Operating out of fear is very taxing on our energy systems and can be a contributing factor to burnout. Fear can make us procrastinate, preventing us from creating changes in our life, and it can hold us back from realising our full potential. Just like thoughts, when we turn towards our fear, we can better understand what is creating the fear and we can develop a better relationship with it.

In this chapter, I'd like to share a story about turning towards fear and also give you some techniques to embrace fear as a positive emotion to move forward in life. We will also explore the concept of trust as a way to flip your fears.

Kathmandu, Nepal

Something was wrong. Our usually friendly, smiling guesthouse host, Dillu, didn't even look up to greet us as we headed out to the streets of Kathmandu's tourist hub, Thamel, to buy our morning chai and breakfast. This was our first morning back in Thamel since completing a tiring but amazing 15-day trek in the Himalayas and all we wanted was a hearty breakfast and a warm chai tea.

As we walked out onto the street, Kila, my travelling companion, turned to me and said, ‘Something is not right; it's too quiet.’ Usually, the first sound we heard as we walked out of the Yeti guesthouse was the hypnotic Buddhist prayer, Om Mane Padme Hum, from the corner CD shop, which played it on repeat, but on this day there was no music. The mood on the street was sombre. The usually bustling shops and street vendors had their garage doors closed and there were very few people around. There was no music playing in the alleyways, no incense burning, no noisy street hagglers touting their wares, no food or chai scents wafting through the air. There was no-one anywhere on the streets, which usually buzzed with excitement and noise.

We noticed one of the local street vendors, whom we had got to know over the weeks, packing up her small shop. ‘Excuse me, what is going on?’ we asked her, as tears ran down her wrinkled face. Without looking up she muttered in broken English, ‘The king is dead!’ We helped her pack the rest of her goods into her trolley and sadly waved her goodbye.

Shocked from this news, we headed to the famous Pilgrims Bookstore, where many fellow travellers, backpackers and trekkers congregated to share stories, read mountain trekking books and sip warm chai together. In total disbelief, we discovered the horrible news that not only was the king dead, but also the whole Nepalese royal family had been brutally massacred. It was horrifying!

From the limited media coverage that we could access, we gathered the information that the previous night (1 June 2001), Prince Dipendra allegedly put on his military clothes and walked through the Royal Palace with a machine gun, gunning down his father, King Birendra, his mother, Queen Aishwarya, and several other members of the royal family, including his little brother and sister, before turning the gun on himself. The whole Nepalese monarchy was literally wiped out overnight, with 10 dead and five wounded in the massacre.

The most bizarre part was that while the perpetrator, Prince Dipendra, lay on life support in hospital he was crowned king of Nepal because he was the next heir to the throne. He reigned as king for three days before dying on 4 June. This unusual event turned the usually peaceful Himalayan kingdom upside down as the Nepalese people really loved their revered King Birendra. In the days that followed, things got progressively worse as grief-stricken people took to the streets of Kathmandu, rioting and expressing their confusion and anger towards the Nepalese government as the police started imposing military curfews. The normally peaceful country was now in a state of shock and hysteria.

As ever-threatening curfews were starting to be put in place, we decided to take one last trip to the nearby Monkey Palace for a bit of respite from the shocking news. Little did we know that the route to the Monkey Palace was also where the funeral procession for the king was being held. We came across a crowd of thousands of people paying respects to the king and the royal family, so we decided to join in. It was a fairly peaceful procession with many local people coming out from their rural villages to pay respect to their beloved king.

Then, only minutes later, the whole scene turned terribly ugly. We heard loud shouting, screaming children and ear-piercing gunshots: ‘boom, boom, boom!’ We weren't sure what was happening because we couldn't understand what the people were screaming as they fled in all directions, dodging the bullets and large rocks that were being hurled around us.

