Fear is information.

The motivational industry has built any number of small empires on the notion that fear is a problem to be either managed, suppressed or out-manoeuvred. Fight the fear, etc. The language is typically martial - as if fear were a hostile enemy, camped at the gates of your better self.But this is sloppy thinking that comes at a cost.When the body floods with adrenaline // the mind locks onto a single threat, the system is doing what it evolved to do: reporting on the state of whatever it is you care about. The signal bypasses the conscious mind almost entirely; which is why you can spend years lying to yourself about what you want and still flinch at the wrong moment when the thing you value comes under threat.My basic claim is this. When someone (anyone, everyone) is afraid, they're telling you what they actually value. Their fear is a noisy, but no less precise indicator of both the surface threat and their underlying stake. A founder who keeps delaying their launch has a private worry…