- Mark Twain

For most of my life, I had no idea how big of a role fear played in my life.

Yes, I knew my palms got sweaty and my heart began to race every time there was turbulence on a flight, or I saw a large dog walking without a leash, or there were three men in dark hoodies in downtown Oakland at night.

Those are obvious fears.

And that's exactly the problem.

I was only aware of fear when it was obvious and explicit.

I otherwise thought I was a pretty fearless person.

I was wrong.

I just had an incomplete definition of what fear actually was, and that cost me, big time.

My life changed when I heard Tony Robbins say that there are only two forces driving every decision we make: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Yep, that's it.

Everything — and I mean everything — boils down to one of those two things.

We’re fundamentally driven by things that make us feel good and things that make us feel bad. Every want, every goal, every hesitation, every dream gets bucketed into one of those two categories.

This is how our entire operating system works.

Researchers call these the Approach and Avoid Circuits.

The Approach Circuit (e.g. Reward System) involve chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, while Avoid Circuit (e.g. Threat System) involves chemicals like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.

Or more simply put, we’re motivated by the carrot or the stick.

That’s it.

Every living creature on the planet also runs on the same software.

It’s how we domesticated horses, train dogs, and teach dolphins to do tricks.

And fear is simply the anticipation of a feeling we don’t want to feel.

Every single fear, without exception, shares two properties. First, it is always about the future, and second, it is always about an outcome we associate with a feeling we don't want to feel.

Understanding this was a game-changer for me; it helped me become more self-aware and better understand my own behaviors.

It also helped me see the world in a whole new way; including seeing how much fear was responsible shaping our daily lives, and how it is strategically utilized and amplified by institutions as a weapon of control.

Think about it.

Media companies use fear every day. It’s a fact that negative news drives consumption. If it bleeds it leads. (Side note: If you’ve never watched the movie Night Crawler it’s worth checking out.)

Universities use the fear of being unemployed to drive student enrollment.

Advertisers use F.U.D. to sell us products.

The IRS uses the fear of audits and prison time.
Employers use the fear of being fired.
Organized religion uses the fear of burning in hell.

“The Powers That Be” know how to use fear against us.

That’s exactly why they never gave us a course on fear in high school or college.

They don’t want us to be aware of their tools of manipulation.

This is why it’s so important for us to know how and when we’re being manipulated so that we can have a fighting chance at taking back our power.

One day I realized that all fears can be plotted on a 2X2 grid; with four distinct categories of fear.

Each category has its own disguise, its own impact, and its own treatment.

Type 1 — The Survival Alarms (High Intensity + External)

This is what fear was actually designed for as an evolutionary response. It was designed to keep us safe from high intensity, external threats. Tigers. Heights. Gunshots.

Type 2 — The Everyday Anxieties (Low Intensity + External)

These are the small, external, low-grade fears that don't feel like fears at all. Overpaying for something and the quiet shame that follows. The homeless guy asking you for change. Missing the exit on the highway.

Type 3 — The Quiet Saboteurs (Low Intensity + Internal)

This is where the most damage lives for most high-functioning people — and it is almost universally misdiagnosed.

These are low-intensity, internal fears so quiet and so subtle that you never flag them as fear at all. They're just... thoughts. Micro-hesitations. The decision not to ask the question in the meeting because you don't want to look like you missed something. The instinct to let someone else take the visible role. The choice to stay in the background at the event instead of introducing yourself to the person you actually want to meet. The thing you wrote and almost posted. Almost.

If you don’t know what your saboteurs are I highly recommend taking the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment.

Type 4 — The Identity Threats (High Intensity + Internal)

These are the fears that shape entire life trajectories. And they are the most dangerous of all; because they don't feel like fears. They feel like facts.

"I'm not good enough for that room." "People like me don't end up in those positions." "I'll fail and everyone will finally know I was never as capable as they thought." "My net worth is my self-worth." Fear of being truly seen. Imposter syndrome. The fear of disappointing people whose opinion of you feels load-bearing.

This is why being aware of when we’re experiencing fear, in any and all its forms, is so important. It’s why self-awareness and Emotional Intelligence are critically important, particularly in the era of AI.

Every year in the United States, an estimated 371,000 people die following a medical misdiagnosis, and another 424,000 are permanently disabled.

Not because they didn't seek treatment. Not because doctors didn't care or patients didn't try. But because the wrong label led to the wrong prescription — and by the time the error was identified, the window for effective treatment had closed.

Fear works exactly the same way.

Our lack of properly calling fear a fear, costs us, big time.

For years, I thought I had a time management problem when I really had a pain management (e.g. emotional courage) problem.

Nir Eyal’s research showed that 90% of distractions are caused by internal triggers (boredom, anxiety, stress, fatigue) rather than external pings.

This is the true cost of misdiagnosis.

I kept looking for the next app, gadget, or organizational system.

They were ineffective because they were all surface level solutions that avoided the root problem: the fear I had around the negative emotions of sitting down to do the uncomfortable tasks I didn’t want to do (like filing my taxes).

That’s it.

Things got better the day I stopped calling my fear by its aliases and started calling it what it actually was.

Because courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the willingness to act in the face of a fear.

It’s why Maya Angelou said “…courage is the most important virtue because without it you can’t practice any of the other virtues consistently.”

Whether it’s the physical courage to go to the gym, or the intellectual courage to acknowledge where we’ve been wrong, or the social courage to risk rejection, our lives will inevitably shrink or expand in proportion to our level of courage.

And it all starts with getting honest about one question:

What feeling am I anticipating that I don't want to feel?

Here's your reflection for the week: The Alias Audit

Identify ONE fear that’s been hiding behind an alias.

Now answer these three questions:

How long has this been hiding behind an alias?
What’s been the cost of this misdiagnosis?
What is the feeling you’ve been wanting to avoid?

Here's your challenge for the week: The Fear Spotter

For this upcoming week, be on the lookout for fears hiding behind different aliases. When you spot one, map it to one of the Four Categories above. That’s it. Begin to train your brain to identify fear when it pops up.

Any comments or questions? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you. I read every reply.

With courage,

Jonathan