When we say we’re afraid of failure, what are we really afraid of? When we avoid taking risks, what are we actually avoiding? If you dig beneath the surface, you’ll find that what we’re truly fearing isn’t the external circumstance—it’s how we’ll feel if it happens.
The worst thing that can happen to us is, in fact, a feeling.
We’re not so much afraid of failure as of the embarrassment and shame in its aftermath. We’re not afraid of being rejected; we’re afraid of feeling disappointed and hurt. We’re not afraid of the unknown; we’re afraid of feeling anxious and out of control.
But here’s what I discovered in the middle of my own emotional storm: we’ve been thinking about emotions all wrong.
Feelings Are Verbs, Not Just Nouns
We talk about feelings as if they’re objects that happen to us—things we “have” or that get “inflicted” upon us. This language turns us into victims of our emotional experience. “I have anxiety.” “I’m overwhelmed.” “I’m trapped in a spiral of shame.”
This victim story steals our power.
What if, instead, we saw feeling as something we do? What if emotions were verbs rather than nouns—a skillset we could develop rather than circumstances we endure?
When we shift to “I am working through anxiety right now” or “I am choosing to feel overwhelmed,” something profound happens. We remember our agency. We reclaim our power. We transform from passive hostages to active participants in our emotional lives.
And here’s the distinction: we can move from “this is happening to me” to “I am willing to experience this.”
That choice changes the entire experience.
The Index Card That Changed My Perspective
This summer, I took a big risk in my coaching practice. I built a new offering based on what I felt would best serve my clients. I poured everything into it – more time, energy, and money than I’d ever invested in a single project. As the stakes grew higher, so did the fear and self-doubt.
The thoughts “What if it flopped? What if no one wanted it? Who did I think I was? Was I making a huge mistake?” visited me daily, often interrupting my sleep at 3:00 in the morning.
The inspiration was still there, but along with it came insecurity and anxiety at a level I’d rarely experienced.
In the midst of this emotional rollercoaster, I remembered a story my coaching instructor had shared years earlier. When she first started out as a coach, finding her footing and developing her confidence, she was feeling a lot of difficult emotions too. She took an index card and wrote down all the feelings she was willing to feel in order to be the best she could be in service of her clients. She kept that card near her laptop and reminded herself regularly that she was actually inviting these emotions—they were part of her journey toward her dream of becoming a coach.
Remembering her story helped me so much. I realized I needed my own index card.
Here’s what I wrote: terror, shame, anxiety, worry, overwhelm, inadequacy, excitement, disappointment, love. This was the emotional territory I was willing to navigate in order to create and serve at the level to which I felt called.
The Difficulty Is the Point
When I started viewing my emotions this way—as feelings I was willing to experience rather than torment I was enduring—something shifted. The emotions were just as intense, but my relationship to them changed. I wasn’t drowning anymore, though I was still very much in the water.
I wish I could say the terror stopped feeling like terror, but it didn’t. What changed was that I could hold it differently. Sometimes the fear was genuinely informative—warning me about a real problem I needed to address. Other times I recognized the insecurity coming from thoughts that needed cleaning up. I heard the old tapes — the “never good enough” story that has played in my core beliefs for as long as I can remember. Learning to tell the difference took time, and I didn’t always get it right.
I’m not going to tell you this was a smooth journey. But over time, I noticed I could sit with discomfort a little longer. Name it more quickly. Let it pass through without making it mean I was failing.
I kept reminding myself that these negative feelings weren’t a sign of anything going wrong. This was what it felt like to take a risk, follow an inspiration, create something new. I was feeling them, willing to feel them, in service of something bigger than my comfort. This didn’t make the emotions comfortable, but it made them more bearable.
What Are You Willing to Feel?
Think about that goal or dream you have—maybe the one you don’t even dare say out loud yet. If you were to really go for it, what emotions would you be willing to feel?
Not the emotions you hope to feel (though by all means, include those too). I’m talking about the difficult ones. The ones that make you want to retreat back to the safety of your current life.
What would you be willing to feel, in support of that dream?
Make your own list. Write it down. Keep it somewhere you can see it.
Because here’s what I’m learning: our capacity to feel difficult emotions is directly proportional to the size of the life we’re willing to live. When we expand our emotional range—when we become willing to feel the full spectrum of human experience—we expand our possibilities.
The emotions aren’t the problem. Our unwillingness to feel them is.
Your dreams are waiting on the other side of your willingness to feel.
P.S. I wrote to my teacher, the wonderful Sara Fisk, and told her how much her index card story helped me this summer, five years after our course concluded. Her response reminded me how much it means to people when we tell them their words mattered.
Consider dropping a note to a teacher or mentor who helped shape you long ago. Tell them how their wisdom is still rippling through your life. It will mean the world to them—and be good medicine for you too.
