Is Fear Essential for Leadership and Success?
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For a long time I wanted to have a real business, as opposed to just playing around trying to make money online.
In November, I launched the Home Turf Media blog network and I knew that it was exactly that. Finally, I wan’t chasing the latest money making opportunity, I was attempting to create something with lasting value.
However I noticed something interesting since November. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my blog network and it is a pile of fun trying to make it grow and turn it into something great, but every morning since I flipped that switch and put the “help wanted” ad on ProBlogger’s site, I wake up and the first feeling I have is something akin to:
fear and dread!
The thought that comes next is something like, “what the hell have I gotten myself into?”
Only time will tell if this is a voice of sanity in my system, attempting to save me from a losing proposition or just an ill-trained security seeking fragment of consciousness luring me back to the mind numbing comfort of the rat race.
While chatting with Liz, and mentioning the morning fear that I experienced, she turned me on the the following video from Steve Farber which validated that experience as a necessary component of leadership and success.
I always say that if I’m not scared,
I’m not pushing myself.
I hear people ask “How do I eliminate fear?”
I don’t think that’s possible.
The real question should be “How can I work while scared s***less?”
Thanks Kimber, glad to know it isn’t just me. This feeling came as a total shock; it is as if I was going to do public speaking everyday as I get out of bed
And you’re right, the question is how to work while having this emotion be present.
Fear and success are two parts of a whole. I’ve started three businesses, one with my own money about 10 years ago. The #1 thing I’ve learned to stay in business is that “necessity is the mother of invention.” If you have to bills to pay or a project to accomplish, you either get inventive, adapt, and learn - or you fail. In this process, fear of failure can help drive you to overcome barriers and boundaries and achieve new heights. A famous anthropologist Joseph Campbell made a prescient observation that every culture has a “hero” story. In this universal story, the protagonist is presented with a test (goliath/monster, etc), has to confront his fears, overcomes them, and in the process becomes a hero. Campbell believes everyone can be a hero by simply doing things they usually would not do. Heros say “yes” to most challenges. It is no mystery that successful people have big egos that mask enormous fear of failure, which drive them to be the best. Complacency yields mediocracy. A healthy fear of death builds pyramids, empires, better mouse traps, and confidence. Conversely, paranoia (irrational fear) leads to failure, such as communism, tyranny, oppression, control, and socialist democracy (an oxymoron).
@Will. Excellent comment, very well said. By your definition, heros deserve the rewards, since they have done the things that most people won’t.
I’d add one thing, Will. Invention has more than one mother, necessity being the most invoked. But love is another mother (to beat the metaphor to death). It’s the love of the game, the business, the cause, the project that makes the fear worthwhile. Love gets us to move; fear proves that we’re really moving.
[...] Is Fear Essential for Leadership and Success? [...]
Feel the fear.
And do it anyway.