The Cost of Irrational Fears

Imagine the typical emotional reaction to seeing a spider: fear, ranging from minor trepidation to terror. But what is the likelihood of dying from a spider bite? Fewer than four people a year (on average) die from spider bites, establishing the expected risk of death by spider at lower than 1 in 100 million. This risk is so minuscule that it is actually counterproductive to worry about it: Millions of people die each year from stress-related illnesses. The startling implication is that the r...

 Terrors Flee Reason

As soon as your reasoning, sprung from that godlike mind, lifts up its voice to proclaim the nature of the universe, then the terrors of the mind take flight, the ramparts of the world roll apart, and I see the march of events throughout the whole of space. The majesty of the gods [4] is revealed and those quiet habitations, never shaken by storms or drenched by rain-clouds or defaced by white drifts of snow which a harsh frost congeals. A cloudless ether roofs them and laughs with radiance l...

 Putting Statistics in Perspective

Now let's get a handle on what it really means to have a 1-in6,500 or a 1-in-13,000 chance of dying. It's as if you lived on an island in the South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimming around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every ten years, a stray shark happens by and eats a swimmer. That's a 1-in-6,500 chance of any one person being eaten by a shark, just the same as the odds of dying in an aut...

 Overcoming Fear

Overcoming fear requires you to train yourself to think every time you feel fear, rather than just reacting instinctively. The thought process I go through goes like this: I'm scared. Is it physical danger? No. Well, when I make a decision based on fear, it's often a bad one, so I'm going to put the fear aside and ask myself "What is my purpose in this situation?" I'll make my decision consciously based on what helps achieve my purpose better, rather than unconsciously on my instinctive des...