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.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Principles for success in life
Principles is tremendously insightful. I strongly recommend reading the book, or at minimum, investing 28 minutes (faster if you increase playback speed) to watch this summary video. It's a remarkable opportunity to be able to peer into the mind of a man who has clearly thought very deeply about life, and whose advice is widely sought after by governments and major companies.
Also highly recommend the rest of the videos on Dalio's YouTube channel (including the mechanics of the economic cycle, establishing a company culture where the best ideas win, etc) here.
In the video, Dalio shares many of the principles that guided his life. Of particular interest is the 5-step process that he advocates. The 5-step process sounds straight-forward enough, perhaps even lacking the oomph of lifehacks that motivational speakers promulgate. But I think it's really important not to only look at how revolutionary
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5 step process
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Know your goals and run after them. what is best for you depends on your nature so you need to really understand yourself, and know what you want to achieve in life
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Encounter the problems that stand in the way of getting to your goals. These problems are typically painful, and if handled badly some of them can lead to your ruin. But to evolve, you need to identify those problems, and not tolerate them.
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Diagnose these problems, to get their root causes. Don't jump too quickly to solutions, but take a step back and reflect in order to really distinguish the symptoms from the disease.
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Design a plan to eliminate the problems. What do you need to do to get around them?
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Execute those designs, pushing yourself to do what is needed to achieve your goals.
Success in life is about repeating this 5 step process over and over again. Dalio also sees this as a form of personal evolution - in fact, any product or organisation goes through a similar cyclical process of constant adaption, without which there is a risk o being obsolete.
People are strong and weak at different things, and it's likely that there will be some parts of the 5 step process that we can't do well. However, not facing this 5 step process is worse, where we fail to grasp reality as it is, and not improve. As we engage the 5-step process more, we do get better at it.
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Besides the 5-step process, Dalio also provides insight into other areas:
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He believes that struggle is constant and necessary
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"In my early years, I looked up to extraordinarily successful people, thinking that they were successful because they were extraordinary. After I got to know such people personally, I realised that all of them - like me, like everyone - make mistakes, struggle with their weaknesses, and don’t feel that they are particularly special or great. They are no happier than the rest of us, and they struggle just as much or more than average folks."
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"Even after they surpass their wildest dreams, they still experience more struggle than glory. This has certainly been true for me. While I surpassed my wildest dreams decades ago, I am still struggling today. I’m still struggling and I will until I die because even if I tried to avoid the struggles, they will find me.”
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“Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.”
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Struggle is necessary because it means progress.
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“Pain + Reflection = Progress”
To understand what I mean, imagine your greatest goal, whatever it is - making a ton of money, winning an Academy Award, running a great organisation, being great at a sport. Now imagine instantaneously achieving it. You’d be happy at first but not for long. You would soon find yourself needing something else to struggle for. Just look at people who attain their dreams early - the child star, the lottery winner, the professional athlete who peaks early. They typically don’t end up happy unless they get excited about something else bigger and better to struggle for. Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn’t just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad.
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Life is about making a choice from the many available, based on reality.
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“I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.” “The happiest people discover their own nature and match their life to it.”
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