When you hear the name of Elon Musk, what might be among the first things that pop into your mind?
I guess you might think of a modern “Iron Man”, who is really smart and really brave going after his targets despite all odds and conventional wisdom.
Except being an extraordinary guy for its achievements, his seemingly inhuman work ethic working around 100 hours a week and his big goal of making interplanetary transportation possible, he feels fear too.
Yes, I know this might sound counter intuitive and that you are simply not used to hear these things from people who seem to be the bravest, but he confirmed this in a recent interview that he had.
Interviewer: One thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something is crazy. And I know a lot of pretty crazy people. You still stand out. Where does that come from or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you, “This is a crazy idea?” Where do you get the internal strength to do that?
Elon: Well, first of all I’d say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it’s not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. There are just times when something is important enough that you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of fear.
Interviewer: So, speaking of important things.
Elon: It’s like, people shouldn’t think, well, “I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn’t do it,” it’s normal to feel fear. Like, you’d have to have something mentally wrong with you if you don’t feel fear.
Interviewer: So, you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?
Elon: Yeah. You know, actually something that can be helpful is fatalism, to some degree. If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. When starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10% and I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose everything. But that maybe would make some progress. If we could just move the ball forward, even if we died, maybe some other company could pick up the baton and keep moving it forward, so we’d still do some good. Yeah, same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.
You can find the full transcript of the interview here.
Do not go now and jump from the sixth floor of a building and do other similar crazy things simply because you want to beat your inner fear after knowing Elon’s opinion about it. I am simply trying to remind you of the fact that it is okay to be afraid and that you should not let the fear to prevent you from working towards your goals in which you believe in.
Elon did not let the fear of failing prevent him from starting Space X and Tesla, despite having low chances of success and all the difficulties that he had.
What might be unusual about Elon and other successful people who amaze us for the work that they do is another type of fear that they usually have: It is the fear of missing out.
They act in spite of fear and might even try to orient their own fear in another direction than most people. They are afraid that if they do not act, they might miss the opportunities that they have in front of them. As the famous quote from Wayne Gretzky states, “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” Share on X
Take action
If there is something that you have been dreaming of and wanting so much to do, but didn’t start to do it, at the very least start to think about it. Start writing down all the obstacles that have been preventing you to act on it. Chances are that fear is the biggest one. Now that you already have the answer, go and do something in spite of it.
Before you leave, remember that reading is easy and acting is not. I would be glad to see you use the information from this article into your own life and not let it fade away in your memory.
According to Elon and common sense, it is normal to feel fear and it would actually be a mental problem if you would not feel it at all. The thing that differentiates those that manage to accomplish far more than others is about the ways they response and use that fear.
