Why aren’t you making great things? Fear
Tools and frameworks only take you so far. You’ve got to move through the fear that’s holding you back.
Using tested tools and frameworks takes the guesswork out of the “how” and provides a recipe to follow. But they aren’t enough. You can have the best hammer and nails but if you are too afraid to swing the hammer and make the birdhouse because it might be ugly, you’ll just have a pile of tools and no place for birds to live. When we create, we bring something new into the world. Fear arises when we think about doing anything new. New is unknown. New is novel. New is scary. Our brains want us to stay in the safe zone.
What if the idea is dumb?
What if people don’t like it?
What if people don’t like me?
What if I fail?
Creating something new means putting a stake in the ground and taking a risk. The more that you are controlled by feelings of fear and anxiety, the less likely you are to freely share your ideas — or to even allow yourself to have new ideas! So often, we stay in a place that is safe and known even if it is not a place we want to be. So, how can you move beyond your current limitations? You must work through the vulnerability that comes with it.
You’ve got to work through your fear.
We are getting more comfortable with frameworks for innovation, methods for creating, tools for prototyping, and learning. (This is awesome!) But we’ve got to also get good at MANAGING FEAR. To do this requires practice.
When I work with teams, I advocate for taking personal responsibility for managing fear and moving forward. It’s easy to wait for the perfect moment or environment to make your move: avoidance. These days, there’s a lot of talk about creating psychological safety in the workplace and while I love that idea, even when we are in the safest space, fear exists. Human beings are imperfect and unpredictable and so are the businesses we work in. There will never be a perfectly safe place and we will always have to contend with our own fear.
I run workshops to teach teams on how to use tools for innovation — and lately, I’ve been incorporating guided meditation, inspired by one of my favorite teachers, Tara Brach. The response has been remarkable.
RAIN meditation:
When you find yourself feeling fear or another unpleasant roadblock feeling, close your eyes and work through these steps. Use the acronym “RAIN” to remember it later.
Recognize the feelings coming up in you. So often we push them down and push them away, which is like taking a sliver and keeping it inside you on purpose. It hurts.
Acknowledge the feelings. Feel them in your body. Sense them in the places they find a home in you. It might be your stomach, your chest, your throat. We all store our feelings in different places. The first step — find them.
Investigate the feelings. Once you’ve found them, see them in you. Be with them. Turn them around like you would a stone in the palm of your hand.
Neutral. Adopt a neutral view of the feelings. Nonjudgement. Non-attachment. Let them go. Let them float away and move through you. Imagine them floating away and up like a cloud or moving like drops of rain off your fingertips. Do not cling to them or grasp them. Let them go.*
My practice has led me here:
My study of yoga and mindfulness made a world of difference in my ability to try new things.
When I launched my business, I had to continuously let go of the fear that I would fail…over and over again. It’s an ongoing practice every day. If I let the fear build up and stay, it’s hard to continue.
Recently, my significant other and I recognized our mutual dissatisfaction with technology’s impact on connection and conversation. We decided to create a side project. This was not a huge undertaking in terms of the steps required to create it, but there was an emotional side to the journey. We had to let go of the fear that making something might be a bust and give it a try…or we’d still just be talking about it.
Your fear will always exist. This is not something you can change, but you can change how you respond. With practice, it gets easier to take risks and put new ideas out in the world. My hope is that you practice getting more comfortable and create the new things that you want to see in the world. As a result, you just might find yourself in a world you like a bit more.
My favorite frameworks & tools:
*Tara cues the “N” as “Nurture” in her meditations. I find that “Neutral” is more effective in this context. Check out Tara Brach if you are interested in exploring her version and spending more time nurturing the feelings that come up.