Mark: Here's a thought: What if the biggest obstacle to your success isn't your fear of failure, but your fear of success? That feeling when things go too well, and you suddenly want to hit the brakes. It's more common than you think. Michelle: Oh, I know that feeling. It's the panic that sets in when you actually get what you wanted. You hit a goal, and instead of celebrating, your brain just goes, "Now what? I can't handle this!" It’s a strange form of self-sabotage. Mark: That exact feeling is at the heart of the book we're diving into today: Fear Is Not the Boss of You by Jennifer Allwood. Michelle: Right. And Allwood isn't just an author; she's a business coach who built a massive online following after getting laid off from her 'safe' corporate job. So she's lived this journey of fear and risk-taking firsthand. Mark: Exactly. And she released this book right at the start of the pandemic in 2020, a moment when fear was basically the air we were all breathing. It made her message incredibly timely. And it all starts with her diagnosis of a very modern problem.

Mark: Allwood argues that for so many of us, the default state has become feeling stuck. And the really tricky part is that, on some level, we get comfortable there. She has this great quote: "We stay stuck because at least we know stuck. And at least stuck is familiar. And unfortunately, familiar feels good even when it is bad." Michelle: That is so true. The misery you know is less scary than the happiness you don't. It’s a known quantity. You know how to operate within its walls. Mark: Precisely. And she uses her own life as a powerful example. When she was 25, she was passionate about home decorating. She loved it. But when she went back to college to finish her degree, what did she choose as her major? Michelle: Let me guess, something practical and "safe"? Mark: The safest thing she could think of in the 90s: a computer degree. She was terrified of being broke, so she chose the path that seemed most secure, even though it had nothing to do with her passion. Michelle: How did that work out for her? Mark: It took her five years of working full-time and going to night school. She got the degree, got the desk job in a cubicle, and she describes it as feeling like she was slowly dying inside. She was doing everything "right," but she was profoundly stuck in a life that wasn't hers. Michelle: Wow, five years. That's a long time to live against your own grain. It's like that other quote she uses, "nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong." But that’s the trap of 'familiar,' isn't it? The cubicle is miserable, but it's a predictable misery. Mark: It is. And she argues that this stuckness drains everything. It makes you a worse friend, a worse partner, a worse parent, because your energy is just being consumed by the friction of being in the wrong place. Stuckness, as she puts it, robs you of options. Michelle: And it's not always a big, dramatic thing like hating your job. She talks about being a stay-at-home mom and feeling stuck in the monotony of diapers and kids' TV shows, and then feeling guilty for feeling that way. Mark: Yes, the guilt is a huge layer. Feeling stuck in a situation you're "supposed" to be grateful for. It’s a very complex, very common state of being. And it leads people to search for a cure, but often, they look in all the wrong places.

Michelle: Okay, so we've established we're stuck. The logical next step is to find a way out. But Allwood argues that the paths we usually take are actually dead ends. Let's talk about the first one: waiting for confidence. Mark: This is my favorite part of the book because it's so counter-intuitive. The world tells us, "Get confident, then you can do the scary thing." Allwood flips that entirely. She says, "If you’re waiting for confidence, you may be waiting forever." Michelle: So what's the alternative? Just do it while you're a nervous wreck? Mark: Pretty much! Her argument is that courage is the real goal, not confidence. Confidence is the result of doing scary things over and over. Courage is what gets you started. She tells this hilarious and brilliant story about her 68-year-old mother, Connie, who has a massive fear of heights. Michelle: Oh, I love this story. Mark: The family is on vacation, and they decide to go zip-lining. Her mom is terrified. But the staff at the course move so fast—they just strap her in, get her up the 95-foot tower, and suddenly it's her turn to go. She doesn't have time to think. And she does it. She zips across the entire course. Michelle: And her reason afterward was the best part. She said she just didn't have time to talk herself out of it. Mark: Exactly! "What would happen if you didn’t think, but just did?" That’s the question Allwood poses. Overthinking is the enemy of courage. And that's a perfect pivot to the second counterfeit cure. Michelle: Which is social media. The ultimate overthinking and comparison machine. Mark: It's the polar opposite of her mom's zip-lining experience. Social media gives us all the time in the world to overthink, to compare, and to feel inadequate. She quotes someone who said that when you're scrolling, "You are watching other people’s dreams come true at the expense of your own." Michelle: That's brutal, and it's so true. The book cites a stat that the average person will spend more than five years of their life on social media. Five years of watching highlight reels. Mark: And it creates this pressure to perform happiness rather than experience it. She talks about being on vacation in Mexico and watching people spend the whole time staging photos for Instagram—posing in the pool instead of swimming, taking pictures of their food instead of eating it. Michelle: That's a modern tragedy right there. She says we’ve become "more obsessed with looking happy online than actually being happy in real life." So what's her advice? Just delete all our apps? Mark: She's a realist, especially since her own business is online. But she strongly advocates for what she calls a "social sabbatical"—taking intentional breaks to disconnect from the noise and comparison. She even talks about how she's envious of her husband, who isn't on social media at all. He's just... living his life, completely immune to the comparison game. He's free. Michelle: That freedom sounds nice. So if confidence is a myth and social media is a trap, what's the actual way out? Where does the real work begin? Mark: It begins with something much grittier and far more personal. It begins with taking the first, terrifying step.

