You versus Everyone Else
Here is a picture of not you.
Stop comparing yourself to other people. Stop trying to be him. He isn’t even human. He isn’t even real.
Remember how when you were a kid and a sadistic weasel of a child made fun of your stupid glasses and your dad assured you that bullies were just weak-minded people projecting their own insecurities onto you? Some burly boy installs you into a locker to confirm a soothing comparison – his body is better than your body, his power is greater than your power. Bullies hurtfully contest with their victims in arenas they know they can win.
Fearful people invert this as they advance to ages where there is a lot to be scared of. They bully themselves by comparing themselves to others in arenas where they know they will lose. The fearful are in a state of perpetual contrived accountability where someone else’s success provokes not inspiration but resentment and inadequacy.
This is so, so bad. Fear.less contributor Robert Thurman points out that if you set yourself apart from the universe, it will consume you. This seems pretty intuitive. It is huge and you are so, so small. Instead, recognizing one’s unity with the universe (a tenet of very many religions) is the way to go, for it diminishes fear because there is nothing for you to feel antagonistic toward if you are one with everything.
But even though you are just a cosmological cog like everyone else, you are a different cog. You are not everyone else. You have different innate qualities and life experiences. It doesn’t make sense to evaluate yourself on criteria that you didn’t invent, that everyone else finds more convenient. If you do, you may find yourself ashamed of your relative inefficacy as a person and too fearful to appreciate yourself as a vessel of value.
The Fear.less contributors are impressive people and when we introduce them to you in the opening paragraph of their stories, we go on about how great they are and what they’ve accomplished. But they’re not better people than you, and you are not incapable of reaching your potential just because you’re not as educated or as eloquent or as lucky as them. They’re not aliens, and they agreed to do this to help you (and them.)
When you read Fear.less and learn these people’s lessons, use them to win at life more than the person you were yesterday, not more than anyone else. As Danielle LaPorte says, “rock”. Keep improving yourself and ignore the background noise. Like Pema Chodron advises, become your own friend. The corollary is stop being your own bully, because pitting yourself in a battle against the world is far more awful than getting mugged for your lunch money.
We Want You in Fear.less 2
We at Fear.less want Fear.less to be big. But there are many kinds of big.
One kind of big is popularity. We definitely want that. We want readers from all walks of life and from all over the world. We want the public to know who we are and benefit from our stories. We want fear.less to be the global conversation for fears and how to conquer them.
Another kind of big is gravity. If you read Platon’s story and liked it, you know we are all about gravity. We want to exude emotional power. We don’t want a physics class to be the only place where you will find notions of gravity, weight and substance.
And yet another kind of big is grandeur. The Fear.less contributors have brought us amazing stories that at times can seem larger-than-life. While we love the sheer power of these kinds of stories, we would also like to stay down-to-earth and accessible and it is in this desire we are anchoring our approach to the next edition of Fear.less.
You see, we don’t feel like one edition is enough. We’d like to take Fear.less to the next level by probing into stories of conquering fear as they happen. We want you to believe not only that overcoming your fears is possible, but that it is possible for you. That’s why we’re creating successive editions of Fear.less, and that’s why we are asking our readers (that’s you) to submit stories of accomplishment, overcoming struggle, and perseverance to fill the next edition.
We want to hear about doubt, apprehension, paralysis, danger, insecurity, ambivalence, shame, defeat, vulnerability, and trips to the bottom of not just the ocean but the whirlpool, where everything spins so fast that nothing seems to make sense anymore. Then, we want to hear about moxie, pep talks, serendipity, epiphanies, mercy, catharsis, survival, persistence, new perspectives, redefined senses of self, and strength that seems to well up from out of nowhere. And we want to hear it from you, and so do other people just like you.
If you are a young person whose talents always seem misapplied, whose future is uncertain, who is trying to find your place in the world, we want to know your story.
If you are a budding entrepreneur with a great idea that everyone doubted but you didn’t listen to them and now it’s finally getting off the ground, we want to know your story.
If you have survived a life of aggressive tragedy and constant fear and now you’re finally turning it around, we want to know your story.
