The Fearful Attitude

In the beginning, fear was a basic, simple emotion for the human animal. We confronted

something overwhelming—the imminent threat of death in the form of wars, plagues, and

natural disasters—and we felt fear. As for any animal, this emotion had a protective function—it allowed us to take notice of a danger and retreat in time. For us humans, it served an additional, positive purpose—we could remember the source of the threat and protect ourselves better the next time. Civilization depended on this ability to foresee and forestall dangers from the environment. Out of fear, we also developed religion and various belief systems to comfort us. Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious.

Over time, however, something strange began to happen. The actual terrors that we

faced began to lessen in intensity as we gained increasing control over our environment.

But instead of our fears lessening as well, they began to multiply in number. We started

to worry about our status in society—whether people liked us, or how we fit into the group. We became anxious for our livelihoods, our future, our personal health, and for woman? Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. It was as if the thousands of years of feeling fear in the face of nature could not go away—we had to find something at which to direct our anxiety, no matter how small or improbable.

In the evolution of fear, a decisive moment occurred in the nineteenth century when

people in advertising and journalism discovered that if they framed their stories and

appeals with fear, they could capture our attention. It is an emotion we find hard to

resist or control, and so they constantly shifted our focus to new possible sources of

anxiety: the latest health scare, the new crime wave, a social faux pas we might be

committing, and endless hazards in the environment of which we were not aware. With

the increasing sophistication of the media and the visceral quality of the imagery, they

have been able to give us the feeling that we are fragile creatures in an environment full

of danger—even though we live in a world infinitely safer and more predictable than

anything our ancestors knew. With their help, our anxieties have only increased.

Fear is not designed for such a purpose. Its function is to stimulate powerful physical responses,

allowing an animal to retreat in time. After the event, it is supposed to go away. An animal that

cannot not let go of its fears once the threat is gone will find it hard to eat and sleep. We are the animal that cannot get rid of its fears and when so many of them lay inside of us, these fears tend to color how we view the world. We shift from feeling fear because of some threat, to having a fearful attitude towards life itself. We come to see almost every event in terms of risk. We exaggerate the dangers and our vulnerability. We instantly focus on the adversity that is always possible. We are generally unaware of this phenomenon because we accept it as normal. In times of prosperity, we have the luxury of fretting over things. But in times of trouble, this fearful attitude becomes particularly pernicious. Such moments are when we need to solve problems, deal with reality, and move forward, but fear is a call to retreat and retrench.

This is precisely what Franklin Delano Roosevelt confronted when he took office in

1933. The Great Depression that had begun with the stock market crash of 1929 was

now at its worst. But what struck Roosevelt was not the actual economic factors but the

mood of the public. It seemed to him that people were not only more fearful than

necessary but that their fears were making it harder to surmount adversity. In his

inaugural address to the country, he said that he would not ignore such obvious realities

as the collapse of the economy and that he would not preach a naive optimism. But he

implored his listeners to remember that the country had faced worse things in its past,

periods such as the Civil War. Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic—as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on. ―”So, first of all, ” he told the audience, ―”let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning,

unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

What Roosevelt sketched out in his speech is the knife’s edge that separates failure from

success in life. That edge is your attitude, which has the power to help shape your

reality. If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat

mode. You can just as easily see a crisis or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to

prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective

action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive

purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. And in fact, through

his inspiring leadership, FDR was able to help the country shift its mind-set and

confront the Depression with a more enterprising spirit.

We face certain challenges as well. The world has become more competitive; the

economy has undeniable vulnerabilities and is in need of reinvention. As in all

situations, the determining factor will be our attitude, how we choose to look at this

reality. If we give in to the fear, we will give disproportionate attention to the negative

and manufacture the very adverse circumstances that we dread. If we go the opposite

direction, cultivating a fearless approach to life, attacking everything with boldness and

energy, then we will create a much different dynamic.

Understand: we are all too afraid—of offending people, of stirring up conflict, of

standing out from the crowd, of taking bold action. For thousands of years our

relationship to this emotion has evolved—from a primitive fear of nature, to generalized

anxiety about the future, to the fearful attitude that now dominates us.

