Fear of risk, fear of danger, fear of going it alone. Fear can be healthy, but it can also hold us back. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores the most important factor in overcoming fear.
Rob Artigo: Ray, many people are held back by fear. I know this personally, and I’ve had times in my life where I’ve avoided something because I just had a general fear of the possible outcomes. And some people just govern their whole lives based on fear. Is it possible to eliminate fear?
Ray Zinn: Sure, but you have to first recognize that you are fearful. Are you risk averse? Risk averse means that you’re not willing to take any chances. The more chances you’re willing to take, the more likely are to succeed. Now, there’s some righteous fear, meaning that you want to fear God as you would, respect them. You want to be respected. And so, you don’t want to be stupid and jump off out of an airplane without a parachute. I mean, that’s not overcoming fear, that’s just being stupid. Eliminating fear allows you to be more willing to take some chances. If you don’t take a chance, you’re just not going to accomplish your legacy or grow your career. Some people are afraid to go to school. I mean, if you’re wrapped up in fear, there’s a lot of things that you could do you won’t do. “Oh, I can’t do that,” or, “Oh, I don’t have that knowledge or that skillset.” As soon as you say what you don’t have and you can’t do, then you’re fearful.
So to be able to accomplish a lot, you have to eliminate that fear factor. Actually, it was a TV program sometime ago, a reality show was called Fear Factor. And the purpose of it was see if people could do things which are difficult, like eat certain things like bugs or something or seeing how they would do walking across a canyon on a bridge or on a tight wire with a… I mean, they did all kinds of really fearful things. How some people are afraid of swimming in the ocean. My wife is afraid to swim in the ocean because she’s fearful of those what she can’t see that’s in the water. In the pool, she knows there’s no animals in there, so she’s not fearful of the pool, but in the ocean, she’s fearful.
But that prevents you then from being able to explore in that environment. Some people are afraid to jump out of an airplane with a parachute, so they’ll never experience that because they’re fearful of it. And we all are fearful of the unknown, but if you restrict yourself to the point where you’re not going to do anything because of fear, you’re not going to succeed.
Rob Artigo: Yeah. You mentioned risk averse. That’s a really good example because you endeavor to do anything and don’t take any risk at all, you’re definitely not going to have any success. If you take some risk, you have a chance of success. If you are less fearful. But one thing that we may discuss in another podcast at some point is the idea that if you take a chance and you have a plan, you’re going to improve your chances of success. In fact, make your success likely to whatever level that ends up being is one story, but you have a really good chance of having success. That’s my little commentary there. And you mentioned healthy fears. So there’s the fear of God and that there’s a balance there. You have to learn some effective ways to eliminate fear so you’re not held back by them. But at the same time, not, like you said, do stupid things like a bungee jump with a rope instead of a bungee cord.
Ray Zinn: There are people who do things which are extremely dangerous, and yet they take the chance. Back when I was in college, I was a rodeo clown and I had to fight the bulls. Now, because I was raised around cattle and I raised around those animals, I was less fearful. And so, I could do it. But I did take a big chance because I was hurt severely a few times, not because of what I was doing. It was because of the way I was doing it. I was not being careful. I was exaggerating my ability as you would, and I just wanted to show the audience, the crowd, how dangerous it was. And so, I got severely injured a few times when I started to show off.
The name of the game is have a righteous level of fear, as we talked about, a righteous fear as opposed to being unrighteous. And even though I was skilled at what I did, I did some unhealthy and unrighteous things that caused me to get injured. Be mindful of the danger and then go for that, but don’t let fear be the stumbling block that prevents you from accomplishing your legacy.
Rob Artigo: In the business world, have you seen people who have been, they’ve held themselves back in work and success just because they were fearful of making a simple decision like switching jobs?
Ray Zinn: Yeah. I mean, that’s why people don’t change jobs because they’re fearful of the new company that they’re going to join or they don’t like change, and so they stay with what they know and where they are. So again, the objective is to have a healthy form of fear, the righteous fear, I call it, versus unrighteous. Unrighteous fear is doing stupid things. And when the potential for failure is so high that you actually will cause either your death or some other serious injury. So anyway, don’t let fear stop you from progressing and doing righteous things, but let your fear on unrighteous grow stronger as you would. Be fearful of doing stupid things.
Rob Artigo: That’s some good advice, Ray. The listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Questions and comments are there are welcome, so join us. Follow Ray on Twitter or X, depending on how you want to call it. Some people still call it Twitter. Facebook and LinkedIn are there. And of course, you can pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.
Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.
