I knocked on a dark green door with flaking paint. A giant of a man named Harvey opened it, standing in front of me wearing nothing but baggy shorts and a tattered t-shirt, sporting a two-day beard. He was not impressed when I showed him my FBI badge and seemed eager to make a move.
Would Harvey slam the door in my face?
The thing is, I needed information from him because he’d been in contact with a member of a known terrorist cell. I could make two assumptions: Was he part of the cell, or merely a dupe helping a friend without knowing all the details?
If the first, I needed to play hardball. If the second, I needed his cooperation.
Our brains prioritize survival, and that comes in handy if we find ourselves on a dark street in a questionable neighborhood. Our senses are on alert for a good reason.
However, if the big and ugly thing in front of us presents an opportunity to dig deeper and uncover a problem, excessive caution can derail our best efforts to move forward.
How can we help our brain make the distinction between a threat and an opportunity?
Bypass the negativity bias
Research suggests this negativity bias begins to emerge as early as infancy. Some studies also show that negative news is more likely to be perceived as truthful, draws greater attention and is considered more valid.
The brain treats negative information like Velcro; it sticks. In contrast, it treats positive information like Teflon; it’s nice, but it easily slides out of our consciousness. This is why we have found that animals, including humans, learn faster from pain than from pleasure.
This explains why we are more motivated by the threat of loss than by the prospect of gain. For example, you may be more likely to complete a task when you’re more afraid of losing your job than of achieving success.
If I were to obtain information from Harvey, my brain would need to determine whether he was a threat or an opportunity.
You may not need to make a split-second decision about whether a person is a terrorist, but as a leader you may need to decide whether a new vendor is someone to trust or ignore; whether a competitor is poised for a hostile takeover or a good partner to strengthen your company’s position in the marketplace; or whether a new hire can deliver on their promises or become a toxic weak link.
We all need to distinguish between threats and opportunities. We can help our brains see the difference in several ways:
Train your brain
The reticular activating system is a network of neurons in the brainstem that serves as an attention filter. Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought at 10 bits per second. However, our bodies’ sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a billion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. The RAS acts as the ultimate gatekeeper, deciding which aspects of reality make the cut.
The RAS tends to prioritize stimuli tied to survival, strong emotion, or repeated focus — which is why fear, past wounds and rehearsed anxieties can dominate what you notice. According to a recent article, if the internal questions you keep asking yourself are versions of “What could go wrong?” or “How do I avoid pain?” your RAS will lock onto information that repeatedly confirms those threat signals.
Self-talk becomes critical because the RAS responds to our negative mental chatter, increasing the likelihood that we’ll see circumstances as threats rather than opportunities. Experts suggest reframing your internal questions:
Instead of “How do I avoid criticism?” try “What can I learn from feedback that strengthens my calling?”
Instead of “What if this change ruins everything?” try “What new possibilities could this change reveal if I handle it with wisdom?”
Reframing our questions doesn’t deny risk, but it requires your RAS to also acknowledge positive outcomes. This helps you distinguish real threats from difficult-but-potentially-opportune situations.
My tips:
Write down clear goals and desired outcomes to prime your RAS to recognize relevant opportunities rather than feeding a threat frenzy. When your attention, beliefs and actions align with your goals, the RAS highlights information that supports them. The RAS will continually default to threat mode the moment you feel pressure. It’s critical that you continually reset the RAS because consistency is the language it understands best.
Make a deliberate distinction between pain remembered from a past incident (even if similar) and imagined scenarios in your current situation. Processing past experiences and understanding your triggers help your RAS stop flagging them as if they were fresh threats every time they appear. Over time, this reduces false positives, allowing more neutral or promising situations to be seen as opportunities.
Give your RAS a clear target for what you want. When your sole attention is on what you stand to lose, the RAS stays locked on the threat. But if your focus is on opportunities, the RAS seeks out potentially positive outcomes. Before entering a context you typically experience as threatening, quietly picture the best possible outcome.
Create a strong mind
When I knocked on Harvey’s door, I couldn’t tell whether he was a terrorist because I lacked sufficient information. Determining that required corroborated evidence, investigative processes and external data I didn’t have access to.
But I could notice obvious threat cues rather than being driven by panic or wishful thinking. Under stress, our minds tend to prioritize whatever we’re already fixated on — if that’s “danger everywhere,” we’ll see threats in everything; if it’s “this will be fine,” we may miss real warning signs.
In my situation, I needed to keep an open, alert mind to notice specific, observable signs of danger as I approached Harvey. A strong mind will recognize concrete threat indicators in advance: posture, movement toward weapons, attempts to block escape routes, evasiveness when asked critical questions, the presence of other unknown individuals, etc.
You can follow the same “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act” loop I used. It’s threat-assessment training for FBI agents who need to reach balanced conclusions about potential threats during dynamic encounters. It’s a way to describe how agents can process information and act faster and more effectively. The concept is this: If you can cycle through “see what’s happening, understand it, choose and act” more quickly and accurately than the other party, you gain an operational advantage.
You may not knock on the door of a suspected terrorist, but you may not want to lose a contract, the ideal hire or an untapped market opportunity. How can you build a strong mindset to address those valid questions?
My tips:
First, acknowledge that you may feel anxious or worried. This is your survival system doing its job.
Second, ask: “What exactly am I seeing or hearing right now?” Force yourself to name observable facts: hand position, tone of voice, eye movement and facial expressions. Do their words match their body language?
Third, separate feeling from the evidence before you. You might say to yourself, “This feels uncomfortable.” Don’t ever disregard gut instinct, but it’s equally important to distinguish between fear not grounded in evidence and discomfort stemming from feeling out of control.
As it turned out, Harvey was not a terrorist but a trusting fellow who was duped into running errands for a terrorist cell.
The goal is not to ignore danger but to see clearly. By retraining attention and grounding decisions in evidence, you can avoid being ruled by fear and instead recognize when a situation — like Harvey — may look threatening but actually presents an opportunity.
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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