CHAPTER 8

Embrace the Fear

You must never feel badly about making mistakes. . . as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.

— Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

About this time you may be saying to yourself, “I don’t know about all of this. You keep saying it’s simple. But it sounds hard. I’m afraid I won’t remember all of this.” Hear that big whooshing sound in the background? That’s fear—the big energy suck of modern life.

One thing many people don’t like to admit is that often they are afraid. We’re afraid we can’t get our work done if we stop to read someone else’s poorly written prose. We’re afraid we will miss something and look stupid so we write a bunch of gobbledegook, hoping no one will notice. And once in a while, as we are sitting in front of the computer, hurriedly zapping out the emails as fast as we can so we can get back to our own work, a situation comes about where we are literally afraid to answer.

These challenging situations can include answering an angry vendor or an overly aggressive colleague who has sent a terse and almost offensive email, or composing a reply or follow-up to your boss. Perhaps we aren’t really sure what the boss has asked us, when the deadline for the project is due, or what all needs to be in the completed project. We then really don’t know how to say, “I didn’t understand what you wanted me to do.” Never mind that the responsibility of making the instructions clear lies with the boss; we still have to deal with it. And often we sit there, afraid to say anything.

Fear steals our emotional time. By making us react to the emotions that the situation brings, not to the situation itself, we negate or slow down any needed action. Think about how much time we spend dreading something. Now try to quantify it. Reluctant to face the email or conversation with the employee whose tone or inability to get her work done on time is slowing down your own productivity? How many times does the thought “I need to do something about this” cross your mind—and then how many times do you have to deal with the sinking feeling in your stomach when you think about handing it?

Fear steals our physical time. We put off sending the message, so it stays there in our mental inbox. And like any formidable mass, it grows. It keeps blocking the forward motion of our other tasks, merely by existing. It continues to be there, taking up time we could be using elsewhere. Try quantifying the time you spend on putting off dealing with just this sort of message: if it crosses your mind at least three times a day, and if the thought takes 30 seconds, that’s a minute and a half.

But wait! There’s more. The thought doesn’t come as a stand-alone product; it also has that fear attached to it. The fearful emotional reaction takes at least twice as long—the 30 seconds that the fear reacts in your body, and then at least another minute to have your rational brain counter with “I can’t think about that now; I have other work to do.” But then you also experience lag speed in your next few minutes as your body tries to normalize itself from that momentary flight-or-fight action. So let’s say that you lose six minutes at the minimum—and that’s probably low as most of us take longer, either to recover from the reaction or in the number of times we think about dreaded task. And let’s say you put it off for six days. That means the fear has stolen at a minimum a half hour of your precious time, as well as your balance and well-being.

Let’s break down why you may be afraid of writing.

Fear of Revision

Many people feel that once they have written something, they’re done. It is therefore written in stone. Or they hate the idea of being judged for their writing. Or they hate the idea of having to think deeply in order to have something to say. In any of these cases, the result is the same: they put down each word as if it is another inch in the crawl to cross a desert. This goal isn’t to do it well. The goal is to get it done. This belief leads to several problems.

One, many people are afraid to write. They are afraid that they will be judged by what is put down on that piece of paper. And they are usually partially right: many people do judge you by your written words. But that does not mean that the very first set of words that you write is what has to stand as the final version. It simply means that writing, like almost anything else, is not a piece of your soul; it’s a piece of your work. Your soul is not judged by a one-time action, but by an accumulation of actions. It’s judged by many incarnations, many revisions, and many chances to atone for mistakes.

Writing is no different. You write down the first words, and they will probably stink. But you don’t stop there. Stopping and thinking, “I’ve put down the words and I’m now done” is the quickest way to defeat progress. The secret to progressing in writing, just as it is in Zen, is that each time you revise, you create a new wrinkle in your brain that takes the initial action that occurs the next time to a slightly higher level than it was in the first action. So if you write something, and then take the time to revise it mindfully, your brain learns to write in the revised, more mindful manner—and will use that manner for the initial writing the next time you sit down to write. That means that each successive revision leads to a higher level of writing for the rest of your writing life. That’s very powerful stuff.

Theologian and writer Anne Lamott emphasizes this point in her book Bird by Bird¹ when she explains that her writer father taught her brother to write when the young boy was assigned a large project on birds. When the boy asked how to go about meeting this huge assignment, Lamott’s father said he had to do it in steps: bird by bird. And each successive bird became easier to write about.

