Fear vs. Anxiety
Restless nights, imagining disaster scenarios, legs bouncing up and down, gulping caffeine to push through, poor concentration, irritable - Do any of these sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Fear and anxiety, and their associated mental and physical markers, are extremely prevalent in the entrepreneurial world.
If you’re like me, I bet you can quickly name at least 3 fears or anxieties that you currently have about your business.
- Do we have enough money in the bank?
- Will our product or service sell?
- What if my co-founder quits?
- What if I get fired by my board?
- Who’s my next major competitor?
Often, we think that once we reach our next business milestone, fear and anxiety will magically dissipate. Like me, you’ve probably found this isn’t true. In fact, each new milestone usually compounds my fears. The bigger you play, the bigger the stakes, the bigger the fears. Success will not solve your fears, this is an inside job!
Give It a Name
To transform our fear and anxiety, we must begin by knowing when we are experiencing it.
Often our fears live in our subconscious, so we cannot name them or understand when they are running the show. That’s why we need to be able to identify the mental and physical markers - insomnia, poor concentration, feeling down on yourself, jittery, eyes twitching, experiencing racing or unwanted thoughts, avoiding challenges, etc. When you experience these markers, you’ll need to dig deeper to get to the root fears and anxieties causing them.
Fear and anxiety, while similar, are completely different experiences. Fear arises when we perceive THREAT in our environment. For early humans, it helped them to escape predators. Today, it’s more likely to help us jump out of the way of a speeding car when we step into the street.
Anxiety is our response to an imagined threat in the future. Our anxieties fill us with worry and stress as our minds play out the possible scenarios associated with that potential threat. The chart below breaks down the differences in fear and anxiety.
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles… most of them never happened.” ~ Mark Twain
I think most of us can relate. We live with chronic anxieties about future threats, even when we objectively know that most of our worst-case scenarios never happen.
In America today, we often wear the stress associated with anxiety as a badge of honor. In our entrepreneurial circles, it’s much more acceptable to say you are stressed than to admit to being afraid.
However, let me be clear that anxiety is not always bad. It can help us anticipate future threats. If we are going to run out of money in a few months, it would be our anxiety that tells us to fundraise, lower the monthly burn, or increase sales.
Why Anxiety Awareness Matters
While some anxiety can be helpful, it has the potential to have a serious impact on mental wellbeing at an individual level. The unfortunate reality for entrepreneurs is that our fears also have the potential to cause our companies to fail (great, there is one more thing to be anxious about!).
Why is that?
1. Anxiety hijacks creativity.
As human beings, we are constantly taking in sensory data (sight, smell, touch, etc.), which is sent to the thalamus, or as I like to call it, the brain’s switchboard.
Once the data is in the switchboard, the cortex- thinking and interpretation - and the amygdala - reactions - assess the sensory data. If a threat is present, whether real or imagined, the amygdala shuts down the cortex to initiate a fast, unconscious reaction.
Ultimately, when we are in a fear response, we see the world through tunnel vision and the lens of threat. We cannot see all the possibilities and uncover creative solutions or identify the pivot that our company needs to make. In essence, our anxiety hijacks our creativity.
One of the most important skills we need to learn is how to reliably move from anxiety to creativity.
2. Anxiety impairs our judgment.
How do fear and anxiety impact our decision making?
Whether we like to admit it or not, every time we have a decision to make, it runs through an emotion filter first. Think about it. If you are feeling happy and ecstatic, will your decision be different than if you are feeling sad and depressed? Of course it will.
In a 2008 New York Times article, Emory University neuroeconomist Dr. Gregory Berns explains, “The most concrete thing that neuroscience tells us is that when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off. The first order of business, then, is to neutralize that system.”
The way we feel colors our judgment. So when our fear is controlling us, we are ill-equipped to make sound judgments. Dr. Berns research also demonstrates that the fear response was stronger in some research participants than others. He found that some people demonstrated a greater degree of fear conditioning. Their brains were ready to quickly deploy strong neural resources to deal with fear.
I believe this is why it is so critical that we cultivate a healthy relationship with fear. The chaos outside of us will never stop and if we’re waiting for the world to be less chaotic before we take the next step, we’ll be waiting for a very long time.
Instead, we must condition our brains to transform fear and anxiety into new possibilities and clear decision-making.
Anxiety to Action
Are you ready to begin turning your anxiety into action?
Let’s start with an activity called the Threat Detector. Make a list with two columns, one for FEARS and the other for ANXIETIES.
In most cases, you’ll find that you have many more anxieties than fears, but it is possible that there is something on the fears list. Before you put it there, ask yourself, “Is this a fire that I need to put out immediately?” If so, go ahead and put it on the FEARS side. If not, place it under ANXIETIES.
I believe you will find that the simple act of writing down your fears and anxieties and calling them by the correct name begins to strip them of their power.
For those of us who struggle to dial into our emotions, this next bit might be stretching. But please bear with me. It’s really important if we are going to get serious about turning them into action.
Now, notice where you feel the anxieties in your body. As you think on each one, take some deep breaths as you begin to let go of them. Remember, these are non-present threats that do not need to be handled urgently!
As we release our anxieties, we gain:
- More access to thinking brain
- More clarity, mental space, and peace
- More choices
- Better decision making
For Now, Identify & Release
As I continue to delve into fear and anxiety, I’m going to go into much more detail about how to release and transform your fears. For now, let’s focus on identifying them and beginning to release them.