On a breezy winter morning, 200+ people gathered in the headquarters of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to attend the inaugural speech of a freshly elected academician. All seats were taken so that many attendees were standing at the doors.
The professor delivered an awesome presentation with seemingly great courage. At the end of his speech, people went to him to congratulate on his presentation and achievements. The line was so long that it took me 5 minutes to get to him and extend a hand.
And then I grabbed the professor’s sweaty palms, looked him in the eyes, and congratulated him on his speech.
In front of me, there was a man who showed signs of fear. At least he didn’t feel comfortable about delivering a speech and dealing with people who all showed up to admire him. (Not only his palms were sweaty, but his eyes also revealed how uncomfortable he felt.)
It was a man probably in his sixties, a highly distinguished individual in the society, who was not long ago nominated to a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Probably he had already delivered hundreds of presentations and lectures worldwide.
Why, then, did he lack confidence?
And then it dawned on me that we all have our own fears.
We all have those sweaty-palm moments to deal with.
In today’s post, I want to address our fears and how to acknowledge them.
It all comes back to the ancient Greeks …
The courage to be disliked
Recently, I’ve read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga. Inspired by the ancient Greek forefathers, this book delivers a dialogue between a young man and a philosopher. It addresses Alfred Adler’s (a twentieth-century psychologist) thoughts on life. The Adlerian school proposed that everybody can control one’s destiny.
Interestingly, Adler believed that all problems in life are interpersonal relationship problems.
Importantly, you shouldn’t intrude into other people’s tasks and don’t let them intrude into yours, either. That’s called the “separation of tasks.”
What other people think when they see your face—that is the task of other people and is not something you have any control over.
It’s in perfect alignment with the ancient stoic philosophy.
The point is that you couldn’t match everybody’s expectations. True freedom comes, the philosopher argues in the book, when you develop the courage to be disliked:
Freedom is being disliked by other people.
This doesn’t imply that you should live life selfishly or in separation. Quite the opposite. Adler’s philosophy concludes that happiness comes through contribution to others.
At the very heart of Adlerian philosophy is the assumption that all interpersonal relationships should be horizontal ones. Vertical relationships are bad. It’s OK to have a workplace hierarchy, but a boss and a subordinate should cultivate a horizontal relationship.
So, what we can grab from this philosophy is that developing courage is key. And it’s only you who makes the decision.
The courage to do big things
When it comes to the big things in life, we’re often paralyzed by our fears and fail to take action.
Successful individuals will tell you that you should take the leap if you want a more fulfilling life.
Take me as an example. I’m an introvert. Everybody knows it. I got my face turned red whenever I’m in front of people.
The first time I was giving a presentation in front of a 50+ audience, I was almost paralyzed by fear. My face was burning. I almost needed to call Fireman Sam to put out the fire. I wanted to get the hell out of there.
By the time I delivered my presentation as a doctoral candidate, however, my fears faded away. And I got nice feedback about my confident speech. (Even though I consider myself a fairly bad lecturer.)
Another example was launching my blog.
Before I hit publish on Productivity95 for the first time, I was hesitant whether I should press that button.
But from a distant perspective, launching my blog was one of the smartest decisions in my life. It took time, of course, to build the courage (ha!) to do it. But then, there was no other way than doing it.
With time and deliberate practice, your fears might vaporize or, at least, you’ll learn how to deal with them. You should be ready to take action when opportunity knocks.
Just for the poetic inspiration, let’s end this post with some lyrics from Nas’ Big Things:
… I’m tired of games
I’m into big things
Gotta get my life together man
‘Cause now I’m into big things
Tired of talkin’ small talk
‘Cause now I’m into big things
I’m into big things
The big things
The big things
If this content resonated with you, please share it with the people around you.
Image credit: Alex Block on Unsplash