Your Inner CEO: The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Lack Of Fear Itself

The Discovery Channel website reported on a mind-altering parasite discovered in mice that makes them permanently fearless around cats.  I suspect that most of these crazy-brave rodents probably get eaten for their trouble. Just the same, the human spirit can’t help but be emboldened by the sight of a tiny little mouse starting down a creature ten times its size. It seems to contain in it everything we love about the pluck of the underdog, taking on impossible odds at potentially great risk. Sort of like when Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone go up against the bad guys, except the mice are a little smarter.

In any case, it was not difficult to begin extrapolating on how the power of this fright-busting parasite might be beneficial to humans.

Imagine conducting your career empowered by a substance that makes you fearless; ready to present yourself to any high-powered individual you can name without breaking a sweat.  No longer intimidated by the stature of your potential employer, no longer plagued by self-doubt or insecurity. With this newfound ability to take on all comers, you would be unstoppable. No career goal you could set would be out of your reach. Except perhaps figuring out your privacy settings on Facebook.

But consider this: all that potential is inside you already, and chances are you wouldn’t be able to access without having to stare down the terror in the first place. Indeed, it is the knowing that we found it in ourselves to push through the fear that gives us the rush of accomplishment. How could we experience that if all we knew was complete, unadulterated, artificially induced fearlessness? 

Learning from our mistakes, facing the inadequacies, growing with each new mustering of effective strategies and goal-setting…all of this happens in contrast to the parts of you that think it can’t be done. If all you are is a chemically altered courage machine, your mind wouldn’t know the difference between victory and toil. The euphoria of breaking through beyond the limits of your achievements would be meaningless.  Not to mention, what fun would the world be if everyone took that pill? Work, and life, would go from the constant thrill of overcoming adversity to a Monster Truck challenge: all mechanical, programmed pushback. No heart and no real, authentic guts. (With apologies to all the brave Monster Truck drivers who are now picturing me crushed beneath an 11-and-a-half foot tall BF Goodrich.)

Fear is a necessary component to success. Use it. Evolve with and through it. Mark Twain did not live long enough to see how many things our species would attempt to artificially recreate, but he did leave us with some famous words that reveal what he might have thought about the possibility of manufacturing blind fearlessness in a laboratory: “Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”  

You can find the Discovery Channel story on the fearlessness parasite here.

http://jinxie-lewis.newsvine.com/_news/2013/10/03/20808455-parasite-brainwashes-mice-to-not-fear-cats-discovery-news