Ranjay Gulati

And we don't have a way to cope with fear.

Winston Churchill said, fear is a reaction, courage is a decision.

So what I came to realize is that if any of us, myself included, I'm going to live a more complete life, I need to find a way to learn to live with fear, engage it, not be ashamed of it.

And this ability to learn to accept fear for what it is, but not be overwhelmed by fear, was the journey I had to go through.

And I was trying to understand it better as I wrote this book.

Because, you know, too many of us live our life through a lens of fear.

There's no easy answer to that, first of all.

So let me first start with point of origin of fear, and then I'll get to your point, actually.

Where does fear come from?

Fear originates in uncertainty.

What is uncertainty?

Uncertainty is not the same as risk.

Risk is where you know the distribution of outcomes of 10% chance of this, 30% chance of this, 50% chance of this, and you're playing the odds.

Uncertainties, I don't know.

I don't know, early days of COVID or job dislocation or a diagnosis of a very deadly illness or even something more simpler like college applications.

Where am I going to go?

What am I going to do?

Or finding a spouse.

Uncertainty is everywhere, which means fear is everywhere.

Now, how do we deal with this fear in a reasonable way?