Fear and Other Demons: Pilot
Hello all!
I am Regena Paloma Reyes, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of studio lobo. We are a design-driven fitness studio dedicated to transforming people’s minds and bodies as they forge the reality of their dreams.
In this pilot article in our content series, Fear and Other Demons, I am going to present to you five cases where opportunities for transformation appeared and dissect the role that fear plays in profound transformation. We will see corporate execs facing down new market entries in a changing market, young voters contemplating their political identities, corporate teams resisting innovation, eagles learning to fly, and a city girl taking on a real-world Mount Doom.
*Spoilers* only one of those cases ends with what we, by the end of this essay, would call success!
Before shifting my focus to individual consultations, I worked with Fortune 500 organizations to adapt their businesses in the face of industry disruption. These seemingly sudden shifts are often driven by emerging technologies, as startups harness the power of tomorrow to challenge the status quo.
Founding studio lobo marks a transformation of my own: I am no longer in the business of organizational change. If you approached this piece expecting advice for some large firm or hopeful conglomerate, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out my friends at Proto. Their mission is to effect large-scale innovation and proactive adaptation, and they do it better than anyone else in the industry. If, however, your aim is to change as a person, then you, my friend, are in the right place.
As a People Transformation Coach, I work with those who want to make major changes to their lives. This is usually in the form of reducing fat, enhancing performance, or using some combination of the two to combat metabolic disorders like diabetes, heart disease, or high blood pressure. What I have learned, from my work helping both people and organizations to evolve, is that among the many obstacles hindering profound transformation — the kind that redefines who a person or an organization is at their core — is the solo challenger that produces a negatively outsized impact. Our adversary:
FEAR.
As a business consultant, I once had the pleasure of designing and pitching new business ventures for a client who, by their own standard, was at the top of their industry. Because they had grown through acquisitions, they were effectively a monopoly, but were still anxious to expand their offerings for a post-Covid reality. Our team worked tirelessly to research emerging consumer trends they could use to launch new ventures, but we had a hard time getting the key stakeholder, the man with the purse, to believe that many of the key consumer cultures supporting our ideas were valid. His logic? That a single instance of something happening on a grand scale – as well as several global phenomena supporting the larger trend – was not reason enough to even explore business ideas in that area.
This is a textbook sign of corporate fear in the face of innovation. When presented with rigorously and robustly collected data and insights, the key decision-maker, afraid of making the wrong decision at the wrong time, often feels (inwardly) like a deer in the headlights — so paralyzed by skepticism they lose even the ability to avoid obvious danger. Consequently, they do the next worst thing: they make no decision at all, avoiding any risky moves, but still damning themselves in the process.
Building the future of anything involves working with uncertainty, and we do not need to know everything about everything to lay the first brick. If we are not vigilant, fear can keep us from performing the types of exploratory testing that would clarify and potentially alleviate uncertainty. That is one of the ways fear works. It paralyzes, preventing you from taking the steps that would reveal that there isn’t anything to be afraid of in the first place.
This concept of “fear” has been phasing in and out of my focus for the past four years. Its first memorable appearance came during my first year of graduate school. I’d teamed up with some classmates to make a short product film promoting my new app. I concepted it with the hope that I would provide a new resource to help reduce the ambient anxiety surrounding the state of American politics. I'd conceived and designed the first iteration of the app and the promotional film was the next phase of the pitch packet.
The film’s direction mirrored the product’s concept, as both were driven by my fascination with the genuine terror that I had observed my friends and colleagues experience while they engaged in something as mundane as turning on the news. Polis Politika, the design intervention in question, was formulated to affirm and assuage the type of fear that comes about when people do not understand the political landscape well enough to form their own political identities. Consequently, the promotional film’s protagonist was a young man so anxiety filled he resorted to noxious levels of chain smoking to cope with his disconnection from the world around him and his place therein.
Fast forward to 2022, “fear” as an existential entity makes another notable appearance in a conversation I was having with my brother. Listening to some work challenges he was experiencing and triangulating those with a recent work experience of my own, I came to the conclusion that the biggest factor keeping both his colleagues and my clients from taking the steps into a new era of excellence was fear. When people cannot envision themselves, or their organizations, functioning in any way other than in the standard of the past, an innovator presenting an alternative state of existence is often terrifying and infuriating. Colleagues and stakeholders can’t believe you would be the one to come up with that idea. Neither do they believe you can generate such results because they themselves have no idea how to. When others cannot see what you see, they challenge its existence. And when you ask that they imagine with you, people get scared, then dismissive, then hostile. New skills spell danger, a new project spells doom. We stop seeing opportunities because the new future is fear.
