When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
​
Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
I had mediocre grades, but I'm not a mediocre student
Photo Credit: Amazon
"Ask yourself, suppose they were high-pressure parents with regard to grades. So there I am with my own sort of photography business, right? And I’m in the astronomy club, and this sort of thing. And if I had high-pressure parents saying we don’t want Bs, we want As. Then I have to cut away those other activities to spend more time in the books to get As. Then I would have had As and then nothing else in my life would have developed. And that’s an interesting trade-off one is making of their kids as a parent. If you’re going to demand certain grades, it means giving up on how they could have grown in other ways that are not measured by grades."
​
In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Neil Degrasse Tyson took offence to a feature of him by the New Yorker. In one part of the article, it writes that "Tyson was not a distinguished student, and teachers criticised him for being inattentive."
Tyson shared that it was true that his grades were not great. He averaged "Bs" throughout his education. But while his grades were mediocre, he disagreed that he was a mediocre student (no doubt his disagreement is also boosted a healthy ego).
Having developed a deep interest in astrophysics, Tyson went all out to develop himself in this area. He was part of the astronomy club. He took extra classes at museums. He won scholarships to go on field trips in South Africa and England. And he forayed in photography (quite an integral part of being an astronomer), setting up his own darkroom to develop photos, some which he even sold to the local newspaper.
In other words, while the traditional and simplest definition of a great student is simply one that got good grades, Tyson subscribed to an alternate definition:
​
"It said that I was a mediocre student. Okay. I had mediocre grades, but I was anything but a mediocre student. I had all these other pursuits (as mentioned above) - it means I’m a doer. It means I have ambitions, it means I have a mission statement for myself and what I want to accomplish in life. And if you just want to go into the classroom and take a test, get a grade and have that be the sole assessment of whether you think someone is going to succeed, fine. But if you also recognize that there are people out there who get stuff done in their lives, then that gives you access to a whole other category of person who is out there."
​
This brings us back to Tyson's point at the top of this page. He was able to be a do-er, to pursue his goals and life mission because his parents gave him the space to do so. They allowed him, as long as he was doing ok in school, to commit to his interest. (Remember, this was a continuation of his parents helping him and his siblings find their interests in life in the first place).
Parents naturally want the best for their kids. And it's a tough balance, it really is. Every child is different, every context is different, and every relationship is different. Besides, not all kids develop such a strong interest so early and distinctly. And there might be some "interests" which parents might disapprove of.
So one question to always consider is, what is "the best" that you want for your kid? Are you, the parent, defining this for your child? Why are you doing so? Why makes you better qualified to do so? Does your child have his/her own definition of "the best" - and why should his/her definition not be the better one?
​
We'll end with what Jack Ma, the founder of Ali-Baba, told his son:
​
“You don’t need to be in the top three in your class, being in the middle is fine, so long as your grades aren’t too bad. Only this kind of person [a middle-of-the-road student] has enough free time to learn other skills.”