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From an evolutionary perspective, our brains are very crude instruments. We automatically translate anything that feels incoherent, unfamiliar, or inaccessible as being unsafe.
Understand why you feel unsafe
When we feel anything that is unfamiliar or that evokes discomfort our evolutionary brains automatically devolve to: I’m being threatened. There is fascinating research that shows that when people have lower levels of self-esteem and they are in a job in which they are recognized and promoted, that promotion can feel incoherent to the person with low self-esteem. They have low self-esteem and they might be used to and expecting to be treated badly. So what is fascinating is the results showing that when people are promoted when they have lower levels of self-esteem they are more likely to leave their jobs.
What this might mean is that if you are used to hearing a story time and time again from a parent or from a partner about how you are not good enough, you are more likely to be drawn to that relationship because it feels familiar. The messaging that you are getting time and time again is connected with what you expect to get.
Assess your fear from a thoughtful place
How do we protect ourselves against this? Daniel Kahneman describes System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking is the intuitive response, the emotional visceral “us” and “them” that can sometimes arise out of fear. System 2 is the deliberate thoughtful examination of: What is this person saying? Is it inline with how I really want to be?
When we are able to step back from our fear – not to pretend that it doesn’t exist but to see our fear for what it is: fear. Not a direction but data and an emotion. When we are able to step back from the fear and able to assess the fear and assess the messaging from the place of our values in a more deliberate, thoughtful way, we are able to come to a place where we are ultimately protected from the message of the fear and are able to move us ourselves forward in a way that is aligned with how we truly want to be and with a world that we truly want to live in.
Move forward in the direction you choose
From an emotionally agile perspective, it is really important to be able to recognize your fear or your disquiet or your anxiety for what it is but to also recognize that no one in this world ever did anything meaningful without experiencing some level of discomfort. Without experiencing some level of distress or without experiencing some level of stress. So it is possible for us as humans to be able to become passionate and connected with our fear but to still make choices that are aligned with the direction that we want to move in our lives.
One of the things that I describe in Emotional Agility is this idea: Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is fear walking. And really what I mean by this is to recognize your fear for what it is and to be compassionate with it, but to not let that fear dictate to you that you not do something that ultimately is important to you. You can feel fear. You do not need to conquer it; you do not need to crush it; you do not need to get rid of it. You can feel fear and you can choose to do what is important to you. You can feel the fear that you might not get a particular job and still choose to apply for it. You can feel the fear that you might sound like an idiot in a meeting and still choose to contribute. You can feel the fear that you may be rejected by a friend who has hurt your feelings and still choose to reach out to that person if reaching out is something that is connected with your values and how you want to live.