How Fear Is Your Best Friend in Business

November 22, 2011  |  Posted by PRO U  |  Tags: Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Motivation, Personal Development, Perspective  |  1 Comment

With Patrick Combs’ MIGHT club coming to PRO Elite, I thought I’d share a secret that artists really understand…a secret that helps you laugh in the face of obstacles:

“FEAR is your friend.”

The picture you see here is me in 6th grade. I was 10 years old and the runt of the litter. I don’t remember the circumstances exactly, but somehow I received “The Tiny But Mighty” award, and I believe that little ounce of recognition despite my awkward disposition carried through a certain attitude that today manifests as “the entrepreneur.”

Today Patrick explained the inspiration of “Might,” the only word in the English language that means both Power & Possibility. And of the 6 reasons that sabotage your MIGHT and leave your dreams dormant, I was particularly touched by #3:

The Anchor of Insecurity and Doubt. This is the belief that you can’t overcome fear, because there’s no system to manage it. But as Patrick said, “No one is immune to insecurity or doubt. There’s not a single success story in the world that doesn’t come with a flood of insecurity and doubt.”

Well, as a practicing artist in New York City, I’ll tell you what fuels all the weird “contemporary” stuff you may have seen in a museum that’s left you wondering, “Why is that art?” Contemporary artists who scrutinize the world around them and re-package their observations of this crazy world into “art” embrace fear.

We love contrasts. We live for discomfort. We are so highly engaged in sensory experience, becoming highly sensitive to visual, auditory, and visceral input that “Fear” becomes like a tangible object to hold, manipulate, laugh at, trust, and respect.

Take the timeless icon of the “momenti mori,” for instance. Representing the skull as a symbol of mortality became a huge trend in portrait painting in the 16th and 17th centuries. New trades funded completely new economic classes, and hence the rise of the merchant/middle class. With unseen wealth pouring into different European port cities, the public psychology at the time was to temper new wealth with a healthy fear of death.

Why?

Because these “new rich” knew they couldn’t bring their riches to the grave! The momenti mori (rememberance of mortality) was not a debilitating source of paranoia, but rather a source of inspiration to focus on what mattered. Exploration. Creating civic infrastructures. Servicing the growth of their cities with new technology. (We’ll leave the devastating effects of colonization to another conversation…had to add that one)

How can the fear of business inspire your desired result?

I’ll leave you with one more example. It’s my favorite print by Andy Warhol, who was famously paranoid and absolutely terrified of death (well, he did survive an assassination attempt).

It’s a silk screen reproduction of an empty electric chair in an empty execution room. How haunting! While he started this series in the 1960s, surrounding the political controversy of the death penalty in the United States, in typical deadpan Warhol style, the chair represents the brutal reduction of life to nothingness. Pair this with the same apathetic attitude towards Campbell Soup cans, and you have a recipe for fear reducing itself into a rhetorical joke.

And humor helps us discharge energy that would normally deal directly with the source of unpleasure itself. In this case, the unpleasure of fear. So there you have it. The secret to laugh in the face of obstacles.

Master this secret, embrace insecurities and doubt, and you will be one step closer to living MIGHTILY.

Tell me what you think about MIGHT in the comment box below!

1 Comment so far.

1. Larry says:

   November 28, 2011 at 6:35 pm

   Thanks for a MIGHTY message, Crystal.

   Reply