Too Afraid for the Trollveggen

People who get to know me through my professional work as a speaker often comment on the confidence I bring to the stage, which is always nice to hear. It’s just a fact of my personality that I am, for the most part, a confident person, especially when I’m in front of an audience or behind a camera. But the truth is, if you take me off stage and put me somewhere high, I don’t just lack confidence, I can be gripped by  almost paralyzing fear. I do fine with the things that other people can be afraid of—small spaces, snakes, spiders. But heights? Heights can undo me.

Some people are able to pinpoint a reason for their phobia, like a traumatizing childhood memory, but I can’t. I simply don’t remember a time when a fear of heights has not been a part of my experience as a human being. It’s my own inner Terminator: it can’t be reasoned with or bargained with. It has no pity or mercy. Anytime I’m somewhere higher up than a step ladder will take me, looking down at anything other than solid ground, I am terrified.

A fear like mine can be a barrier to choices I might otherwise make, and there are some times when I respect it. For example, I’ve never gone skydiving, and I am unlikely ever to. I don’t go on roller coasters or ferris wheels. When my grandchildren are old enough for their first trip to Disneyland, my wife will be the one taking them on the Incredicoaster; I’ll be the one happily seated on a bench with all the stuff, eyes down as they enjoy being lifted hundreds of feet into the free air.

Now, choosing your fear over the thing you’re afraid of is well and good when the thing isn’t really essential to human flourishing, but what if your fear is about something that matters? Asking for a raise. Risking a deal by holding the line on price. Quitting your job and working on your start-up full-time. Confronting a workplace abuser. Scheduling that first appointment with the therapist. Leaving a destructive relationship. Asking her to marry you.

When you know that what you want matters more than your fear, that fear becomes the thing you have to confront in order to achieve your goal. lt’s all a matter of gathering and using the tools you need to move forward.

Last weekend, I joined 30 of my fellow JavaZone speakers and some of its organizers on a trip to Åndalsnes, Norway for the famous Trollveggen, or “troll hike.” It’s a 6-mile hike with maybe 3,500 ft of vertical gain at the peak—a bit of work, even if you’re an active person. But it wasn’t the physical demands that were intimidating for me. 

Parts of the hike are on very narrow ledges and saddles with a sheer cliff on one side and long falls down a mountainside on the other. Thousands of ordinary Norwegians take the hike every year. There are vanishingly few accidents, but no rational statistic or other kind of cognitive process can dislodge my certainty in the moment, in both mind and body, that death is just a step away. It is on every level an irrational fear, but also a very present, very powerful, very somatic one.

That’s precisely what I felt as our hike brought us within view of the first saddle we had to cross. When I first saw it, I said out loud, “I don’t think I can do that.”

My impulse was to turn around and walk back down the mountain. But then I stopped and thought about what I wanted. And what I wanted was to keep going forward until I’d made it all the way down. To not quit, and to know that I hadn’t, even when I had the choice. I wanted to finish this hike.

So I used tools that would make me less afraid—my body and my mind. I used my eyes to focus on the parts of the slope that were gentler, or just the rocks immediately in front of me. With my hands and feet,  I felt the stability of the rebar supports driven into the mountain on the steepest parts of the trail. With my ears, I listened to the advice of the experienced guide who had worked with hikers like me before, and to the intentionally cheerful chatter of my friends, some who knew my fear of heights firsthand.

And with my mind, I reframed my thoughts from what I was afraid of to what I actually believed. I lost myself in thoughts about the theology of mountains, and how clinging to naked rock tens of yards above the rugged ground mirrored an unmediated encounter with the Divine Creator of all things. I even thought about writing this post.

Every step I took down the mountain chipped a piece of my fear away. Every step made the hike shorter, and me less afraid, until I reached the bottom. And once I was there, tired and calm, I had a richer experience to savor than if I had retreated down the mountain at the sight of that first saddle. I had hiked the Trollveggen—commonplace, perhaps, for the residents of the Romsdalen Valley, but a geographical and cultural treasure that I had now made a part of my own story. Because I found a way to dominate my fear, I dominated a mountain.

The fact is, fears always present themselves to us as not just the worst possible outcome, but the most certain one. That will almost never be the truth. Are you going to be turned down for the new role? Possibly. Not win the deal? Once in a while. Shutter your startup? Perhaps. Die? Probably not today. 

Feeling fear is an inevitable part of what it means to be human, but surrendering to that feeling just because it’s present means missing out on victories that are often on the other side. The key to winning the fight against fear is finding a way to move through it. There's a deal to close, a new role to take, a mountain to climb, a new love to embrace, an abundant life to live.

Go live it.

Don’t be afraid.