You register other people’s emotions more intensely. You remember details more vividly. You perform cognitive tasks faster and better. You are more optimistic, more loyal, more forgiving, and more open to new information and experiences.1 Research by neurobiologists suggests that these “love chemicals” dysregulate your neocortex, which widens your perspective on yourself and liberates your mind to accept new thoughts and feelings. The work of psychologists such as Barbara Fredrickson, author of Love 2.0, shows that, while the evolutionary purpose of fear is to narrow your focus to a few clear choices—fight or flight—the point of love is to create in you such feelings of safety and connection that you broaden your outlook and build your strengths.

“And yet I find I can’t banish fear. It’s a part of being a human in the world. Feeling fear is as natural to me as feeling empathy, or joy, or anger. To pretend that it isn’t, to try to live without fear, is fakery. Real humans can’t do this.

With fear as our life’s companion, the best thing to do is what you would do with any companion: turn and look at them, ask them loads of questions, get curious, get intimate with them, and, in so doing, let them reveal you.

The first thing you may learn is that lots of your fears are focused on other people, and in particular what those other people think of you. This is not a problem. This is as it should be. When someone tells you that you should ignore what other people think of you, that others’ opinions of you are none of your business, please push back. You are designed to be concerned about what other people think of you. It’s part of what makes you human. The only people who are not concerned about what other people think of them are sociopaths.

So yes, it is wise and good to care about what other people think of you. As we talked about in chapter 12, their reactions to you are an important sign of how your loves are playing out in the world. You need to pay attention to their reactions—at least, if you’re interested in turning your loves into contribution.

… The second thing you’ll discover is that fear itself is not the thing to be afraid of. It’s not fear that causes the problems in your life. It’s what fear degrades into when you shun it.

Fear that’s shunned metastasizes into feelings that are deeply damaging.

By contrast, fear that’s examined yields powerful discoveries about you at your best. When you get curious and let fear in, what you realize is that your fears are yet one more sign of what you love. I am afraid to write this piece on fear precisely because I love writing things that can help you, and I so desperately want to be helpful. I am fearful of my mom being able to take care of my brother because I love them both so bloody much. My fears pinpoint my loves.

Try to change your relationship to your fears. Don’t banish them. Don’t fight them. Don’t turn and face them down. Instead, see whether you can learn to honor your fears—which means listening to them, being curious about them, and admiring them as part of the real you. Do this—gently, generously, kindly—and they will show you what you truly love.

On your journey, you’re told to dismiss your fears, to confront your fears, to step outside of your comfort zone. Yet this is all so misleading. Your big choice in life is not “comfort or no comfort.” It is “love or no love.” When you step into things you love, you will feel fear. That’s not just OK, it’s fundamental. So fundamental, in fact, that if you’re doing something and you feel no fear, then you’ve lost your love.

So, take the path of fear, because the path of fear is the path of love.