I have an irrational fear of house inspections. When I was a kid we lived in a commission house and my Mum was pretty crafty about getting us to keep it clean, she'd tell us that if the house wasn't spotlessly clean then we'd be kicked out at inspection time and we'd be destitute. I remember looking out the front window at a car across the street and Mum saying, 'they're watching, so you better clean up'. I've been living out of home since 2003 and I still get a slight sense of dread when I receive a letter from the real estate agent to say my place is due for an inspection.
The consolation is that in this instance my fear results in a positive outcome, in that I clean the house and get the inspection completed without an issue. Fear isn't necessarily a negative emotion, it can protect us from potentially dangerous situations, it can cause us to focus at time when we need to and it can result in us taking action when we need to.
Unfortunately though, I think that most of us get stuck and allow fear to dictate how we live our lives. Our brains are conditioned to behave and react in specific ways based on past experiences, and under stress we will revert to type. The saying, 'once bitten, twice shy' is true when it comes to brain physiology.
Sometimes we don't even realise that we're behaving based on fear, which comes down to our conscious and unconscious self. There's a nice little graphic that describes this called the Johari Window. In the scenario I've described I'm aware of my irrational fear (and so are all of you now). But there are many instances when we either can't see it ourselves, but it's obvious to everyone around us or it is completely hidden (unknown self). I used to have a manager who would say, 'you don't know, what you don't know'. And when it comes to self that's pretty spot on.
Often people around us will be telling us something but we won't get it because because it's hidden to us. It might be hidden because we don't have the self awareness to realise it, or because we don't want to have to deal with it, or because we're scared. Eventually we might have an epiphany and realise what people have been banging on about. But I don't know how often that happens.
I wonder how many people have the epiphany, realise why they've been behaving in a certain way and still think to themselves, 'oh well, that's how I am, change is hard. Why bother?'
Good blog post. Looking at the figure, I think I've figured out the key difference between humans and machines. In machines there is known-knows, known-unknowns, unknown-unknows. Which can be substituted for three of the boxes except top right one. Which is what a human is, Private & conscious, that's how we learn, on our own. Totally different to what you posted, but the relation is there. (I write for www.careergeekblog.com and came across your story about blogging & working for Deloitte)
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