Here Be Dragons: Why the Unknown Feels Dangerous

In the 1500s, mapmakers would sometimes stamp “Here be dragons” on the edges of their maps, which marked places no one had yet explored. In this episode, we explore how that same instinct shows up in modern life when you’re facing risk or uncertainty and why your brain is quick to assume the worst. You’ll learn how to recognize when fear is shaping your decisions and why the ability to navigate uncertainty (not predict it) is a valuable skill anyone should develop.

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Transcript

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In the 1500s, mapmakers sometimes marked unexplored territory with a warning. It read, Here be Dragons. Now it meant that cartographers didn't know exactly what was out there. The waters were in essence uncharted, and therefore the risks beyond them were unknown. So they decided to leave a warning for future explorers and sailors to proceed carefully. What's interesting though is that even though we no longer sail wooden ships into the horizon, most of us still carry our own version of that stamp. Every time we face uncertainty, whether it's in the form of a new opportunity, a career shift, maybe a new creative endeavor, or simply a leap of faith, our mind will quickly mark the territory the same way. Danger lies ahead. So today on the Win More Live Better podcast, we're going to talk about why our brains label uncertainty as here be dragons all the time here in the 21st century and how to navigate the unknown without letting fear keep us from becoming who we're capable of. Hey coaches and leaders, I got a quick question for you. You spend a lot of time building game plans for those you lead, but when was the last time you built one for yourself? If you're looking to sharpen your leadership skills, strengthen your team culture, or find better ways to support and challenge your athletes in the mental game, I'd love to help. I'm offering a free coaching call where we can talk through your current challenges and create a simple game plan for what might move the needle most for you, your players, and your program. Most coaches I know obsess over developing their team, but they neglect the person in the mirror. This call is a chance to invest in you because a better you is going to produce a better them. And if that sounds helpful, you can grab a time at Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon. That's Callenly.com slash Zach Brandon, or just check the link in the show notes. I'd love to connect and explore how I can best support you. So this phrase here be dragons comes from early maps used during the age of exploration. When cartographers reached the edge of what was known, they didn't always just leave it blank. Sometimes they would mark it with like the image of some sort of big, scary sea monster, or they would write out the warning, Keek Sunt Dracones. And again, I'm hope hopeful I'm pronouncing that right, but again, it translates to here be dragons. Now in their eyes, the unknown was a sea filled with peril and danger. So they made sure to stamp it with a warning to ensure people navigated it with complete caution. And again, we have our own version of this stamp today. Whenever we encounter uncertainty, our brain still fills in the blank space with threat. And it sounds like, well, what if I leave this job and it doesn't work out? What if I step into this leadership role and this added responsibility, but I'm not ready? What if I speak up and it backfires? What if I try something new and people judge me? What if I invest in this and it fails? What if I change directions but end up regretting it? And what if I'm exposed? These thoughts and concerns, they show up across a wide range of different contexts, but at the heart of each is a similar pattern. When the outcome is unclear, the brain, it's not gonna stay neutral. It's gonna fill the gap with caution, with doubt, with imagined consequences. In other words, we stamp here be dragons on any part of our life today where we don't have certainty. Now, we should be clear that there is some advantages to this. Our brain is a prediction machine helping us stay protected and it's constantly scanning our environments for any potential threats to our survival. But the issue isn't that the brain creates warnings, the issue is that when we treat those warnings as facts on a regular basis, when imagine dragons become this like assumed or expected reality, our behavior can change in really dramatic ways that keep us stuck or keep us playing small. We avoid experimenting, doing things that we wouldn't normally do. Maybe all of a sudden we delay conversations that we have a lot of uncertainty around because we start to worry about what if this doesn't go well or how someone else might react. We hesitate on seeking opportunities that we think might pay dividends in the long term, but maybe it has some scary risk and uncertainty in the short term, or we simply just stay in roles or routines or identities that just feel comfortable to us and safe. But maybe there's there's deeper or bigger possibilities beyond those horizons that we're just afraid to ultimately pursue. And when you peel back each of these, one of the most obvious ways this prevents us from becoming who we're capable of is because fear and uncertainty often fosters inaction. That's what fear really drives is avoidance. And over time, our world shrinks to the edges of what feels predictable. But if you look across sport, business, or really any meaningful personal growth, most breakthroughs don't happen inside a fully mapped-out territory. They happen at the edge through a willingness to move forward without complete certainty and into a space that's outside of your comfort zone. So bring in this kind of full circle, how do we move into uncertainty without letting fear really control the map of our lives? I think the first is to recognize when we immediately default to that stamp. Notice where your mind starts to label things as dangerous simply because it's unfamiliar. Those what-if thoughts, for example, like that's the stamp. Because unfortunately, more often than not, when we all play the what-if game, we only play half of it. We only play the half where, well, what if this doesn't work out? We're not very good at sometimes playing the game of, well, what if this works out? What if this goes exactly the way that I hope it would? And just simply being more aware of that stamp, that figurative stamp in our brain and what we tell ourselves, uh, is again a way to kind of create some separation and some distance between what your brain's predicting and what is actually true. And again, as you're starting to notice, this ties in really well to what we talked about the other day as a follow-up to my conversation with Stephen Vogue, where we talked about thoughts are not laws. And just because you have a thought doesn't mean you have to believe it. Now, the second lesson, I think, is to replace potential imagined catastrophe with just curiosity. Again, instead of what if this goes wrong, what might be possible here? Now, that curiosity isn't gonna eliminate risk necessarily, but it can change your relationship to it. So instead of assuming danger, you're just simply gathering data of what again could potentially happen here, what could actually um benefit me from stepping into this space of the unknown and outside of my comfort zone. And you're shifting from a space of avoidance to exploration. And again, that's I think where many of us um are gonna be way more apt to grow than the alternative. And then finally, I think one of the lessons in all of this is having confidence in your ability to navigate the unknown and not just try to predict it. They m uh the mistake that most people I think make is thinking that they need to predict everything before they begin. Um, sailors, though, they can't anticipate every storm, every current, hidden danger along a long voyage. What separated the experience from the inexperience wasn't their ability to predict things necessarily. It was their ability to navigate whatever showed up. They could trust their skill, they could trust their ability to make adjustments, they could trust their ability to respond in real time to the demands and circumstances that were unfolding. And I think the same is true for you and I. When you step into something meaningful, the path isn't always going to unfold exactly as you plan. There's going to be variables that you didn't account for, moments that test you, and conditions that shift. And this is all just part of the journey that we all signed up for. So instead of asking, how do I make sure nothing goes wrong? Make sure you remind yourself, do I trust myself enough to handle whatever unfolds if it does? Because confidence is not going to be built on certainty. It's going to be built on your belief to navigate uncertainty whenever it arrives. So to bring this episode to a close, I just want to send the reminder that the phrase here be dragons was never really about sea monsters. It was about the limits of what people understood. And in your own life, those same markings, they don't always have to really signal danger. They often signal possibility that just hasn't been explored yet. So maybe the goal isn't to eliminate that fear, is to recognize what is it pointing you towards. Because sometimes the places your mind warns you about the most are the exact places where growth is waiting for you.