You Don’t Need to be Fearless: How to change your relationship with fear || with Farnoosh Torabi

Unfortunately, fear cannot be avoided. But for so many of us, it can become an all consuming emotion, especially in certain circumstances. Farnoosh Torabi, a renowned expert in personal finance and author, shares her origin story about fear, and how it shaped her entire life. Now, she makes the distinction between understanding and embracing fear as a natural emotion, rather than viewing it as an enemy.

Farnoosh emphasizes the need to have a constructive conversation with fear, allowing it to provide valuable insights for personal growth and decision-making. We also explore two common fears: fear of uncertainty and fear of failure, plus practical strategies to navigate through them. Ultimately, we have to learn to make room for fear and find strength in vulnerability.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Farnoosh, welcome to about progress.

 I am really eager to dig in because I have found myself as someone who is still working on trying to grow in the most important areas of my life.

One

of the things I get stuck on still to this day, which I find very frustrating is fear, and you happen to write an entire book about it, and we're gonna dig deep.

But I wanted to start with a little bit of your own background and what your relationship with fear has been like.

Farnoosh: Fear, and I go way, way back, Monica. I was the poster child for fear as a kid growing up in the eighties, the daughter of immigrants from Iran. a Young girl who had a lot of differences from a lot of her peers, whether it was like external differences like my name, my appearance, and then behind the scenes being culturally different. And I think as a kid all you wanna do is assimilate because that's

survival, and it's acceptance and it's love. And so I struggled with fear a lot as a kid. And my mother, who was very young when she had me, she was 19 years old,

 also new to this country,

didn't speak the language. We were just two peas in a pod most of the time, as my father would be at work. She raised me to be intentionally scared so that I would quote unquote stay out of trouble.

And she's admitted to this, so

 I wasn't allowed to do a lot of things that my friends were allowed to do because my parents were afraid of these western culture ways of doing things like sleepovers.

Nope. You sleep in your own bed walking home from school. Absolutely not.

And I grew up with a bit of a. Not a chip on my shoulder, but like always cautious, always. Almost like hard to trust people as a result. And I'll admit that, I don't think that my relationship with fear has been perfect at all, but I think the reason that it has blossomed is because there was a turning point where I had to reckon with it because fear is not something that can just go away because we tell it to,

we just wear our fearless capes.

​

Farnoosh: And not do the work that is required before you put on that cape and actually go do the thing without fear overwhelming. You have to unpack your fears. You have to learn from them, and you have to find a way to, to tip the scale of that balance of power so that you are the one who is in charge of that fear and not the other way around. And so I'm really excited to talk about fear. I think it's like, for me, it's been an evolutionary relationship. and

I think we can all get there.

Monica: it's funny because I've been realizing one of my greatest fears is fear . It just doesn't feel good to be afraid, and I almost try to avoid fear. Altogether, but just like anything else, you avoid it will find you.

 And so let's start with how you want people to shift their perspective and relationship with fear.

What does that even look like? I'm guessing it's not avoidance, which like I said, it's my go-to tactic. That doesn't work. So what should we be doing instead?

Farnoosh: It's not avoidance, it's not seeing fear as an enemy or as a sign of weakness.

I think culturally and for generations and not just our culture, I think it's pretty universal. That fear has been branded as an emotion That is a waste of our time. Fear nothing but fear itself. Famous speech FDR during the Great

Depression No less, when there were a lot of terrified Americans and rightfully see, I want us to see fear as an emotion, like every other emotion that shows up usually for a reason. It is personal, it has a message, and therefore deserves some attention. Some. Some space in our minds and in our lives and some respect too. I think that fear, again is, look, we all fear things that's universal in some ways, but also the fears that you have, Monica, and the fears that I have and the fears that our listeners are harboring. All different for different reasons. They are reflections of our lives, the experiences that we've had, the relationships that we have embraced or not embraced. And so fear is really a mirror to life, and that may be hard to hear, that may be hard to accept because again, we have been so conditioned to dislike fear and to see it as a negative, as opposed to potentially a positive. Don't take it from me if you don't want to. There was a study done this year, 2023, across various academic programs where they looked at Americans who looked at words like fear and sadness and anger as neutral. Like they didn't really have a negative association with these words. Some of them thought they were great.

