How Fear Makes Smart People Make Bad Decisions

Walter McKenzie
16 hours ago
3 min read

Amanda Crowell is the author of Great Work: Do What Matters Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else (2nd edition), with accompanying classes, podcasts and journal. She is a Doctoral Lecturer at Hunter College in New York, who originally published this piece October 22nd on LinkedIn. We cross-post it with her permission. You can contact Amanda via email.

“Slow down! Think for a minute! Stop rushing around like a crazy person!”

You know the scene. The character has just realized they’re in danger, and instead of hiding or staying quiet, they start ricocheting off the walls, screaming, slamming doors, and drawing the monster right to them.

It’s the moment in every scary movie when you can’t help but yell at the screen—because you can see the loop they’re caught in. Fear takes over, and every move they make to escape only brings the danger closer.

That’s a classic fear loop.

And it’s not just for horror movies. It happens to all of us when we’re doing something that really matters - something that could prove, once and for all, whether we “have what it takes.”

When the dream is that important, the fear of finding out you don’t have what it takes can make you panic. You rush. You push. You try to get to the end just so you can know, finally, whether you’re safe.

I’m living in that loop right now with my novel. I want the validation. I want the agent, the “yes,” the confirmation that I can actually pull this off. But every signal I’m getting - from my feedback readers, from my gut, from experience - is saying: slow down. Look again. Give it space.

I Don’t Want To

I want to be done. I want to send it out and get the answer. I want to know if I’ve made it.

But if I hurry, I already know what kind of feedback I’ll get: It feels rushed. It’s not there yet. It needs more emotional resonance.

That’s the cruel trick of fear—it convinces you to run when the real move is to stand still. It makes you rush toward reassurance and, in the process, guarantees the very outcome you’re desperate to avoid.

If I can stay in the discomfort of not knowing just a little longer, if I can resist the urge to escape by calling it “done,” I’ll give the story time to become what it’s meant to be.

That’s what it actually means to “have what it takes.”

🙄 Not perfection, but patience.

🙄 Not certainty, but steadiness.

After a decade of studying Great Work, I know this pattern well: When fear takes the wheel, it drives us straight toward the thing we’re trying to outrun.

This is one of the fear loops we’ll explore together in “Face Your Fear: How to Bring Your Scariest Dream to Life,” happening October 29th at noon ET.

Join us to uncover how fear disguises itself as productivity - and how to keep your footing when your dream makes you want to run.

Face Your Fear to bring Your Scariest Dream to Life

If your scariest dream is the one you can’t stop thinking about - the book, the business, the project that keeps circling back no matter how many times you try to shelve it - this month's FREE Great Work session is for you!

Join me on October 29 for “Face Your Fear to Bring Your Scariest Dream to Life.” We’ll explore how to work with fear instead of waiting for it to disappear, so you can finally move toward the dream that matters most.