There is enough to be afraid of in this world already, and submitting to Fear.less should not be one of them, so let me try and alleviate some of your concerns about the task itself.
- Do not be afraid your story is irrelevant or not what we are looking for. It’s the opposite. If you hesitate about sending in your story, it’s the perfect reason you should send it in right away. We’ll read everything and pick the ones we think resonate the most.
- Do not be afraid of opening yourself up. We at Fear.less like to think we are highly gentle and empathetic people.
- Do not be afraid that your story doesn’t sound like the ones you read in Fear.less 1. That’s the point of Fear.less 2.
Your story can help people. It really can. Think about it carefully, and then send us an e-mail at info@fearlessstories.com.
Getting fearless!
We’re grateful to everyone who wrote to us about the first ever fear.less story. Those of you who subscribed to receive the magazine, also received a special first look at Platon Antoniou’s tale of fearlessness. Readers were inspired enough to send us feedback and even some of their own stories!
Here’s what they said:
“I loved it. Platon’s generous words reminded me that life is a sequence of present moments – each of them precious and beautiful, even the ones that seem simple or painful. I especially appreciated his honesty. His brand of fearlessness is about accepting fear – not only his own but those of the people around him, which he intentionally disarms. Keep the stories coming.”
“Very, very nice. Being a photographer myself this really hit home, but well done no matter who’s reading it. Keep up the good work!”
“Thank you very much for this enlightening and inspiring tale. I enjoyed reading the first story and have passed it on to 157 of my friends. Everybody deserves to know about fearless people and their stories.”
“Thank you! This morning, as I was having breakfast, I reaffirmed that this day is my day to make a great day of. So I chose to do so. How wonderful to receive this confirmation when I arrived at my desk. Have a beautiful day, without fear of fear.”
“A note of appreciation. This is simply gorgeous. Raised my spirits, shifted my perspective, and made me feel so smart for having signed up. Thanks heaps.”
“Awesome. Really interesting guy, great life advice. Could not have done any better with this one, I’m looking forward to more stories!”
“This is amazing!!”
Check our “buzz” page for more reviews and sign up to receive special early releases of stories. To enter a story of your own and have the chance to be featured on our blog or in the 2nd edition, please subscribe and send us an email.
With love and thanks,
Clay and Ishita
Is the Future You Fearless?
Today’s post is about… time travel! Kind of.
You may have noticed that this blog can’t stop making references to Benjamin Zander. That’s because the he has a lot of good ideas. One of them is the title of our blog post on him, “Give an A”. He automatically gives each of his students an A in their first class of the year, and has them write a letter dated for next spring, addressed to the talented and confident musician they will hopefully have become. The idea is that Ben Zander is teaching, and grading, the person described in the letter.
Future correspondence is a neat idea in a classroom, because the teacher collects all the letters and then remembers to give them back to you. That way, you can forget about them, so the surprise is greater when they come back.
Now, thanks to super-duper technology, we who are no longer in school can use a computer for this purpose, thanks to a fascinating website located at http://www.futureme.org/. On FutureMe, you write an e-mail to your future self to be received however many weeks, months, or even decades later. The advantages over handwriting it are that you can’t lose the letter and you can’t peek at it. There’s no way you’ll see it again until the date you specified.
FutureMe has provided the option to mark your letter as “public (but anonymous)”, and indeed there is a section of the site where you can read the 15% or so of letters marked this way. Many of them are fascinating and often sobering examinations of what people think of themselves and what people are truly fearing in their day-to-day lives.
Some of them shimmer with almost blind optimism – a guy congratulating himself on becoming a physician 5 years before he graduates medical school, or a lady expressing envy toward her fitter, sexier future self, or even a confused pre-op transsexual congratulating whatever-self-they-think-they-are on finally making the currently-unmade choice of a lifetime.
Some of them are frothing with remorse and malevolence, as if they don’t want their future selves to let anything go. Are you still fat and useless? Are you still a junkie? Let go of her, because she will never love you. Remember back in 2004, when you had no life? I hope you’re not failing all your classes anymore. (Seriously, some of them are the most macabre and bitter obloquies I’ve ever seen directed at human beings.)
