Pinchpin
Pinchy is not a keystone of the food pyramid, but he sure tastes good.
Consider this another tool on the pegbar of the diffident.
So fear.less contributor and fount of inspiration Seth Godin has this grand new book called Linchpin discussing the indispensable person – someone with vital intellectual capital. You can survive in this sordid economy if you’re too precious to release.
Few people are truly indispensable. People on every level of leadership within an organization may be special, distinguished, and crippling to lose, but rarely will you meet that legendary person whose departure would smother you with regret.
And it’s really hard to show someone (potential employer? eh?) that they honestly cannot live without you within moments of meeting them. Everyone who reads fear.less is clearly an amazing person with a lot to offer, but it’s just a fact of life that often we’re not in positions to say “get like me”, to hold ourselves hostage, to cement our destinies.
I have two fear.less contributors in my head right now: Colleen Wainwright and Leo Babauta. Colleen has been hired by companies that “weren’t hiring” just because they wanted her. Leo’s proven approach for fighting fear can be summed up as “baby steps”.
So much in the same way that I can derive satisfaction from being an “ersatz Jesus” in my attempts to be a good person, I have a new stepping-stone aspiration on my way to being an indispensable linchpin: being a kind of indispensable pinchpin! (I don’t think that’s a real thing.)
What a copout, right? Honestly, I’m not a linchpin though. Not yet. Not to anyone’s tribe but my own embryonic one. I don’t have enough experience and that’s okay, I think.
But what the fearful do more often is underestimate our power – typically to about zero.
If you’re not the head of an organization, you can at least be an arm. You don’t need it but wow, you don’t want to lose it. What I have found on my quest to combat fear is that feelings of inadequacy, of being one white sheep in a cottony sea of thousands, often originate from holding back your personal inner magic. But that magic is what tempts people’s appetites. If they don’t need you, make them want you. Draw them in with an authentic magnetism that they might not even understand, and back it up with honest drive. I will let you know how this goes.
Being invaluable starts with being valuable.
The Cost of Fear
Last November, WIRED magazine ran an important cover story on the detrimental effects caused by some parents’ fear that vaccines cause autism.
It’s worth a read.
Link here.
Contrarian Determinism
The Fear.less staff
Today is a Saturday, a balmy summer morning, a couple days after my quietly-celebrated 40th birthday. Everybody around the house seems not distant, necessarily, but reserved. It’s eerie. My son and my brother decide we’re gonna go out golfing for a few hours.
I know what’s going on here, because I have seen it happen many times. The golfing outing is a distraction for all my friends and family to show up at my enormous surprise party. Politely, I stay quiet and feign ignorance while outgolfing my family. At 3:00 p.m. we begin the trip back. The car pulls into the driveway. I walk out back, preparing my plumb-flustered face.
No one is there. There is no party. What the hell? Why?
Because I thought about it first.
This is an extrapolation of a fanciful idea I had a couple years ago that I called, to be as pretentious as possible, contrarian determinism. It means that stuff doesn’t happen to you only because you imagined that it might happen, and the universe hates you. Do you think you’re going to find your wallet when you go back to the restaurant? Well it’s gone forever. Do you think you aced your exam? B-.
And it only works to hurt you. So you can’t imagine your best friend dying in all sorts of horribly brutal accidents and make him immortal.
There is a little truth to this idea, unrelated to fate. Running scenarios in your head like movie scripts is a common preparation technique for job interviews and dates but sometimes it can severely derail you when you’re caught unaware by a diversion from your imagination. But it is clear that this idea is also the epitome of diffidence. After years of being assured variations of “anything is possible if you just believe”, I came to almost seriously think that “what you want is impossible, just because you believe it. You, specifically.”
When we are afraid, we begin to subscribe to philosophies of fear. With our limited, fear-stained experiences, we construct a framework for a dreary ontology.
In reality, “nothing ever goes my way” is always false when said by a living thing. Instead of classifying and varnishing the architecture of our pessimism, giving it a name and joking about it with out friends, let’s try knocking it down.
It can pose a challenge. When something I was looking forward to gets postponed or cancelled, my kneejerk reaction is to blame it on myself for having fantasized about it first. This is ridiculous.
Many of the Fear.less contributors laud the importance of mental training, of wiring the brain to just not lend any credence to that insanity. And you, and I, should listen. Because you just can’t go on thinking that the universe is fundamentally opposed to you.
