The Shape of Fear
Week 1 of a four-part series on fear
We are living in a time of deep unmooring.
What once felt stable—institutions, norms, even our roles and routines—is now being questioned, reshaped, or dismantled. The pace of change is disorienting. The noise is constant. The ground underfoot, uncertain.
In times like this, leadership becomes less about control and more about presence.
But presence is hard to access when we are shaped—often invisibly—by fear.
Fear is not just a reaction to crisis. It is not limited to those big, dramatic moments we can name. It is a quiet architect behind how we show up every day—what we say, what we don’t, how much of ourselves we reveal, and how often we reach for safety instead of truth.
How we relate to fear is how we relate to power, to vulnerability, to truth, and to each other.
That’s why we begin this four-week journey here—not with strategies for fear, but with a return to what fear has shaped.
Because until we see the shape, we cannot reshape it.
Fear is not the problem.
Forgetting who you are in the presence of fear—
that’s where the ache begins.
Fear doesn’t always come loudly.
Sometimes it arrives in silence.
A hesitation.
A sudden desire to wait.
A breath that won’t go all the way in.
It says, don’t move yet.
Don’t speak.
Don’t be seen.
It tells you safety lives in shrinking.
And, for a while, it works.
But only by making you disappear.
— Soul of a Leader, p. 65
Fear doesn’t always feel like fear.
It doesn’t always show up as terror or anxiety.
Sometimes it sounds like logic: “Let’s wait a bit longer.”
Or it disguises itself as humility: “I’m not the right person to speak.”
It can even wear the voice of wisdom: “This isn’t the right time.”
And yet, under all of it, there’s a shrinking.
A pulling away from what’s true.
A disappearing of the self that was just about to step forward.
Before you ever led a team, launched a vision, or carried someone else’s trust, fear was already shaping you. Long before the job titles and responsibilities, you were learning how to respond to what felt unfamiliar, unsafe, or unknown.
You didn’t choose fear. You adapted to it.
You learned to be careful with your voice.
You learned what earned approval—and what didn’t.
You learned how to survive. And survive you did.
Those patterns became your inner map.
But now, for many of us, that map is outdated.
The leader you are becoming cannot grow inside the shape fear created.
Because while fear may have taught you how to stay safe, it never taught you how to be free.
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Fear is not the enemy
This series isn’t about defeating fear. That would only deepen its power.
Fear is not the enemy—it’s the echo of what mattered most: your belonging, your safety, your visibility, your sense of self. And like all echoes, it arises from the past. Sometimes it still helps. But too often, it speaks for a reality that no longer exists.
To lead from truth, we don’t silence fear.
We stop obeying it.
We give it a seat in the room, but not the head of the table.
We listen—but we remember who we are.
And this remembering is not a single act.
It is a rhythm. A practice. A path.
Pause and Remember
A simple practice for this week
When fear rises—
not as panic, but as tension, delay, or self-doubt—
pause.
Pause before the apology.
Pause before the fixing.
Pause before you disappear.
Let your awareness come home to your body.
Feel:
· The tightening in your chest.
· The breath that won’t go all the way in.
· The contraction that tells you to wait, shrink, or prove yourself.
This is not weakness.
This is memory.
Then ask, gently:
What part of me is trying to protect me right now?
You don’t need to push that part away.
Just witness it.
Thank it for its loyalty.
And then return—not to who you had to be,
but to who you already are beneath it all.
You don’t have to force confidence.
You don’t have to pretend clarity.
You simply pause, feel, and remember.
You are here.
You are safe.
You are not too late.
This is the beginning
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