Fear Always Gets You More of What You Don't Want

I recently wrote about the positive purposes of fear here and here, but even though I see fear as a perfectly natural emotion that delivers really important messages to us, it doesn’t seem to be useful to feel afraid all the time.

The idea is to notice and accept the fear, ask for it’s positive intention and receive the important messages it delivers. And then, from my experience, the fear magically dissolves. But when we don’t recognise our fear or we’re afraid of our fear and try to ignore or resist our fear, it only grows, and all the choices we make come from a place of fear, and then we start to get some nasty results popping up. Because fear always gets you more of what you don’t want. Always.

Have you noticed that?

Here, you try it out:

• Think of something you’re afraid of, or something you don’t want to have happen. Write it down.
• Then ask yourself, “How do I behave when I’m having that fear?” And write that down.
• Then ask yourself, “And what results does that behaviour get me? And how do other people react then?”
• Now notice how much of what you fear and didn’t want is reflected in those results.

Here’s an example we’ve all seen:

Fear:
“I’m afraid my partner might leave me (which is just another way of saying, “I’m afraid my partner might reject me)”

Behaviour:

• I work hard to try to convey my value to my partner. I focus on making sure I look good all the time, I watch and notice all of his likes and dislikes and try to give him as much of his likes as possible.
• I tailor my conversation, behaviour, style of clothing, etc according to what he likes.
• I stop doing the things he doesn’t like. I avoid telling him about the things I don’t like so much that he does. I avoid conflict with him.

Results:

• I’m not being myself. So even if my partner continues to love the person I’m pretending to be, he’s not loving me. I haven’t even given him the chance to love me, because I’ve left “me” out of the equation altogether.
• Also, he sometimes says I’m boring or that I mother him. When we argue, it’s usually about that.
• Our sex-life is dull and he sometimes seems attracted to other women who speak their mind and seem more cheeky and exciting. I suspect that’s the sort of woman he’ll leave me for one day.

And here’s a common example from the corporate world:

Fear:
“I’m afraid one of my juniors at work might become more competent than me, and I’ll lose my job or they’ll get the promotion instead of me.”

Behaviour:

• I’m careful to ensure that I don’t share much information with my team members – that way they won’t know what I do and how I do it.
• I don’t give much public credit and praise to my team members.
• I try to claim as much personal credit as I can, for work results accomplished with my team.

Results:

• Since I haven’t trained anyone to be able to do my job, the company can’t promote me.
• I’m seen as a poor teamplayer and leader because I don’t give credit to my team members, so I’m not considered for promotion to positions with greater leadership responsibility.
• I piss my team off, and then they don’t give me their best. So I look bad because my team’s performance has dropped.
• Because I’m not seen as a strong leader, I become dispensable in the business – and more likely to be retrenched or passed over for promotion.

And here’s a common example amongst self-employed knowledge workers and creators:

Fear:
“I’m afraid I won’t have enough income”

Behaviour:

• I see other people working in my industry as potential competition rather than collaboration, and I’m careful not to share my ideas with them.
• I trademark as much of my work as I can, and invest in legal services dedicated to making sure that nobody is infringing my trademark.

Results:

• Investing in trying to protect my income means I have less money to spend on growing my work through ongoing research and development, and growing my business in other ways. Which means I have to be more careful to protect my income.
• Because I view other people in my industry as potential competition, I have to work by myself to advertise and promote my work and I can’t leverage the marketing benefits of partnerships or the content-enriching benefits of collaborating with other professionals in my field.
• Only people who’ve paid me money to become a licensee of my work can spread those ideas freely. It’s nice to get this extra little bit of income, but it slows down the spreading of these ideas. As Seth Godin says, “Ideas that spread are worth more than those that don’t.” If I restrict the channels through which my ideas can be spread, I make it harder to market my work. Which means I have less income and have to be even more careful to protect my income.

See what I mean? Fear always gets you more of what you don’t want.

Surely protecting myself is the right thing to do?

The tricky part is that the self-protective strategies we use when we’re coming from a place of fear always seem like perfectly logical and rational choices. And self-protective strategies are usually supported by societal norms, company policies and legislation. So you can always find a rational argument why the self-protective strategies we use when we’re coming from a place of fear are “right.” And perhaps in some situations they are the best choice for ensuring that we survive.

But do self-protective strategies still work?

Many accomplished knowledge workers, marketers and creators are coming to the conclusion that often these “right” ways of doing things get us exactly the opposite of what we wanted, and prevent us from thriving. In this post for Wired.com, Chris Anderson (author of “Free”, due to be released in 2009) sheds some light on the reasons why we’re going to have to become more generous in business, if we want to survive – nevermind thrive. These days, there are more and more people sticking their necks out in spite of the risks, and finding that they can thrive through a generosity mindset – check out:

• Top blogger Zen Habits’ Leo Babauta’s uncopyright statement
• This video about the growth of the Creative Commons movement,
• A view from Commoncraft (note the great discussion in the comments)
• And find out some of the ways marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin thinks about this sort of thing here.

We all have stuff we fear, and self-protective strategies we use, and on some level that’s worked – it’s how we all managed to survive and be here today. But is the world changing? To what degree are these self-protective strategies still useful? What results are you noticing when you use fear and self-protective strategies? How’s it working out for you?

P.S. Look out for my update next week, on facing my big, irrational fear!
Photo by vladeb