Writing isn’t etching in stone. It is fluid, changing, growing—much like life. The people who are afraid of revising—or too lazy to do so— do not see the bigger picture. Some people are afraid to let things go. They fear that they will fail somehow if they do, so they look for perfection as an ideal. These are the students who always ask for an extension because “I can make it better” or the people who never stop fiddling with their Powerpoint slides.

To have the self-compassion to accept that process, and to accept that our writing will be flawed in some way, but hey, it’s the best I can do right now with the tools and skills I have, is a mighty act. We accept imperfection as growth and effort in others; accepting it in ourselves shows compassion and mercy and kindness. In other words, it embodies the principles of Zen.

But those who are afraid to see themselves as works in progress make life miserable for themselves. They set up a standard they will always fail to achieve. Really? Why do that to yourself? Everything has a time limit; everything has a cycle.

You have to know when it’s time to move on. Sometimes people try to freeze their lives in routine or continuous repetition, running from the past but afraid of the future. They apply that constraint to their writing, afraid the final product won’t be good enough. Here’s the irony: nothing stays the same. It either progresses or regresses—even stagnation is regression. So in that endless revision, they are actually regressing—by taking themselves right back to where they started.

Remember the movie Groundhog Day? Bill Murray’s character is caught in over a hundred endless replays of the same day. Sometimes he makes the same mistake he made in previous versions. Sometimes he does something different with a different result. Along the way, he learns to play the piano and speak another language and becomes a much different person from the first time he experienced the day—but he keeps waking up in the morning, caught in the same day, until he realizes that he has changed and is ready to move on.

People who cannot stop themselves from rewriting and trying to make something perfect need to realize one simple truth: they alone are the ones who can move things along. Only by letting go of that fear of being less than perfect can their writing—and their lives—grow. And by doing so, they show that compassion for themselves. One way to reach that point is to ask, “How important is it? Is this particular piece of writing worth this much time?” A technique that helps it to figure out exactly how much money you make on average per hour. Then break that down into how much you earn per minute. Let’s say, for instance, that you make $30 an hour. Basically you make $.50 per minute. If that one email sentence you’re working on takes you up to 10 minutes to compose, then that one sentence alone costs you five dollars. And that’s just one sentence—not the whole email!

If the email has three sentences, and you have put $5 into each, you have to ask yourself if the end result of that email is worth those $15. Some are, but most aren’t. Only you can answer that question. In your preparation time and thoughts before you write, set a limit for what you are willing to spend on the piece of. You may not want to work on this one sentence more than three minutes; you may not want to work on the whole email more than three minutes. So before you start, you set a time budget. The time budget limit allows you to decide on the level of clarity you can achieve in the limited time, given the tools and skills and circumstances you have right now. You will have learned something from it; the next time you will move higher, just because you were aware as you composed and revised.

Whether you are a one-and-done or a constant tinkerer, you still have to get distance from your writing. As we said earlier, it is a piece of your work, not a piece of your soul. Allowing yourself that objectivity will allow you to revise and cut, which in turn will lend itself to much easier reading and much clearer communication.

Fear of Reaction

Why are we afraid? Because we don’t want to face someone else’s reaction. We are afraid of conflict. Conflict is going to exist. Avoiding the issue, or being afraid to confront the issue, doesn’t make the conflict go away. As someone once put it, fear does not mean you forget everything and run; it means you face everything and rebound. Facing up to one’s fears, choosing your words wisely, and going forward not only gives the image of great professionalism but also furthers communication. Without communication, the conflict can never be resolved.

And really, how much of a major impact is someone else’s reaction going to have on you? In most cases, the reaction may be unpleasant, but it’s not life-threatening. It’s not like the situation that women in Sub-Sahara Sudan face, where facing any conflict may mean literally life or death. In the bigger picture, what it usually means that you have to look at yourself and what you need to do to grow or improve. In other words, even if the result of facing the conflict is positive, we still have to change. And as Woodrow Wilson reportedly once said, “If you want to make instant enemies, tell them they have to change.”

Taking a bigger view of any situation helps reduce fear. So you have an angry vendor. And you’re dreading in some way answering him. Explore a bit: why? Just because you don’t like conflict? That bigger picture makes you look at the details—not the details of what he is angry about, although those do matter, but what is causing your fear. What’s he going to do, reach across the WiFi and choke you? Even if his words make you feel as if he is, in reality, that isn’t going to happen. This fearful reaction is more about your emotional self overreacting than it is about your rational observation of what has caused the conflict in the first place. Focusing less on yourself and how you feel about the words and more about what the words indicate will not only reduce your fear but help solve the problem.

