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"Don't be fear-less. Be fear-intelligent!" - Jacqueline Wales
The following is a synopsis of the keynote speech I gave at the University of California NOW Conference this week.
Have you ever driven a car with the handbrake on?
The engine groans, everything feels off, you're pushing forward but something's fighting you. Then that moment when you realize what's happening... you release the brake and the car surges forward like it's been unleashed.
Most of us are driving our careers—and our lives—with the handbrake on. That handbrake is fear.
After 70+ years of wrestling with fear, losing everything in 2008, and rebuilding from scratch at 54, here's what I know: Fear isn't your enemy. It's your fuel.
Where Fear First Takes Hold
My first memory: I'm three years old, hiding under a table while my father throws a vase at my mother. My tiny brain is going absolutely mental—stress hormones swarming like angry bees, adrenaline and cortisol rushing to my defense. My response? I froze. Like a deer in headlights, except the headlights were my chaotic family life.
By five, I'm hiding in wardrobes, barely breathing, hoping my father—built like a bodybuilder from years working the docks—won't find me. That's where the handbrake first locked into place.
These stress hormones became like a car alarm that wouldn't turn off. I was hypervigilant to anything that felt like a threat, real or imagined.
Fast forward to twenty years old. I'm lying in a hospital bed after giving birth. There's a social worker with adoption papers—everything's arranged, smart and logical. But holding my daughter, something breaks open inside me. This primal fear bigger than anything I'd ever felt floods through me. I make a split-second decision to take her home.
Except I don't have a home to take her to.
That desperate experiment lasted exactly three months until I spiraled into a place so dark I almost did serious damage—to myself and to her. That night, I realized I was becoming the very thing I'd been running from: a parent passing pain forward like some twisted family heirloom.
I gave up my daughter for adoption. It felt like the ultimate betrayal, but it also started to shape me.
Years later, I thought I had this fear thing figured out. Wrong.
2008 hits. Financial meltdown. My husband and I lose almost everything—our life savings, gone. I'm fifty-four with no corporate resume, no business experience, and no obvious path forward. Fear wasn't just driving with the handbrake on anymore—it was like fear had parked in my garage with the engine running and I was slowly suffocating on the exhaust fumes.
Fear Is the Most Honest Emotion You Have
Here's what those dark moments taught me: Fear is like that friend who doesn't sugarcoat anything. You're in a meeting trying to sound like you know what you're talking about, and your fear is under the table kicking you going, "You have no idea what you're saying, and neither does anyone else in this room."
Brutal honesty. Uncomfortable as hell, but at least it's real.
Fear often doesn't look like fear. It shows up as indecision, perfectionism, control, procrastination, or my personal favorite—taking care of everyone but yourself.
And here's something to consider: What if your deepest fears are pointing directly to your most important purpose?
Fear Is Running Your Workplace
Walk through any office and you'll see fear behind the wheel everywhere. The micromanaging boss terrified of being exposed as someone who doesn't know what they're doing. The high performer who'd rather eat glass than ask for help. The person staying silent in meetings even though they know the answer.
According to Harvard Business School research, 85% of employees withhold ideas, concerns, or innovations because they're afraid of the consequences. We're talking billions in lost innovation and breakthrough solutions that never see daylight because someone was too scared to speak up.
The cost? Astronomical. Not just in dollars, but in human potential.
Meet Resistance: Fear's Most Talented Actor
Before you think you can just "power through" fear, let me warn you about resistance. It shows up the moment—the exact moment—you decide to change something important. But it doesn't announce itself as fear. That would be too obvious.
Instead, it wears reasonable clothes and sounds totally logical:
"I'll start tomorrow when I'm less busy." "I need to research this more first." "I deserve a break before tackling this."
I've become a master at convincing myself that avoiding what matters is productivity. Three hours organizing digital photos from 2015 while that important project hasn't moved an inch.
Our brains are great movie makers. When we're afraid, our internal director starts creating imaginary disaster films that feel so real we act like they've already happened.
Don't believe your own bullshit.
Fear as Your Compass
Here's a completely different way to look at it: What if fear isn't a wall to break through, but a compass pointing toward what matters most?
Fear of public speaking? It's pointing toward your desire to be heard, to make an impact. Fear of failure? That's your ambition talking. Fear of success? Your soul saying it's time to expand your idea of who you are.
Martha Graham wrote something that changed everything for me: "There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost."
When you block your authentic expression out of fear, the world loses what only you can give.
From Fear-Less to Fear-Intelligent
I used to say "Be Fearless," but I've changed my mind. Being fear-less is almost impossible unless you're Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.
Instead, be fear-intelligent.
Fear-intelligence isn't about not feeling afraid. It's about having the courage to take the next step, then the next one, until you're confident you can handle whatever shows up.
Susan Jeffers nailed it: "Fear is our inability to trust we can handle whatever comes our way."
Do you trust yourself?
Fear Dating
This week—not someday when you feel ready—pick one small fear. Just one:
- Speak up in that meeting
- Say no to something you always say yes to
- Ask the question you've been avoiding
- Start the thing you've been putting off
Feel uncomfortable. Because nothing grows in the comfort zone. Nothing.
Here's the only guarantee I can give you: uncertainty. That's it. That's all any of us get. But uncertainty masks itself as self-doubt and steals your best ideas before you've had a chance to explore them.
What Fear Taught Me
The choice to see fear as my ally instead of my enemy was the game changer. After facing down fears of "not good enough," "not capable," and "not deserving," I've achieved more than teenage me in Leith, Scotland ever thought possible. Four books, a coaching business built from nothing, keynote speaking, a black belt in karate, and professionally trained singer.
The gap between who you are and who you could become is often just the width of your fear.
When you learn to use fear as fuel, it guides you toward a more expansive future and opens your life to more love, acceptance, and joy than you ever thought possible.
Take the brake off. Trust your engine. Drive forward.
Five Takeaways:
- Fear is data, not a directive. It's telling you something important about where you need to grow, not where you need to stop.
- Resistance disguises itself as logic. When you find yourself procrastinating on what matters most, you're probably face-to-face with fear wearing a reasonable mask.
- Fear-intelligence beats fearlessness. You don't need to eliminate fear—you need to develop the skill to move forward with it.
- Your unique expression matters. The world needs what only you can offer. Don't let fear rob us of your authentic contribution.
- Start before you're ready. The transformation happens now, not when circumstances are perfect or when fear finally leaves you alone.
What would change in your life or career if you saw fear as fuel instead of a stop sign?
Related: The Hidden Leadership Flaws That Quietly Destroy Businesses