Happy Monday to all of you. Hope it's been a good one at that. All's well in my neck of the woods. Just did the article submit thing. You know, this is beginning to become a pattern. I draft an article, submit it, and touch base here. Not a bad discipline, I suppose.
This time around I wrote about fear and its frailty in the face of logic. Now, I know defeating fear painting fear with logic may not provide immediate results; however, with practice and continued reason I believe the job can and will be done.
Here's just one portion of the article...
"Your chances of dying on a single airline flight on one of the Top 25 carriers with the best safety records are 1 in 6,300,000Your chances of matching all five numbers in the Illinois Little Lotto are 1 in 576,000Your chances of dying from a bee sting are 1 in 86,000Your chances of dying from being struck by lightning are 1 in 84,000Your chances of dying in an automobile accident are 1 in 100 Interesting and revealing numbers, aren’t they? And with regard to dying in an airplane crash, air safety in the United States is so good right now that there’s a better chance of a child being elected president than your plane going down. How ‘bout this one - if you were to fly only 2,000 miles a year, your chances of death are just about the same as an airplane falling out of the sky and hitting you on the head. Now, how often do you fret about that during a typical day (and don’t start now). In spite of the fact that it’s been years since I’ve had a panic attack, there’s still no doubt that my levels of anticipatory anxiety and in-the-moment fear would dramatically decrease if I knew I was going to make a trip by car, as opposed to flying. But given the stats we just reviewed that just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, 1 in 6,300,000 as opposed to 1 in 100? Give me a break."
"Look, let’s say you had a life-threatening medical condition and there were only two courses of treatment that could save your life. One’s chances of death were 1 in 6,300,000, but involved a horribly painful recovery. The other guaranteed a pain-free recovery; however its chances of death were 1 in 100. Gee, in spite of the pain, for which course of treatment would you opt? Of course, you’d go with the odds. How ‘bout this one. The chances of dying from a lightning strike are 1 in 84,000. Again, the chances of dying in a plane crash as described above are 1 in 6,300,000. Hmmm - you won’t fly, yet you’d run to the car (probably with a metal umbrella) during a thunderstorm with intense lightning. You bought that Little Lotto ticket in Illinois knowing you had a very remote chance of matching all five numbers at odds of 1 in 576,000. Did you really expect to win? Of course not, you trusted the odds. Yet, you believe your plane will go down when the odds are 1 in 6,300,000 that it won’t. Again, look at the numbers, as well as your history of suspect interpretation and overreaction."
Well, here's the link to my author page on Idea Marketers. The article is entitled, Panic Attacks and Fear: Going With Logic and the Odds. Hope you enjoy it. Bill
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Your dime, your dance floor. My only requests are to watch your language and really consider where people are coming from if you're directing comments at what someone's expressed.