Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life by Emma Grede - 5

If you can’t beat fear, just do it scared.

—Glennon Doyle

“Hey, are you good?”

I leaned into the partition that separated me from the driver.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he replied. “Are you good?”

“Well,” I offered, “we’re being followed.”

I was in South Africa as part of a delegation for the Obama Foundation, in a car with a husband and wife I’d never met. I looked in the rearview mirror, pulse racing, and clocked the cars on our tail, convinced we were about to be kidnapped—or worse. I continued to confer with the driver.

The wife tapped me on the shoulder. “It’s our security, we have a car behind us.”

“But do you have two cars?” I asked. “There are two cars tailing us.”

She looked at me, pausing. “How did you know that? We have one car tailing us and a second you’re not supposed to know about.”

“Well, I see them. A heads-up next time would be appreciated. I thought we were about to die.”

I learned my hypervigilance in East London, which is, to this day, a very tough place. Twenty years ago, my husband, Jens, thought it would be a good idea to get down on one knee and propose there. As he held out a large diamond, I pulled him to his feet.

“Are you mad?!?!?! We are going to get robbed.” We were on a little cul-de-sac where I had lived for the first twelve years of my life. The primary landmark in this tiny stretch of Plaistow during my childhood was not my school; it was a pub that featured the sign No blacks. No dogs. No Irish. When I grew up, this neighborhood establishment was frequented by skinheads—and naturally, one of the regulars was obsessed with me. He’d ask me out repeatedly with his braces and Doc Martens and army pants, and I’d have to say, “I’m sorry, but from what I understand, that would not be cool—I’m not your demographic.” I can laugh now, but danger was palpable, and dark stuff went down all around me, though I had a veil of protection from my family. Nobody messed with my uncles, and by extension, nobody messed with me. Or that’s what I told myself. In reality, I didn’t operate with the belief that I should be protected from fear—it didn’t even occur to me that that was an option. Nobody cushioned me from reality. I was scared as shit, but I didn’t have the privilege to use that as a reason not to go about my life. My family’s DNA revolved around toughness. You are strong. You don’t get to be scared. Other people are scared. I needed to push past fear and survive, which meant learning to function in a world that was a little terrifying. Today, aside from rare moments—like when I found myself hurtling through traffic in South Africa with two cars on my tail—I can easily recognize that most of the time, I’m not in “real” danger at all, even though, yes, I am frequently scared. I think we all are.

I credit my ability to navigate fear in business to my upbringing: What I encounter now in business is not going to kill me, even if it might feel that way. I’m usually unfazed at the prospect of gambling on a product or investing in a first-time founder or starting a new business venture. This doesn’t mean I’m not scared—I’m scared all the time. But I’ve developed the ability to use my fear as a signal that there’s something important on the other side—that I’m being faced with something big, whether it’s an opportunity to grow and learn, or a space to win. If fear isn’t present, I know I’m not pushing my edge. I know it’s so difficult, but I do believe that if you want to achieve in business and more generally get what you want from life, you will need to learn how to push through this discomfort; too many of us let it stop us in our tracks. The number one statement I hear from women I meet is I just don’t know where to start. But they do, they’re just scared. Scared they’ll lose money, scared they’ll fail, scared they’ll embarrass themselves. I totally get it. Here’s the thing, though: You’re going to have to shit your pants a little bit to get to anything good on the other side. Unsavory but true.

Now, I get it. We are taught that fear signals something life-threatening: Don’t walk in a dark alley, don’t wear a skirt that’s too short, don’t put yourself out there. Because of this, fear holds many women by the throat: fear of not being enough, fear of not doing enough, fear of messing up, fear of failure, fear of screwing up our kids, fear of losing our partners to younger and hotter people, and so on. It’s an exhausting list, and I’m not even rating the existential and cultural fear that many of us mainline daily as we scroll the news over coffee. I understand that people feel the world is scary as shit. What I want you to grapple with though is that you can’t let this stop you.

