Terry Tucker: Face the Fear—The Power of Naming What Scares You

Terry Tucker is a former NCAA athlete, high school basketball coach, police officer, cancer warrior, and hostage negotiator turned motivational speaker. Diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of melanoma more than 13 years ago, Terry uses his journey—not just as a survivor but as a leader under pressure—to teach others how to live with purpose, resilience, and emotional clarity. He is the author of Sustainable Excellence and the founder of MotivationalCheck.com.

Segment Summary:
In this introspective and emotionally resonant segment, Terry dives into a lesson he learned not from a hospital—but from his time as a hostage negotiator: the importance of calling out your fear. When faced with overwhelming anxiety, test results, or uncertainty about the future, many of us are tempted to bury our emotions, especially men. But Terry explains why naming your fear and facing it head-on is the only way through it.

From imagining worst-case scenarios to reframing the stakes—“even if I lose a leg, I’m still here, I can still hug my wife”—Terry shares how confronting fear has allowed him to think more clearly, make grounded decisions, and stay emotionally resilient throughout his cancer journey and beyond.

Key Topics:

• Lessons from hostage negotiation: Don’t bury fear—name it
• How avoiding fear increases stress and emotional confusion
• Emotional honesty in high-stakes situations (cancer, policing, life)
• Why acknowledging fear helps you make better decisions
• The mental clarity that comes from naming worst-case outcomes
• Reframing what it means to be strong: vulnerability is not weakness

Guest Contact & Resources:
📘 Sustainable Excellence: Ten Principles to Leading Your Uncommon and Extraordinary Life
🌐 MotivationalCheck.com
📣 Follow Terry on Instagram:

Find out more about Kali and the show HERE: https://humanityoffame.com/

Transcript

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Now, I know you mentioned helping others. Are there any other things that you use to help to switch your focus and make it more intentional with purposeful action? Absolutely. And this is something I learned as a hostage negotiator. You know, if you're, if you're scared, if you're nervous, if you're apprehensive, you know, we tend to, especially guys, you know, we don't want to be thought of as vulnerable and things like that. We bury it. We, you know, let's, let's push it down. Let's get it, get it as far away from us as we can. And one thing I learned from being a negotiator is you, you don't bury it. You call it out. You face it. You say, I'm scared. And you know what, I'm going to have this test tomorrow and I'm scared because burying it doesn't do it. It doesn't make it go away. Facing it allows you to confront it and allows you to deal with it. And you know, by burying it, it's still there. You're still apprehensive. You're still worried. You're still nervous. So that's, that's a huge part of it. Whenever you get scared, whenever you get nervous, don't think you're like, well, you know, maybe I'm not as tough as I think I am. And so like, no, no, just confront your fears, confront your adversity. It allows you to think clear. At least it does for me to think, okay, I'm going to have this test tomorrow. All right, let's keep going. Let's just, what's going to happen. Well, what if it's this? Okay. What if it is, what's the worst thing that could possibly happen? Well, maybe I'd have to have my leg amputated. Yeah. Maybe there it is. Okay. You're still going to be alive. You're still going to be able to hug your wife. You're still going to be able to tell your kid you love her and stuff like that. Yeah. Still going to be able to do that. Well, you know what? Yeah. It's going to not be, it's not going to be great to lose my leg, but you know what? I'm still going to be here. There's still alternatives. There's still things, but by not confronting it, it just festers. It's like, you know, a stomach ulcer that you don't do anything with. It just festers and you get more scared, more nervous, more apprehensive. To your point where you said that, you know, confronting it, fear, it's an emotion just like anything else, just like every other emotion. And when you said that when you confront it, you can think more clearer. And I can relate to that because if you're doing everything to avoid the emotion that you're really facing, then now you're kind of scatterbrained because you're thinking of everything else except what's really staring you in the face and you're trying to call it everything else except what it really is. So you're really not thinking logically. Absolutely. I mean, we used to get asked, are you ever afraid being a police officer? And I used to tell people, yes, I'm absolutely afraid many times. And any cop that tells you that they're not afraid is either lying to you or is in a state where they're going to get themselves or somebody else hurt.