Choosing Fear

Being An Engineering Manager: Part 6

So my last few posts have been VERY management-heavy (what did you expect from a series called Being An Engineering Manager). But I start to feel ill if I go too long without nerding out. Plus, variety is the spice of life - so here’s my story about Fear and how I learned to both embrace and beat it.

How many of you know who Green Lantern is?

Unfortunately, anyone who says yes is possibly still thinking of the ill-fated 2011 disaster-piece starring Ryan Reynolds. But in the mid-00s, Green Lantern was DCs best selling Comic for years. So let me give you an ultra-quick rundown on exactly why Green Lantern is my favourite comic book of all time and just how it changed how I approach virtually everything in life.

First off, think of Green Lanterns as space cops. There are approximately 7200 of them patrolling the galaxy, each one in possession of a magical ring, aka the most powerful weapon in the known universe. Because the ring itself can do… anything. It has limitless power, the scope of which is determined by the wearer. Yes, I know, bonkers mid-20th-century character creation at its finest.

Anyway, it can do anything the wearer can imagine. Flight, Telepathy, Creation, Time-Travel, Resurrection. You name it. But only if you can imagine it.

More importantly, its fuel is none other than Willpower. You have to physically and mentally will the ring’s powers into existence.

So how you might ask, is an individual selected to wield such audacious power? Well, for the longest time, Green Lanterns were expected to be fearless. If you need willpower to manifest your abilities, then nothing should deter or impede you, right? You need to be strong and unyielding in the face of abject terror and disaster.

But that’s not how the selection process works. Ultimately, the rings seeks out individuals who have the power to OVERCOME fear.

This was a huge distinction for me. Because most heroes are portrayed to be fearless Supermen or Captain America. Damn near-perfect people who a regular old scaredy cat could never hope to become.

But finding out that there were 7200 heroes flying around the galaxy who might have been utterly terrified of their jobs, but were chosen to do it anyway, and who keep doing it anyway made me think long and hard about fear itself.

Like how we tell our kids not to be afraid or not to worry. And how we let fear so often get the better of us in life or at work.

There’s a healthy middle ground where you accept that you’re totally and maybe implausibly afraid of something and… that’s totally fine. Because you’re still going to do that something while you’re scared to death.

That’s what real courage and bravery is. The ability not to pretend or ignore. But to overcome.

Early in my career, lots of fears held me back. Fear of not knowing or having all of the answers. Fear of having those knowledge gaps found out or exposed publicly. Fear of socializing. Fear of speaking. Fear of standing out for the wrong reasons, like being the joker or the sarcastic ones. Fear of standing out for things that weren’t even under my control - like being the only black dude in attendance.

This is just a fraction of a list that could go on and on. And for the record, I’ve completely moved on from several of these fears naturally. While many others still plague me every day. But at one point I decided to accept all of these things about myself and lean into them. I decided to chase that feeling of overcoming.

There’s something really satisfying about knowing that even though I can’t seem to control how horrible something feels each time, I know what it’s going to feel like on the other side once I emerge from the discomfort.

And this is pretty much why I repeatedly pile headfirst into things that terrify me day after day now.

I mean, within reason. I still haven’t told my Dad it was me who accidentally installed that virus on his PC in 1998. Some fears are just not worth facing.

There’s a terrible Will and Jaden Smith movie called After Earth where there’s this monster that hunts people by the scent of their fear. And Will Smith’s character, the only man who can turn his fear on and off, says something like, “Danger is real. Fear is a choice,” in that charismatic way that pre-Oscar slap Will Smith always did before he became a meme.

Oh look I found it. Even the poster is awful.

For a while, I remember thinking this was the only awesome thing in that utterly abysmal movie. But now I prefer to think that it isn’t Fear that’s the choice. I don’t think you get to choose whether your skin crawls at the sight of spiders, or whether your stomach fills with butterflies when you stand up in front of a crowd.

The choice is what you do in spite of those feelings. The choice is whether you get up on stage to talk in the first place. The choice is if you give the talk anyway (even if it goes badly like it probably will at first). And the choice is doing it again knowing exactly how you’re going to feel every time.

I remember my first bookstore reading for ‘What Can We Be?’ Those little kids were monsters. Terrifying and brutal the lot of em. It’s a feeling I remember any time I talk to a group now.

In management, I see the fear in those I manage every day.

Some are afraid they won’t get the promotion or pay rise they’ve been waiting for, and are worried about how they are going to afford the cost of living.

Some are afraid they’ve hit a glass ceiling and they’ll have to leave a job and people they love to continue their growth.

Some are afraid they’re going to lose their jobs altogether.

The thing so many of them have in common is how much they hate feeling that way. And how much they hate having that fear paralyzing their thoughts. They wish things were different or easier. Sometimes they just want an answer that will make those fears go away.

But all I ever want any of them to know is that it’s a perfectly reasonable and rational way to feel. If you work in a startup, there may always be a very realistic chance that your job disappears overnight.

And the thing you have to do is accept this troublesome fear and decide what you’re going to do every day to overcome it. What you’re going to do whenever the fear comes back to haunt you.

Are you going to keep killing it at your job, and revel in that feeling while it lasts, despite a consistently uncertain future? Or are you going to leave and embark on a more secure and exciting journey that comes with all new fears of its own? Which way are you going to keep combatting this fear and continually overcoming it? That’s what you need to decide.

Anyway, I recently told this story to a friend and I realised that I used to tell it all the time to pretty much everyone. My wife even got me this portrait of myself as a Green Lantern on our wedding day to commemorate this obsession and the positive impact it had on me.

So I’m gonna start doing that again until people are either sick of it or decide to get up and do something fearful.

Do something terrifying every now and then until you’re as perpetually frightened as I am.

I’m not saying you’ll be selected to be part of an elite group of space heroes who frequently die in the line of duty and send their rings off looking for replacements or anything.

But you’ll definitely become more powerful because of it.