Ranjay Gulati

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?

Because the default answer to fear is not fight or flight.

It's freeze of flight.

Sometimes doing nothing is riskier than doing something that might not work out.

My mother's calculus was doing nothing was not an option, but it required her to deal with her fear because she could have just sat back and waited it out to see how this plays out.

But if you saw this guy's violent outburst, you would have known that he wasn't going to stop.

I am not leaving here till you sign this.

This thing was going south very fast.

So I think you're right.

There is always going to be a fine line here.

And not every courageous story we know ends up with a happy ending also, right?

But the question is, how do we learn to tame fear?

How do we learn to understand a fear?