I instantly felt adrenalin surge through my body, sending blood pumping to all of my limbs, but I didn't know which way to run. I looked at Kila and saw a look of absolute fear and terror on her face like I had never seen on anyone before. I knew this was serious as I squeezed her hand tightly and we ran away in panic following the other fleeing people. Suddenly a hurling rock the size of my fist flew past my face, missing me by centimetres as I froze in shock. Then, more gunshots booming around us sent us back into a fleeing panic. We did not know where to run. I was just about to kick in the door of a small village house to seek refuge when an old woman, also hiding in fear, peeped out of the window, so we moved on.

The scene got worse as some of the men started fighting with each other. We saw angry men violently shaking a car and tipping it over on its end. We were amid a full riot and the scene was made worse by the sight of young, shaven-headed males raising their fists in the air in anger. We later learned that young males in Nepal shave their heads to show their respect and honour for the king.

Squeezing Kila's hand even tighter, I really didn't know what to do. We were so confused, so fearful, so uncertain in this fully blown riot. Which way to run: left, right, up, down or hide somewhere? Then, out of nowhere, a middle-aged man, whom we recognised as one of the street vendors in Thamel, also recognised us and motioned with his hands for us to follow him. I sensed that he had seen this type of riot before, having grown up among various political unrests and Maoist uprisings. We could see that he genuinely wanted to help us. We put our absolute trust in this kind man with his hardened but gentle face as he kept us close by his side. The frightening thing was that he motioned us to follow him towards the oncoming crowd instead of away from it. My natural instinct was to go the other way, but we followed him towards the angry rioting mob and just as we were metres away from it, we slowly snuck down the side of the street, which led us to a polluted river bank. We put 100 per cent trust in this man as we followed him, wading knee deep through a smelly sewage-polluted river. I would hate to think what was floating through that river as our feet sloshed through the black, oil-slicked mud and sewage, but we didn't care because we could hear the enraged sounds and fearful cries of the crowd behind us as we left the war zone.

Eventually we were led back through the dark back alleyways of Thamel and towards the familiar streets around Durbar Square near our Yeti guesthouse. The generous man then left us, placing his hands in front of his heart in prayer position and saying, ‘Namaste’. We reciprocated the gesture, expressing our gratitude for the kindness of this stranger, who had saved our lives. Shocked and relieved, we stopped in at Kathmandu Guesthouse, which was one of the few places still open, washed our disgustingly toxic feet, and gathered our senses with a shot of whiskey while chatting with other puzzled and distraught fellow travellers. Sure that we had just escaped death, we felt a sense of relief come over us, as we tried to obtain information via the local news, the BBC and other sources.

The following days things went from bad to worse. All of the shops, eateries and guesthouses remained closed. There was no food or clean drinking water to be found, so many of us foreign travellers were getting progressively sick as we tried to survive and make an exit plan from Nepal. There were violent clashes on the streets, regular tear gas explosions, burning car tyres and roadblocks, and the streets of Kathmandu resembled a war zone. We heard the government had instilled a curfew with ‘shoot at sight’ orders and nobody was to be out on the streets for any reason whatsoever.

After many failed attempts, we finally made our way to Kathmandu airport and after literally kicking and fighting our way through built-up airport crowds, we eventually managed to get a flight out to Delhi. As our plane took off over the deserted streets of Kathmandu, I gazed out of the small window and the only movement I could see below was a few military trucks and soldiers as they patrolled the streets. As the flight levelled out, I turned to Kila and said, ‘Phew, let's find some peace and quiet in Delhi’. ‘Delhi’ and ‘quiet’ are two words that I wouldn't usually use together in a sentence, but compared to what we had just experienced it seemed appropriate!

This experience in Kathmandu taught me some very valuable lessons that served me well for the rest of my travels — and for my life, for that matter. Throughout my travels I came across many more events that involved guns, knives and near muggings and the best option was always to turn towards the situation and meet it head on instead of running away from it. The other lesson was to always trust myself — trust that I will have what it takes to confront challenges — and also to trust my instincts when it comes to the kindness of others.

