How to make our worst fears our greatest motivation?

I was watching this episode of Brooklyn 99 (Season 5, Episode 14) in which Jake Peralta and Raymond Holt interrogate the perfect criminal, Philip – a dentist who murdered his business partner leaving no traces behind.

Even after 14 hours of intense interrogation, both these officers could not get an inch near making Philip confess. Until, they exploited a fear they identified in him during the interrogation – The fear of being considered a product of sheer luck.

Philip, as stated before, was a dentist. As a norm, he was often ridiculed as not being a real ‘doctor’. His insecurity or fear had made him so uptight that as he tried to defend his perfect alibis in the interrogation room, he also wanted to prove to the officers how good he was.

But when Jake tugged on Philip’s underlying insecurity real nice by calling the entire murder operation a product of ‘dumb luck’, Philip spiraled and confessed everything in a heartbeat. This was all in his attempt to disprove the relevance of his fear, to prove that all his dedicated efforts were not an outcome of sheer luck.

Now that I have summarized an entire episode of crime investigation for no reason, let me get to what I actually wanted to say. You see, our character Philip was so driven by his fear of ‘not being good enough’ that he went all out, to do away with it.

Consider all our actions during this pandemic. Why did we suddenly become so careful about our physical hygiene? Because now, we fear the obvious fact that we might die, probably a little too soon. Our fears have made us so cautious and motivated to be healthy that we started doing everything we can to prevent our fears from becoming our reality.

We often underestimate the power of fear in our lives. Today I wanna tell you that we can use this crippling emotion and make it our greatest motivation.

So here is a friendly guide to make your worst fears your greatest motivation.

1.       Identify a situation in which you need instant motivation: This point is by default, there needs to be a situation in which you lack motivation or desperately need to get moving but can’t, to apply our theory. Let’s take an example: I am a final year student in DU with zero motivation to study for my final exams due in 10 days because of the ambiguity of the exam process.

This situation has virtually every clause that qualifies it to be ‘below sea level’ motivation zone. What do I do?

2.       Identify your greatest fears in relation to that situation: This step involves imagining your worst nightmares come to reality. In the example, if I continue going down the path of no studying, chances are I will fail or score really low, dropping my average. But what’s my worst nightmare if I continue down this road? Suppose I want to get admitted to a good college, or look better in the eyes of my parents or feel a little bit in control of my life in these uncertain times.

Often times, the reasons why we do not act when a situation demands it, is because we fail to analyse the impact of the consequences on our lives. For once, if we make it a habit to truly evaluate ‘what will happen next?’ I promise you, we all will make so many better choices.

3.       Figure out what you can do to stop your fears from becoming a reality: Merely thinking about the consequences of our actions will trigger our brains to find a way out of the situation. Use that energy, use that fear tugging down your veins to find the best solution to the problem at hand.

The second you do that, you will be so motivated to get going my friend!

Disclaimer: As powerful as the emotion of fear is to instantly motivate you, it’s not a permanent solution. In these uncertain times, we are already fearful of so many life threatening circumstances.

The point of my rant was to prove to you that even the lowest points in our lives and our greatest fears have the capacity to pull us out of the darkest shadows and into a brighter, better life. Use it, use all that you have got, and all that you are to become the best version of yourself. Some wise owl once truly said, “Everything you will ever need to thrive in a lifetime- is within you” - even your worst nightmares!