“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.” – Teach Different with Robert Louis Stevenson

Transcript

Steve Fouts (00:10)

Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. We are talking to another professional in the city of Chicago today. And we have a wonderful quote that is going to really get you to think about fear and courage and some really good kind of directions and ideas that we can take on whether or not we should be keeping fears to ourselves and what courage means. And I’m gonna let the quote reveal itself like it always does. This quote is by Robert Louis Stevenson. So we’re gonna get to the quote in a second, but first of all, we always do this. What’s the drill? What’s the Teach Different Method? We’ve got the quote that’s gonna frame our conversation. We’ve got a claim and a counterclaim that we’re gonna discuss with the quote. And we’re going to make sure, you know, we push back against it, but we’re also going to agree with it if it’s natural. And then we’ve got hopefully some questions that are going to emerge from the conversation. And I’ve got a wonderful guest that I just met actually within the last what week or so, Katherine Johnson from Chicago. And I’ll let her introduce herself when she weighs in first in the quote, but you know, away we go and Katherine, I haven’t talked to you about this. I’ve had Jarvis on quite a few times on the podcast, but we’re really excited to do some work in Chicago, with the young leaders and platforming them and their wisdom and getting them involved, you know, in Teach Different as much as we can. We have a project called Voices Rising that we have devised with another local nonprofit. We can talk about that one later. I just wanted to throw that out there for our guests as well. Get ready for Voices Rising because we’re gonna have some really, really important voices that we’re gonna get on the platform. So here we go. Here’s our quote for today. Robert Louis Stevenson, the quote is, and I’ll read it a couple of times, keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. What do you think, Ms. Johnson? Well, you’re up first.

 

Mrs Johnson (02:45)

All right, great. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. My name is Ms. Johnson. I’m Katherine Johnson. I’m a social worker from Chicago. I’m excited to be here. So the quote, keep your fears to yourself and share your courage with others. I thought about this many different ways. I don’t know. I’m kind of conflicted about this particular quote in a way. I get it from one perspective of keeping your fears to yourself, right? Because what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to project your fears onto someone else, therefore stunting their growth. And to balance that, I guess the writer was saying, well, you can then share your courage with them. But sometimes when we speak in the negative, and if we start off with the negative, sometimes that’s all that people hear. And so we may follow it up with something positive, like sharing my courage with someone. But if I’ve already spoken against or talked them out of taking the next step because of my fears, they’re less likely to hear that positive affirmation on the end of it.

 

Steve Fouts (03:53)

So am I hearing you right that if we hide our fears, if we keep them to ourselves, that can project something that they’re gonna pick up on whether we like it or not? Am I getting you here?

 

Mrs Johnson (04:00)

Mm-hmm. I think it’s just the opposite. If we share those fears, if we share those fears, yes, if we share those fears instead of our courage, you know, yeah.

 

Steve Fouts (04:22)

I gotcha. So you’re really on the truth of the quote. You know, don’t be walking around sharing fears. I got you. I missed that. Okay. I got you. I got you. Don’t be walking around sharing your fears because you’re going to derail a relationship pretty quickly.

 

Mrs Johnson (04:26)

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. And if I can go a little bit further and share a personal experience. Growing up here in Chicago, there’s a lot of things to be weary of or to be leery of in a sense, right? And so growing up with my mother, she was always afraid of what could happen next, right? So there were things that she would discourage me from even experiencing because she was afraid. For instance, swimming. I could just use swimming as an example. I didn’t learn how to swim because my mother was afraid that something bad could happen, you know, in the pool or in the ocean or so forth. Her sharing her fear instead of keeping it to herself, had she kept that fear to herself, I may have been more likely to go out and attempt swimming. First, I didn’t want to disappoint my mother. So once she shared with me that she was afraid for me to engage in such an activity, of course, as a little kid, you don’t want to disappoint or put your parent in a position to look on you unfavorably. So I never even attempted. Now, did she have anything positive to say about swimming? Sure she did, but she shared the fear first, and that’s what I grabbed hold to. So if she had kept that to herself, who knows, I could be an Olympic swimmer now.

 

Steve Fouts (06:14)

It’s valid, right? And of course, in her mind, if I can be your mom for a sec, thinking, if I don’t share this fear, my baby is gonna be in danger. This is almost something that I have to do. And it’s making me realize that that example, is making me realize one of the reasons why people share fears. It’s not because they’re trying to stunt someone’s growth, especially if it’s someone who loves you. They’re wanting to protect. And I’m thinking of my grandma, she, well, I heard this from my dad a lot. He was just sheltered by her his whole life, you know, and he broke out and he said he was like 45 or something when he started taking some chances. But again, it was that same, it was almost too much love or too much care, right? But there’s reason for it. It’s not a mean-spirited thing.

