“Fear of the Unknown” is Imprecise

Change is hard because it leads to failures. And failures are scary. 99% of us already know this. 🥱

The Jack Mas and Ray Dalios give us reasons and tips to bear-hug fear, and then every protagonist of any “zero to hero” movies explains to us, “It’s the fear of the unknown!”

Or is it?

We cannot really fear something we don’t know. It’s not that we fear the unknown. What we really fear, is the loss of the known.

What is the “loss of the known”?

• I got to where I am today because of how I did it.
• People like me because of the way I am.

“What we really fear, is the loss of the known.”

To give up doing things the way we know worked immediately means we don’t know what works anymore:

• “I spoke too fast in my presentations? I have been presenting this way my entire career and I am the General Manager!”
• “Listen more and speak less? 🤷🏽 My team loves me because of my wisdom!”

Yet in life, we are actually very okay with replacing perfectly good tools with better ones. We are very good with losing the known:

“I need to replace my wifi-router because my new home is bigger.”

So the loss of the known doesn’t have to be fearful. Change is merely replacing a screwdriver with a drill, and no one is asking us to throw the screwdriver away.