Fear Drives Our Lives

My mom’s favorite joke goes somewhat like that:

Poor man prays to God, “Please God, let me win the lottery, let me become rich, please…”
Next day he goes on praying, “Please God, let me win only once the lottery, I only one 1 single million, not more…”
Next day again, “Let me win, I will be nice to people, I will do good …” It goes on for weeks and weeks. One day God’s mighty voice falls from the sky, “Bro, you have to fill in at least one ticket …”

Today also, I had the following situation. I found out that one of my $20’s had a ripped corner. The missing piece was not small enough so that it can go unnoticed, but it also wasn’t big enough to be completely unacceptable. So I was getting food at Chipotle (the best fast food you can get) and I faced the following dilemma — should I try to get away with my ripped 20 or should I gave them a regular one. I gave them 2 tens but before the cashier put them away, I pulled my ripped banknote and asked naively, “Would you ever take those ripped 20’s under some circumstances or should I not even try?”, the guy smiled at me, gave me back my tens, took the scarred 20 and joked, “I will get extra 15c for that missing part” I was left in amazement, I got away with it so easy!

So then I thought, why on Earth would people have that completely irrational fear to avoid chances that come with barely any risk? Why did I not give the banknote at first place? Was I afraid of being denied? [so what?] Was I afraid they are going to laugh at me? [so what, I am never going to see them] Was I just shy? [how does that make me a better person if I am shy?] There is nothing significant that I could possibly lose if I try. But I didn’t in the beginning, and a lot of people don’t at all.

Those of you that have read any of my previous posts know that I preach that ‘the only person you should be working is yourself’, so here it comes:

I said last time how luck and risk are almost irrelevant, but Ilian and I calculated chance of not succeeding in any of the ten startups you began under the assumption that on average 1/10 startups succeed: (1-1/10)^10 = 34.9% That pretty much means that from pure statistical calculations in 2/3’s of the scenarios you will make at least 1 startup successful, and as Marc Cuban wrote long time ago – “you only need to be right once”. It is very important to note that this simple statistical measure does not include any of the most important characteristics of startups which include but are not limited to: 1) you gain a lot of experience after each failure, which considerably increases your chances of success 2) you make connections on the way 3) you learn to be critical and firm minded, able to analyze and process information very efficiently [these are things about UNSUCCESSFUL startups, imagine about even half-successful ones] After considering all of those qualities of entrepreneurial thinking, I think chances of not getting where you are going are almost invisible. Assuming that, and the high rewards of success, I wonder again, why would people not start startups? No risk, huge rewards. Nobody wants it!?

Ilian tried to explain it through an interesting psychological observation of fear and happiness. People seem to be happy when they win something, but if they lose this same object, their happiness decreases twice as much. Naturally, a fear evolves from this, that drives our lives and makes us extremely risk averse. So risk averse that we probably won’t take a free ticket to the lottery simply because chances of winning are too small, in which risk of losing is practically zero, therefore the fear is completely irrational!

Same goes on for funding. Paul Graham says its a good idea to calculate your pluses and minuses before you do a major move. Why would you not ask your connections to invest in you if all you lose is a rejection, which is equivalent to not asking at all anyway, and what you win (in our case) is to keep the project on track? Just 2 days ago we managed to overcome the fear of asking people to invest in us. The result? Noah pitched to one person and he agreed to spit 5, 10g on the basis of friendship with no official paperwork. A whole new discussion follows on now: ‘should we take that offer and how should we present the official request’

Fear is powerful…