# CHAPTER 4: MAKE FRIENDS WITH FEAR
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? I hope you’ve got your courage cup nearby, because today we are walking straight into CHAPTER 4 of *Cultivating Audacity read online*—the chapter called “Make Friends with Fear.” And wow, does this chapter deliver. It opens with a live-television nightmare, then turns rejection into a strange kind of sport, and finally asks one of the bravest questions of all: what if fear is not a stop sign, but an invitation?
Our guide in this chapter is Anne Marie Anderson, and she begins with a memory that still makes her anxious decades later. Her first time on live television was in 70 million homes. That was not the plan. She had been hired as a sideline reporter for ESPN’s regional television network, but before she ever went on camera, a colleague called her with an opportunity. This colleague was a successful ESPN sideline reporter who had conflicts with several games. She told Anne Marie, “I have a conflict with several games. I am going to call Ed and tell him I can’t do them. You should call him in five minutes and ask if any other games are available.”
So Anne Marie called. She told Ed she was looking forward to the season and asked him to think of her if anything else became available. He answered, “Actually something did just become available!” Just like that, she was assigned her colleague’s games. Her first college football game was on ESPN2—not exactly starting small. She had produced coverage of dozens of college football games in the years before, but this would be her first time in front of the camera on live television. She had worked college and NFL games for nearly fourteen years, so maybe colleagues assumed she had been on live TV before. She hadn’t. And she panicked. It was sheer terror that she would embarrass herself in front of millions of people.
Moments before the game, her phone rang. It was the same friend who had tipped her off. She asked how Anne Marie was feeling. “Not good, not good at all! I’m pretty sure I’m about to throw up on national television,” Anne Marie whispered. Her friend told her to take deep breaths and assured her, “No matter how bad your first time on television is, it won’t be as bad as mine.”
Really? This friend had been a successful reporter for years. She was beautiful, polished, and loved. Anne Marie could not imagine her having a problem. Then the friend told the story. In her first game, the visiting quarterback was in the national conversation for the Heisman Trophy. The guys in the booth mentioned he was a potential Heisman candidate. The friend told the producer, “I can add.” The producer brought her in: “For more on this story, let’s send it down to the field.” Proud to contribute something no one else would know, she began, “Guys, I know you are talking about him as a potential contender for the Heisman Trophy, but the fans down here disagree. They are chanting, ‘Heisman my ass, you suck, you suck!’” Then she paused and said, “Bob, back to you!”
Anne Marie burst out laughing. Her friend was right. Anne Marie was not going to swear on live television. And her friend still had a job after that gaffe. How bad could Anne Marie be? That story calmed her down. She walked out to the field. The moment came for her opening report, and she carefully maintained eye contact with the camera and slowly repeated the report she had memorized. She was terrible—stiff and unsmiling—but she did not curse on camera. Victory! She faced her fear of embarrassment and reported on camera. The only thing better the second time was that it wasn’t the first. She was terrible the second time, third time, and fourth. But each week, she got out there despite being afraid. She learned that day to make friends with fear.
The chapter then turns introspective. Fear is an invitation to grow. Of course, that growth can hurt more than passing a kidney stone, but it is still progress. Before Anne Marie understood the power of embracing fear, she would do anything to turn it away, bury it, avoid it. It was an awful feeling—unease in her stomach, chest, and head. When she decided to change her relationship with fear, she challenged herself to tune into the discomfort. She began to pick at it, examining her fear with neutral curiosity. What was she fearful of? Rejection? Failure? Embarrassment? Judgment? Or something else entirely?
Most importantly, she stopped shaming herself for feeling fearful. It is natural to avoid fear. Fear can signal danger. Healthy fear can save lives: backing away from a venomous snake, pulling over on a snowy mountain road, crossing the street when a growling dog appears. Those are excellent reasons to be fearful. When internal alarms go off in response to an outside threat, caution is wise. But when fear becomes a barrier to living an audacious life, it is crucial to recognize how fear can paralyze progress. Fear exists to protect us, but it can also be a liar.
Fear lies about what could happen before we even take action. Fear as a barrier manifests in many forms, and none of them is a certain outcome. Fear of judgment happens entirely in the head. It assumes the feelings and thoughts of someone else, which may or may not be true. Fear of the unknown is based on projected results of an action that has not yet occurred. Recognizing how these fears paralyze progress is the first step toward breaking free.
Making a decision from fear is a weak thread. It is playing defense, reacting to something that hasn’t happened. When you make an offensive move, the prospect of failure is just one item on a menu of possible outcomes. An offensive move is when you take action. The desired result may or may not happen, but you are on offense by deciding which direction to go. When a decision is fear-based—such as staying in your current situation because you are afraid of the unknown—the only possible outcome is to stay the same. We may think staying where we are is safer than taking a risk, but it is actually the opposite. Staying the same isn’t safe; it ensures no growth is possible. An offensive decision generates the potential for growth and increases your chances of success a thousandfold, even if it doesn’t work immediately. The success is in the decision to act in the face of fear, not in the outcome.
