The Alarm

Fear is old equipment. It was installed to keep you from petting lions and wolves.

It worked. Everyone without it got eaten, and you descend from the ones who ran. Respect that. The alarm has saved your life more than once.

The lions and wolves aren’t in the room, but the alarm is still sounding.

It goes off at a phone call. At a hard conversation. At the thing you have been meaning to start for three years. Your body cannot tell the difference between being killed and being embarrassed, so it treats them the same. Full alarm, every time.

It is not lying to you. It is poorly calibrated.

So use it for what it is. Information, not instruction. An alarm signals something might be burning. It does not get to decide whether you walk into the building.

Look at what fear produces when you let it author the decision. It keeps you small. It keeps you defended. It makes you cling to the old way, the safe way, the way it has always been done — and it dresses every bit of that up as being smart.

I have never seen a good decision rooted in fear. Not one.

So feel it. Hear it. But don’t surrender to it.

True courage was never the absence of the fear. It is choosing to face it head on while the alarm sounds.

Act first. The confidence shows up after.

“Action breeds confidence and courage." — Dale Carnegie