MAKE FRIENDS
WITH FEAR IN
THE NEW YEAR
By Holley Gerth
Elite skier Nick Goepper stands at the
top of a mountain, blue sky above,
runway of snow below. Olympic athletes
like Nick face-off with each other every
four years, and with fear every day in
between. Fellow Olympian and halfpipe
snowboarder Elena Hight says, “Fear
is a very interesting thing. It can be a
very good motivator but can also be an
inhibitor. It just depends on how you go
about dealing with it.”
Can you relate? I’ve stood on the edge
of a challenge, verge of a breakthrough,
starting line of a new year, and thought,
this could change everything. In those
moments, we all need to know how to
make fear an ally rather than opponent.
Why We Experience Fear
If you could watch fear’s track inside
Nick Goepper’s (and yours), it would
start in the amygdala—a small, almond-
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shaped part of the brain in the temporal
lobe. From there neurotransmitters
communicate the threat to the rest
of Nick’s body. His pupils dilate, heart
rate rises, and breathing increases to
prepare for action.
O u r f i g h t - o r - f l i g h t re s p o n s e i s n’ t
accidental; God created it for our
survival. It bypasses the logical part of
our minds so we can react, protecting us
from danger. That’s why fear feels like
it’s out of our control. And, yes, that’s
true of the initial brain response. But we
can choose what we do next.
Change the Context
Alison Wood Brooks, a professor at
Harvard Business School, studied the
similarities between fear and excitement.
Biologically, the two are closely related.
The difference is how we talk to ourselves
about what’s happening. Researchers