The Unlived Life & An Antidote to Fear
I spent the last few years trying to avoid my deepest fear. One day, a terrible realization washed over me like a tidal wave: I had been holding hands with Fear all along and simultaneously living something far worse than what I feared. More on that story later.
First, my hard-won lessons:
What you fear the most is likely to happen to you if you choose to play in spaces beyond your comfort zone.
Being aware of your core fear (of rejection, failing, getting trapped, losing control, or being duped, or exposed, etc.), and then choosing to lock it away in a cabinet in your psyche means that you have played right into its fearful little hands!
With the immeasurable wisdom of archetypes, I finally saw what was going on in my life, as if from a bird’s eye view. This article is about fear and choosing a different way to live.
Playing hide and seek with fear.
Fear is a mechanism deep inside you, trying its hardest to keep you safe. It keeps a filing system of possible consequences for doing new, unknown things, and it’s always adding more. Most importantly, your fears are not made up – they are versions of what you’ve learned and observed from others and from your past.
If you’re on a heroic journey, doing hard things, Fear shows up. By this point, you’re probably quite good at sensing when Fear is taking over the navigation.
Being in the arena with Fear is like playing a high-stakes game of hide and seek. Sometimes Fear is not very good at hiding and you spot it right away. “Hi, Fear! I found you!” You call out. “You’re right there, pretending to blend in with that wall.”
In these more obvious moments, Fear might show up as a mean inner critic, or a sinister reminder of all the things that will go wrong if you do that thing. You might find yourself flicking through memories of past pain or failures, and think to yourself, Oh look, Fear is insisting on showing me its old photo album again. In more frantic moments, Fear is simply a guttural scream that stops you in your tracks.
Sometimes Fear is better at hiding. You might have thought you won the game years ago, only to realize Fear has been masquerading as a side table the whole time. In these less obvious moments, depending on the archetypal space you’re inhabiting, Fear can be a source of comfort, kindness, reassurance, compassion… and rationality, which is the case for Sages. In these sneaky forms, Fear slides under our radars by speaking in a voice we love and champion in our lives. It knows that if it steers us away from the great unknown with what comforts and delights us, we won’t do anything too wild.
The Sage’s Core Fear.
February is Sage month and Sages are seekers of knowledge. They enjoy learning, picking apart and analyzing thinking processes, and developing lasting solutions. Purveyors of logic and rationality, Sages often feel aligned with Stoic philosophy. One of their gifts is immense dedication to what they are invested in.
This makes the Sage a naturally serious, conscientious, and committed archetype. They are the sober thinkers in a project, pointing out potential pitfalls and complications. They seek evidence before drawing conclusions and have sharp wits about them. Sages are deeply invested in finding a correct answer and coming up with the most accurate solution out there.
It’s not a stretch to say that a Sage’s sense of identity and self-worth is wrapped up in whether or not they are perceived as competent by those they hold in esteem.
The Sage’s core fear is being exposed as ignorant or incompetent. To help the Sage avoid experiencing this fate, the Sage’s Fear constantly runs scenarios where their knowledge is questioned, doubted, or deemed lacking or inaccurate. “Back to the drawing board,” Fear says kindly, drawing the Sage away from the bright lights of the stage and into the peace of its own mind.
It is important to recognize how realistic this fear is for the Sage. As people who play in the realms of higher learning, teaching, sharing, developing solutions, and applying logic, Sages are bound to make mistakes once in a while. Mistakes others will see.
The siren’s call of higher learning.
If you are a Sage, you might recognize how Fear often shows up as a reminder to be careful and thorough. It urges you not to take action until you are 104% ready, correct, and prepared for any argument or dissenting opinion.
With this in mind, the sneakiest form of Fear for the Sage is a friendly call to higher learning in moments where you are considering action of some kind.
“Hey, here’s an ad for really interesting training,” says an upbeat voice in your mind as you scroll through the interwebs. “Before we do that thing we were going to do, we should sign up for this course first!” Or “Before we speak on this subject, we should probably look for more articles with supportive evidence - Oh wow, there are 78 of them! We had better reschedule that presentation again!”
You can see how this trail of breadcrumbs quickly leads to avoidance, which leads to a whole lot of nothing happening. On a deeper level, it can lead to an unlived life where your whole experience happens in thoughts, ideas, and plans that never become real. I’ve been here.
