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.
Scott Belsky Keeps the Ship Afloat
Scott Belsky had big ideas and big fears to go with them.
His struggle is standard enough entrepreneurial fare: Even if you can convince your colleagues to abandon a life of stability to help you realize your vision, how do you then cope with being responsible for their careers?
Scott aimed to develop a business out of putting inventive, visionary people in touch. You will learn how that pans out when you read Fear.less, but I’d like to share with you a brief sentence in his story that I noticed while editing it. It may be just succinct and punchy enough to let you know exactly what you need to do in your own life, right now.
My burdens, it seemed, were a result of isolation.
Scott established an atmosphere of transparency with his team to facilitate the discussion of concerns, like a whole bunch of Casper the Friendly Ghosts, and his business is better for it. Think about that the next time someone asks what’s wrong and you murmur “nothing” and shuffle away.
Fear.less is a special project that commands special background music when I am editing it. In commemoration of Scott’s inspiring discovery of the merits of openness, today’s fear-related song of the day is Isolation by Joy Division. Fear is specifically mentioned in the first line. Enjoy, and know that if you want to keep your ship afloat, you have to talk to the crew.
Pushing Himself to New Limits
“I always believe that we should do what we’re most afraid of in life. If you look at my career, I had to confront any fear I had about switching fields. It was a huge decision because my job as a book designer was great. But I had reached a level of success where there wasn’t a job above me to aspire to.
I knew I wanted one more job in my life where I was frightened every day that I’d be fired. I wanted something that pushed me as a designer, to see if I could jump off another bridge and swim.”
John Fulbrook keeps climbing mountains and pushing past his fear, it’s what helps him excel in new and necessary directions. He currently uses his master storytelling skills at Collins Agency, an innovative, brand-building agency.
Read more about how John battles his fear (and wins) in fear.less, coming in July.
Michael Paterson chooses sunlight
In his own words:
I’ve always been creative, even as a kid; always had an interest in art, but my previous job was a business management job where my creative side wasn’t engaged at all. The transition when I gave it all up was a huge moment. Really, it was like the sun coming out after a huge long period of darkness. I thought to myself, “You only live once,” and to me it meant, “Why not actually live?”
Michael is now Associate Creative Director / Art Director at powerhouse agency Ogilvy and Mather in New York City and has directed top campaigns for clients such as IBM, Motorola, Cotton Inc. and SAP.
We’d like to thank Michael for participating in our fear.less e-book. Look for his profile when we launch in July.
A generous genius
Happy birthday to a generous genius. Can you believe that this is all Tim O’Reilly has accomplished?
- 1992. Published The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog, the first popular book about the internet, which was later selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century.
- 1993. O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.
- 1998. The term “open source” was formally adopted at a summit of key free software leaders hosted by O’Reilly. Tim is honored with Infoworld’s Industry Achievement Award for his role in open source advocacy.
- 2000. O’Reilly introduces Safari Books Online, the first web-native service for online book content.
- 2000. Tim’s “Open Letter to Jeff Bezos” in protest of Amazon’s 1-Click patent is signed by 10,000 supporters in four days, leading to joint lobbying for software patent reform by Amazon and O’Reilly.
- 2003. O’Reilly holds the first Foo Camp, a private gathering at its Sebastopol, CA campus, where, as Business 2.0 noted, the alpha geeks were “…hard and happily at work moving the entire economy of the Web forward, to good end.”
- 2004. The Web 2.0 Conference, hosted by O’Reilly, John Battelle, and MediaLive, introduces the Web 2.0 meme to a sold-out crowd.
- Tim has served on the board of trustees for both the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two organizations devoted to making sure that the internet fulfills its promise. He was on the board of Macromedia up until the recent merger with Adobe. He is currently on the board of CollabNet.
- If after all that, you think Tim is just a tech geek, he graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics. His honors thesis explored the tension between mysticism and logic in Plato’s dialogues.
- An archive of Tim’s online articles, talks, and interviews can be found at Tim’s archive page.
All Tim has done is change the world for the better. If you use the Internet (and apparently you do), you’ve been impacted by O’Reilly’s brilliance.
