The Advise to “Be Fearless” Is Misguided
Our brain Evolved To Protect Us and it’s a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.
The struggle for budgeting money has been a constant struggle for me. I would balance my check book and it would always come out short. I would scratch my head and think what’s my next move.
When I decided to augment our salary, I went to binge listen and binge read about business ideas from couple of different places, from audible audio books, to podcasts and then blogs.
I was let go from a company before because the company went belly up. Since then I was scared of working in a start-up company (Biotech companies specifically).
Although I was working as a chemist, money wasn’t that good and I decided to jump into a business. Business, as I was told, was the fastest way to gain financial freedom.
You don’t get rich my savings and scrimping.
You can if you do it long term. But one of the best way to get rich is to start a business, although not guaranteed.
When I started a business, there were obstacles that I encountered. One of the biggest was the Shiny-Object-Syndrome. Then I tried to beat procrastination — everyday.
Starting a business wasn’t easy. Although I am a scientist, my skill sets wasn’t business and marketing. I have to learn and develop all these.
When I started using my own money, our savings, to a business start-up, that’s when I got scared. Maybe I’m like you or maybe not, but I was always scared to use the money.
And I was that when I went to college too. I didn’t want to spend the stipend my parents would send me — I was in the saving mode all the time. It was later on that I realized that my parents saved and sent this money for me as investment, for my education.
My brain was in savings mode, didn’t want to spend the money and was scared. But I got used to it.
Our ancient brain developed to protect us.
Let me explain. During the times when our ancestors were roaming the jungle, it was always looking for signs of danger, and that’s what the brain does best.
I grew up back in the Philippines. This was the time when you have to go outside to play, because there were no iPads and electronics. One thing that my friends do during the summer, and I know this sounds weird and unusual, was to look for spiders and then let them fight.
In the process of looking for spiders in the jungle, I scans our surrounding for dangers such as snakes and wild animals. It was the nature of my brain, my friend’s brain and your brain to scan the perimeter for danger.
But with our advance society today, your brain looks for patterns of dangers too. But this time, it works against us.
Your brain scans for dangers, all the time. Like for example, I have to save money and not use it. There’s nothing wrong with saving, but if you want to start a business, you must use some money to start up.
This money may come from your savings, or you’ll find a way to get extra cash, or what other calls OPM (other people’s money).
I used some of my savings, and it was enough to push my business forward.
But in the very beginning, I was scared to use some of my savings. It took me a long time to learn this. I was scared.
When some gurus say don’t be scared, I think this advice is misguided. What we need is a healthy dose of fear. Then when we put Mark Twain’s assessment of courage, that
Courage is not the absence of fear, but resistance to fear and mastery of fear,
that’s what I did. To be brutally honest, I was scared. I was scared ordering inventory through Alibaba.com, and ask the manufacturer to send the goods to Amazon fulfillment centers (warehouse) in Texas.
I was freaking scared when my contact from China don’t answer my WhatsApp messages.
I was freaking scared when the product launch failed at first.
But I just went on and work, past my fear. The human race didn’t evolve to be like us if they didn’t master their fear and build the ship. Or if they didn’t master the fear of flying.
