How to Turn Fear into Courage

In a world roiled by AI upheavals, geopolitical tremors, and personal reckonings, Annette Simmons warns in Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins that fear-driven narratives cripple us. It narrows vision, stifles creativity, and traps us in fight-or-flight-freeze loops. But I've learned to flip fear into fuel, transforming it from a roadblock into rocket food. This isn't abstract philosophy. It's a battle-tested method for crafting "pull" stories—those magnetic narratives Simmons describes, fueled by hope, desire, and belonging—that draw us toward brighter futures.

Here's my contrarian twist. Fear doesn't make me stupid. It makes me want to be courageous and figure out how to overcome it. Certainty humbles. Apathy spurs action. My three biggest shadows have been fear, certainty and apathy? Now they're invitations, gateways to growth. Let me make this personal with a story from the Camino de Santiago, where doubt nearly derailed me, but a simple reframe kept me going.

Three years ago, on September 10, 2022, I froze before a weathered cement milepost—a "mojon"—just outside Belorado in northern Spain's Castilla y León. At 59, lugging a 20-pound pack after crossing the Pyrenees with my wife, Cristina, that marker hit like a thunderclap. We had 554.6 kilometers left to go to Santiago de Compostela. It did not indicate the ground we'd conquered, but the endless trek ahead. My ankle was swollen like a softball from old injuries, blisters wept openly, arthritis gnawed my hips and back. We'd trained through two COVID-locked years, evolving from 1-km limps to 12-km weighted pack hauls. But there, on day 13 of our 37-day odyssey, doubt whispered, "You can't." My fear wasn't theoretical. It was visceral, a cold sweat between my shoulder blades amid the morning chill.

This moment became my crucible for a personalized ritual, a postmodern, neo-medieval mashup of Stoic-Christian wisdom I simply call "premeditatio." Rooted in the ancient premeditatio malorum (premeditating worst-case scenarios), I've expanded it to premeditatio bonorum (envisioning best outcomes) and premeditatio probabilium (mapping likely paths). It's not wallowing in doom or chasing rainbows. It's alchemizing negativity into direction, ensuring your pull story is resilient hope, not fragile fantasy.

Step 1: Facing the Worst—And Surviving It

Start with the malorum: Dive into the abyss. How bad could this get? At Belorado, I pictured it all. I pictured my body breaking down, busing to Sarria (the "easier” 100-km start for certificate hunters), mingling with fresh-faced partying pilgrims instead of our sunburned Camino family. Skip the Meseta by bike? Miss those mind-expanding flats? Heartbreaks piling up? Disappointing Cristina, abandoning our big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) hatched in lockdown despair?

Then the pivot came. Can I live with that? My answer was raw and unflinching, grounding me. Yes, I'd adapt, resilient in even the darkest of narratives. This stripped fear's sting, forging courage from paralysis.

Suddenly, the mojon transformed. It was no longer a doom oracle, but became my sacred cairn. Pilgrims before me had stacked stones here, graffitied messages in a towering babel of tongues. Some of the scribbles were spiritual like "Buen Camino" or Bible verses etched in faded Sharpie, others profane with crude drawings of phalluses or swear words in multiple languages venting frustration at the endless path. Often they were political, such as "Castilla" or "León" scratched out in heated regional rivalry, or anti-EU slogans amid Brexit echoes. I even saw faded calls for Catalan independence. These raw scrawls capture the messy humanity of the trail, of local squabbles over identity, of the everyday gripes about blisters and bureaucracy, mirroring the internal battles we all carry: the doubts, divisions, and desires clashing within. I imbued this specific post with my meaning. We had already walked farther than those Sarria-starters do. Our choice to walk from Saint Jean Pied de Port was indeed audacious, our Pilgrim's Wager. If worst came, I'd live with it. Hell, I’d honor it still. Two years before I could not walk 2 kilometers without requiring a rest day to recover!

Step 2: Comfort in the Probable

Shift to the probabilium. What's most likely? This calms like checking a weather app in the morning before leaving the albergue. Oh, there’s a storm coming? And you prep without panic. In Belorado's shadow, I mapped out my realities. Could I not take better care of my blisters with Compeed lambs wool? Ice my ankle nightly? Defy my doctor’s orders and down one of those Spanish 400mg kidney-bucking horsepill ibuprofens at breakfast and then again at lunch? We'd baked in three rest days to our walking plan, and a few more would not derail us. Pinpointing probabilities turned my chaotic worries into actionable data, soothing my mind's frenzy.

It worked. We pressed on, and the metronomic crunch of aching feet on the Meseta's crushed gravel became a mantra. Overtaken by professionals pushing wheelchair-bound pilgrims? Pure inspiration amid the vast, windswept plateau, that unglamorous middle third you can actually walk, symbolizing life's flat stretches. No shortcuts were taken. We just persisted.

Step 3: The Magic of the Best Case

Now the ignition. Define the bonorum, the best-case horizon. This is your pull story's core, morphing vague dreams into vivid beacons. Giving you a conceptual map point to triangulate life against. Draw arcs, plot bearings, chart vectors. At Belorado, my best-case crystallized: taking one step at a time, dealing with each setback through workarounds. Nothing chased down those horse-pill-sized ibuprofens like a Spanish tortilla and cafe-con-leche. Kilometer-markers ticked down steadily. Next came Santovenia de la Oca, then Burgo, Leon, and Villafranca del Bierzo.

With my vision of Santiago locked in, obstacles sharpened into challenges. The universe conspired in our favor.

Sor Theresa's vise-grip blessing in Rabe de las Calzadas, her bony fingergrip sincerty lingering like a talisman.

An old blind man's "Buen Camino" near Mansilla de las Mulas, his cane tapping the road's edge.

We navigated cow-mierda rivers in Galicia's rain, our only two wet days on the Way, transforming into peaceful, magical reverie.

Hugs with Camino amigos, rounds of 1906 beers bearing messages like "The world belongs to those who have their own vision."

Roasted chestnuts from vendors’ calloused fingers, ancient trees witnessing our weary passage.

Joy surged after every dip—always.

This ALL echoes Spanish poet Antonio Machado in Caminante, no hay camino:

Traveler, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more.Traveler, there is no road; the road is made by walking.By walking you make the road, and turning to look behindyou see the path you never again will tread.Traveler, there is no road, only foam trails on the sea.

Paths aren't predestined, but they can be premeditated. Fear, certainty, and apathy? Shadow-triggers for amor fati, loving fate's messy opportunities. ¡Viva la meseta! Not because it’s glamorous, but because its a metaphor for the carve-your-path persistence that eventually got us to La Praza Obradoiro, bagpipes blaring, and “after" photos with far-flung amigos. I’m still processing the indescribable of my pilgrimage three years later. Maybe I always will.

If you're crafting a story to tell yourself amid chaos, looking for a way to overcome a fear on your own "Camino," give my remix of ancient premeditatio a stroll. Flip your shadows into thresholds and step over them. Let fear fuel courage. Your best-case scenario might just pull you, and those around you, into a future worth every step it takes.

¡Viva la meseta!

~Lance v22,677