F.E.A.R. ~ False Evidence Appearing Real

“If we take a risk we might fail. If we don’t take a risk we surely will fail. The greatest risk of all is to do nothing.” – Unknown Author

Why would anyone go through the process of setting and planning goals and then not follow through? One possible answer is the rewards aren’t sufficient enough to motivate you into action. Another probable answer is procrastination has derailed or stalled you. The inability to act can often be traced to fear, doubt, or the absence of a clear picture of the potential rewards and consequences.

And all fears come down to these three main types.

1. External Fear

Usually caused by a specific event in your past, external fears are caused by something outside of you. This is when someone fears something specific like flying, spiders or the number 13. It is only triggered under specific instances when you encounter what it is that frightens you. Because of the trigger, these fears are easily recognized.

Most of these fears are caused by some traumatic event in the past. For instance, if you got bit by a spider at a young age, you might develop a phobia about them. Your experience taught you to avoid them.

2. Internal Fear

Like external fears, these fears are also triggered by events outside of you. However, internal fears are not specific to any circumstance and are due to internal emotions. This can make these fears difficult to recognize.

Internal fears manifest as fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, lack of self worth and doubt. Having a fear of failure can stop someone from starting their own business, asking a person out on a date or starting a new hobby.

All of these are different circumstances affected by one fear. Internal fears are dangerous because it can make you think that this fear is just who you are. If you miss it, these fears can really hold you back in life.

3. Subconscious Fear

Other fears are so internal to us that we develop beliefs around them. Subconscious fear is similar to internal fears except subconscious fears are believed to be a part of who we really are. Subconscious fears develop into limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs filter how you see the world. An example of a limiting belief would be if you think you’ll never find a job you like because every job you have ever had was terrible. Limiting beliefs usually try to convince you that you are not good enough to do something.

Because they are beliefs, they are hard to recognize and eliminate. Realize beliefs are not facts. How many beliefs have you had that you realized were not true?  Sometimes what you think is true about yourself is just an irrational belief.

Although any one of these 3 types of fears can cause you to become immobile, it is usually the internal fears that create the most barriers to goal achievement…

Common internal fears can further be divided into three basic categories:

1. Fear of criticism, rejection, or exposure
2. Fear of the unknown
3. Fear of failure

Fear of criticism, rejection, or exposure is linked closely with the need for social acceptance. People will go to great lengths to adopt a mode of dress or a certain type of behavior because they fear criticism and rejection of others. Fear of having an idea rejected continues to lose billions of dollars for American business.

Fear of the unknown can also inhibit achievement. Many times, our need for security (the need to feel safe) causes us to be fearful in those situations in which we are not sure what is going to happen. Our fear of what might or might not happen can cause us to keep from doing those things we should do to bring us closer to our goals. One key to addressing fear of the unknown is examining the possibilities and then weighing them against doing nothing.

It is not unusual for a person to want something intensely, but because of the fear of failure, not even try to attain it. Whether it’s the president who’s afraid to make a change in structure or the manager who is afraid to develop a more competent, self-directed team, fear can be a major deterrent to success. If you promote a risk avoidance mentality, innovation, growth, and the entire goal setting process can be stifled. If mistakes are met with criticism and/or punishment, people will be inclined to do only what they know how to do. It will inhibit creativity and improvement. By not trying, people frequently ensure failure—the very thing that they are trying to avoid. Fear of failure has blinded many people from seeing opportunities.

Many people view failure as a permanent, indelible, and negative state. It’s not that at all! In fact, failure can be a very positive experience. Failure provides an opportunity to learn. Any newly attempted endeavor invites failure. The first time you try to ski you are guaranteed to fall. If you don’t fall you haven’t moved or progressed. Without failure there is no progress. When you stop failing, you stop learning. Failure is important to success if it is viewed as an opportunity to learn. To change failure from a negative experience to a positive phenomenon, eliminate those conditions which contribute to fear of failure. Develop a culture in which individuals are recognized and rewarded for innovation and creative problem solving.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

Have you overcome any fears in your life? 

Any ways that you deal with fears when you encounter them?

