How to Use Fear to Your Advantage

🤝 “I’d need a guarantee…”

How often do you hold back on your dreams simply because you’re not sure if they’re possible?

Maybe you feel like your goals are too ambitious, too risky, too improbable.

But I don’t buy it.

What you’re REALLY saying is that you’re scared.

You fear…

• What it would mean if you failed.
• Not knowing what success could bring.
• Wasting time on something you might abandon.
• Discovering and exposing your weaknesses.
• Change, uncertainty, and the unknown.

Feeling fear is normal - and valid.

But when left unchecked, fear can be paralyzing.

So today, I’d like to share with you a DIFFERENT perspective.

With the right frame of mind, you can actually use fear to your advantage.

Because there’s one fear I find more powerful than all of the fears I listed above, combined:

The fear of regret.

I’m reminded of this quote from Inception:

Sure, Saito’s got a pretty extreme take on the consequences of not taking action.

But when you read that line, how does it make you feel?

Can you feel the urgency to action it creates?

This is how we’ll transform your relationship to fear.

🎢 Use Your Fear to Push You

Most of us let fear dominate our decision-making in a way that doesn’t serve our dreams and aspirations.

But by using fear as a tool, we can change that.

Because as Tony Robbins shares in his Personal Power tapes, humans are driven by two primary forces:

• ✅ The pursuit of pleasure
• ❌ The avoidance of pain

But interestingly, given the choice between the two…

Humans focus more on AVOIDING PAIN than pursuing pleasure.

And we can use this info to our advantage.

How?

By using our fear to push us forward.

Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson states:

“You want to get your fear behind you, pushing you. You want to be more afraid of NOT pursuing your goals than you are of pursuing them.”

So by re-framing what we’re afraid of, we can use pain avoidance to push us forward.

Instead of thinking about the consequences of failure, struggle, weakness, or insecurity…

We can shift our attention to the fear of never doing what we’re meant to do, or never taking a risk, or never sharing our art with the world.

That fear no longer holds us back.

It becomes fuel for our fire. ❤️‍🔥

💭 Don’t put off your dreams

To drive this one home, I wanted to share an incredibly powerful video from my friend and long-time collaborator Robert Rodriguez:

In this video, Robert shares the reason why he’s so passionate about pursuing a creative career.

That reason is driven in a lot of ways by fear.

And that fear is so strong that it creates positive momentum towards the goals an dreams he truly cares about.

So here’s your challenge for the week. 🍎

Grab a pencil and paper, and divide your paper into two columns.

Then, think about a dream or goal you’ve had for a while now.

In column one, write all the fears that stop you from going all-in on your goal.

This’ll likely be fears about failure and risk.

In column two, write all the fears you have if you didn’t achieve that goal.

This’ll likely be fears about regret or feeling unfulfilled.

Finally, have a long look at your paper.

Ask yourself the fundamental question

“Which column feels more painful?”

(I could guess the answer.)

Start using fear to push you from behind.