Rob Artigo: One thing I want to talk about today is, or the main topic here today is about fear, because fear ends up being a guide for a lot of people. And I mean a guide to nothingness, a guide to non-productive activities, a guide to isolation, a guide to avoidance, all those things. It all stems from fear. And I think that a lot of people can relate to that. Just simply deciding you’re not going to do something because you have some fear there lingering. I think you like to say refuse to let fear decide what you attempt or achieve. Is that fair to say?
Ray Zinn: Exactly.
Rob Artigo: Let me start with this. Have you ever experienced a situation where fear was something that you had to overcome in order to attempt or try something that you wanted to do, but you were reluctant to do because there was a certain amount of fear involved?
Ray Zinn: Absolutely. In 1994 when I took the company public, I lost my eyesight. I became legally blind. And so doing the conference calls that we did once a quarter, that was a real fearful thing. I mean, it just became almost comatose over that because I couldn’t see well and I tried to say, oh, can I remember everything that I need to know in order to present the information about the company? And so when I lost my eyesight, I really, really ran into this problem of fear almost took over. I can’t drive. I listen to all the things I can’t do and that really caused me to go actually into a deep depression. What I did to come out of it is I said, rather than focus on what I can’t do, let me focus on what I can do. And so I let that be the driving force of let me do this because I can do it.
And that built my confidence, and I was able to overcome this lack of vision by just focusing on what I could do, not what I thought I couldn’t do. That became the driving force for me, take courage to not let some problem or dilemma affect my ability to accomplish whatever tasks I wanted to succeed. It’s a matter of focusing on what you can do, not what you can’t do.
Rob Artigo: Is this a place where we can write down those things that we fear and just work on them so that they’re not holding me back, so I can get through and do it. Like in your situation, just the mere threat of potentially going blind would make most people, it’d be a showstopper kind of fear, just an absolute abject fear that you have no control over it. It’s coming at you in a wave and yours was very sudden decline in your vision. And the more sudden it is, the more fear it generates because there’s so much unknown involved.
Should we make a list of these things as we go along and say, is there something I can do to overcome this fear? I mean, fear of speaking in public, as a leader, you want to be able to do that and not everybody has that confidence or that skill to speak in public. I’m a radio guy and there are times when I go to stand at a podium and go to talk and I’m really nervous. But the fear doesn’t stop me from doing it.
Ray Zinn: Well, there’s a program they called Fear Factor, which is this program where these contestants would come on and the host would try to come up with these different fears and see if people would overcome them. In other words, it might be going into a dark room, it might be a height, it might be something eat like snails or something that sounds grotesque. So the whole concept was who can overcome these fears? And that’s what they refer to as fear factor. There is that fear factor. All of us have that fear of something, whether it be height, whether it be speaking in public. But that’s because we focus on it. So rather than focusing on our fears, focus on what we can do, focus on the positive aspects of it, not just something we can procrastinate because fear then starts generating procrastination and procrastination is really doomed to failure.
And so having this fear factor, which we all have some, is a challenge and we talk about it in my books is overcoming fear by doing, attempting to do things you don’t want to do. That’s the key is to overcoming fear is to do things that you don’t want to do because we let that drive our success or how well we can succeed is they say, “Well, I have a fear of this. I have a fear of that.” Rather than say you have a fear of it, say you have an affinity for it and you go from there. So driving yourself to eliminate fear, being courageous is the key. Whether you have a fear of heights or whether you have fear of a fire or drowning or whatever your fear is, focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do.
Rob Artigo: It’s a mindset, but it’s also sometimes the fear is just there. And we talk about endurance, having a life that endures is enduring those moments of fear. I know people who have done some pretty amazing, very, very brave things, but they were scared doing them. But they feared for their life. Nobody wants to face death, but they did it and they were scared the whole time and people, “Man, you were really brave.” You go, “Yeah, but I was really scared.” But I manage that experience just like you did with going blind. I think that the hard part for people to understand is that it’s okay to… You can’t control if the fear is there suddenly, but you can contain it. You can work through it if you approach it the right way, right?
Ray Zinn: I call it managing. You manage your fears. You’re not trying to disavow them or you’re not trying to feel that you can’t do it. You just acknowledge it and you work with that fear. And then you say, “Well, how do I best it? How do I overcome it? How do I manage it?” And that’s the key, whether it be running a company or whether it be taking on a new job or getting married or whatever it is, you manage it by acknowledging the fact that there is that fear and that concern, but you control it by managing it.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. You just stick around. If it lingers, then you have a whole different situation going on. Join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And of course, pick up the books. Tough Things First, The Essential Leader, Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and Ray’s new book, Zen of Zinn Daily. Until next time, do the tough things first, right, Ray?
Ray Zinn: Let’s do it.
