What are you actually afraid of?

In the modern context, our fear is almost always a bug in our operating system.

It seems pretty clear fear evolved to motivate us to avoid danger. It makes sense to be afraid of heights, of dark places, of snakes and spiders, or of physical confrontation.

Yet fear often bubbles to the surface, even when we’re clearly not in any danger.

People in professional services are often afraid of calling potential clients, for example. We’ll find a hundred vaguely useful tasks to spend our time on before we’ll pluck up the courage to phone a person we don’t know very well, to see if we offer any services they might want to spend money on.

What danger are we exposed to in such a situation? What are we actually afraid of?

Would it really be that bad if they screened our call? Or said “Sorry, I’ve got a lot on today, can we catch up next week?”

Subconsciously, I think we confect worst case scenarios in our minds and worry about them on a loop. It’s such a strange thing to do! We’re born with the incredible gift of human imagination and we use it to create futures we don’t want, and won’t happen, and endlessly stress ourselves out about them!

The simple fact is that real world is much less stressful and scary than the realms we inhabit in our minds.

Don’t use your imagination to make strangers into dangers. Just make a list of 3, or 5, or 10 names, and call them.

The average person is utterly lovely to deal with on a professional level and, if you’re good at your job, there’s a decent chance they need your help with something. Give them a call and find out.