I once worked with a young woman who wanted to know, at every turn, what she should do, how she should do it. She was smart, passionate and able -- yet she was gripped by fear. Gripped by the fear of not doing it 'right'. The problem was, and is, that there is no manual -- there is no 'right' way. As Seth Godin would put it -- she was in the grip of her lizard brain, that primitive part of our brain that is either hungry, scared, angry or horny. It's the reason we are afraid. I heard that she'd recently had a baby. I hope she's worked out how to tame that lizard brain because I'm pretty sure there's no manual for raising a child either. This is the premise of Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin . We have a choice to stay stuck, or we can embrace the fear and create some momentum. That's the good news. The bad news is that our conditioning, and that damn lizard brain, might stop us. We're conditioned to fit in, not stand out. We're conditioned to deny our own genius, our art -- whatever it is -- because we might fail and then the lizard brain can say 'told you so!'. We fear failure to the point where we don't even try. Prototyping is all about trying and discarding. Accepting failure. Our lizard brain doesn't like failure. It once meant we were probably dead, a tasty meal for some predator.