If Fear Be Thy Enemy!

“Winning isn’t Everything It’s The Only Thing.” Vince Lombardi

 A few years ago I was with the great left handed, nationally heralded quarterback Boomer Esiason (who played for the Cincinnati Bengals, New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals) at the cusp of another glorious Super Bowl game. This time in sunny Florida, flapping my lips at Boomer, reflecting on a cadre of leadership risks and fears in our business lives as we enjoyed another beer. Boomer asked me point blank just why do I work so hard? “Why do you push yourself and your team Peter so aggressively to achieve, to win?” I wound up like a top, muscles flexed between my heart and mind declaring over 5 big sentences that “I am whom I am and drive so hard because I want to win and succeed with my team every day, at every turn.”

Boomer smiled, cocked his head and then he said it. He shocked my system, he snapped me back like a perfectly thrown football spinning me into a bulwark posture. My backbone mettle, my boomerang determination was about to retort and attack Boomer’s words on the offense even before he finished his thought. And then he said it, he said the truth, he set me free from the bondage of fear. Boomer said “you are full of baloney. You don’t run hard and fast with unyielding determination because you want to succeed Peter. You play hard and fast to win, you unleash your teams capacity in every way you can for one reason and one reason alone: your grave fear of losing."

Boomer is right and so are we who play the sport of business leadership every day. It is our knowledge spectrum, our ability to perform, our disciplined portfolio of empirical experience in the moment, our refulgent creativity that sets us apart on and off the playing field. In essence, fear itself is not our enemy. Rather fear of losing, fear of disappointment in our hearts, in our team mates minds is our enemy, our nemesis. Fear lives and stretches in rejection, in opportunity, in unpreparedness, in the unknown, in the new and fresh. Fear offers the prepared mind an escape, an opportunity to reconcile, the choice to reject or project a moment of opportunity to be blocked or to be gained.

This video "When The Time Has Come” amplifies yet mollifies risk and fear.  When fear comes to us and we wish it would just go away we realize there is truly nothing to fear than fear itself:  "When The Time Has Come."

Hope is not a strategy. Hoping that fear will be magically or graciously removed from your mind and heart is a failed disability, failed logic. In order to defeat fear, in order to re-master fear in business, at home or on the playing field we must first polarize winning between two powerful pylons. To the left is our heart and mind in unison focused on the fear of loss: victory-evaporation. To the right is our heart and mind focused on the win: victory- infatuation. The cynosure between these gateways is kinetic fear, our worst enemy. However now, our worst enemy no more.

In order to capitalize, defer and eliminate the fear of loss we must first declare “we will never allow our minds battle our hearts.” Intellectually once you command and accord this savvy separation, rational judgment beacons, fear separates itself and falls smartly to your business judgment, to your critical thinking, to your creative motivation to win based on logic: as opposed to negative emotional capital focused on losing.

Inside the arena of logic, it is not to say or suggest our hearts are not our greatest catalyst and engines for reforming fear or leading a caring and sharing charge to victory. Our hearts and congressed passion is at the core of opportunity. However, separating the hearts mammoth power to drag us up or down is a must in order to lasso fear, defeat fear, capitalize on the risk of fear. In order to overcome objections, rejections and a bad connection called “FUD” Fear, Uncertainty or Doubt, our minds must overweight the emotional senses of our hearts. Viceroy knowledge. thinking, planning, comparing and creativity delivers protracted victories, the absence of fear itself.

Fear loses all its power, all its demand for loss when the mind out muscles the heart. When the mind aggressively separates the power of logic from the potential maelstrom of emotional capital. The following 12 principles whether you are in sales, marketing, administration or at home fuel winning results, eliminates the fear or risk of loss, eliminates agoraphobia:

“Winning Is a Habit. Unfortunately, so is Losing.” Vince Lombardi

• Creative: Be creative through relevancy. Be a subject matter expert congressing breakthrough attentive differentiation.

• Think: Failure is a learned disability. The prepared mind is the victor of chance, of fear of risk, of the disability of loss.

• Complexity: Is the refuge of the unsure. The more your heart and mind battle, the more complex your focus becomes, your fear spirits your loss.

• Be: Prepared at the negotiated core of risk, of opportunity.

• Never: Be shackled and or chained in ignorance. Advantage through disciplined and relevant knowledge not through assumptive suppositions.

• Opportunity: Risk must always equal reward or there can be no victory.

• Spank "FUD": Fear, uncertainty and doubt must be and only can be vacated by separating your heart from your mind.

• Passion: Love your mission to avoid the fear of reality.

• Attention: Be emotionally and intellectually available.

• Remember: The best opportunities lie in danger, in risk where fear mounts up aggressively.

• Never: Negotiate against yourself. Your reservoir of relevant knowledge coupled to urbane creativity keeps you focused on the negotiated victory ahead.

• Don’t: Bogart that victory, do not bogart that loss: sharing is caring.

Regrets in business, at home or on the playing field are always much worse than failure itself. To enjoy the brisk run of assiduous success, to avoid being trapped in the “risk avoidance business” each and every day it’s time to go on the offense. It is time to think. It is time to realize your minds offense and defense must be tuned, crafted and designed to play to win through highly relevant knowledge, logic and creativity: the righteous trilogy to destroy fear. Your heart in turn will righteously cheerlead and fuel your passion for team success, for well earned, well fought victories while avoiding the agony of defeat, the agony of a tired and forgotten heart-set: fear. Remember, never let thy heart battle thy mind. Never let risk, fear or doubt rule your life, your opportunities, your happiness. If fear be thy enemy, play on!

Peter is the author of Green Reign Leadership Available at amazon.com