Maybe You Should Feel More Fear

Zak Slayback and I were talking about some people we’d recently met who desperately wanted to do something exciting and new, but in the end they couldn’t pull the trigger.  I told him I was surprised by how much fear can hold people back.  Zak’s insightful response was that their problem wasn’t too much fear, but too little.  Too many people will do anything to avoid the experience of feeling afraid, and if more people would embrace it, they’d be happier.

As usual, I stole this wonderful conversation and turned it into a blog post.  It’s up today at the Praxis blog, where I riff a bit on this theme.  Thanks Zak!

From the post:

“If we believe that experiencing the emotion of fear is the worst possible thing we can go through, we will do only those things that are not accompanied by that emotion.  We’ll stay safe, stay home, stay in he comfort zone, only try what we’re already good at, only talk to who we already know.  The avoidance of experiencing fear is a recipe for stagnation.”

Read the whole thing here.