Like me, I was in the great camp. they are happier than those of us who see these words. Feel these emotions and immediately the instinct is, this is bad. I am weak. I don't like this.

​

Farnoosh: Because on the road to happiness, I would argue, and I think we could all agree that you have to be comfortable in your skin.

You have to like yourself, you have to like all of yourself, you have to like you good parts and your bad parts, and your your optimism and your pessimism, all of it. Because why? Because it is all part and parcel. To who you are, who you've become, what your values are, what your goals are. I say, show me someone who claims to be fearless, and I'll show you someone who doesn't actually know themselves that well.

Monica: Well, that right there demands a slow clap for me, because you're so right. Every fear is a mirror. It's a mirror of our experiences, like you said, but also other . Parts of ourselves, our characteristics, our desires, the things that we are scared of are so connected to those desires. I want you to help me sort through this puzzle of how do we then make room for fear without staying in that room.

Farnoosh: You wanna have a conversation with fear, and this conversation has closure, I promise you, but it has to

has to

have a beginning on The fear spectrum, right?

There's different kinds of fears, there's

different degrees of fear. I chose nine different fears for this book. The ones that I felt were in many ways relatable I've certainly experienced them. So fear of loneliness, fear of rejection, failure, uncertainty, money, of course, as I've dedicated my whole career to personal finance. But I think it's Important that you have a conversation when fear shows up. And usually a really good starter, an icebreaker with

the is to say do you want me to protect actually.

Fear shows up for a reason. You and I would not be podcasting today if it weren't for fear. So thanks, fear.

But fear is an internal signal. It is an a biological response to something that is happening to you that feels threatening. But why does it feel threatening, right? Is it because you wanna protect something of importance, a value, a goal, a relationship? Something you've worked very hard for. I think that begs attention. That requires some focus and fear is a nudge towards that. It's a nudge to basically turn you inward in many cases, to reevaluate, to reexamine, to see again, or for the first time what it is that you actually care about. That seems to be at stake.. Maybe it is you wanna protect your safety, your sense of dignity, your sense of accomplishment, a relationship. All valid. Then it's about how can I go and do maybe that thing that initially felt so terrifying that I just wanted to avoid it but now I'm gonna maybe actually go still do that thing.

But I have to create a roadmap for myself that incorporates these aspects of my life that I wanna protect. And that's where we do things in full self alignment, right?

Monica: That's a huge difference to me. So it's not to avoid, it's not to be afraid of. It's to have a conversation with, ask questions, with and let it give you information that you need to move forward. I wouldn't say without fear, but in a way that it's not in the driver's seat. Am I I getting this right?

Farnoosh: look yes, and you can look back and say, I did the thing, thanks to fear, but not with the fear. I did it because of the fear, but not Entrenched in the fear, right? And so fear is an informant. It is an informant. And as an informant you can choose to do what you want with it. You can choose to do what you want with the information. You can choose to take it with you. You can choose

to say, okay, that was interesting. That was an interesting lesson or that was an interesting observation that fear gave me, but I'm going to still go in this direction or not.

Monica: And I like that in making room for this. Sometimes we are being made aware that . Perhaps in our pursuit of avoiding a fear or not listening to it or even letting it lead the ship we're not paying attention to the fact that sometimes it is right, that we don't follow through with or we do it differently than if we had been avoiding that whole internal conversation.

Now, I learned best with a lot of examples and so to help me learn and my listeners, I wanted to take on two fears in particular that I thought were . Really in alignment with what our community struggles with. And so let's take fear of uncertainty. I'm gonna read one part from your book that I thought really encapsulates why this can be an issue for us, especially as we're covering perfectionist.