Primal fear

Fear is one of the most primal of human emotions and is usually triggered when we are in danger, under attack or in anticipation of a threat. Fear is programmed into our nervous system and puts our senses on high alert. It can trigger the stress response to flood our body with stress chemicals such as adrenalin and cortisol. This is a handy mechanism to engage when we are under attack and need to survive a threatening situation, but it is not a good way to operate all day, every day.

Just like stress, fear can be both motivating and debilitating. In some ways, I love travelling in developing countries because this is where I feel most ‘alive’. That's not to say I put myself into dangerous situations, but when they arise, my senses are on high alert and I feel most alive. It's probably the same mechanism that motivates people to perform extreme sports, such as base jumping, caving, freediving, wingsuit flying, cliff diving and all of those adrenalin-fuelled sports that put your life on edge. There is an addictive high associated with this, but fear can also sap you of all of your energy, leaving you feeling depleted. Continually operating out of fear for prolonged periods of time can tax your energy so much that it could lead to burnout.

Some of our biggest fears are:

• fear of inadequacy
• fear of rejection
• fear of uncertainty
• fear of change
• fear of missing out (FOMO)
• fear of being judged
• fear of losing control
• fear of being hurt — for example, love or loss
• fear of failure.

This might explain why the number-one fear for humans is public speaking. It ranks higher than the fear of dying: if you look at the above list, public speaking involves most of our biggest fears.

Which of these fears have you been able to relate to at certain times of your life?

Demystifying fear and understanding it better

Fear is often debilitating and people who spend their life in fear have immense trouble moving forward. They may procrastinate over big decisions, feel stuck, feel trapped and cannot progress in life. Operating out of fear is not a healthy way to approach work or life. I'm not only talking about life-threatening fear like that described in the story above, but also fears that arise in the workplace or at home. Sometimes you might spend your days operating out of so much fear and uncertainty that you feel anxious at the slightest thing: the telephone rings and you think the worst, anticipating bad news; or your email pings and before you even open it you feel your heart pounding. You feel jumpy and on high alert all day long.

We can have fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, fear of not meeting our expectations, fear of losing our job, fear of losing somebody, fear of getting sick, fear of having a difficult conversation, fear of many things. Everybody experiences fear differently and the trouble is we can have a myriad feelings, emotions and behaviours associated with fear, which can cause some confusion. Figure 6.1 shows a few examples of feelings and behaviours associated with fear.

I'm sure you can add some words of your own to this list.

Ask yourself what your relationship with fear is and how you feel and behave when you are scared.

It's hard to change your emotional response if you are not sure what exactly you are feeling. However, if you can drill your fear down to the primary emotion, you can then better understand it and take some action towards it. For example, you might feel ‘stuck’ in your life for various reasons, creating different emotions. Perhaps you are stuck in sadness, unmotivated and depressed; or you are stuck in the past, which is holding you back; or you could be stuck in fear of taking the next step into the unknown. These are very different reasons for feeling stuck, so it is beneficial to open your awareness to what the primary emotion is that you are feeling so you can work directly with that emotion.

Ask yourself the question, ‘What do I do when I'm confronted with fear?’

Do you push it away, do you run away from it, do you procrastinate, do you freeze or do you embrace it?

Further ask yourself, ‘What am I really afraid of and what is the worst-case scenario that could result from this situation? Is it a matter of life and death? Is the fear real or perceived?’ Quite often, the fear is perceived and the more we feed the fear with more uncertainty and anxiety, the more the fear continues to grow rapidly. Developing an open-minded relationship with fear is a great asset.

Embracing fear in the workplace

As a high performer in the workplace there is also an addictive nature to pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, making courageous decisions, motivating a team and constantly dealing with fear and uncertainty. This is especially true when things go right: it is rewarding, challenging and fulfilling, but it is also resource heavy and it takes away a lot of your energy, so you need to be aware of your limits. When working in a high-pressure job or faced with a challenging situation it's important to embrace the unknown and push your limits, but it's equally important to manage your personal energy along the way.

