How To Use Fear

So when you're trying to change people's behavior, is use fear the right way. One of them says, people are only motivated by fear, you gotta scare them, that's the only way. And then there's the other sort of namby-pamby view of, no, people are more enlightened, they don't really respond to fear. Both of those are completely wrong. Here's the way to think about fear. Negative emotions narrow. Think about N and N. Negative, narrow. Negative, narrow. That's very good sometimes. You block out extraneous things, you put your blinders on, that's very useful. So for emergency kinds of settings, fear works really well. If you are leaving a burning building, are you focused or not focused? You're focused like a laser beam. You are locked in. You're not worried about how fast you're self-actualizing in that moment, right? You're trying to save your frickin' life. So if you want people to have a narrow focus, use fear. If you want them to have a wider focus, don't use fear. You can't scare people into doing things that require an expansive view, things like creativity, things like conceptual work. So think about it in a business setting. If we don't do 3 more deals by the end of this month, we are going out of business. I think you'll get 3 more deals by the end of the month. But here's where it doesn't work so well. If we don't come up with a new product idea, we're sunk. You're not gonna get a new product idea there. For new product ideas, you want an expansive view. Fear narrows. Negative emotions narrow. Positive emotions expand.