In truth, there will always be gaps in our knowledge – the end goal of “knowing enough” is a mythical destination. Sages often end up in “analysis paralysis” that doesn’t end until we get unstuck. Which leads to my story.
My five-year Sage trap.
Since I started my business five years ago, I have feared publishing my writing. What kind of a writer doesn’t publish their writing? I hear you ask. The answer is: a ghostly writer. As an introvert and thoughtful human, I’ve actively tuned into a voice (you may recognize it) that has reassured me for a long time.
“You don’t have to be in the spotlight,” it says in soothing tones. “You don’t know enough about the stuff you’re interested in yet. Hey, I know! You can write on behalf of other people and then no one will judge your writing because it will never be under your name! This way you can still take action while you keep learning. You can publish your stuff next year when you’re an expert!”
What an elegant solution! The old “hiding behind other voices” trick. Thanks, Fear!
So, for the past five years, I’ve primarily written in the voices of other people. My portfolio is both impressive and confusing - it reads like a crowd of unrelated individuals all jabbering away at once. It’s hard to imagine that one person wrote all of it. There is a retired police officer there, as well as an energy healer, a sports med doctor, and a writing coach. I’ve written in the voice of an inventor in the telecommunications industry and the leader of a high-level women’s business community. My voice is everywhere and non-existent.
This is what was really happening: I took my identity as a “good writer” so seriously that I became paralyzed. For YEARS. The pain of this as someone who has amazing things to say is hard to put into words.
Recently I realized that yes, I have been very successful at avoiding what I thought would be the outcome of my fear. No one has called me foolish or not very good at what I do. No one has said that I misquoted something or have the wrong end of the stick on a philosophy that I’m learning about. Whoof. Dodged that bullet.
But by trying to avoid my fear, I was actually holding hands with it. Or in other words, I fell into the Sage trap. Take a stab at guessing what that is.
Thinking, planning, or studying endlessly… and not acting.
I’ve always found it fascinating that our core fear never leads to the outcomes we expect. The Sage trap is not “being paraded around in public for being ignorant and silly, whilst the townsfolk throw rotten tomatoes.” It is simply never acting.
It means never leaving the comfort of our offices or libraries.
Never leaving the comfort of the space between our ears.
Never being seen and received for the expertise we have.
The biggest thing we miss out on in the Sage trap is Satisfaction with a capital “S”. Sure, no one thinks we’re big old dumb dumbs, but no one knows anything about us. No one knows what we know. We’re not in the real world, contributing to a bigger conversation that could bring us so much satisfaction, and impact others on a larger scale.
Instead, we’re paralyzed, trying to bolster up our self-confidence as “experts in our field”, while actively avoiding conversations we fear might expose us as “not experts in our field”.
The Antidote To Fear
In BrandPsyche, we draw on the wisdom of the opposite, and the Sage’s opposite is the Comic. Unlike past-and-future-focused Sage, the Comic lives in the present moment. Unlike serious, dedicated Sage, the Comic is carefree, entertaining, and seeks to enjoy and lighten up the world.
Sages can learn a lot from their Comic cousins. The Comic reminds the Sage that knowledge isn’t meant to be incubated and stagnant. It is meant to be dynamic! It is meant to shift, evolve, and grow. It is meant to be shared, and shaped, and examined. When Sages learn how to detach their identity from their perceived competency, they feel lighter and less afraid talking about what they don’t know (yet).
When they draw on their Comic wisdom, Sages:
• Stop trying to prove themselves at every turn, and become more open
• Poke fun at themselves and develop a lighter, humbler energy field
• Genuinely enjoy communities and conversations they were once intimidated by
• Share, teach, and ask questions without defensiveness
• Transparently admit to what they don’t know, inspiring other Sages to fill their gaps
For my part, I don’t know who will read this, I truly don’t. I no longer hang my self-worth on my knowledge or writing like a hatstand, but rather understand it as my main form of expression which is connected to, but separate from, “me”.
I click Publish, and whoosh, away it goes, to rest in the hearts and minds of whoever chooses to receive and resonate with it. I know in my new wisdom that the most foolish words are the ones left unwritten.
Brittany Veenhuysen is a writer and co-founder of BrandPsyche. With a BA in English and a philosophical lens, she uses strategic storytelling to connect entrepreneurial folk with people they love to serve.