I was discussing this with Scott Chapman, CEO of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Victoria, who is no stranger to embracing fear and uncertainty in his personal and professional life. Scott has spent his life pushing the limits. He has completed expeditions across the Arctic circle and walked the Kokoda trail; he enjoys rock climbing, ice climbing, scuba diving and extreme skiing, and has traversed remote areas of the globe in search of adventure. Scott is in his mid-60s and, as I write, is about to do a ride from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean on a 1942 model motorbike. He has completed 113 skydives, of which none were tandem, and on one occasion his chute did not open, leaving him with the tough decision to cut away his tangled chute and engage his emergency one. Comparing this to my tandem skydiving experience made me feel like a bit of a wimp!

Scott treats life as an adventure. He explains that as a CEO you need to embrace the uncomfortable and turn towards the fear of managing uncertainty. Scott explains that not everything in business is black and white and sometimes you have to sit comfortably in the grey, find comfort in the unknown, prepare to fail, take some risks and continually learn from the experience. Creative solutions and infectious optimism are the hallmarks of his leadership. The other thing we discussed was ‘change’. He explained that there are only two things that drive change in your life: one is through making a choice to change, and the other is through crisis — and unfortunately most people wait until the latter. Sadly, he's right when it comes to burnout. Most people wait until they are burnt out before they make some changes to their life, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can also make a choice, and I hope this book prompts you to do so. I really love Scott's ‘matter of fact’ approach to life and his adventurous nature. At the end of our chat, he left me with some sage advice from his father: ‘After all is said and done, 90 per cent of the things you worry about never happen.’ I couldn't agree more!

Worry creates uncertainty; uncertainty creates fear; and fear creates anxiety — it's a snowball effect. If you can catch it at the worry stage and unpack what it is that you are worried about, you may see that you are making a mountain out of a molehill or worrying about something you cannot control, or worse still, worrying about something that may not even happen. It is an absolute waste of your personal energy and resources to spend your mental energy consumed by never-ending worry and fear. It's a healthier approach to turn towards that worry and fear and ask the same two questions we asked in the previous chapter about our thoughts: ‘Is it true?’ and ‘Is it useful?’ Is what I'm worrying about even true and is it helpful for me to spend my mental energy on it?

Seeking the uncomfortable

Fear can often hold us back from realising our full potential — especially with things that are outside our comfort zone. I have been practising an exercise over the past few years that I call ‘seek the uncomfortable’. I mentioned in earlier chapters that it's great to do the most demanding work tasks first up in the morning when you are at your freshest and before you get hijacked by everybody else's demands. Brian Tracy describes this beautifully in his time-management book titled Eat That Frog²³ when he talks about ‘eating the frog’ or doing the hardest task first up in the morning to eliminate procrastination and so everything else seems easier afterwards.

I really like that idea and have practised this myself, but I decided to add another layer to it. I start the day by ‘seeking the uncomfortable’ to help me embrace fear on a daily basis. Every morning I purposefully look for the tasks in my day that make me feel uncomfortable or provoke a bit of fear in me and I highlight them as the first thing to meet head-on. For example, it could be that tough conversation, or that hard meeting, or a tricky phone call breaking bad news, or a challenging client or anything that I don't really like doing. After circling that one thing, I then engage with that uncomfortable task and turn towards it with good intentions and a positive attitude. I must admit, it was challenging at first, but after doing it on a daily basis, it became much easier and I actually began to enjoy it because it helped me grow and develop. I was even a bit disappointed on one occasion when I looked at my day ahead and there wasn't anything too challenging to embrace.

