I’m not religious. If it needed to be defined, I’d call myself spiritual, but I do have a religion. It’s gratitude. To me, gratitude is a direct line to the Universe, giving thanks for what I want to receive. It’s a tangible way to practice awe rather than waiting for those rare glimpses of it. The more gratitude I have, the more I’m graced with things to be grateful for.
This applies to all things, those perceived as negative and positive. It’s easy to practice gratitude with pleasurable elements. More challenging situations can be harder to connect to gratitude—maybe an unexpected job loss or a realization you may have hurt a friend, even if unintentionally, and need to address it. This is really where I get the opportunity to practice why this is happening for me versus why this is happening to me, because this mindset is one that supports my growth and my healing. Maybe the loss of that job has me looking for a new one when I otherwise wouldn’t be—and that job is more in line with what I actually want to do, or in a culture that’s more conducive to collaboration. In the case of the realization with the friend, hard conversations can be challenging. So can owning what we can do differently. Leaning into that honest conversation might even bring more depth to the connection going forward.
Gratitude is a Framing for Choosing to View Experiences
A lot of times, the greatest fears we face are rooted in scarcity. We don’t have enough time, talent, skill sets—because we don’t have enough. The underlying belief here is “I’m not enough.” Fear has us focus on the lack, thereby creating a perpetual cycle of a mindset of lack.
Glenn Fox, head of University of Southern California Performance Science Institute, conducted a study, “Neural Correlates of Gratitude,” published in the academic journal Frontiers in Psychology, that found that when participants reported grateful feelings, their brains showed activity in the prefrontal cortex, the home of curiosity, expression, decision-making, and connection. Gratitude, like curiosity, is a quality that can move us from our amygdala to our prefrontal cortex, neurologically shifting us out of fear. This may feel counterintuitive, as for most of us, it may feel foreign to practice gratitude when we’re experiencing fear.
In every aspect of life—from personal relationships to leading businesses—cultivating gratitude for the assets we have, and the opportunities challenges may present, will help us be more creative with those assets and circumstances. This can be a multitude of things: the depth of a relationship, the joy it brings you, the growth it asks of you, the call you can make when you need a friend, the beauty of nature and its ability to bring calm to us, the team that takes the risks and fails and is stronger for it, the vulnerability you expressed as a leader to call forth your team’s best, the deep grief after losing someone (connecting you to the love you have for them). Some of these might be harder than others. We can find gratitude in every circumstance if we look for it. It’s a way of framing our experience—and it’s a choice.
I realize it may seem a big leap to be grateful for your fear, but hear me out. Why am I a defender of fear? Fear is the key to our freedom. If they are left unexplored, we give our power away to our fears. If we take our power back and use it to mine the information our fears have for us, we learn who we really are and are shown the steps we need to take to get there, to grow into the next version of ourselves. Nothing has more information for us than our fears. Even if it has an ironic sense of humor (making us dread the very thing we desire), fear is the only language fear speaks. Expecting my fear to speak Guryan to me would be like me thinking that if I speak in English to a speaker of Mandarin, they could understand what I was saying. If they learned English, they could understand what I had said. If I learn the language of fear, perhaps I can understand what my fears are saying. What an invitation for us to get curious about the language of our fears—so that we can access the gifts of personal wisdom fear has for each of us.
Being grateful for our fears helps us see them as our allies instead of our enemies. Most of us are aware of what fear has prevented us from doing, what we regret not doing, what we’ve missed out on, what it has cost us. On the flip side, have you ever wondered how your fears have served you? What have they caused you to do or not to do? Our fear has contributed to shaping who we are, and when we understand how it’s in service to us, we can be grateful for the role it plays in connecting us to our most authentic self.
I’ll share a very high-level example with you. I have undiagnosed OCD tendencies. When I’m looking at them through a mindset of lack or fear—which means when I’m judging or shaming myself about these tendencies—I have a fear of being perceived as high-maintenance and intractable. When I look at my OCD through a how-is-this-serving-me? mindset, which can connect me to the gifts these tendencies have for me, I have an incredible level of efficiency, which often enables me to accomplish things at a superpower level. Those who know me are aware of my love for to-do lists. They’re not for everyone, but they help bring structure to set up my efficiency for success. Let’s say I have a trip I’m planning or packing for, errands that have to be run to prepare for it, a slide deck that needs to be made for a presentation I’m giving, and people to see before I head out. Even if the feeling of overwhelm creeps in, I pause, use my I-have-enough-time mantra, and then lean into my OCD and watch things get done at a rate that surprises even me.
Often, we are familiar with what challenges come with negatively perceived emotions, like anxiety, but we don’t acknowledge the gifts they may have for us. Many clients come to me stating they have high levels of anxiety. I am not taking away from the (in some cases, grave) challenges that anxiety presents. I also believe it’s worth looking at how anxiety may serve us. Some of the common traits in my clients with high anxiety levels are that they are detail oriented, compassionate, thoughtful, highly curious. . . I could go on. When we can identify all the attributes that are available to us when we’re in different states (fear, anger, anxiety), we have more choices for dialing up or down and when.
This has been excerpted from Unmasking Fear: How Fears Are Our Gateways to Freedom (Health Communications Inc; August 2025).