Some of them are bemused by the whole concept. “So, uhhh, you’re me.” How unfortunate that it is so awkward to communicate with the one person they spend their every waking moment with!
The morphologies, undertones and overtones of these letters are too varied for me to go on about forever, so you should read them yourself. I’ll just say that some of these people need to follow Fear.less contributor Pema Chödrön’s advice and practice loving-kindness toward themselves. In some cases, these public displays of gutting vulnerability are not addressed to friends but to hated enemies. We see the sort of problems people really wish they could solve but maybe aren’t doing much to work on yet, hoping that in the next few years they’ll turn velleity into ambition.
I invite you to try using FutureMe, if only to one day remind yourself of your own power. Here’s what I pray happens:
1. You write your future self a candid e-mail going on about all the miserable scary swamp gas in your life. It doesn’t matter what tone you take, whether you assume all the problems will be solved by the time you get it or whatever.
2. You set the date, and live life as that date draws nearer. Growing, learning, changing, fighting.
3. You receive the letter and it turns out that you’ be capable of laughing it off if it weren’t so interesting. Because that day you face a different set of fears, and the ones that seemed so crushing and ever-present before have been defeated, changed, invalidated, or their conquests of you were inconsequential and subverted. Wouldn’t it be great to be a novelist by the time you realized how much you worried about getting published? Wouldn’t it be great to be happily in love by the time you realized how much you were letting one stupid buffoon ruin your life? Wouldn’t it be great to giggle at the silly things younger you worried about?
Fears only get bigger and bigger as life goes on. What if that e-mail ends up lifting you up from the bottom of a whirlpool different from the one you were drowning in years ago? Can we be compassionate and gentle and intimate enough with ourselves to be our own cheerleaders? I hope so.
Short of all that, it’s still a very cool website and you should check it out.
Heavy Mettle
What if I told you that these two gentlemen were the same person?
Read this article, go change your pants, and come back.
It’s hard to comment on David Smith’s story without profanity-laced interjections. I mean just look at him. Just look at the picture of the 650-pound man-island next to the smiling, objectively handsome guy, and let it sink in that they are the same person.
One of the sections of the article is titled “Facing his fear” but even without the headings holding your hand you can tell David Smith has a story that is ultra-worthy of Fear.less.
I can’t help but marvel at the progression of it all. The miserable childhood. The graphic suicide fantasy. The frustrated lamentations of a lonely, forsaken man, and his discovery of just a single microscopic shard of hope nestled deep beneath the flab. There are tons of people in the world who want to not wheeze climbing stairs, who want some attention from their gender of choice. This man, in far more dire straits than most people in that category, emerged triumphant. I love how vague his reasoning for deciding to lose weight is. It came from “somewhere deep down”. Okay, sure. Think about how empowering that is. David Smith chose to conquer his fears just because he could, much to the delight of several of his body parts.
Let’s be honest here. Pre-courage David Smith was a physical and emotional wreck. Nobody was going near that. It’s hard to look at him and see any potential. But there he is, plain as day, potential applied. Such is the power of being fearless. He used to be fat and depressed and now he isn’t. Anyone who reads his story can harness that same power. That is a fact. It happened. You have now officially been given clearance to go out and win at life.
Is There a Doctor in the House?
In a post titled “What Is That Thing?” I discussed the power that identifying, learning about and discussing one’s fears gives one to overcome them. So here’s a tricky idea – can we identify, learn about and discuss fear itself, so we are enabled to overcome the entire emotion? Who do you think could help shed some light on the biological aspects of fear for us? Go ahead, guess.
If your guess looks nothing like this man, great! This means Fear.less has something to offer you. This man is Dr. Joseph LeDoux. He is the director of the NIMH Conte Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety. He is exactly who we need.
Joseph’s Fear.less entry is unique and fascinating. He goes into great detail on the scientific nature of fear, and reading his story is soothing in an absolving sort of way. The good doctor explains that fear is a normal process in the brain, not a vice that makes you crazy or weak.
