The Upside of Fear

Certain things trigger fear in me more than others. As I get to know myself and the world better, I can recognize fear and not have it dictate my actions so much. So I'm still fearful, but it impacts my life less.

My core fear is rejection, and I believe it comes from experiencing the stigma at school from coming from "a broken home" as they would say, so it's groups that I fear most and new groups can trigger it.

There have been numerous times when I have feared approaching someone socially or professionally, and so I'll nod or wave, which is usually so insufficient an expression of what I feel about them and it only serves to compound my own feeling of isolation.

Years ago I Executive Produced a documentary called "Calling the Ghosts" about two women who survived Omarska, the notorious Serbian death camp. They were two incredibly brave women whose journey was to see the arrest of the indicted war criminals through giving testimony. It was screened at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York and Richard Holbrooke attended. As the person behind the Dayton Peace Accord he was the person to go lobby about the arrest of the indicted war criminals, which with a certain amount of trepidation I plucked up courage to do, asking him simply why they hadn't been arrested. His response was that "We don't want another Somalia."

Knowing I didn't know enough to challenge that response I backed off, only to be called by him after the event and told how lame I'd been, and that I now needed to go to Human Rights Watch, learn about it and come back at him with a response. He was wonderful about impressing on me that he couldn't do his job as a politician if I didn't step up and do mine as a citizen. I chose this example because my fear was that I didn't know enough and that I would be made a fool of or rejected, and frankly both happened, but the outcome of the entire incident changed my life for the positive, and that is the reason to overcome fear.

I often find my fears are well-founded! But I've learnt that that doesn't mean I should let them dictate and stop me from doing things. At the end of the day the thing I feared happening was no big deal, and spawned great growth; it helped me laugh off the fear and feel more empowered in future.

If you haven't already visited our new Becoming Fearless section, click here for more blog posts, news stories, and special features on relationships, work, parenting, health, sex . . . life.