First, take a deep breath. This most likely isn’t about you; it’s most likely about an action that somehow has an attachment to you. It’s about something you, or someone you are responsible for, did, not about what you are. Seen in perspective, this distinction should resolve fear. It may instead raise feelings of responsibility and ownership—and those don’t involve fear. Using logic to see the details can help solve the conflict. So how do you put things in perspective?

Behavioral psychologists have an interesting technique to help patients who have panic attacks that are based on fear. This technique requires the patient to go into the fear and, instead of trying to bury it—and leaving it there to continue to grow and steal your time and energy—truly embrace the fear. That means imagining the worst. It means investing some time in imagining what could happen. So let’s say you need to tell your boss that you didn’t complete the project she assigned, mainly because you weren’t sure what she wanted. You may know in your heart that her communication was vague and shoddy, but you are afraid that if you tell her you didn’t understand—well, what are you afraid of?

Let’s imagine it:

Now let’s look at the bigger picture. Is this really going to happen? Unless you have the boss from hell, probably not. Look at the different opportunities you have to confront this fear and make this a positive conflict. Consider the point when the boss says “My communication is perfectly clear,”—I sincerely doubt that the boss will say those exact words. The unreasonable boss will say something such as, “What’s not clear?” The reasonable boss will say something to you such as, “What part did you not understand?” Either way, the action you need to take now is the same. You can turn that whole scenario, with either boss, into a win for you both by sticking to the 5 W’s and the WIFM. Observe:

See?

The situation has diffused. You’re now actually dealing with the situation and the actions associated with it, not with the emotions. And really, when you look at this in this bigger imaginary picture, you see the problems. Why didn’t you go to the boss when you first got the email? Simply because you were afraid. Yes, you probably did have other earlier deadlines. But the quick for-now read? Somewhere in the back of your mind, you may have not wanted to face looking at the detailed feedback then.

But putting it off didn’t make the situation any better. Had you gone with the boss first sent you the email, a week ago, not only would you have saved an awful lot of your own time, but hers too. Also, you would have come across as more confident, more professional, and more proactive. You could have invested this half hour in knowing exactly what the boss wanted and learning for next time. And that investment would also be a great thing for your emotional well-being—unlike living in fear.

Seeing the bigger picture allows you to see your own responsibility. Sometimes allowing yourself to imagine the absolute worst will help you gain perspective. What if you imagined your boss getting mad and picking up a book end and throwing it at you—or stomping over and trying to choke you? Imagine it: She’d be hunched over your body, arms akimbo, snarling and trying to avoid your flailing hands while your eyes roll and your body shakes and your tongue lolls out like some character on Looney Toons.

That most likely is not going to happen. Yet pushing that really absurd and horrible possible reaction scenario reveals a lot about what we really fear. Most likely what we really fear is not going to happen, but imagining it will probably get it to the point where it’s funny. Seeing the bigger picture allows you to lose the fear. It reveals the holes in your thinking. It shows you where you can create a better product. And it shows you how you yourself can grow and change.

Fear of Being Wrong or Less than Perfect

Many of us are also afraid of being wrong. Being wrong about something means that somehow we are wrong: not just this one opinion but ourselves as a whole. So we play it safe. I have seen students so worried about getting punctuation wrong that they write safe little See Jane Run sentences. They get the punctuation right, yes, mainly because they write sentences that require nothing but a final period, yet they lose depth of content. They lose ideas and creativity and spark. These Look! Look! Spot! There’s nothing there! sentences actually send a message that something in us is wrong if we can’t loosen up a bit to try.

Many of us don’t have the self-confidence to feel as if we are good enough. We may be accepted to grad school, but spend the first few weeks in class thinking, “They made a mistake. I’m too stupid to be here. I don’t know any of this stuff.” (Some poor souls spend their entire grad school career thinking this way.) Well, of course you don’t know any of this stuff: you came to grad school to learn it. If you knew it all, what would be the point?

Or maybe we are afraid that if we are wrong on one little tiny thing, the rest of the world will think we are imposters, not worthy of perhaps even life itself. Balderdash! Life is about growing.