German psychiatrist Fritz Perls said that “fear is excitement without the breath.” 1 I love this frame, as the two are partnered in my mind. When I feel low-grade scared about pushing into a new opportunity, or a new venture, or a new space, it’s a signal for me that there’s something there that I need to move toward. A little twinge of fear is the starting point for most of the big moves I make in my life. I find it extremely motivating to pick up the phone, start asking questions, and begin to figure out whatever new problem is in front of me to solve. Another word for this is “eustress,” or challenge stress. Challenge stress is when we feel called to rise to the occasion—it could be interviewing for a new job, it could be presenting at an important meeting, it could be getting married. It’s those moments when you feel your pulse start to race in anticipation of doing something new or difficult. While we’re understandably all convinced that stress is going to kill us, this is good stress . Learn to not only welcome it but embrace it. 2 While it can feel scary, it’s typically misunderstood excitement.

I love the idea of challenge stress because it underlines the role we can play in being actively engaged with the world. When this is your mindset, you are rising to meet whatever is in front of you and choosing to make an impact on your life directly, rather than feeling like the world is happening to you , where there’s little you can do to protect yourself in response. I’m convinced that if you’re going to do anything interesting, if you’re going to take any action in your life that’s outside the lines that have been prescribed by our culture, you will have to learn how to contend with fear—and if that feels overwhelming, reframe it as challenge stress instead.

Before we move on, I want to underline this idea that when it comes to employment and our financial future, many of us do not feel in control of our destinies—we feel we operate at the mercy of our bosses. And that is, in fact, very scary—especially when we feel like we are in trouble, or that we’ve done something wrong. I’m going to talk about “employee mentality” later in the book, but I’m going to argue that I used to have a propensity for looking for a “boss” everywhere until my husband brought it to my attention that this was a debilitating way to see the world. I’m not arguing with the reality that most of us have bosses—even many CEOs report to their boards—but I do want to point out that when you see yourself as doing the bidding of someone else, stress will not feel positive; it will feel terrifying. Women in particular are exceptionally good at finding someone in the world to be in charge of them—we will outsource our decision-making to Fred, our bank manager, or Joe, our lawyer, or a critical Instagram follower any day. If we don’t have a boss, we will frequently invent one to subordinate ourselves to someone who must know better.

The other day, I was in my office with several members of the executive team—my CFO, my head of HR, and a handful of others. Besides me, there were two women and two men. We called in several members of the senior leadership team for some guidance on a project one by one. As we called them in, the other women and I locked eyes: “The women are going to think they’re about to get fired,” one said. The men looked at us like we were nuts. Sure enough, both of the women we called in to the meeting asked, as soon as they had stepped into the room, if they were being canned, while the men sauntered in with an inquisitive, “What’s up?”

I don’t run ruthless organizations where people get fired willy-nilly—these women had no reason, at all, to think their jobs were on the line. (They run essential functions of the business—and admirably!) But their predictable reactions are a testament to a wider culture, one where women operate as though they are always under threat. I get it. I don’t want to discount the way so many of us feel. And yet I want to acknowledge that this is not a good way to live, nor is it an efficient use of energy. We must stop giving other people permission over our lives. We need to shift our mindsets. We cannot let strangers dictate how we feel. Instead, we must learn how to manage our emotions so we can stay calm, centered, and in control over the right next step.

If I’m not a little scared, then I know I’m not pushing enough. I use fear as a signal that something important, something that demands my attention, is in front of me. And then I move forward through the discomfort quickly and without delay in order to embrace what’s on the other side. Speed is very important, because stalling and overthinking comes at a very high price. Perfection is not the goal, forward motion is. If helpful, use a visual like a doorway to represent fear. You need to walk through it to get to growth and expansion. This is a muscle that you can build. In time, you will come to trust your instincts even more—that you will be okay regardless of what happens, which will help you override your fear even more. 3