Fail More Often

Continuing on our theme, 'Fear of Failure', it seems that in our society, it is considered a bad thing to fail. From our earliest memory, we are all taught to succeed at what we try. It does not matter if it is taking a few steps on wobbly legs or negotiating an international merger of two huge organizations, we are conditioned that success is the goal and failure is anathema. Through this conditioning, we are taught to feel great when we succeed and to feel awful when we fail.

Take away the stigma of the word, and a failure is simply an attempt to do something that did not work out as planned. In the learning process, we obtain more information, momentum, resolve, inspiration, insight, and knowledge when we fail than when we succeed. To succeed is to get something done, but we have not learned very much. For example, without the corrective adjustments by ourselves and our parents, we would never learn to walk or talk. It is the constant reshaping of previous attempts that cause our forward progress.

People need to embrace failure and to stop feeling bad about it. What we need in life is more 'at-bats' rather than more home runs. Each time we go for something new, we risk failure, but not taking that risk is a bigger problem, because we block our own advancement.

The most often-quoted example of this theory is the story of Thomas Edison, who found that carbonized bamboo filaments worked well for his light bulb. To re-cap his most famous quotation: “I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 things that won’t work.” He also acknowledged that by being creative while simultaneously inventive, he was able to develop things that seemed like serendipity, but they were really the culmination of a lot of hard work and numerous failures. He once said, “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

The key to embracing failure is to let go of the stigma and seek out the learning potential in every activity. They ought to teach a course on failing in schools. Kids should be introduced to the concepts of failure - as long as something was learned - as the route to eventual success. Instead, we hammer home the idea that to fail is to not live up to expectations. Children learn to fear rather than embrace failure. That attitude permeates our society, and it has a crippling effect on every organization.

Another aspect of failure is the idea that we never really fail until we quit trying. As long as we are stretching to achieve a goal, we have the potential for success. I love the quotation from Vince Lombardi who said, “We never lost a game, but sometimes we just ran out of quarters.”

I believe there needs to be good judgment when deciding how long to persevere. I do not think Winston Churchill was right when he said “Never, never, never, quit.” At some point, it is time to learn a lesson and leave the battlefield. It is okay to have a discarded scheme or to recognize a blind alley and cut your losses. It is important to recognize when we have run out of quarters, but it is wrong to quit trying prematurely. I think the difference between those two mindsets is the difference between genius and mediocrity.

I am not advocating that we fail on purpose. Doing things right should always be the objective. What I want to champion is that the only thing to avoid is making the same mistake over and over again. Some people focus on being busy just to have something to do. Thomas Edison had a quote for that too. He said, “Being busy does not always mean real work.”

Institute an “Experience Award” at work for daring to risk. Honor people who stretch and try but fail, as long as they learn from the experience. It may seem unorthodox and “over the top” to many stuffy managers who will not tolerate things that are irregular. Too bad these managers are leaving real creativity off the table.

Inner And Outer Realities

Continuing with the last week's thoughts on my outer world realities as a reflection of my inner turmoil; is it any wonder that if we are inwardly in turmoil then we are certain to see a tumultuous world? 

Just as we question our personal intentions and behaviors to change, we also must question the social intentions and behaviors of our current society. The two are never separate. What applies to the individual is equally applicable to the collectivity and the society.

Growth and moving forward begins the moment we summon the courage to create change in our lives. Courage is a universal phenomenon. It is something we all muster up in times of challenge.

Come Together

The challenges and travails we endure as individuals we also endure as a collective society. However, without awareness of this we fail to see that our individual problems stem from the fact that our cultural ethic condones a life of isolation, fear for survival, the need for comparison, as well as a multitude of other ways of being that diminish our quality of life. And in the same way that we are numb to the disastrous effects that the corporate state is having on the planet, so too are we numb to the fact that this corporate state and the life it espouses is detrimental to us as individuals.

Finding Ethics Over Fear

Early this year, as part of a series of articles on Quantum Physics of Beliefs, I wrote in one of those articles, Quantum Physics of Belief - Scarcity is a Limiting Belief that the competitive business practices advocate that there is not enough for everyone to win, and therefore we have to make sure we are one of the winners. This demonstrates that we believe profits are not abundant, but rather they are scarce; and that the only way to secure our personal or business need is to compete against each other. As shown in that article, this fear driven ethic is simply a self-limiting belief; underlying this is a profound reality that there is no limit to the abundance that exists in the world, except for the limits that exist in our minds. As such, we can learn to be better at choosing how we perceive the world.

