All humans feel fear. Every. Single. One. We need to debunk the myth that certain successful people are naturally fearless. Believing that our heroes were born with a superhuman capacity for fear is just an excuse to justify our own inaction. True courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the ability to find the strength to act anyway.
If fear is a natural feeling that affects us all, how do some people find courage? Understanding true risk, the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome, is a good place to start. Write your fears down and dig into the potential consequences. If the risk is that your Facebook friends might judge you, that’s an irrational reason to let fear prevent you from acting. On the other hand, if the risks are more tangible, like bankruptcy or death, letting fear push you to flee rather than fight is a pretty rational decision. To see what mindsets can help conquer fear in the face of real risks like these, we can look to two of my biggest heroes: Martin Luther King Jr. and Elon Musk. Through them, we can see how a steadfast belief in the importance of what you’re doing can give you the courage to carry on.
On Friday night, January 27th 1956, 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. sat by himself at his kitchen table while his wife and daughter slept in the other room. He had just received another death threat over the phone. The caller rattled him good, telling him, “If you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”
Martin was tired. He had spent the prior night in jail. The threatening calls started slowly but he was now receiving up to 40 a day. He hadn’t chosen to lead the Montgomery bus boycotts anyway, he’d reluctantly been nominated into the role. Sitting at the table, Martin later recalled:
I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward…. I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born…She was the darling of my life. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute.
And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me…you’ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.
And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it… I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause that we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.
…At that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’ … I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone.
Almost at once, my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared.
That night, in the depths of his fear, facing personal danger and seemingly insurmountable odds, Martin found his foundation. At his core, was a belief that what he was doing was right and just. It was too important for him to give up despite the risks. Through his prayer and introspection, he found strength and courage that would carry him for years to come.
Elon Musk is the real world’s closest thing to Iron Man. He’s the genius behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. On top of that, he’s involved in efforts to colonize Mars and make humans a multi-planetary species. Taking on some of the world’s biggest problems, he’s seemingly a person with an inhuman threshold for fear and risk. However, in an interview with Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, Elon readily admitted to, “feeling fear quite strongly.” “It’s not as though I just have the absence of fear,” he continued, “but there are times when something is important enough, that you believe in it enough, that you do it despite the fear. People shouldn’t think that, I feel fear about this therefore I shouldn’t do it, it’s normal to feel fear, there would have to be something mentally wrong with you to not feel fear.”
He goes on to suggest that fatalism, the belief that all events are predetermined and inevitable, can be helpful too. “If you just accept the probabilities, that diminishes fear. In starting Space X, I thought the odds for success were less than 10% and I accepted that, probably, I would just lose everything, but that maybe we would make some progress. If we could just move the ball forward, even if we died some company could pick up the baton and keep moving it forward, so that would still do some good.”
MLK and Elon Musk were both able to conquer real, rational fears because of their beliefs in the rightness of their missions. With them as examples, we can distill action steps to help confront and conquer our own fears, whatever they might be.
First, define your fears. Write the things that scare you on a piece of paper. Once on paper looking back at you, some might no longer seem so scary. For those that do, the rational fears with real risks, how important is it to you that you act? Ask yourself, if what you are doing is right enough and just enough that you can accept the probability of negative consequences and truck on.
Take steps to minimize your risk through preparation. Realize that failure can be a learning opportunity. Read about successful people and how they dealt with life’s inevitable blows. When you get in the mind of people we hold up on pedestals, you realize they’re not all that much different from you.
A couple resources to credit for this post. First, David Garrow’s book Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Second, Sam Altman’s interview with Elon Musk, video below.