Fear is the Mind Killer and something close to my heart, quite literally

On this day last year, I awoke having spent the night alone in Basingstoke and North Hampshire Hospital’s Cardiac Care Unit having suffered what they could only describe as a ‘significant cardiac event’. I was alone as Covid-19 protocols prevented any visitors and my wife was needed at home with our five children, all of whom must have been as scared as I was. All things considered, I was very lucky, have a lot to thank the NHS for and have been fortunate to have made a pretty much full recovery.

But that fear has remained. The fear of it happening again, of leaving my wife without a husband and my children without a Father. I think back to only a few years before when I lost my adoptive Father and remember feeling similar fear then. It hit me hard. I gave up everything that ever had any meaning. I stopped playing rugby, I practically ended my own business within days. I just gave up and gave in to the fear and let it take me.

I almost did the same thing a year ago. I almost let the fear win and came very close to giving up again. I came very close to quitting my work at school and whilst I’ve never mentioned it to any of my colleagues, I almost didn’t turn up at school for the first day in September. At the same time, I declined the social media speaking gigs that I’d been approached for in the new year and I didn’t make any effort to find any new gigs.

I’ve spent the last 12 months living in fear and I’ve spent a lot of my time considering how it affects me and others. It must sound like a pretty morbid fascination to anyone else, but it’s made me consider a lot of things. It’s also made it increasingly apparent that we all live with and often act out of fear. How many times do we stop ourselves from doing something new or exciting because we’re afraid of what might happen?

Because that’s the thing I’ve come to realise. Whether we admit it or not, whether we like it or not, we human beings are practically designed to consider the frightening possibilities of our actions, decisions or what might happen. We’re evolutionarily programmed to look for the bad things and actively encouraged by the news, media and marketing to give in to it. It can be as simple as the fear of missing out (FOMO) or as terrifying or neurotic as leaving our homes for fear of what might happen.

Our whole lives have been built around the fear response, already present in our instincts, fed by our parents as we’re told what might happen if we touch a hot plate for example. School, college and University all add further fear in relation to failure or meeting expectations, or not being able to take the next step. That next step is often the world of work, where more fear is piled upon us. What happens if we get fired or made redundant? How will we pay our mortgages? How will we support our families? We make major life decisions based on fear almost every single day.

Today the news, television and social media are full of fear. Rising prices, inflation, cost of living increases, the war in the Ukraine, energy costs, food shortages, water shortages and reports on every kind of crime you can think of. All valid concerns, don’t get me wrong, but all designed and pitched to us to provoke a fear response. To make us act out of fear.

A few years ago, before my father died, before my cardiac event, I was fortunate enough to work with a fantastic group of people who essentially taught me to ‘feel the fear, but do it anyway’. They might realise from this post who they are, and I massively regret failing to put that into practice since learning it. But now I am vowing to put that into practice every single day and I’m every single area of my life. I let fear get the better of me and I’ve carried it around lick a rock weighing me down for long enough. I’ve allowed it to get heavier and to trip me up too many times.

I’ve worked long and hard at this and now it’s time to start making moves and making things happen. I don’t expect it be easy, but it is going to happen. So if you feel in future that I’ve changed, I really hope I have. Likewise, I know there must be plenty of people feeling similar fears every single day and if you’re one of them, then I want you to reach out, because I want to help you. I mean that, please feel free to chat, message, email or drop me a line through my website. This is step one.

Step two is going to require a little more work, but inspired by my friends Maiko Sakai and Baiju Solanki, I’m intending to propose an alternative to the fear-driven marketing that has become so prevalent in our society. I’m working on a more respect-driven model and they have both encouraged to flesh the idea out into the chapters of a book. Something else that I’d always let fear stop me from doing.

I’m hoping to share more about this idea of respect-driven marketing as I go along, so please keep an eye out for any posts as I’d value any feedback or discussion as I take this forward.
From now on, I am ’feeling the fear, and doing it anyway’.

I hope you’ll join me.

Yours Socially

M