I, I know I said on your show that perfectionism is just a fear of uncertainty in many ways.

 And what you've said here is the trick is to learn . What this fear is trying to tell you, your fear is protecting you, keeping you on high alert, contemplating the what ifs, and creating an escape plan.

This is all part of the foundational work needed to make your next best move. Whether you're experiencing a dead end relationship to molt at work or deep uncertainty in your personal life, trying to make a decision, like going to college or not getting married, or not having kids or not, your fear is helping you lay the important groundwork for getting out of an uncertain mess.

 Let's talk about uncertainty. Why is that such a deep fear, especially for recovering perfectionists?

Farnoosh: It's a deep fear for all of us, but particularly those of us who source so much of our sense of comfort and control

from predictability,

​from knowing what's gonna be around the corner. And that sense of control. But we all know that is just a recipe for disappointment. Perfectionism is the antidote to deep disappointment because life doesn't work that way.

 And I am grateful for that early onset realization. I think because of being the daughter of immigrants, because growing up in a country that wasn't Originally our country. That we had a lot of adversity in my household. And I think even as a woman too raise your hand if you're a woman and everything's been easy breezy for you.

No. Hands are up. And so things don't always go our way and that. That's terrifying because it's hard to be able to maneuver on your feet. It's hard to also let go of the goals that you had been hoping for, that you've been planning towards, and now have to start anew. It's not to say that, fear is irrational. No, I think that too long we've been told that message that like you fear uncertainty. Oh, get over it.

 life's uncertain. Move on. Yes. I think that's the promised land for all of us. But in the meantime, until we get there, we, there is work to be done. And I think one of the ways that we can work towards a place of having more resolve with uncertainty and the reality of uncertainty and how to use this fear healthily and constructively, is that when you fear uncertainty first, realize That you're probably not wrong, to fear it. And now your work is really to identify the things in your life that are unshakeable, that are certain. uncertainty comes up your fear, wants you to protect your sense of control.

But that doesn't mean you now have to go and try to take matters in your hand that are not within your reach. We cannot control externalities. But what are the internalities? What are the things within your realm that you can touch and hold and mold and influence and shape and redirect and use and leverage?

And I would say it's a long list. It starts with your own resourcefulness, your appetite for curiosity, for learning, for doing, for taking action. That's a huge asset. That is an unshakeable truth. Remember that you can apply these skills, these attributes, these tools to Pivoting to taking action in a different direction. That maybe wasn't what you planned, but here you are doing the thing. When I got laid off in 2009, in the thick of the Great recession, my fear of uncertainty initially it did trap me.

It felt very trapping to be in that moment. I was, stuck in bed. I felt very bad for myself. I allowed myself to go through the grieving, and I think we should. I think when there's uncertainty and you feel shaken, like that's okay. It was my job title.

It was my salary, it was my health benefits. It was the sense of Accomplishment too, that I derived from this job that was now feeling very deflated. And re I recognize that, yeah, all those things are gone. But what remains, what has endured, what is again, a non-negotiable fact of my life, that is a tool that is something that I can leverage. And it was so many things, including the things I just talked about, I had a degree. I had a community of people who respected my work, who I was going to now. Call them and see what I could do. But also I had hopes and dreams and visions too that, I was too scared to pursue while working a full-time job.

I had always thought about entrepreneurship, but it always seemed really scary to me. And now I was faced with an even bigger fear, which is that if I go back and work in the nine to five space, there's a lot of uncertainty there too, which I hadn't quite recognized, and now I'm living it and experiencing it.

