The Break School

A few years ago, I had a surgery. After the surgery I visited my doctor regularly for a few months for check up. Every time the doctor picked up his tools to examine me, I would tighten my body. I would make faces as if I was in deep pain. My doctor was confused. He had not even touched me. However, over a period of time both he and I realized, that I was reacting not to the pain but to the fear of experiencing Pain.  In my head, I was expecting much worse than I would actually experience. 

Turns out, I’m not the only one to act this way. You would have often seen kids shout even before the needle touches them. According to a study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2017 annual meeting in Boston, more than 200 patients were asked before the surgery, to evaluate the level of pain they expected to experience after the surgery (On a scale of 1 to 10). After the surgery once the effect anesthesia had lowered, They were again asked to evaluate their actual pain on a scale of 1 to 10. The researchers found a significant difference indicating that people often overestimate the amount of pain they would experience from the surgery. 

There is nothing wrong in anticipating pain. In fact, it is super useful. Expecting pain or trouble forces us to be cautious and alert. It stops us from taking unnecessary risks. It pushes us to save money for rainy days and prevents us from doing stupid things.

The problem is we do not know how much pain will we really experience. More often than not, we overestimate the amount of pain, which hugely limits our growth.  

Let me give you another example and in this case the pain is not physical but unnecessary Anxiety.

I have been part of Toastmasters for several years now. It is a public speaking forum where a group of people meet once a week to practice public speaking. Whenever you want to deliver a speech, you book a slot in advance and on the scheduled day, deliver your speech in front of your club members

I have given more than 50 speeches. Now, that should make me a super confident and fearless speaker? Right?

Confident. Yes! 

Fearless. Nope. Not at all.

Even today, in the days leading up to the speech, I feel anxious. I curse myself for having booked the slot. I wonder if I should postpone the speech. 

On the day of the speech, I think of all possible reasons I could give to not give the speech. Reasons like –

I’m unwell!

Medical emergency at home!

Death in the family!

Hey, my tyrant boss pulled into some emergency task! I’m sorry Ill have to skip the meeting.

The fear of putting myself in front of people, the fear of delivering a mediocre performance, screwing up and being laughed at reaches its peak just a few hours before I’m supposed to deliver my speech

But I’m glad that I have rarely backed out. I have delivered my speeches, No matter how terrible I felt. 

And here’s the beauty. After every speech I have delivered, I walked out feeling great. Of course, I did screw up a few times. There are speeches I hate to look back at. But the pain of screwing up is no where close to what I was anticipating before delivering the speech. 

But here is the funniest (and most important) Part of the story.

Despite having this awareness, I experience the same kind of anxiety before delivering my next speech. I still tighten my body when I see the doctor despite knowing the examination is not so painful. Now, the question you may have is, 

Why do we behave this way? 

There are two possible reasons, 

Reason 1 – Loss Aversion

Noble Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman and his partner Amos Tversky have shown that our tendency to avoid losses is twice as much as our desire to make gains i.e, the loss or pain I would experience on delivering a bad speech would be roughly twice as much as the joy I would experience on delivering a good speech.  Hence my fear of screwing up, is far higher than my desire to learning something new

This behavior has an evolutionary reason. As Danial Kahneman writes in his book Thinking fast and slow “Organisms that treat threat as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce”

We are designed to respond to threats and rewards (opportunities). In early ages, threats were physical. Danger from wild animals, other tribes etc. Now, the threats are not physical but mental or emotional such as not meeting our goals, disappointed by our salary, feeling sad for rejection, not getting a like on insta blah blah.

When we are trying something, we anticipate failure, ridicule or other kinds of negative emotions. negative emotions are also threat. We don’t want to experience them and hence avoid doing new things to avoid feeling sad rather than achieve long term reward of learning something new.

Reason 2 – We underestimate our ability to cope with negative events

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert and Tim Wilson have shown that we often overestimate the impact of certain positive or negative events on our life. For example, he asked people how happy would they be after getting married, or how happy would they be after getting a promotion. Most people would give a score that is much higher than their current happiness. Naturally, after they got married or got the promotion, they were really happy but that happiness comes down after a few years because the marriage or the promotion became a norm.

Similarly, when people were asked how would they feel if they lost of limb, or if they were fired from their job. The answer would always be I’ll be crushed, or No, I won’t be able to tolerate it. But again Daniel Gilbert has shown that many people, even after having terrible life incidence, have returned back to normal level of happiness.

This is not to imply that losing a limb or job has no impact on your life. Of course, it does. You loose a specific capability. But what it implies is we often ignore or underestimate our ability to Adapt. We neglect our ability to cope up with failures or even the most terrible incidences of life. As a result, we often stay away from trying simple things, like a learning a new skill, or taking up new responsibilities. Because, We underestimate our ability to cope with negative events

What does this mean for all of us?

There are so many things that make us curious, so many things that interests us, so many things that we want to learn and master. But we rarely start because we are terrible at it now. It is painful to acknowledge we do not know. It is painful to learn something from scratch just because you love doing it because there is no immediate reward.

Can we avoid exaggerating fears and over estimating our pain?

You cannot eliminate loss aversion and tendency to overestimate pain. Neither do I have any magic pill or quick hacks that could help you overcome them. However, with some consistent work you can take control of what you do, despite these tendencies being there. Here are few things that can help –   

1. Consciously observe what are you afraid of Repeatedly – Let’s say you want to learn to write? or become a stand up comedian? But every time you try, you feel terrible. But no matter, how you feel, note down in a book what are you really afraid of and then do what you want to do anyway. Publish 5 to 6 articles, do a few open mic. Everytime you finish one, Consciously observe over the next few days, how do you feel? again come back to your note book and write down your observations. Compare your observation of before trying and after trying. If you feel just as terrible, Then don’t do it. But if you realize it isn’t as bad you thought, if you are actually getting better at it, then that’s your insight. When you make your next attempt and again feel terrible, come back to this note. Remind yourself that your body is fooling you, It isn’t going to be as terrible as your mind wants you to believe it is. 

2. Expose yourself to a little pain every day –  A few months ago, I started practicing Yoga. One of the posture I need to sit in is Vajrasan. It was extremely painful initially. I could barely sit for a minute. However, now I can sit in Vajrasan for up to 20 minutes at a stretch. How? Just by increasing the duration of pain every day. If you are afraid or hesitant to do something, You don’t have to do it in one shot. Expose yourself to your fears or Pain a little everyday. Let your mind and body get used to it.

3. Don’t seek perfection. Put yourself out and screw up a few times – You cannot build competency in something without doing it and screwing it up a few times. In most cases, doing something involves putting yourself in public view and exposing yourself to public scrutiny, judgement and even ridicule (Although in most cases people don’t give two hoots about what you are doing). Take it as a feedback.  See what worked and what did not and get better consistently.

In short, If there is something you want to do but you are frequently afraid to try, then just make note of what are you most afraid of, go ahead and try anyway and then reflect was it as bad as you thought? Mostly not. Now repeat the cycle.

This will not make you fearless or lessen the pain. but It will only make you aware of your ability to deal with it.

Good Luck. Do what you love. Everyday.