Fear vs your body genuinely protecting you

Hey Reader,

A listener asked a great question on this week's podcast.

When it gets hard and your brain starts throwing out excuses to stop, how do you tell the difference between your mind genuinely protecting you and just being scared?

I smiled because I'd been asking myself that very question a few days earlier.

I was out in the mountains of Colorado with my friend, attempting a 3-day Hard Rock loop.

It’s a 100-mile loop through some of the highest, most remote mountains in the US, with about 33,000 feet of climbing along the way.

About 12 or 13 miles into a 40-mile day, deep in the most remote part of the course, the alarm bells started going off.

My head started throbbing.

My breath grew short, and I started to wheeze.

We were high up, the air was thick with smoke from nearby wildfires, and there was no aid station, no road, nothing but more climbing ahead.

It was a tough and intense experience that tested my limits.

At some point, I was like, I don't want to do a hundred miles again. I don't think I want to do a 50-mile. Like, why do we even do this? Why do we even do these long hikes?

I was hallucinating and seeing animal-shaped faces on the rock at some point.

It absolutely sucked.

I did notice all these little excuses the mind fills us with.

Part of me wondered if this was just the pain I expected to experience at some point or if something genuinely wasn't right.

It became a thing of “Just get to the next rock.”

Then the next one.

Eventually, the trail eased, my breathing settled, and we kept moving.

Now, back to the question. I think it’s something a lot of us want to find an answer to.

Let’s dive in.

🧠 Fear vs Instinct

One of the hardest parts about chasing something meaningful is that fear and instinct don’t always sound very different.

Sometimes your mind is simply looking for the nearest exit when it notices how hard things are getting.

But then, your body could also be trying to tell you to watch out and avoid breaking down or ruining things.

The tricky part is that both can feel equally real in the moment.

That’s why I don’t think the goal is just to become someone who always pushes through.

Mental toughness goes beyond that.

There are moments when the right decision is to keep going.

And there are moments when the smartest thing you can do is adapt because the situation has changed.

And you have every right to stop at that point before it gets messy.

❤️ Experience can tell the difference

The good news is that telling the difference between fear and instinct isn’t something you’re expected to know from day one.

You learn the difference with experience, and you build that judgment over time.

When shit gets hard, you start to remember: I’ve felt this before, and it passed.

Or I’ve felt this before, and I backed off when I didn’t need to.

You just have to keep checking in with yourself.

And you have to be brutally honest about it.

Little by little, you start recognizing the difference between your mind trying to escape discomfort and your body trying to protect you from harm.

I kept checking in with my body the whole way up the mountain.

My legs felt strong. The trouble was in my head and chest, and it came back every time I pushed harder.

That was a genuine signal, so I dialed back the effort, and we kept moving.

Experience over time doesn’t make the crazy thoughts or difficult decisions disappear.

But you’ll make your choice from experience rather than fear.

That’s a much better place to lead yourself from.

And there’s absolutely no shame in getting it wrong sometimes.

So what are you finding so difficult right now?

Think about a past similar experience.

Did you quit, or did you keep going?

What lesson did you learn from that decision?

Now look more closely at this present situation.

Is this pushback clear and specific, or is your mind resisting because it’s getting hard?

Be honest.

What’s the best decision from where you are right now?

You have every right to stop if it genuinely comes to that.

And you owe yourself a positive story if it’s just your mind messing with you.

Like Marie Curie once said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

You’ve got this.

With appreciation,

Huw

P.S: We talked about this and a lot more on this week’s episode, along with some of the lessons I learned from my Hard Rock adventure last week.

It’s worth a listen.