Startup Reflections: Overcoming Fear

Recently I posed a question on LinkedIn to my followers asking “what is a start-up related topic you would be interesting in me writing about?”

There were a wide range of topics but among them one central theme seemed to emerge: Overcoming Fear.

As I think about this topic, I remember back to the night before I started the Velocity Accelerator program (a Birmingham based Accelerator program). I vividly recall laying in bed with thoughts running through my mind at 100 miles per hour… Thoughts like “what if I’m not smart enough to run a business” or “what if I don’t have the work ethic to meet the what it takes,” among others.

When I think about the commonalities between the thoughts running through my mind they all revolved around failure — failure to build a product, failure to help clients, failure to succeed.

As I look back at my sleepless night, I wish I would have been able to tell myself a quote I found several years later from non other than Elon Musk:

“Failure is essentially irrelevant unless it is catastrophic”

When you think about the quote, it becomes all too obvious how it’s easy to overweight the consequences of failure when in reality 1) the people it may impact do not place as much weight on it; 2) failure typically accepts opportunity for correction; and 3) in the grand scheme of life, certain failure isn’t really all that important — it’s how you respond.

An exercise I came up with to help manifest these concepts is to imagine yourself 10 years down the road. Ask yourself “how will I look back on that experience” and “how will it have made an impact on my life?”

The answers I typically arrive at are 1) I will have never known the outcome had I not taken the risk and 2) if I did fail, I will likely be able to laugh about the experience and share the lessons I learned to help others avoid the mistakes that led me to failure.

The other big component of overcoming fear and failure deals with ego.

Typically when you are worried about failure it is not so much the objective failure as it is your own inability to succeed.

What is important to remember is how there are many things outside of our control when it comes to success. A useful exercise a friend once introduced me to is what is referred to as the circle of control — which essentially goes like this:

The circle on the right “What you can control” represents you. The circle on the left (“What you cannot control”)represents everything else — your friends, your coworkers, and the material world. The overlapping regions represents the relatively small portion of external things you can have an impact on.

All too often, fear and ego like to dance in the “What you cannot control” circle. Together they keep you up at night and cause undue stress.

The key is to focus on what you can control — your emotions, your time, and your well-being. In turn, this will also help you maximize any outcomes within the overlapping region of the diagram.

Lastly, I would like to conclude with one other quote I have found extremely useful when it comes to the overlapping region:

“Have the courage to say what you need in the moment. Most people aren’t mind readers. Two things will happen: You’ll either get what you need or realize that the source you are asking doesn’t have the capacity to deliver. Both are gifts.” — Jada Pinkett Smith (via Twitter)

Ego often prevents people from saying what they truly need, when they truly need it.

Practice your ability to express your thoughts and your needs with others. Similar to what Elon Musk said, rarely will this result in catastrophe and you may walk away with an outcome you never thought possible.

I hope this article was helpful and provided a few mechanisms to overcome fear. Stay tuned for more posts.