Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

There is plenty about which to be fearful in 2020 and the pandemic doesn’t seem to be over yet. For many, the fear and uncertainty caused by the pandemic is piled on top of the fear and uncertainty in their personal and professional lives even before the pandemic. Yet, some people seem to cope better than others. How does that work? Have some people conquered all their fears? Not likely. 

No One Conquers All Fears 

Even the most successful people in all facets of society, in candid moments, will tell you they still have fears. A more accurate headline might be “Managing Fear.” The ability to manage fear is like the ability to run a marathon. One doesn’t just wake up one day ready to run the distance. Nor does one wake up one day and all the fear is gone. In both cases, it takes time and training, making gradual progress toward the goal. In the case of fear, it is never gone completely but can be managed in a way that can sometimes lead people to do extraordinary things. 

Living With Fear and Ambiguity 

Gary Schoeniger, founder of the Ice House Entrepreneurship program that I use, often mentions the fact that entrepreneurs—and small business owners—have to learn to live with the ambiguity and fear of not knowing for sure what happens next. Nothing ever turns out as planned so the key to planning is learning to build flexibility into the plan. 

In “Ice House” we also talk about world renowned psychiatrist Albert Bandura. He could help people overcome great fears, such as a fear of snakes, in just a few hours. He helped people whose fears were severe enough to affect all aspects of their lives. Through a process he termed “guided mastery” a client would be told that there was a snake in the adjoining room and that before the session was over, the client would touch the snake. Most clients reacted hysterically to such thought. In the first step, a window curtain was opened so the client could see the snake in the next room. After the terror subsided, the door to the snake room was opened and the client coaxed into standing in the doorway then gradually, one small step at a time, inching closer to the snake. The new terror and anxiety of each step became less and less drastic. The client eventually touched the snake via the protection of a thick welding glove and finally with bare hand. For most people, a life-long fear of snakes vanished at that moment never to be a problem again. 

Bandura discovered something else about his clients who had overcome life-long, unhealthy fears of such things as snakes and spiders. The clients had less fear about other aspects of their lives. He calls this self-efficacy, a special kind of self-confidence, allowing people to better manage the fears in their lives by taking on their challenges one step at a time. Self-efficacy spills over into all aspects of life, personal, professional and academic. 

Making Builds Self-Efficacy 

We see increases in people’s self-efficacy as they learn to do new things in a maker environment like Fab Lab ICC. So much so that it’s part of the Fab Lab mission “to increase self-efficacy by people learning to do things they never thought they could do.” For our young people, this sets them up to be life-long learners in all areas from their continued education through their careers as either entrepreneurs or employees. It even translates into the courage and self-confidence to tackle home projects. Think about how much money over a lifetime one might save by being able to self-accomplish 85% of home projects and repairs instead of hiring elusive and expensive contractors for the job.  

Fear will never completely go away for most people but increasing self-efficacy will lead to a more confident approach to facing the fears in our lives, even during a pandemic. 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks. Archive columns and podcast at jimcorrell.com.