STEP 1

Focus on What You Want, Not on What You Fear

In my midtwenties, I landed a great job. For someone my age, it had solid cachet. I’d be attending VIP events. Meeting important people. On paper, I’d hit the jackpot, particularly for a girl who’d not long since left life on a dairy farm.

My little happy dance lasted about two weeks.

By week three I started to realize that I’d joined a dys-functional team, with a disengaged manager and disgruntled coworkers who promptly decided to take out their unhappiness with life on me. The fact that I’d been hired into a more senior role than them, despite being several years younger and less experienced, clearly fueled their resentment.

I could have asked my manager for more direction.

I could have talked to the department head and sought his guidance.

I could have confronted my coworkers’ snide remarks and bullying behavior.

But I didn’t.

Sure, I did my job. Made some friends. Met some interesting people. Yet over time I grew increasingly miserable and disengaged. My lunch breaks grew longer. My working days got shorter. Within a year, I decided to leave.

On my final day, I was asked to meet the divisional director. “I’d hoped you’d have a big future here, Margie,” he said from behind his mahogany desk in his plush corner office. Figuring I had little to lose at this point, I spoke truthfully. The promises broken. The lack of direction. The “mean girls.” He frowned. “I wish I’d known,” he replied, sounding genuinely disappointed. “If you’d come to me, I could have done something.”

But I hadn’t. Not because I didn’t think it might have been helpful, but because I simply lacked the courage. It all felt too uncomfortable, too awkward, too scary. And so I let my fear of an uncomfortable conversation keep me from doing something, anything, to improve my situation. Instead, I shrunk back. I settled. I languished. And after a year, I left.

Might things have improved had I spoken up? Maybe. Might I have even risen in the ranks? Who knows. Within a few months, I’d packed up my life to pursue an adventure beyond Australia’s shores. However, even though I failed the test of courage in that short chapter of my early career, I didn’t fail to learn the lesson.

Whenever fear governs our decisions, it makes us an accomplice in our problems as well as their victim, perpetuating our problems and shortchanging our future. So the first step in closing your courage gap is to decide what it is that you want more than what you fear. What do you want to experience in your life? What do you want in your career, your relationships, your leadership . . . your life? What values do you want to define the kind of person you want to be? Until you make these decisions, every other decision and corresponding behavior will be automatically directed by your fear of what you don’t want—leaving you permanently living under the effect of your circumstances rather than being the cause in improving them.

Until you’re clear on what you most want, fear of what you don’t want will pull its invisible strings. When I was in my midtwenties, I was yet to connect to what I wanted more than what I feared—and so my fear governed.

Doom headlines garner the most clicks for a reason.1 Our brains are programmed to focus on deficits and mentally dress-rehearse the outcomes we don’t want. Unless you’re directing your attention to what you do want or can do, it will default to negative spaces—dwelling on what you don’t want, don’t have, can’t do, or might lose. What’s more, what you focus on expands—for better or worse, for braver or more uptight, for more confidence or self-doubt.

Try this thought experiment to see for yourself: set the timer on your phone to three minutes then start writing a list of all that you don’t like about your life and don’t want to happen. Notice any subtle shifts in your emotional state when your timer reaches three minutes. Then set it again but this time, list everything that is good in your life and what you’d love to happen. Again, notice the shifts in how you feel three minutes along. What does that tell you about the power of your focus?

It’s a natural law that energy—expressed in your creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness—flows where your attention goes. The more you focus on the negatives, the more mental real estate they occupy, magnifying your perception of danger and amplifying negative emotions to the point that you end up living in the very reality that you want to avoid, anxious about potential situations that might never actually occur. Dwelling on deficits also closes down your ability to identify novel solutions. Metaphorically and literally. Researchers have found that when we focus on negatives, our peripheral vision narrows,2 literally restricting what we can see and confining our actions to a smaller range of options than actually exists.

