When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
​
Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
The Cycle of Success
You have been appointed Head of British Cycling, with the task of taking it to the top of the cycling world.
Awesome! You got the top job. Until you realise... British Cycling is also awesome... in its mediocrity. It has struggled for medals in the Olympics. No British cyclist had ever won cycling's biggest event - The Tour De France. And you recently got a really big reminder about your team's mediocrity is - a top bicycle manufacturer refused to sell you bikes because they were worried it would hurt their sales if their brand was associated with British Cycling. What a slap in the face - Other teams and professionals would not want to ride the same bikes that British Cycling team used.
So what do you do? Sir Dave Brailsford had a very simple answer. He relentlessly and obsessively pursued the aggregation of marginal gain: if the team broke down everything they could think of that goes into competing on a bike, and then improved each element by 1%, they would achieve a significant aggregated increase in performance.
What does this mean? Brailsford elaborates in an interview with the Havard Business Review:
​
"By experimenting in a wind tunnel, we searched for small improvements to aerodynamics. By analyzing the mechanics area in the team truck, we discovered that dust was accumulating on the floor, undermining bike maintenance. So we painted the floor white, in order to spot any impurities. We hired a surgeon to teach our athletes about proper hand-washing so as to avoid illnesses during competition (we also decided not to shake any hands during the Olympics). We were precise about food preparation. We brought our own mattresses and pillows so our athletes could sleep in the same posture every night. We searched for small improvements everywhere and found countless opportunities. Taken together, we felt they gave us a competitive advantage."
​
​
​
​
Video is 2 minutes long
Was is it effective? As these and hundreds of other small improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined. The team went from four medals at each of the 2000 and 2004 Olympics to leaving the last three Olympic Games at the top of the cycling medals table, with at least 12 in their bag. At the Rio Olympics this year, every member of the 14-strong track team won at least one medal. from 2012-2018, British Cyclists won the Tour De France 6 times in 7 years. It is widely seen as the most successful era in professional cycling.
​
Brailsford strategy was inspired by the Japanese business concept of Kaizen - which pushes for continuous improvement across everyone in the workplace (managers and workers alike), to keep doing little better, and in doing so, setting and achieving ever-higher standards.
​
Toyota Car Company is a very established example of the practice of kaizen. Toyota emphasises the virtues of lean manufacturing - where products are produced in a manner that eliminates waste and inconsistencies, without placing unreasonable demands on workers. These are notions central to the kaizen philosophy - where the focus is placed on improving processes (rather than the product). With these improvements to the working processes, there will be a natural and consequent improvement to the product.
​
The notion of Kaizen and of marginal gains sound pretty abstract. Toyota and British Cycling are far removed from our lives. So what can we really take away from this, if at all?
​
We are often seduced by the idea that making changes in our lives and achieving big goals we have requires some form of massive and impressive action. But think about it - most successful changes or accomplishments comes from aggregation of small actions. The Olympic gold-medalist every single day, hour after hour, making small improvements to his/her technique. Most successful businesses do not become overnight sensations - it takes years of constant planning, executing, and expansion before they grow and become profitable. And you do not master knowledge in one field from just one book or one lecture. Einstein took years and many revisions to develop his theories of special and general relativity (these theories are also partially wrong, but have helped moved our understanding of physics tremendously). And even successful marriage doesn't depnd on the initial romance, but daily effort to maintain and upkeep.
​
The graph below provides some quasi-mathematical proof:
​
​
Image from JamesClear.com. James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits, a book I would recommend. Find out more about the impact of habits in our mini-series, here
As humans, it is natural for us to want big results, and quickly. In association, we often think that the actions we have to take have to be very massive. However, we have just examined some examples - and you can think of yourself - that it is often very difficult to find one massive action that can change everything.
In contrast, making 1% improvements might seem very trivial. We won't even notice it. But as the graph above shows, this 1% difference accumulate into a huge effect after some time. If we are 1% every day for one year, we end 37 times better than we were at the start. If we are 1% poorer every day, we end up almost at nothing. A huge gap develops between those who try to make themselves slightly better every day, as compared to those who don't. Making these small changes is also much more manageable, and we are far less likely to give up because it just gets too hard.
​
If we look back at the significant things we accomplished in life, they typically came from the aggregation of many moments. If we can create a system of doing things (i.e. a habit) that allows each moment we are involved in to be just slightly better every time, the results will compound into something major.
​
Related links: