1. Understanding: Fear

Welcome to Mindset: a guide to getting out of your own way and a blueprint for professional success. 

In this series, scientist Shelley Laslett will join FW’s Sally Spicer to explore the negative feelings that threaten to hold us back before FW’s Helen McCabe and Jamila Rizvi share their practical wisdom, moving you just that little bit closer to resilience and fulfilment. 

In our first episode Shelley explains the science behind fear, and why our brain treats sitting in the waiting room ahead of a job interview the same as outrunning a bear.

• Become an FW member to join the movement and fast-track your professional development
• Learn more about Shelley Laslett’s neuroscience coaching
• Keep up with @futurewomen on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads and X
• Find out more about FW Jobs Academy

Support the show: https://www.futurewomen.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mindset, a guide to getting out of your
own way and a blueprint for professional success. Over this series,
neuroscience coach Shelly Laslett will join me, Sally Spicer, to
explore the negative feelings that threaten to hold us back.
After that, FW's Helen McCabe and Jamila Risby share their

(00:22):
practical wisdom, moving you just that little bit closer to
resilience and fulfilment. Today, we're talking about fear.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Some of the things that scare me are being rejected
and failing. So after I've done something pretty big, be
it go for a job interview or on the occasion
that I've asked for a pay rise, or done something
pretty substantial for my career, I've always felt a sense
of fear. The initial fear point.
For me, when applying for a job or before an
interview is definitely about doubting myself. I have been guilty of,

(00:55):
you know, listening to that nagging thought of, you know,
I'm not good enough, or maybe this is not the
right time.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Shelly, thank you for joining me. First off, can you
please explain why things that have no chance of physically hurting,
like getting on a Zoom call with your boss or
doing a job interview, can still feel so physically frightening?
Why am I worried about getting on a Zoom call
with my bosses? It's because we are so
Social creatures. We want social approval. We want to be

(01:26):
in group and we want to be in tribe because
that is how we have survived on this planet. We
are not isolated species. We do not function as an individual.
We actually function in a collective, and that's where we're protected.
That's where we're high performing.
Even if you think about, if you take a human
and put a single human, a human is actually not
going to survive very well. If you take a collection

(01:49):
of humans, in fact, a couple billion of them, you
can see how we can both positively and negatively impact
the planet. So, the important part to remember is being apprehensive,
being fearful, being worried, it's your brain's way of saying,
I care about being in a group, I care about
being accepted, I care about making sure that I do
a good job.
And I actually care about making sure that the people

(02:11):
around me want to work with me. Now, if I
described that to you, those 4 things and attributes about
a person, would we say that's negative? No, it's positive, right? Like,
it's actually a really good thing. So that's your social philtres,
let's call them, sort of coming into play. You desire
that approval, you desire that recognition. And so the idea

(02:32):
that you're in a scenario where you might not get
that can be anxiety provoking.
And also, you want to do a good job. You
care about what you do. If you didn't care, then
that wouldn't stress you out. Right? Apathy is not necessarily
a good antidote to anxiety or apprehension. So, we don't
want to be completely apathetic that we're basically horizontal because

(02:53):
we're so laid back, and we don't want to be
so highly strung that we feel like we're walking a tightrope.
So where we want to land is somewhere in the middle.
And what that means is that any time you feel
nervous or apprehensive, I want you to start telling yourself,
it's because I care.
It's because I value what I do, it's because I
value who I am, right? Just those three simple statements.
That is enough for your brain to be like, oh, OK, yeah,

(03:13):
I see that. And then anytime you feel that apprehension,
I want you to think about the outcome going well. OK,
so you say that apathy isn't the antidote to anxiety
or to fear. For me, the logical antidote is probably courage.
So how can we be more courageous in the face
of fear? And is that even the right way to
think about it?
I think courage doesn't necessarily promote the risk taking. I

(03:36):
think courage is
Is something that we have to facilitate. I think fear
probably overall gets quite a bad rap. So, fear is
a really natural, normal human emotion in the same way
that happiness, pleasure, all the things that we like, all
the positive, you know, toward reward states are. Fear has
to exist. It is intrinsic. It is iconically human. Oh sorry,

(03:58):
fear is across the whole animal kingdom, but feeling fear
as a human is a really normal thing.
I think when we talk about courage, courage isn't just
feeling no fear. People who are courageous don't have a
complete absence of fear. In fact, I'd be very worried
if somebody came to me and I said, I have
no fear. I have complete absence. I do not feel fear.

(04:18):
That would be more concerning, really, clinically, definitely. Courage is
about feeling the fear, processing it and using it as
fuel to do it anyway.
So what do I mean by that? Fear is an emotion.
Emotions are energy. Energy is communicated between brain cells, and
that generates an emotion which generates a feeling, which sometimes

(04:39):
generates an external action or an internal action. Internal being
a thought process, external being an act or behaviour outside
of yourself motivates you to do something. So if we
think about it on a just a really basic scientific level, and,
and what I'm describing is actually quite inherently complex, but
I'll try and make it as simple as possible, because
no one needs to know all those boring details. Fear

(04:59):
is essentially an
Electric charge and you either do something with it or
you don't, but you can't control it from being there
in the first place. What does that mean? It means
all emotions happen unconsciously first, and once we are conscious
of them, we can choose to do something with them
or choose to not do something with them. And so
when we think about fear, it's actually a really normal, natural,

(05:21):
neurological thing that's been around for centuries and has kept
the human species on the planet for centuries because it's
also allowed us to survive. So often when we feel fear,
That's a good thing, right? We, we are concerned in
some way about something. We have apprehension. That apprehension can
also be excitement, it can also be nervous energy. And
that energy isn't necessarily good or bad. That energy can

(05:44):
actually be flipped to be used as sort of positive
thinking fuel. It can actually drive you into hyperfocus, or
it can actually be used to help you concentrate. So
fear in itself might not feel like a fun emotion.
Nobody really loves to be in a fearful position, but
it's a really normal thing.
To be fearful. And what you're doing with that fear,
if you're thinking about it in a courageous lens, is

(06:06):
turning that energy and framing it in a way that
allows it to be productive. So when I say sort
of courage isn't feeling no fear, it's feeling fear, processing it,
telling your brain, taking control of that narrative about how
you want to use it, and then directing it into something,
directing it into an action.
OK, so it sounds like it's about taking the energy
that you're already feeling, expending, and then deliberately changing how

(06:29):
you're using it. But like, how do you actually do that?
Can you give me an example? So what does that mean? Practically,
I kind of really want to apply for this job.
I'm really scared. I don't have those qualifications. I don't
think I'm unnecessarily well suited or maybe it isn't right
for me. That apprehension is your self-analysis. That's just your
critical thinking, actually, going through the scenario and saying, Is

(06:50):
it the right thing to do? Now, again, that's a
Really positive advanced neurological capability. Your brain's actually really doing
a fantastic job there. It might not feel fun and
fear is a bit ick, you know, we get that
swirling tummy feeling. Maybe our body goes tense, maybe we
can feel our jaw tighten in some instances, you know,
heart rate might start to increase. All those things don't

(07:10):
necessarily feel good, but they're very clear bodily signs to you,
to your awareness, to your conscious part of your brain.
That there is a feeling there associated with this. Now,
we also get those same physiological responses when we are excited. So,
with fear, there becomes this dance, and it's really a
choice about which partner we're gonna choose when we enter

(07:32):
the dance floor. Do we want to have that self-doubt
that's governing fear and confusion, or do we want to
have the, I feel fear, and let's choose the confidence partner?
And what does the confidence partner look?
Like it means I'm feeling fear because I'm worried because
I care about the outcome, because I care about what
I do, because I care about, you know, taking the
right position and because I want to do X, Y, Z.

(07:53):
I want to provide for my family, I want to
have a fulfilling career. Those are all really positive things.
So what we need to do with fear is just
find the right frame for it that allows us to
use it as super positive thinking fuel. And when I'm
talking about fear here, I'm also talking more broadly about stress.
What's called acute stress in the moment stress. It's neither
positive or negative. It's how we frame it, determines whether

(08:15):
or not it will be used to help us focus
and to help us be motivated, and to be channelled
as excitement and, you know, that sort of positive anticipation,
or whether or not it's gonna overrun the system and
sort of take us offline.
In our next episode, Helen McCabe and Jamila Risby share

(08:35):
practical tips on how they turn fear into courage. Single
acts of courage can be a bit easier than trying
to say, I'm going to be a more confident person now.
I'm going to be a courageous person. This doesn't have
to be an end state, a single point of being
in the same way you can't achieve happiness and then
just stay there forever. You have periods of happiness, work
on those single acts of courage, try and be courageous

(08:58):
in the moment rather than all the time.
Mindset is created by FW Jobs Academy with support from
the Australian government's Office for Women.