Two hundred thousand years ago, our ancestors lived on the African savanna. And they were very good at being scared of dangerous stuff.
If you weren't scared of snakes, you got bitten by a snake and you died. Your genes didn't get passed on.
If you weren't scared of not belonging to the tribe, you got evicted. And you died. Your genes didn't get passed on either.
So we evolved to be scared of stuff that was dangerous.
And there was a very strong correlation between how scared we were of something and how dangerous it was. This was incredibly useful.
Unfortunately, our fear is still finely tuned for what was dangerous two hundred thousand years ago on the African savanna — and generally that doesn't serve us so well nowadays.
This creates two problems.
Firstly, there's dangerous stuff we're not scared of. We're not scared of a poor diet or a sedentary lifestyle. We're not scared of social media algorithms. But we should be.
Secondly, there's safe stuff we are scared of. We're often scared of promoting ourselves. We're scared of sales. We're scared of committing 100%. We’re scared of playing big. But in business, the safe path often feels scary.
In business, and in life, notice when you’re scared. But take it with a grain of salt.
