“One day, I just remember, something changed in me. I was pulling in a nice fish that I was going to bring home for dinner when this big shark came up to take it.”

Kimi Werner is the United States National Spearfishing Champion. She grew up in an isolated part of coastal Maui, free diving with her father to search for their primary source of food.

In Fishpeople, a short film by Patagonia that documents the stories of four people whose lives have been transformed by the sea, Kimi Werner shares the story of the day she finally confronted her fear of sharks.

She continues:

“And I just swam faster towards my catch and pulled it in faster, closer to me. Everything [I was doing] was bringing this shark much closer to me. But I got my hands on my catch and just pulled it in towards me. And then I swam at that shark just to tell it: ‘Not today buddy—go get your own dinner. This is mine!’ And the minute I did that, that shark took off.”

“And that taught me a lot. It taught me that the energy that I put out there—the confidence and courage I show in holding my ground—it’s going to communicate to the sharks what kind of animal I am.”

When the shadow of fear creeps onto you, what kind of energy do you put out there? Do you hold your ground and lash at the fear? Or do you bow down to it paving the way for it to cripple you into inaction?

Fear is a universal experience; it’s part of being alive. It’s just another difficult emotion we all feel and struggle with. It’s something we all share. And yet, it’s one emotion we aren’t as familiar with as we’d like to think.

Fear is Your Compass, Not Your Enemy

Last Sunday, when I sat down to draft up the 60th edition of my weekly newsletter, an odd voice swiftly rose in my head:

“Who’s going to read this, anyway? Why are you even bothering with it? Aren’t you afraid of what will happen when you can no longer sustain the quality and depth in your articles?”

It was the sly voice of fear echoing louder only because I was at the cusp of doing something I truly cared about, something I was genuinely interested in—writing and sharing my work in public.

But when you stop to think about it, what sense would it have made for me to entertain those thoughts? None, for they held no merit. Perhaps they were rooted in the fear that we are never enough, but I think it was just my lazy mind playing tricks on me to protect me from engaging in any activity that would breed further momentary discomfort.

As Steven Pressfield explains in the War of Art, that’s precisely how the waves of fear and doubt arise. Fear senses the feeling of interest throbbing inside of you and so it rises straight up to meet you:

“Fear tells us what we have to do. The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. If it means nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.”

Fear is how resistance manifests. And resistance is what we all naturally experience as we strive toward what we truly want.

Whether that want is to capture a fish for dinner or to publish an article in public, beneath the surface, the underlying current of fear is ever-so-present. Sometimes its pull is stronger than before, but nevertheless, that fear is omnipresent. Fear, then, is your compass, for it’s an omen guiding you onward and shining the light onto your true path of growth.

But what you must realize about this compass is that no one is devoid of fear. Not the world’s most famous artists or the top accomplished speakers or most decorated athletes. They all experience the same universal emotion of fear.

The difference, however, is in the way they respond to fear.

The successful use it to their advantage. Those are ones we call “brave.” They’re intimate with fear. But isn’t a brave person just a coward who went ahead and did it anyway?

And isn’t that what Nelson Mandela portrayed in his words:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it… The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Fear is your compass, guiding you north, moving you closer to your truth.

Your only objective when it comes to handling that fear is to become more intimate with it. Make it your friend, not your enemy. Much like what Kimi Werner did, look it right in the eye, pull it closer to you, and communicate what kind of animal you are.

Hold your ground and dare. Dare yourself like you dare a friend. Leverage that fear to motivate yourself into action, and watch how the energy of confidence you project, in spite of that fear, will shatter the fragile glass wall it’s made of.

Slay The Dragons And Move Closer to Your Truth

There’s a quote by Pablo Picasso that I hold dear to my heart:

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."

In order for us to make way for the new, we must first let go of the old. Likewise, a piece of you must die every time you move forward with fear.

Consider how it was through the act of channelling courage, by charging toward the shark, that Kimi Werner mourned the loss of a piece of her cowardice.

And it’s through this courage to die—to step forward a little further than usual—that we find the freedom to be reborn. Hence, it’s through the act of destruction that we create.

And that really is the greatest benefit that blossoms from the befriending of your fears—the chance for you to move closer to the truth, your truth that you didn’t even know existed.

As you follow that compass and walk its path projecting the energy of confidence and courage, so will you begin to notice how you’re slowly undoing old ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling. So will you mourn the loss of who you once were and pave the way to who you’re becoming. So will you destroy, and thus create.

As Pema Chödrön wrote in her book When Things Fall Apart:

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Fear equals interest. And interest is the voice of your intuition. You feeling fear, then, is the natural reaction to moving closer to your truth.

Perhaps that’s what poet Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he wrote that:

“Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”

Slay the dragons and you’ll discover your deepest treasure.

Unleash Your Fear, Don’t Tame it

In his book The Originals, Adam Grant mentions a study done at Harvard Business School where professor Alison Brooks asked students to deliver persuasive speeches in front of a judging panel. 

But with only two minutes to prepare, many students were “visibly shaking.”

So to help them manage their fear of public speaking, professor Brooks asked the students to speak three words out loud before they delivered their speech. She randomly assigned them to say either “I am calm” or “I am excited.”

This was the result:

“When students labeled their emotions as excitement, their speeches were rated as 17 percent more persuasive and 15 percent more confident than those of students who branded themselves calm. Reframing fear as excitement also motivated the speakers, boosting the average length of their speeches by 29 percent.”

The salient point here is quite simple: Fear is an intense emotion; and rather than trying to suppress such a powerful emotion, what you need to do is befriend it and convert it into a different—but equally intense—emotion.

Author Susan Cain explains that “your stop system slows you down and makes you cautious and vigilant. Your go system revs you up and makes you excited.”

When it comes to conquering your fears, you want to stay away from your stop system and activate your go system instead. Here’s how: Channel an acute emotion that matches the intensity of your fear. 

In other words, reframe fear into excitement.

In doing so, you empower yourself. You leverage the intense energy that fear is already baking up inside of you and translate it into something constructive.

So here’s the easiest trick in the book:

See fear as a challenge, not a threat.

Don’t tame it, instead, unleash it. Don’t try to calm it, instead, flame it. Lean into it and take action through it. Because once you do, once you overcome that resistance and face that fear head-on, the next time it shows up in your life, its grip on you will be significantly loosened.

Now that you’ve downsized your fear from a massive insurmountable mountain to a mere pebble in your path, its heaviness and relevancy, have dwindled to the grounds of irrelevancy.

Conquer your fear once and you end up learning how to conquer it forever. Isn’t that one powerful mental shift? Once you take the first small step forward, doing it a second time becomes much easier.

In Short, Be The Queen, Not The Pawn

We will always be drawn to the unknown, without knowing if we will have the courage to face it, but we can always choose to believe that we can.

We can trust that we will.

To borrow the sentiment of Kimi Werner, the energy you project out there—the confidence and courage you show in holding your ground—it’s going to communicate to your fears what kind of animal you are.

So tell me, what is it that you're so afraid of?

You’ve been playing the pawn—one step in, one step out. Hesitant. Inconsistent. And now you’ve long forgotten that you’re the queen, not the pawn.

You make your move.

You roll the dice.

You lay the dominos.

You decide.

Fear is your compass, not your enemy.

Now be the coward who went ahead and did it anyway, and watch how the world will call you brave.