This week in #BuffyLifeLesson, let’s talk about fear. Of course I’m quoting FDR’s famous quote above. Another great quote is from Nelson Mandela, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it." And FDR wasn’t the only Roosevelt who had something pithy to say about fear, check out Eleanor: “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."

And bear with me while I quote myself. Back in the day I used to give a lot of talks on entrepreneurism. I had a slide that said simply, “Make your fear concrete, not abstract.”

So often, we worry abut everything that could go wrong. We worry, simply, that things will go wrong. (And you know what? They most def will at some point, in some way.) My contention was that you need to ask yourself, “And then what?” Ask and answer until you get to the really concrete worst-case scenario of your amorphous fear. Only then can you decide if the effort, the experiment, the risk, is worth it. You may find, when you really break it down, that the result of failure may not be fun or pleasant or easy, but it’s not catastrophic. It’s not something from which you cannot recover. As Genevieve Bell, an Intel senior fellow when we ran in the same circles, used to quote her mother saying, “If it won’t result in death or dismemberment, you should try it.”

How did that look for me? In the first two year of BlogHer’s existence, my co-founders and I were all doing consulting work while working on BlogHer. At the beginning of year two, we made an agreement to phase out our consulting work and focus on BlogHer 100%. That didn’t mean we were ready to pull in salaries yet. We worked another year not paying ourselves, paying other people, only occasionally reimbursing ourselves for expenses incurred. None of the three of us were independently wealthy, so for each of us it was a struggle. Personally, I went through my entire life savings in those two years, and took out a $50K line of credit on the condo I was lucky enough to have bought during the dot.com bust. We got our first round of funding and were able to start paying ourselves regularly just in the nick of time.

Lots of people would hear that and ask, weren’t you afraid?

In my case, the worst that could happen is that we did not raise that first round and none of us could afford to keep it going at all, PLUS my then-live-in partner would move out, and I wouldn’t even have someone to split expenses with. What would I do then?

The truth is having that condo was privilege #1…something I could sell. Privilege #2 was having family living in the area…to the point where I probably could have moved back into my old bedroom in the house I grew up in. And start over. And just get a job.

To be clear, none of that is what I wanted to happen, especially not at the age of 42. It did not sound fun. But the truth was I wasn’t afraid having a failed bootstrapped start-up would ruin my reputation. I wasn’t really afraid of being embarrassed or ashamed of it. I wasn’t afraid of being judged for it. I had money anxiety (and still do) but if I really fleshed the scenario out, the likelihood that I would experience a catastrophic result was minimal. The worst-case was unappealing, inconvenient, probably depressing. But no death or dismemberment looming.

So I kept making the leap.

The episodes of Buffy I watched this week (Season 1, episodes 9 and 10) were all about fear. And fear made absolutely concrete. Episode 9, The Puppet Show, features a creepy ventriloquist’s dummy. I mean, creepy to me because I saw the movie Magic at an impressionable age…dummies are to me what clowns are to some other people. But can you blame me?

Interestingly, a predilection to find certain kinds of people or objects (like a puppet) inherently scary can distract you from the people or things you really should be worried about. Interrogating your fear is also helpful to make sure you’re not fearing tropes and cliches, rather than the real risks you face.

Then Episode 10, Nightmares, is a very on the nose, nightmares-become-reality episode, and delivers three empowering messages.

Stephen Sondheim had it right when he wrote, “Children will listen,” but why stop there? We are all listening.

As per above, I watched Season 1, episodes 9 (The Puppet Show live recap) and 10 (Nightmares live recap)…two creepy episodes, but the first in particular full of humor too.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Episode 9 is that fears can reflect our personal baggage, don’t fall for the obvious, have a broader perspective.

The core #BuffyLifeLesson in Episode 10 is that you make your own nightmares, and you can face, address, push back on them too. Oh, and children will indeed listen.

What story about fear is part of your own personal mythos? I’d love to hear it! Leave a comment and let me know.

The final two episodes of Season 1 are here. And the first “big bad” meets his fate. It’s a short season, and Season 2 is an absolute masterpiece of a full television season. I can’t wait to dig in!

Hope you’ll join me! Subscribe here. And share, please do share this link!