Making Fear of the Unknown Work For You

by Gabriella Kortsch, Ph.D.

Moving to a new country? Starting a new job? Defending your first client in court? Getting married? Getting divorced? Having a baby? Giving a speech? Starting a new business on a shoestring? Learning how to drive a car? Got a promotion which entails far greater responsibility and management? Getting ready to write your thesis? Teaching your first class? Giving your first piano recital? Going for an audition? Presenting yourself for elections? Going for a job interview? Taking over your first board meeting? Thinking of voicing your feelings for the first time (even though you're 57) in a romantic situation where you are not certain of the outcome? (See also my July 2007 Newsletter Emotional Unavailability: An Introduction at http://www.advancedpersonaltherapy.com/). Going white water rafting? Trekking the Silk Road with a knapsack in hand?

All of the above - and many other situations - may cause us to feel a certain sense of trepidation, worry, concern, or fear, simply because they are - at the point we are at - still unknown situations that we have had no experience with (see also the radio audio clip from my weekly program: Overcome Your Fear of New Experiences and Jump-Start Your Growth in the Emotions Section). Not having experience with something means we have nothing to fall back upon in our own personal history to allow us to calm our nerves and our fears, until we have actually gone through the process that we are facing.

So Now You've Done It

But what happens once we have actually done whatever it is that up to this point was unknown?
Our world expands. We generally have a much lower sense of fear - if any at all - involved with the new experience. We grow. We learn. We recognize more bits of ourselves insofar that we realize it was much more our fear than the actual experience that was holding us back!
So we see that we are actually much more than we envisioned prior to the experience.
Expansion of Your Personal Universe

Do you see where I'm taking you? Your fear of an unknown experience was actually the promise of an enriching moment in your life. Your fear was actually the promise of an expansion of your personal universe. It indicated to you that you were on the threshold of something very important in your own growth.

Now don't misunderstand me. If you are standing on a precipice in the Grand Canyon, deliberating on whether you should jump or not without a hang glider and feel some trepidation, you are most evidently not going to have an enriching experience if you pass the threshold of those fears and jump. If you do have the hang glider, however, and your heart is thumping, and then you go ahead and have the experience, you will most probably enrich your life.
And in the more normal category of events, as indicated above, crossing the threshold of your fears will take you into a new place in your life that is richer and broader, and that may even serve to change some major paradigms about yourself and the world that you have been holding on to for dear life.

Fear of Rejection Forms Part of It

Obviously in many of the instances described above, fear of rejection forms part of the problem. Another area of apprehension and concern for many people is fear of failure. (See also Rejection: The Devastating and Paralyzing Effect it Can Have on Us, on my website on the Articles Page). So when you combine fear of the unknown with fear of rejection and fear of failure, you have a fairly paralyzed scenario that for many people is simply too much to surmount. It is that point of paralysis that I wish to address with this article.

Paralysis

Paralysis causes stagnation in our lives. Paralysis means we don't grow. And if we don't grow we start to die, that is what the stagnation implies. We may not die physically, but we die in spirit, because we are not doing all that we can to expand ourselves.

Expansion

Expansion implies seeking out new territory. (See also The Risks We Don't Take). When the Vikings set out to discover new worlds in their elaborately carved vessels, when Columbus set out to find India on the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, when Luther nailed proclamations on church doors, when the Gutenberg press began printing bibles for mass consumption (well, whatever went for mass consumption in the Middle Ages) that heretofore had only been available to the elite, when NASA put a man on the moon, and when quantum physicists discovered that material reality is composed of non-stuff, clearly, each individual involved in each of these events, must have had a sense of fear and trepidation upon embarking on the venture. Whether it was because of issues concerning their physical safety (they might have dropped off the edge of the world, or not been able to return to earth), or the sanctity of their reputations (Luther was setting himself up to be proclaimed an heretic, putting not only his reputation on the line, but also his physical safety at the hands of the church, and early quantum physicists might have feared ridicule from their colleagues due to discoveries that threatened to retire Newtonian mechanical physics), it is obvious that what these individuals were undertaking implied unknown, new territory, risk, and possible failure.

Excitement and Your Master Plan

And yet there must have been a sense of excitement as well. (See also my June 2006 Newsletter: Finding a Meaning For Your Life). It is the combination of the fear of the unknown and the excitement that tells you that a new step in growth and expansion is taking place. It tells you that if you cross this threshold of fear of the unknown, you will have become more than what you were before taking that step.

The excitement also tells you that you've tapped into something that has real meaning for you, whether it is because it forms part of your overarching mission or master plan, or whether it is because it simply is an experience that takes you further down the road to growth and expansion.

Exploration and Creation

Your life is composed of a series of events, decisions, emotions, realizations, failures and successes, and what propels us forward more quickly than others, is the decision to venture down paths even if they make us feel uncertain of the outcome. Look where it took Richard Branson and Virgin, or Bill Gates and Microsoft, the 30-something owners of Google, or Oscar Pistorius, the South African amputee sprinter who wants to compete in the 2008 Olympics. Fear of the unknown is one of the best indications that we are on the road to expansion and growth. Fear of the unknown is one of the best indications that we are on the road to exploration and creation.

Creation equals gestation and always is the beginning of something new, and new life brings new growth and richness to your existence. Can you possibly afford to ignore this message from your viscera, your gut feeling of fear of the unknown, in the knowledge that if you are willing to cross the threshold and face your fear it will bring you growth?


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