 

Mrs Johnson (07:15)

Yeah, yeah. I understand. Absolutely, absolutely. And I like how you said there was that element of danger there and being the mother and being the parent or the mama bear, she couldn’t protect me from that danger because she herself could not swim. So it became overwhelming. So you’re absolutely right. It was a source of or a sense of protection.

 

Steve Fouts (07:42)

Yeah, and she tried to protect you by saying, away from the water. Good example. That’s really good. I’m trying to think. I’ll probably come up with something myself as far, well, what do I fear? Sharing my fears. I don’t know. I think it is something where if I’m afraid of something, I will, I’ll give someone that advice. And, but I do, I don’t know. I, I, I’m going to come back to me because I feel like something’s going to come out when we hop to maybe a counterclaim. But before we go to the counterclaim, let me ask you this, the courage, the courage, sharing your courage with others. Let me give you what my impression of that word was and how it fits in the quote. This guy’s saying, keep your fears to yourself. Don’t project your problems basically on the rest of the world unless you have something that is positive and you want to show people how to jump out of an airplane with a parachute. There’s courage. You should do that and show people that you’re a courageous person. I’m a little, I wanna go with the claim and I wanna say, okay, I agree with you, Stevenson, but I’m wondering what’s the difference between courage in this case and why is courage so important? Are we always supposed to put a positive light on ourselves and show people that you need to overcome your fears? Is that the message?

 

Mrs Johnson (09:12)

Well, if his goal was to tell people that they need to lead by example, then that would be absolutely correct, right? We all have fears. We’re all afraid of something. Fear is a natural human emotion, right? So everyone experiences fear on some level at some particular time. What if we went around just sharing all that fear all of the time, right?

 

Steve Fouts (10:03)

I feel like we already do it. I mean, you know what I mean? Like most people are doing it. And that’s why there’s so much anxiety. I don’t know, you maybe not, maybe not, but the courage, now I’m liking this overcoming fear. What is courage? It’s overcoming fear. So, you know, I guess, you know, if you show people that you can overcome fear, that is a good message.

 

Mrs Johnson (10:23)

Absolutely. Is this overcoming fear or is it working through fear?

 

Steve Fouts (10:40)

What’s the difference?

 

Mrs Johnson (10:42)

Well, overcoming means that the fear, in my mind, the way I see overcoming fear is that the fear cease to exist. And sometimes you have to just move forward afraid.

 

Steve Fouts (10:56)

I see. I see it’s still there, but you’re not letting it control you.

 

Mrs Johnson (11:06)

Absolutely, absolutely. It doesn’t hinder you in any shape, or fashion. For instance, jumping out a plane. I don’t know anybody who would jump out a plane and not have a little, you know, sense of fear back there, right? But you still do it because…

 

Steve Fouts (11:23)

You know, that was a terrible example. I brought it up. I’m never doing that ever. And I’m never getting in a helicopter. It’s just not happening. I heard Mike Tyson. Of course you’ve heard of Mike, Iron Mike. I heard an interview with him and he said something interesting. They said, they asked him, are you afraid when you go into the ring? And he said, I’m afraid every time. The minute I’m not afraid, I’m lacking. Like I will get taken advantage of in there. I’m afraid that’s what gets me ready.

 

Mrs Johnson (11:56)

Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

 

Steve Fouts (12:07)

So yeah, I guess that would support your idea of, you’re not overcoming it, you’re acknowledging it and you’re moving forward.

 

Mrs Johnson (12:07)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. In spite of.

 

Steve Fouts (12:21)

We have a quote in our library. We have a library, Ms. Johnson, in an online community with just a bunch of quotes, right? Just like this one. And one of them was from, I think it was Maya Angelou, where she said something to the effect of, when you know what it is that you need to accomplish, fear goes away. You need a goal though. You need to have, when you know what needs to be done, that’s it. When you know what needs to be done, fear goes away. And I’ve always looked at a quote like that as an inspiration in the sense that, yeah, the fear is there, but there’s something more important than fear, you know, keep it keep it in perspective.

 

Mrs Johnson (13:18)

Mm-hmm. I can see that. I can see that.

 

Steve Fouts (13:21)

Did you have other brothers and sisters and are they Olympic swimmers?

 

Mrs Johnson (13:26)

I did not, I’m an only child.

