01/18/2020
How fear relates to intelligence ... and vice-versa
As I am writing this post –one of the first one I ever wrote- I am experiencing a strange sensation. Am I going to write something interesting? What about the English? Can I make a joke? I am wondering, less confident. A kind of fear of some sort.
We all experience different levels of fear at different stages of our lives. But fear in business is a particular one. Yesterday, the CEO of a company told me “we got a transfer of 100K on our account, from one of our clients. This makes me nervous”. Sometimes it is fear of not negotiating well enough, sometimes it is about CRA, some other times it is about our image among our peers or employees, about how they perceive us. Business fears never leave entrepreneurs alone.
In my personal life I have a few profound passions: Apnea (I used to and still do spear fishing), Judo (started when I was 8 and almost never stopped), and music (used to play in public, but this is a long long time ago).
All those passions relate to fear at a deep level:
- When you are holding your breath and diving, just by the idea of a potential fear your heart beat is going to increase, resulting in less time allowed staying under water. Or worse, you might not have enough time to return to the surface.
- In fighting, fear can result in too much adrenaline in your blood, up to a point where you can’t control what is going on and you lose focus.. and get knock down.
- On a stage, fear results in, well…. to the best a bad performance interpretation…. Or, at the worst, total black out with trembling hands and cold sweat.
Yes, sure, so what??
It happens that I have 2 cats. A big male called Ashi, and a small female, called Mimi.
Ashi keeps chasing Mimi to have a bigger territory and get rid of her. He knows we hate his behaviour, but he acts smart (unfortunately) and always finds the right moment to enter into a fight and make Mimi running away.
He is not really afraid about us, but if we move just a finger he freezes and does not act as intended towards the small cat.
To the contrary Mimi is always afraid of anything that could happen to her. She does not eat properly any more. As soon as the big cat is in a room she avoids going there, even if we are around.
She has lost total control over the environment and herself. As if she had completely lost any sense of intelligence or analysis.
Long story short…
I often ask myself “what is Intelligence?”
Observing my cats, I have come to a personal definition: “To be capable of containing and mastering our fears and acting on them with the right timing”.
--> That is why we need analysis: to define and limit the fear to its true nature, and then act on it with what is available now or in a defined future.
--> That is why we need consistent training and hard work: to get enough exposure and experience in order to be capable of building a conviction based on analysis.
If Analysis is a Sundae, then Conviction is the cherry on its top.
Makes sense ?
