What is your biggest fear?

Yo wassup chimps,

Happy Wednesday.

In todays edition, we're going to talk about fear and risk. Specifically, how fear influences the decisions you take, ultimately dictating the course of your life.

So let's just get straight into it.

When we are born, we are a blank slate with a set of biological predispositions.

We don't really know how to feel, what to feel, how to act, how to behave.

We don't really know anything.

So we start interacting with the world and look for live feedback.

Based on that feedback, we learn whether to do it more or to not do it at all.

So, for example...

If a kid goes up to a girl walking by and pulls her skirt down, that kid will receive a certain feedback.

Based on that feedback, the kid would realise whether that action is right or wrong.

So if he...

Gets scolded for pulling the skirt down (most likely), he is much more likely to never do it again.

Doesn't get scolded and receives positive feedback (very very rare), he is going to do it again.

This is the essence of social conditioning.

This is where fear influences our behaviour.

Now unless you're Mowgli raised in the jungle by wild predators...

You were raised like this and have been subjected to social conditioning at some point in your life.

It is definitely necessary, but only to a certain extent.

And this is where the problem lies...

Because of it, we learn to fear, too much in fact.

We learn to be shy and timid.

But to do anything big in life, shyness and timidity are exactly what you don't need.

To become someone great, you need to be bold and take big risks.

Again, this is where fear comes in...

It stops you from being bold and audacious.

Whether it be...

Fear of failure

Fear of rejection

Fear of embarrassment and humiliation.

We learn to fear everything in life.

We cower into a shell of a human being and make a habit of walking the safest path in life.

In the habit of being timid, we let fear control us.

You can't let fear control you

In my case...

I decided long ago that I will not let fear control me.

I can feel fear and that's fine, but it does not make decisions for me.

I will not live in a state of fear.

To really put this into practise, it's this simple.

If you fear it, then it's worth doing it.

Even if you fail and don't get what you want, you will have experience.

You learn from those experiences.

And most importantly, you will have proven to yourself that you can overcome fear.

You will build positive reference points, which will lead to a huge gain in confidence.

Confidence then in turn breeds success and success breeds more confidence.

Applied properly, it's a perpetual cycle of success.

So practise boldness, be audacious, take big risks.

Without it, life is very boring and mundane.

Do not be afraid to get hurt or bleed or be betrayed. If you want to be afraid of anything, be afraid of becoming a shell of yourself and never living life the way you want to.

Often our fears of the worst possibility never even come true. They narrow our vision and cloud our thinking, which in turn causes us to make mistakes we normally wouldn't make.

And in the 1% chance that it does, know that you will have the strength to deal with it.

Remember...

"Cowards die a 1000 deaths before their day of mourning."

That's it for today.

Bye