Summary: The COVID-19 crisis caused many business owners to experience things for the very first time. Customers ordered to stay home. Businesses deemed nonessential and ordered to close. Many personal liberties curtailed. All of this has created a lot of fear. So what can we do to help clients overcome the fear and see past it?<br> <br> <br> <br> David: Hi and welcome to the podcast today. Cohost Chris Templeton, and I will be talking about seeing past the fear and helping our clients to do the same. Welcome back, Chris.<br> <br> Chris: Hi David, with everything that's been happening, wall to wall news coverage of every detail. There has certainly been a lot of fear in the market and rightfully so. I know that our topic today is about seeing past it, but don't you think a little fear is actually helpful?<br> <br> David: Well, I think it can be, particularly for some people. Some people are really motivated by fear. And so for those who are motivated by fear, I think that it can be helpful in encouraging them to do the things that we're being told we need to do. But I think it's a fine line. And sometimes the danger is that when there is too much fear, not enough fact, or too much fear, not enough critical thinking, that we all tend to start to devolve mentally. We tend maybe not to be able to think as clearly or think straight. So I think, yes, a little fear can be helpful to some people, but overall, I don't know. I just feel as if most of us are better at making intelligent, thoughtful decisions critically than we are from a basis of fear.<br> <br> Chris: It's a really, really good point. And I think a lot of people don't even realize that they're falling into it occasionally. And with what's going on now, every detail on the news, it's certainly easy to go down that road. And all of a sudden we start to behave in a way, make decisions in a way that are based on that underlying fear without even recognizing it. A balanced perspective sure does make a big difference, don't you think?<br> <br> David: Yeah, I think balance is very important. I had this thought the other day about the words to the National Anthem, "the land of the free and the home of the brave." And I think it can be challenging for some people to think in terms of the land of the free, when you're required to stay home. And the home of the brave, when everything they're telling you on television is designed to potentially make you fearful. And so, it's finding the balance and recognizing that there are facts, and we need to be able to look at the facts and just think in terms of "how can we keep things moving forward?" How can we do it for ourselves to be able to think critically analyze situations intelligently and help our clients to do the same?<br> <br> Chris: Well, and I think from that standpoint, it is about perspective. It is saying to yourselves, into your coworkers and your family and friends, "we are going to get through this." We don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but we know that we've been through it as a planet, in what, 1918 with the Spanish flu? And we do come back from these things. And even that, just as a starting point, in trying to bring more perspective and balance to what I'm thinking, has to be a great step in the right direction, don't you think?<br> <br> David: Yeah, absolutely. And the better we get at doing that, the better off we're going to be. But right now, I mean, when I look at what's going on with our clients and with different people that I've talked to in business, a lot of the fear that I see people dealing with is the unknown. That seems to be the biggest thing. And it reminds me of childhood fears. The reason that children are afraid of the dark, is not because it's dark. It's because they don't know what's going on. It's because they can't see what's happening. And as a result, it's really the fear of the unknown. And that's a lot of what we've been dealing with ...