But without questioning and inquiring into the possibility of a new way of life, at both the individual level and at the societal level, we condone a spiritual death that eventually consumes the entire soul of humanity.

I encourage you to think for yourself and question standard cultural assumptions. For example, question to yourself, what is “progress” at the social level? Is progress all about how we create greater sums of profit? But has not profiteering off the destruction of our ecosystems had devastating global consequences?

Outward To Inward

The dominant cultural ethic suggests to us that our advancements in technology, medicine, and production outweigh the consequences of their proliferation. Yet, a race that is not mature enough to use advanced technology destroys itself. A race that does not allow its greatest medical achievements to reach everyone, because it is a for-profit industry, leaves millions bankrupt and or dead prematurely. We need to look at this reality if we are to grow as individuals.

Whatever happened to the idea that progress is the creation of a communal ethic that creates harmony out of the empathy we feel for each other?

Real individual growth is all about being aware to the fact that our lives are inseparable and thus creating a society that allows for harmony between our inner and outer realities. Without questioning ourselves and without questioning society we fail to grow. The two are not separate. Everyone depends on each other for their individual survival.

Given the state of our world as it is now we can no longer afford to be afraid to look at the hard truth.

Facing the Change

It is becoming overwhelmingly apparent that our society is in the midst of big challenges. Here in the United States of America we have staggering inequality, a real unemployment rate around 8%, and the future of our current economic infrastructure is in imminent danger of collapsing.

The corporate elite who cajoled the public, without a voice, into bailing out their institutions with taxpayer subsidies created a situation that devastated the middle and lower classes. The elite who control political and economic affairs know the system is broken. They are using all tactics possible to accumulate the last bits of wealth and dismantle public power as they go out to create their untouchable gated oasis.

Unregulated markets make monsters out of men, and yet the real problem is our apathy that condones this way of life. We must seek personal insights to overcome our unique personal challenges; we also need to seek social insight into the way we live.

Again, as we fail to see that the collective social problem is our personal problem we are creating a future that is not in the favor of the majority of people. The excess and narcissistic indulgence that we enjoy now comes at a major cost when we will no longer be able to afford the security we need to survive in the future as the integrity of our planet degrades.

Living As One

Spiritual and emotional work is not just personal. It is primarily social.  Imagine asking Martin Luther King or Gandhi what was important to them. It was not their individual gains that led to personal well being, but rather it was the joy and sense of accomplishment they received from their involvement in pushing society towards justice for all. When we continue to allow those in power to keep “business as usual” without protesting for what is “right” justice and equality continue to decay. To see the truth can be a scary thing. But without knowledge and insight we will not grow, but rather, we will cannibalize ourselves into spiritual death.

St. Augustine stated that the rebel knows that hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage — anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain as they are. We are at a point now that individual growth is short sighted if it does not account for the well-being of others and a healthy functioning planet.

Do not expect any government to fix these problems. These problems are not exterior to any of us. They are within us. And only with radical courage to see things as they are and a determined collective of voices to make change can we grow as both individuals and as a collective society. We are undoubtedly one. And the challenges we face as individuals, in a profound way, arise because we have lost sight of establishing a society that puts the gains of the community first as opposed to the gains of the individual.

Next week, I'll continue with the interconnection between the inner and outer realities. Namaste!

Quantum Physics of Belief – Emotions (continued)

In my previous article, I discussed how one can read other people’s emotions, and why positive emotional states foster business success. When people are in a positive emotional state, their cognitive ability is significantly enhanced and their ability to be creative is elevated. As leaders, we can learn to monitor the emotions of our employees and teams.

“Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to become angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.” ~ Aristotle

Aristotle was a student of Plato, and his primary disagreement with his teacher was his respect for emotions. Unlike Plato, he realized that rationality wasn’t always in conflict with emotion. Instead, Aristotle argued that one of the critical functions of the rational soul was to make sure that emotions were intelligently applied to the real world.

