Elon Musk: “When something is important enough, you do it in spite of fear”

When asked how he can be so fearless investing his entire net worth into Tesla and SpaceX when everyone told him it was a crazy idea, Elon responds:

“It’s not as though I have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are times when something is important enough - you believe in it enough - that you do it in spite of fear… It’s normal to feel fear. There’d have to be something mentally wrong if you didn’t feel fear.”

He finds fatalism helpful for dealing with fear:

“If you just accept the probabilities, that diminishes fear. When starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. And I just accepted that I would probably just lose everything. But if we could just move the ball forward - even if we died - maybe some other company could pick up the baton and keep moving it forward. So that would still do some good. Same with Tesla - I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.”

Full video: Y Combinator “Elon Musk : How to Build the Future“ (Sep 2016)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Elon Musk insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Elon Musk"