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
Can you make your own luck?
"Some of the most important determinants of life paths often arise through the most trivial of circumstances.”
Luck is that mysterious element of chance that we can't control, and can only hope favours us.
-
Sometimes you just meet people at the right points in time, forming lifelong friendships.
-
Sometimes a great opportunity comes to you at a time when you're in a great frame of mind.
-
Sometimes you misread your opponent and with 5% chance, luck out at poker.
-
And probably the best and most important example, sometimes the chef just squeezes the right amount of sauce onto your burger, to create the perfect condiment-patty-bun-toppings ratio.
Humans have been looking to create their own luck for just about as long as we can remember. These come in the form of superstitions. Whether it is avoiding black cats or walking under ladders, touching wood or wearing red, the list is pretty imaginative. Even some of our greatest athletes have their own superstitions - Serena Williams the great female tennis player wears the same pair of socks throughout an entire tournament (thankfully washing machines were invented huh?) and Michael Jordan, possibly the most famous athlete ever, started a trend of longer basketball shorts... because he wanted to cover his college shorts which he wore underneath for good luck.
​
I don't think we really need to examine whether superstitions work. They don't.
​
I want to stress that we're not examining how we can mythically have more good things happen to us here. That is not what we can control. Instead, what we should focus on is how we can practically increase the probability of occurrences that might be beneficial to us.
​
Think about it. New opportunities in life mostly occur because of new circumstances or new people that you meet. If we live our lives in largely the same manner every day, the probability that a lucky opportunity will come upon us is very low. So obviously, one key element of creating our own luck is simply changing our routines - this doesn't need to be a major change. Perhaps just once per month, we can skip the Netflix session and volunteer for 2 hours, try an exercise class, or join a group activity. This increases the chance that you might meet someone (or someone who knows someone), from which something might develop.
Dr Richard Wiseman shares more with his study on luck:
Dr Richard Wiseman
University of Hertfordshire
​
For the best part of a decade, Richard Wiseman studied the difference between people who saw themselves as lucky and people who saw themselves as unlucky. This experiment of his provides some insight.
The experiment:
-
400 participants were invited to classify themselves as "lucky" or "unlucky".
-
Those who felt they were "lucky" were placed in one group, while those who felt they were "unlucky" in another.
-
All participants were given the same newspaper.
-
They were asked to report back on how many photographs the newspaper contained.
​
Results:
-
On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs.
-
The people in the lucky group? Less than 10 seconds.
-
Why? The second page of the newspaper contained the message “Stop counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in font over 2 inches high.
-
Even though it was staring right at the participants, people in the unlucky group tended to miss it while people in the lucky group tended to spot it.
-
Just for fun, there was a second large message halfway through the newspaper. This one announced: “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” Only some people spotted this, all from the lucky group.
-
People in the "unlucky" group missed the opportunities because they were still too busy looking for photographs.
​
It's important to get the correct story here. We don't get luckier just because we re-write your story to be "lucky". We won't hit the lottery just because we want to and believe so. As this experiment shows, the "lucky" and "unlucky" go through the same experience. The "lucky" weren't in a more advantageous position. However, those who saw themselves as lucky were able to be open to opportunities that came. But thinking of ourselves as "unlucky" causes us to miss out on the same opportunities because we don't think they are there.
​
4 basic principles of luck
Wiseman's research led him to conclude that lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles.
​
-
They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities:
People who saw themselves as lucky tend to create more opportunities for themselves. Many describe different ways of disrupting routine in life, making sure they meet new people. This could be as simple as regularly changing routes to get to work, travelling to countries very different from their own, to talking to unfamiliar people at parties. There is no magic in this. If we only talked to the same people you already know, there is a lower probability for a new opportunity to come by. However, each new person you meet could potentially introduce new opportunities in your life.
-
Make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition;
I'm going to skip this bit because I think this is very misleading. If you want to find out, you can check out Wiseman's book.
-
Create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations.
This is best exhibited in the experiment above. Remember, people were not actually more "lucky". They all had the same opportunities. But the folks who thought they were lucky had a positive enough mindset which enabled them to see the opportunity which the "unlucky" folks couldn't.
-
Adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
In further tests, Wiseman presented different scenarios to people. He found out that those who thought they were lucky, tend to imagine spontaneously how the bad luck described in the scenarios could have been worse. This then leads to point 3 above - the positive view helps keep their expectations about the future high, and, increases the likelihood of them continuing to create or spot opportunities when they come.
​
​