Jake Burhans explains why fear spikes when you step into unfamiliar situations: your nervous system mistakes growth for danger. The fix is simple. Act anyway. The fear melts the moment you do.
Fear is like a survival mechanism and is very helpful. I mean, it helps us stay alive when we're— when our life's truly in danger. But guess what? Our life isn't in danger when we're on a sales call. Our life isn't in danger when we have to talk to someone at work that we don't want to talk to. Our life isn't in danger when we have to have a difficult conversation with our spouse or our kids. So we need to be able to regulate so we can show up as our best selves and perform as our best selves. So understand that fear is trying to keep you safe. It's the nervous system trying to keep you in the familiar. So naturally, as you grow into these higher levels of yourself, you are going to feel that fear, right? Because you're going into an unfamiliar environment. You're literally growing. You're becoming someone that you never have before. So your nervous system and your nervous system is trying to pull you back, right? Saying, no, that's unsafe. That feels weird. That's uncomfortable. But it's almost like an illusion, okay? Because you're so fearful about speaking on the stage or having this conversation or taking this shot or posting on social media, what people are gonna think. You have all this fear, but the second that you step up and do something, it all melts away. It's like it was never there, right? So we get stuck in these patterns of not wanting to pursue what we want to pursue because we're scared. Really, it's just our nervous system being unfamiliar with the new environment, but it's pulling us back to safety. And all we need to do is just act, right? You have the courage to act and go chase what you want to do. And the moment you act, all that fear melts away, right?
