Member-only story
Can fear be beneficial?
yawning before the start of a race.
This week I was part of a terrific group looking at how fear can hold entrepreneurs back from innovation. One person asked, around getting us to take action, to innovate: “can fear be helpful?”
My mind leapt back to my younger days, and to a particular moment when I was getting ready to go on court for a squash match that would decide whether or not my team, the Cayman Islands, would win the international competition. The pressure was high, it was all on my shoulders for the team. I knew that I was nervous, but I also had a secret, a pre-match routine that would transform that nervousness to extremely relaxed alertness, often called Flow (an article on flow and another sporting moment here).
I went on court and was in such a “flow state” that I could barely remember any of the match even right after I had won 3–0. One of the spectators came up to me and said: “I was really worried about that match, especially when I saw you yawing so much while you were getting ready to play.” Ah, but you see, yawning was part of my routine, it was a secret weapon. Why? Back to the question: “can fear be helpful?”. I told that story to make the point that my answer is “yes, and only so far. If it spurs you to action, great, but in taking the action itself, being in a state of fear is the opposite of useful for performance, one must be in a state of relaxed alertness.”
