Ambition drives us to work for our dreams. Fear makes us hesitate. Both are important in motivating us.
Fear motivates? Yes. While ambition gives us impetus to wake up and work, fear moves us to sense risk and hesitate.
We know the sayings and how they seem to contradict each other.
“He who hesitates is lost” teaches leaders not to deliberate for too long, otherwise they will miss opportunities.
But “haste makes waste” tell us that rushing into action and ignoring the risks can lead us to disaster.
There is “nothing to fear but fear itself” gives people the idea that we shouldn’t let whatever scares us rule our lives.
However, “fear is a good thing. it means you’re paying attention.” Fear is a gift in that it helps us sense and evaluate our environment for risks and adversities.
Social media is rife with posts of those who claim success because they did not hesitate. Executives boast early changes in their careers which brought them to prestigious high-salary positions. Entrepreneurs pride themselves for quitting college and working long nights to invent products which made them millionaires.
There are those, however, who decided not to dive in, who decided that the potential for riches was not worth the trade-offs to their personal lives.
Gordon Bowker founded Starbucks with two friends in 1970. Mr. Bowker sold the business to Howard Schultz and investors in 1987. When he was asked if he regretted his decision given the multi-billion dollars’ worth of Starbucks years afterward, Mr. Bowker said he was “rich enough.”
Gordon Bowker passed away on August 21, 2025. The Wall Street Journal obituary* quoted his long-time friend David Brewster citing Mr. Bowker:
“I think that he decided early in his life that he would master business, and then later in his life that he would master the art of living.”
If this isn’t a fine example of a man who weighed his ambitions and fears, I would not know what is.
*Chris Kornelis, “Gordon Bowker, Who Came Up With the Idea for the First Starbucks, Dies at 82,” The Wall Street Journal, September 6-7, 2025. https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/gordon-bowker-starbucks-dead-6c2ca37c
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