The Real F-Word

Last week, I discussed inertia, or the reason why people often don’t follow through on their goals.

Inertia - which is 100% human - is a symptom of something deeper: fear.

We know that we live in an uncertain world in which fear-of-the-other runs rampant.

But what makes fear particularly insidious is that we humans have found a way to be scared not only of others but of our individual selves.

In a business course I recently took, I learned the sales triad. That is, for someone to purchase a service (and perhaps a product), three things must be present: 1) the customer must trust the seller/brand, 2) the customer must trust the process (or product), 3) and that customer must believe himself/herself/themselves to do the work to yield the desired results. If one of these elements is missing, the transaction does not go through.

Where it gets interesting is that when it comes to a customer’s objection, that objection can’t be taken at face value. Instead, different objections point to different parts of the triad that aren’t working. For instance, if a highly-paid overweight person wants health coaching but balks at the price, noting that it’s too expensive, what the customer is really saying is that they secretly don’t have faith in themselves to do the work. (Again, he’s highly-paid so it has nothing to do with price). It has everything to do with subtext; this person doesn’t trust himself to do the work to get the results because what if he fails a bulletproof process? This is the customer saying on a primal level, “I want to be up to the standards of the tribe. I don’t want to look foolish.”

But here’s the kicker: who would know??

The coach? A spouse or significant other?

Who would know this except for the customer??

Yes, fear is that sneaky is that it will prevent us from making good decisions for our health, wealth, and happiness because it disguises itself as something rational (when it is not).

Fear attempts to keep us safe when there’s no threat at all.