In this op-ed, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The New York Times bestselling author of The Moment of Lift, explains how she gets over her fears.
Hailing a cab. Giving a speech about malaria to a room full of experts. Using a chop saw.
What do those three things have in common? All of them are things that scare me. Or at least, they used to.
Here’s how I learned to overcome those fears.
Use fear as fuel
I’ve had three careers in my life. My first career was in tech. Then, when my three kids were little, I was a stay-at-home mom. Today, I’m the co-chair of the foundation I started with my husband, Bill, and I lead a company called Pivotal Ventures, which works to advance social progress in the U.S.—especially for women and girls.
Along the way, I’ve had to get used to trying new things.
The first time I hailed a cab, I was 22 years old and on my first ever trip to New York City. I’d just started my job at Microsoft, and I was in New York for a meeting. (Actually, I was there to run a meeting. Microsoft was a lot smaller back then, so 22-year-olds got pretty incredible opportunities.) As I stepped out into the street and awkwardly lifted my arm, I had no idea if it was actually going to work like it did in the movies. Guess what: it did. And I learned that just because you’ve never done something before doesn’t mean it won’t turn out fine.
That trip to New York was full of firsts for me, and some of them were scary. Now that I’m 54, I’ve had enough experiences to conclude that when you’re attempting new things, some fear is natural—maybe even inevitable. The very worst thing you can do is surrender to that fear and let it prevent you from trying.
Instead, use fear as fuel. Embrace that jittery feeling and reframe it for yourself as the incredible, empowering feeling of pushing yourself to grow.
Surround yourself with support
When I started giving speeches about issues like malaria, there was not much in my background that had prepared me for it. I studied computer science and business in college and then spent nine years working at Microsoft. At the time, I never in a million years would’ve guessed that husband Bill (who was the CEO) and I would fall in love and get married — or that we would start a foundation focused on global health. But once we did, people wanted to hear from me about the issues we worked on. Suddenly, I started getting invited to events where I was expected to hold my own against experts in the field.
Crises of confidence, imposter syndrome, sweaty palms—I had them all. An ugly little voice in my head asked questions like, “What are you doing on this stage when every single person in this room knows more about malaria than you do?”
To give you a sense of how bad it was, once, when Bill and I were both giving speeches at the same event, I actually asked him to leave the room before I gave mine. He gave his speech, left, and then drove around for 15 minutes until I was ready for him to pick me up. (Although if he hadn’t shown up, at least by then I knew how to hail a cab!)
I never made that particular request again. But there were other times when I knew he would be in the audience and told him, “Look, no matter how badly I’m doing, I want you to look like you’re awed by every word.” He didn’t make me feel embarrassed about any of those requests. He just let me know he was there for me however I needed him to be.
From those experiences, I learned that scary things seem a lot less scary when you’re surrounded by people who support you. They can be family, friends, teachers, mentors, significant others—as long as they are people who believe in you, who never make fun of you or take advantage of your insecurities, and who want you to succeed even more than you do. The best advice I know is to find these people and hold them close.
I still get nervous before speeches sometimes—but not that nervous. No one gets banished from the room. No one is required to look at me in awe. I’ve gotten better at overcoming—or at least managing—my fears.
Which brings me to the chop saw.
Seek out good teachers
If you don’t know what a chop saw is, well, until a few Mondays ago, I didn’t either. But on a visit to a wonderful place called Girls Garage, I learned it’s an electric power tool used in construction projects to make straight cuts through wood. (When you hear the sound it makes, it’s easy to imagine that it could also make straight cuts through bone.)
Girls Garage is a design and building program for—you guessed it—girls, founded by a woman named Emily Pilloton who believes teaching girls STEM skills can improve their confidence at the same time. The Girls Garage motto is “Fear Less, Build More,” and within about two minutes of walking through the door, I’d already experienced a little of both. I put up my hair, literally rolled up my sleeves, and started measuring the piece of wood I’d be chopping. Then, with a pounding heart, a lot of buzzing and whirring, and some friendly words of encouragement from a 15-year-old builder named Azusa, I sawed the wood in two, drove a screw through it, and attached it to a bench the girls are building.
Let me tell you: It was a powerful feeling.
After I’d gotten my hands dirty, I sat down with a few of the young builders to talk about how they overcome fear. One of the most important takeaways from that conversations was the importance of seeking out good teachers.
A good teacher isn’t necessarily someone who works at a school or has a formal role as an instructor. A teacher is anyone who will make you better at the things you want to do. One of the young women at Girls Garage told me that the reason learning to use power tools was empowering instead of intimidating was that “I wasn’t just handed a drill and left alone.” Instead, someone invested time and energy in her progress. Find people who will invest in yours.
One last thing
My hope for everyone reading this is that you get in the habit of doing things that scare you—that you learn to coexist with a little fear and let it motivate you instead of hold you back. If you live your life at the edges of your comfort zone, your world is constantly getting bigger.
I bet my 22-year-old self would be pretty impressed by the fears I’ve overcome and the new skills I’ve learned. And I bet you’ll feel the same way about your future self, too.