 

Steve Fouts (13:28)

Look at you. Okay. Okay. That actually explains a bit more your mom. But okay. All right. So how are we doing with the claim? I mean, we’ve got the basics, right? Keep the fears to yourself. Projecting it really can really do others harm. Show courage and you don’t pretend like fear is not there, but you just acknowledge it and step through it. You’ve got courage. Let’s push against the quote. Let’s just, I’m gonna let you do this. You start us off and pick at this thing a little bit.

 

Mrs Johnson (14:11)

Okay. May have inverted my answers here. My flip side to that as a parent, as a parent who has taught a couple of children how to drive, right? A very scary experience, let me just say. However, I had to keep that fear to myself in order to keep that child from making some drastic mistakes. So I think I flipped it, flip-flopped it. I had to demonstrate courage. I had to show a strong front, even when I wasn’t.

 

Steve Fouts (14:45)

Okay. Ooh, wait, you’re saying courage is needed to keep your fears to yourself. Did I hear that?

 

Mrs Johnson (14:54)

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. I think you did. I think you did.

 

Steve Fouts (15:05)

You just turned the quote, now I see what you’re saying. You just flipped the quote on itself. So, okay, and now I’m, this is interesting. I think you’re right though, because, you know, the hardest thing to do is to pretend like you’re not afraid while your heart is just beating a hundred seconds. And so that takes some courage and you stop yourself from, you know, creating some anxiety in somebody else, that takes courage for you. Interesting. Okay. All right. I’m buying that.

 

Mrs Johnson (15:42)

Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Steve Fouts (15:51)

I’m buying that. Here was my take on it. The keeping your fears to yourself. Here’s what I was thinking, and you already said it. Everybody has fears. We all have fears. It’s human, it’s humanity. I think it was my mom that said, if someone is angry, there’s one of two reasons. Fear or hurt. And if you take that, I want to say against this quote, don’t keep your fears to yourself, say them, you know, articulate them. And do it in a way that makes it very clear why it is that you fear something. As much as you can, because it’s so emotional, right? Usually we fear something, we don’t wanna talk about it. We’re just like, there’s something under my bed. Or I don’t know what’s around the corner. Don’t make me describe this fear, but it’s emotional, right? So I’m gonna go to your mom right now. What if she would have said to you something like, I’m afraid that since I can’t swim, that you around water, I wouldn’t be able to protect you. And that hurts me to think that something would happen to you and I wouldn’t be able to protect you. I just wanted to let you know that I fear that. Do you really wanna swim? Let’s figure this out.

You already listened to her and you’re just like, all right, I got you mom, that’s all you need to say. But my point is, like, don’t keep it to yourself. It’s not gonna hurt necessarily to share it. Maybe it would help because someone else may say, you know what, I’m afraid of some things too, but I’ve never said it. And you just said it.

 

Mrs Johnson (17:54)

Yeah. That’s it, exactly.

 

Steve Fouts (18:18)

So now I kind of respect you a little bit or I feel a little bit better about my own. I don’t know, I’m just trying to come a different side where maybe it’s not always bad to keep your fears to yourself.

 

Mrs Johnson (18:32)

I like where you’re going with this, especially as a therapist, because now sometimes it takes courage to speak those fears, those fears that you’ve held tight, that you held close to the chest, right? There’s some scary things out there, right? And it takes courage, especially in terms of sometimes trauma and or abuse to speak those things out loud, right? That takes courage.

 

Steve Fouts (18:59)

That’s true.

 

Mrs Johnson (19:01)

And not only to speak it out loud, what about in a group setting? It may be easier to on a 1 on 1, right? So when I say keep your fears to yourself, but use your courage, you’re using that courage to speak those fears out, to kind of eradicate. Well, I won’t say eradicate because that may still be there, but to lessen the traumatic effect of fear.

 

Steve Fouts (19:30)

When you say it, it does lessen it sometimes, you know, cause it demystifies it. It’s so powerful when we try to run from things, you know, and we cover it up and we take it out on other people or we pretend like it doesn’t affect us. And here we are just eating ourselves inside, but have that courage. It’s fun. Yeah. You just used courage to basically go do the claim and the counterclaim to agree and disagree.

 

Mrs Johnson (20:03)

They disagree. Yes. What if you have a fear and because you’ve kept it to yourself, you don’t even realize that it’s not even something to be afraid of. Like you could be afraid of a snaggletooth dog and all you see is the dog and not knowing that the dog was toothless the whole time because you never shared it.

 

Steve Fouts (20:23)

Right. Right. Right. You made it up. You made it up. I mean, how many fears are like that? How many are real fears? I mean, swimming back to that one, I think that’s a real one because drowning’s real. Well, think of public speaking. I don’t know how you are. Well, I saw you at, you’re not a bad public speaker. You’re a good one. But, and I was a teacher.

