If You're Not Nervous, You're Not Growing:

If You're Not Nervous, You're Not Growing:

"Grow[ing] up … that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Where no hope is left, is left no fear." -- John Milton

‘Life is beautifully tragic. Giving it up isn’t the hard part, it’s the living part that everyone struggles with.”— Confidence and courage are overrated. In the success-is-everything world that we’ve got at the moment, people are all about finding a few easy steps to cultivating boldness and crushing fear. Yet it’s unwise to build a life that has little or no room for fear and anxiety. We’re going to take a few long and unpleasant sniffs of fear in the coming days—watching it and smelling it as it mixes with vulnerability, success, ambition, risk, shame and doubt to make a messy and pungent stew. When you eliminate the fear.

Some psychologists compare healthy fear and anxiety to the experience of moving from a closed room into a hallway, in pursuit of a better place. Being in the dark hallway is so terrifying that we often scurry back to the closed room, when what we need to do is to accept the dark hallway as the only route to freedom. Think about that image of the scary corridor that must be passed through: That’s the essence of a legend as ancient as the Israelites wanting to retreat from the wilderness and return to slavery in Egypt rather than press on the Promised Land. redient of fear in your career or personal life, you end up with a sterile dish that lacks flavor or nutritional value.

Some psychologists compare healthy fear and anxiety to the experience of moving from a closed room into a hallway, in pursuit of a better place. Being in the dark hallway is so terrifying that we often scurry back to the closed room, when what we need to do is to accept the dark hallway as the only route to freedom. Think about that image of the scary corridor that must be passed through: And that’s the essence of a modern work parable as charming as Who Moved My Cheese, in which its characters would rather stagnate and complain than move out into a scary world. Success Doesn’t “Cure” Fear—It Doubles Down On It Success is as dangerous as failure … Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. -- Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell One of the greatest delusions about fear is that, if we can just taste a little success, the nervousness will go away and we can move on to becoming rock stars in our field. Yet that’s not how it works for rock stars themselves, is it? If you ask someone, “Would you rather be a rock god who’s worshipped by millions ... or a tormented heroin addict?” any sane person would choose the first. Yet the first leads to the second with alarming frequency. Success is just a furnace in which the person who can’t manage fear gets scorched … or a precariously steep ladder that gives you a deeper sense of doom as you climb it. The only people blessed with a natural talent for squelching fears are the folks who are usually classified as narcissists and sociopaths. They run into their own problems, and usually race off cliffs (sometimes taking their organizations with them). You know you’re not one of those, by the very fact that you’re reading this article. Such persons don’t sit around reading about self-development— they’re too busy moving people around their personal chessboards. Fear as a Growing Pain Fear and anxiety remain the growing pain of the soul, at any stage of life. If you’re not feeling fear, you’re not growing. Young bodies can’t usually opt out of growing physically (especially since it’s a myth that coffee stunts growth).

But talented and ambitious adults find many ways to opt out of emotional growth. Opting out sometimes involves spectacular and impressive exercises with drinks or substances. But more often it just involves quietly fencing off our lives and careers, and keeping a “safe” distance from thoughts or actions or conversations that would trigger anxiety, but which would also trigger immense growth and fulfillment.

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