The Price
Howard Zinn is a Fear.less contributor with a rich life-tapestry and a compelling story to bring to our magazine. The interview he gave refreshed, in contexts steeped in the most important events of American history, basic and treasured bastions against fear that we sometimes lose sight of. He granted adages like “strength in numbers” and “stand up for what you believe in” a brighter breath.
He died on January 27, 2010. I went into a class of mine two days later and the professor informed the class that “Howard Zinn, hero of the American Left” passed away a couple days ago, and the class’s general sentiment was “for whatever that’s worth”. Then this morning, three weeks later, in a different class, we discussed federalism and Hamilton and Madison and Wheatley and a student brought Zinn into the conversation and at the mere mention of his name the instructor flinched and went “ugh”.
A second later, when I realized that several circumstances precluded Zinn from defending himself, I gained new insight on courage.
I have a capricious interest in politics and I had never heard of Howard Zinn before I read his Fear.less story. I didn’t know he had written over 20 books, or had participated in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement with so much exposure. I gathered from his Fear.less story the general idea that he placed himself in peril for his beliefs, but I under-understood it. The man put himself on front street, at risk of either praise, or disgust and derision from my class’s pretentious gooberocracy. I grasp how fame works, but it never really hit home until I saw how it affected people’s perception of Howard Zinn. It resonated with me because he participated in a project that has brought me great personal reward, not because I agreed with his politics, but I’ll make do with what I have.
Ideas can be big hits, but big hits make big waves, in all oceans. J.K. Rowling and Stephen King have earned vast wealth and admiration for their imaginations, but it’s so easy (especially through the cowardly anonymity of the Internet) to find people blubbering “Harry Potter is formulaic tripe” or “King can’t write endings worth a crap”. Maybe it’s true, and those people are entitled to their opinions. Certainly Zinn generated controversy and disagreement. But sometimes the amateur armchair critics overdo it. They hate people who are commonly believed to have universal acclaim. When your beliefs and ideas become exposed to millions, you open yourself up to be hated. Not just your ideas, you. People will seriously think that you are a detriment to the human species. And yeah, you can dismiss them as petty and resentful and all that, but I don’t think you can escape being stung over and over. Unless you are even more fearless than Howard Zinn.
The day Zinn died there was discussion about it on a forum I frequent, and in poured anonymous insults more severe than what the relative politeness of the classroom allowed my instructors to get away with. My responses were incredulous and profanity-ridden. These people didn’t even know him. I never met him, but after reading his Fear.less story I wish I did, and I know something about how he felt during a very important time in his life and in American history, and he seemed like a swell guy. I am biased because like Zinn I support civil rights and liberties (crazy I know) and would have opposed the Vietnam War, but I didn’t know any of that about him until after I learned his position on fear.
In one of his last interviews, Zinn said he wanted to be remembered as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.” As far as I’m concerned, he succeeded with his Fear.less story, and also taught me something about the challenge of standing up for what you believe in. And yeah, a lot of bad people say nice-sounding things, but I think there comes a point where you have to admit to yourself that maybe someone who disagrees with you isn’t a villain who’s going to cripple the human race, they just disagree with you. Reserve the rage for the malevolent and the manipulative, why don’t we.
I have a story that exemplifies this, a story about Roger Ebert and Rob Schneider.
Rob Schneider releases Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, which is panned by a Los Angeles Times critic. Schneider attacks the critic in an open letter, mocking him for not winning any awards… “maybe you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who’s Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers.”
Roger Ebert, alumnus of my university and all-around disher-outer of important thoughts, replies in his review of the film, “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.” He then writes a book about terrible movies called Your Movie Sucks.
Two years later, Roger Ebert is struggling with cancer, operations, recovery, life. Then he writes a curious article: “A beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to the house the other day. A handwritten note paid compliments to my work and wished me a speedy recovery… The card was signed, “Your Least Favorite Movie Star, Rob Schneider.” Roger Ebert realizes something important. “They were a reminder, if I needed one, that although Rob Schneider might (in my opinion) have made a bad movie, he is not a bad man, and no doubt tried to make a wonderful movie, and hopes to again. I hope so, too.”
I didn’t know Howard Zinn but from what I do know about him I don’t think he was a bad man and I find his story very uplifting, even after what he has posthumously taught me about the price of being vocal.
Stand up for what you believe in. You will make mistakes. You will have to put up with a lot of bullshit. But do it anyway.
Rest in peace, Mr. Zinn.