 

Mrs Johnson (20:42)

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. But there’s always an element of fear there. Now let me say that, there’s always.

 

Steve Fouts (21:00)

There should be, right? A little bit, it gets you ready. But yeah, people, some people, I heard some poll somewhere about more people, or people fear public speaking more than they fear death. Whoa, you know,  that’s pretty powerful. And is that real? I guess it is real, but that one is an example of one. Let me throw that out. I think that one is a lot of it’s in your head because when you’re at the podium, it’s very real. I was gonna say that doesn’t make it fake, But it’s, I’ve come to realize as an audience member,

 

Mrs Johnson (21:19)

Wow, right? Right. But still very real, even though it’s just in your head, it’s still very real. Right, right.

 

Steve Fouts (21:48)

When someone else is speaking, it never ceases to amaze me. I’m looking at him and I’m saying, I hope you’re not nervous. I hope you’re natural. I hope you do well. I don’t want you to screw up. It’ll make me feel uncomfortable. You’ll feel uncomfortable. I’ll see you feel uncomfortable. I don’t know why it’s so hard to translate that to when I’m at the podium. Most people are believing that for me too, but here we are with that real fear that, what are they thinking about me? I’m gonna screw up. But they actually want you to be successful. So anyway, that’s a big one actually.

 

Mrs Johnson (22:19)

Mm-hmm. I love that. And it took me to, there’s a population that I work with often times where I am the only female in a male dominated environment. And so as the only females, sometimes in a male dominated environment, show no fear. Right? Show no fear. I have to keep whatever, whatever may be making me uncomfortable. I have to keep that to myself and because of some of the population that I work with, my reason for being there is to speak hope. So here I am now. I can’t appear before this population afraid or else they won’t believe my message.

 

Steve Fouts (23:22)

I appreciate that. Even though you might feel that covering that up, you’re not doing it out of some huge psychological problem. You’re doing it because they need that. They need that sense of certainty. And if you don’t show that you’re not going to connect with them. I get you. Yeah. You got to know your audience.

 

Mrs Johnson (23:35)

Yes. Yes. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s that and you just think about it. It’s not always easy. Well, I’ll say for me, it’s not always easy being a woman to command an audience of alpha males. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Steve Fouts (24:03)

That goes without saying. But again, I think that you are better and have more skills than you think. And I’m glad you’re humble. I don’t think that was a fake humble. No.

 

Mrs Johnson (24:16)

No, not at all. And since I kind of inched in there, the male-female dynamic, I’ll use this quote to go even further with men, keeping your fears close and using courage. Men don’t have the liberty in our social environment to even share their fears because no one respects necessarily a man who is sharing his fears. Not that he doesn’t have them, but it’s socially unacceptable, unfortunately, in this society for a man to verbalize his fears. So for him to keep his fears, you know, keep your fears close, but share your courage, it’s almost the epitome of societal manhood.

 

Steve Fouts (24:59)

Yeah. It is, and I’ll argue that that’s the not so healthy way of showing whatever, manhood. I like your courage of sharing fears. If you can do it in an appropriate way where you’ve got your logos, your language, you’re articulating it, man, that is powerful. That’s more powerful than the whole, you know, I don’t need anything. I’m ready to stipulate, you know, I’m the thing in the room or whatever. That stuff can just be broken apart by anyone in my opinion that is humble and has seen the game and seen the fakers. So watch out. If you’re going to use your courage to hide your fear, my thing would be watch out for someone who’s going to use their courage to express their fear.

 

Mrs Johnson (25:43)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. I’ll be in complete agreement with you there.

 

Steve Fouts (26:16)

But I do agree that the way most people are, know, it’s the other one. It’s more like what he’s saying. Keep your fears to yourself. Let’s do this. Let’s, you know, we’ve done the claim counterclaim. The essential question really is our last kind of piece to this method. it’s one of these, there’s no prescription for it. Are you wondering anything based off our conversation here? I mean, I’ll throw out what is courage. I would like to throw that out as a question that I would like to revisit. You know, if we had a few more of these conversations, and hopefully we will, let’s get into courage a little bit more, because I think that that word, although we all use it, and we think we’re all agreeing, I think it’s different, that people have a different sense of it. And I don’t know if you have any, you know, I thought on that right now or have another question, but I’m just trying to kick off the questioning.

 

Mrs Johnson (27:25)

I think courage is a tool or vehicle even. Like I said, that we use to take us from one place to the other. It takes us over the speed bumps of fear, of anxiety, of worry, of self doubt. So I think that it’s a tool that we use.

