NL Post #18 Fear can speak but it doesn’t have to make your choices.

“Curiosity is the compass. When fear keeps you stuck, use it to find your next step.”​
— Justin Charles Allman
​

Fear doesn’t always show up loudly.

Sometimes it sounds intelligent. Rational. Responsible. It gives us a hundred reasons why we should wait, stay where we are, avoid the risk, or choose what feels familiar.

Maybe now isn’t the right time. What if this doesn’t work? What will people think? Maybe it would be safer to stay where I am.

And because those thoughts can sound completely reasonable, it can be difficult to recognize when fear has quietly become the one making the decision.

That’s something I’ve had to learn to observe in myself.

Before I go any further, I want to make something clear: this isn’t about putting anyone down or implying that I’ve somehow mastered fear. I haven’t.

I still experience fear. I still hesitate, overthink, and question myself.

I’m not better. I’m just an observer.

I think about this the same way I think about skydiving.

When you’re inside the chaos of freefall, everything is happening at once—the speed, the noise, the adrenaline, the uncertainty. Your attention is completely immersed in what is happening around you.

Then the parachute opens.

Suddenly, there is space.

You’re still thousands of feet above the ground. You’re still moving through the same sky. The circumstances haven’t magically disappeared, but your perspective has changed. Now you can look down at the world beneath you and observe everything from a completely different vantage point.

I’ve learned to do something similar with fear.

I don’t necessarily try to eliminate it. I try to create enough distance to notice it before allowing it to make the decision for me.

That small shift in perspective can reveal something important: fear may be trying to protect us, but protection can quietly become limitation.

The more decisions fear makes on our behalf, the smaller our world can become.

We stop trying things because they might not work. We avoid conversations because they may be uncomfortable. We stay in situations we have outgrown because uncertainty feels more dangerous than familiarity. Eventually, we can become so focused on avoiding what might go wrong that we stop asking what might become possible.

That’s where curiosity becomes the compass.

🔷 Curiosity

Curiosity interrupts fear’s certainty.

Instead of immediately accepting the story fear is telling me, I can become curious about it.

What am I actually afraid of? Is this truly dangerous, or is it simply uncomfortable? What could I learn by trying? What might become possible if fear wasn’t making this decision for me?

Curiosity doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. It doesn’t promise that I won’t fail or that everything will unfold exactly the way I want.

It simply reminds me that fear’s prediction is not the only possible future.

Sometimes that is enough to get unstuck.

🔶 Permission

Once I can see fear instead of simply reacting to it, I can give myself permission to move.

Not because the fear disappeared, but because I stopped requiring certainty before taking action.

I think many of us wait for a moment when we finally feel ready. We tell ourselves that once we are more confident, more prepared, more qualified, or less afraid, then we’ll make the move.

But sometimes confidence comes after movement.

Permission can be as simple as acknowledging: I can be afraid and still try. I can be uncertain and still take the next step. I can make a mistake without turning that mistake into a definition of who I am.

Fear can come along for the ride.

It just doesn’t need to drive.

🔷 Discovery

Once we move, we finally get something fear cannot give us: information.

Experience teaches us what works, what doesn’t, what needs to change, and what we misunderstood. Sometimes it reveals that the thing we were terrified of wasn’t nearly as overwhelming as we imagined. Other times we fail—and even then, we leave with something we didn’t have before.

Knowledge.

Perspective.

Experience.

A new question.

A different direction.

Remaining stuck gives us very little new information to work with.

That is why I would rather move, learn, adjust, and discover than spend my life trying to create enough certainty to guarantee the outcome.

🔶 Creation

Eventually, those decisions begin creating a different life.

Every time we choose curiosity over fear’s limitations, we create new evidence about ourselves and what might be possible.

Maybe the thing works.

Maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe the experience takes us somewhere completely different than we expected.

But we moved beyond the boundary fear originally created for us.

And that, to me, is where creation begins.

Fear doesn’t have to disappear before we live our lives.

It can warn us. It can speak. It can even make a convincing argument.

It just doesn’t get the final vote.

From Fear to Curiosity

If this reflection made you think about an area of your own life where fear may be quietly creating limitations, this is exactly where I’d invite you to continue.

Chapter 4 of Curiosity to Creation is called “From Fear to Curiosity.”

Beginning on page 27, I go much deeper into this shift and share the personal experiences that helped me understand how curiosity can interrupt fear before fear becomes the authority making our choices.

Later in the chapter, in “Becoming the Observer,” I explore the perspective behind the skydiving analogy and what can happen when we create enough distance from our thoughts and fear to actually observe what is happening within us.

Fear’s limitations are where the conversation begins.
From Fear to Curiosity is how we begin moving beyond them.

So here’s something to sit with:

Where in your life might fear be making a decision that curiosity deserves to question?

If something immediately came to mind, start there.

Then, if you want to go deeper, open Chapter 4: “From Fear to Curiosity” in Curiosity to Creation and explore what your next curious step might look like.

And if you’re ready to turn that reflection into practice, pair the book with the 30-Day Curiosity Reset Journal.

The book helps you explore the mindset.
The journal helps you apply it to your own life.

You can find both at curiositytocreation.com.

Until next time—stay curious, Curiosity Creators.

Author of Curiosity to Creation / Curiosity Creators​
Justin Charles Allman

Remember. Reclaim. Create.

Click below to get your copy today.

Explore the book

$7.00 30-Day Curiosity Journal Designed to help you move from Curiosity to Creation through 30 days of Curiosity, Permission, Discovery, and Creation.... Read more Get the Journal

​