On the flip side, when you focus on what you do want, you elevate your vantage point and ignite your creativity. Suddenly you can connect dots, spot opportunities, and see relationships not readily obvious to others, bringing your full creative resources to the moment at hand. Focusing on the positive outcomes you want taps latent energy that enables you to show up with the “can-do” spirit that attracts like-minded people and opportunities to advance. If you’re still remotely cynical, here is another simple experiment: for the next twenty-four hours, focus your attention and conversations solely on what you want and what you can do. No complaining. Then notice the shifts in your emotional state. You can thank me later.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter brought Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, leaders of Egypt and Israel, to Camp David with the intention of ending the long conflict between their countries. Although many were skeptical that any semblance of agreement could be reached, Carter was determined to spare the loss of more lives and forge a pathway toward peace. Day after day, night after night, he would walk back and forth between their lodgings, sometimes until three or four in the morning. His commitment to finding common ground for common good eventually culminated in the historic Camp David Accords. As difficult as it may be to imagine enduring peace across the Middle East right now, the truth remains that all it takes to end the cycles of conflict that create so much human suffering is for leaders to prioritize the pursuit of peace over the desire to win war, consolidate power, or seek retribution. Overcoming human nature is no small endeavor, but it is the enduring hallmark of the most noble.

Similarly, Orville and Wilbur Wright didn’t get a heavy machine airborne by focusing on the law of gravitational pull but by harnessing the aerodynamic forces of flight. Likewise, you too will fly higher when you focus on what you want—what you really want—not on what you don’t.

Focus on what you are for, not on what you’re against.

Focus on forging new ground, not on protecting what you have.

Focus on possibilities to improve the future, not on ruminating over past failures.

Focus on doing more of what energizes you, not on dwelling on what pulls you down.

Focus on optimizing the resources you have, not on complaining that you don’t have enough.

Focus on what you’d love to create by the end of the week/ year/your life, not on how hard it will be.

Focus on being more of the person you’d love to work/ live/hang out with, not on avoiding disapproval.

If you’re not sure what you really want, you’re not alone. Most people spend more time planning their next vacation than how they’ll spend their life. Yet, if we have no North Star to align short-term decisions with long-term aspirations, what will make us feel better right now will overshadow what will fulfill us most. It’s why so many people spend precious energy in a hive of activity—chasing and striving, reacting and impressing—yet live on a carousel going in circles. As GPS technology has found by tracking people’s movements, in the absence of a clear landmark we naturally walk in circles.3

Roman philosopher Cicero coined the phrase summum bonum—Latin for “the highest good”—believing that it was everyone’s duty to aspire to the highest good. Although this can be done in any context—in your relationships, family, team, company, community, or country—there is no greater context than the highest good that you want for your life. After all, you don’t get a second shot at it.

My mum was eighty-four when she passed away. A “solid innings” by some measures, but gone too soon by my own. I’ve thought about life a lot since she died. And about death, including my own. Perhaps the most valuable gift of death lies in how it sharpens our appreciation for the gift of life. In grieving for Mum, I’ve returned to the same deep knowing I felt after mourning the death of my brother Peter, who took his life after his long and torturous struggle with schizophrenia.4 That is, I want to live my life in a way that honors the gift of life itself, the life Peter never got to live, using my talents to help others use their own for the summum bonum.

The life we most aspire to live will often require sacrificing what is comfortable now for what will serve our highest good later. Whenever our decisions are directed by short-term gratification or insecurity alleviation—proving our significance, touching up our appearance, or avoiding criticism—we risk our entire life being consumed by impression management and outcompeting the Joneses. To paraphrase D. H. Lawrence, we are not happy when we are doing just as we want, but when we are doing what our “deepest self ” wants.5

What does your deepest self want? As Lawrence also pointed out, uncovering what our deepest self truly desires can take some digging. What I know from my own inward exploration is that when I’m connected to my true self—to what I believe is the sacred within each of us, which I call God, and which knows beyond what my intellect ever can—the answer becomes clear, even if it evokes fear in some form.

In early October 2001, a few weeks after 9/11, I boarded a flight in Australia with Andrew, our eight-week-old baby, two-year-old, and three-year-old to move to Dallas, Texas. Five planes. Thirty-six hours. A marathon trip with young kids made even longer from the impact September 11 had on air travel. For the next three months, we lived out of suitcases awaiting our belongings. I had no social support and felt as though I’d landed on Mars; every day felt like another long and tiring marathon. Soon after we’d unpacked the last box in our rental home, my body sent me a thousand mini stop signs in the form of head-to-toe psoriasis. Not only did I feel down—on myself; on my spots; on Andrew, whose job had bought us to a place where I wondered if I’d ever fit in—but each time I glanced in a mirror, I realized I was far vainer than I wanted to think.

