LTUE Report: Fear

    The last presentation I attended at LTUE was all about fear. While it was mostly directed towards us writers and the fears that we face, the information was still really, really good, and can be used in any context.

    The presentation was called, "Let Your Fears Disappoint You," and was done by an awesome guy named Matthew Bockholt. Here's what I learned--maybe it'll help you in some way!

    Mr. Bockholt's first main point was that fear is natural. It is meant to protect us from things we don't understand.

    However, fear has an antidote: Experience.

    He told us about a time when he was a kid, when he heard a scratching sound on his window in the middle of the night. Terrified it was some kind of monster, he ran to his parents' room and woke his dad to come chase the monster away. When his dad came back with him and opened the window, though, he revealed that the source of the scratching sound was nothing but a twig on a nearby tree branch, scraping against the window as the branch swayed in the wind. On another night later on, he heard the same sound again, and for a moment was as terrified as he had been the first time--until he remembered that it had just been a tree branch. Eventually, he became experienced enough with the situation that when the tree scratched on his window at night, he was no longer afraid, and was instead annoyed by the sound because it affected his sleep.

    Mr. Bockholt's point in telling us this story is that, with any fear we face, all we have to do to conquer that fear is to study it, to learn more about it, and to gain experience with it. Once we have done that, we know enough about the thing that once scared us that we know there is nothing to fear from it.

    So, then, what do we do when we are afraid of something? Mr. Bockholt outlined it for us in 5 simple steps:

    Step 1: Flee to safety! Start where you're comfortable--don't push yourself too hard too soon.

    Step 2: Practice and prepare. Work with more experienced people and learn from them, so that when you run across your fear again you have more information to work with.

    Step 3: Stand your ground. Face the fear and gain some personal experience for yourself.

    Step 4: Make a plan. Now that you have personal experience with the thing you fear, make a plan to overcome it. Be specific about goals and fears so that the next time you face your fear, you already have a plan for what you intend to do about it.

    Step 5: Return to Step 1 and repeat the process again, and again, and again, however many times it takes for you to work through your fear.

    The other thing to consider about fear is why we are afraid. Mr. Bockholt advised to ask "why" five times, like so: "Why do you fear ____? Well, why do you fear that? Why do you fear that? Why do you fear..." and so on. Eventually you'll get to the real root of the fear. (In the emotional health world, the root fear of our fears usually has to do with our self-worth: 'If I'm bad at X/If X happens to me, then I must be a bad person. If I'm a bad person, then maybe I'm not worth loving.' It all seems to come back to that.)

    Mr. Bockholt proceeded to explain that a universal fear we all share is a fear of failure. No matter who you are, where you come from, or what your life experience is, you have most likely been afraid to try something because of the question, "What if I fail?" We're all afraid to mess up, make a fool of ourselves, or cause something bad to happen as a result of our failure to accomplish something.

    He illustrated the point with writing. See, we writers are generally afraid to let other people read our work. What if they don't like it? What if it's trash and we don't know? What if we'll never be able to write something good? What if we're really terrible writers? Maybe we shouldn't write anymore...

    This is a common thought process. If it is one you suffer from, you are not alone! I have suffered from it in the past. I have met a lot of other people who have also suffered from it in the past. If you do to, it's okay; none of us are judging you. But you also don't have to suffer from it anymore if you don't want to--just follow the five steps!

    To follow step one, we first take a step back and tell ourselves that nobody has to read our work. Not yet. Then, in step two, we find a writing community (online or in-person) and learn as much as we can from the more experience writers in it, improving our work to the best of our ability.

    In step three, we show our work to someone--someone safe. Someone close to us, who we know doesn't mean us harm and will give us good, kind, honest feedback. In step four, we take what we learned from that experience and make a plan to do it again, this time with someone who feels, perhaps, a little less safe. We then proceed to repeat the whole process again in step five.

    This allows us to learn more about our fear of failure in a safe way, because, as Mr. Bockholt said, it's super important to study failure. You see, failure is normal, so there are a lot of people with experiences we can learn from. Furthermore, every failure is a chance to learn, because it tells us what we should not do next time. Fail enough times, and it won't be scary anymore!

    But you can only fail a lot if you try a lot, and if you try a lot... Well, Mr. Bockholt's Rule of Inevitable Success says that, as long as you keep trying, you are not competent enough at failure to keep failing forever. In other words, if you keep trying, you will eventually fail to fail--a process we refer to as success.

    Finally, remember that failure does not define you! Just because you have failed at something does not mean that you, yourself, are a failure. Until success is impossible to achieve, you have not truly failed--you have only been set back! And according to the Rule above, the only time success becomes impossible is when you stop trying.

    Thomas Edison "failed" to make a lightbulb hundreds, even thousands of times. But he never gave up, and as a result he did eventually succeed.

    You can, too. Keep moving forward. Keep trying, and trying, and trying again. Keep studying your "failures" and learning from your mistakes. One day, you will succeed.