And I had the benefit of, the layoff to teach me that, uncertainty is a part of life that if you're scared of something because it is uncertain. It should not be a dead end. It should just be something you need to plan for. We have our plan a's very important in life to have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D, and feel really good about those. Alternate plans so another offer for the fear of uncertainty. It's like it's asking you to recalibrate and calculate, like you fear the uncertainty of maybe the future or what's around the corner. But if you don't do the thing, isn't that scarier? And if it is. Then that is your catalyst and your reason to go do the thing, because it's sometimes life is just a matter of weighing the fears It's what is scarier?

I remember I was earning $18 an hour before taxes, working in an editorial room in New York City.

Yeah, I was gonna say the most expensive city

The most So I almost got fired from that job. I was not doing so hot at it, but in my mind, I knew exactly why I had come, what I wanted to get out of this experience. And maybe it wasn't going to check off the entire list of things that I wanted out of my first job.

But I had enough, it had enough that I said, okay, I'm gonna do this. And I remember one day, head of communications for the magazine came into the newsroom and said, Hey, everybody, CNN would like to interview somebody from our staff about our monthly issue, our new monthly issue. It was about real estate and housing. Does anybody wanna go? It's a, it's in a couple hours, we'll get you a cab, it'll be great, and nobody wanted to go. And I said to myself, I'm gonna go And I said to her, I'll go. And she's you're the intern. And I was like if nobody else wants to do it, I'll do it. And I, 'cause I knew that I did nothing else during this job. This would actually be a stepping stone for me. because I had in my head that I'm gonna come here and create opportunities and this opportunity and wasn't intended for me, but I volunteered and I got it and I got on CNN, I think I was like 22 years old, my first live national television hit. I use that. Three minute segment to get me my next job in television

and next job. And the next job. So it's yeah, on paper that job wasn't maybe ideal or sexy or even affordable But if you have an eye on your prize and you know what your prize is gonna be, For me in that scenario, like just getting a, sinking my teeth into that New York media market. I remember there was one actor who talked about his early days in acting, and we know acting is full of rejection and full of uncertainty, but he's I wasn't gonna wait for the role. I wasn't gonna wait for the perfect movie. I was gonna go pick up trash at a movie studio. Because for me that was Success in progress for where I was in that stage of my pursuit of acting. I just need to be near the actors. I need to be near the action. And if I have to be the assistant to the assistant, if I have to pick up the trash, like I will do that. And he probably did. And I just I'll never forget stories like that because it's just a reminder of how How to thrive during uncertain times and when you know, you're not sure how you're gonna get from point A to point B, but just get going.

Monica: You, you said this earlier, no matter what, we're living with a level of uncertainty. And I think it's so easy to forget that. And instead, when we're only thinking about the future, we stay stuck in a holding pattern where our holding pattern. Is just as uncertain as what could come, if not even more like you said, weighing that out.

So I appreciate your perspective there. I also wanna talk about fear of failure. This to me is the root of so many issues. And in particular with anyone who's finding themselves in that holding pattern.

I think a big part of why we fear failure is because we have this message in the zeitgeist that translates to toxic positivity. Like it's your day, it's your life. You make the decision, you make your own way. And while that all can be inspiring and motivating, and we all can also have ambitions that we're working towards, like having a vision in mind matters and taking responsibility matters, I think to some extent we almost take life too personally.

So we think a failure is personal

that we made that happen. It's a reflection of us and our lack of capabilities or our lack of goodness or worthiness of getting the outcomes we want. But instead, what I am hearing you say is that's just part of life. And in order to face this fear of failure, you have to make room for the fear or otherwise you're gonna stay s safe.

In other words, you're gonna stay . Stuck.

So I would love an example from you on maybe a even a failure that you had or you had to face this fear of failure and how it wasn't exactly just because of you, it was just life and how acknowledging that helped you move through it better.

Farnoosh: When we fear failure, it is sometimes Nudge to recognize that you are being set up for failure. And now I'm all about personal accountability. I will do my best, I will be accountable. But the truth is, sometimes you find yourself in situations where the environment, the people, the systems at play are not setting you up for success. They're setting you up for failure, and that's not a great place to be in. When I was at that job after college money Magazine, it was in fact I'll just see it 'cause it's in the book.