 

Steve Fouts (27:51)

And it’s based kind of in fear in a way.

 

Mrs Johnson (27:54)

Yes, yes. I don’t think you could have courage without fear.

 

Steve Fouts (27:59)

Yeah, there you go. There you go. I don’t know if you study any philosophy, but my guy, Plato, he had a definition of courage. And I love it because it’s different and it’s thought provoking, but here it is. Courage is the knowledge of what you should and shouldn’t fear. It’s slightly different, right? It’s a knowledge. There are some things you shouldn’t fear. There are some things you should. Who’s courageous? The person that gets them right. And he would argue that if you know what’s right, and his teacher was Socrates, of course, who got executed by his society, being afraid of death, is not courageous. That’s not something that should bother you. What should bother you is not doing the right thing. Not being yourself, not taking care of others. So he linked courage to morality. That’s big idea. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on it.

 

Mrs Johnson (29:25)

It’s a big idea. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a big idea. I don’t know. I have to sit with that one a little bit and think about that. I don’t know. I don’t know that I necessarily agree at this point. Something about it rubs me just a little off. And I can’t put my finger, yeah. Can’t put my finger quite on it. I can’t point to a specific thing and say this is what’s rubbing me a little raw with it, but something is rubbing me raw with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Steve Fouts (29:49)

Linking morality. Yeah. I like it. It’s an intuition. Yeah.

 

Mrs Johnson (30:10)

So don’t know. The knowledge of what’s what, I don’t know that I agree.

 

Steve Fouts (30:12)

I’m trying to think of what you should and shouldn’t fear. So it’s, in other words, it’s not an emotional thing. You know, I guess the insight into it, and I’m not even arguing for it. It’s, it’s more, it’s a different angle on it. Usually, I think we think of courage as an emotional response to fear. I’m going to get over this. You know, there’s an obstacle. I’m going to, like you’re saying, take it from one point to another. And the way that he’s suggesting is that I guess it’s a knowing about what’s worth it and what’s not. It’s more of a thought than an emotion. Okay, let me, can I simplify that? Courage is more of a thought than an emotion. And that’s what probably is rubbing you wrong. And it’s rubbing me wrong actually, the more I think about it. Because courage is spirit, right? It’s not your head, it’s more your heart. It’s the thing that pushes you forward towards something. Yeah, don’t make me disagree with Plato. I’m feeling it. It was your hesitation. Yeah, that’s – But courage is, that’s a big question, right? Like what is courage? I think that’s a good one. Maybe here’s another one throwing it out, you know, cause I’m just practice at this, right? I just, cause, and I was a teacher too. So, but how about this one? How do you know when to keep your fears to yourself?

 

Mrs Johnson (31:47)

Yeah, that’s the big one. Okay. Hmm, that’s a great question. It’s definitely situational.

 

Steve Fouts (32:07)

Because maybe it’s situational.

 

Mrs Johnson (32:14)

There may be times where it’s beneficial to keep your fears to yourself, especially if those fears can be exploited in a way that it will do more harm than good.

 

Steve Fouts (32:26)

There you go, and there might be other times when it will help you to just share them because you’ve got people you trust around you. There’s nothing to do, don’t close yourself off. Take advantage of the situation.

 

Mrs Johnson (32:35)

Right, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Steve Fouts (32:50)

This has been wonderful. Like this is not our last one, okay? And it definitely is not. And when I get it into Chicago, I’m gonna be in Chicago next week for Thanksgiving. I’m sure you’re real busy and everything, but I’d love to get together again and I’ll tell you more about that project, the Voices Rising project and the types of things Jarvis and I are doing together. But this was an absolute pleasure.

 

Mrs Johnson (32:55)

Absolutely, I enjoyed it. I’m always game for good conversation. Thought-provoking conversation.

 

Steve Fouts (33:25)

Yeah, and you got the method too. Really just, it changes with the quote, you know? So again, you’re always working with circles and groups of people. It really is picking a quote that fits a certain, you know, moment or something you want everyone to start thinking about. And then you just go through the claim counterclaim essential question. And, you know, this was what, like 30, 40 minutes. These things can be 10 minutes, they can be two hours. It just depends on who’s there and it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful and I was so glad you were able to make it.

 

Mrs Johnson (33:53)

Mm-hmm. Wow. Absolutely. I thank you for asking me. I definitely enjoyed and would love to come back and do this again.

 

Steve Fouts (34:13)

You will and we will and take care. Bye everybody.

 

Mrs Johnson (34:16)

You too, be well, have a great Thanksgiving.