Dancing With Fear

R is rising up and down in the break zone. One hand grasps her paddle, the other the over-turned kayak. She is 100 or so metres off-shore. Far enough that we cannot help her and I have to zoom right in with my camera to take a photo. I feel a bit guilty. There is nothing pleasant about failing five attempts at a roll in the surf and eventually wet exiting, finding yourself far from shore, no help at hand, a long swim in; the swim of shame that hurts as much from defeat as it does from taking a beating in the incessantly breaking waves. I know, I have done it so many times.  

The last few days have been a blur of paddling in big swells and windy conditions that culminated here, on a windswept empty beach with a decent swell rolling in and a messy sea whipped up by northerly winds.

This is my fourth day paddling in a row. I pack my gear the night before, in the morning, I get up, give myself a pep talk and head out kayaking, each day doing something I dread, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot. Mostly, I am trying to get my roll, which is reliable on both sides in reasonable conditions, bomb-proof when tossed about in the surf. I have failed so many times that envisaging success is getting harder and harder, but is essential for success. If you don’t think you can do something, you are certainly right.

I have been thinking a lot about fear and habits, learning and confidence lately. One thing I have learnt in this life is that you don’t change yourself by force of will, you change by habit. If you want to get fit, lose weight, write a book, become a kayaker, you have to put in place the habits that fit people, lean people, authors and kayakers practice. First the habits, then the belief – “I am a fit person/lean person/author/kayaker,” and finally, if you can keep the habits going through easy days and hard weeks, you eventually become fit, lean, a writer or a kayaker.

But humans respond to aversive stimuli no differently to any other biological animal and if the habit you are building day by day involves an immediate but negative reward continuing to pursue the habit goes against all our evolutionary drives and requires a certain degree of mental tenacity to persist with.

Faff your roll in the surf, bail out, get beaten about the head by the kayak and the surf, swim into shore through a rip towing a 5 metre boat full of water with one hand and grasping a paddle in the other, empty boat, repeat, requires the unthinking persistence of a ferret on the scent of a rabbit. Dreading getting back in the boat in the morning seems a not unreasonable response.

And then, there is fear. Coincidentally, the day after I read about using immediate aversive rewards to help rewire unhelpful habits in James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits” and realised that my dread of rolling in the surf was supported by science, I read the text below that Will Gadd (well known Canadian alpine climber, kayaker, general bad-ass) wrote about fear:

Fear is not the enemy, or to “be overcome.” It’s one of the most powerful tools I have for surviving and thriving in daily life and high-stakes environments—if I choose to engage, dance with it. Listen to it, understand it, learn and grow with it, use it to change. Or ignore it, understand less, shrink mentally, die either slowly from living in fear, or quickly because my mind shuts down when it should be open.

I used to feel ill before I competed in anything. I had a bag of fears bigger than Santa’s gift bag, and it was hard to move with that load. I finally stopped and asked, “Why?” I feared the results. I feared climbing/flying/paddling like shit in front of small or massive crowds. I feared so many things I couldn't focus on the act of competing. And that was the answer: I was worried about the wrong stuff. I started worrying about the right stuff. It didn’t make the fear go way, but it drove me to train harder, stop worrying about results, and perform at my best. Overcoming the fear and competing wasn’t enough; understanding it and using it was. I use that same tool for new routes, presentations, business pitches, now, whatever scares me: Listen to it. Talk with fear. Use it strip away the irrelevant and focus. Time to dance with it again.

Fear is not the enemy. It’s a focusing lens that allows me to see myself and my situation. Or blinds me to the same. It’s the same lens, but I see through it differently depending on who I am that day.

No one “overcomes” fear. At best we can temporarily ignore it. That is not a victory, it’s a delayed defeat. It’s the crux battle pushed into the future, and it just gets bigger and harder to kill.

Hello fear, let’s dance. It's never the same dance, we're gonna make a new one up together today. Anyone else dancing?

My dance with fear has been a form of exposure therapy. Capsize, roll – or not – repeat, over and over. Each time, I get more comfortable, I take a bit longer to set up, I focus on floating the paddle over the water, I relax, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but the important part is to set up and try again. Start in small surf, build up to bigger surf. Eventually, if I can keep the habit streak going, I will be a kayaker who rolls in the surf.

R, in the meantime, has finally let go of the kayak, which loaded with water now, hurtles to the beach on a series of slamming waves. Doug and I weave about, ready to catch the boat, but not get hit in the process. R, with a hand free now, swims into shore, scrambles up onto the beach, her own dance with fear over.