Summary

The article discusses the impact of fear on human behavior and decision-making, emphasizing that fear often exaggerates dangers and can prevent individuals from taking risks necessary for personal growth and achievement.

Abstract

The article "This Is Why You Shouldn’t Let Fear Hold You Back" delves into the nature of fear, illustrating how it can dominate our lives and limit our potential. It uses the author's childhood memory of a formidable school dinner lady, Mrs. Johnson, to demonstrate how fear can loom large in our minds, only to appear much smaller upon reflection. The piece draws parallels between human and animal fears, noting the survival instincts that drive them, such as the rat's loss of fear after contracting toxoplasmosis. It also touches on the physiological effects of fear, including the amygdala's role in emotional responses and the body's fight-or-flight reaction. The author argues that while fear serves a purpose in protecting us from genuine threats, modern life's minimal dangers render many of our fears disproportionate and restrictive. The article encourages readers to confront their fears, suggesting that the act of overcoming them can lead to significant personal development and fulfillment.

Opinions

Fear is an overpowering emotion that can distort our perception of reality, making challenges seem insurmountable when they are not.
The physiological responses to fear, such as increased heart rate and disrupted digestion, are remnants of our evolutionary past and are often unnecessary in contemporary society.
Athletes who learn to embrace fear tend to outperform those who succumb to it, indicating that fear can be a catalyst for improved performance if managed correctly.
Fear can be a useful tool for survival, as seen in nature with examples like the mimicry of the King snake and the bluffing behavior of bears.
The article suggests that many of our fears are based on the fear of change or the unknown, rather than actual danger, and these fears can prevent us from achieving our goals.
The author posits that confronting and overcoming fear is essential for personal growth and that looking back on our fears often reveals their insignificance.

This Is Why You Shouldn’t Let Fear Hold You Back

Your fears are far smaller than you think they are.

We called them dinner ladies.

An archaic throwback to an earlier iteration of the language, when dinner was eaten in the middle of the day and supper came later. At school, we ate lunch and rejected the alliterative Americanism of lunch ladies in favor of an older title.

And Mrs. Johnson was the most notorious of them. (That’s not her real name. Given our relative ages, she’s probably dead by now. But like the bad guy in a slasher movie, you can never be sure.)

The dinner ladies’ job was to watch over us kids as we ate and played outside, the whirling chaos of six and seven-year-olds supervised by retired women looking for something to do in the afternoon.

Inevitably, fights broke out. Kids are animals. Part of a dinner lady’s job was to maintain order on the playground. The harshest punishment was to be excluded, made to stand perfectly still against one crumbling wall of the school while friends and enemies played in front of you.

I remember Mrs. Johnson being tall, but all adults are tall when you’re six. Her hair was a close-cropped gray helmet that never moved. Her eyes were bright and fierce as a tiger’s.

Her grip was like a vice. Thirty years later, I can still remember the feel of her bony hand on my arm as she dragged me to the wall. It was that, a crushing grip that somehow managed to leave no bruises, that we kids feared the most.

Fear floods the amygdala, the tiny little walnut buried in our brains where emotions are born.

It shuts down nonessential bodily functions, such as digestion. It spikes our heart rate to keep our muscles rich with oxygenated blood.

It does all of these things so that we can react in the way nature prescribes. Fight or flee. As far as our bodies know, we still live in the forest, where the only law is survival. There is no problem that can’t be killed.

We don’t live there anymore. Mammalian fear reactions are of limited use in the complex societies that surround us. Killing what we fear is off the table, bringing with a whole host of even worse consequences. And ever since we left the forest behind, there is nowhere for us to run to.

Fear messes with our heads. The hormonal rush that prepares our bodies for danger disrupts the normal functioning of our brain. Emotion becomes ungovernable as the amygdala grows fat on terror. Reactions become split-second and impulsive, focused more on the present perception of danger than on long-term goals.

Participating in sports at more than most amateur level can bring a healthy dose of nervousness and fear. At the elite level, most athletes are extremely well-matched in terms of performance. Often, what sets them apart from each other is how they handle the pressure of a major event, and the fear that goes with it. Those who learn to enjoy the fear outperform those who buckle under it.

Rats are afraid of cats.

With good reason. Our fluffy adorable pets are merciless killing machines, perfectly adapted to slaughter small animals.

But once a rat contracts toxoplasmosis, it loses the fear that keeps it alive. Dancing to strings pulled by the virus, it courts its own destruction, seeking out cats to eat it so the virus can spread.

Rats aren’t as different from humans as we like to pretend. Especially when it comes to fear. Fear is the iron spike that anchors us to the earth, reaching back into the dim and distant beginnings of life. We share our fear with rats and fish and flies wrapped in silk, waiting helplessly for the spider’s poison bite.

And fear can be a useful tool. The harmless King snake survives by mimicking the deadly Coral snake. Bears bluff and bluster when you meet them in the forest, half enraged, half afraid. A decent impression of something dangerous can save your life.

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Fear is here to help us. To keep us away from the raging fire or the deep growl at the back of the cave. But our lives have outgrown our fears. Now, more than anything, it holds us back.

For most of us, our fears are low-key and pernicious. We don’t face death on a daily basis. We aren’t going to starve. What we fear is not the sudden drop, but the leap. Our comfortable lives make us risk-averse. We have a lot to lose, so we are afraid to try for more. If the valley is good enough, why risk the mountain?

But nothing worth having comes easily. To live is to risk. Triumphing over fear is why fear exists in the first place. The hammer that breaks the hard shell of our former life so something new and beautiful can emerge.

And viewed from the other side, our fears look so small, it’s laughable.

Years passed.

I moved from high school to college, followed by an extremely short spell at university. I grew up. But some childish habits remained.

I was in church with my dad when I saw Mrs. Johnson again, after a gap of well over a decade. The same gray helmet of hair. The same stony face. But the eyes had lost some of their steel. She had shrunk. The intervening years had turned the playground tyrant into an old woman who barely came up to my shoulder.

And as she made her slow way down the aisle, I heard a noise. Again. And again. I pressed a hand to my face. The fearsome Mrs. Johnson was afflicted with chronic and seemingly uncontrollable flatulence.

When Joseph Stalin failed to get up for breakfast one morning, no one dared disturb him. In the dark court of the dictator, one wrong move, one wrong word, could easily prove fatal. So one of the most powerful men in the world lay there, stricken dumb and soaked in his own piss, until 11 PM.

Spiders look three times bigger than they really are when you’re afraid of them. Aerophobes always overestimate heights. Our fears are huge and unconquerable. Until one day, they are not. And we find ourselves wondering why we were ever afraid at all.

There are lots of reasons why we don’t live the lives that we want. Duty. Lack of opportunity. The lottery of ill health.

But if you are letting fear hold you back, you’re giving it too much power. The terrifying dictator is an incontinent old man. The fearsome dinner lady is a sick woman embarrassed by her perpetual farts. These tigers are made of paper. These castles are made of glass. Fear is the grit we trample on the way to meet our dreams.