To prevent fear paralysis, do the thing that scares you most first. With her first time on television, Anne Marie was afraid she would be terrible—true. She was afraid it would be embarrassing—true. She was afraid she would never get another chance on television—not true. Doing the thing that scares you most first makes everything that follows easier because you have already failed once, and it didn’t kill you or ruin your life.
Then the chapter shifts into a deliciously unexpected idea: fun with rejection. Yes, it is possible to have fun with rejection. Television is a tough business. Anne Marie cannot count how many times she went after a job, an assignment, or a position and was rejected. But it took a while for her to see rejection as an opportunity—an opportunity to fail, survive, and carry on. After she made friends with fear and accepted it as a necessary part of growth, she actively sought out situations where rejection was likely. She thought of it as practicing audacity. They couldn’t fire her if they hadn’t hired her yet.
When she first moved to Los Angeles and got the contract with ESPN, she could work for other networks if it didn’t conflict with her assignments. She wanted to work with Fox but heard from several people that the man who did the hiring was a bully. This was undoubtedly an opportunity for rejection, so she was prepared when she went in to talk with him. Ray was as advertised: dismissive and utterly disinterested in what she had to say. She left the interview proud of herself for pursuing a conversation even though she assumed rejection was a foregone conclusion. Examining her feelings afterward, she wasn’t upset but curious. What would happen if she tried again? And again? As for practicing audacity and being rejected consistently, she had found her man. She decided to mess with Ray a little bit.
Every time they were at the same event, she approached Ray, reintroduced herself, and asked if today was the day he would hire her. “Hi there. I’m Anne Marie Anderson. We’ve met before. Is today the day you are going to hire me?” The first time, he scowled and grunted, “No.” Three months later, passing him in the hallway, she asked again. He looked away. Every time she saw him, she did the same thing. She would catch his eye across the room and wave with a smile, pointing to herself and mouthing, “Is today the day?” Eventually, he laughed and wagged his finger at her because she was so crazy. He also knew she wasn’t intimidated by him.
A year later, sure enough, he approached her at an event and said, “Today is the day. I have something for you. Let’s talk!” Ray assigned her to a basketball game as a sideline reporter. Afterward, he was pleased and told her what a wonderful job she had done. His praise felt gratuitous, as she only did a handful of twenty-second reports on camera. It felt disingenuous, and she wondered why he was so effusive over a minor contribution. Ray offered her another assignment: hosting the Pac-12 Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament show. She accepted even though she had no prior experience hosting a remote show. One of the unspoken rules in television is that you say, “Yes, of course I can,” to anything you are offered or asked to do, and then you just figure it out. Never turn down a job. That is audacity—saying yes and figuring it out.
On the day of the show, Ray asked her to voice the tease. The tease is those few sentences over exciting action at the beginning of a show that hooks the viewer on what is to come. It needs to be powerful and generate excitement. She read the script: “Tonight, the clash of crosstown rivals vying for the conference championship…” As soon as she finished, Ray chastised her in front of the crew: “No! You need to have more emotion!” She read it again. He yelled, “That was worse! Do it again!” She exhaled and did it a third time with more animation. Exasperated, he said, “Ugh. You can’t do this. I will have Bill voice the tease.”
She hadn’t met Bill before. He was a well-respected and experienced play-by-play announcer in Southern California. Bill looked at her and, holding down the mute button so no one could hear, said, “You can’t win.” At first, she thought he was trying to shake her confidence. But he repeated, “You can’t win. Ray will never let you win. He set that up so he could say you suck. It actually has nothing to do with the way you voiced the tease. He just wanted to flex his muscles and knock you down.” She understood. The man who took delight in being an ass when she interviewed and then turned her down time and time again now needed to make sure she knew she wasn’t good enough. He had overpraised her after the sideline gig to set up the opportunity to knock her down again and act as if it was a mistake to hire her.
Bolstered by Bill’s encouragement, Anne Marie confidently sat at the anchor desk as the show started. When they reached the first commercial break, Ray barged up to the set. She rose out of her chair, greeting him with a smile, feeling excited about her work and proud of herself for figuring it out. “You are boring,” he said. Did the smile fall off her face, or was it frozen? “Excuse me?” “You are BORING me!” he said louder so everyone could hear. “You are so slow. You are putting the audience to sleep!” Thanks to Bill tipping her off, she knew that although Ray may have been right, he was also trying to rattle her. There was no constructive criticism there, just a straight-up “you suck.” She realized Ray knew she wasn’t intimidated by him, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to be feared, but she wasn’t going to give that to him.
