Fear and Confidence

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“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Adair

The other night our iPad fell on the ground. My kids and I were getting in the car after visiting my brother and his wife. My brother folded the stroller and the iPad that my 6-year-old daughter always uses fell out of the pocket and landed on its corner. We picked it up and went on our way but as we drove, my daughter discovered that the power button had been slightly crimped down by the fall and so all the iPad would do was show the Apple icon and then go black over and over again.

This iPad is her favorite thing in the world. It represents her agency in the world to discover things that other 6-year-olds are doing. It has her books, videos and games so it is also her main source of entertainment. That iPad holds a lot of power and possibility in one sleek package.

She started wailing in the backseat that it was broken. I calmly said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take a look at it when we get home. We’ll try to fix it.” And she wailed back, “We can’t try. It won’t work.”

What?? We fix things all the time. This was the little girl that just an hour before had confidently stood up on a paddle board and was paddling it by herself on Lake Union. And then she was jumping off the paddle board over and over into the lake to swim around with not a worry in the world.

And now she was saying we couldn’t even try. That all was lost. Everything was broken and would stay broken. This wasn’t normal or rational, this was fear.

It struck me that confidence can’t show up when fear is running the show. So in my ongoing inquiry into confidence, I went digging in to get some perspective into this.

In their book The Confidence Code, authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman distill the definition of confidence from all their sources of research and erudition into “Confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.” They also describe the other positive attributes that often go hand in hand with confidence, what they label as the confidence cousins: self-esteem, optimism, self-compassion, and self-efficacy. But all of these things, confidence and the cousins that work to create belief that you can make something happen, are part of our rational/thinking brain.

Neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson have great illustrations in their book The Whole-Brained Child that illustrate how fear is a downstairs (limbic) brain function and that when we flip our lids, we temporarily lose access to the upstairs brain that supports thinking. The downstairs brain that provides quick reaction so when we are in critical moments of fight of flight doesn’t stop to think about it.

So in our moments of fear we lose, maybe just momentarily, access to the stuff that creates confidence until we move though it. This brought to mind for me of one of the rapid fire questions Brené Brown often asks her guests on her podcast Unlocking Us: “You are called to be very brave but your fear is real and you can feel it in your throat, what is the very first thing do you do?” And the answers from her guests are things like:

  • Oprah: “Take a deep breath. Remind myself to breathe.”
  • Dr. Angus Fletcher: “I think of the bravest person I know who happens to be my son who is much, much braver than me.”
  • Dr. Julie Gottman: “Put my hand on my heart.”

Coming back to my daughter in the car I asked her if what she was saying was because she was afraid of losing her iPad. She said she guessed it was. And owning that, we then could reason through the fact that the only sure outcome was the one if we didn’t try. If we did nothing, the iPad would stay broken. So we had nothing to lose by trying.

Sure enough, we got home, fiddled with the button and it came back to life. The button is a little tricky now but our confidence is restored. We could try – and it worked. As the quote for this post says, and it is one of my all-time favorite quotes because it has gotten me through many barriers of my own making, “Everything you’ve always wanted is on the other side of fear.”

This is my second post delving into confidence. I Can was the first.

(featured photo from Pexels)

33 thoughts on “Fear and Confidence”

  1. I love this! The mantra my daughter and I leaned into many times was “what have we got to lose!” We tackled many DYI projects around the house with that thought. If it didn’t turn out then we’d have to pay to replace, but we found that a bit of creativity and hard work paid off!

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    1. I love that mantra — that you clearly infused in your daughter and now she’s passing on to her kids! It’s wonderful. Creativity and hard work do pay off when we get past the fear and TRY! Love this comment, Tamara. Thank you!

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  2. You handled this well Wynne. I also appreciate the reminder about fear and it’s ability to hold one back from trying. My Denver vacation is coming up, which means getting on a plane. I’d prefer just pressing an iPad button and magically arriving there. I think that’s out of the question though 😉

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    1. Yes – your trip to Denver. Oh, it’s so hard to overcome our fears but well worth doing, right?

      Because I think there is a button on the iPad that will take us to Denver — but through Zoom — and we’re all tired of that! I hope that all the preparation you’ve done makes flying easier for you.

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    1. Thank you, Art! They might be learning and remember – but I know for sure that I am learning and remembering right alongside them. Such a rich time of life!

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      1. You’re welcome. Yes, you’re learning, too; and so am I, and maybe the next guy or gal that reads this. And so on. What a rich experience…this incredibly precious LIFE.

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  5. Glad that the iPad is ok thanks to your calm reassuring approach to fix it.

    I agree with you that fear is such a paralyzing emotion that drowns out logic and confidence. I liken it to fight and flight mode too. The window to reason and reassure is narrower during this mode.

    A good lesson for daughter and mom. 🙂

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    1. Thank you, Dr. Stein! My daughter pretty easily caught on so I suspect she was moving on all by herself. I appreciate you reading and commenting – as always!

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  7. A delightful story. I relate to your daughter’s fear that a techie gadget can’t be fixed. I get that, but I also think your approach to handling the situation, not chastising her for her fear, while showing her there is value in trying. A good lesson, for her, for all of us.

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    1. Thank you for such a kind comment, Ally! All these lessons are such good reminders for me. It seems like my kids get them more of less organically and it’s just me thinking about them… 🙂

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  8. The fear of loss is very relatable. And I wonder, from the way so much of her “life” is in the iPad, if it’s the one basket where she feels all her eggs are? It’s all her books, so it’s not just losing one book. It’s all her videos, so it’s not just losing books or videos, etc. Maybe physical books have another benefit, they help spread the eggs into more baskets (and, yes, make them harder to lug around 🙂 But they can drop with less damage… except on toes 🙃)

    Kudos on your becoming an Apple Genius! Great job on fixing the iPad!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. A very astute comment. She has a lot of physical books that I buy her or she brings home from the school library or city library. But the ebooks have more cache. Maybe I need to talk the other ones up some more – mention that they drop with less damage! 🙂 Thanks for a great suggestion – I hadn’t thought of that.

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  9. It could just be that today’s technology is so fickle, she automatically assumed the iPad was irretrievably broken. Considering that new appliances have 1/3 the lifespan of older ones, I can’t really blame her pessimism. But I’m glad you were able to get it working again!

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    1. That’s an excellent point. I’m just grateful that the screen didn’t crack although I heard the other day that Apple is supporting doing some self-service repair of these devices including replacing screens.

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  10. Ugh I can relate to this so much in my current state! I’m in physical therapy and the self doubt is frustrating. I have to remind myself that my body will work again. Such a fabulous post and a powerful reminder

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’m so sorry to hear about the doctor and PT, LaShelle. But yes, here’s to getting past all that fear and self-doubt so we can try! Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  16. Brilliant post and so interesting about confidence coming from the rational / thinking brain vs fear in the limbic. I hadn’t thought of the two, fear vs confidence, in that way before. I think there are also parts of confidence that come from a non-rational place too- sometimes it’s just a flow state, not thinking, being, kind of thing – I’ve definitely seen this with clients. Although the beliefs and cognitive elements you mention clearly have a major role too, and I also see this helping and hindering my clients too! Thanks so much for sharing, very interesting and also some good parenting inspiration- I have a 6 year old too! I’ve also just posted a blog post about fear being an opportunity that you might be interested in 😊

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    1. What a great and interesting comment, Christina! And so fun to meet another parent with a kiddo the same age. I’m looking forward to reading your post! Thanks for reading and commenting!

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