Follow the Fear —?Do Things That Scare You

In this series, professionals reflect on their inevitable career mistakes. Follow the stories here and write your own (please include #BestMistake in your post).

A lot of people will say they were shy children. You might say that about yourself, too.

You might recount things like “I hid behind my mother’s legs” or “I could never talk to strangers.”

But when I was a child, I took shy to a new height — to whatever is beyond shy. Perpetually fearful, maybe. Chronically freaked out.

I easily could’ve been the original embarrassed emoji.

By age 8, I had a running list in my diary of everything I was afraid of. It started out with the obvious. But then it veered into some pretty open territory. I warned myself to avoid...

• Spiders
• The dark
• Being alone in the house
• Stairs that didn’t have a back riser
• The back of the school bus
• The deep end of the swimming pool
• The smell of the cellar
• Toddlers
• My older brother’s teenage friends
• Old people
• People in wheelchairs
• People with foreign accents

(and finally)

• People

That went on for three pages.

Fourth grade, in particular, terrified me. I was nine. I had a loud, brash, outgoing teacher with an accent I now recognize as Jersey who believed that children learned best when they had plenty of room to express themselves and engage with the world around them.

She wanted children of different abilities and personalities to learn from one another. She mixed up the typical classroom seating arrangement — desks in rows, children front-facing — and instead placed our desks in a large circle so we could all see each other talking. Someone always was, because she believed that ideas were worth discussing in an open, engaging forum.

She was a phenomenal teacher.

I hated her.

She messed with my strategy for school, which was to keep my head down and do my worksheets. And during forced group discussion or class participation, to align myself perfectly with the silhouette of the student directly in front of me so I effectively disappeared.

For a fear-filled, anxious child, her classroom was hell.

One day that year, our teacher organized a surprise team-building exercise outdoors. She had us self-organize a field hockey game in some kind of cooperation and leadership exercise.

It went like this: Half of us got field hockey sticks and were supposed to engage in some kind of game on the field. When she blew the whistle those on the field would give their sticks to those on the sidelines, and the sidelined kids would take their positions.

I was slow to claim a stick initially — if I hated classroom discourse and attention, I hated team sports more — so I was in the first sidelined group. Only, when the whistle blew, instead of claiming my spot I rushed at the beefiest, jockiest, most athletic girl in our class and told her she could have a double turn on the field.

I knew she’d be thrilled at the prospect — and she was! She enthusiastically trotted back out.

I was counting on the teacher's not noticing — in the chaos of the switch — that I was the only fourth grader to sit out the field hockey game.

It was a tragic miscalculation. Actually, the teacher didn’t notice me. But she did notice that the beefy jock was back in the game, and she asked her why.

My opt-out was a huge deal for a teacher who was trying to teach accountability, openness, discourse. My parents were hauled in. The principal was involved.

It was a fail on an epic scale, for someone trying to stay under the radar.

And my next report card carried a letter I’d never seen before on any document attached to my name: an F.

It hit me hard. If there was anything I valued more than going unnoticed, it was my grades, which were how I defined myself: I was someone who racked up As. If I got an F, who was I?

That F felt like a scar. It would be years before I would read The Scarlet Letter, but when I finally did read it I thought back to that F and I realized, “I know exactly how Hester Prynne feels.”

In the weeks and months and years that followed, I slowly came to a realization.

It dawned on me (after years, after decades!) that opting out of things — whether a field hockey game or something more important than that — means failure on a scale larger than an F on a report card.

Saying NO immediately because you are awkward or insecure or unsure of the outcome or worried about poking your nose out earns you an immediate F not just on a report card, but in life.

It means you limit yourself.

You pen yourself in.

You avoid what could be.

So what? Can’t we live a perfectly happy life unfilled, under the radar? Isn’t that hiding spot quiet and cozy? Does it matter?

It does, because to be loved means to be seen for who you are. And to be who you are means to explore the possibilities of what’s possible — before you define what’s impossible.

Former RISD President John Maeda once explained, as quoted by Debbie Millman: “The computer will do anything within its abilities. But it will do nothing, unless commanded to do so.”

People are often the same, says Millman, a writer, artist, and brand strategist. We like to operate within our abilities. We like to stay in our comfort zones.

But whereas the computer has finite capacity — based on its operating system or memory or programs or whatever — you and I don’t. "Our abilities are limited only by our perceptions," Millman says.

Years after that day on the field hockey field, I can now articulate it: My comfort zone is my dead zone. And your comfort zone is your dead zone.

I limited my perceptions that day. I did for most of my childhood. But I don’t anymore.

Except when I do.

Because the truth is I still fight the urge to hand back the field hockey stick. I still want to say NO. Some days, I still want to opt out.

But instead of letting that resistance derail me, I try to use it to fuel my momentum — much the way a sailboat uses its sails and the wind, while tacking or gibing, to power its effort toward where it wants to go.

So here’s what helps. There are three things:

1. Ask yourself, "So what?"

This is a lesson I talk about in Everybody Writes, to help businesses get to the essence of their product’s value to the customer.

(Your product is awesome. “So what? Tell me what it means to me. Why do I care?”)

In my case, I ask so what? to access something different: I make a fool of myself on the field hockey field. So what? I embarrass myself in this post, and you say rude things in the comments. So what?

What’s the real power of that? I’ve learned to not take life — and myself — so seriously.

2. Assume people love you. If they don’t, assume they just don’t know you well enough yet.

I learned this lesson from my dog Simon, who died a few years ago.

Simon greeted everyone he met with an unembarrassed enthusiasm. He assumed everyone loved him, and if you didn’t love him, he assumed you just needed to invest a little more time getting to know him. In his mind, he was worth knowing.

That’s a perspective that helps enormously, because putting yourself out there means being vulnerable. Assuming that people love you and want you to succeed makes stepping out of your comfort zone that much easier.

The room feels warmer somehow. It tells you, You’ve got this.

And finally...

3. Follow your fear.

Because quite often, when something scares you, it’s the very thing worth doing.

Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs. Her new book, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, is a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Sign up to hear more from her at AnnHandley.com.

See an annotated version of this post on Slideshare.