Chameleons
Have you ever read the Fear.less blog and exclaimed “What the hell? He’s not talking about fear!” That’s wrong. You are wrong. I am always talking about fear.
A lot of people (conservative estimate: a bajillion) have said that fear and love are the two most basic human emotions, and I agree. (Maybe one day you will see Love.less. I mean more.) Basic emotions tend to evolve into many different forms that are often related. Imagine fear is a chameleon. It can change color based on its mood, still certainly a chameleon, but manifesting in ways dependent on the situation. And, if it also happens to be camouflaged, you might not be able to see that it’s fear at all.
Fear is the parent of anger, sadness, hatred, ignorance and low self-esteem. And probably many other things, but I am trying to avoid falling into the habit of writing long lists. When you take a deep breath, give yourself a compliment or research something, you are really targeting the angry/incompetent/stupid part of the problem, and this chips away at your overarching fear.
We address a wide variety of fears in our magazine. When you’re being pulled over by a cop, the techniques suggested by the neuroscientists we interviewed for managing the fight-or-flight response will come in most handy. This situation has little to do with depression or self-loathing and is a more primal fear. But if you’re nervous about beginning to teach a group of people, maybe because you don’t know how or you think you are not cut out for it, that’s when Ben Zander’s suggestions for gentle, nurturing instruction will give you the tools you need to be a better teacher in your own eyes.
So sometimes these blog posts will look more like they belong in Hate.less or Cry.less or Commit.less.arson but you should think of them as chapters in the Fear.less story instead of negligent diversions from our goal.
In fact, when you find yourself experiencing a higher negative emotion, try to figure out what the corresponding fear is. If you dislike your boss, is it because you fear living in a world where the dishonest and inconsiderate can have positions of power, or because you fear the affronts to your self-worth that come from him breathing down your neck every day?
Fear-reducing observation of the day: at least you are not this thing.
What the Future Holds
No, not this I hope.
After working on and planning out later issues of fear.less, I can’t help but use the future as a salve for the wounds of the present. I have much work to do this week that is unrelated to fear.less and it will be agonizing. But when it is done I will be, at least for a while, in a state where I can focus on things that really reward me. This right here.
I’ve alluded to this technique in previous posts but as I am consumed by it now I just have to suggest it outright, to everyone who has an imagination or at least is willing to accept the possibility that they do. It’s a meditation thing. You’re in the troublesome present now, but close your eyes, let your mind’s eye bathe in thoughtful psychedelia, and picture a future where the present’s hassles are things of the pastles. A realistic future, no flying away on dragons or anything. I imagine my work finished and my mind free to focus on this.
One time last year my friend and I went out for a run late at night and found ourselves caught in a wild spring storm. Torrential rains, howling winds, you know the drill. We took shelter in a building a long way from our apartment and, since we were basketcases afraid of getting struck by lightning, sat there a while, waiting for the storm to stop. It showed no signs of doing so. This was pretty frustrating. I sat there thinking, not frantically wanting for warmth and dryness and safety, but sculpting it in my head – the glorious release of changing out of soggy clothes, the relieving anticlimax of falling onto my bed in triumph. Feeling better, we laughed and talked for a while, and then we hauled home at warpspeed. Upon making it through the front door, arms raised, we danced like crazy people in front of several confused but clearly moved people. The relief was double – not only had I made it home, but back in the rain I had sewn myself a coat made of a situation and I discovered that it fit comfortably.
Personally I have a tough time with meditation and thought exercises but I find this one stark enough to make a difference for me.
And, since I mentioned them I may as well comment on them: the issues of fear.less we’re working on are stupidly good. Stay tuned.
Cutting the Deck
“Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.” I forget exactly where this is from, but I think it’s from a Robert A. Heinlein book. What it means is, if your back is against the wall, do something. (Almost) anything. Even if you don’t know the ins and outs of possible repercussions, you might do something that can help you out.
In Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, the titular character is ambushed in the showers of the Battle School by a bully named Bonzo. Ender slyly manipulates the vain Bonzo into fighting him one-on-one, but knows he will probably get ruined. As they exchange dramatic banter, Ender turns on all the showers in the bathroom to maximum heat. “I’m not afraid of hot water,” Bonzo says. But the steam makes Ender sweat. Between that and the soap on his body, he becomes a slippery fish. Bonzo wants to throw Ender into a toilet, but when he tries, he can’t get a solid grip and becomes vulnerable. Ender beats him senseless. A lot of good not being afraid of hot water does.
