Another great post by Seth Godin about how fear sabotages success; often subconsciously. The thing is, without it you would live life recklessly and probably have already doomed yourself.
So the trick is to ignore the irrational part that keeps you from succeeding and pay attention to the part that helps you survive. How do you do this?
Walk through the possible outcomes of things that are causing your fear to their logical conclusion. Usually, the worst outcome is not nearly as bad as you imagined in your subconscious. In that case ignore the fear. And if it is real, then you can take action now to mitigate it.
Sometimes you are a hare and there is a coyote hot on your heels. Then you just might need your lizard brain.
But many times, it is just getting in your way.
How right you are, Doug! I am always kicking myself for painting situations out to be worse than they actually are. Why isn't 20/20 hindsight enough to change the way our mind assesses these types of problems? I work with someone who posted an article talking about the same sort of thing at http://whoweam.com/2011/08/talulah-derailed/. Looking at the issue at 20,000 feet - if this is how people are wired, then maybe even larger cultural issues are caused by the aftermath of this "lizard brain" theory?
Posted by: Abbey Salvo | August 31, 2011 at 01:39 PM