The "unknown" is scary

Over the course of the years, I've wrestled with things I'm not sure about, dealt with problems that I didn't know how to handle and explored where I had never gone before. These are what I call "The Unknown" -- that sphere of life where we have never been.

To me, the unknown looms like a big hairy monster in my path. I'm very inclined to decide that something else is more important at a particular moment than dealing with the unknown. The cool thing about the unknown is that it is pretty passive. It just sits there and waits. Unlike a real monster, it doesn't give chase when it sees me. The urgency comes when I find that I need to cross the path where the monster is so, eventually, I need to deal with it.

In my early years, my distract-ability combined with my ability to focus (or the converse being my ability to ignore anything that I'm not focusing on) gave me the protection from unknown monsters. I could just avoid them by focusing somewhere else. ("I don't even think I HAVE any homework.")

My fear of the unknown would produce fear if I was forced to confront it. This explains why I would get so angry when someone (usually parents or teachers) would remind me that I was avoiding my responsibilities. To me, responsibilities were putrid constructs. Who would want to face the unknown? Why would anyone want responsibility? It was like a curse. But they would talk about these as if they were privileges that I had to earn. I knew I was wrong somehow but I totally didn't get what value there was in responsibly facing the unknown. It felt much better to just avoid it.

The brain is a marvelous organ. Study psychology for a little and you will be amazed at how our brains will carefully protect us from painful memories or experiences. It's fascinating. The whole role of a shrink is to get you to the point where you will honestly face yourself as who you are. Everyone around you can plainly see what you are but you can't because your brain won't let you -- it's protecting you. The method is to walk you through your life experiences and get you to see things that your brain would normally not let you see (because it is protecting you from pain). Freedom comes from understanding how your brain prevents you from seeing/behaving rationally. Once you understand that, you can compensate and start to live a 'normal' life. (spoken by someone who has never been to a shrink)

My brain would never entertain the thought that there was anything unusual or wrong with my approach to the unknown. So, I would cheerfully proceed without ever questioning that maybe my approach was not the best.

Of course, as I got older, I found that this method of dealing with the unknown was not good. I found out that if you didn't pay the electric bill, you would find that you had no electricity one day and I liked electricity -- it allowed me to do things I wanted, like see and stuff.

So, it was many years of constantly having to deal with unknowns that gradually allowed me to see them and my default method of dealing with them. Gradually, my method started to reveal itself. Along the way, I had to face the horrible truth that it wasn't working. Interestingly, I had to discover that it wasn't working many, many times; kicking myself for not learning how to deal with this and vowing to never let the unknown get in my way again. I'd be like: "Good, now I got it, learned my lesson, never let that happen again!" Only to have it happen again.

But the fear and my reaction to it remained and is still there with me today. It's like the imaginary people that follow John Nash around (He's the real-life mathematician who's life the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is based on) At first I didn't understand it, then I fought it, but now I can't escape it so I just try to deal with it.

The big breakthrough for me came as I climbed the corporate ladder and took on leadership roles for projects. Through these roles, I found the skill to break down big, hairy, scary jobs into bite-sized pieces and focus on the next piece trying to avoid looking at the whole scare thing. Like my slow realization that fear of the unknown restricts me, learning to break things into smaller pieces took years.

I wouldn't claim that I'm good at this now -- I am not. I still find myself avoiding things all the time. But I have come to an acceptance of that and am able to admit that this is what is happening. I no longer blame someone or something else for what is only my fault. And it is a fault. It doesn't make me a lesser human being or anything but it is embarrassing to admit.

What I need to do is just face it. In fact, facing the unknown is not "unknown". I've been there before and survived. Reminding myself of that and then employing standard project management techniques, I muddle my way through.

So, for all of you like me, let's just remind ourselves that the sooner we start, the sooner the job will be done. Then we can go reward ourselves with Gin and Tonic's on the back porch and admire what a good job we've done!