When Mum’s cousin offered to fly from California to “hold the fort” so that Andrew and I could get away for a few days, it was an easy yes. Lying on a beach a month later, I did a guided meditation to imagine the highest vision for my life ten years out. I quickly saw myself forging a whole new path coaching and empowering people. A nanosecond later, another image flashed to the foreground. It was me and what . . . wait . . . four children! What?! That can’t be right? Four is one human more than three. God, can you not see these spots?!!

Fear dialed up my self-doubt to max volume. How on earth can you manage four kids with no family nearby AND have a career? Who the hell do you think you are!? Yet I knew the vision wouldn’t have been imprinted on my heart if I wasn’t capable of raising four children and honoring a call beyond my family. While my mind shouted a million reasons why not, my heart knew I’d be selling myself short if I allowed my fear—of falling short as mother or coping with the inevitable ball-jugglingdropping act—to call the shots. Sometimes our heart knows the path we must take well before our head is ready to surrender resistance.

What does your deepest self want? What future state ignites a spark in you, making you feel more alive, even as your fears waste no time in filling the gap between that future and where you currently stand? The bolder your vision, the more likely they will.

Your longing to live a deeply rewarding life will often be at odds with your desire to live a secure one. This is why so many sacrifice their passion and potential on the illusive altar of security. It’s also why pursuing your highest good will never be wholly comfortable. More often, that pursuit will call on you to do the very things that your insecure, comfort-loving, cautious self would prefer you didn’t. Surrendering control. Risking exposure. Stepping into uncertainty. True security against the risks and ravages of life cannot be found in material form.

There’s no arguing that fear’s directive spares you stress . . . in the short term. No risking rejection. No ruffling of feathers. No rocking of boats. No extra balls to juggle and drop. (Though on that matter, my kids improved their eye-hand coordination picking up my dropped balls and throwing them at each other.) Yet just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s bad. Your greatest source of stress will never come from hard work or courageous action, but from the lack of it:

• • From the conversations you did not have
• • From the boundary you did not firmly set
• • From the request that you did not clearly make
• • From the feedback you did not give and accountability you did not manage
• • From the tension you did not address
• • From the change you did not make . . . or not make soon enough

The brave thing you most need to do is often far more mundane than changing career or launching a startup. More often it’s something far simpler. Making a phone call instead of texting. Saying no to an invitation knowing you will likely disappoint. Asking for help or delegating a task rather than doing it all yourself. Admitting “I don’t” when feeling pressured to pretend that you do. Saying sorry. Saying “Enough!” Saying “I do.” To quote psychologist Carl Jung: “Where your fear is, there is your task.”6

The smarter we think we are, the more cunningly our fears work in the background. Working with insecure over-achievers has taught me that fear has many faces and only occasionally expresses itself in overt knee-shaking trepidation. More often it hides behind intellectualized emotions, a false sense of urgency, being hyper-controlling, or constant posturing and name-dropping. Or, on the other side of the behavioral spectrum, being overly accommodating, excessively humble, or too nice for our own good or anyone else’s.

Fear is at the wheel anytime our desire to prove, please, or impress matters more than serving the higher good over the longer haul. Whenever we bifurcate our public and private personas, when we procrastinate on addressing tension in a relationship, or relentlessly pursue “success” or avoid situations where we risk being exposed as “less than” on some measure, fear is at play. If you haven’t spent time identifying what makes you feel vulnerable, your decisions will be governed by avoiding it.

