DESIRE & FEAR INSIDE ME

DESIRE & FEAR INSIDE ME
What Does 'Fearless' Decision-Making Actually Involve?
Personal Story by Ned Stranger

​Some clichés you hear so much that they start to lose meaning. “Be fearless” is one of them. It’s assumed that we know what this means…

I used to be one for “goal” style new year’s resolutions; the kind that read like a checklist of achievements. Release X many songs. Play Y many concerts. Finish writing Z book draft. But eighteen months ago I became a father and, among other things, I started thinking differently about goals and how I spend my time.

Not only because time was scarcer, but also because of the importance of savouring deeper experiences. It’s another one of those clichés that parenthood rushes by and your daughter grows faster than you can fathom. One minute she’s pulling off her socks whenever your back is turned; the next she’s started playing guitar and eclipsed your Spotify follower count…

So I wanted to focus less on what I was doing and be more mindful about how I was doing it. This filtered into my New Year’s Resolutions for 2026. I set upon two broader, more abstract intentions. First, to be more thorough in the projects I chose to take on. The second was a necessary consequence of the first: to get better at making decisions.

If time is precious and if I commit to deeper ways to use it, I have to feel sure I’m making the right choices. Do I write that book, or use that time to write more songs? If I want to explore a new hobby, do I take up salsa dancing or boxing or deep sea diving?

I then realised that I have no idea what “better at making decisions” actually means. Napoleon Hill formulates it quite simply: you should “make decisions quickly and change them slowly, if at all”.

But “quick” decision-making can lead to impulsive and, ultimately, “wrong” decisions. Something that feels right during one week might feel totally wrong the next. Especially at a time of constant change - our daughter picking up a new skill every few days (and growing out of her clothes as frequently) - I wanted a decision-making formula that was more enduring.

I then found a more detailed account of “good decision-making” in Ray Dalio’s book of principles. He splits it into 5 steps: having clear goals; identifying problems; diagnosing them to get to root cause; designing plans to solve them; doing whatever it takes to get the result. From his analysis I realised that there were two broad phases to a decision: first, gathering as much information as possible, so that the decision is informed; secondly, making a choice.

What I realised is that, the quickness should apply to the information gathering. If you have an itch to explore something - e.g. salsa dancing - don’t sit with it, just find out as much info about it as possible. Go to a sample class, ask friends what the salsa crowd in Vienna is like, etc. Do all of this as soon as possible. None of this is committing to “doing” salsa; it’s about information gathering.

Then, once you understand it in more detail, decide whether or not it’s right for you. If it is, then commit to it for a long time; at least until something drastic changes.

​But still there was something missing. I realised that, at the heart of all my decisions, was a tension between fear and desire. Both of these influenced what I was choosing, but I wanted my decisions to be based solely on desire. Instead, fear was creeping in, causing me either not to do the things I wanted, or to keep changing my mind.

For example: “what if I don’t have enough energy to go out dancing in the week?” is a fear. So is the fear of judgment, something I experience all the time with my songwriting, even after twenty years of playing concerts and publishing songs. “What if my next song release goes down badly?” “What if this song is too edgy?” “What if I can’t fill the next music venue that I book?”

Coming back to my more philosophical outlook; what’s important is not what decisions you make, but how you make them. I can’t stop myself thinking these fearful thoughts, but I can stay aware of them so that I don’t let them affect the outcome. Instead I focus on what I desire. If I desire a bigger audience at my next show, or feel a creative desire to release a seven-minute song with less accessible production (i.e. four minute guitar solos… like all my teenage idols), then I should follow that desire rather than worrying what people think.

In the same way, I shouldn’t force myself to do things that I don’t feel that desire for, just because I’m worried other people will judge me if I don’t. In 2025, I launched a podcast called Poly Risk Reward about my alternative relationship lifestyle and unusual family set-up. After 15 episodes I felt a total lack of desire to go deeper and grow it to a wider audience. Rather than forcing myself to continue, lest I seem like a “quitter”, I decided to pause and respond to my creative itch to spend more of my spare time writing songs.

There are so many things to fear. And fear is unavoidable, necessary even as a compass for understanding our environment. But decision-making should be about fearlessness, a triumph of desire over fear. ∎