This executive is living in fear


It’s not a story of mine.

No.

The great Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book Antifragile compared two people: a high-level executive with a good salary, dressed in a suit and tie, and an immigrant taxi driver, self-employed, with a variable income and dressed as best he can.

Taleb remarked that, while the executive may seem to have a calmer, more secure life with a better salary, better suits, and nicer restaurants, deep down, he lived in immense internal fear.

He sh*t in his pants.

This fear comes from his status. Everything he now has and doesn’t want to lose.

Comfort zone or the pay check drug.

The executive trembles whenever company cutbacks are announced, loses sleep thinking he might be fired, and feels like his world is crumbling if his boss calls him into the office for no apparent reason.

Why?

Because the well-paid executive fears losing his lifestyle, being unable to pay the three mortgages he has, the car, and his kids’ school fees.

And he fears this because, unlike the self-employed immigrant taxi driver, he has two major problems:

  1. He is accustomed to a stable, constant, and secure income.
  2. He can’t imagine, nor does he feel capable of, living on less than his monthly salary.

Therefore, the taxi driver is more antifragile, which essentially means being better prepared for unexpected events, disruptions, and change.

The taxi driver is used to earning a lot some days and nothing on others, having good months and less favorable months, and above all, dealing with uncertainty and change.

Security and certainty vs. uncertainty and change.

But you could work this around in your favour.

You could simply accept that there is no greater security or certainty than knowing that life is uncertainty and change.

This is why personal growth, remain flexible and alert, a side business or investments, are so important to keep your pants clean.

If you look for help in that regard, you can click below and start working.

$999.00

Mentorship Package

Three sessions of 1 hours each where you can discuss for business or yourself any of the issues I know more about: ... Read more

​

PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day.

PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com

PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below.

Vicente Valencia

I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇

Read more from Vicente Valencia

I hope you had not been in one of those… A meeting with a Power Point. Around 130 slides… Yes. One. Hundred. Thirty. Graphs. Tables. Appendices explaining the appendices. The speaker? Monotone. Boring. Like a GPS giving directions in the desert. A funeral seemed a fiesta in Ibiza. Slide 14… Slide 38… Slide 79… Around slide 92 something magical happened. One of the client directors fell asleep. Not metaphorically. Actually asleep. Head tilted. Eyes closed. The kind of sleep that says: “I’ve...

How you do anything is how you do everything. Leave something half-done or poorly executed and people assume the rest of your work looks exactly the same. Maybe that’s unfair.Maybe it’s not true. Doesn’t matter. That’s the perception on the other side of the table. If you don’t show leadership in a simple information meeting, why would anyone trust you to lead when the deal gets complicated? If you perform poorly once, what are the chances the other side believes the next time will be...

Everything you want is on the opposite side of fear. Let’s pause for a minute and let these words sink. I’m in the middle of a complex transaction for my real estate businesses… and those words couldn’t resonate more in me. Those feelings tell me that I’m on the right path. I’m getting out of my comfort zone, and this is great. There is nothing positive in the comfort of your couch. I can’t tell you this. If you don’t feel those butterflies in your stomach. If you don’t feel the fear. The...