Why Are We So Afraid of the Future?
We closed out one of our last community sessions before the summer with Yovanna Duovic, someone who has shaped so much of my own thinking over the years. She is a Kundalini yoga teacher, a creative strategist, and the founder of Humanize, a platform built to help people develop the skills machines cannot replace. We sat down on the summer solstice, which felt fitting, a day the whole natural world is quietly pushing toward growth. And what we ended up talking about was the thing that so often stops us from growing at all. The fear of the future.
You can watch our full conversation below. If you would rather read, here is what stayed with me.
▶ Watch the full conversation with Yovanna.
Why are we so afraid of the future?
Because we are built for it, in a strange way. Yovanna's answer surprised me. Fearing the unknown is not a flaw. It is one of the most human traits we have, and it comes from somewhere very old.
"Humans are actually the only creatures that have this capacity to think about the future and the unknown, and to have this fear of the unknown because of that."
Animals do not carry this particular weight, because they live entirely in the present. We are the only ones who can project ourselves forward in time and then feel afraid of a place we are not actually standing in yet. That is worth sitting with. The fear is not a sign something is wrong with you. It is a sign you have the kind of mind that can imagine tomorrow at all.
Is it possible to be fearless, or is that the wrong goal?
Wrong goal, and this reframe changed how I think about leadership. Yovanna does not believe in the word fearless. To her it is almost a contradiction.
"Fearless means that you don't have fear. Sometimes the bravest thing that people can do is to act on something despite still feeling the fear."
She draws a sharp line between responding and reacting. Reacting is instinctive and fear driven, the thing we do without a pause. Responding comes from a wider awareness, a small gap between the feeling and the action. Some of the best leaders, she says, are the ones who respond despite fear. Some of the worst are the ones who feel none at all. Fearlessness is not the mark of strength we have been told it is.
Why does fear feel more real than hope?
Because fear is rooted in memory, and hope has to be built without one. Yovanna traced this back to something quietly technical. In the yogic view she works from, fear of the unknown is essentially a subconscious memory of the past, resurfacing to warn you. Hope has no such evidence to stand on. It is asking you to trust something you cannot yet point to.
"Fear is always in the mind. That's where the fear is."
She also named something I had never quite put words to before, the idea that fear can become a habit in its own right, not just an emotion that visits occasionally. If you have spent years responding to uncertainty with dread, that becomes the groove your mind falls into automatically. The encouraging part is that habits can be worked with. You are not stuck with the pattern simply because it is familiar.
If fear has become more of a habit than a feeling for you, this is exactly the kind of pattern we work through together. Book a conversation with me whenever you are ready.
What does it mean to be both the island and the ocean?
This was the image from our conversation I keep coming back to. Yovanna described two parts of ourselves. One is the ego, not in the sense of arrogance, but in the sense of identification, the roles we attach the words I am to. Mother, founder, leader, friend. The other part is vast and mostly unknown to us, something many traditions would simply call soul.
"There is this really interesting concept with the island and ocean. Island is that identification, that limited self. Ocean is that very vast unknown."
The island is real and it is not nothing. But it is only ever one small piece of who you actually are. When we let go of a role, whether by choice or by loss, it can feel like losing ourselves entirely, because the ego does not know who it is without the box it built. Yovanna's point was gentle but firm. You are never only the island. The ocean was always there too.
How do you actually let go of control?
Slowly, and usually with some grief attached, but on the other side of it, she says, is something closer to relief than loss.
"Sometimes it can be almost paralysing to let go of control, but very often, when we do it, we realise how liberating it is."
Her explanation of why leans on the same island and ocean idea. Ego loves control, because control is how it protects its territory, its role, its box. Loosen the grip on the role, and there is a moment of not knowing who you are without it. That moment is uncomfortable. It is also, in her experience, where the actual growth happens. Nature does not resist change. Every part of it, including us, is built for expansion, and resisting that is where a lot of unnecessary suffering comes from.
How do you calm the fear of the future without pretending it is not there?
You do not talk yourself out of it. You calm the nervous system underneath it, and you come back to the present, again and again, because the future genuinely has not happened yet.
"The future is not created yet. I'm creating the future from this moment right now."
Yovanna's practical answer leaned on something she works with daily in her Kundalini practice, a calm nervous system as the actual foundation, not a nice idea layered on top of an anxious one. She also talked about language as a surprisingly practical tool. Nervousness and excitement are close to the same physical sensation. Which word you reach for can shift how the whole experience lands
How to put this into practice this week
Next time you feel fear rising about something in the future, try renaming it excitement out loud and notice what shifts, even slightly.
Ask yourself once this week, what am I identifying with right now, a role, a title, a relationship, and is there more of me than that.
Practice responding instead of reacting once. Feel the fear, take one breath, then act.
Spend three minutes in silence, hands resting, simply breathing. Notice how much of the fear was actually happening right now versus somewhere in an imagined future.
A few questions I hear often
Why do humans fear the future more than other animals seem to?
Because we are the only ones who can imagine it. Animals live almost entirely in the present, so they are not carrying the particular weight of picturing a future event and feeling afraid of something that has not happened. That imaginative capacity is a genuine gift. It is also the exact mechanism behind anticipatory fear.
Is it bad to feel afraid as a leader?
No, and believing otherwise tends to backfire. Yovanna's view, which matches what I see in the founders I work with, is that fearlessness is not the marker of good leadership. The leaders who respond thoughtfully despite their fear tend to make better decisions than the ones who feel nothing at all.
Can fear really become a habit?
Yes. If your mind has repeatedly met uncertainty with dread, that response can become as automatic as any other habit. The useful part of this is that habits are workable. A pattern you learned can be met with a new one, built the same way the old one was, through repetition.
What is the island and ocean idea, in simple terms?
The island is your identity, the roles and labels you attach yourself to. The ocean is everything you are beyond that, vast and harder to put into words. Most of our fear and our sense of limitation comes from believing we are only the island.
How do I stop worrying about the future without ignoring real risks?
You are not being asked to ignore anything. The shift is in where your attention rests. Planning sensibly for what is ahead is different from spending your present moments anxious about a future that has not arrived. Grounding practices, including a calm breath and a few minutes of stillness, help you tell the two apart.
Meeting yourself where you are
If there is one thread through everything Yovanna shared, it is this. So much of our fear comes from believing we have to become someone else before we are allowed to feel safe. Her advice was simpler than that, and harder. Meet yourself where you are today.
This is close to the heart of what we do at The Simplified Model, with founders, executives, and investors who want their success to include themselves. If that speaks to you, book a conversation with me whenever you feel ready.
If that’s the work calling to you right now, take a breath, and know it’s exactly the work we hold space for at The Simplified Model. Book a mindset conversation whenever you feel ready.
This piece draws on our full community conversation with Yovanna Duovic. Watch it in full above.
