Elon Musk On Fear

One thing I really like about you is you are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something that's crazy. I know a lot of pretty crazy people; you still stand out. Uh, where does that come from, or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Where do you get the internal strength to do that?

Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I fear feel fear quite strongly. Um, so it's not as though I just have the absence of fear; I feel it quite strongly. Um, but there are times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough that you do it in spite of the fear.

So speaking of important things, like people shouldn't think I should—people shouldn't think, "Well, I feel a fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it." Um, it's normal to feel fear. Like, you'd have to have something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear. Um, so you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway.

Yeah, you know, actually something that can be helpful is fatalism, uh, to some degree. Um, if you just accept the probabilities, um, then that diminishes fear. Uh, so, um, with starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. Um, and I just accepted that actually probably I would just lose everything. Um, but that maybe we would make some progress 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, um, so that we still do some good. Um, yeah, same with Tesla; I thought, you know, odds of a company succeeding were extremely low.