Mark: The real antidote, according to Allwood, isn't a feeling. It's an action. And she tells one of the most powerful stories in the book to illustrate this: her journey to completing a triathlon. Michelle: And this is coming from someone who was, what, terrified of water? Mark: Terrified. Couldn't swim. She was nearing her 40th birthday, saw a 70-year-old woman competing in a triathlon, and on a whim, decided she would do one too. She hired a swim instructor and spent a year learning to put her face in the water, to blow bubbles, to not panic. Michelle: That alone is a huge accomplishment. Just learning to swim as an adult is a massive undertaking. Mark: It is. And then comes race day. She gets into the open water for the swim portion and has a full-blown panic attack. She's hyperventilating, she's convinced she's going to drown. Everything her fear had told her was coming true in that moment. Michelle: I can't even imagine. What did she do? Mark: She remembered her training. She flipped over on her back, floated, calmed her breathing, and just kept moving forward. She finished the swim. She finished the bike. She finished the run. She crossed the finish line. And her takeaway was profound. She says, "I was forever changed when I did something big, hard, and scary, and proved to myself that it did not kill me." Michelle: "It did not kill me." That's the core of it, isn't it? That you can survive the thing you're afraid of. Mark: Yes. And that experience becomes the new evidence your brain can draw on. The next time you're scared, you can say, "Well, I was scared before the triathlon, and I survived. I can survive this too." You train yourself to do things scared. Michelle: And that's where she gets really direct with the reader. She has that chapter titled, "But Maybe, Perhaps, Supposedly, Staying Stuck Is Kinda, Sorta Your Fault." That's a tough pill to swallow. Mark: It is, but it's a message of empowerment. She's not blaming people for their circumstances or trauma. She's very clear on that. But she says that while what happened to you might not be your fault, your response to it is your responsibility. Michelle: It's the difference between fault and responsibility. You have to own your part in staying stuck if you ever want to get unstuck. She talks about choosing the hard work of obedience over the hard work of regret. Both are hard, but one leads to freedom. Mark: Exactly. It's about breaking those generational patterns, letting go of bitterness, and taking ownership. It’s not about waiting for fear to disappear. It's about deciding that your calling, your family, your future—whatever it is—is more important than your fear.

Mark: When you pull it all together, the book lays out this incredible journey. We start in a comfortable prison of being 'stuck,' we try to escape using the wrong tools—waiting for confidence, scrolling through Instagram—and then we realize the only key that works is courage. Michelle: It’s the willingness to take that first step, even when you're terrified. To choose action over analysis. To, as she says, saddle up anyway. Mark: And to trust that God, or the universe, or whatever you believe in, can't steer a parked car. You have to be in motion. You have to give it something to work with. Michelle: It really makes you wonder, what's the one thing you've been putting off because you're waiting to feel ready? Or confident? Or "good enough"? Mark: Allwood's point is that 'ready' is a myth. The magic isn't in the perfect plan or the perfect feeling. The magic is just in the doing. Michelle: A powerful thought to end on. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.