The Mission Fear Spiral

Two things often happen when we choose to take on a mission important to us.

On one side of the spectrum, we become energised, motivated, enthusiastic, our minds are flooded with ideas of how we might solve the challenges ahead, we experience an incredible pull towards action in service of our goal.

On the other side, we can experience paralysis. Because, as with anything worth pursuing, there is a non-zero chance of failure. We catastrophise, conjuring narratives about what failing would say about us as a person, in our own eyes as well as those of the people we care about and respect.

Both things are, of course, the polar ends of the same feeling. Caring. We are at the same time excited and fearful because we care.

But how do we get over that fear that can sabotage worthy missions before we’ve even begun the work towards them? How do we break the ‘Mission Fear Spiral’?

The below isn’t an exhaustive list — but three tactics to experiment with if getting caught in the Mission Fear Spiral is something you struggle with.

• Be present with fear — feel into it, recognise it for what it is. Perhaps use the ‘5 whys’ technique to keep digging deeper until you get to what it is you are truly afraid of. It’s hard to confront what we haven’t named. Remember, the fear is natural, and our job isn’t to get rid of it, we just need to move past it.
• Simply act — a well-worn technique in phobia treatment is ‘exposure therapy’, incremental exposure to a little of what you’re afraid of. So once you’ve called out your fear for what it is, take a small action, a discreet action if needs be, but start to take action. Then take a slightly bigger one. In time, bigger and bigger moves won’t seem that scary.
• Drop the ego — when we make the mission about ‘us’, about ‘our’ success and failure, it becomes inherently personal, it becomes a threat to our ego… and the ego doesn’t like that. The ego would rather you do nothing than fail. When you language the mission, in your own internal monologue or to others, de-personalise it, ‘you’ shouldn’t come into the equation.

In short, recognise the spiral, break the pattern, get back on track with your mission.