I invite you to try this out yourself. Think of the things that make you feel a bit uncomfortable and see what you can do to meet those first up in your day instead of putting them off, because if you are anything like me, you will delay them until the afternoon and then inevitably postpone them until the following morning. When you turn towards your fears and accomplish them, it can be very rewarding and energising.

Developing a relationship with fear and trust

While trekking in the Himalayas for a few months, I had to face my fears more than once. When crossing the mountain rivers while trekking, you come across many suspended footbridges, some safer than others. They are usually suspended on wires or ropes and sway high above the valley floor. Many times they have raging rivers underneath them and they are usually very narrow, with just enough room for two people side by side. They are sometimes called ‘sway bridges’ because when you start walking on them they bounce and sway in all directions, and the more people that are on them, the more they bounce, which can be quite scary! You really have to put your trust in the primitive engineering of these bridges and just go for it.

I do have a fear of heights, but it's weird because it's not a problem all of the time, which is worse because it sometimes catches me by surprise. I remember the first time I had to cross a suspended bridge, I was halfway across when a team of Sherpas with laden donkeys came from the other direction onto the bridge. The bridge started bouncing and swaying so I instantly turned back around and hurried to get off the bridge and onto stable ground, scared that I'd get squashed or knocked off. I waited for ages for the bridge to be totally clear before I would cross. However, I quickly learned that there are many of these crossings among the mountain treks and eventually you have to get the courage to continue to cross them no matter what is coming towards you — otherwise you'll never get anywhere. I got so much better at it after many crossings and eventually I had zero fear whatsoever. I even managed to share bridges with yaks coming the other way!

The most confronting river crossing was not quite a suspension bridge but a flying-fox type of system with a cage made of iron and chicken wire that was suspended hundreds of metres above a raging river high up in the Himalayas. My life, and that of my travel companion, literally depended on one single cable fixed to each side of the cliffs as we sat in our chicken-wire cage while being ferried by the locals from one side to another via a series of ropes and pulleys. My heart was in my throat as we got pulled, inch by inch, over a raging river, but we eventually made it safely to the other side.

To top it off, at the end of our 18-day Himalayan trek we ran out of money from buying too many treats along the way. You see, the higher you trek in the mountains, the more expensive things are, and we probably had one too many Snickers bars and Coca-Colas along the way. We got to the end of our trek and needed to catch a bus back to Kathmandu, but we didn't have enough money for tickets. We searched through our backpacks and managed to pull together a few Nepalese rupees, which we offered the bus driver. We were motioned to follow him and he led us up a ladder to the roof of the bus. To our surprise, we were greeted up there by a few young local Nepalese boys ready for their journey. We sat on top of our backpacks and looped our hands and feet under any rails we could find as we endured the nerve-wracking six-hour ride all the way back to Kathmandu. Trust, trust, trust is all we could do!

All of these experiences gave me the confidence to constantly turn towards my fears and embrace them as best I could. Like anything, the more you expose yourself to uncomfortable situations, the more you condition yourself to develop trust in yourself and your capabilities. Sometimes when we are feeling burnt out, stressed or anxious we lose that sense of trust in our capacity and capabilities and we might avoid certain challenging situations. However, the more you expose yourself to fear and ‘being comfortable with being uncomfortable’, the more you can embrace the full experience of life.

On the other side of fear is trust

A fear mindset inhibits you from truly living the life you want. The fear of taking risks, the fear of failing and the fear of change can stop you moving forward. I am not a career coach, but very often I see clients who are feeling ‘stuck’ in their career or life because they are simply too scared to take that next big leap. This is understandable because any significant change in life is usually scary, but once you eliminate the fears and build trust instead, you are ready to progress forward with positive momentum. I was coaching Jean, a corporate executive who had spent the previous 10 years advancing her career to managing director of a medium-sized logistics company. Although she enjoyed her job and her team, she did not feel fulfilled and, in her words, she felt ‘comfortably stuck’. She said she was feeling a bit burnt out and lacked the drive to keep going for another 10 years in this type of role. She discovered her true passion was to help other professional women to manage their careers while bringing up a family (she was a proud mother of three herself) and she really wanted to open her own coaching business, but she was too scared to give up the financial security she had in her job.

