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The most common question asked of high divers is, “Are you afraid up there?” My response has always been that if you aren’t afraid, you’ll probably get hurt. High divers aren’t fearless. Rather, they are fear-enhanced, or enfeared. It is precisely this fear that heightens a diver’s awareness of his surroundings so he won’t make any mistakes. Divers often talk of having a “healthy respect for the ladder.” We respected the fact that at any time, the high diving gods could cause us to tumble out of control and come crashing down to Earth. Our respect was grounded in fear, and most diving injuries happened in fear’s absence. We knew that fear kept us safe. Indeed, we were more worried when we weren’t afraid than when we were. When leaping from the ladder, fear was a VIP passenger that always came along for the ride.

When you talk about risk, invariably you have to talk about fear. Risk, after all, has an intimate relationship with fear. Fear is the great risk inhibitor. We fear high places. We fear loss. We fear failure. We fear success. We fear rejection. We fear embarrassment. We fear commitment. We fear intimacy. We fear the unknown. And, of course, we fear fear. But the truth about fear is that we need it. Fear is the primary (and primordial) warning system that alerts us to danger. In threatening situations, fear jacks up our heartbeat and stimulates our senses to keep us from getting hurt. In well-proportioned measures, it can sharpen your focus, quicken your reflexes, enhance your performance, and even add to your excitement and enjoyment of the risk. The point is, fear is a powerful energy that, properly channeled, can make risk-taking an invigorating and rewarding experience. Indeed, fear-laden risks tend to be the most memorable once taken. For these reasons, and because relishing risk is partly a function of living in a fear-respectful way, every Right Risk-taker needs to be well versed in Right Risk principle 6: make fear work for you.

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Sensational Fear

If you sit with fear long enough, you can become comfortable with it. My friend has Lou Gehrig’s disease. She has spent much of the last 20 years confined to a wheelchair, and spends most of her days reading horror novels. I once asked her why she is so fascinated with spooky stories. Her answer was insightful, “Because it makes me feel alive inside.” My friend’s answer captures why some of us actually like being afraid. As mentioned briefly at the end of Principle 5, many risk-takers demonstrate “sensation-seeking behavior.” As the term suggests, these people seek out situations that stimulate their senses and enlarge their ability to feel. More than nearly any other emotion, fear magnifies and sharpens our senses. Fear’s ability to make us “feel alive inside” can be powerfully enticing. This allure of fear can draw the sensation-seeker into dangerous situations. After all, it is the fear of getting caught that makes the dangerous liaison so exciting, the fear of getting hurt that makes the dangerous stunt so thrilling, and the fear of wiping out that makes the dangerous dive so exhilarating.

Complacency: The Absence of Fear

Ironically, you are most likely to get hurt in situations that are devoid of fear, because the absence of fear can cause complacency. The U.S. Air Force Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, are among the military’s most elite pilots. Their aerial maneuvers combine a mixture of formation and solo flying, all done at the helm of an F-16 while traveling at lightning speed. Pilots like this aren’t the fearful type. Mostly that’s a good thing. They wouldn’t be able to perform with confidence and precision if they were under the grip of fear. But the Air Force knows that at least some level of fear is healthy. For this reason, officer assignments with this elite squadron are limited to two years.¹ Beyond that, the positive effects of fear can wear off altogether, significantly increasing the possibility of a midair catastrophe.

The antecedent of complacency is often success. A disturbing example of this has recently been noticed in San Francisco where the number of HIV infections has doubled in the last five years. Researchers are so alarmed that the Center for Disease Control recommended—for the first time—that all gay men get screened for HIV at least once a year. The sharp rise in infection was attributed to behavioral complacency brought on by advances in HIV treatment and prevention. Aggressive prevention programs, safe-sex advertising, and better drug treatments were so effective that they had created a “reverse epidemic,” whereby the gay community was now lowering its guard against HIV. According to Michael Siever, director of the Stonewall Project, an advocacy group for gay men, “There’s much less fear . . . People aren’t as careful. They’re tired of getting tested and they’re tired of the same old campaigns to scare them about sex.”² In this instance, the consequence of the absence of fear may not just be behavioral complacency, it may be death itself.

