What we do with fear and why it matters

I’m twelve years old, visiting Zion National Park in Utah, staring dizzily downward 1,500 feet to the ground I can’t even see below. I’m surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscape in the country, but my feet refuse to budge during the last half mile of the trail to Angels Landing. To reach this towering rock formation, you need to follow a narrow path with a sheer drop at either side, with a long chain railing as the only grip. I’m petrified. I’ve never felt fear like this before in my life.

Decades later, I still remember this scene so vividly. I wanted nothing more than to turn around. I was just about to give up and tell my dad that I didn’t want to go any farther. Then, I saw something unexpected: an elderly couple approached us and without a moment of hesitation, they dropped their hiking poles, grabbed the chain along the path, and kept on going, as if they weren’t afraid at all. I was shocked! I looked up ahead at my dad, who started to laugh at my response. After a moment, I did too. Seeing their fearlessness shifted my perspective, and we continued along the path. While I still remember how scared I was, I’ve also never forgotten that absolute feeling of achievement — and, of course, the spectacular views that awaited us — when I reached the top.

I thought about this moment last week, when my fellow troublemakers and I hosted one of X’s most beloved annual traditions: the Quiz Night of Horror, a trivia night we host every Halloween to raise money for charity. This year, we raised a grand total of $60,000, with donations going to each quiz-taker’s non-profit of choice. (Thank you to everyone at X, the moonshot factory, who joined us and donated!)

Each time we plan a Quiz Night, my team and I try to outdo ourselves with fun, unexpected twists to keep everyone on their toes. This year we wanted to find creative ways to create a sense of mounting instability — but also to show how small doses of fear could bring us together. To do this, we gave each table a “Dread” tower (think: Jenga with a twist!). The teams faced serious consequences each time they pulled out their Jenga pieces: when a tower fell, the person holding the Jenga block would leave their team and join a zombie horde. To win points, the teams had to work together to overcome their “fear” and solve their increasingly-precarious puzzles. 

While this kind of fear is fun, many kinds of more serious fear affect us in different ways. At work, fear of failure is common. In my role at X, the moonshot factory, I sometimes feel as though I’m at the edge of a drop like the path at Angels Landing. And when we’re afraid, it can be so tempting to fall back, retreating to the path we already know is safe. But we all have such a strong, often untapped ability to push forward through this paralysis. Whether it’s overcoming your fear of heights, or solving the kinds of high-pressure shaky scenarios that happen at work (Jenga or otherwise!), our fellow teammates and trailmates help us through — whether that’s by shifting our perspective, bringing order to chaos, or preventing us from joining the ranks of the undead.

I still have the poster of Zion National Park I bought after being so inspired by the summit I reached that day. This childhood memory reminds me now to pause, take a deep breath, and apply some good old mind over matter to keep going forward whenever I’m feeling stuck, worried, or downright afraid of what I’m seeing or what might be ahead. Fear is something we all face, but it’s our relationship with it — and with each other — that can make all the difference.