Yet, we continually discount emotions when we weigh data, correlate statistics and use results from customer surveys and focus groups. Many companies rely on surveys and focus groups to make product and marketing decisions. Without careful consideration of context, they may miss making the best decisions.

The problems of focus groups are well known. It’s why some television shows don’t make it to the networks. Seinfeld tested poorly, as did The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Hill Street Blues.

Focus groups are a crude instrument to measure audience responses because people express their feelings, but they don’t explain them. Data is recorded based on impulsive feelings with all the usual flaws of the emotional brain.

Executives have to sort through the data and make qualitative decisions using contextual information. You can’t rely on emotional data and obey it blindly.

Sorting data and making sense of it is what the prefrontal cortex does well. The audience in a focus group is like our emotional brain, constantly sending out visceral signals about its likes and dislikes. The prefrontal cortex, also called the executive brain, is like a smart TV network executive, patiently monitoring emotional reactions and deciding which to take seriously.

Rationality can work to save us from impulse decisions based on negative feelings that aren’t justified. But relying exclusively on rational thought can easily backfire. When the rational brain takes over, people tend to make all sorts of decision-making mistakes. As rewarding as a strong analytical mind can be, it is a detriment if we become conditioned to always keeping our awareness in that realm.

People ignore the wisdom of their emotions, and start basing their arguments on things they can explain rationally, like survey data (without considering that customers respond to them emotionally.) One of the problems is that even when our feelings are accurate, they can be hard to articulate. So instead of going with an argument that feels best, we go with one that sounds reasonable.

I remember when Subaru launched their “Love” campaign several years ago. It highlighted the love that drivers feel for their cars, and a Washington Times article was quick to berate them for mentioning love as a reason for buying a car. According to the article, love is an irrational emotion that has no place in the realm of purchasing decisions or anywhere in business. It’s a common belief that the emotion of love should be barred from business, yet this is highly ironic because love is the one ingredient that can help businesses generate the highest prosperity.

Emotions profoundly impact the rhythmic beating of our heart and the signals it transmits to our brain. These signals cause measurable changes in our brain’s ability to think and process information. When our emotions are positive, emanating from the heart, we are in a state of coherence, where the electrical patterns of the brain synchronize with the rhythmic patterns of the heart. In this state, our brain functions at peak levels.

When we experience positive, heartfelt emotions, such as compassion, appreciation and gratitude, our mind becomes far more sharp and clear. Our cortical function is enhanced and we are able to see possibilities where previously we could perceive only dead-endings. We are able to rapidly recall information committed to memory and mentally sift through large amounts of data, finding the most relevant facts and making the best decisions. New understandings about the market place and the organization are quicker to emerge, and we are more adaptive to change. When businesses consistently foster positive, heartfelt emotions in their organization, the performance of their employees skyrocket and enhanced creativity leads to greater innovations.

A recent IBM survey of over 1500 global CEO’s concludes that creativity, adaptability, and the mental aptitude to process growing volumes of data, are the qualities that organizations need to succeed into the future. As the business world becomes increasingly complex and fast-paced, employees are increasingly challenged to find local, instant solutions that work. The capacity to thrive in these environments is engendered by positive, heart-based emotions.

In contrast, when our emotions are negative, such as fear, anger, worry, and anxiety, we severely limit learning, memory, cognition, and problem-solving. This causes decreased productivity, poor or short-sighted decisions, difficulty finding the right words and remembering key facts, a slowed reaction speed, and the feeling of being overwhelmed. People and organizations in this state simply can’t compete effectively.

Many corporate environments are riddled with anxiety, sometimes even by design, as many leaders believe that employees work harder when motivated by fear. But as a leader, don’t let conventional thinking convince you that having heart in business is irrational or a sign of weakness. Leaders maximize prosperity not by aggravating people into doing more, but rather by nurturing their emotional health. This is the key to the organization’s long-term viability. Among other methods, you can help people feel positive, heartfelt emotions by controlling your own emotions, defining a purpose that resonates, trusting people, and creating more collaborative environments.

Watch this short video on emotions.