Free Yourself from Fears (19 page)

The man thinks for a moment. “OK,” he says, “what about the time when I was coming out of a bar late at night and I heard a girl cry out? There was no one around and I went to investigate. I walked around to the back of the building and there were ten guys harassing a girl. I was furious. The poor girl! I grabbed a piece of wood from the ground and walked up to the leader. This guy was enormous; he must have been over seven feet tall and weighed about 240 lb. He was tat-tooed all over his arms with slogans I wouldn’t dare repeat here. He pulled a knife out from his boot and went into a crouch as his friends formed a circle around us.”

St. Peter leaned forward and looked interested.

The man licked his lips. “You want to know what I did? I leapt forward and hit the leader in the stomach with the piece of wood. He didn’t even seem to notice the blow! I turned and yelled at the rest of them, as the girl stood cowering next to me. ‘You’re a bunch of sick animals! Leave this poor girl alone! Go home before I show you the inside of the local Accident and Emergency department!’”

“Really?” asked St. Peter, who was clearly impressed. “When did this happen?”

“About two minutes ago.”

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The Darwin awards

That man would be a candidate for the Darwin awards. These began over ten years ago as a joke, and now they are awarded every year. They are posthumous awards, named in honor of Charles Darwin, the scientist who first proposed the theory of natural selection—the survival of the fittest. The Darwin awards commemorate people who in the words of the award, “improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it.” They do so because they seem to lack an appropriate sense of fear. Bizarre, sad, and grisly deaths happen every year, in instances where fearlessness becomes stupidity, and the bestowers of the Darwin awards collect the worst and vote on who deserves to win.

For example, the 1990 award went to the incompetent thief who tried an armed robbery in Renton, Washington State, USA. He had no previous convictions, so this was his first and only attempt. He tar-geted H&J Leather & Firearms, a gun shop. The shop was full of customers, many with guns in their hands. If that was not enough risk, he had to step around a marked police patrol car that was parked outside the front door, which meant it was very likely that an armed officer was inside. When the man entered, the police officer was at the counter drinking a coffee. When he saw the policeman the man must have panicked, because he announced a hold-up and fired some shots, all of which mercifully missed the people inside. The police officer and the shop clerk drew their guns and returned fire, killing the would-be robber immediately. Several other customers had also drawn their guns but did not fire. No one else was hurt.

The most often-quoted Darwin award went to a former Air Force sergeant who was supposed to have obtained a jet-assisted take-off unit (JATO). These are solid-fuel rockets used to give heavy military transport airplanes an extra push for take-off from short airfields. The story goes that he attached it to his car, found a long stretch of road, and started the car—and the rocket. The charred and shattered remains of both him and the car were supposed to have been found four miles away embedded in a cliff face. It is a good story, although it is an urban legend—it never happened.

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So fear is there to protect us from danger and harm and it is important to pay attention to it. However, sometimes we are not sure if the situation is dangerous. Sometimes we do not pay attention to our fears or we override them. Fear can only protect us if we act on it, and sometimes we don’t, either because we don’t notice the danger, or because we underestimate it. How do we know when it is right to act on our fear, rather than ignoring it? We need to calculate the risk involved and to feel safe. These are the themes of the next chapter.

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Safety and Risk

FEELING SAFE IS THE GREATEST RESOURCE against any type of fear. When you feel completely safe, there is no room for fear. Safety is not some objective ISO 9000 standard; the subjective feeling of safety is what counts and that comes from trust in your resources.

The second law of safety:

The more you trust your resources the safer you feel.

I have just been watching men working halfway up a 24-story building. They are on a flimsy wooden platform, which is lowered on a pulley from the roof. They are wearing hard hats and safety harnesses that are clipped on the pulley wire. They move with assurance and they tell me that they feel perfectly safe. They are used to this life and they trust the equipment that looks so frail to me.

What does safety mean to you?

How do you know you feel safe?

Think of some time when you felt safe, even though there was some threat of danger.

When was that?

What was the risk?

HOW WE ASSESS SAFETY AND RISK

Why did you feel safe?

How did you feel safe? What pictures, sounds, and feelings did you have in your mind?

Think about these questions for a moment before reading on.

Assume risk or assume safety?

Some people assume that events will go well, or at least as expected, unless they get feedback to the contrary. They don’t need reams of information before they make a move. For example, I am generally optimistic and assume that things will go well. Consequently, I am sometimes insufficiently prepared.

Other people focus more on the risks in what they do. “Better to be safe than sorry” is their motto. They do not assume success without getting feedback and evidence. They need reassurance that things will go well, so they take many more precautions and gather a lot of information before proceeding. The precautions may be unnecessary, but they need them to feel safe.

Neither pattern is better than the other. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and it is best to be flexible. Look at each situation and take the necessary precautions.

When I drove through South West London late at night, I assumed that I was safe: I did not scan the streets looking for suspicious people. When I drive the streets of Rio de Janeiro, I assume risk. I pay attention to the people around me and how they are acting.

The third law of safety:

Respect the context, time, and place.

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What do you need to be safe?

Most people need to feel in control. To feel in control of a given situation you need three things:

J You need information about the situation.

J You need to have prepared for the situation.

J You need to feel you have the ability to deal with any difficult situation that could possibly arise.

The fourth law of safety:

To feel safe you need to feel in control.

Information

The fifth law of safety:

To feel safe you need information that is:

—Relevant.