“Ok, Ray, are you ready?” He glared at her with a sneer. “Are you ready for me to have more energy? I am going to level it up right now. You’ll see.” And she flashed a wide, happy grin at him before walking back to the set. She knew it would frustrate him to see she wasn’t rattled. The camera’s tally light turned red again, and she began speaking. Maybe you want her to write, “I knocked his socks off! He said I was amazing and hired me for the next year,” but she had no idea how Ray felt, nor did she care. She was happy that she didn’t back down in the face of criticism. She measured her performance by her own standards and effort. She was proud that she recalibrated her relationship with rejection. It was no longer something she feared, especially after she intentionally sought it out with Ray. In an audacious mindset, we conceive and conceptualize audacious moves. When we begin to take action, we graduate to level two in cultivating audacity—audacious behavior. The jump from dream to action is worth celebrating.
The chapter then reminds us: only your vote counts. In her 2019 book *Limitless*, Laura Gassner Otting wrote, “Don’t give a vote to anyone who shouldn’t have a voice.” Ray was Anne Marie’s supervisor. He absolutely had every right to a voice in her performance, but she knew validation from him wasn’t going to happen. She decided Ray didn’t deserve a vote. To be audacious, don’t look for validation outside of yourself. All you will find there is a sea of opinions from people paralyzed by their own fears and limitations. Their experiences color their world, so measuring your progress by their standards will never get you where you want to be. The only person for whom you should be making this change is YOU.
Seeking external approval for your decisions can only lead to resentment. If you change your work situation because someone else judges you for not spending enough time with your kids, then you may end up resenting that person and your children too. But if you change your work hours because you want more time with family, the perspective is entirely different, though the change looks the same. That change isn’t for that person or the kids—it is for you. Resentment doesn’t have a home when your motivations come from within, even if the change benefits others.
Then comes a story titled “Just Try: From No to Not Yet.” In 2018, a production company offered Anne Marie a job as a play-by-play announcer for a professional women’s basketball team. The season fit perfectly into her calendar, so she accepted and awaited the contract. She kept waiting for over a month. A few weeks before the season, she checked in with the man who hired her. “Is everything ok? Contract on the way?” He responded, “There is a problem. The general manager and head coach of the team has decided to hire someone else. I’m sorry.”
She was livid. She had never met the general manager/coach because the production company had hired her, but she had cleared her calendar for the summer work. Now that work was disappearing without her even meeting the man who decided he didn’t want her. HELLLLLL NOOOO. She told the production company to let the team’s headquarters know she was coming. She wanted to meet the man in charge. She cries when frustrated. Her kids saw her angry with tears as she walked out, drove to the airport, bought a ticket at the counter, and boarded the short flight. Upon landing, she took an Uber to the team’s offices. When she arrived, the head coach, who obviously didn’t want to meet with her, said, “Look, this isn’t personal.” “Of course it is. I am a person. I was told I had the job. What happened?” He led her to his office, explaining he wanted to hire his friend. “I trust him,” he said, which is completely reasonable.
She knew his friend was a white man in his sixties, so she asked, “Is that the person you think will best connect with your audience largely made up of women with a large LGBTQ+ fan base?” He was quiet. Her intention was not to back him into a corner, so she asked a different question: “You just drafted the top post in the country, but you don’t have anyone to pass inside to her. What is your plan?” He told her about a point guard he’d just drafted. She knew the player and said, “She has had three ACL surgeries. It took her six years to finish her college eligibility because of injuries. You are banking on her to be the quarterback of your offense the entire season? What is the plan if she gets hurt again?” He knew it was a valid question. As a response, he asked one of his own. “Did you cover so and so in college?” She had. “Can she play defense?” He had another point guard in mind. She had called her games since her freshman year of college.
They went back and forth talking about personnel and his goals for the team for a while. Finally, he said, “Look, you know your stuff. I need some time to think about this, and we will get back to you.” She knew if she left that office at that moment, she wouldn’t get the job. She had flown there and introduced herself but still hadn’t addressed his reluctance. She took an audacious risk, saying, “Let me make this easy for you. I don’t want to work for you. I don’t. Not if every time I walk into the gym, you roll your eyes and think, ‘Oh, here is the girl I didn’t want to hire.’ But I will tell you this. I’m not a child. I have been a broadcaster for nearly 30 years. I flew here because I wanted you to meet the person you decided not to hire. Please don’t give me the job because someone else says you should. I’m only accepting this job if you want me in that chair because I don’t want to spend my summer looking over my shoulder.”
