Purpose vs. Fear: What's Driving You to Learn?
When I was in my early twenties, I watched a lot of my peers go to graduate school.
It mystified me because I always believed that investing time and money in an advanced degree meant knowing for sure that this right here is my specific thing, having a clear sense of direction.
I sure didn’t have that. And I didn’t know how others my age did.
More often than not, I suspected that my friends went to grad school not out of clarity of purpose but rather out of fear.
Education can enrich us—it can be a catalyst that propels us.
But it can also hold us back—it can be a place to retreat to out of fear.
Here are five types of fear that drive us to learn:
--> Hiding: Choosing the safety of gathering knowledge rather than risking the vulnerability of showing up in the world to share your skills, do the things, and make contributions.
--> Delaying: Avoiding the discomfort of uncertainty and hoping your path will magically work itself out rather than asking yourself the deeper questions and wrestling with your authentic answers.
--> Deferring: Expecting others to know better and looking outside yourself for answers rather than developing a trusting relationship with your own inner authority.
--> Protecting: Collecting credentials like armor, thinking that they’ll protect you rather than figuring out how to feel comfortable with the vulnerability of putting your work into the world.
--> Over-preparing: Gathering knowledge to combat a feeling of “not enoughness”—believing that you have to have everything ready before you start rather than trusting yourself and your resourcefulness to figure it out.
Whether you’re thinking of pursuing a formal degree at an institution or signing up for a series of free online trainings (one of my clients recently joked that she could have her own series on TLC called "My Webinar Addiction" 🤣), ask yourself:
• How might I be using this learning to hide, delay, defer, protect, or over-prepare?
• What is my sense of purpose in pursuing this learning?
To be clear, I’m not knocking education. Growth is one of my core values, and I thrive when I am learning.
It’s not about the particular learning opportunity—it’s about your orientation towards it. You can sign up for the same online training from a place of purpose or a place of fear.
I’ve held a policy for myself for the past fifteen years—one that I created way back when my friends were enrolling in further education:
I’m not going to grad school until it slaps me in the face.
Meaning: I’m not going unless I have clarity on why and there is a need for that specific knowledge/skill set/credential to get me where I want to go.
Making the choice to pursue further education can take fears like hiding, delaying, deferring, protecting, and over-preparing and give them a label that seems justified and legitimate. From the outside, it looks productive, successful, an exciting move forward and up.
“I’m getting my MBA” sounds better than “I’m lost and figuring out my path.”
But that doesn’t mean that it actually is better.
• Before you sign up for that webinar or take that LSAT prep course, be sure you’re clear on what’s driving you: is it purpose, or is it fear?
• Before you spend another hour of your week developing a new skill, be sure you understand the skills you already have.
• Before you try and cover up your fears, unpack how they are preventing you from moving forward.
Fear and doubt are constant companions on our career journeys, but we can learn to manage them while we do our work with purpose.
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The kind of learning that I always find purpose-driven and useful is self-discovery.
This is what coaching is all about.
Coaching doesn’t just look productive—it is productive. It gets you out of the spinning loop of questions, uncertainties, and “I don’t know’s” in your head and helps you to actually make progress.
• Coaching challenges you to see yourself and what you have to offer clearly.
• The process guides you through untangling the tough questions and uncovering your own authentic answers.
• It’s about being brave enough to confront uncertainty with support and guidance.
• The process redirects you from looking for answers outside of yourself that can only come from within.
• Together, we explore what it means to approach decisions from a place of purpose rather than fear.
• And we build your sense of inner authority so that you can put down that heavy, protective armor of perfection and trust yourself to have your own back.