THE NONENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

Let me put this posting on English because I love the words…

The problem we all face in strategy, and in life, is that
each of us is unique and has a unique personality.
Our circumstances are also unique; no situation ever
really repeats itself. But most often we are barely
aware of what makes us different--in other words, of
who we really are. Our ideas come from what we read,
teachers, all kinds of unseen influences. We respond
to events routinely and mechanically instead of trying
to understand their differences. In our dealings with
other people, too, we are easily infected by their
tempo and mood. All this creates a kind of fog. We
fail to see events for what they are; we do not know
ourselves.
Your task  is simple: to see the
differences between yourself and other people, to
understand yourself, your side, and the enemy as well
as you can, to get more perspective on events, to
know things for what they are. In the hubbub of daily
life, this is not easy--in fact, the power to do it can
come only from knowing when and how to retreat. If
you are always advancing, always attacking, always
responding to people emotionally, you have no time to
gain perspective. Your strategies will be weak and
mechanical, based on things that happened in the
past or to someone else. Like a monkey, you will
imitate instead of create. Retreating is something you
must do every now and then, to find yourself and
detach yourself from infecting influences. And the best
time to do this is in moments of difficulty and danger.
Symbolically the retreat is religious, or
mythological. It was only by escaping into the desert
that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their
identity and reemerge as a social and political force.
Jesus spent his forty days in the wilderness, and
Mohammed, too, fled Mecca at a time of great peril
for a period of retreat. He and just a handful of his
most devoted supporters used this period to deepen
their bonds, to understand who they were and what
they stood for, to let time work its good. Then this little
band of believers reemerged to conquer Mecca and
the Arabian Peninsula and later, after Mohammed's
death, to defeat the Byzantines and the Persian
empire, spreading Islam over vast territories. Around
the world every mythology has a hero who retreats,
even to Hades itself in the case of Odysseus, to find
himself.
If Moses had stayed and fought in Egypt, the Jews
would be a footnote in history. If Mohammed had
taken on his enemies in Mecca, he would have been
crushed and forgotten. When you fight someone more
powerful than you are, you lose more than your
possessions and position; you lose your ability to
think straight, to keep yourself separate and distinct.
You become infected with the emotions and violence
of the aggressor in ways you cannot imagine. Better
to flee and use the time your flight buys to turn inward.
Let the enemy take land and advance; you will recover
and turn the tables when the time comes. The
decision to retreat shows not weakness but strength.
It is the height of strategic wisdom.
The essence of retreat is the refusal to engage the
enemy in any way, whether psychologically or
physically. You may do this defensively, to protect
yourself, but it can also be a positive strategy: by
refusing to fight aggressive enemies, you can
effectively infuriate and unbalance them.
Most people respond to aggression by in some
way getting involved with it. It is almost impossible to
hold back. By disengaging completely and retreating,
you show great power and restraint. Your enemies
are desperate for you to react; retreat infuriates and
provokes them into further attack. So keep retreating,
exchanging space for time. Stay calm and balanced.
Let them take the land they want.
They will start to overextend themselves and make mistakes. Time is
on your side, for you are not wasting any of it in
useless battles.
War is notoriously full of surprises, of unforeseen
events that can slow down and ruin even the best-laid
plan. Carl von Clausewitz called this "friction." War is
a constant illustration of Murphy's Law: if anything can
go wrong, it will. But when you retreat, when you
exchange space for time, you are making Murphy's
Law work for you. War is a physical affair, which takes place
somewhere specific: generals depend on maps and
plan strategies to be realized in particular locations.
But time is just as important as space in strategic
thought, and knowing how to use time will make you a
superior strategist, giving an added dimension to your
attacks and defense. To do this you must stop
thinking of time as an abstraction: in reality, beginning
the minute you are born, time is all you have. It is your
only true commodity. People can take away your
possessions, but--short of murder--not even the most
powerful aggressors can take time away from you
unless you let them. Even in prison your time is your
own, if you use it for your own purposes. To waste
your time in battles not of your choosing is more than
just a mistake, it is stupidity of the highest order. Time
lost can never be regained.