No secrets there.

Monica: Yeah.

Farnoosh: I almost got fired. For a factual mistake, a failure in the magazine I wrote, looking back, it's like comical, but in the moment I was terrified of losing my job because they told me We are gonna almost fire you if you do this again, described dollar stores as where everything is a dollar. And it printed and it ran. And my editor, who worked on the story with me, who read it also before it ran. Called me in, very disappointed in me showing me the pages saying, can you spot the error? And I didn't know what he was talking about. And then he read it out loud to me and it was like,

 and he's not all dollar stores sell things for just a dollar Farnoosh, you said all you should have said most or many.

And I said, oh my gosh. Okay, now he is absolutely right. I made the mistake, I owned it. I learned so much from that. Like I think my early years in magazine writing and in early days of journalism gave me a just a fierce de dedication to fact checking and the truth, which I think is hopefully what we want all journalists to dedicate themselves to.

But thank You Money Magazine for terrifying me into that role. bUt you know what, as I thought about that experience, and as I called my mother in tears, actually the shortly after that meeting, she said to me in Farsi, she said, those stupid idiots. Ahah. And I was mom, did you not hear this?

I made the mistake my failure. She goes yeah, that was stupid, but., let's understand your environment. Okay? You are new to this job

​

Farnoosh: and you worked with a professional senior editor on this article who also didn't catch the mistake. And just a little behind the scenes of how magazines get produced.

Like it's not done in a silo. There's many multiple steps and eyeballs reading the work. It is highly vetted and I, took the blame, obviously, 'cause it was my writing, my byline is right there. But she said, this doesn't sound to me like a place where you're gonna be coached. It doesn't sound to me

a place where you're gonna be given any forgiveness,, and not that we wanna be excused all the time, but this was my first mistake.

It was unfortunate that it was printed in the magazine, but again, like not a place for cultivating. Relationships and mentorship and all of that. ANd that there was no recognition that you that failure is universal. These editors saying to me like We would never do something like that, and it's really? I'm pretty sure you run corrections every single month. So I appreciated that coming from my mother, especially because she was pretty hard on me growing up. And so for my

mother to say that and to recognize that I can meant a lot. And I didn't quit. I didn't go back and yell at my boss. I didn't self-sabotage. Instead, what I did was I put that piece of knowledge in my back pocket. I recognize this isn't my forever place, but while I'm here, I'm gonna make the most of things I'm gonna learn from this failure. The next time an article across my desk and I was responsible for fact checking it. I did it like it was my, not just my job, but my life's duty. And I actually caught 16 errors and this was somebody else's article. Look, everyone's making mistakes. I'm usually the one

finding them. When it was my article, nobody was fact checking my work. And though therefore, the mistake came. Onto the pages, but I was like, you know what? This isn't my forever place. I'm gonna find somewhere else to go. In the meantime, I'm gonna leave here with rave reviews. And months later I did leave for another job. And when I left they said, oh my gosh, were you not happy here? And I said, no, I had a great experience. I'm just ready for something new. That was the truth. I took that failure with me to the next job insofar as I was very vigilant about my fact checking. But I also recognized what other things the fear taught me, which is that when you choose to work somewhere, try to choose a place where you will be supported, where you'll be set up for success, where they are rooting for your success and not. Attacking you or threatening you at the site of your initial failure, that first of all, was a collective failure in some ways.

Monica: A lot of our listeners are parents, and I'm. Translating this to real life too outside of a job, which of course, totally matters, but a lot of our day-to-Day responsibilities entails, things in the home and with kids, and how we can create a climate and a culture within our four walls of our homes.