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Offsetting Complacency with Fear

Even in corporate settings, the total absence of fear can be a sign of danger. In organizations too, complacency can be an outgrowth of success. Bloat follows growth and slows the organization’s response to competitive threats. After sustained periods of success, organizations are easily lulled into a false sense of security. During these times, an organization is most vulnerable to injury. For example, one reason the Big 3 automakers had such a tough time in the 1970s was because of their success in selling gas-guzzling cars to a market of “conspicuous consumers.” Sustained success caused the Big 3 to believe “It has always been this way, therefore it will always be this way.”

To prevent organizational complacency, it is precisely at the moments of a company’s greatest triumph that senior executives should make fear work for them by stirring the butterflies in the belly of the workforce. Not as fear-mongers, but as fear leaders. Leaders should have a compensatory relationship to followers. When followers are afraid, leaders should calm them down. Conversely, when followers are apathetic, leaders should counterbalance with fear. One of the most dramatic presentations I ever witnessed was given by a senior executive from a large communications company. Using stark and sobering terms, he warned of the competitive threats looming on the company’s horizon, even though the company was coming off its most successful year. This exec knew that success today could cause a train wreck tomorrow. Thus, he deliberately enfeared the workforce to offset the negative effects of complacency.

The Dark Side of Fear

While fear does have some redeeming qualities (like preventing complacency), it would be foolish to suggest that fear is always a performance-enhancing elixir. At a certain point fear converts from a risk-motivating force to a risk-inhibiting rogue. Fear can bludgeon the fledgling risk-taker’s courage. I’ve seen rookie high divers so paralyzed with fear that they were unable to climb to the top and unable to walk back down, literally stuck on the middle of the ladder. When fear tucks under your skin and worms its way into your brain, it assaults your nervous system with adrenaline-filled hand grenades. Left unchallenged, your vital signs become deranged, your heartbeat races, your skin blotches, your vision constricts, you lose your appetite, you sweat profusely, and you hyperventilate. The physiological response itself can be so frightening that you may become more afraid of your fearful feelings than you are of the risk that prompted them. You are in a panic attack, the fear of fear itself.

A friend of mine is a Vietnam veteran. He recently confided to me that he sometimes misses combat. He explained that the fury of combat had taught him things about his character that he hadn’t known existed, things like valor, honor, and courage. Further, it taught him that fear, like electricity, can provide the needed energy to help you take a risk. For many of the same reasons previously mentioned—focus, alertness, excitement—he and his fellow soldiers believed it was good to be scared. But before each major offensive they would tell each other, “Don’t let the fear getcha.” As he explained, if the fear “gotcha,” it resulted in a macabre paralysis that would electrocute you in its grip. Under the spell of fear, a soldier would be frozen on his gun’s trigger, unable to squeeze and unable to release, just a sitting target.

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At issue is how to achieve the right balance of fear, so that you can make it work for you. Not enough fear, and the risk is banal and boring (and—one could argue—not really a risk). Too much fear, and the risk is nearly impossible to take. You are most apt to take a risk when the dose of fear is strong enough to motivate you into action, but not so strong that it stuns your nerves. Beyond a certain point, fear can have diminishing returns.

Fear of the Unknown

A lot has been written about the natural tendency to fear the unknown. In my opinion, the first (and perhaps best) description of this phenomenon comes from the 4000-year-old masterpiece of Plato. In The Republic, Socrates (an early Right Risk-taker) describes fear as being a function of knowledge versus ignorance. He draws an interesting parallel between the nature of dogs and humans, explaining that a dog will bark at a stranger regardless of whether the stranger has ever harmed him, but will be gentle with someone he knows, whether or not he has received kindness from him. Socrates notes that “knowing and not knowing are the sole criteria the dog uses to distinguish friend from enemy.”³

Humans, too, will bark at what is foreign. What we are ignorant of, we are often afraid of. Consequently, the most unfamiliar things are often first viewed as a threat, and we put up our defenses. One way to reduce fear (i.e., ignorance) is to increase your exposure to the feared object or situation so that you gain knowledge of it. Psychologists call this the “mere-exposure effect,” meaning that we can grow more comfortable with something just by spending time with it. When we acquaint ourselves with our fears, their debilitating effect on us dissipates.

