Focus 3 
A few weeks ago I shared a story from the book “If I Get to Five” by Dr. Fred Epstein, a gifted and visionary pediatric neurosurgeon in New York City. The primary theme of the book is courage, and in particular the courage of children who are facing life-threatening illness. Here is another excerpt from the book:
“We’re hardwired to feel fear. It’s called the fight-or-flight response – part reflex, part choice. Though we’ve subdued most of our natural predators, modern life has its own cast of saber-tooths that strike fear in our hearts and confront us with fight-or-flight choices. We fear failure. We fear loss – of love, of money, of status, of youth. Most of all, we fear death.
Fear is an inescapable part of being alive. What counts is whether or not we let our fears keep us from engaging the toughest challenges or pursuing our most cherished goals. We each fight these battles every day – between our fear of failure and our desire for achievement, between our fear of intimacy and our desire for connection, between our fear of looking foolish and our drive to transcend our limits. We can all look back on our lives and see opportunities that we let get away – in work, in love, in friendships and families – because we lost our nerve.
So many people – often the most intelligent and talented professionals – never achieve their most cherished goals because they’re afraid to fail. I’ve known many terrifically talented surgeons who have been hamstrung by their fear of failure. They shy away from the most difficult cases because they get attached to their success rate, which they wear like a badge of honor.
When I was a boy, my father framed the cost benefit of risk-taking this way: “You’ve got to be willing to look like a jackass if you’re ever going to look like a genius.” At the time, I was feeling like a jackass on a daily basis in school. An unwilling jackass to be sure, but I understood that if I let myself be ruled by my fear of looking foolish, I would never learn to learn.
Along the way, I figured out the most important lesson of my life: Once you stop fearing failure, you’re free. You can go after any crazy idea you can dream up. Everything becomes possible when there’s nothing you’re afraid to try. I embraced Thomas Edison’s credo: “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
To flee or to fight, to submit or to overcome – that remains the eternal and recurring choice. That’s where we test our metal – in the everyday challenges to do whatever is toughest. Every circumstance is different, but the summons to our courage remains the same: embrace what is scariest.
Remember that our best self is our most courageous self.”
What is holding you back? What opportunities are you letting get in the way — at home or at work — because you are afraid? What would you pursue with focus and passion, if you weren’t afraid? Who will be the victor in your heart: the desire for achievement or the fear of failure?
Ambrose Redmoon said it well when he wrote, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”