I want to thank Tim for participating in our e-book. The amazing fear.less profile of this generous genius shows that he hasn’t lost his philosophy chops, he has honed them.
Of course.
-Clay and Ishita
“Welcome to the White House.”
World-renowned photographer, Platon, talks to us about giving the best of yourself.
“Last week, I photographed Michelle Obama in the White House for her first iconic session. On meeting her, I held out my hand and said, “Mrs. Obama, it’s an honor to meet you.” She brushed my hand aside, put her arms on my shoulders and gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said, “Welcome to the White House.” Now that’s a devastatingly beautiful thing. That’s someone who has something to give. Of course people can abuse that, people can choose not to be bewitched by that charm, but I found it incredibly beautiful. From that moment on, we connected.”
How often do we worry about how we’re perceived and what people think of us, instead of just connecting honestly with the person on the other end?
We’ll never know, and the media doesn’t have a clue, but perhaps Ms. Obama touching the Queen’s shoulder was a good thing; a little honest affection goes a long way.
Thank you Contributors!
Clay and I are honored to bring to light our courageous contributors, each of whom have devoted time, energy, and authenticity to the stories within fear.less. We obviously couldn’t create something like this without their insight and wisdom, and the support of people like Howard Zinn, Immaculee Ilibagiza, Platon, Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith, and Tom Kelly. (Click here for full list.) They’ve shared personal stories, tools that they’ve used to overcome fear, and lessons we can all take something away from. Everyone has something to give. Our contributors have shown that they’re willing to give above and beyond what’s necessary.
Negotiate with your Fear
Don’t argue with William Ury. You’ll lose.
One of the world’s top negotiators, Ury co-founded Harvard’s Program on Negotiation where he currently directs the Global Negotiation Initiative. He is the author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No & Still Get to Yes.
In the last 30 years, Ury has mediated in conflicts from corporate mergers to ethnic wars in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. With former president Jimmy Carter, he co-founded the International Negotiation Network, and during the 1980s, helped the US and Soviet governments create nuclear crisis centers designed to avert accidental nuclear war. He’s served as consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House and recently was enlisted as a third party to help to end a civil war in Aceh, Indonesia, and to prevent one in Venezuela.
“Fear generates a type of holding on. The more you hold on, the more fearful you get and vice versa. You need to learn how to break the cycle and let go. For me, it’s much easier to let go if I’m in nature and I steady myself in order to gain a larger perspective around the fear. To realize that there’s a larger world, a larger presence, it allows you to see what you’re going through at that moment and shows you that no matter what, it’s quite small thing in the grand scheme of things.”
Read how Ury confronts his fear as he meets with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in fear.less.
Your life still has meaning
Danielle LaPorte on worst-case scenarios:
“I’m a huge fan of doing worst case scenarios in any kind of visioning or planning because you realize that even if you have to waitress, or sling beer, or live on a credit card, you’re not going to die. You’re still talented, and you still have passion, and your life still has meaning, even without the gigs.”
Danielle’s got perspective. She knows how often we relegate meaning to the bigger, more concrete things in our lives, relatively unaware that they have nothing to do with the real meaning of things. Usually it takes a worst case scenario to realize where meaning comes from in our lives. Hopefully we learn early on to make (and take) meaning from every experience we have.
Hear Danielle drop more useful honesty at WhiteHotTruth.com and check out her story in fear.less.
Impossible to the Human Imagination
Immaculee Ilibagiza in the bathroom where she hid for three months during the Rwandan genocide.
After reading her book, Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, I knew I wanted to share Immaculee Ilibagiza’s story in fear.less. It’s difficult to imagine how she survived the genocide by hiding in a bathroom with seven other women as killers lurked outside the house. The bathroom was so small that they couldn’t sit or stand at the same time, and Immaculee entered weighing 115-pounds and emerged after 91 days weighing only 65-pounds.
Here she describes the moment she realized that God had answered her prayers, that the killers not find them hiding a few feet away.
“How can hundreds of people, searching specifically for us, miss one door out of 4 bedroom house?” They searched and searched and didn’t see the bathroom door behind the wardrobe that we used to covered it. That’s impossible even to the human imagination! Many times they came back again to search and still, they never found the door.”
