Fear

I subscribe to the Wall St. Journal.  It’s tough to find good economic news in there, especially for corporate America.  Fear vibrates from every page. 

But there are always people in every economy who make money.  There was an article  in the NY Times 2 weeks ago called “When Fear Takes Over Our Brains,” written by a neuroscientist, Dr. Gregory Burns, talking about what to do instead of letting fear take over. 

Dr. Burns says that when fear is active in the brain, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off.  Turned off!  I don’t want to walk around in a fog of fear, the risk-taking part of my brain paralyzed, and not even notice it.

He says the antidote to that is to stay away from fear-mongering people, and don’t monger fear yourself.  And after I do that, he advises me to innovate.  Find new opportunities.  Figure out new things to do in my business.  He says “…right now there are incredible opportunities to do something differently.  Yes, they’re risky, and some will fail.  But while others wait for the storm to pass, I’m busy expanding into new areas.”

I want to be one of those business people who make money in any economy.  Even more, I want to keep innovating.  Focusing on innovation is so much more fun, challenging, and such a better use of my time than sitting around watching the stock market plunge.  Blogging and Twitter are new for me.  Writing another book.  I know there’s much more I can do.

Tags: Fear, Innovation

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Fear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.