Why I do things I fear

Hi, Gopi here.

I’m writing this from Guatemala. I’ve never been this far away from home, completely on my own.

Every time I open Google Maps, my stomach does a little flip. The blue dot that’s supposed to be a comfort just reminds me how lost I could get.

And yet, some part of me keeps pushing. It’s the part that made me do the hardest thing I’ve ever done on Monday: hike a volcano.

Let me be clear: I was completely unprepared.
I’m not a hiker. I packed nothing. The morning of, I felt so sick with anxiety I was pretty sure I was going to puke before I even got in the van.

My brain was screaming at me. Every rational thought was a perfectly good reason to stay in bed.

But a quieter voice just said: go.

When I arrived at the base, I was offered a sherpa to carry my bag. A wave of relief washed over me. Yes. The easy way out. Let someone else do the hard work. My brain loved this idea.

But then a fellow traveler talked me out of it. “You should carry your own pack,” he said. “It’s part of the experience.”

For some reason, I listened.

So now you have this guy - the non-hiker, the one with zero gear, the one who was just about to pay for the easy route, strapping on a full backpack to climb one of the hardest ascents in the country.

It was terrifying.

The first 15 minutes were the worst of my life. I have never sweat or panted that much, that fast. It was pure, physical misery.

My brain, the world’s most convincing lawyer for staying in bed, was presenting its closing argument.

“See? You can’t do this.”
“You should have hired the sherpa, you idiot.”
“Just turn back now. No one will know.”

But I persevered. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, even with the paralyzing fear that something bad was about to happen.

And then a funny thing happened.
After a while, the fear just… evaporated. The pain was still there, but the panic was gone. The thing that was so scary suddenly became fun.

So fun, in fact, that I didn’t just hike one volcano. I hiked two: Acatenango and Fuego.

I did something completely foreign to me, not because I had nothing better to do, but because I’m learning to seek discomfort. To intentionally step outside my norm.

And this feeling? This is what we face every single day in the work we’re trying to do.

It’s the fear of posting that video on TikTok.
It’s the hesitation before promoting that app you poured your soul into.
It’s the dread of what other people will think.

Our brains are designed to protect us from the volcano. They’re wired to spot the risk, to convince us to take the sherpa, to tell us to turn back after the first 15 minutes of pain.

But we have no idea what’s on the other side of that fear.

The best things in my life have come from ignoring that voice and just continuing the climb.

Why stop before you see the top?