Why fear blocks your willpower

In my first piece, I wrote that you do not need the whole picture to begin, only a direction to hold on to. My last piece was about the will that keeps you holding on, and what makes it last. This one is about what drains that will: fear, and, more surprisingly, a certain kind of hope.

I wrote about surrender in both earlier pieces (on not needing the whole picture to begin and manifestation in practice): letting go of the outcome while holding on to the direction. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle explains why fear gets in the way of that. In his teaching, surrender means accepting what already is, right now, without resisting it. That is not the same as giving up. It means you let go of the useless mental resistance to the situation you are in, since you cannot change what already is, so your energy is free to deal with it. Fear does the opposite: it keeps your mind busy with a future that has not happened yet, and away from the situation you are actually in.

Fear does not only pull you out of the present. It also weakens your will. In my last piece, I wrote that whether willpower lasts depends on what it runs on, what motivates it. Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, whose book Steve Jobs reread every year, called fear one of the greatest enemies of willpower. Fear does not help you escape what you fear, it only paralyzes your will. Even when your willpower serves the common good, which makes it more resilient, fear still weakens it.

Together, these two teachings point to the same way out. Fear does not loosen its hold when you fight it, but when you accept it: surrendering to what is, including the fear you experience around that reality. Once you stop resisting, your willpower is free to be directed to what you can actually do. And that is what gets you away from what you fear, even if by then, in full acceptance, you would no longer need to. Fully understanding this is probably what helps most in real life. But acceptance can also be actively practiced.

The white bear
I started addressing this from spiritual teachings. But regardless of what you do or do not believe, the effect is real for everyone: fear holds you back. And research shows both that that’s true, and why fighting it does not work.

In a well-known experiment, people were asked not to think about a white bear for five minutes, and to ring a bell whenever they did. They kept ringing it. And when they were later allowed to think about the bear, they thought about it more than people who had been allowed to from the start. Trying not to think about something requires checking whether you are thinking about it, and that check keeps the thought present.

Fear works the same way. The harder you try to steer away from what you fear, the more your attention stays on it, and the more you fear it. Think of walking into a presentation with "don't mess this up" in your head, rather than "help them understand." Research shows what that costs: students whose main goal was not to do worse than others got lower grades. Fear also makes us put things off. Procrastination is a common way to escape unpleasant feelings like fear in the moment, at the expense of our path, our chosen direction, or simply what we want. But while putting it off brings relief now, that might not be the choice you want to make. Because it's either the fear that leaves, or the opportunity.

The same happens on the scale this is really about: replacing default with intention, to build an authentic, happy and meaningful life, rather than just ending up somewhere. A life built around avoiding what you fear is a default too.

A certain kind of hope
Hope seems like the opposite of fear: One anticipates what could go wrong, the other longs for what could go right. Yet they have something important in common: both have already decided how things should go. Fear refuses the outcome it dreads, and hope clings to the outcome it wants. In both cases, you stop accepting that life can still go in any direction, and you spend your energy on an outcome that does not exist yet, instead of on the next step you can take.

Obviously, hope is not a bad thing. Being hopeful is a desirable mindset, widely promoted, and for good reason. One of the best-known theories of hope defines it as having a goal, seeing paths toward it, and believing you can walk them. That is a beautiful and valuable sequence, and close to the steps from my last piece: a wish → an intention that makes a plan → willpower that acts on it. Research found that students high in this kind of hope earned better grades and were more likely to graduate than students who had scored just as well on their entrance exams.

Where hope can become a problem is in what you do with it. When you use it only to picture an end result, and not the path toward it, including what stands in the way, it drains your willpower: it keeps your mind in a future that is not yet real, where you cannot act, and away from the situation you are actually in. Research found that people who indulged in positive fantasies about a desired future achieved less. Their energy even dropped afterward, which researchers could see in their blood pressure. Graduates who fantasized most positively about landing their dream job received fewer offers and lower salaries. Yet the same research found that people who expected to succeed, based on what they had already done, did better. This is where hope can work against you: picturing the result gives the mind a taste of having it, so it relaxes as if the work were already done.

Now this may make hope sound tricky or a bit complicated, but it is really not. All you need to remember is this: let hope show you where you want to go, and let your will take the next step. Hope that only pictures the result stays a wish. It moves you forward once it becomes will. So the question to ask yourself is simple: does my hope make me act, or does it make me wait? Hope that points the direction and puts your energy into the next step works together with will. Hope that already enjoys the outcome works like fear.

Hope that feels like being grateful for the path works the other way. It enjoys the journey you are already on, rather than an outcome you have not reached, and so it remains effective in keeping you moving forward. Research points the same way: students who pictured the steps of studying for an exam, rather than the good grade, planned better, felt less anxious and scored higher.

So neither fear nor fantasy is the path that gets you there. Then what does?

What does work
When my daughter has to do something at school she feels a little anxious about, like an exam, I ask her before she walks out the door: what is the one thing you need today? And she knows to answer: self-confidence. That’s all. Not the outcome, and not hoping it goes well. Just the belief that she can meet whatever comes.
Research on this belief in your own ability shows that it shapes how much effort you put in and how long you keep going when it gets hard. Psychologists call it self-efficacy. It is trusting that you can do what the situation asks of you. People with lower self-efficacy tend to dwell on what can go wrong, while trusting yourself keeps your will with what you can do, whatever the outcome turns out to be.

Confidence does not require the fear to be gone. Remember the white bear: fighting a thought only keeps it present. What helps is giving it a place. In one study, students who wrote about their worries for ten minutes before an exam performed better, because the worry no longer took up the mind they needed for the test. And people who told themselves they were excited, rather than trying to calm down, turned out to perform better under pressure. Fear and excitement feel much the same in the body, like a racing heart, sharp senses, and heightened energy. Trying to calm down fights that energy, but calling it excitement uses it, and turns it toward what you want to do rather than away from what you fear. In that way, the energy of fear can become the energy that feeds your willpower.

Even simpler than writing it down is simply naming your fear. In one study, people who were afraid of spiders approached a live tarantula several times. One group put their fear into words each time, with sentences like "I feel anxious it will jump on me." Another group tried to talk themselves out of it, describing the spider as harmless. A week later, facing a new spider, the group that had named their fear showed the lowest physical stress response. And the more they had described their fear in words like "anxious" or "scared," the stronger that effect. Naming fear acknowledges what is, and that loosens its grip on the body. Brain imaging research suggests why: naming an emotion quiets the brain's alarm system and engages an area that helps regulate emotion.

Tolle offers a way to practice the same acceptance from the inside. When fear comes up, he suggests turning your attention to where you feel it in your body, and simply observing it, without judging it or acting on it. This way, you become the one noticing the fear, rather than identifying with it. He also offers a question that I have found to be the simplest and most effective way to become fully present in the now: what is missing in this moment? It allows you not only to observe and appreciate, but also to check whether you have a problem right this moment. The answer to that is no. In this moment, there are only situations to deal with or accept. Problems live in the future the mind imagines. It is not the easiest idea to grasp, but once it clicks, it can be life-altering. If it does, or you find this surrender through faith, I’m happy for you. Otherwise, there’s always the science.

In practice
Before something that makes you anxious:

• Take a few minutes to write down what exactly worries you about it, so it is out of your head and on paper.

• Picture the steps you will take, rather than the result you hope for.

• When you notice the nerves in your body, tell yourself you are excited, out loud if you can.

• Ask yourself the question I ask my daughter: what is the one thing I need today? Choose a quality that moves you toward the task, like confidence or seeing it as a chance to grow.

Replace default with intention.

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