Q. What is fear?
A. Fear is an awareness for me, of what you need to think about, perhaps a signal meant to be listened to. It’s a voice meant to bring something up within you, and it manifests itself in different ways. For the people I’ve talked to within the magazine [fearless.com], there are different levels and intensities of fear in our everyday lives.
When it’s survival, a life-or-death situation, obviously, fear is a signal that you need to do something – something to listen to. And if you don’t listen to it, it can trip you up in life, and it’s a force to be reckoned with. The thing is, how do you deal with it? You can embrace it, work with it or work around it and try to use it to your advantage.
Q. What sparked your interest in fear and fear.less, your new online magazine?
A. My business partner [Clay Hebert] and I were in a program with [author and entrepreneur] Seth Godin. We wanted to start a business project that meant something to us, something that was meaningful and relevant to the world. When we started it there just happened to be the market crash and there was a great sense of fear in our society – and still is. There’s a fear of being able to be who you are and make money doing what you love.
So we wanted to do something that meant something to us personally as entrepreneurs but that also helped others in the process. People in different circumstances have totally different fears and we wanted to encompass a variety of them and have conversations that were as open and honest and as raw as possible. … When we think about fear, we think it’s shameful; there’s a lot of guilt and sadness associated with it, so we wanted to create a community around discussing fear. It’s universal — from the top CEO to Nobel Peace Prize winners to students to survivors of September 11th. Everyone has fear in their lives. Let’s talk about it and share our stories, so we can learn from each other.
Q. For entrepreneurs, is fear ever a good thing?
A. Seth [Godin] says that entrepreneurs create something bigger than themselves. I like that definition, having a mission that’s larger than yourself, serving something — whether a population, consumers, an audience, readers, a mission — that’s larger than yourself. You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley sleeping on a couch to say you’re an entrepreneur. You do have to know that change happens day to day and you have to be OK with uncertain times; that there is no path. You have to know that some days you’ll feel uncertain or unsure, the product won’t be as stellar as you want, or investors will pull out. … Just be prepared to know this stuff happens. You’re navigating on your own and that can be pretty hard, [but] there’s also a real sense of empowerment. You have a mission, a product or service you want to launch to help people, and you put your heart and soul into it. That’s incredible. I guess realizing that this all takes place is part of the process. A lot of people focus strictly on the end, but personally, I like to revisit the basic goal of what I’m doing, of the venture, what I’m trying to do, whom I’m trying to help, why I’m thinking about this in the first place. That really brings me back and gives me some relief from the craziness.
You should listen to your fear, use it as a driving force, but don’t let it overtake you. Fear should be a passenger, saying “turn here or there,” but don’t let that be the driver.
Q. Should we overcome our fears?
A. I think absolutely we should try. Fear holds a lot of us back, and why does it need to? We are powerful people, whether we’re entrepreneurs or students or actors. Why let it rule us? We have so much power; we’re so creative. We should always make an effort to embrace our fears. I don’t want to say, “fight.” When you resist, sometimes fears and anxieties persist. Understanding which fears you should listen to and which you shouldn’t is a hard process, but it’s something worth figuring out. So many things are available to us today, including the stories we’re sharing, and everyone has similar feelings, whether it’s surviving Rwandan genocide or the entrepreneur just starting out: They just want to be the best they can be and not be ridden by fear.
Q. How do you know when to listen to the fear?
A. The only honest answer I can give is that it’s different from person to person; you have your own internal gauge. Personally, I really like to look at the root of why I’m feeling a certain fear. Like with fear.less magazine, there’s a lot to get stressed out about with advertising and securing advertisers, and finding funding, etc., but when I take a step back and ask if I’m really focusing too much on the outcome instead of the process or in learning lessons from each step, it gives me a great deal of relief. Attachment to the outcome is huge. We’re so attached to success, which creates a lot of fear. You can’t know if you’ll achieve success. All you can be sure of is the effort. I think we should also notice the stories we tell ourselves, notice our individual patterns — what we tend to get anxiety about or what we fear. A lot of times if you take a step back, you’ll be able to tell a different story. Take a step back, tell yourself the big story, look at the facts. Facts are a lot less scary than the stories we tell ourselves.
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Who is Ishita Gupta?
Ishita Gupta is co-founder and editor of fear.less magazine. She works with Seth Godin as Head of Hoopla and manages to blog (sometimes) at Truth Aint Easy. fear.less is the first online magazine dedicated to stories of overcoming fear. More than 60 entrepreneurs, artists, CEOs, non-profit and business leaders, students, and survivors of extreme experiences such as September 11th and the Rwandan Genocide talk about their fears and the lessons they've learned in dealing with fear. The magazine is co-founded by Gupta and Clay Hebert, and is their answer to an emergency of our fundamental right to live without fear. Subscribe at http://fearlessstories.com/.
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