I wrote a MIT regarding this very topic of how to deal with fear of the unknown and I used fog as an example to symbolize the concept of the unknown. I wanted to write about this on the blog so that RSS subscribers who didn’t get the MIT in their email would be able to benefit from it as well.

Whenever we try to start a new venture and look down the road, it seems to be shrouded in the thickest fog. We can’t really see that far into it. We can only see what’s in front of us a couple feet.

There’s too much unknown out there. Too much fog. We don’t know what’s there lying up ahead and that starts to breed fear.

So what do you do now?

At first glance, if you’ve ever seen really thick fog early in the morning, it may seem as if there’s no way you would be able to drive in it. Yet when you get in your car and press the accelerator, you begin to see that’s not the case. The fog that looked to be so impenetrable out your bedroom window turned out to be very transparent. And as you begin to move forward, you realize you begin to see what you couldn’t see before in your original position. You move to another “zone” where everything is clear within a radius of a few feet, but you can’t see what’s up ahead any further than that.

That is, until you begin to move some more.

Then the same thing happens. You move to a new “zone” where you can again see clearly what you couldn’t see before in a radius of a few feet around you. You look at what’s in front of you and what’s around you and you find yourself able to see the street signs, landmarks, buildings etc., and you use all that to help you make the decision of where you want to go next.

The important thing to remember is that each new “zone” will show you enough to help you make the decision of where to go to next.

One of the main reasons why fear of the unknown has such a strong hold on us that it paralyzes any form of action is that we don’t see how everything is going to work out from start to finish.

And it’s true. You can’t see how it’s going to work out from start to finish, simply because you’ve never done anything like it before.

But if you just concentrate on each zone, to see what you can see clearly around you, the signs, the people, the buildings – and leverage all that to help make your next decision, you can move to a new zone with new information.

Just because you can’t see it NOW in your current “zone”, doesn’t mean the solution you’re seeking doesn’t exist. You just have to keep on moving forward in order to see it or at the very least, get more information on how to get to it.

Fog looks to be very dense, but when you’re in the thick of it and move forward, it becomes very apparent that it’s not as dense or “solid” as it seems.

It’s exactly the same thing with our fear of the unknown. It appears to be heavy, but when you do the best with what you’ve got, take a course of action and move forward, you’ll find yourself in a whole new “zone” with a whole new set of surroundings with new street signs, people, landmarks - information that you can use to determine how to get to the next zone you want to go to safely.

If the fear of the unknown ever starts to creep up on you, paralyzing any form of action on your part, keep this fog paradigm in mind. Look around your current position right now and use all that information to make the best decision as to what you’re going to do next.

Then do it.

And when you do, you find yourself in a whole new “zone” with a whole new set of information that you can combine with what you learned earlier to make even better decisions on where to go next.

As you continue to do this over time, the “sun” of experience and knowledge will start to come up, ultimately clearing up all the dense fog and showing you exactly the path you need to take to get to your destination and you’ll find yourself no longer fearing the unknown.

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