Feeling fear is not a problem in and of itself. In fact, we need fear in moderation to ensure our survival. It’s the paralytic effects of overwhelming fear that I am going to help your war with. I will help you relearn your relationship with fear so it won't dominate you, so the news won't induce such anxiety that we are unable to meaningfully engage in the world around us, or when the risk of making a mistake looms so large that we can’t find our way forward. These moments make us feel the smallest, so we turn the TV off and we reject every suggestion our (well-informed) colleagues make. We take the “L” as fear flaunts its victory, condescendingly wrapping us in a false blanket of security while inept politicians systemize oppression and a new industry challenger snaps up a promising startup that we passed up the opportunity to buy.
Paralytic fear is for the birds. Ironically, it is from watching baby eagles learn to fly that I remembered two obvious, but overlooked weapons that every human is born with. Courtesy of Netflix’s copious documentary options, I’ve seen fledgling eagles take literal leaps of faith, flapping for dear life, only to succumb to their own weight and end up hitting every jagged rock on the way down to the base of a cliff, as their parents and siblings watched on. Many die on impact, while others manage to survive the fall, but are unable to make it back to their nest, and end up dying of starvation days later. Even for a bird whose body is designed for flight, flight is a tough skill to master, especially when the course of the lesson includes risking sudden death, repetitively.
In spite of the high mortality rate, many fledgelings do indeed learn how to fly. The more successful flight lessons were ones where fledgelings first learned to hover. Instead of jumping, or getting thrown, off a cliff or out of the nest, those whose instinct was to first get comfortable with the concept of flight — using their wings to catch air currents well enough to steadily suspend themselves a few inches off the ground — were the ones who went on to cheat death and claim victory in the sky. And that is the lesson: instead of making a reckless move (jumping off the cliff) or being paralyzed by fear (and consequently being thrown out of the nest), trusting instincts and adjusting to changing currents are the key to successful flight. We, as humans, may not have wings or sight like eagles, but we do have instincts and we excel at assessing situations and responding accordingly. Those are already two weapons we have in our respective wars on fear, and the most powerful one will shortly be revealed.
Fear’s most recent appearance in my life is the kindling for this series. My sister and I recently embarked on an adventure into the Swiss Alps. Our destination? Matterhorn.
Our first morning in Zermatt, we woke early to watch the sun gradually lighting up the east face of Mount Matterhorn from our hotel balcony. As I watched the peak slowly turn from black to blue to dazzling white, juxtaposed against the rising sun on a crystal clear sky, I stood transfixed. I stood contemplating the fact that the same God who created me, also created Matterhorn — which in that moment was WAY more beautiful, and significant than me. My anticipation for the day’s adventures began to bubble over, as I was simultaneously buoyed and humbled to meet this ancient, respected elder. It was during such musings that my stomach sank like a brick of cement in the East River. According to local news, the cable cars to the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise, a massive glacial trail with the best views of our resident beauty queen, were geschlossen (meaning “closed” in German). Apparently the same high pressure that creates pristine alpine mornings also comes with heavy winds that one generally doesn't want to experience first hand when hugging a harsh mountain face.
I was a festering fireball of disappointment, anger, and hunger. That day was the only day of our trip that would be clear enough to even see Matterhorn. I didn’t drag myself halfway around the world to just look at that mountain from afar! I was supposed to be in Matterhorn. To be a part of Matterhorn — or as much a part of it as I could be without actually summiting it. To be next to Matterhorn? That was also an honor, but not the same. Hoping that the winds would die down as the day progressed, we took a morning adventure atop another peak. The views were breathtaking, but still, we wanted to get up close and personal. So, imagine our glee when, around 4pm, we learned that the cable cars were finally open. God had looked down on us and smiled! It was then, as we stepped into the first of three cable cars that would take us to the Glacier Paradise, that our titular antagonist appeared on the scene, a most unwelcome party guest.
As I stepped into the cable car, I was violently reminded that the only thing holding me hundreds of feet in the air was a single cable. What if it snapped? What if I fell out? There was rough wind for the entire day, what if it had only temporarily died down? It might be just enough time for me to get on the cable car and then go plunging to my doom! How would anyone explain that to my mother? I objectively knew that a) these were irrational and intrusive thoughts and b) that I was safe in the hands of God — and also in the hands of the bundles of steel ropes composing the “cable” in our “cable car”. I needed to focus on the objective truth, not my fear. Cable car operators were experienced professionals who run this thing year round and I had every confidence in their expertise. My safety was literally their job. Nevertheless, fear has a way of surpassing reason.
