Beware the Fear Lizard Policeman
- Dec 9, 2025
- 6 min read
Certified Scrum Trainer and former physicist with a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge, Paul Lister brings over 20 years of fintech experience to help teams minimise risk and embrace Agility. He is passionate about making work better, sharing knowledge through training, coaching, writing, and community building.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of getting older, but I’m a lot more relaxed than I used to be. I (vaguely) remember being virtually feral as a teenager and used to overreact to everything for at least ten years after that. This is not just looking at things retrospectively through venerable eyes or having no longer the fire I once did, or finding the previous behavior ‘wrong’ due to ageist jealousy. It’s biology, baby. More accurately, neuroscience.
Evolution is a strange and delicate thing. We tend to think of it as a survival of the fittest template, but that’s not quite the whole story. Some changes are advantageous, and some are not. But that doesn’t mean that everything is the ‘best thing it could be.’ Zebras may have stripes because it breaks up the outline of the beast for predators, and hence that particular trait was reinforced. Or stripes may make absolutely no difference to being caught by a lion, but since it wasn’t disadvantageous, it wasn’t bred out. Feedback mechanisms in such a complex environment are hard to pin down, especially when we are talking about environmental interactions over millions of years. What evolutionary biologists can do, however, is see where distinct species branched away from each other by examining various physical structures in their bodies. Structures such as the brain.
I am the lizard king
A brain which I’m going to use now to generalize about its own function. The brain consists of many areas, but it can be generalized into three main parts, the cerebellum, or little brain, which deals with motor functions, the limbic system, or lizard brain, which mostly concerns itself with dealing with danger, and the cortex, sometimes referred to as the mammalian brain, which controls higher functions like thinking. The prefrontal part of the cortex controls rationality and makes sure that the various decisions that may trigger the lizard brain are examined before more bestial actions are undertaken.
It’s not a surprise that my fifteen-year-old self, like most fifteen-year-olds, was running riot. The prefrontal cortex keeps growing and developing until, on average, an individual is twenty-five. (Just as an aside, it seems a strange world where you can parent a child, drink alcohol, which drops your inhibitions, and fight for your country at ages that are younger than this...). The Prefrontal Cortex tempers the animalistic flight-or-fight response that the limbic brain wants to make to situations that are unexpected. Situations that cause fear. The word limbus in Latin means border, and the prefrontal cortex patrols this border like a customs guard, only letting through reactions that make sense in a world where humans must interact with each other and society as a whole. As our environment changed from one where we were running for our lives or deciding to snuff out others, to one of debate and détente, the mutations in the brain slowly grew this customs officer, the process of evolution slowly helping it along.
But, as we don’t live in a perfect rational world (possibly one of the great understatements of our time), we know that the Prefrontal Cortex is still evolving, still adapting. But is it possible to help it along?
I can do anything
Not to try to drop into too much meta-territory, but we tend to think of our thinking as a reasonably static thing. Despite this, the brain and the various connections within it are pliable and able to reset and change to form new paradigms. In science, this is known as neuroplasticity. This is visible in studies where CAT scans are taken of people trying to learn new things. A good example of this is an examination of individuals training to be London taxi drivers. They have the gargantuan task of learning ‘the knowledge,’ a mental map of London’s roads and landmarks so they can navigate their way around the complex spider’s web of thoroughfares in the capital. Periodically scanning these students showed that after each session of study, concreted by practical testing, entire areas of the driver’s brain had effectively been rewritten. But these people have a willingness to let this change happen. Because whilst the Prefrontal Cortex is a customs officer for the limbic system, the lizard brain has its own border guard that won’t accept change if it deems that the change will be detrimental. Its own ‘fear policeman.’ And it doesn’t take much to trigger it.
People are strange
It’s not a great decision to spend a lot of time deliberating over whether running away from a lion is a good idea. Which is where the lizard brain, when we had little else, was a great innovation. It protected us. And in the modern world, it still protects us, but the scale and dangers are very different.
In the early days of Homo sapiens, we only had to be concerned with the things that kept us alive. The psyche was dominated by the ‘id,’ as psychoanalysis puts it, the purely instinctive way of reacting to things. But as interactions became more civilized, then a different sort of protection was needed. The ‘Ego’ developed, the complex sense of self, and suddenly there was a new fear. Anxiety.
This new fear manifests in different ways. It can be worrying about others’ opinions of you, fear for the future, or concern about mental health. The lizard fear policeman can sometimes decide to batten down the hatches as a risk strategy, deciding that the best action is not to do anything.
This is okay now because doing nothing is an acceptable strategy, our modern version of the lion is trying something new, making sure someone doesn’t ‘get one over on us,’ or exposing vulnerability. It is pretty unlikely that you’re going to get eaten because of it. But if this limbic brain is operating in this fashion, is it easy to spot? Is it possible to know when the lizard fear policeman is at large? And can our prefrontal cortex do more than just be a border guard? How can it help?
The doors of perception
The safest option for the Lizard is to deal with anxiety by ensuring that change is kept to a minimum. That way, neither the modern versions of the fight-or-flight response are triggered. This can lead to a fixed mindset, as the ultimate form of resisting change is to maintain a set way of thinking and try to bend the environment to it, rather than the other way around. This can lead to not attempting anything new, as then the risk of failure is perceived as lower. This adherence to consistency can lead to conflict and unhealthy behaviors, such as telling others what they need to do in order to follow the path of reduced change. Conflict of this nature can often lead to competition with others, as the Lizard feels that they have to prove themselves right to justify a fixed mindset. In practical terms, this can show itself as a focus on output so that there is an empirical ‘rightness’ justifying the behavior.
But even if you do spot that this lawman is actively patrolling your brain and sending it to ‘fixed mindset prison,’ can you do anything about it? Well, like I said, the Lizard is not the only sheriff in town. But how can you give the Prefrontal cortex more jurisdiction?
Break on through
The structure of our internal organs is determined by our DNA, and apart from damage and decay, we are unable to change them. The brain is an exception. We can literally change the shape of the connections just by thinking and experiencing. It’s going to sound a little precocious, but the best way to conquer instinct with rationality is by doing the opposite of the behaviors that are promoted by lizard thinking. Instead of telling people what to do, seek ways to garner their opinions by collaborating. Telling involves talking, try to swap this for listening, giving those opinions a fighting chance to thrive. Try new things, even when it seems risky and flies in the face of pragmatism. And if those new things fail, reinforce that cortex guard by finding some way to learn from the experience. Defocus measurements of outputs and focus on outcomes, the real tangible thing that comes from an action rather than how efficiently that outcome is reached.
Retraining your brain in this way leads to a thriving growth mindset rather than a stagnant fixed one. Unless, of course, your Lizard fear policeman has got so much control that you’re not even willing to try.
But you’re in charge of your thinking. Aren’t you? More of the above and the courses he runs can be found at his website.
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Read more from Paul Lister
Paul Lister, Agile Coach
Paul Lister is a Certified Scrum Trainer with the Scrum Alliance, one of only around 250 worldwide, with a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and a background as a physicist. He has over 20 years in fintech as a developer, manager, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach. Drawing on experience in both Waterfall and Agile, he helps teams minimise risk, embrace Agility, and achieve their goals. Beyond coaching and training, Paul writes novels, directs short films, and founded the Surrey & Sussex Agile meetup. Passionate about making work better, he loves connecting with others to share ideas on Agile, creativity, and collaboration.