We’re considering putting his article first in the table of contents. That way fear, the enemy, is well-identified, so when the several dozen other contributors discuss their personal experiences, you’ll know what they’re dealing with. You’ll be able to step into their shoes more smoothly.
Things like the table of contents are approaching to the forefront of our concerns here at Fear.less. We are entering that stage where it is time to synthesize all of the great content we’ve gathered into a cohesive and powerful package for your reading pleasure. We are so confident it’s going to be awesome that we want as many people as possible to see it. So you, readers! Tell your friends to sign up! If there are only 5 of you, we want 10 of you, if there are only 5,000, we want 10,000,00. We don’t want you to threaten anyone with sharp objects or anything, but if a blunt object or two somehow entered the negotiation, we might look the other way.
Really, though. The community is what’s going to make this project great, so we are grateful for your involvement and support (and signing up). We have a Facebook group and page (both named Fear.less) that we welcome you to join. Partake in discussions, keep on reading, and soon we will introduce you to the inspirational and enlightening tales of Joseph LeDoux and all his fearless friends.
Cracking Down on Cracking Up
You know who isn’t feeling fear?
<—- These guys. ^^^^^
Unfortunately no cats or seals could be reached for a Fear.less interview, but we did manage to snag a few humans who know how to exuberate. Benjamin Zander’s TED talk, linked to in a past blog post, is peppered with comedy. There’s a part of Guy Kawasaki’s Fear.less story that entertains in a sublime way I won’t spoil here. Two of the big banners on the front page of the site feature Mawi Asgedom and Immaculée Ilibagiza, who both A) have survived genocides and B) smile sometimes. Personally I was deeply moved when after intimating myself with Mawi’s tragic, powerful story, I took another look at that humongous, genuine smile.
If you’ve ever gotten blood drawn or learned a martial art, you are well aware of the virtues of relaxation. If you are crippled by fear and ardently interested in reading our book, you are well aware of the drawbacks of being strung-out. “If only there was some magical way to lighten my mood so I could enter a profound state of relaxation!” you lament.
Wait… did you say… magic?
I will personally vouch that that video can cure at least three hours of feeling crushed by fear. I found it in an article on Cracked titled 5 Glorious Failures in TV Talent Show Auditions.
Cracked is the resource I’d like to share with you today because humor can be so helpful in putting us in a state of mind that is prepared to combat fear. Their articles are irreverent, engaging and even educational. Here are some relevant starting points:
- 7 People Who Cheated Death (Then Kicked It in the Balls), a.k.a. Baby Fear.less
- The 6 Most Insane Moral Panics in American History, which follows the common Fear.less theme of realizing that fear can be ridiculous
- 5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won’t), which could change your perspective on your life’s insecurities
- Underdogs of War: 6 Tiny Nations That Kicked Ass, for getting PUMPED
- The 10 Most Terrifyingly Inspirational ’80s Songs, for getting PUMPEDER
They let anyone write for them and will pay you $50 if they publish your article so if achieving that might help your poor soul out, register on their forums and give it a try. Let us know how it goes.
If you are one of the handful of people in the world who hate reading enough to dismiss Cracked but not enough to have given up on this post, buy a season or two of a funny show on DVD and pop it in when your bankruptcy anxiety or whatever else is getting the better of you. The Office, Scrubs, Arrested Development, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Seinfeld, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Two and a Half Men – say what you will about any one of these shows but I have seen people delivered to equilibrium and productivity by all of them before. And there are so many more. There are huge quantities of media designed exclusively to make you feel good and you should take advantage of them.
If you don’t understand that life can be joyful and worth appreciating, you will have a rough time with your fear. Platon, Bernard Lown, and Srikumar Rao are just a few examples of Fear.less contributors who ruminate on the rich possibility life holds for happiness. This works. Like I alluded to before, only a few hours ago I felt smothered under various anxieties that seemed merciless and unyielding, but a mere 10-second video set me on a path that resulted in a great mood and this blog post.
Today’s entry in the Fear.less editing soundtrack is The Cure – Doing the Unstuck, which is more optimistic than uh, um… a really optimistic thing.
Be a hyena. Be Fear.less.