Fear. Many people believe it is a bad thing. They fight it back or they flee from it. Hoping to escape forever just how uncomfortable it is to experience it. Fear can take so many forms. Anxiety, will you be able to win the industry award again? Rejection, will they say no on this sales call. Judgement, will they think you’re funny, laugh at you or mock you? Pariah status, will you be socially removed because of what you’ve done. Fear of death, injury, lost of a loved one.

Yet fear itself is very helpful. You see a nice shiny thing and pick it up. You look at the price tag and go “yikes”…you set it down. The fear, no matter what you call it. Encouraged you not to buy it. When it says “beware of alligators” next to a dirty pond somewhere in Florida,  you don’t jump in…generally.

These fears are legitimate. In our age though few of us actually have to face a fear that our ancestors had to feel. They had to handle bears, tigers, hunger, other humans so on. If you’re living in an industrialized country it’s bonkers the degree of satisfaction we have. You can reach almost any of your survival needs assuming you have the cash and it doesn’t take much to do so.

So fear now comes in the form of disturbing and paralyzing ways that make no sense. Our instincts are to flee or fight them. but this isn’t your ancestors fear. These fears are the ones listed way above. Anxiety, rejection, judgement, pariah-hood. To a founder. You will either overcome these fears rapidly or you will fail miserably.

My advice to you is to not fight against it nor to avoid them but to instead embrace them. These fears means that you are doing something that makes you vulnerable. Something that is meaningful to you. You will grow exponentially the minute you start embracing your fears and discomfort. You suck at giving presentations? Well if you’re a founder you have one choice learn or go back to your day job. The reason why you fear it can vary but it’s judgement, vulnerability as well as the potential for you to NEVER achieve your success.

These fears are, I assume, natural. The faster you can overcome them by embracing them the better. You should be relieved to feel anxiety before a big presentation. A smile should spread across your face when you experience fear that this new prospective client, the big one, could reject you. This means these actions are meaningful and that the stake in the game.

Don’t fight.

Don’t flee.

Embrace and do so happily as it means you’re doing something profound and you can only grow from it.

Don’t ask for safety. Ask for adventure. To do so means you’ll travel the lesser known path. You’ve may have heard to take risks when you are young. I’d argue to take risks whenever. It’s never too late to travel the unknown path.

If for some reason it becomes catastrophic. Well. There’s always the known path. The tried and true. You can ALWAYS go back to that path if you don’t like the unknown. But at least try some adventure first instead of shirking it.

We tend to believe the first piece of information given to us. Worse we discount future information. This can make discovering real customer problems challenging.  As well as tarnishing the responses your potential customers could have.

When discussing your background and what you want to do adding additional details of how you want to solve the problem could completely change the conversation you were going to have in regards to what is their problems.

In addition to giving more weight to first heard statements, regardless of accuracy. We as humans tend to look for the things that stand out the most and ignore all the mundane. We focus on things that generally don’t make sense in any other situation.

It’s how our brain works. It’s designed to discriminate against features and traits and behaviors. It’s how we discern the world around us. The berries we can eat the animals that are threats. Are all built on this machinery that’s kept us around for so long.

In fact this can go so far that we become obsessed with things that stand out as opposed to the every day events. If you are to ask who is happier Californians or Midwesterners. Both Californinians and Midwesterners say “Californians” yet, when you actually measure they are about the same. It’s because we, as humans, flock to the points of difference.

The decision if someone from California is happier is on the things we see as different. Like California has more sunshine. It’s warmer. It’s a vacation spot for people. “Oh! California for sure.” but we discount all the normal things. Like people working often in offices, human congestion, commute time. Things that we assume are  constant even if they are not.

The challenge then is to look past first heard. Since that will be the last thing forgotten. Writing and audio recording will help challenge your recall. You can go back to it and drop statements into broad buckets to give you over all themes.

Remember do not fall prey to the first heard last forgotten syndrome that most others do.

In front of you are two boxes. In one box you have 50 red balls and 50 blue balls. The second box has a total of a hundred balls but the number of red and blue are unknown. You will receive a 100 dollars if you can draw a red ball.

So which of the boxes will you choose to pick from?

The majority of people would pick from the 50 red and 50 blue. We as humans tend to ignore or avoid choices where we don’t have all the information. In this unfair scenario, we can’t get the information we need to make a logical decision. The number of red vs blue in the second box.

This is important for entrepreneurs and founders because starting a company is ambiguous. There are thousands of decisions with little to no pieces of information. We flee the options with the less information. Options you are researching are the options you go with as they are most familiar. Familiarity of information helps reduce the ambiguity of probability of a risk vs reward. The second urn could of had all red balls. Providing a  100% chance of getting the $100. Because we don’t actually know that we fault ourselves to the point of going with what we know.

When it comes to innovation and disrupting industries. What we know is not working. So . Pioneers have no problem adventuring away from the familiar. Most potential customers will not follow you. They will be thinking “how risky is this service or product?” They are looking for a reason to stop thinking about you.

So when it comes to customers, employees and even yourself. We select options with a known probability over unknown odds.

A startup is risky but it’s also ambiguous. People avoid this because they may seek out more information but often cannot get it. This may explain the life insurance industry. Why people will happily invest in underperforming government bonds and CDs.

This is why so many people avoid startup work. If I was to say “You can get a job at a reasonably high percentage of likelihood. Or with no real known probability you can start your own business.” There are industry failure rates out there but the common person is not interested in reading that. They also flock to the superstitions of security. The great oak seems like a wonderful thing right now. They look at the seed and only see a seed. They look at the oak and see shade, sturdiness and time and energy already invested into it with a low risk of will it grow and be stable like a seed.

