The Power of Fear-Facing

#TransparentTuesday

Hi friend,

Recently I did something* that scared the absolute shit out of me, just to prove to myself that I could. 

*Read to the end to find out what it was, and how it turned out!

To give you a little background for why I did this: 

I’ve been obsessed with courage since I was 18 years old, when I came to the conclusion that it was—not to be dramatic here, but—the absolute key to everything. 

I valued courage before then, to be sure, because even as a teenager I knew that I wanted to live a big, expansive life, and I understood that such a life would require a shit-ton of courage.

All the things I wanted to do most in life felt scary. Graduating high school early to do a foreign exchange program in South America. Moving to NYC to pursue my dreams. Traveling the world alone. 

I recognized pretty young that in order to follow my heart, I was going to need to be brave. 

I also noticed that many of the adults I knew seemed to feel stuck in lives that were too small for them, and struggling with regret about paths not chosen, and feeling like it was “too late.”

These types of stories seemed to share one single in common. The person’s heart had wanted something… but they decided not to pursue it because it was too risky, so they took the “safe path” instead. 

I remember thinking that this would be the worst thing that could happen to a person—knowing that something was meant for them, and missing out because they were too scared to go after it. So, yes, ok, I’ve always thought courage was important. 

But it wasn’t until my best friend convinced me to go skydiving at 18 that I fully understood the life-changing power of facing your fears— of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway,” as they say. 

I should probably mention here (since I think this is relevant to why I’ve spent so much of my life thinking about courage) that I have always self-identified as a scaredy-cat. 

Later in life when people would  hear my stories and call me “fearless,” I often felt like I needed to correct them, because nothing could be further from the truth. Call it high sensitivity, anxiety, or neurodivergence, but ever since I was a child, I’ve been afraid of everything. Connection. Isolation. Failing. Succeeding. Feeling my feelings. Being numb. It all scared me.

So I may be brave, but I’m not fearless. And that distinction is crucial. 

Anyway, back to my best friend suggesting we go skydiving. 

I remember thinking that this was a cool idea, and knowing immediately that the version of myself I wanted to be would say yes. So I did. But then spent the next couple of months desperately hoping she was kidding… and when I realized she was deadly serious, I switched to hoping she would change her mind, or back out at the last minute. 

Even in the car on the way to the skydiving place.

Even as we did our training.

Even as the plane ascended and I was strapped to a guy who happened to be missing a few teeth.

Even as the plane door opened, and he counted to three. 

I kept thinking there is absolutely no fucking way I’m jumping out of this plane!! But at the same time, I couldn’t bear the thought of having been too cowardly to go through with it. 

It wasn’t until I was free-falling through the sky that I realized I had done it, and I remember a time-frozen flashbang of insights hitting me immediately.

The first realization was that I was now (and forever would be) a person who had jumped out of a plane. Which meant that I was “the kind of person” who jumps out of planes. The kind of person who can do scary, hard things. In short, a badass.

I also realized that my fear—the most intense fear I had probably ever felt up to that point in my life—didn’t actually kill me or stop me. 

When I realized that my fear didn’t actually have any real power over me, I became suddenly and acutely aware that, from that point forward, my life would be my own. 

It was the single most empowering and liberating thing I had ever done, and it made me realize how important it is to do things that scare us. To prove that we can. To expand our comfort zones. To cultivate self-trust. To place ourselves back in the driver’s seat of our own lives. 

From then on, I became obsessed with being brave and facing my fears, and I sought out things that scared me to do as often as I could, until fear-facing became a regular part of my self-care and self-affirmation practice. 

This decision served me well for a long time. It gave me the confidence in myself to handle hard things and take risks, so that I could always follow my heart and build the big, expansive, non-conventional life of my dreams.

But things shrunk down during the pandemic again, and fear started to take hold.

Not on purpose, obviously. At first everything had to shrink down, and fear was everywhere, because we were a nation in crisis. Then as we were still healing and processing that experience, life picked up again and we just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Somewhere along the way, I think the habit of courage got broken. And when we’re not in the regular habit of ousting and disempowering our fear, it grows roots and gains power. 

This isn’t just a “me thing,” either. I hear similar stories from friends and clients all the time!

Think about your life now, compared to how it was before 2020. Does it feel smaller now than it did before? Do you feel more isolated or anxious now? Are you less likely to socialize, make plans, or leave your house? Are you less likely to step out of your comfort zone and take risks? 

If so, you’re not alone. And luckily there is a very simple way of changing this! 

Fear only has power when we think it has power, and we only think fear has power when we haven’t done anything recently to remind ourselves that it doesn’t. 

There is nothing more effective for giving yourself a boost of empowerment, liberation, and confidence than doing something that scares you.

“Feeling the fear and doing it anyway” instantly strips your fear of its power over you, and reminds you that you are in control of your own life. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that doing this on a regular basis will literally change your life. 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of years, as I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of fear-facing again. 

It’s been going well when it comes to small things, but I’ve been on the lookout for something big. I wanted to do something that made me feel totally shake-in-my-boots terrified, both to remind myself that I can, and to get that earth-shattering surge of empowerment and liberation. 

A few months ago I found something that fit the bill: I could audition for a musical, at my local community theater. 

If you know about my background in acting, it might surprise you to hear that this was the thing I found frightening enough to consider it “peak fear-facing,” but I assure you it was. 

I haven’t auditioned for anything in something like 17 years and I haven’t done a musical or sang publicly since high school, but my fear was a lot more complex than that. 

My relationship to performing (and giving up performing) is emotionally complicated, and singing specifically has always felt like the most vulnerable thing in the world to me. Plus I have a traumatic history of dealing with vocal nodes (blisters on my vocal chords), which means my relationship to my voice has been all tangled up with feelings of anxiety, grief, and betrayal for years.

If I’m being honest, I was afraid that auditioning for a musical might open a whole-ass box of pain— one that I’d planned to let collect dust on a hard-to-reach shelf in my psyche for the rest of my life— and I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

In other words, it was the perfect fear-facing challenge.

I told myself that the goal wasn’t to get cast, but rather just to be brave, and that meant actually putting myself out there, and going through the audition process with both feet in. 

It’s always safer to do things with one foot out, isn’t it? When you half-ass something, you protect yourself from disappointment and vulnerability, because you always have an excuse on the other side if it doesn’t work out! 

So I wasn’t surprised when my fear tried to convince me that I didn’t need to put in any effort preparing for my audition.

“It doesn’t matter,” my fear said. “You don’t even really want to get in, and you’re too tired and busy to spend time on this, just wing it!”

It was tempting, but in the interest of properly fear-facing, I really tried. I practiced my song, I learned my choreography, I even watched some youtube videos on vocal technique! My audition went ok, and I left feeling very proud of myself. 

I’d gotten outside my comfort zone, and I’d been fucking brave.

Then I got a callback. So I had to (got to) be brave twice.

I left my callback absolutely flooded by adrenaline, and feeling really grateful for the opportunity to have been that scared. I was sure I wouldn’t be cast, but the experience was exactly as empowering as I’d hoped it would be, and I already felt my fear losing its power over me.

A few days later, I found out that I had been cast (in the ensemble). 

*gulp * This was an outcome that I quite honestly had not considered, but I guess I now have about a million opportunities to practice courage over the next couple of months, as I go through rehearsals and performances. Which is both scary and amazing!

Looking to expand your life, get unstuck, or feel more confident and empowered instantly? Do something that really scares you.

Then report back! Hit reply to share your story, so I can celebrate your courage from afar. :-)

Big hug,Jessi

PS I’ll be swinging back tomorrow to announce my Black Friday 2025 deals, so stay tuned for that!