Hope vs fear

There’s an immense power in language. The meaning of whole stories can shift with the adjustment of just one word. For some reason, the most vivid example I have of this was when I was a kid, listening to my dad explaining an old Roy Orbison song.

The song is called “Running Scared” and it’s about a man constantly worried about the woman he loves potentially returning to her former lover.

Just runnin' scared each place we go
So afraid that he might show
Yeah, runnin' scared, what would I do
If he came back and wanted you?

👆️ Those are the first few lines of the song.

The accompanying music intensifies slowly to induce a rising sense of fear and anxiety, so much so that we’re not really sure how it’s going to end.

The story could go either way… which one will she choose?

And then comes the final line: “You turned around and walked away….. with me.”

There it is! We breathe a sigh of relief because he keeps the girl and life moves on. It’s a feel-good song. Sort of.

However, if we change “with” to “from”, the song becomes a tragedy. That’s the incredible power of language that my dad reinforced in me. One word would have changed it all, and it was held back to the very end.

But even in this version where he wins, he never truly enjoys being with her. He’s too busy scanning the horizon for what might go wrong. Yes the girl chooses him in the song… but sadly he spent the entire song suffering. And that is the real tragedy. And it’s one that so many of us go through daily.

Hope and fear.

This is where hope and fear reveal themselves as two sides of the same coin.

They feel like opposites, but they’re both powered by anticipation. Hope is an aspiration that something good might happen while fear intimates that something bad might happen. Both pull us out of the present moment and into an imagined future. And both come with a cost. They drain energy, spike anxiety, and kill our ability to focus.

And don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for both fear and hope in life. Hope gives us lift. Fear gives us caution. We need them. But when they dominate us, we stop living where life actually happens. We live in tomorrow, next week, or next outcome instead of in the only place we ever truly have: right now.

“We lose the night in expectation of the dawn.” - Seneca

This quote sums up so much of how we live these days. In the modern workplace, this plays out everywhere.

• We hope the client will say yes. We fear the client they’ll say no.

• We hope the pitch lands. We fear the idea is going to fall flat.

• We hope the restructuring creates opportunity. We fear it’ll create instability.

So we live in a constant state of mental rehearsal. We run scenarios, write emails in our heads, replay conversations that haven’t happened yet. All the while, the only thing we can actually control is being neglected: how we show up right now.

That’s the hidden cost of hope and fear in life and business.

How do we stop “running scared”?

Here are a few simple practices that gently bring us back to where life is actually happening.

1. Name the story. The moment we notice ourself drifting into “what if” mode, we need to pause and remind ourselves that we’re telling ourselves a story about the future. That one sentence (acknowledging the story) is powerful. It creates a small but meaningful gap between us and the thought. We’re no longer trapped inside the story, but now we’re simply looking at it. We’re observers instead of participants. This matters because our brain can’t tell the difference between an imagined threat and a real one. When we replay a feared future, our body reacts as if it is already happening. Heart rate up. Muscles tight. Shallow breathing etc. Naming and observing the story reminds our nervous system that it’s not reality yet. Yes, it’s a possibility, but possibility is something we don’t need to cling to.

2. Come back to the senses. This is the “5-4-3-2-1 tool”. Anticipation lives in the head while safety lives in the body. So when we feel ourself spiraling, we can return home by anchoring into what is real. Take a breath and pay attention to our sense. We can name 5 things we can see. 4 things we can feel. 3 we can hear (near or far). 2 that we can smell (or we can remember a smell we like). And finally, 1 we can taste. It sounds simple, but it works because it moves us out of imagined futures and into the space we’re in, this breath, this moment. And more often than not, we’ll discover that right here, right now, we’re OK.

3. One grounding question. Get down to the best next step. Action beats thinking so we need to ask one small question that helps us find steadiness. “What is actually required of me in this moment?” Maybe it’s sending one email. Taking one breath. Making one decision. Or simply resting. This simple question shrinks life back down to something we can carry lightly instead of something that presses on us from all directions. When we stop gripping the future so tightly, we often make better choices for it.

They make songs like “Running Scared” because it’s just how we are as humans. We worry and fuss and hope, and it costs us the joy of the moment we’re in.

So we should take care to pay more attention, because we can’t forget that this messy, uncertain, ordinary moment is the perfect place for love, courage, and resilience to be practiced.

So take a big breath. And enjoy the music. 😄 

Carré at Resilient Minds

PS - scroll down for the full lyrics if you’re interested. And feel free to hit reply and share your thoughts on the 5-4-3-2-1 tool (or any others that keep you present).