And with that, she took an Uber back to the airport and flew home. By the time she arrived, he had called the production company and hired her—but first, he gave her starting salary a bump. The producer told her that he’d said, “I like her; she has balls and knows basketball.” It wasn’t her words as much as her actions that got her hired. They said “No,” and she heard “Not yet.” The fear of rejection is never easy, and it might sound crazy, but shoot for the stars and fall short—early and often. Sometimes the no you hear can turn into a not yet, and other times it means “next.” But shifting to a not yet or next requires the gumption to challenge the no. It requires the audacity to just try.
The chapter then offers a powerful tool: catastrophize your life. Intentionally exaggerate and take your fear to a ridiculous level rather than letting it drag you under. Having a relationship with fear can be revelatory. We spend so much time pushing it away that fear plays an antagonist role. Once you tap into it and explore the root of your trepidation, it is far less likely to spiral. Create a story in which everything you dread materializes, pointing to an irrational end. Anne Marie’s exaggerated fear story goes something like: “If I go on air and am bad, which I certainly will be because I haven’t done it before, then everyone will see me, and I will be embarrassed. If I am embarrassed, I will always be afraid to be in front of the camera, and then I certainly won’t get better and will lose my job on air. The reporters for whom I produce won’t take my advice once they see I can’t do their job, so I will lose that job too. Jobless and humiliated, I will become depressed and difficult to live with, forcing my husband to leave me and take the kids because I won’t be a good mother. Without a job or family, I will die destitute and alone.” Whew, that’s a lot! But that is what it means to catastrophize your fear. Lay out every possible thing that could go wrong. When dying destitute and alone is the feared outcome, anything short of that is a success, right? Once you write the fear story all the way to the end, it becomes clear that it is absolutely absurd. It’s simply never going to happen. Now picture the very best that could happen and the very worst. Your outcome will most certainly lie in the middle. Fear becomes a friend because it is an essential barometer. Fear is a scale when considering whether a move is reckless or worth it. If you aren’t at least a little bit afraid, maybe you aren’t pursuing a goal that will move you forward. As Amelia Earhart once said, “Use your fear, it can take you to the place where you store your courage.”
Finally, the chapter asks us to redefine fear and failure. What is failure in your situation exactly? Is it a failure if you learn from it? Let’s say you put a new marketing plan in place for your consulting business, and your revenue doesn’t increase. Is that failure? Or is that data pointing you toward a different plan that could be more lucrative? Recognize how each setback in your life has contributed to your personal development. Anne Marie likes to look back on jobs she didn’t get and jobs she lost as detours leading to growth. It all is just data that fed her personal development. Failure is not trying. That is her definition of failure: not even trying.
Embracing failure as a stepping stone to success transforms fear into a valuable teacher, but you have to understand it first. The chapter offers prompts and tools: Paralysis Analysis, Fear Identification, Fear’s Root Cause, Fear’s Cost, Fear Journal, Fear Visualization, Fear Exposure Challenges, and Failure Celebration. It reminds us that fear can be a map—keeping us on the right path and helping us separate the worth-it from the reckless risks. Fear can fuel growth if we don’t let it paralyze us from taking bold risks. Then it warns that once you make friends with fear, be prepared for another barrier to arise. It will most likely be time. “I’m not afraid to do it, but I’m so busy I just don’t have time.” That is just another desperate attempt by your superego to protect you from hurt or disappointment. Your superego is not a fan of going out on a limb. There is time. I promise. Let’s dive into it. Turn the page.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating: This chapter hit me like a coach’s whistle in a silent gym. It is honest, funny, and painfully relatable. The opening ESPN story made me laugh out loud, especially the “Heisman my ass” moment, and then it turned tender when Anne Marie admitted she was stiff and terrible on air. That honesty is what makes the chapter work. It doesn’t pretend that audacity feels glamorous. It shows audacity as shaky hands, dry mouth, and showing up anyway. The Ray story is delicious because it shows how rejection can be disarmed with humor and persistence. The “Not Yet” basketball story gave me chills, because she didn’t just ask for the job—she demanded to be seen. And the catastrophizing exercise is weirdly freeing. I walked away thinking about my own fears differently, not as enemies but as loud, nervous friends who need to be heard and then gently ignored. This is a chapter I would reread before any scary opportunity. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction: The final lines set up a direct turn toward the next barrier: time. I predict the next chapter will tackle the familiar lie “I don’t have time” and expose it as the superego’s favorite hiding place. Anne Marie will likely show how audacious people protect their calendars, say no to good things so they can say yes to bold things, and stop waiting for the perfect moment. I also expect practical tools for auditing time, setting boundaries, and turning busyness into intentional action. The cliffhanger is clear: fear has been befriended, but now time will be challenged. And if this chapter is any clue, the next one will be about reclaiming the hours we give away without realizing it.
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