Maneuvering through fear

What is your mountain? What fear do you have that seems impossible to scale, to overcome?

Historically, I have a fear of climbing up or down things like ladders. It is a result of a series of traumatic events over the course of a week when I was about 20 years old. I was working as a labourer for a small company in Estevan, Saskatchewan. The job was simple enough – replace windows in an apartment complex. We rented a scaffold and assembled it on site. The apartment was four floors high, and as a result so was the scaffold, which was a series of 3×6 platforms on a metal frame with a wheeled base, matching each floor in the apartment building.

On the second day of operations, the wind was very strong. We came back from lunch to discover that the scaffold had collapsed from the wind. We reassembled it, noting that it was bent and had lost integrity in some places. But we had a job to do. The next day, we were moving the scaffold while still assembled (not a good idea, by the way). We decided to not bother disassembling it because the base was on wheels and we only need to move the scaffold about 8 feet distance from one row of windows to the next. I think that safety measures required us to disassemble the scaffold before moving it, but I was new to scaffolds, so what did I know?

As hindsight is 20/20, I can now say that predictably, the scaffold collapsed as we were moving it. Although none of us were seriously injured, I came away with a number of bruises from pieces of the frame hitting me on the way down. Once again, we reassembled the scaffold and continued our work. The following day, I was on the top of the scaffold, four floors up. The wind continued to shake the now somewhat-compromised scaffold. All at once, the scaffold collapsed, leaving me hanging on the outside of the window sill. We had just removed that window, so I at least had some structure to hold onto. My foreman was on the inside of the window and grabbed my arms to pull me inside to safety.

Needless to say, I quit that job. Since then, I have experienced difficulty with ladders. Once, I was stuck seven feet off the ground on the roof of a shed for four hours because I could not muster the nerve to put my foot on the ladder that stood waiting for me just over the edge.

It was not until someone came along who could talk me down that I was able to brave putting my foot over the edge of the roof and onto the ladder. Even then, someone had to come up the ladder, take my foot, and guide it to the ladder, before I would attempt to leave the safety of my cell upon the roof. That person needed to stay with me on the ladder, talking me from one wrung to the next as I made my way to the ground.

There are a lot of ways I could describe my relationship with fear. As I was considering this, I thought about titling this article “overcoming” fear, “climbing out of” fear, “battling” fear, and other such references. I arrived at “maneuvering through” fear because like many other encounters along life’s journey, my response to fear has not been to beat it back, destroy, or rise above it. Rather, my response has been to take the steps necessary to maneuver through fear in order to achieve freedom from it. The truth is, as Edgewalkers we are already in the habit of sidestepping barriers as a part of how we are wired. But when it comes to personal fears, it seems like the rules can sometimes change. Fears that we encounter at a personal level haunt us in ways that professional fears never could. But they have a way of trickling into every other part of our lives.

In my previous post, I identified some key reasons that we encounter fear. I would like to emphasize that the fears that you and I feel are real, potentially crippling, and threaten to derail us from reaching our goals in life. But this does not have to be the end of the story. We have the ability to write the rest of the story, and we do not have to write it alone. Maneuvering through fear takes time, effort and courage. I have repeatedly counted on mentors and a community of encouragers to help me keep moving.

…the fears that you and I feel are real, potentially crippling, and threaten to derail us from reaching our goals in life. But this does not have to be the end of the story. We have the ability to write the rest of the story, and we do not have to write it alone.

So, I don’t want to leave you hanging. I acknowledge that fear had held me back at more than one time in my life. But what could I do about it? The sad truth is that there is no magic potion for overcoming fears. What works for me may not work for you or the person next to you. But there are common themes related to tackling fears that are worth mentioning here. To illustrate these steps, I am going to share how I maneuvered through my fear of ladders. Sometime around 2010 I had the opportunity to take some steps to deal with the fear that had gripped me as a result of the collapsing scaffold. These steps represent my journey to freedom.

Acknowledge the fear. I acknowledged my fear to a group of kids at a summer camp where I was a guest speaker. They were amazingly compassionate. I thought for sure they would laugh at me. But they could tell my fear was genuine. I stood a 10-ft ladder on the stage one day and shared the story I just shared with you. I told them I was sick of being fearful and wanted to overcome the fear. There were about 200 kids staring back at me as I shared my story.

Acknowledgement is a huge first step. If you do just this today, you’ve done something great. Many of us have these fears, but they are at the back of our mind, unnoticed, unacknowledged, as we try to ignore them and pretend they’re not there. But they are there. And they affect us, every day, all our lives.