For example, I have a relative who is prejudiced. He grew up in New York where communities are tightly segmented by ethnic sections (Little Italy, Spanish Harlem, Chinatown, etc.). A few years ago he came to visit me in Atlanta. At the end of his visit, I took him to see the tomb of Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps Atlanta’s most famous hero. We also toured the house where King was raised as a child. What started out as a whim turned out to be a profoundly moving experience for my relative. Having grown up during the tumultuous era of the civil rights movement and having witnessed race riots and looting in New York, he thought of King as a troublemaker and inciter. But standing in King’s home, seeing where he ate, bathed, and slept made King more relatable. King the man was more accessible than King the provocative political figure. A simple tour of King’s home did more to reduce my relative’s prejudiced views than any finger-pointing on my part could have done. Seeing the ordinary man behind the extraordinary hero helped convert my relative’s ignorance into knowledge.

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As Socrates suggested, and as my relative experienced, fear changes from an enemy to a friend to the extent that you move from a condition of not knowing to knowing. And it is hard to know things you keep at a distance. Instead, relishing your risk requires that you spend time “merely-exposed” to your risk. Thinking about starting a business? Take a weekend apprenticeship in the same field. Thinking about moving overseas? Take an extended trip abroad. You will remain hampered by fear of the unknown only as long as you remain loyal to your ignorance.

Fear of the Known

In my opinion, fear of the unknown is overrated. The real fear, and the hardest to overcome, is fear of the known. Few things inhibit our ability to take a risk as much as an early bad experience. In these instances, you know all too well the consequences of a risk . . . and you’ve got the scars to prove it. For example, I am an avid whitewater kayaker. A few years ago, while paddling Tennessee’s famed Ocoee River, I got flipped upside down in a rapid affectionately known as “Grumpy.” Kayakers label rapids based on reputation, a linguistic expression of homage to man’s collective risk experience. Some names are friendly, like “Surprise” or “Cat’s Pajamas,” other names are more ominous, like “Decapitation Rock,” “Table Saw,” or “Witch’s Hole.” Grumpy got its name for a reason—this nasty hydraulic is as friendly as a grizzly bear with hemorrhoids. By obsessing solely about Grumpy’s dangerous consequences, I lost my composure and exited my kayak. In fast moving whitewater, the safest place to be is in your boat, even if you’re upside down. It is when you are orphaned from your boat that you are most exposed to rocks. As I bobbled up and down the fast river, I felt as if I was in a liquid pinball game, banging into rocks with every body part. By the time Grumpy was through trashing me, I was bruised all over.

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After my little brawl with Grumpy, whenever my buddies and I would go paddling, I would shamefully trudge my boat past Grumpy and enter the water farther downstream. Before long, years had gone by since the episode, but I was still trudging my boat past the rapid. I was in full fear of the known. Whereas the antidote to fear of the unknown is gaining knowledge, the antidote to fear of the known is a mixture of willful ignorance and focused attention. The truth was, unless I could stop mentally replaying the beating I had taken years earlier, I would never get past my fear of Grumpy. At the same time, I would have to pinpoint exactly what had gone wrong so that I could do it differently.

When I finally did paddle through Grumpy again, instead of thinking about all the things that could go wrong, I focused on the specific actions that I needed to take to successfully navigate the rapid. When you look at Grumpy in its entirety, it is incredibly intimidating. Water crashes onto boulders, rushes through narrow confluences, and circulates beneath undercut rocks. But successfully navigating Grumpy comes down to an intermediate ferry move. Ferrying is when you use the river’s current to move from one side of the river to the other while facing upstream. By focusing with laser-like attention on making the ferry move, and not on Grumpy’s tumultuous panorama, I was able to conquer the rapid and my fear too.

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Caging Fear

There is little physiological distinction between intense feelings of fear and excitement; they are neurological correlates. What happens when you are afraid? Your heart quickens, your blood pressure builds, your stomach teems with butterflies, your breathing shortens, and your skin tingles with nervous energy, right? Now, what happens when you are about to have sex? Enough said.