Neuroimaging technology has enabled a deeper understanding of how fear is embedded in the neural operating system of our psyche. By identifying which parts of the brain light up when making decisions, we know that the reward centers of our brain are twice as sensitive to potential loss—of approval, status, money, reputation, power, pride—as they are to potential gain. Our default programming is to protect against what we don’t want rather than pursuing what we do want. To say this another way, we put more value on not losing $100 than on gaining $100. One study asked people to walk seven thousand steps a day for six months. Some were paid $1.40 for each day they achieved the goal; others lost $1.40 each day they failed to walk. The second group hit their target 50 percent more often.7 As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow, “We hate to lose more than we love to win.”8

Our brains are extraordinarily complex and some very “brainy” people like Kahneman have written much to help us understand them better. Kahneman refers to the two parallel neural circuits driving the operating system enabling you to read this book as our fast and our slow brain. Our fast brain engages one of the more primitive parts of our brain, known as the amygdala—sometimes labeled as the “monkey brain.” Automatic, impulsive, intuitive, and error-prone, the amygdala governs much of how we think and what do in our everyday lives. If you’ve ever jumped out of the way as an electric scooter sped toward you on a sidewalk, you have your fast brain to thank. Likewise, anytime you’ve overreacted or been impulsive—saying or doing something before your rational “slow” brain kicked into gear—you can point to your fast brain, which generates emotions without the participation of consciousness, spurring you to react to perceived threat before you’re even fully conscious of exactly what is happening. To be clear, your slow brain isn’t actually slow. Rather, it requires mental exertion to deliberately reason and make more complex decisions.

Clearly, we wouldn’t enjoy the lives we have today if not for the brilliant gray matter between our ears. The problem is that unlike the technology which scans that matter and runs our lives, our Stone Age brains haven’t evolved much in sixty thousand years. This makes our fast brain prone to assess a situation as life-or-death even when our life is not remotely at risk. As neuroscientists have found, our emotional responses to psychological injury—such as feeling humiliated in a meeting, socially excluded, professionally marginalized—use the same neural circuits as a physical injury.9 The sources of our anxiety are rarely legitimate threats to our life but more often threats to our sense of significance. Only occasionally are they wholly rational.

This story, ripped from the pages of my own life, is an example. A prolonged drought forced my dad to sell his herd of dairy cows. As the cattle truck pulled out from the loading dock, it suddenly occurred to me that it was driving away with our family’s sole source of income. Looking up at Dad as he watched that truck move slowly down our gravel lane, I asked him: “How will we get money now, Dad?” He wrapped his arm around me and replied, “I don’t know, Margie.” Then, squeezing my shoulder to reassure me as much as himself, he added: “We have to trust that the Good Lord will provide.” My nine-year-old brain tried to imagine how the Good Lord would do this. Would we win the lottery? Would a bag of money just show up on the back verandah?

Neither happened. Rather, Dad spent the next four years doing contract labor, fixing fences, baling hay, and building vacation rental cabins by the lake nearby. We lived in hand-me-down clothes and never dined out (ever). Our Friday- night tradition of ordering fish’n’chips never actually included fish. It was too expensive. However, we had plenty of eggs from our chickens and meat from our remaining few cows and pigs, and we regularly ate freshly caught fish bartered with the local fisherman for milk. And of course, a boundless supply of milk—full cream, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, straight from the udder to our cereal bowl. Yet although we never went hungry, for many years a deeply etched fear of ever again feeling “poor” would highjack my rational brain and trigger scarcity thinking that left me focused on what I feared to lose rather than on what I wanted to gain, to give, to create or enjoy. More on this in the next step.

As different as your childhood likely was from mine, most of us carry psychological scar tissue from our childhood into our adult lives that pulls our attention toward what we don’t want to reexperience, regardless of how irrational that fear may be in the context of our lives today. Working through the experiences that our developing brain processed as “near-death” in our childhood (regardless of whether they actually were) is the work of every flourishing adult.

This isn’t about wishing fear away. That would be to wish away what has secured the human species from extinction. It’s just that in today’s world, we aren’t staring into a campfire under the stars, slingshot at hand, ears tuned for predators. Rather, we are staring into our screens over a triple-skim venti Frappuccino, scrolling newsfeeds with algorithms engineered to stoke insecurity. So the goal is not fear extermination but fear regulation. Learning to recognize these four common cognitive distortions that magnify fear and contract courage—I call them “fear traps”—will help you do just that:

• • Discounting the future
• • Fearcasting worst-case scenarios
• • Rationalizing inaction and excess caution
• • Betraying yourself to secure status with others