Good Scary

Fear is a useful tool, but a very blunt one. It evolved as a way to keep us out of danger, and it’s pretty good at stopping us from walking off cliffs picking up red-hot coals. Unfortunately, you can trigger our fear response with pretty much anything that’s unfamiliar or uncertain. As we make our way through our 21st century lives, that’s a problem.

So many of the things we fear pose no real danger to us at all. Public speaking. Fashion faux-pas. Conversations with strangers. Dancing in public.

The reason these fairly innocuous scenarios fire up our fear response like a charging rhino is that our brains are finely tuned to the possibility of social ostracism or loss of status. Back in the prehistoric world where our brains evolved, those could be real mortal dangers to an individual who was dependent on their tribe. We may have changed a lot from those days on a superficial level, but deep down we are still running the same old genetic software, and it shows.

So the next time you seem inordinately afraid of something that shouldn’t be that scary, remember this: uncertainty, unfamiliarity and social risk are not existential threats. Most of the time they’re invitations to stretch yourself and to expand your life beyond its current limitations.

There’s bad scary and there’s good scary. It pays to know which is which.