False positives and true negatives

Albert Einstein, while being primarily known for his keen fashion sense, hairstyle and oh, of course, that e=mc2 thing, would have been a great blogger had he been alive now.

He is the source of some very deep philosophy about life, as is the case for most great physicists, and his snappy quotes are some my favourites, up there with Emerson, Thoreau and Bush (the latest George W. one being something about "maybe I did make some mistakes".)

Einstein once said that you can either come from "fear or faith".

People make many decisions and do many things out of fear and many of those fears are not founded on reality.

I was once caught in an avalanche and nearly had the breath snatched out of me. This qualifies in my mind as a legitimate fear, linked directly and immediately to my actual death. The irony is that I was not really afraid, just calm, and this has been true for most of the life threatening experiences I've had in the mountains or behind the wheel.

Most of what I'm afraid of is vastly more abstract and fuzzy. I am afraid, in the low ebb sort of way, of amounting to nothing, of getting Alzheimer's and of being eaten by a shark, not all at once mind you, but if I do amount to nothing and get Alzheimer's, a shark attack might be a good way to end up with a swift death and a final write-up in a newspaper. I'm also certain that if I managed to get Steve Jobs' iPhone number, upon hearing he was shopping for a coach, I'd have a difficult time dialing the phone. And don't even get me started about the prospect of singing in public (secretly also my biggest rockstar fantasy.)

In the way I like to think about personal growth, people have four main fears: failure (and paradoxically success), rejection (which includes abandonment and all sorts of social shunning), criticism (humiliation, embarrassment, judgement) and loss (of money, health, life itself). It's a stunning to think about all the misery, value destroyed and opportunities lost to improve the human condition due simply to our natural tendency to avoid situations we think are painted with these fears.

I think the only viable alternative to fear is contribution, and here's where faith enters. Leaders show up when it's time for something to change. A leader sees something missing and thinks up an innovation to fill the gap and resolve the problem. There is so much working against a new innovation that it's remarkable that anything ever changes. In the face of these daunting obstacles to change, the leader must dig deep and find the sometime faint heart beat of the self-confidence, self-trust and self-security required to keep going on the sometimes cold and dark path to abetted future.

In the purity of my aspiration for a better future, I am not afraid. Such is the stuff of courage and the dance with danger.