I Forgot to be Afraid

My friend Sylvia went on a trip to New Zealand where she tried bungee-jumping for the first time. She recounted her adventure to me after she got back home and said it was amazing. Then she said something that made me whip my head around:

“I think I did it because I forgot to be afraid.”

She didn’t wait for the fear to go away. She just stopped feeding it. And in that instant—without even realizing it—she stepped into the exact moment that I call: the blink.

That split second when discomfort meets decision. When the fear is still there, and you have to overcome the urge to blink and step back — and then you move anyway. That’s the window. That’s disruption. You may not get that moment twice. You may not feel brave or ready. But readiness is overrated. What matters is that you move. That you act. That you stop waiting for permission.

That’s the secret most people don’t talk about. The people who seem fearless? They’re not void of fear. They’ve just decided it doesn’t get to be in charge. Courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s action in spite of it. It’s fear walking side by side with your decision to do the thing anyway.

And here’s what I’ve come to believe: the more you do the thing you’re afraid of, the more you can do the thing you’re afraid of. Every time you override the part of your brain screaming this is scary, you build a deeper reservoir of strength. You condition yourself to act. You build muscle memory for courage.

I’ll never forget one of the first times I realized that truth in my own life.

I was a brand-new cop, still in training, riding midnight shift with my Field Training Officer. Just after midnight, we got dispatched to a shots fired call—but we didn’t need the radio to tell us. We’d already heard the gunfire. We were right around the corner.

I gunned it.

My FTO leaned out the window to confirm the shots were still going. Two guys were running. I threw the squad into park—right in the middle of the street, door wide open—and we jumped out.

We chased them through backyards, over fences, into the darkness. I remember seeing the flash of muzzle fire—and still we kept going. We split up, closed in, and then we pounced. I tackled one of them to the ground. My FTO grabbed one arm, I grabbed the other. I straddled him, pulled out my cuffs, got him detained while my partner secured the weapon. We did it by the book. Fast. Clean. Together.

When the suspect was loaded into the transport van, we made our way back to the squad. Another officer had parked it properly because I’d left it in the street, running, like a scene from a movie.

We got in, and I looked at my FTO.
“Holy shit,” I said. “HOLY. SHIT.”
We high-fived. We laughed. I was euphoric.

But the adrenaline really hit when I got home. I sat in the dark, stunned. Not scared. Just in disbelief. I replayed the whole thing like a movie—shots fired, the chase, the takedown. And that’s when it hit me: I forgot to be afraid.

Not because I was reckless. Not because I had something to prove. I forgot to be afraid because I was trained. I had spent months in the academy. I had been drilled, tested, and stretched. I knew what to do. And when the moment came, I did it.

That’s the lesson, and it doesn’t require you to chase someone with a gun to learn it.

You don’t become fearless. You become prepared. You build reps. The more you do the hard thing, the less power it holds. The fear might still be there, but now so is your conditioning.

Courage isn’t a trait for the chosen few. It’s a skill. A rhythm. A pattern you create every time you choose forward over frozen.

So whether it’s zip-lining, quitting the job, starting the business, or just speaking the truth aloud, your bravery gets built in the doing. One scared step at a time.

And the more chances you take, the more chances you can take. You stop waiting for the fear to pass. You start trusting that the net will appear—or that the next step on the bridge will show up as your foot lands.

Do it scared. That’s how you train for a life that matters.