Jenny Wood's 3 Types Of Fear

I was listening to Barrett Brook’s podcast ‘Good Work’ where he interviewed Jenny Wood, where she shared the 3 types of fear. We’re in an age where information is everywhere, so what matters more is the emotional impact and implementation of what we know. 

That’s exactly what I got as I heard Jenny’s story: She was a people pleaser, risk-averse, succeeding in every way you could imagine externally as an executive at Google… But was quietly burning out, self-medicating, and on a dangerous path.

She was living in fear, which is what made her sharing about it that much more meaningful. As Jenny Wood describes it, the 3 types of fear are:

‍1) Fear of failure. For many years, Jenny was afraid to put herself out into the world of dating. She couldn’t handle the hit to her self-esteem if someone said she wasn’t good enough, attractive enough, or desirable enough.

We all live with our own fear of failure and it roots back into our own feelings of unworthiness. If we fail we expect that others will think less of us, providing more evidence that we were never worth investing in to begin with.

‍2) Fear of uncertainty. As Jenny was in the midst of her burnout, she knew she needed out. But she was afraid she didn’t have the financial means to justify it. Leaving a comfortable tech salary for an unproven entrepreneurial venture flagged a wave of resistance within her. But she overcame it with evidence, sitting down to see what her finances would look like if she made the leap, and that infused enough certainty within her to give it a try.

The unconscious mind naturally gravitates toward familiarity because it's predictable, and therefore more psychologically safe. You know what you’re going to get. And the negativity bias of the mind validates this stance by filling in uncertainty with all of the reasons something can go wrong versus the potential upside.

‍3) Fear of the judgment of others. Jenny talks often about the importance of being shameless and selfish. The problem is, acting like that might make others think differently of us. It's a people-pleasing tendency many of us have, and Jenny worked through it by putting up stronger boundaries and swallowing her pride to do what she knew was best for her.

I’m a firm believer that if we didn’t care about embarrassing ourselves, looking stupid, or accommodating others' expectations of us, we’d live different lives that are way more true to ourselves. But, social conditioning has us trapped in patterns of playing small, fitting in, and doing what’s expected.

If you want to listen to Barrett’s podcast episode with Jenny, check it out here, it’ll give you a good sense for her work and message.

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