After some sessions in establishing trust and working out a sensible transition plan, Jean finally made the courageous move. She thought she would start it as a side business initially while still working, but within months she was so busy and successful in her coaching business that she invested herself in it full time. Her passion and drive accelerated her rapid growth and she has not turned back since. She now laughs at herself when she thinks of what she was afraid of. With trust anything is possible!

Flipping your fears

Making any big change in life is scary, but you need to truly trust yourself, trust your capabilities, trust your instincts, trust your decisions, trust your support network and go for it. Sometimes it's useful to think of what would be the worst-case scenario if you gave something a shot, and if it doesn't work out, can you deal with that? It's also beneficial to break down what it is that you are scared of so you can turn towards it and understand it better.

Another great exercise is to ‘flip your fears’ into trust. Let's say you are going for a job interview and you fear inadequacy. You might think something like, I'm not good enough, or I'm not ready. You can flip that thought and reassure yourself with expressions like, ‘I am good enough and I am ready. I trust that I have all the knowledge and skills that I need and I will also learn new skills along the way.’ This is a healthier mindset and approach for turning your fears into positive actions and validating to yourself that you've got what it takes to succeed in life.

We can use this approach for all of the basic human fears we looked at earlier in this chapter. You can see this approach at work in table 6.1.

This exercise is a great way to flip your fears to trust. You can dive deeper into this exercise yourself in the practice template at the end of this chapter. The goal is to identify the main fear or the limiting belief, put it into a sentence starting with ‘I'm scared …’ and flip it into a positive statement starting with ‘I trust that …’

Imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs

You may have heard the term ‘imposter syndrome’²⁴, where you have a sense of self-doubt about your competency, your skills and your accomplishments. You might feel like an imposter and that you have only made it this far out of luck or faking your way there, and maybe one day somebody will find you out. For example, say you have just entered a leadership role through a series of promotions, but you believe you are not good enough for this role and you don't really have what it takes. You doubt your capability as a leader and worry that someday you will be exposed.

While limiting beliefs are a set of false beliefs that can stop you from pursuing your goals or your big dreams, many of them stem from fear, as we have discussed previously, and they can keep you in a holding pattern that prevents you from achieving greatness in your life. You might say things like:

• I'm not good enough
• I'm not smart enough
• I'm not old enough
• I'm too old
• I'm not ready yet.

Sometimes we do not verbalise these phrases but we think them and this stops us from taking positive action. There are a variety of factors that create your limiting beliefs. They can stem from your upbringing or through certain conditioning at different stages of your life. A story that illustrates this perfectly was shared with me by an elephant trainer in Chang Mai, far north Thailand. He explained that when elephants are babies, they restrict them by attaching a thin piece of rope fixed to a peg in the ground to the little elephant's ankle. The elephant learns that it is limited to that area. As the elephant grows in weight and size, it still believes it is limited by the thin piece of rope, even though it could easily break it, so it won't even try.

Ask yourself if you have any limiting beliefs that are holding you back from realising your dreams. (The exercise at the end of this chapter will help you with this.)

Sometimes all you need to do is take that first step! When you gently turn towards your fear, you can meet it head on and have an understanding of what's creating that fear. You can then respond to it logically and mindfully. Furthermore, when you identify your limiting beliefs and break through them you can create anything you want in life. The choices are virtually limitless. I have learned that with trust and belief you will always have the right response, take the right action and use the resources inside of you just when you need them for any given situation — not before, not after, but in the moment. This belief has served me well and I'm confident it will help you too.

Here are some exercises to ‘flip your fears’ and break some of those limiting beliefs. Let's take some positive steps towards living your best life!