Write it down. When I wrote out my story to share with the campers, it was the first time I had ever written down the experience. I felt better after I wrote it out. I chose to share it with the campers, but I could have just as easily crumple it and throw it out, burn it in a fire, or something like that. I am a storyteller, so I chose to tell the story. What I discovered was truly profound. Naming the fear brought it out into the light, externalizing the fear and moving it from the dark lurking places in the back of my mind, where it had power over me, out into the light of day, outside of me, where I had power over the fear.

I will ask the question again: What do you fear? What is your ladder? Write it on a piece of paper. Take control over it by writing it down. It is now outside you. You can do something about it.

Feel the fear. That day on stage, I allowed myself to feel the familiar fear of the ladder as I placed it on the stage. I acknowledged it, but was still afraid of it. I had been reluctant to even have this fear. I was embarrassed about it. It seemed sinister and so much more powerful than I was. Well, “No more,” I said. The fear was a part of my experience, but it didn’t have to control me. I told the campers I had every intention of speaking to them from atop the ladder that day. I chose to feel the fear and climb the ladder anyway. This took courage. As it turns out, it took more courage than I alone could muster.

Consider the outcomes. As I prepared for the day and even as I was about to climb the ladder in front of the campers, I asked myself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Often it’s not as bad as I think. After all, I have feared failing in a new career. And what happened when I did? I got another job. I moved on. I lived to tell the story. So, I decided that failing to get to the top of the ladder and stay there would be the worst that could happen. But I had hundreds of young, impressionable eyes on me. So I talked myself into climbing.

Mobilize! Just do it! To repeat: feel the fear and do it anyway. To beat the fear, I had to just do it. I just started climbing the ladder. I was sweating like crazy. Was the ladder shaking, or was it me? I got to about the 3rd wrung and froze. I had not prepared to deal with freezing. That had always been the story since the scaffold experience – I would start out on a ladder, determined to do the job I needed to do, only to get to about the third wrung, freeze, and return to the ground. But this time I was determined to succeed. This brought me to the next step.

Prepare. When I am going to take on an adversary, I must prepare myself. I arm myself, and have a battle plan, and train for the fight. I did this in my battle against fear. I feared failure, but had not adequately prepared myself to deal with freezing on the third wrung except to do what I had always done – just climb down again and tell myself “maybe next time.” Even this time, I had failed to come up with a plan to succeed. So, I told the kids, “This is as high as I can go. If it’s okay with you, I will just come down again.” But the campers had a different goal in mind. They cheered me on to keep going and yelled that coming back down was not an option. I have learned that part of preparing is identifying who I need to bring along with me on the journey. In this case, it was the campers.

Be in the moment. Fear of failure (and other similar fears) are fears of the future. I used to get caught up in worrying about what might happen. Instead, I now banish all negative thoughts of the future. I also banish thoughts of past mistakes and failures. I now tell myself “Now! Focus on right now! Come on, do something right now to beat this fear, to pursue your dreams, and forget about what might happen. Just do it, now!”

When you find yourself thinking about the past or future, bring yourself back in the moment and focus on what you’re doing right at this moment. What was I doing? I was climbing up a ladder. I focused on the encouragement of the campers and stayed in that moment. I kept climbing.

Small steps. It took me about ten minutes to get to the top of the ladder. But I did it. And then I sat on the top and talked with the campers about what I had set out to talk about – overcoming fear. Conquering fear and pursuing a life goal can be overwhelming, intimidating. So start small. Just take one little baby step. I took one step at a time, and conquered a mountain of a ladder.

Celebrate every success! Every wrung I stepped up, the campers cheered louder and louder. By the time I got to the top, the celebration was deafening! I did not prompt them to do this. They just did it. Something within them told them to celebrate my achievement and by following their instincts, they encouraged me to succeed and celebrate while I did it. Every single thing you do right, celebrate!

Edgewalker, I will ask you a third time: What is your mountain? What is the fear that you need to maneuver through? As Edgewalkers, we are in the business of breaking out ahead of the crowd in order to try new things and let others know what we have discovered. We have learned the art of sidestepping barriers and roadblocks. These same steps that I followed to maneuver through my fear are the same steps we can follow on a daily basis to define change, set new boundaries and learn new realities. We can also bring our community of Edgewalkers with us so we are not doing it alone. I learned that following these steps helps me to succeed. So, I share them with you as my fellow practitioners and Edgewalkers, my community of practice, trusting that these steps may also help others.   

Donovan Mutschler, MA

For more information on the content or processes included in this article contact Donovan Mutschler at donovan@edgewalkers.ca.