Fear & Inaction
I want to share a story about an encounter between my dog Loki and a very scary… rock. Loki is an Anatolian Shepherd Labrador mix and is by all accounts a big dog. He stands nearly 27 inches at the shoulder which means that when we are at the dinner table, he can easily rest his chin on it while still on all fours. Suffice it to say that he is a large dog and I am so glad he never grew into his paws or head.
Despite his lovable lap dog nature and playful demeanor, Loki is seriously intimidating. His current size is formidable on its own, but his head and more accurately, his enormous mouth full of terrifyingly sharp teeth and his jaws of steel are enough to make any predator take pause. This is comforting given that I generally walk him in the wee hours of the morning or at night when I am most at risk from human or animal predators alike.
While on our morning walk one day, Loki met his match. We were westward bound and the sun was low in the sky at our backs just about 20 minutes into sunrise. He and I had been out for about an hour at this point and since he had been behaving, I let him have a little more leash to wander a bit further ahead from me. We were walking up the trail towards home and the sun glistened off a boulder at the crest of the hill up ahead.
I watched in wonder as Loki slowed his pace and lowered his head while looking intently at the boulder. He lowered his tail and let out a small whimper as we got closer. He scampered back towards me until he was half leaning on me without ever removing his gaze from the looming “danger”.
“Loki, honey.” I laughed. “What are you afraid of? You silly dog. Are you scared of that big bad boulder”? Loki whimpered again and he leaned harder into my leg nearly pushing me off balance. As I stopped about 10 feet from the 2 ton menace, I said, “Loki, go check it out. It is just a boulder bud.” While he can’t understand my words, he recognized my emotional support and then looked up at me as if to say, “Are you sure? Because it looks so scary!”
Loki ducked his head a little more and crept quietly towards the boulder with his tail between his legs, sniffing the ground all the way in an attempt to identify the creature he was faced with. When he got within 4 feet, he jumped sideways and back like a scared cat. You know, the kind of jump that happens when a cat turns to see a cucumber behind it?
At any rate, this beast of a dog was terrified of the boulder because of the way the light was playing on the face of it and creating shadows. He couldn’t tell that it was a harmless boulder due to his current perspective. In his sweet little brain, he resorted to his instincts of fear and self preservation. My “fierce” and enormous dog has the natural potential and skill to fend off predators as large as wolves, bears, and lions. Yet, here he was, scared and looking to me for solidarity and safety from a 3 foot tall, stationary, and harmless…. boulder.
On our last quarter mile home, I reflected on his reaction. I thought about how often I had allowed my perspective to cause me to retreat or run away in fear. How often had I allowed a shadow or a shallow point of view determine my reaction? How many times had I backed away from something that was never a threat to begin with?
We question our abilities to face perceived enemies. This comes from the combined effect of not having enough trust in our own skills and abilities while simultaneously giving much more credit to the “adversary” than the situation warrants. So the question then is, how do we change this?
When faced with a situation that feels larger than life and perhaps even a bit frightening, remember that the fear is there to help you learn. The emotion is a nod to our core fight or flight response. Our brain, at its very core, is wired for survival. While this instinctual response was developed for physical altercations, the intellectual situations cause the same response. But there-in lies the very key. If it is an intellectual situation, we can reason ourselves through it just as easily as we recoiled at the initial encounter.
Here are 7 quick tips:
Determine necessity- Should you address the situation? Will doing so improve things for you even if only slightly?
Assess the true risk- What is truly at stake? Is it as large as it feels initially? If the worst happens, what can you do next? How likely is it that the worst will actually happen?
Consider the alternatives- What other ways exist to handle the situation?
Get clear on the benefits- If you move forward and face the fear, what benefits will you reap? List these out for both the long term and short term. What are the big wins? What are the small wins?
Consider the costs of not acting- What are the consequences of not addressing the situation or moving forward? Long Term, short term and worst case scenario?
Enlist support- Is it possible to enlist allies and or support networks to help?
Practice- Role-play the interaction with a trusted confidant. Simulate various types of responses to allow yourself the opportunity to increase your familiarity with circumstances