Are you already expecting some witty opening paragraph here, some anecdote to get you hooked? Well, tough luck. Because today I’m going to share the single most important thing I ever learned, and I’m way too excited to preface this wisdom nugget with mediocre puns.
Every decision you make, you make out of one of only two reasons. Now take a deep breath because the next thing I’ll say will sound a little woo-woo. Not like chakra-aligning energy crystal woo-woo, but enough to warrant a heads-up.
Every decision you make, you make either out of love or out of fear.1
In less snappy, but also considerably less woo-woo terms: every decision you make is either to avoid a negative outcome (that’s the fear part), or to bring about a positive outcome (that’s the love part).
Decisions out of fear protect you from losing what you have.
Decisions out of love are in pursuit of something new.
Why do you get up and go to work every morning? Do you love what you get to create there, or are you just afraid of what would happen if you decided to simply not go?
Decisions out of fear preserve value.
Decisions out of love create value.
Decisions out of fear are often also made out of scarcity.
Decisions out of love are made out of abundance.
I’m not saying that you always need to pursue growth in every area of your life. Some things are good as they are, and it's okay to keep it that way by making decisions that protect that. But if you want to grow, then you need to commit to making decisions out of love.
Reviewing our current life choices, big and small, often brings up quite a few decisions that are grounded in fear.
I can’t even count the times I went to some party or group trip out of fear of missing out, rather than genuine excitement about the people I’m going to meet and the beautiful moments we’ll have together
A little over a year ago, just before the start of the pandemic, my partner and I decided to sell our belongings and become nomadic with our then 4-month old infant. Was I scared? Shitless. We left a lot of our friends in San Francisco. Parenting is hard enough as it is. Working remotely brings an entire new set of challenges. I was afraid of losing friends, falling short as a parent, and letting people down at work. But I also felt an abundance of energy and excitement for showing our kiddo the whole wide world, making new friends, trying out different cities for size, finding out who we will be in a different environment.
Pick the areas where you want to grow, and commit to review every decision through the lens of love vs. fear. It's okay to be afraid, but in order to grow we must learn to not act on fear2.
Why is this distinction between decisions made out of love and out of fear so important? We all like to think that we have a “growth mindset”, and since you’re reading a blog on mental models and personal growth you probably want to live up to that. To grow, we need to make decisions out of love. It’s really just math: decisions out of fear have their place, and that place is preserving the status quo.
When you make decisions out of fear, everything might still work out great — but it’s because you got lucky, not because of what you can control. In fact, people who make decisions out of fear tend to bet a lot more on luck. Maybe you'll win the lottery, maybe you’ll meet your soulmate at a the biannual flood insurance conference, maybe you’ll watch your niche Substack newsletter on psychology and personal growth go viral overnight and wake up to an inbox full of book deals. We all can dream. Here’s the thing: fuck luck. Luck is, by definition, outside of our control, and if you bet on luck you’ll also suffer through misfortune. (What if your wife meets her soulmate at the biannual flood insurance conference, huh?)
The decisions we make are the only thing we can control, and hence the only thing worth writing about. So back to the growth mindset: you will only grow by making decisions that pursue opportunities, that create value, that give back.
Show that your love for wisdom nuggets wins over your fear of too many emails and subscribe to Proxy Wisdom:
A reader pointed out that choosing love over fear is one of Oprah’s favorite themes. All hail the queen.
Don’t be a fucking idiot and proclaim that your refusal to wear a mask at Target is because you’re no longer afraid of Covid and some internet person said this is an expression of love. It is not. You’re not creating anything, Karen. There’s no growth and no value in it.
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