The (objectively sturdy) cable car whizzed into action as we rocklily careened hundreds of feet in the air. The wind was still quite rough, with the cable car swinging like a pendulum as it chugged along, at one point coming too close for my comfort to one of the poles that kept the cables suspended. Objectively, at its closest point to the pole, we were still several feet away, but from my vantage point it felt as if I could reach out and smack against that pole if I wanted to. But the reality was that I couldn’t do anything other than hold onto the seat for dear life, with the blustery wind almost banging on all sides of the cable car, keeping it swinging all the way to the top. A bird’s eye view of the perfect winter wonderland was before me, but I couldn’t appreciate a moment of it. Paralytic fear had set in. Imagine, then, my relief as I bounded out of the cable car at the next station. It was a relief that died quickly when I saw the tracks for the second cable car we would take. It was an almost vertical incline up one of the steepest mountains in the world. I had no rational thoughts that time; all I had was fear.
Thankfully, God is merciful. The same rough winds that taunted me on the way up had caused the car operators to close the mountain just as we arrived at the station — the only way forward was back; down to Zermatt. For the second time that day, I faced the word geschlossen, but, this time, it was a much different experience associated with the term. Needless to say, that is one German word I will never forget. Not when faced with that impervious wall of rock and snow.
So… What is the point of exposing myself as a chicken and ski noob in such a public forum? What does it mean when of our five cases only fledgling eagles found success? No, I'm not arguing that youth is a prerequisite for transformation or that we must become one with the birds to find wisdom. As discussed, many eagles die suddenly in pursuit of their destiny. We are in fact at an advantage because, in most cases, it takes a while for the consequences of our fear and indecision to reach us and one wrong move is usually not sudden death. However, delayed consequences or not, a life ruled by fear is a doomed life. We don't always get to go back to Matterhorn.
As I wrote earlier, God is merciful. Technically, the reason I did not get to see Matterhorn up close and personal was because of rough wind, not because I was too scared to go up in the cable car. That means I still have a chance! My reason versus fear showdown was postponed and I still have time to put that specific fear and all others in their place, which is out of my life.
This experience highlights why fear can be so difficult to overcome. I had judged the wishy washy exec, the colleagues afraid of a new system, and coworkers unwilling to test a new program, and yet my own battle with fear ended in a draw. Fear is sneaky; it has many aliases and handmaids to masquerade as. It conveniently uses them as scapegoats so that we rarely ever see it for what it is and call it by name.
And calling fear by its name is mission critical. If any of you have seen The Exorcist or any other possession-themed horror flick, you know that calling anything (an emotion, a thought, even a demon) by name gives you power over it. You also know that you always have several weapons to destroy, or at least cast out, those demons. The exorcist’s toolkit usually contains a crucifix, holy water, and other blessed artifacts, but the most powerful weapons an exorcist has are the courage and authority (through Christ) to look that demon in the face and command it to leave.
Religion aside, every person has some measure of this nuclear weapon: courage. When fear sees courage, it feels the same way I felt looking up at the second cable car: like a shame-faced chicken. Whether you have a little or a lot, if you’re not used to using courage, or even if you need time to locate your own because you’ve never seen it before, you must know that you have at least one weapon with the power to cast out fear and other demons.
This is why I am publishing this series. To name many, if not all, of the names. Resistance. Perfectionism. Imposter syndrome. The list may be endless, but when we identify the name of the demon we are facing, we step into our courage, which is the authority that unleashes our power to command fear to leave every aspect of our lives. And what of resistance, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, et al.? They too have to leave because you say so.
This is the power of profound transformation. If you lift weights but don't train your mind, or if you have a clear purpose but take no action, you are equally trapped. Profound transformation uses purpose to vanquish fear, take action, and permanently alter your behavior for positive and continuous growth. In each piece, we will explore fear in its myriad forms and dissect the ways it may hinder our efforts toward profound transformation. Examples will draw mainly from my lived experiences and I invite all readers to reflect and, if you desire, to share your own experiences. As we tackle fear from every angle, we will ultimately end up with a diverse set of strategies and tactics for building and using courage, instinct, adaptation, and other weapons to deal with it, its aliases, and its associates.
As I re-learned at the base of Matterhorn, the journey is more important than the destination. I look forward to embarking on this adventure with you all. I can’t wait to see the stories this series inspires as we all step into our courage, and command our fears to flee.
Until next time…
Credits
Editor: Ope Martins
