On Doing Things that Scare You

“Just because something scares me, doesn’t mean I won’t do it,” I told a friend of mine the other day, as a way of explaining myself—explaining why I might push back against an idea and make it look objectively from an outside perspective like I don’t want to do it—and yet I do it anyway. The truth is, almost everything scares me, and if I’d never learned to do things anyway I would never do anything at all.

This doesn’t mean I always make good decisions about what to do. Part of why I have a fear response is because I’ve done things that scared me and those things made me miserable. I picked some jobs that made logical sense for my future, which left me as a trembling bundle of nerves that couldn’t find calmness for months afterwards. I’ve gone out with people who hurt me badly. I’ve made friends with people who weren’t trustworthy. Things scare me because bad experiences CAN happen.

But what I’ve learned over the years is that I really don’t have a good way of knowing in advance whether something that scares me will make me miserable or not. So many things surprised me by being enjoyable, and I would’ve never known if I hadn’t done them. Jobs that terrified me and I thought I’d hate, I turned out to love. Talking to new people turned out to be fun. And so on. Just because something scares me, doesn’t mean it won’t become one of the deepest joys of my life. Therefore, trying a lot of different things that I’m not sure about feels like a risk worth taking.

It’s really hard to predict if you’ll love something without taking the leap to do it. When I decided to go off to study theology in 2017, my mom asked me if I thought I’d like it. And I had to say I honestly didn’t know, and wouldn’t know until I did it. This actually held me back for a long time—I’d been warned by well-meaning people that most people who thought they liked theology actually found it tedious, and that I needed to know why I wanted to study it before I took such a big leap. (Turns out I still don’t know “why” but it didn’t stop me from enjoying it).

And when I was in seminary to study theology, several people told me they couldn’t imagine moving across the country, and that they could never do it. Well, a part of the reason I had done it was to prove to myself I could. I knew the only way to find out if I could was to do it. The agony of loneliness and the lack of a supportive community when my life there was overturned felt worse than I could’ve predicted, and was exactly the sort of scenario that my brain frightened me with before I left—and yet I wouldn’t have known you get through these things if I hadn’t experienced that. Life can be more painful than your brain tells you, so fear is a totally appropriate response—and yet, by living through life experiences, your brain also begins to accept that you survive and these things don’t kill you.

That said, I absolutely struggle with paralysis! It’s exhausting when so many daily activities terrify you and you have to find the courage to keep going anyway. A lot of times I run out of energy to get stuff done. It also means I rely a lot on other people to tell me things are ok, and to encourage me. It makes me rather tiring to be around!

Anyway, it makes sense to wrap this post up with some advice about doing things that scare you. I’m no sage, but here are some thoughts:

• Be open to things! Try to believe the chances you’ll love something you’re not sure about are at least equal to the chance you’ll hate it. The chances are probably higher, honestly.

• If you’re miserable, change something. This is easy to say and hard to do. When you’re miserable, you have even less resources to face things that scare you. Also, many times you’re miserable because you feel stuck—or you feel hopeless that change will do any good. But if you can, make a change in some area. This will help give you a feeling of control over something. (Note: if your misery is tied to depression, you probably need more help than this blog post.)

• Accept that “just do it anyway,” is the best explanation for how to do things that scare you. It’s the only explanation I’ve read, and it sounds super unhelpful. But somehow it does all come down to leaping out into the unknown.

• Sometimes you can’t “just do it”—but you can the next week or the next month. Don’t beat yourself up at not being able to conquer your fear in the moment, and celebrate it when you do find a way to wrap your brain around it.

• For me, spontaneity is a big thing that helps me to do things I’m scared of—just taking advantage of the moment and doing the thing now (like talking to someone who intimidates me). The more time I have to think about my decision, the more fear builds up. Maybe spontaneity will work for you too.

• Sometimes baby steps is the best way—going out to a restaurant alone rather than moving across the country, to face a fear of loneliness. But sometimes a “flooding” or “exposure” to a fear is better than tip-toeing up to your fear and letting yourself overthink it. It’s ok to switch up your strategies. Try figure out what will work for you.

• Don’t go against your gut. You do know some things are just not for you. Don’t date a guy you dislike, for example, or do a job you’re not suited for. This advice of doing things that scare you is for the things that scare you because the outcome is unknown.

• Some things that scare you are harder to undo than others. You can quit a job. You can come home from a trip. You can move back if you hate a new place. You can break up a relationship. But you can’t get back money you’ve lost. You can’t easily restore bridges you’ve burned. You can’t end a marriage without a lot of pain. Know what you’re willing to lose when you try something. Things with more permanent impacts are legitimately scary.
  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a great quote about this in his book Skin in the Game, where he apples this to finances:
  • “[N]o individual can get the same returns as the market unless he has infinite pockets and no uncle points. This is conflating ensemble probability and time probability. If the investor has to eventually reduce his exposure because of losses, or because of retirement, or because he got divorced to marry his neighbor’s wife, or because he suddenly developed a heroin addiction after his hospitalization for appendicitis, or because he changed his mind about life, his returns will be divorced from those of the market, period.”

• You can’t actually keep experimenting with life because eventually you run out of runway. But if you don’t experiment at all, you restrict yourself. It’s finding that balance between being open to learning what you can be, without blowing yourself up in the process.

• Deciding to do something that scares you teaches you about yourself—facing it often involves facing the why behind it. And navigating whatever it is—underlying feelings of inferiority, underlying discomfort at spending time with yourself, underlying distrust in the rest of humanity—is part of the journey of living better.

After reading this, you might be like—she’s so brave! But I bet if you looked at my life, you wouldn’t think that at all. It’s not about making yourself try skydiving or travel to North Korea or start a business It’s about finding the strength to take a step towards something you do want to do, to be there kind of person you do want to be. Keep at it! You will find your way.