You're Not Stuck. You're Scared.
That split second between fear and reaction is your most powerful business tool
Have you ever really thought about what fear is?
Phil and I once went ziplining on one of the longest and most famous ziplines in Brazil. He was triggered by the height very differently than I was.
His body contracted. His breath became shallow. While we were waiting in line, he couldn’t really take in the beauty of the nature around us. He was moving forward toward the instructor who would clip us in, but you could tell his body was in a semi-frozen response.
He was tense.
I was more relaxed. Excited, even.
Same zipline. Same height. Completely different experience.
That’s the thing science gets right about fear… it’s not just the stimulus. It’s your nervous system’s interpretation of the stimulus. Otherwise we both would have had the exact same reaction.
Your nervous system detects a potential threat and mobilizes energy to protect you. It does that based on past experience, past opinion, past story.
Fear begins as a sensation. Sometimes it’s strong and obvious, like Phil standing at the edge. Sometimes it’s more subtle, the fear of being seen, of speaking up, of pressing publish. No apparent threat in the outer world. Just a quiet tightening. A hesitation you can’t really name it.
The sensation is the same system activating, even if the intensity differs.
Whether the threat is physical — if I step forward, I could fall — or psychological — if I step forward, I could lose approval, identity, belonging — the body does not clearly distinguish between the two.
It contracts. It prepares. It gathers energy.
And here is where everything changes.
That gathering of energy is not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of a choice.
You can react from it, run, freeze, pull back… and the contraction stops you.
Or you can pause, feel it fully, and choose differently. That same energy propels you forward faster than you could have moved without it.
The problem is, most of us never get to that pause.
Fear moves faster than thought. Something happens and the response is already there… before you even realized you were afraid.
The gap between what happened and how you responded disappears.
Working consciously with your body, in breathwork, in yoga, in any practice that asks you to stay present with discomfort, trains that gap to widen.
You practice feeling the contraction and choosing what comes next. Not to eliminate fear. To create just enough space to get curious instead of reactive.
That gap is everything.
Now think about your business for a moment.
Maybe you’ve experienced this. You want to write something bold. Say a truth you actually believe. But something tightens inside. You soften the language. You dilute it. You convince yourself it’s not the right moment.
Fear isn’t stopping you from speaking. It’s protecting you from being rejected. It wants you to feel like you belong.
The problem is, you don’t belong to that box anymore.
You’ve outgrown it. But your mind doesn’t know that yet, even though your heart already feels it.
And so fear, physiologically, is trying to keep the status quo. While spiritually, it’s pointing you exactly toward where you want to go.
This is also why so many of us fear our own success. Can I really have fun and make money doing this? Can I really be seen, matter to more people, carry more responsibility?
Fear guards your wounds, yes. But it also guards your expansion.
And without realizing it, fear can convince you that everything else is more important than building what you actually want to build. It will make that argument very convincingly. You will believe it. You’ll call it practicality. You’ll call it timing. You’ll call it being responsible.
Deep inside, you know what it actually is.
This is the gift hidden inside the contraction.
If you had access to the moment between being triggered and choosing your reaction — really had access to it — you wouldn’t avoid the fear. You would move toward it. You would go through it.
Phil breathed through that whole line. He felt everything, the tightness, the height, the weight of it. And he stepped off anyway.
It wasn’t as bad as he thought. On the other side he felt alive. Excited. That sense of pure adventure that only comes when you’ve moved through something that scared you.
And now?
Fear of heights doesn’t hold him back from experiences he actually wants to live.
That is what’s waiting on the other side of your fear too.
Not just relief. Freedom.
Fear is not only a physiological contraction. Spiritually, it is a doorway.
It doesn’t only show you where you’re wounded. It shows you exactly where you’re ready to grow, if you’re willing to feel it instead of flee it.
One of my favorite quotes, by Joseph Campbell: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
If you run from fear, you will never enter the cave. But once you feel it… really feel it… you are already at the entrance.
Fear is not the wall. Fear is the guide.
Let it lead. Follow with curiosity. That is the dance.
You know what scares me right now?
The Substack unconference event we are putting together in 2027. The scale of it. The visibility of it. The part of me that wonders if I’m ready for what comes with it.
And I’m choosing to move toward it anyway.
So I’ll ask you the same thing:
What are you afraid of right now, but keep choosing to face?
With Love,
Carolina
Fear and resistance in business are rarely random. They show up loudest around the things that matter to you most.
If you’re ready to stop letting them run the show and you’re looking for partners to help you bring your business to life book a call. Let’s explore