Feel the fear and do it anyway

Have you heard the phrase Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway?

I read Susan Jeffers’ book years ago. I couldn’t tell you everything that was in it now, but the concept stayed with me.

Although, if I’m completely honest, I haven’t always acted on it.

The idea is deceptively simple: fear itself isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what we do with the fear.

Fear can motivate us. It can sharpen our attention, help us prepare and sometimes even propel us forwards.

It’s when we interpret fear as pain — something we need to avoid, something we can’t cope with — that it can leave us feeling helpless, stuck or paralysed.

I understand that concept much more deeply now.

Because recently, I left my employment after nearly 20 years.

And to understand why that was such a big deal, I need to go back to the beginning.

It wasn’t just a job

When I joined the company, I was in my twenties with a small child who was about to start school.

He was three or four years old.

And exhausting.

Going to work actually gave me a chance to sit down. To drink a cup of tea. To go to the toilet alone.

You know what I mean?

I was working three days a week and it was fun. But I also knew I was capable of more.

At the time, I was working on a contract covering someone’s maternity leave. During that contract I noticed a gap — an opportunity for a role that didn’t yet exist.

I could see how learning and development could be much more closely aligned to the needs of the business, initially to attract and develop highly talented graduates.

To my delight, they loved the idea.

And so I got started.

Over the years, I navigated the usual tensions between work, family, flexibility and ambition. I was supported to undertake postgraduate qualifications, qualify as a coach and certify in multiple psychometric instruments.

I progressed.

I was given opportunities to build, create and grow.

And for every belief placed in me, I worked hard to give something back.

There was a kind of flywheel effect: belief created opportunity, opportunity created capability, capability created contribution, and contribution created more opportunity.

So this wasn’t just a job.

It was a company that had become part of my identity.

It was somewhere I felt invested in — and somewhere I felt I owed something to, because of the belief and investment it had made in me.

I had built something from scratch.

And I cared deeply about it.

But things change

Maybe I had changed.

Maybe the company had changed.

Probably both.

The why doesn’t really matter.

What mattered was the impact: it wasn’t a place I wanted to be anymore.

I’d felt it for months. Maybe even years.

But I remained completely committed.

There’s a saying about women in relationships remaining fully committed until the very last drop has gone.

That was me.

The cup was emptying, but I remained 100% in.

I kept remembering the past. Why I’d joined. What it had given me. What it meant to me.

And strangely, all those positive things were part of what kept me stuck.

Of course there were still moments of joy. But ultimately, I needed to move on.

And I couldn’t seem to make myself make the decision.

I put it off.

I talked myself out of it.

I questioned myself.

I lost energy thinking about what might come next rather than using that energy to actually plan for it.

In my mind, it had become a binary choice:

Stay — and remain safe.

Or:

Leave — and put my life and my family’s security at risk.

My mind went round and round.

Was this really what I wanted?

Was I making a huge mistake?

Was it my hormones?

Was I having a temporary moment of madness?

I was driving myself — and, if I’m honest, the people around me — slightly crazy.

Then one day, something happened that broke the camel’s back.

The last drop emptied from the cup.

And the decision was made.

I was leaving.

And then the fear got intense

I expected to feel relieved.

Instead, I felt terrified.

Honestly, I felt as though I might have a panic attack.

My pulse was racing. My heart was racing. I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were racing.

My brain seemed to become a kind of matrix, running through every possible outcome in an attempt to find the pattern that would make me feel safe.

Except it couldn’t.

So it filled in the gaps.

It imagined endings.

It identified risks around every corner.

It created scenarios that hadn’t happened and then reacted to them as though they had.

And that went on for some time.

Until I realised something important.

The fear wasn’t telling me what would happen.

It was telling me that I didn’t know what would happen.

There is a difference.

And once I recognised that, I could start to take back some control — not control of the outcome, because none of us has that — but control of my perspective.

Feeling the fear

Susan Jeffers describes seven ways of taking back your power.

They include recognising that nothing outside yourself has to control your thinking or your actions; noticing when you are playing the victim; becoming aware of the stories you tell yourself; identifying the payoffs that keep you stuck; getting clear about what you want; and, the one that resonates most for me, choosing the path that contributes to a sense of growth and inner peace.

Reading those ideas again through the lens of my own experience was interesting.

Because I already knew them.

I’m a coach.

I spend my working life helping people think differently, challenge assumptions, explore possibilities and navigate change.

But knowing something and living it are two very different things.

And perhaps that’s the most useful thing I can take from this experience.

Being a coach doesn’t make me immune to fear.

It doesn’t mean I always know the right answer.

It doesn’t mean I don’t catastrophise, procrastinate, overthink or question myself.

It means I’ve learned some ways of sitting with those things.

Of noticing when fear has taken the driving seat.

Of separating what I know from what my mind is imagining.

And of asking a different question:

What if I don’t need to get rid of the fear before I move forwards?

What if I can feel it — and move anyway?

Because sometimes courage doesn’t feel courageous.

Sometimes it feels like a racing heart, a sleepless night and a mind desperately searching for certainty.

Sometimes doing it anyway isn’t about feeling confident.

It’s about deciding that the fear doesn’t get to make the decision for you.

I don’t know what the right decision is in your life.

And I wouldn’t want to tell you.

You are the person who has to live it.

But I do know what it feels like to sit with the fear of change, to question yourself, to feel stuck between the safety of what you know and the uncertainty of what might come next.

And I know that sometimes, having someone alongside you — someone who doesn’t tell you what to do, but helps you hear your own thinking more clearly — can make all the difference.

Perhaps that’s what coaching is really about.

Not helping you become fearless.

Helping you feel the fear — and find your own way to do it anyway.