Yet the statement is not embraced well in modern-day Western thought. We pay lip service to learning by mistakes but punish if any mistakes occur. We fear being judged so harshly that we prevent and protect our kids from ever making mistakes. Think about the parent who does the science project, so the kid will get a good grade (and yes, I bet you know at least three of them). The problem becomes, however, that by doing so we send a message that the kids by themselves are not good enough to do the task. Or that they aren’t strong enough.

We fail to see the bigger picture once again. And we teach that the outcome is more important than the effort. Remember that old saw about Thomas Edison making a thousand mistakes before he invented the light bulb? You didn’t see his parents hanging around trying to do it for him. And as a result, he wasn’t afraid to be wrong. He knew who he was, and he was confident that he would be able to make his invention work, even if it took him a thousand tries.

Alina Tugend, in her book Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong (2011), offers evidence that making mistakes is so important that even people who have been recognized as saints have made them:

As Thomas Caughwell, author of the pithily named book Saints Behaving Badly, put it: ‘The Catholic calendar is full of notorious men and women who turned their lives around and become saints. St. Camillus de Lellis was an Italian mercenary soldier, a card sharp and con man. For six years St. Margaret of Cortona lived as a Tuscan nobleman’s mistress. St. Moses the Egyptian led a gang of cutthroats in the Egyptian dessert. And St. Pelagia was the porn queen of fifth-century Antioch.’ Of course, they went through great suffering to become saints—but the point is, they made their fair share of mistakes. And most of us aren’t aiming for canonization. (p. 37)

Makes you think twice about avoiding that conversation with your boss, doesn’t it?

Compassion Is the Key to Overcoming Fear

Right about now many of you are thinking, “Why should I have to do these things? These people I interact with are adults. They should know how to write professionally!” Yes. They should. But that doesn’t mean that they do. Many of them have never been taught, some of them don’t understand what they were taught, and others have forgotten what they were taught. Instead of thinking, “Oh my heavens, why can’t this jerk get his life together?” approach it from a Zen perspective.

That perspective espouses that we need to care for all living things. It’s called having compassion. Even the lowliest ant or bug is too precious to be squashed in the Zen point of view. This idea is in line with the Golden Rule that some of us grew up with.

What does that mean? It means that by opening vision, we see clearly. We suddenly see the audience in its entirety—and we also see beyond our own perspectives. By doing so, we increase the clarity and sharpness of what we are asking of others, which in turn increases, focuses, and sharpens our instructions and our words. To do so, you have to think about this whole task in a compassionate way. Instead of thinking this guy should know how to write professionally, we have to look at what he is doing in a positive manner. Therefore, the positive spin on this thought is he’s trying hard to be professional. I have to give him credit for that; he really wants to do a good job. It’s up to me to show compassion and teach him how to take one more step up on his own path toward professionalism.

Think about yourself in a compassionate way as well. Most of us talk to ourselves in a manner in which we would never talk to anyone else. Do you berate yourself for making small mistakes? For being less than perfect? Toward the end of his life, the great 20th century poet W.H. Auden tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to erase the poetry that had made him famous, saying it was no longer honest and truly wasn’t good enough. Yet it was good enough for Auden to have been lauded as one of the best poets of his generation; his poetry is still read and studied by hundreds of thousands of high school and college students every year.

How much more compassionate it would have been for Auden to have accepted his younger self and that younger self’s work. It was honest at the time he wrote it. But as his skills developed and his poetry became more perfected, he failed to accept the reality of growth.

Moreover, what’s hard for some of us isn’t hard for others—and sometimes what is easy for some is hard for others. We don’t always see that truth. We just judge ourselves by abstract ideas of perfectionism instead of evaluating each step toward excellence. Let’s face it; sometimes it’s okay to do a B-level job, if that’s all you can do in the circumstances you have going on in your life. Sometimes it’s a victory just to have done something at all.

Have a little compassion. Pat yourself on the back, smile, and get back on the horse. Fear is false expectations appearing real (or forgetting everything and running). Compassion is embracing the passion, the life force that flows through all of us. As the old saw goes, we are all humans being, doing the best we can. Remember that.

By doing so, both you and the person who was trying to be as professional as possible take another step on the path to enlightenment. By having compassion for him and seeing the positives of what he is doing, you clarify your instructions and smooth out your tongue. You build a win-win. And you both progress.

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¹Lamott, Anne (1994). Bird by Bird. New York, NY: Panthenon.