If you’re alive, you have moments when fear puts its fist in your stomach. When you sense that, your mind shifts into a survival mode and pushes you to choose between fight or flight. Of course, those are not your only options. But our instincts deceive us, believing something sacred (our life) is in danger.

This may be helpful when your life truly is in danger, but it can be detrimental when the stakes are not life and death. Realizing you forgot to send a time-sensitive email is not the same as being attacked by a saber toothed tiger. Still, we believe something sacred is at risk. Our reputation, careers, a relationship, an investment, opportunities, ego, closing the deal, being accepted, getting likes on Facebook… where do we draw the line on sacred? What is worth the emotional investment and the sacrifice?

And when we feel fear gripping our gut, do we react instinctively or stop and think? You can’t turn off your “spidey sense” but you can use it to take inventory of what is at risk and whether it is essentially sacred.