Your dreams are on the other side of fear

“Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free…” - Robert Tew

Last week, I wrote about discomfort and the importance of incorporating some intentional discomfort into your daily routine.

The week before that, I wrote about chasing your dreams while acknowledging that chasing dreams is going to be hard.

So, in a way, intentionally doing the hard things is prepping you to be stronger when you want to finally take steps towards your dreams.

However, there is one thing standing in the way of you doing either of those things, and it’s fear.

Fear is getting in your way

Fear is what prevents people from embracing discomfort and is what stops most people from chasing their dreams.

Fear is what stopped me from initially committing to the off-grid lifestyle. Even when we had already purchased the shipping container and had converted it into a liveable home, something was still holding me back from actually moving in. It took a couple of months before we spent a weekend here as a trial run.

We struggled to commit because we knew it would be tough. We knew we were giving up the normal comforts of living in the city. At that time, we lived in a city apartment; we had the convenience of Uber Eats, watching TV in the evening, and turning on the heat pump for instant warmth. We also had a good-functioning shower with hot water and a microwave and oven, but I digress.

We made the leap and decided to spend one weekend there, like a camping trip. Very non-committal. Things were basic back then. We didn’t even have internet or cell phone reception. But when we spent that first weekend there, it was immediately clear that this was everything we had ever wished for. The quiet and solitude, the beautiful nature surrounding us and the peaceful space we had carved out for ourselves - it all came together and we could finally see what we had worked towards all those previous years.

This is what we had dreamed of.

Suddenly, all the little things that we had been worrying about didn’t matter anymore. I knew, deep in my heart, that there was no place I would rather be. And if that meant that my toilet breaks would be in a doorless outhouse from now on, I would gladly commit to that.

Fear isn’t a bad thing

Looking back, what was I really afraid of?

There were some obvious worries: How ever will we survive without internet or cellphone reception? How will I get used to not having a flushing toilet? Will I be cold (turns out, yes)? We didn’t even have a kitchen yet, how much can a person really cook on a BBQ (turns out, almost everything)? And, of course, how would I make pizza without an oven (turns out, you can do that on a BBQ too)?

But really, what I was afraid of deep down was achieving my dream, succeeding. I had dreamed of this life since I was a teenager. I remember my husband and I talking about building Earthships, sustainable living, and self-sufficiency. We dreamed up our life, and I was at the cusp of grabbing that dream with both hands.

But what if I did? What if I grabbed it, finally achieved the fruits of all the hard work, and it turned out to be… not what I had hoped?

What if I turned out not to like living in an off-grid tiny house? Would I need to get a new dream?

Once I dug deeper, beneath the obvious (and sometimes valid) worries, it uncovered the real issue: once you achieve a dream, there’s always the risk it might not be what you wanted. By that time, you’ve built your identity on top of that dream, and if this doesn’t turn out to be what you truly want… then who are you really? And what is it that you truly want?

Fear alerts us to opportunity

But here’s the thing.

None of those worries turned out to be true.

We found solutions for most things—especially the lack of internet. You’d be surprised how creative a person can be when they truly want something (like Wi-Fi).

We were so caught up in all the little (and big) worries that we almost missed the opportunity right in front of us.

Fear shows us where we should direct our energy and where the opportunities are. We all know that a comfortable life is just that—comfortable. It’s not leading to any growth. If life isn’t just a little bit scary, we know we’re not pushing ourselves enough. The good things happen when we step just outside our comfort zone.

So when you feel that fear, what is it trying to tell you?

Fear shows you what you care about. Think about it: if I didn’t care so deeply about living this off-the-grid lifestyle, then those worries would have just put me off immediately. There are plenty of people who wouldn’t even consider living life without cell phone reception or TV. That’s ok. It’s not their dream. Those people wouldn’t feel that fear. They would think of the idea and immediately dismiss it.

The ongoing fear and worry I felt was a sign that this opportunity really mattered to me.

There may be things in your life that are filling you with fear. Think about what is behind that and why it matters so much to you. It’ll show you where you need to lean in a little bit more.

Some things we can do to help us face our fears

Facing our fears is tough. There’s no doubt about that.

There’s one thing that has been helping me in the past year, and, like many things in my life, I’ve gotten my inspiration from Stoicism. It’s called pre-meditatio malorum - the deliberate meditation on the difficulties we might encounter. It’s an exercise to help us visualise all the challenges that may lie ahead or all the things that could go wrong.

“What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events…

Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes.”

— Seneca

When we spend time considering all the challenges or difficulties that may happen in the future, we feel prepared.

Now, it’s important to note that I’m not talking about overthinking or helplessly agonising our way into an anxiety spiral. What the Stoics were talking about is a mindful and deliberate exercise where we consider likely future paths and solutions. As part of this exercise, you think of all the ways in which you could deal with these issues and in which you could respond to challenges ahead.

It’s not pessimism or compulsively focusing on the negative - it’s realism. We must accept that things may not always go our way, so it helps to be prepared. If we’re prepared, it lowers our anxiety. If the worst will happen today, then I’m already prepared. I’ve gone through it in my mind, and I’ve got a sense of how I can react.

This can help us settle that fear of trying something new. Of course, we will never truly feel ready to try out new things. We can never 100% control the outcome—that’s impossible. But we can plan and prepare and accept there will always be an element of the unknown. This helps us become more resilient.

It’s also important to keep in mind that as we do this exercise, most of those things will never actually happen. Often, when we consider the worst possible outcome of something, it never happens in real life. How often did you think something was going to go terribly wrong, only for it to turn out just fine on the day?

Again, as Seneca says: “We often suffer more in our imagination than in reality”

So, as you go about your day, remember to embrace discomfort. Remember to do something that scares you. Consider all the ways in which your day could go wrong today, and then embrace the day fully. And when things do go a little wrong or not as planned, remember you have gone through so many difficult times already. This is what you’ve trained for and you have everything it takes to get through it.

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Let me know in the comments what is on the other side of fear for you?

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Something that inspired me this week:

Annie Duke is a former professional poker player, now author and speaker. I first came across her on Ryan Holiday’s podcast The Daily Stoic. She has written a couple books, Quit and Thinking in Bets. She also has a Substack newsletter called Thinking in Bets.

This article about monkeys and pedestals is an older one, but one that I have always remembered, and an inspiration for last week’s article about doing the hard things.

The premise of the article is that often when we’re embarking on a project we tend to focus on the low-hanging fruit. You’ll notice this happens often in professional settings as well: getting some quick wins. Annie Duke says we already know how to do the low-hanging fruit, we should focus on the thing we don’t know how to do first because that’s going to be the bottleneck.

“To understand monkeys and pedestals, imagine that you’re trying to teach a monkey to juggle flaming torches while it stands on a pedestal in the town square. Two tasks are competing for your money, time, and attention: training the monkey and building the pedestal.  
One is a possibly intractable obstacle. And the other is building the pedestal.
 
The bottleneck, the hard thing, is getting the monkey to juggle those flaming torches. (…) 
Simply put, there is no point in building pedestals if you can’t solve for the monkey.”

Well worth a read!

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This is what you can expect from me every week! A long-form article related to a reflection or life lesson on personal growth and one thing that inspired me this week. If you liked this, don’t keep it to yourself; share it with your friends:

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