I’m in the middle of a Brené Brown podcast interviewing Jim Collins. It’s excellent so far. At minute 37, Brown shared that a vital emotional barometer reading she uses to indicate when she might need to inspect her current life velocity/focus/capacity is resentment. I.e. when she notices herself feeling resentful, it’s a flag she uses to check her priorities and make sure she’s not either overstretching herself or deviating from her core purpose. I love the concept. I’ve been toying with something similar lately.

I’m becoming more and more attuned these days to when I’m feeling fearful about something, or when vague feelings of angst/apprehension/frustration/negativity can be pared down to a root of fear. Sometimes it’s fear of an unknown – most often how someone will feel/react or how a situation will play out. Sometimes it’s fear that I’ll fail. Sometimes it’s general fear that I’m not loved, valuable, or worth being around. Usually though, it’s tied to a specific experience or decision, future or past.

I feel like I’m honing in on spotting fear like a bird dog in training. I want to be driven by love, confidence, and humility. I want to exist in the security of the truths I believe even in occasions when I don’t feel them. And when I recognize fear playing into my motivations or behavior, I’m getting better at trying to call it out for what it is. This current season feels a bit like I’m learning how to play one of those pixelated arcade shooting games where I’m blasting pockets of fear into smitherines – or at least locking them in my sights and giving it a good go.

Would I be able to eventually erradicate fear and never experience it again? I definitely don’t think so. But it’s become an interesting practice and is a new spin on both understanding myself and practicing what I hope will prove to allow for decision-making.

Try it out. Let me know what your experience is. Or if you have a different red flag emotion/state, I’d love to hear what it is and what you do about it.

-LS

P.S. — In honor of one of his core values (curiosity) and his lifelong mascots (Curious George), Jim Collins has an animated chimp crawling up his professional bio on his website. It looks incredibly clunky, but I freaking love it so much. This is the kind of subtle character and whimsy I want to build into all of my brands.