Bravery is an uncomfortable choice

Excitement and fear start at the same place

When I was at MIT, a senior administrator introduced me to a Head of State. "This is Layla, she is fearless," he said. The description took me aback. I have always known myself to be fearful. But I push past the fear.

That moment crystallized something I'd been thinking about for years: the relationship between fear and execution, and how to channel fear into action. Most people think courage means the absence of fear. But courage is actually about what you do with fear when it shows up. Bravery isn’t an invisible shield, it’s an uncomfortable choice. Bravery is a muscle.

EXCITEMENT IS FEAR

Science proves me right: excitement and fear are physiologically almost identical. Same racing heart, same energy surge, same heightened awareness. The only difference is interpretation and response.

Successful people have learned to read that sensation as "go" rather than "stop." They've trained themselves to interpret excitement as intelligence pointing toward opportunity, not as a warning to be cautious. And the momentum ensues. they feel loss more, and harden towards it. Even Olympians feel fear.

Research shows people feel losses 2.25x more intensely than equivalent gains. This explains why the fear response often overrides excitement even when the opportunity is objectively good (Kahneman & Tversky). The longer people deliberate, the more loss aversion kicks in.

Allowing that feeling to kick you into “go” mode enables speed. And speed is everything.

TIME KILLS EVERYTHING

The single most important factor in success is the speed of decision making and execution.

I talk to people all the time who tell me they plan to write a book, start a company, launch a podcast. Nine times out of ten, when I catch up with them later, they never did the thing. They didn't trust their gut.

Fast decision-makers capture opportunities while others are still analyzing or afraid . They understand that perfect information doesn't exist, and waiting for it means missing windows that won't reopen. Speed compounds — each quick decision builds momentum for the next.

MIT research by my advisor and company’s first champion, Dr Sandy Pentland, found that teams who began executing within 24 hours of making a decision were 5x more likely to achieve their goals than those who waited a week or more. The implementation gap grows exponentially with time.

THE FROZEN CYCLE

Here's the trap most people fall into:

The more you think, the less you do. The less you do, the worse you feel. The worse you feel, the more you doubt. The more you doubt, the less you do. The less you do, the worse you feel. The worse you feel, the less you believe. The less you believe, the more often you are to fall into this cycle.

This cycle is deadly because it masquerades as being thoughtful and careful. But it's actually just fear dressed up as prudence.

Harvard research by Thomas Gilovich found that people regret things they didn't do 84% more than things they did do. The top life regrets were "not pursuing education," "not taking career risks," and "not expressing feelings" — all speed-related failures, not action-related mistakes.

EXECUTION SHARPENS JUDGMENT

When you push through fear, you gain more experience. Experience isn't just about knowledge accumulation — it's about pattern recognition. Veterans can quickly identify what matters and what doesn't, cutting through noise to make quality decisions rapidly. They've developed intuitive filters that let them move fast without being reckless.

But here's the catch: you can't develop this judgment without making decisions and living with the consequences. The only way out is through.

YOU WILL LIVE THE LIFE YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO IMAGINE

Most people's lives are constrained not by external circumstances but by what they dare to envision. The gap between current reality and imagined possibility creates the very excitement-fear response that either propels you forward or freezes you in place.

You will live the life you had the courage to imagine for yourself. Not the life you deserved, not the life you were entitled to, but the life you were brave enough to envision and fast enough to execute.

THE FEAR OF PERCEPTION

The people who have tried what you're doing and failed, or who are scared you're going to be better than them, are going to say the most. They'll disguise their fear as concern. They'll call your excitement recklessness. They'll mistake their caution for wisdom.

Don't listen.

THREE GENERATIONS OF MISTAKE TOLERANCE

When my daughter was four, she fell and made a comment along the lines of "I am so clumsy." She had heard someone in our orbit refer to her as clumsy and repeated it back to me. I stopped her and said, "No, you aren't clumsy. You are adventurous. And the more adventurous you are, the more you will fall. If you sit still, you will never fall."

I have since repeated that sentence to her so many times that she repeated it back to me after I tore my ACL: "It's okay, Mama — you are adventurous. The more you play, the more you get hurt."

Recently someone asked me how I am dealing with the length of ACL recovery. I recalled a moment after injury when my mom said to me “ACL recovery is tough, but you are disciplined — so you will get through.” My mother’s first reaction to my injury was my discipline. Not that I made a mistake. Or that I was in for something intolerable. Or even something inconvenient. My parents built a solid mistake tolerance in me. And I was teaching that tolerance to my daughter.

Sometimes we create self-fulfilling beliefs (good and bad) in children ourselves. Sometimes we live the realities (good and bad) that other people prescribed for us. Because when you tell a kid something, they listen. Even near their fourth decade of life.

The same is true for the stories we tell ourselves.

Fear thrives in psychological safety, so make failure safe.

NO, YOU DON’T DESERVE IT

Here's the disconnect that kills execution: "I am worth X" or "I deserve X" is the worst type of thinking because it abstracts expectations from reality.

The world doesn't owe you anything based on your inherent worth. Success comes from what you do, not who you are. It comes from speed of execution, not depth of entitlement.

YOUR ACTIONS CREATE YOUR REALITY

Stanford research by Peter Gollwitzer found that people who make implementation intentions ("When X happens, I will do Y") are 2-3x more likely to follow through than those who just set goals. This backs up converting excitement immediately into action.

There's no evidence that simply imagining something makes it "manifest" without effort, but there is strong evidence that positive thinking and visualization are powerful tools when combined with action.

Mental rehearsal works for skill acquisition. Optimism improves outcomes. But action is essential — simply picturing your future isn't enough. You need to take action based on your goals.

Duke University research shows that 40% of daily actions are habits, not decisions. New habits formed through implementation intentions had a 91% success rate versus 39% for traditional goal-setting. This supports converting excitement into immediate, specific action rather than vague intentions.

Action begets action. People who do things create a positive feedback loop.

THE CHOICE

Every day, you face the same choice: Will you interpret that surge of energy as excitement pointing toward possibility, or as fear warning you to retreat?

Will you move fast enough to capture the opportunity before doubt creeps in, or will you think yourself into paralysis?

Will you live the life you have the courage to imagine, or the life that others prescribed for you?

The administrator at MIT was right. I am fearless — not because I don't feel fear, but because I've learned to feel it and move anyway. Because I was given the safety to fail, repeatedly.

Speed is courage. Excitement is intelligence. Fear is just energy waiting to be directed.

The question isn't whether you'll feel afraid. The question is what you'll do with that feeling when it shows up.