Why you shouldn’t be afraid of fear, featuring Michael Scott and George Costanza

Fear is a powerful weapon; use it for good rather than bad.

Ever worry that you don’t understand what your boss is asking of you? Or what a coworker is explaining to you? Are you eager to speak up and get to the truth, or do you prefer to avoid any potential confrontation or embarrassment, sitting in silence as the work isn’t done or the issue is left unresolved?

If you face your fears and speak up, hats off to you! If you routinely let unresolved issues fester, keep reading to learn why you should change your ways.

What might motivate your passive behavior? Let me take a guess: you’re probably afraid. Afraid of looking stupid. Afraid of looking weak or indecisive or inattentive. Afraid of ‘bothering’ a colleague or superior. Afraid of uncertainty. Afraid of looking another human being in the eye and saying “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

When your emotions hold meetings in your brain, fear runs the show. Your other emotions cower to fear. Love, anger, joy; they don’t hold a candle against the world’s most powerful emotion.

Fear is a product of our evolution. We used to have a lot of threats on our minds like hunger, violence, and predation. Fear is deeply ingrained in our brains; no matter how hard we try, we can’t eliminate it.

But remember when Franklin D. Roosevelt said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself?” Turns out FDR was on to something.

When you face an uncertain situation, you will probably develop some level of fear. You have two choices: either avoid the fear or use it to your advantage.

Michael Scott: unafraid of fear

In a Season 5 episode of The Office, top accountant Oscar explains to his boss Michael Scott that he has discovered a $4,300 surplus for the past year that Michael must spend for the office in order to avoid that money being withheld from next year’s budget. Michael quickly interrupts Oscar, cutting him off and unforgettably saying “explain this to me like I’m five.”

Oscar uses a lemonade stand analogy, which Michael quickly internalizes. Eventually, after some comedic levity and a typical bout of indecisiveness, Michael defers to his employees, empowering them to decide on either upgrading the office’s copier or upgrading the chairs.

Michael faced a choice when he did not understand the information being presented to him: he could have avoided accountability entirely and simply failed to make a decision given his lack of understanding of the dilemma he faced. Or he could have made a simple request to elicit a suitable response. Choice #1 would have been fear-driven. Choice #2 was driven by confidence.

What do I mean? I’ll let Nick Wagnall take it away. As he wrote in a recent Medium article:

“If you cultivate the willingness to accept your fear and get on with life despite feeling afraid, you send a powerful message to your brain: Fear is uncomfortable but not dangerous. And when your brain really believes that, confidence is not far behind.”

When you confront a situation that induces fear, your body produces adrenaline, which enhances your performance. The world’s best performers use this to their advantage.

Michael Scott was by no means a world class performer. But for one fleeting moment, he acted like one.

If someone (a boss, a parent, a friend) is explaining something to you that you don’t understand, don’t hesitate to speak up and say “hey, I don’t get this!” Depending on the situation, it might not be wise to pout like Michael and say “explain this to me like I’m five,” but I think there’s a lot to be said for being honest and direct with people rather than pretending to understand something. Usually, you’ll produce better outcomes when you prioritize truth over fear, or as Nick put it, values over feelings.

George Costanza: very afraid of fear

You can look to Seinfeld for an example of what might happen if you don’t understand something and fail to speak up about it. In one episode, George Costanza’s boss with the New York Yankees gives him a major project. The boss details George’s role in the project while using the office bathroom, but since George refuses to follow his boss into the bathroom, he misses the explanation.

In typical George fashion, he fails to admit his faux pas. He carries on, pretending to work on the project without the slightest idea of what he must do. George lets fear get the best of him, and the predictable result is anxiety. At one point, he anxiously tries to decode an innocuous pop culture reference from his boss.

It turns out that George’s boss had actually completed the major project but hadn’t remembered doing so. But by letting the situation fester, George found himself in a pickle.

The episode insinuates that George’s boss forgot because of an undiagnosed mental health issue. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, mistakenly assuming that George Costanza had completed the project, deems the younger George mentally unstable and sends him to a mental institution.

George does the exact opposite of Michael: rather than ask for guidance, he refuses to accept or admit his lack of understanding. In both situations, the men received explanations from colleagues. Michael accepted guidance from a subordinate, George refused guidance from his boss.

By speaking up, Michael created a mutually beneficial outcome: he and his employees enjoyed new chairs. Conversely, George created a mutually terrible outcome: he ended up in a mental hospital, and his boss’s mental health condition went unaddressed.

Hopefully, your boss wouldn’t immediately institutionalize you for something that clearly wasn’t your fault. But when you don’t speak up for yourself, you let lingering issues fester.

Once again, don’t be like George Costanza

Whether it’s a $4,300 surplus at the office or a major project from your company’s bigwigs or something else entirely, don’t let your fear stop you from getting what you want. Fear is natural; it’s how you respond to it that makes a big difference. Remember that Epictetus quote:

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

You might be afraid to admit that you don’t know something or didn’t pick up on something the first time. But it’s almost always better to take your humble pie, admit that you need some help, and ask for it. It might also demonstrate some good skills like forthrightness and initiative.

We all have our blind spots, and we all make mistakes; it’s better to accept your fear and do your best to make the most of it rather than let fear run your brain a la George Costanza. Fear is a powerful weapon; use it for good rather than bad.