Fear is Good

Gordon Gekko famously quipped “greed is good” in his iconic Wall Street 80's movie. The phrase came in the middle of an era of deregulation and liberalization. A phase where "shoot for the fences" was the name of the game. Financial markets then became more of a cumulative distillation of the collective psychological state of its participants. And now, just as then, greed-dominated markets engender euphoria, happiness and (even if only fleeting and paper-based) great wealth. Fear-induced markets are the mirror image of the former, degenerating into panics, wealth destruction and (in some tragic cases) even death. 

Fear is connected to the negative. It’s why policemen shoot first and find out later. It's how some autocrats gain power over a very fearful electorate. Why politics have become so toxic as of late, and why the youngest generation these days is despairing and gloomy (where 60% of them "experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness"). 

But I am here to tell you that fear is much more than a febrile state of alertness that makes us do stupid shit. I'm here to tell you that fear, in fact, is good.

Every time I wake up before dawn to prepare for my workout and get annoyed by my parakeet pets rattling and makings noises is a reminder of how good fear is. Their fear (manifested as skittishness) is one of the key attributes that has kept these micro dinosaurs alive and very much non extinct. 

Fear is the reason Africa is the only continent that still has megafauna, like rhinos, giraffes, hippos and elephants. They survived because they evolved alongside man and learned to fear him. Megafauna in other continents, like the south American Megatherium, the Moa of New Zealand, didn't get a chance to learn to fear man, and were exterminated as a result.   

But for fear to be good, it must trigger a reaction and prompt us to be prepared against said threat. The parakeets instinctively know this (that’s a trait that survived over eons) and prepare to flee upon the minor sign of a threat (cage not withstanding). But to let that fear marinate in your head, paralyzing you into inaction and robbing you of the will to prepare, is to become the Moa upon the arrival of mankind in your shores. It's not gonna end well. 

How many times have you been awake at night fretting about that one issue the following day, only to find out that the monster you made that obstacle to be one night before turns out to be a mundane blip you solved with a little bit of common sense? How many times have you felt relieved to find out the dreaded outcome you feared turns out to be something you're able to handle? We tend to discount our capabilities as adaptable animals when facing hardship. We all descend from a long line of peoples who faced daunting odds (and came out on top). There's a reason why we thrive on adversity. Why our growth only occurs when challenged. Why we despair and feel lost when things get too comfortable and predicable. Why sometimes we even need a nemesis to thrive. 

It is in our nature to react against adversity, and to grow from it. 

Fear is nothing more than an alert mechanism. Not a prophecy that something bad will happen. It’s an opportunity to be proactive and to prepare when the threat is not yet here; a chance to war game unwanted outcomes, and to train yourself so that if in fact said threat materializes, you’ll come out on top.

So the next time you're dreading a potentially unwanted outcome, and fear suffuses your soul, embrace it, and turn it into an opportunity to prepare to face that outcome. I assure you: you'll grow from it.