Fear, Forecasting and Fables

This past weekend, I caught myself making a decision based on a future that didn't exist yet.

My instinct was to step away.

Nothing bad had actually happened.

There was just a chance that it might.

So my first instinct was to exit stage right.

Gracefully, of course.

But it was still running away.

Looking back, it makes perfect sense.

My time in consulting taught me to look around corners, anticipate risks and think several steps ahead. Those skills served me well in boardrooms and spaces where the cost of getting it wrong could be significant.

Life taught me something similar, too.

Personal loss and navigating other painful experiences along the way left me with a degree of hyper-vigilance. My brain's amazing at spotting potential threats long before they arrive.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Sometimes it's even useful.

The problem is that fear rarely introduces itself as fear.

It sounds like common sense.

It tells you you're just being responsible.

That you're avoiding unnecessary glitches in the matrix.

It sounds like protecting your peace.

It sounds like waiting until the timing is better.

As I sat with my decision, I realised I wasn't responding to reality.

I was responding to a potential future that hadn't materialised yet.

I was solving for a problem that hadn't even been confirmed as being a problem yet.

In trying to protect myself from the discomfort of something going wrong, I was also closing the door on everything that could go right.

It made me realise that this wasn't just a conversation about fear.

It was a conversation about presence.

Most people associate presence with slowing down or being mindful. I think it's also about making today's decisions from today's reality.

Not tomorrow's imagined worst-case scenario.

Because when we're constantly living in a future we've created in our minds, we're not fully present in the life that's unfolding right now.

Alignment starts with responding to what’s true today, not what might be true tomorrow.

The biggest realisation wasn't that I was afraid of something.

I am, in fact, afraid of things more often than I'd like to admit.

It was that I still let fear convince me to play smaller than I need to.

The tricky part is that it doesn't feel like fear.

It feels like good judgement.

The question used to be, What if this doesn't work?

Now it's becoming, But what if it does?

I've never in my life been accused of blind optimism. If anything, I'm usually the cynical one. It's 100% on-brand for me to say something cynical while silently cheering on the best case scenario.

This realisation has shifted something.

I'm starting to trust myself to deal with whatever happens next.

Every difficult chapter of my life has taught me the same thing.

I'm still standing.

It's definitely not because everything worked out the way I hoped.

It's because I found a way through when it didn't.

Which makes me wonder...

How many opportunities, relationships and experiences do we sacrifice because we're trying to protect ourselves from futures that may never happen.

Maybe the better question isn't about the risk at all.

Maybe it's this:

What am I giving up today because I'm trying to protect myself from a tomorrow that doesn't exist yet?

And when did I stop believing that I'd be able to handle whatever comes next?