Remember when you were a kid and you stayed up really late that one Saturday night to watch that one really scary movie that your parents didn’t know you were watching? Remember laying in your bed that night afraid to roll over on the off chance that you would find yourself face-to-face with Freddy Krueger? (Or in my case the little stuffed clown from Poltergeist. Creepy.) Do you remember what that fear felt like? It was literally paralyzing, wasn’t it? Can you imagine being any more scared than that?

Wait a minute. Hold on. Let’s think about that for just one second.

We Know All About Fear

Whether or not that scary movie was in fact the scariest thing you’ve ever experienced — and if it is, then you likely lead an incredibly boring life; but I’m not here to judge — I’d wager that you’re able to imagine being as terrified as you could possibly be. And if in the next hour you were to actually experience that kind of fear, chances are the experience wouldn’t be all that dramatically different from how you imagined it. Fear is a relatively simple beast, however awful. We can imagine it’s full spectrum, from mild anxiety to full-blown panic.

That’s a problem, isn’t it? We sometimes avoid situations not because they are uncomfortable, but because they could make us afraid. And we know that we’re likely to act differently when we’re afraid, don’t we? Maybe even inappropriately. Maybe in such a way as to cost us a piece of business — or even our jobs. We avoid certain situations not just because they make us scared, but because of what that fear might make us do. We’re afraid of being afraid.

You Are Not Helpless

It’s easy to believe that we can’t help but be afraid, knowing fear as well as we do. It’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking that fear is just around the corner, waiting to grab us and burrow it’s way into the hollow of our chests. It’s easy to believe we are each of us subjects to King Fear, that to know him is to be subservient to him.

The first thing we have to do is to stop worrying what we will do when we are afraid. It’s amazing how quickly fear unravels itself once we accomplish that.

We are often told that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I don’t buy that. I think we have to fear a bunch of things, not the least of which is complacency. We have to fear indifference. We have to fear those who encourage resting on one’s laurels. The stagnation of progress, of innovation, of industry — these things we must fear, and more, must defend against while there is still breath in us. To fail at this very basic and very fundamental objective is, to be frank, unacceptable on any level.

How Sure Are You?

But the key to all of these is confidence. We accept stagnancy because we are certain of it’s outcome. We worry about calculating The ROI of a marketing campaign that could pass as a campaign for just about any product or service on the market. We do market research because we want to be sure we’re talking to the right people. We’re deathly afraid of our boss asking us a question and having to respond with, “I don’t know.” Not knowing is unacceptable these days.

But what if “I don’t know” was a perfectly acceptable answer? What if we replaced “let’s do this because…” with, “let’s find out if…”? What if we stopped relying on what people “knew” and started relying more on our own imaginations?

A business based on dreams. How scary is that?

Not very, when it comes right down to it. At least not as scary as a stuffed clown to a five-year old. And when that’s your frame of reference, it’s really hard to be scared of anything.

A Thing You Can Do:

Here’s a homework assignment. The next meeting you go to, be the person who calls an established fact into question. I literally want you to stop the conversation by saying, “Says who?” Let’s find out how that changes things.