The UnStoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power

Chapter 3

Emotional Mechanics

What Only Neuroscientists, Your Friends in the SEALs, and the Israeli Army Will Tell You

Fear. Now fear’s interesting, it keeps you in your hole. You spend all your time avoiding it. But you never can. So you start a relationship. You let it sit on the seat next to you. You tell it to stay put so you can do your job. Until one day you realize: You’re no good without it. It gives you your power, your edge, your game. The fear you thought was stopping you is making you UnStoppable. And that’s the most powerful thing of all.

—U.S. Navy SEAL

TO AN ENTREPRENEUR, DOING IS A TERM OF ART. It means starting, not quitting, and ultimately achieving some value that wasn’t there before. Doing is the most valuable quantity there is. So why don’t we?

One hundred people were asked at random over the course of this project whether they thought owning their own business, being their own boss, launching a new enterprise, and creating jobs for others was a desirable goal. Most said yes.

But when they were asked, “So why do you think most people with the idea or the dream don’t start their own businesses?,” 100 out of 100 answered with a one-word sentence that starts with an F. They all said, “Fear.”1

“They know what they’re talking about,” said Dr. David Ouahnouna, an Israeli human performance scientist. “When a person has something important that they wish to do, they want to do, or need to do—and they are not doing it—then some type of fear is stopping them. Whether ...