Fear and Decisons

You never know where you will pick up insights.  That’s why you always need to be in the moment and aware of what’s going on around you.  The other day I was mentoring at TechStars.  I signed the board and I noticed a pattern.  I mentioned to one of the people that work there that almost everyone who signed the board was right handed.  You could tell by the way they signed, and the slant on their signature.

No big deal.  I am not the next Sherlock Holmes or Colombo but when you are aware you see things and hear things and experience things you otherwise might not.

I was in my yoga class the other day and it happened again.  I do Iyengar Yoga which combines philosophy with movement and positions.  For example, if your hips are inflexible, maybe your mind is inflexible too.  Or at least a part of your mind.  Maybe you don’t want to move that body part because of some sort of inner fear which manifests itself in pain.  Or, maybe it does just hurt!

Neuroscience has looked at decision making and noticed a lot of things.  One of the things it has found is when people make decisions out of fear, certain parts of the brain are more acitve than others.  It’s much easier to influence people with fear than straight logic.  That’s why great advertisements or great sales pitches appeal just a little bit to the fear complex inside a brain.  Ideally it is just a fear of missing out.  Too much fear and you trigger a flight or fight response and that enhances the perception of risk increasing the paralysis of the person.

In entrepreneurship we deal with fear all the time.  It’s. A. Constant.

But, somehow you have to figure out a way to compartmentalize fear, otherwise it will affect your decision.  You might find yourself in a pattern.  That pattern of decision making could be setting you up for failure.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing that doesn’t work over and over again but it could be fear that is driving the insane process of the decision making.

It’s something to think about when you find yourself in the same spot over and over again.