On making room for imperfection, making room for . Failure and also making room for fear, which I think you've done an excellent job of modeling how that can look. Do you have any other takeaways for the parents who just want to make sure that their kids are set up for success? Balancing that line of being a helicopter parent, but also being like a hands free, like not really involved parent.

What does that look like in terms of everything we've been discussing today?

Farnoosh: It's a timely question, I think especially with some new books out right now on this topic because I think we're all realizing as our children are now going to college, some of them, and They're not doing well with failure. They're not doing well with rejection or loneliness, and all of the fears associated with that because maybe they were set up too much for success and particularly the very specific kind of success, which is get into college. I. That's it.

 cause college is hard to get into and our culture really values that degree and so we work really hard to get our kids into college But what seems to be the issue now is that we have forgotten how to also equip our kids with sort of emotional strengths and life skills that I think far exceed the importance of a bachelor's degree, right?

But it's like things like being self-accountable dealing with your fears of rejection and loneliness, dealing with failure and uncertainty. And so when they're young, how do we teach this to them? To some extent, as a parent, you have to be okay with letting them experience these failures on their own. I remember a parent told me one time that her child didn't wanna do his homework. And of course it's our, maybe our instinct to be like, let's do it. We're doing it now. You might do it for them. But she said, fine, don't do it. And I'm gonna see how you feel when you go to school and you deal with that consequence. And lo and behold, after a couple of days of going to school without his homework, he recognized how bad that was. Because sometimes kids, it's not enough for their parents to tell them, here's what the consequence is gonna be. It's when they go out in the real world and they actually feel that consequence. And so another example, parents love to wake their kids up in the morning. I do that for my kids, but when they get to be 13, 14, 15. Maybe they need to just get themselves up to school themselves, which may mean being late for school sometimes, which may mean missing the bus, but it's on them and the next day they won't do And again, it's these sort of like little, exercises that are, we it's easier, right? Just wake your kid up. It's easier just, do the homework together, put the homework in their backpack, make sure you do it. 'cause they won't, but enough times when they don't do it, and then they experience the consequence in the real world there is nothing better sometimes to, to as a, in terms of helping them acquire those life skills. A great book on this is called Erasing the Finish Line. Ana Homa, she's been on my podcast.

 She, Has just written about how we set so much pressure on our children to just get into school and the academics, whereas we forget to talk and coach them through a lot of these executive functioning skills, these self-accountability skills and. Really, that's what's gonna help them navigate life, right? When they get to college and they fail a paper or they, get rejected from a friend group or a sport group, how that shouldn't cripple them. But it is, a lot of kids are returning home calling their parents. I don't wanna go to college anymore. I think as parents with younger kids, these are the things I'm implementing is just, setting them up for success at home though, right? Because when they feel confident being able to do things, that's what brews confidence. If I just tell my son, go make yourself cereal. And I haven't shown him where the cereal is, and I haven't shown him how to open a milk carton. And I haven't put it in a place that's reachable. Guess what? He's gonna spill. He's gonna feel bad. And it's my fault, because I'm the adult. I should have been able to set him up better for success.

It doesn't mean I do it for him, but I make it more of an accessible and, easier sort of accomplishment so that he gets the confidence and then he gets the know-how too? I can't, he can't control his height at this age. So things like that may seem small, but they really do go a long way in making them feel really capable.

Monica: I love the whole full circle that this has been for me, not only to learn more from your own story, but how we can apply it in our own homes, starting with modeling failure too. Modeling how we're working through our fears or when something's hard for us. anD helping those in our households and in our relationships have that space to both be set up for success and to make room for the imperfections and the pivots and the twists and turns along the way.

Speaking of twists and turns, I feel like many people will see your book. I'm gonna hold it up. I have my napkin as a bookmark for a quote I read earlier, but they're gonna look at this and think this seems like a pivot from the typical things you talk about. You've written other books on money and financial literacy, and you have a whole podcast that is extremely popular, called so many.

So why write a book all about fear?

