Tenet 3: Remove Fear

Fear is the ultimate inhibitor of creativity. When we let fear influence our decision making, we often make conservative choices that minimize risk. This is a useful evolutionary response in many cases. For example, “stay inside today, don’t get eaten by tigers.” But when it comes to bringing your ideas into the world, fear is the ultimate enemy.

What most often we are afraid of are social or financial repercussions of our actions. If we express an idea and look ridiculous in front of our peers, we will be less likely to express risky solutions in the future. Not only is it important to remove fear from your own process, but to remove fear in your interactions with other people in order to maximize your combined creativity.

Social fear can seep into your decision making and creative work without you even knowing. When was the last time you examined your process to try and identify where you are socially influenced? The nearest person can be miles way and still have major influence.

For me, I find myself evaluating what I choose to take on often on financial merit, or in terms of what my father might think. This happens for a brief instant of time, but I have trained my mind to ignore such impulses and focus on my vision. I deny the fear of disappointment, polarization, or failure and I take the burden of these things off of myself and act as if they are figments of my imagination- they are.

Fear is truly a misuse of your imaginative power. When I am afraid or anxious, I find myself visualizing the worst-case scenario possible in a very visceral way. My creative abilities are being used against me here. I am combining negative solutions and the outcome often is horrific. The result of this is draining of my energy.

You must recognize your fears and the patterns that take place internally in order to avoid and master them. It is truly the battle of the self.

As said, there are typically 2 places where fear reigns and restricts you from taking risks and doing your best creative work. These are social and financial realms. The social realm is mostly an internal matter as paradoxical as it is. Most people don’t think enough about what you are doing for that to matter. If they are, you are probably doing something right anyways.

Financial Realm of Fear.

Financial Fear is a difficult place to be in. I know it is – I have been at points in my life where I was physically pained to spend money on things whether I needed them or not. I didn’t understand finances, I didn’t know how easy it could be and I was stressed out constantly because of it.

This fear cornered me into having a full-time job (FTJ). Does anybody actually love their FTJ? I didn’t usually mind the work itself, but it was the control that the corporation had over me that was intolerable. I had to go to punch clock because if I didn’t, I couldn’t pay bills. You know this feeling I am sure.

What I didn’t understand is that the world of finance all boils down to a single concept: Opportunity Cost. This is a phenomenon that most of our generation is actually intimately familiar with, despite possibly not having heard this label for it. Op. Cost is the opportunity that you give up, or rather, the infinite array of opportunities that you give up when you choose a single thing. When I choose to spend an hour playing a game, I cannot spend that hour doing anything else. I have spent it. All the world of opportunity that was possible for that single hour is now gone. Whatever I gained from that hour is final. There is another name you may be more familiar with, characterizing the phenomenon as a fear: the FOMO or Fear of Missing out. It’s a very powerful segment of the fear market, and it can totally paralyze you if you let it. I have seen many of my peers, and indeed have myself grappled with the FOMO. But you should be concerned with Op Cost. You must recognize it as a necessary, not a fear, but a constant concern to be regulated and managed. Here’s why.

All these hours that you spend working for your boss are hours that you can never spend honing your craft. Never. Now, there are some smart caveats that we can discuss later (I am thinking of synergistic overlap and careful choosing of day job to build a specific skillset). But let’s assume for the moment that this is true. So, you work a day job. An FTJ (full time job). You have financial security, but no time increasing your likelihood of becoming successful as a craftsman in your chosen field. There is a direct tradeoff here. An Opportunity Cost. You may have the reverse situation. You may have decided that you would rather be poor and do what you love. Admirable, but not necessary if you play the game of life the smart way. Managing opportunity cost is the center of reducing fear. Another term for this is Risk Management. Managing risk is managing the negative impacts of your decisions. If you can do what you need to do to succeed in your craft without losing the financial peace of mind that you have with an FTJ, you probably got there by managing risk.

So, this is our noble goal, to maintain our financial security while also reallocating our time to what matters. The way we get to this goal is by understanding risk and learning to manage it. If you can manage the risk involved in any endeavor, then you immediately free yourself from fear. When you understand the risk, it becomes less scary and controlling. When you manage the total possible risk, you eliminate fear entirely. This is called ‘Capping the Downside’.

Risk is a highly personal thing. How much you can stomach, you tolerance, will improve as you become more and more used to managing it. Often, high risk is rewarded more generously. If you succeed. Cap the downside. This capping is not always purely financial.

Sometimes you have to be willing to lose financially in order to gain skills or network with the right people. You have to understand cost, lost finances in the short term, within the context of your greater set of objectives. You may work an entire year on your business with no pay at all. You must be set up for this beforehand (and thereby managed the risk of bankruptcy) but you will likely have gained a year’s worth of experience as a CEO or marketer or both! This is not a bad tradeoff. Maybe it is for your situation. Either way, you must be the one to understand the tradeoff and embrace it. You are the captain of the ship; you manage the risk.