I spoke with Immaculee to find out how she lived through her experience and how her inner strength now allows her to share her message with millions of people worldwide.
Julia Cameron – A Worker Among Workers
This isn’t a lesson we usually like to hear, certainly not from our parents or friends, but it seems rational to listen to highly successful author Julia Cameron, who’s built her career on confronting her resistance and putting it in it’s place. Her book, The Artists Way, a roadmap of creative and spiritual lessons, has helped millions of people overcome their resistance to doing the work they need to do to fulfill their hidden potential. Julia tells it to us straight in fear.less:
“Work is a wonderful anecdote for fear. We have a duty to create, and when we finally do, a lot of emotional difficulties get laid to the side. I used to think praying would get rid of the fear and then I could take action. What I do now is pray, stay with the fear and take action despite the fear. I sit down at the computer and listen. Then I type what I hear.”
Now, get to work!
Best-selling author scared of writing?
Leo Babauta is author of Power of Less, Zen to Done, and Handbook for Life. He’s an online productivity guru (superstar) with the popular blog Zenhabits.
Excerpt from Leo’s story in fear.less:
“For a long time I was actually afraid to put myself out there and really go for my dreams because I feared I wasn’t good enough; that I couldn’t compare in the bigger world of talented writers and bloggers, so I never really put myself out there. I did what was safe for almost a decade of working, and it was only in 2007 when I decided to just try venturing out into the online world. I didn’t have any big dreams or goals, I just wanted to try it out.”
Get comfortable with fear
“A further sign of health is that we don’t become undone by fear and trembling, but we take it as a message that it’s time to stop struggling and look directly at what’s threatening us.”
-Pema Chodron
Pema Chodron is a Buddhist American teacher and foremost expert on fearlessness. She’s my go-to person when I feel fear. Her books, Going to the Places that Scare You, The Wisdom of no Escape, and When Things Fall Apart are best-sellers and once you read them, you understand why. Without fail, her wisdom-told as anecdotes and lessons from our fallible human lives-are always a helpful solution to uncertain and anxious times.
Read Pema’s teaching on getting to know fear here.
Howard Zinn Speaks!
Today I had an incredible interview with Professor Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, social activist, and historian. I’ve always highly regarded Zinn’s work, and wanted to interview him on his experiences with fear and his involvement in the Civil Right’s and Anti-War movements.
He told me about the turbulent times he went through in the South, as de-segregation slowly transformed the landscape and how his visibility within the movement increased his chances of arrest. He also gave his perspective on the mis-use of fear tactics by the American government and their injection of fear into society as a means of control and limitation on the American people.
Perhaps the one thing that really hit home was Zinn’s understanding that collectivity reduces fear-doing things together with people and working toward a common goal gives you the courage to move through the fears.
Into his eighties, Zinn continues to speak and lecture around the world, dropping knowledge about what should be inside the history books in our schools.
Want to learn about history and fear? Best listen to someone who’s lived it.
From refugee camp to Harvard to Oprah
I was speaking to my friend Chris Czerwonka about the fear.less e-book project and he told me about his friend Mawi Asgedom. When I learned Mawi’s story, I knew he would be perfect for our e-book. When I interviewed Mawi, his story brought me to tears.
As a child, Mawi fled civil war in Ethiopia. His family was separated from his father and they survived a Sudanese refugee camp for three years. After being resettled in The United States in 1983, Mawi overcame welfare, language barriers and personal tragedy to graduate from Harvard University with top honors. Mawi delivered the commencement address at his Harvard graduation in 1999.
Since then, Mawi has dedicated his life to helping youth reach their potential. He has written four books that are used in thousands of classrooms across North America and spoken to over 500,000 students and educators. Mawi also founded Mental Karate, a training organization that challenges youth to create their own inspiring journeys.
Oprah Winfrey named her interview of Mr. Asgedom as one of her 20 Unforgettable Moments in October 2005.
In Mawi’s fear.less profile, Mawi takes us through his extraordinary journey and provides the tools and frameworks for others to overcome their own fears.
I feel lucky to have met such an amazing and inspirational person. Check out Mawi’s story in the fear.less e-book, coming in July.