Farnoosh: We talked about it a little bit about how I grew up terrified and how as an adult woman, I haven't been able to be fearless, like all the books want me to be and all the Instagram quotes want me to be. I just feel like we talk about fear, we're talking about life, and similarly, when we talk about money, we're talking about life.

There are just so many intersections. Whenever we're talking about money, the emotional underpinning is fear. So while I haven't. Identified it directly Over the last 20 years of working in personal finance, it has always been the third wheel. It has always been, the silent guest on my podcast as guests and my audience send in questions about money, and we talk about money, whether it's like, should I buy the house or rent?

Should I start the business or not? Should I quit my job? Should I ask for more money? All these shoulds and coulds are rooted in an aspect of fear, and I thought that was just an interesting place to start a new conversation about money, but not just money, but life, right? Because I think I'm ready for those bigger meatier conversations.

I'm really tired of talking about 4 0 1 Ks

And Roth IRAs. It's been a long 20 years of talking about budgeting.

 I am really ready to bring more of myself to my work, my

 and my guests, like you've been on, so many, have been so generous to talk about their personal lives as it pertains to. Money and success. And I felt that, I have stories to tell too that are not inconsequential to the person I've become. And increasingly people are curious about me. How did you do all these sort of seemingly risky things, seemingly fearless things. And the answer is. Fear

That's never lost. Yeah, I've never lost touch with my fears and I'm grateful for that.

Monica: This will really turn a lot of things on. . Their heads for people, especially if the, if they find themselves safe, but really stuck in this place of fear, regardless of what that fear is for and about. And there's. I love your personality in the book too. I think a book about fear would be very serious, but I found it very story driven and also quite funny. You have a great sense of humor and also hope giving. It gave me ways to take action on it, especially each . At end of the chapter you give us some takeaways on what we can actually do about this particular fear, like fear of uncertainty and fear failure like we talked about today.

So I want to encourage them to go and get a healthy state of panic and we'll also direct them to your podcast. So money is there anywhere else you want them to go.

Farnoosh: Thank you so much. I would just say Instagram is my favorite social media platform. I'm hanging out in the dms there, so if you have

questions for me, if you wanna give me your 2 cents on the book, I love reading reviews. That's a great place to connect as well.

Monica: I have one final question for you. 'cause we are at an action community, but in small steps, if there's one thing you can advise listeners to do today to take action on what they've learned from you, what would that be?

Farnoosh: Think about what fears you have, but at the intersection of also what excites you.

Typically new endeavors, things we haven't tried before, they excite us. But there's also an element of fear. And I love those kinds of fears. I love those. I love that intersection. I want you to live there a little bit. I want you to experiment with it.

I want you to take a baby step towards that. 'cause that's usually, on the other side of that is usually some of the best life-changing moments and experiences. For me, that was standup comedy

which a terrifying Yeah. I was always been like so fascinated by standup comedy scared me.

So many scares, so many fears. And I didn't just go up on a stage and just blah my way through a set, I took a class. 'cause that was my way of protecting my fears, I wanted to protect my preparedness, I wanted to protect my sense of control on stage.

And with that comes a lot of practice and learning and trying and rehearsing. And so I did that before I did the thing. And then I, got on stage finally and it was a lot of fun and I did it for a little bit. And then the pandemic happened and I'm hoping to get back to it. But Ultimately this book was a derivative of that experience as well.

I put the standup comedy skit that I did on Facebook. A literary agent saw it. She was laughing and she reached out and said, Hey, do you have more of this material? I would love to see more of your writing around this. And I said I don't it's all in my head. Is that okay? Does that count? And she said no, please start writing.

And so I did. And it's essentially now a healthy state of panic.

Monica: I love that connection so much. This has been amazing. I'm so glad that you made space for your fears and you let them lead you to this direction of writing the book. And I appreciate your work so much and you as a human, thank you.

Farnoosh: Monica. Thank you.

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