Why because it’s already around. So instead of seeing things in the seed. They see the obvious, a tall strong oak and say “I know this is a tree. I do not know what this seed is” and they avoid it like the plague.

“Why go do a startup” (with an unknown outcome) “when you can join X company” (with a known outcome).

Beware the company that advertises stability and security as their biggest traits. It’s like advertising stale bread.

How come this doesn’t happen in situations like when people getting married? People  ASSUME they will remain married 20 years down the road. Even if the current divorce rates are through the roof. They are optimistic about their love, their relationships and their power and will to stay together. THIS is the closest analogy I can make for people who are not founders and innovators.

You don’t go into a marriage going “My dear, in 10 years we’ll be divorced”

You don’t go into a venture going “in 10 years we’ll be bankrupt and our reputations ruined”
This means there is no ambiguity of choice. I mean sure, some will have that ambiguity but that means they are not a 100% confident in their decision.

95% of the people who are around have helped humanity stay alive. The rest have forever altered, for good or bad, humanity. The 5% is why we have smart phones and eat eggs. Someone at some time had to eat mushrooms and die. Someone had to venture forward across the sea.

The explorers and problem solvers do not live in the past like the majority of others. They are almost wholly focused on the future and the possibilities it can bring. In this aspect they see the things in a seed. They know what is and what can be. They challenge those who only see the seed as it is.

The challenge is explaining their vision for the future to others. In case you want to try it. Try explaining what an orange tastes like to someone who has never tasted a citrus fruit. The knowledge the 95% has is the past not the future. They are not privy to the insights of an orange let alone a lemon. The visionary must make them not only taste an orange but go “I want more of this!”.

It is clear that at least 90% of the people are blind to the things in the seed. It’s obvious by the questions and statements and views they hold. They ask children questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up”. They expect cliched answers like doctor, astronaut and so on. An obsession on the steady path over uncertainty. A great skill in the wild. They think and relate to the known path, the comfortable and familiar. This is what has helped our species survive for so long.

They flock to the superstitions of safety, they crowd the details of convention and they are uncomfortable by the uncanny.

Those who can see things in the seed, ask children “What problems do you want to solve when you grow up?” and “What are school subjects you like and dislike?”

Looking forward is possible for everyone. It comes easier to some than others. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start looking to the future.

Do not yield your duties because it’s safer to be a slave.

Freedom and Justice exist on a spectrum. It is the responsibility of every individual within a relatively free state to ask the question to what limits should there be to justice and to which should be to freedom. The same can be said for entrepreneurs. Freedom is nothing more than a chance to be better. With it comes the liberty to take risks. Many would suspect entrenching themselves with fences, monitors, scanners and guards would keep them safe. Safety is not the intrinsic state of nature nor should it be for us.  In a world where the majority of the developed nations worry more about their job performance than if they’ll eat. There is very little need for the illusion of safety. Or the need to burn witches, blame others for our problems or cast out those in weaker positions.

The superstition of safety is only making it more challenging for you to do something meaningful.

Let others surrender their rights, but do not surrender yours. With that, the rights of Freedom are not enumerated privileges but duties. The nature of a free society is inherently risky and unpredictable. For the entrepreneur, in this day in age, playing it safe is akin to never leaving the nest.

The core of a virtue comes to light once it has been exercised. If you hold a virtue within your core it’s your responsibility to test it, boil it, place pressure and gauge what is left. Many people feel that when their virtues are being tested that they are being attacked. Perhaps they are. But they should see it as an opportunity to make firm the untested values they hold so dear.

A virtue with no adversary cannot be a virtue for we do not know what will remain of it when it faces it’s contrarian view. It’s a hundred times better for you to probe your own virtues then when everything is going apart, to have your virtues torn apart.

Do not fear a challenge of your virtues. Fear not challenging them.

The resiliency reserves you have built up are not fixed. They change over time. When you are passionate about something it’s far easier to embrace defeat over and over again than when you are not. So the common wisdom is to work in areas you are passionate about. That is not a requirement though. You don’t have to be passionate about it but just remember with each failure and defeat you are less likely to shoot as hard and as fast as you did the first time.

You know the people whos ambtions have waned. At 18 they could do anything they wanted and by 19 they were resenting college and screwing things up in their lives. They settled. The bar dropped with each failure. The downward spiral so profound in this, that they are death spiraling faster and faster.

The same though can be said about the upward spiral. Small, daily disciplines that are difficult to start but once going raise the ball upwards. Like in phyiscs an object in motion stays in motion….with the upward spiral you must force yourself to get the ball rolling…uphill….so start small. Decisively establish successes. Move forward….and as your momentum rises, suddenly you realize you were having limitations and your ambitions start growing bigger and bigger. Just like driving vs walking. When walking you have time to look at all the details of the ground….but when driving you need to be looking 10 maybe even a 100 feet out just to make sure you don’t crash depending on the speed. This is like your ambition. When those with little resiliency and no passion are hit they get up slower, take longer and start looking at the walking speed as ambition.

While on Valentines day we think of loving significant others. I’d like to point out that the same can be said about a product, a service or company. Most entrepreneurs are uncomfortable, scared and nervous when presenting or doing something they are not familiar with. This fear, an evolutionary tool that has helped us survive this long, is no longer truly required. It is a by product of times when standing out and being judged meant you were not doing something right.

The reason why I’m talking about fear is that those who are willing to take risks. Go after their dreams and big ideas don’t do it because they lack fear. They do it because they are passionate about it. They LOVE what they are doing. When you love something deep enough it provides you with the courage to go out and get it.