Though physiologically fear and excitement are nearly indistinguishable, there is one simple but profound difference. We experience fear as unpleasant, and excitement as pleasant. Fear can lead to feelings of anxiety, dread, apprehension, and terror. These feelings might be prompted by sitting in a dentist’s chair or being summoned by the IRS. Conversely, excitement is accompanied by feelings of joy, euphoria, and even ecstasy. These feelings might be aroused by winning a thrilling athletic victory or getting an acceptance letter from the college of your choice. The more intense the fear the more unpleasant it feels, and the more intense the excitement the more pleasant it feels. The real question becomes, what if you could use all the raw physiological energy aroused when you’re afraid, and convert it into excitement? You can. In fact you already do.

The truth is we enjoy, and even seek out, a good fright. Of our own free will we will do scary things, not in spite of the associated fear, but because of it. We will skydive, hang glide, ride motor cross, and go shark fishing for no other reason than scary enjoyment. Out of all God’s creatures, man is the only one known to seek out danger just for fun’s sake.

The most thrilling situations are those that fuse the emotions of fear and excitement closely together. Indeed, the most basic objective of an amusement park is to make you scream with joy. Notice that your enjoyment isn’t contingent upon a reduction in fear’s intensity. To the contrary, the more fear-saturated the better. The most inviting roller coaster is the colossal beast at the far edge of the park, the giant loop-d-loop monster that promises to thrash you to and fro at G-force speed. We are no longer satisfied with sitting passively on a soft cushiony seat. We want to ride the beast standing straight up. Better yet, take the floor away and let our feet dangle over the asphalt below!

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Rather than fight fear, make it work for you by using all that combustible energy to embolden your spirit and fuel your ability to take, and enjoy, the risk. You do this not by reducing the fear’s intensity, but by increasing the robustness of what British psychologist Dr. Michael Apter calls your “protective frame.” In his fascinating book, The Dangerous Edge, Apter provides a useful metaphor for understanding this concept. He writes, “Think of looking at a tiger in a cage. Both the tiger and the cage are needed in order to experience excitement: The tiger without the cage would be frightening; the cage without the tiger would be boring. Both are necessary. In order to experience excitement, then, we need both the possibility of danger and something we believe will protect us from it.”⁴

As Apter explains, many situations can potentially arouse feelings of excitement or anxiety depending on how safe you believe yourself to be. The safer we feel, the more we can cope with fearful feelings. In other words, fear does not always have to have diminishing returns. As long as the danger of our risk is matched in equal measure by something that increases our safety, our fear will be offset with excitement. Thus, Apter suggests that instead of reducing the size of the tiger (fear), you should strengthen the metal of the cage (protective frame). Fear is converted to excitement to the degree that you build up your confidence and capability. When you seek out coaching, are well rehearsed, deepen your skills, have strong social support, and have safe equipment, you become emboldened by feelings of confidence, greatly enhancing your chances of withstanding fear’s debilitating effects. The more robust the protective frame, the more ferocious the tiger you can deal with, and the more scary fun you can have!

Pulling Back the Curtain

When we are faced with fear, our first instinct is often to run away. We are not unlike the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, who, when looking at the menacing image of the great and powerful Oz, hightailed it in the other direction. The impulse to run is reversed, however, when we pull back the curtain on our fears and bring it down to size. Contrary to the Wizard’s famous directive, we should indeed pay attention to the man behind the curtain. More often than not, he is smaller than we think.

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Putting Principle 6 Into Practice

• Think about your past risks. What fears reoccur most consistently?
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• Think about the risk you are currently faced with. What are you most afraid of?
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• What is driving your fear, the known or the unknown? Have you ever had a direct experience with what you are fearing? Or is it an entirely foreign experience?
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• Take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left-hand side, list all the ways that your fear is actually serving you (e.g., keeping you safe). On the right-hand side, list the ways that the fear is holding you back.
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• What about your risk secretly excites you? How is your excitement tied to your fear?
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• Think about the metaphor of a “tiger in a cage.” What is your tiger? How big and ferocious is it? How strong is your cage (protective frame)? What can you do to strengthen it (e.g., get a coach, rehearse, get social support, build your skills)?
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