In an ideal world, we would be able to have complete control over our emotions, particularly in business. But the thing that makes humans the unique species that we are is emotion. Emotion can and often works to the benefit of business – if channeled properly.
Excitement, empathy and compassion are all emotions that positively feed business professionals and have also helped to inspire new business ideas that have transformed industry. These emotions should be encouraged and fostered.
Fear, envy and greed are all of the emotions that negatively feed business and are often the most powerful. The emotion that I find I focus on managing with my clients most is fear. We have all experienced it and are familiar with just how debilitating fear can be.
It can also be used to light a fire of motivation in us, however, I have always found that this is not the ‘fun’ way of building a business.
For now, I want to focus primarily on how we can begin to manage our fears. The emotion of fear is perhaps the most irrational emotion of them all. Think about it, fear is created when the mind creates a story about the future. It envisions a ‘worst case scenario’ which creates a visceral and very real feeling inside that has us react today by making decisions and taking actions about something we think might possibly happen in the future.
Why is this irrational? Because the story we create in our minds is not true and there is no basis for it. None of us can predict what will happen tomorrow. You can’t even guarantee that you will be alive tomorrow – but do you have control over that? No. You may be able to do certain things that will increase the probability that you will be alive tomorrow, like looking both ways before you cross the street, but you can’t guarantee your desired outcome. So, if we can’t guarantee a certain outcome, why do we allow the fear of failing or ‘death’ to prevail? Because we are mostly operating at a subconscious level. We are conditioned by the messages of our past and we react accordingly. We are fed messages in the news constantly about what could, will and has gone wrong. Our minds don’t like missing information. What happens in the future is a lot of missing information. The only way the mind can have a certain level of ease is by filling in the missing gaps of information by relating what happened in the past. As long as we walk backwards into our future, only seeing what happened in our past, we will be limited. We will limit what outcomes and possibilities there are for our companies and businesses. It isn’t until we turn around and walk boldly into our future without the fears of what might happen can we really begin to gain significant ground and surprise ourselves at what we can create.
