Fear Can Make You Stupid: Part 2

I’ve said this before, but maybe not as clearly.

Control your fear, or your fear will make you stupid.

Fear makes you stupid.

Is that clear enough?

The baseless fear we choose to create can change our lives entirely. It will affect our relationships and our personal and professional lives. Fear can cause businesses to fail and relationships to crumble. Friends, relatives, customers, and vendors can see, smell, and feel it oozing from you.

There is so much going on today that might make a person fearful; you must be ultra-aware and very selective as to what you allow yourself to fear. You have more control over your fears than you might believe. We have a level of control over most of the things we fear. Ask yourself, is fear that infects you something that you can do something about, or not? If you can’t, you must ask yourself, Why am I allowing this perceived fear to affect my life?

With my work as a Master Business Coach, I’ve become a collector of everything I’ve heard or observed that people cannot control, as well as the things we can control. And frankly, the things we fear are all things we have no control over, which becomes that list of things that can make you stupid. My partial list of stupid fears, that we can’t do anything about includes, but not limited to;  Inflation, recession, cybersecurity, politics, legislation, bird flu, Ukraine; tariffs, the local news, National news, war, taxes, killer bees, weather, road construction, Congress, dumb people, smart people, death, travel delays, the economy, politicians, bad actors, meteorites, big government, billionaires, knucklehead talk show hosts, angry people, negative people, aging, the future, other people’s happiness, other people’s crappy attitudes, time, the Past, opinions, traffic, thoughts, religion, and the actions, thoughts and beliefs of others.

These issues mess with people’s lives, affecting their attitudes, focus, and personalities. And they can’t do a darn thing about any of them.

List two is a list of the things that people can control, and honestly we need to focus most of our attention on things like; your attitude, possibility thinking, your perception, your body language, your vocal tone; your vocabulary, smiling, how you walk, your confidence, your enthusiasm, listening, hope, passion, belief structure, accountability, trust, caring, consistency, loyalty, helpfulness, cheerfulness, courtesy, kindness, bravery, and good personal hygiene to name a few. We can act on and control all these items just as easily as we fear those things in the first list.

Remember that fear, uncontrolled, will make you stupid.

It’s about staying calm and controlling your thoughts and emotions.

I can’t conclude this thought without identifying one of the biggest sources of fearmongering for you. Today, it is imperative to monitor and control our media consumption. With the 24-hour news cycle on television and social media mixed in, we have many sources to allow us to see and hear what we want to see and hear.

Garbage in, garbage out.

We can read or hear about protests, war, death, and civil unrest right next to stories about how a kind neighbor mowed their elderly neighbor’s lawn. There is no shortage of stories about everything bad happening in our world. We’ll hear about death and destruction, protests, fraud, and even more on brutality, hate crimes, name-calling, and more. It’s not that we don’t need to know some of this, but we’re at the point where it’s all we hear and read.

One of the lessons I consistently teach my business coaching clients is from one of the most important personal and professional development books ever written. THINK AND GROW RICH was written by Napoleon Hill in 1928, and the book’s premise is as fresh today as it was back then.  Its timeless point is “what we think about most of the time, we become.” In other words, if we absorb all of the negativity in the world daily, we will become fearful of our world, surroundings, and life. Don’t be stupid. You can control this fear. You can turn off the television news channel; you can manage your social media consumption, and if necessary, you can change your friends.

A healthy dose of fear is good when it harkens innovative thinking and informed choices. You have control. If fear controls you, at best, you will struggle to survive. If you manage your fear, you have a reasonably good chance of surviving and thriving, and looking at the world with new eyes.

You’ll have eyes of possibility and opportunity.

Allowing fear and negativity to control and dictate our lives is deadly. Managing fear and negativity is the secret to living a great life and building a strong business, or not, in our world today.

Living with the fear of things you can’t control is a choice, and it may be the biggest choice you ever make.