—Sufficient.

—Trustworthy.

The better the information, the easier it is to predict the future. Too much information is as bad as too little. The best predictions are based on trustworthy information and plenty of it. What makes information trustworthy is the subject of the next chapter.

Here is a personal example about gathering information. Last year, Andrea and I were staying the weekend at a large Brazilian fazenda, which is a cross between a farm and a ranch. This one (as many fazendas do) had a stable with many horses. We wanted to go riding that weekend and here was the perfect opportunity.

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Riding is very pleasant, but it can also be dangerous if you get into trouble; falling off a horse onto a rocky road can break your leg or worse. The last time I had ridden a horse had been in Mexico. That had been a wonderful experience riding on a deserted beach—but we had not checked the stables or the horses or the conditions. I fell off about halfway through the ride and hurt my arm. (I got straight back on again!) We had not been to this particular Brazilian stables before and we did not know the people who owned them, or the quality of the horses they had. So we assumed some risk from the start.

Our first impressions were good. There were about three dozen horses, which looked healthy, well fed, and well behaved. The people were friendly and helpful and the facilities were good. The main room had drinks and small snacks and sun cream, and hats were available to borrow if you wanted them. Admittedly these will not keep you safe on a horse, but it showed us that these people had an eye for detail and wanted to make people comfortable, even in the waiting room.

Several children were waiting to go riding and we saw a ride coming back with three children, all of them under ten, swaying happily on top of their mounts and clearly delighted with the experience. All of this suggested that the stable was a good one and it was safe. One of the horses seemed slightly crazy, however. The way it looked around at people reminded me of the psychopath played by Jack Nicholson in the film
The Shining
. It moved in a high-stepping, excited way and looked like it would bolt at any moment. Neither of us wanted to ride this horse, but one man insisted on riding it. We were a little worried, because if this horse bolted, we did not want ours to follow. So we asked the owner some questions: J “Are the horses safe?”

J “Are they well behaved?”

J “Do any of them bite?”

J “Do any of them kick if you are behind them?”

J “Would they bolt if that crazy horse bolted?”

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We started with these general questions and then tested the answers with more specific ones. We watched the owner’s body language, to make sure he was trustworthy. Our questions were intended to get information, so we could make a decision. (For example, we could also have asked “Have you ever had anyone hurt here?” or “What should we be careful of when riding?”)

We did go riding that day. The crazy horse did bolt, but we were ready. I had to keep a tight rein on my horse to stop him following, but we enjoyed the ride overall.

Gather information

Ask questions from different angles. The greater the risk of danger, the more questions you need to ask.

Start with general questions and test answers with more specific questions. If you get an answer that suggests there is danger, ask specific questions to find out about that occasion, what happened, and what were the special circumstances.

Precautions

Safety depends on the precautions you take against danger.

“Precaution” is an interesting word. When you do something that could be dangerous, you use caution.
Pre
caution is the caution you use before you start. Caution is taking care. The word “care” has two opposite meanings. When you take care of something you deal with it in a good way. We also say we care about the people we love. However, care can also mean worry. For example, to say “I don’t have a care in the world” means that you have nothing to worry about. Worries can be distracting, like wondering if you turned off the gas before going out.

Taking precautions before doing something dangerous stops your worries and lets you focus on the task you have to do.

Precautions clear your mind, even if you feel you do not need them. An acrobat without a safety net is at risk, however skilled he is.

A rock climber who climbs without a safety harness is taking a big risk: if she makes the slightest mistake, she could die. She may be an expert, she may never have fallen (and of course she does not intend to), but she will feel much safer with safety ropes attaching her to other 154

HOW WE ASSESS SAFETY AND RISK

climbers. Her skill is only one factor. Anything can happen, even to an expert, and anything that can happen will happen, given enough time.

Taking precautions minimizes loss. The more you have to lose, the more precautions you need to take. The less there is to lose, the less you need to take precautions.

When I walk the streets of a dangerous city, especially at night, I take with me only enough cash for what I am planning to do, and one credit card for emergencies. Then if I were to be robbed I would not lose so much.

The sixth law of safety:

Take sensible precautions against possible loss.

Contingency planning

You take precautions to avoid the risk of something going wrong. But suppose it does? What then? Your safety also depends on whether you can
deal
with something going wrong. How can you prepare yourself for the worst? When you know you can cope with the worst that life can throw at you in the situation, then you will feel safer about taking the plunge.

There are many examples of this. The first thing a martial arts teacher will show you is not how to hit someone, but how to take a hit, and how to fall. When you learn canoeing, the first thing they teach you is what to do if you capsize. If you are serious about taking up horse riding, then your teacher will show you how to fall off a horse without hurting yourself.

Planning for the worst case is not negative thinking. It is positive and helpful. You take precautions beforehand of course, but you will be extra confident when you know that you can cope with emergencies, even while hoping that they will never arise.

Insurance companies make money from this principle. Insuring yourself against injury does not make it less likely that you will injure yourself, but it does cover you if you do.

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Making a will is another example. No one wants to die, but if you die without a will, then it will be difficult for your loved ones to sort out the finances and it usually means that the government gets an unfair share. Yet, many people do not make a will because they feel that it brings death closer.

Having a BATNA (Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement) in a negotiation is a third example. You cannot assume that there will be an agreement, so you need to know in advance what you will do if the negotiation breaks down completely.