Fear
topic on 7 shows · 17 statements across 16 episodes
Founder's Journal 
the Knowledge Project 
BigDeal 
Lenny's Podcast 
Capital Allocators 
All-In 
20VC
17 statements about Fear, every show
Eyal: Focusing on discomfort amplifies fear and creates a pain loop
“When I'm constantly thinking about what's wrong, what's causing me pain, I turn up the fear dial, and the more fear I feel, the more pain I feel, and it becomes this vicious cycle.”
Pohlson: Fear is short-term motivation that worsens decision-making over time
“Fear constricts you, makes you focus on things that you think are threatening you, spikes your cortisol levels. Again, it can be very motivating, but Over time, it makes you make worse decisions.”
Mervosh: Fear is fundamentally unprocessed and unformulated excitement
“That's the alchemical force. That fear is really unprocessed and unformulated excitement.”
Pujji: Fear is an effective motivator but leads to burnout and is not renewable
“Fear is kind of obvious, but if I put a gun to your head,
You're going to run faster than you've ever run in your life.
So the benefit of fear is it's super effective.
And that's one of the cool things about this paradigm is it never argues, because one of the…”
Mochari: Joy-Based Motivation is Equal to Fear But Non-Toxic
“Fear is a great motivator. It's toxic. But it's very compelling. And so now of course, joy is equally compelling, but non-toxic. So that's like the way to succeed and have a great life is to be joy based.”
Pujji: Fear Is the Most Effective Entrepreneur Motivator, But It's Unsustainable
“Fear is the most common. By the way, it's the most effective, so I'm not judging fear, right? ... Yeah, you put a gun to your head, you're gonna run faster than you've ever run, but the downsides of fear are that they leave a negative residue on you and others…”
Mochary: Fear distorts reality and causes exaggerated predictions for founders
“When someone's in fear, they're gripped. They can't see reality. Their brain is making very exaggerated predictions.”
Mochary: Consult people not experiencing fear to overcome ego threats
“The easiest thing is just to check with somebody else who's not in fear because they will be able to see clearly when you can't.”
Pujji: Fear-Based Motivation Is Effective Short-Term but Unsustainable Long-Term
“Fear is very effective, right? You put a gun to my head, I'll run faster than I've ever run. But then as soon as the gun's gone, I stopped running. Right. And in his case, he got, became the richest man in the world. And Microsoft didn't sustain his motivation…”
Curiosity displaces fear and accelerates pattern recognition in intense negotiations
“When you're curious, you also have pushed fear out of your brain. You can't be afraid and curious simultaneously. When you're curious, you're in a positive state of mind, which is smarter. You hear better. You see patterns more quickly. You see deals faster. W…”
Friedberg: Crisis-induced fear will persist in public behavior long-term
“The fear that gets created by the actual crisis will persist in terms of the subconscious behavior of the population for a long period of time.”
Hudson: Unprocessed Fear Becomes Chronic Anxiety and Mental Rumination
“When we don't process fear, it becomes this backlog of sort of jitters and unease and not being able to sink into ourself, and it keeps our mind turning and turning and turning.”
Patients unable to feel fear make catastrophic gambling decisions
“There's psychological work that shows that people who can't experience certain emotions like fear because they have neural damage, they actually make really bad gambling decisions and they go broke because they just don't care. They have no risk conversion wha…”
Dethmer: The antidote to fear is acceptance, not courage
“The antidote to fear is not courage. The antidote to fear is acceptance.”
Mervosh: Fear is simply unprocessed and unformulated excitement
“Fear is, is really unprocessed and unformulated excitement.”
Sharot: Fear induces inaction, demotivation, and freezing instead of creativity
“Fear actually causes inaction. So fear can demotivate and causes us to freeze. And not actually to do things and to become more creative.”