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The world is going to collapse into chaos (and the scientific establishment with it).

It’s a fairly common belief, based on a simple premise:

People are bad and they will ruin the planet. We’ll destroy all the ecosystems, use up all the oil, and then we’ll be done. Game over.

Or, perhaps before that, governments will run out of money and we won’t be able to do good things like science.

I talked to a guy the other day who lives in a gated community in Texas. I mentioned Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, and he immediately jumped on it. Yep, he said, “living in a gated community is proof that we’re headed for that.”

Want to know what underlies this?

Fear.

Cynicism is driven by fear.

Fear that things will go badly.

Fear that someone else might be right.

Fear that other people are bad and the world is out to get us.

By being afraid and basing our actions upon fear, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Skepticism is a closely allied disease. Hardcore skeptics are not a lot better than religious fanatics: they have a fixed set of beliefs, and are incredibly afraid when those beliefs are challenged. (Oh boy, I can see the flame throwers already.)

The point of skepticism is fine–it’s to avoid being taken in by snake oil salesmen. But the problem with hardcore application of skepticism is that it fails to distinguish between reversible and irreversible blunders.

For example, an irreversible blunder might be a retired person spending their life’s savings on swamp land in Florida. They have little chance of making it back, so it is irreversible. Some skepticism is a useful preventative.

A recoverable blunder might be spending an extra $10/month on a supplement like Vitamin C. It might be ineffective, but there’s no permanent damage done. And who knows? A later study might show some positive effect. In other words, the benefits versus the drawbacks are not nearly as clear.

But skepticism grounded in fear says there is no difference: unless something is “proven,” it is wrong, useless, or automatically bad. Stay away, period.

Skepticism pretends to be based on rational thinking, but all rational thinking is based on premises, or beliefs, about how the world operates. Beliefs are not provable. We may accumulate evidence for or against them, but quite often they turn out to be wrong (e.g. “human flight is impossible,” “time is an absolute constant everywhere in the universe,” or “nobody can run a four minute mile”).

As a result, the hardcore skeptic cannot experience anything in life that is not perfectly well defined, well known, and clearly “beneficial” (a totally subjective, belief-driven word if there ever was one).

This kind of thinking negatively affects scientific progress. Paradigm shifts often come from those outside of a field, because all the people within the field become too skeptical of anything that doesn’t fit neatly within existing paradigms. They fear change, and it slows progress.

Fear is bad if you are trying to run a lab. It is bad if you’re writing grants. It is bad if you’re trying to start a business.

Perhaps a little fear–such as fear of being scooped, which motivates you to get that paper out–is OK. But in general, the deep-seated of fear that drives hardcore skepticism and cynicism shuts down positive action. And often, it’s just that kind of action which might prevent the bad stuff from happening in the first place.

Fear also shuts down positive imagination, seeing some small corner of the world being improved by your work.

I frequently talk to scientists who got into science to do something really interesting that might have an impact on the world. But after getting into the fear-based thinking mode (easy to do), the vision fades, and it turns into “just surviving.” Getting tenure, getting grants, getting papers–they all become chores, “must do” things to survive rather than “I want to do that because I’m excited by my science.”

I’m here to tell you: you can’t very often write a great grant proposal if you’re doing it from a mental perspective of “I’m writing this because I’m afraid for my survival.”

Great proposals need to be inspiring and exciting. Can you picture someone who is afraid, ho feels like they’re struggling for survival, coming up with inspiring and exciting ideas and writing?

No? Me neither.

Seriously, if you want to accomplish anything significant in life, whether it is getting your grant funded, doing some great science, whatever, you have to get away from fear-based thinking. You have to drop much of the cynicism and skepticism, replacing them with an optimistic “yes, these are solvable problems” mentality.

People that achieve great things ignore the skeptics and the fear, and do it anyway. I used to be the epitome of fearfulness, and full of cynicism about the fate of the world. It didn’t help solve the world’s problems, nor did it help my life. It was the most useless mental state I’ve ever held.

Here are some of the things I did to overcome it:

1. I Stopped watching the news. The news feeds you fear. If you want to program yourself for fear, then make sure you stay “informed” at all times. (Note: your brain is 2-10 fold more responsive to fear-based messages than positive messages, which is why fear sells. So, for every fear-based news piece you see, you need 2-10 times more positive messages to counteract it. Better to just avoid it.)
2. I started focusing on the things I can control and affect. It starts with my life, by becoming healthier and happier, and from there extends to people I interact with. That’s the only true way to have a positive impact on the world, from the inside out.
3. I took control of the programming of my brain. Rather than letting the TV and news program it with repeated, fearful messages, I decided to play to myself the opposite: repeated, positive messages. It’s actually quite easy to do once you take control.
4. I learned to ignore people around me who are in fearful mode. That’s many of them, unfortunately. But listening to people like that is almost worse than listening to the news.

If you want to achieve the best possible outcomes–with your grants, your science, and your life, it is imperative that you do stuff like this to make sure you’re operating in a positive mode rather than fear mode.

And if you want more help with putting an inspiring, positive vision into your grants, checkout this free webinar I made for you.