How Fear Can Have Catastrophic Effects

Learning and Listening saved a life in my story below.

The 5 Tactical Initiatives that you must nurture to keep full when times are good and draw from when things are not so good, or downright bad.

The Fifth is being a Life-Long Learner & Listener

We’ve covered the first four: Vision, Confidence, Resilience, and Action

What can you learn today that will help tomorrow. Who or what can you listen to.

This is one of those things that we often do when things are going well and we are trying to stay ahead of the curve; perhaps we have to implement a new technology, create a new program, or innovate a new service to meet changing needs.

So, we have to learn new things and tap into new resources in order to scale to a larger market share or capture a new market.

But when things are not happening for you, like now with the threat of this virus, what are you doing? Who are you listening to?

Are you in a wait and see mode? Are you in a defensive posture?

Or, are you not only remaining in learning mode but ramping your learning mode up.

I retired from medicine abruptly for health reasons. I won’t even going to the psychological and emotional challenges that caused, but financially a handsome salary disappeared overnight. 

We had no money coming in. None. But, I knew we had to learn new things and listen to new people. I’ve covered that in other articles but suffice it to say it was in the high 5-figures to get our real estate investment firm off the ground. And these funds do not include the initial capitalization to buy properties.

So, contemplate for a moment and ask yourself which mode will serve you best? Wait and see or continual learning even in dark times.

And when you come to the right conclusion, what can you do today to improve yourself.

What can I do better? Who will I listen to? What are my blind spots? What do I need to learn to position myself better for the future whether things are going well or going south.

I love Jim Rohm’s quote, ‘don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.’

What can you do during this time, during this situation.

Is there something you can do about your own personal growth? Your business? Your marketing efforts? Your relationships and connections?

It’s possible, just possible, that what you could be learning and doing now could elevate you to even greater heights.

Perhaps there is a lesson that is worth more than the money you’ve lost or not getting.

I was an interventional radiologist. I realize many of you don’t know what that is but they perform minimally invasive procedures under x-ray, what we call live fluoroscopic guidance.

There was a young man that came in with multiple pelvic fractures that were so severely displaced and fragmented that the sharp edges of bone tore apart several pelvic blood vessels.

In these cases, they often don’t go to surgery because the anatomy is so distorted and the bleeding so severe that the surgeon can’t find small bleeding vessels so they come to me, the interventionalist.

So, I puncture the femoral artery in the groin to feed wires and catheters through the vessels in order to what we call ‘embolize’ the vessels to stop the bleeding. Generally, we use different types of metal coils, foams, and other particles to inject through the catheter to plug up the vessels and the bleeding stops.

Well, I was struggling for over 45-minutes because his normal anatomy was so distorted, his blood vessels, instead of being like straight roads, were more like a bowl of spaghetti.

They were so tortuous that it was extremely difficult to get the catheter in the right position because you have to get it exactly in that vessel and not another normal vessel because that could be disastrous.

So, the clock is ticking, and his blood pressure drops and his heart rate goes up, both are signs that he losing blood more rapidly, and I’m thinking I’m going to lose this young guy right on my table. The thought was horrifying.

I had tried every single catheter and wire and every other technique I had ever known and used. I had never lost a person yet and just couldn’t believe this could be it. Now, MY heart and respiratory rates start to elevate to unsafe levels.

And then all of a sudden, Karen, my interventional technologist said, ‘Dr. Howard, remember the vendor rep from Cook medical dropped off some samples of that new thin glide catheter and claimed it could navigate anywhere ... remember him going over all of the benefits.’

She said one word that saved this young man’s life. ‘REMEMBER.’

Now, I was the chief of interventional radiology, trained at two of the best institutions in the country, and had treated politicians, celebrities, local well-known citizens and thousands of others.

I had learned and listened, but …

I had forgot about this new seemingly revolutionary device. 

But why? Well first off being in the middle of the night and tired didn’t help, but I had performed plenty of successful cases with less sleep. 

It was FEAR.

My thoughts were immobilized by fear. Fear stopped the learning, the trying, the innovating.

Fear blocked the learning and listening that I had done.

The exhaustion likely fueled the fear. It was almost as if, despite performing the action of the procedure itself, I was in a variant of the wait and see mode.

I was doing something, but I was doing the same old thing over and over again with the same devices for 45-minutes, expecting to get different results. What did Einstein call that? Insanity.

And what else does fear do besides paralyze you … place you in a stuck position. It also causes you to forget things or place things outside of your awareness because you go into tunnel vision mode.

I forgot that there was a different opportunity. One small tweak could change everything.

We put that catheter in the right vessel and within another 10-minutes, stopped the bleeding, and his vitals stabilized. Fortunately, he did great without other complications but did have a long haul of rehab.

So, to wrap this series up I want to remind you right now that it may not look like it's happening for you.

And for many of us it’s downright bad.

But you have to embark on this Fifth Tactical Initiative of being a life-long learner and listener, without the fear, because it will nurture you to rebound and become better than ever.

Thank you for joining me for these 5 Tactical Initiatives of Vision, Confidence, Resilience, Action and being a Life-Long Learner and Listener.

These you nurture while things are good so that you can draw from them when things are not so good.