I am big on real-life examples of things, so take a gander at seth godin add some brackets, a blog post by fear.less contributor Seth Godin. Unexpected punctuation to distract someone from getting intimidated by the daring idea – wily, right?
Both of these examples have calculation in them, they’re not truly random. Rarely will you be in a situation where your actions, much less that one that saves your skin, comes out of completely nowhere. The point is there are a lot of little things with unpredictable effects that, especially if you have the disadvantage in a situation, might be helpful to introduce. The other point is that they are introduced by action, by making them so. As fear.less contributors Bernard Lown and Paul Ekman claim, action can go a long way to reducing fear, but it may also coincidentally defeat it outright. You choose to say the weird thing at what turns out to be the right time, or put just the right spin or quirk into a presentation that makes it pop. And in times of great antagonism, you may even the playing field by creating a situation that your opposition did not anticipate dealing with – making the natures of ideas and people more clear.
Don’t be a seventh-grader about it, but keep it in mind. Some balances are best tipped by fate.
Wow I Suck
Who thinks this? Let us extrapolate to a variety of topics. The tantras of low self-esteem! (Or is it mantras?) To the big bad dog-eat-dog go-get-’em types, these look like short hurdles, or maybe just one of them is tall. But sometimes Type B people want to be successful too.
-I am not shrewd enough to make the sale
-I am not creative enough to generate elusive ~*~NeW iDeAs~*~
-I am not perceptive enough to deduce what this person is thinking
-I am not charming enough to build a social network
-I am not attractive or talented enough to have confidence
-I am not adaptable enough to belong here
-Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat some wo-o-orms
-Everything I touch gets ruined
-God hates me
-I too miserable of an excuse for a human being to conquer my fears
It’s true. If you think the guitar is broken, you won’t bring down the house with it. This is an important post for me to write and I realize that a lot of you forward-thinking entrepreneurial types have opinions of yourselves that range from “okay” to “God”. I am being silly about it but some people, even if they aren’t trying to make money or help people, are still crippled by fear because, dang it, they’re just dopes. Or so they think. Fear.less contributor Karen Armstrong is very big on compassion, so I invite you “I-love-me” types to indulge and nurture those who are less existentially fortunate than you, because they could still have a lot to offer even if they don’t think so. “No time to waste on wet blankets!” Whatever dude. You don’t impress Karen Armstrong. Or me, Deputy Editor Supreme of Fear.less.
Did you hear that? You still have a lot to offer, even if you don’t think so! You could be wrong about you! Ignore the urge to point out “yeah, being wrong, how very like me” and perhaps consider the possibility that you do not know yourself as well as you think you do. Maybe you have been trying for 20, 25, 30 years or more, but for some of that time you were incontinent… the point is that if you think so negatively of yourself there are probably a lot of arenas you haven’t tested yourself in.
Do it. Leave your comfort zone. Start the album, shoot for the interview, get the girl. It terrifies but it rewards. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain. You will learn about you and the world and your place in it. It doesn’t matter if it comes from real resolve or from coincidentally productive fatalism. Even if you totally blow and the world totally blows, if you just admit to yourself that there could be a chance that it is not true (since you have not met everyone or been everywhere or done everything in the world) then you can begin to turn things around. It’s okay if it’s a slow process (hint: it is) and it’s okay if you still get crapped on. It’s really okay. fear.less contributor Pema Chodron has written books on how to view things as okay and be your own friend. Check one out.
I feel like I am being harsh, but I hope it is interpreted more as Vigor and Inspiration because I used to think I suck, and now I think I am okay. (Partly thanks to the art of BLOGGING.) Treat yourself gently and find people who treat you gently, not like me, who Tells You What To Do. Thoroughly hopeless people like Charlie Brown and John Locke are exclusively television inventions.
You ARE at the very least an adequate enough person to throw yourself together and bare your teeth at fear. I personally have never met a decent-hearted person that I thought was beyond redemption. Fear is for everyone. Consider that courage is, too.
The Dot in Fear.less
The chemistry of the moment courage overcomes fear is a total mystery.
Fear.less loves stress management techniques, productive reframing and positive thinking. We have psychologists and neuroscientists ready to explain why these work. Almost all of the contributors admit that they were afraid at their life-defining moment of truth and continue to feel fear to this day. Fear remains a presence in their lives, and for some of them, it even becomes a moderator or ally.
You can weaken fear or reshape it, but it will remain, telling your dreams “no”. No matter what there is going to be some precise, hyperdense point in time where your fear meets your new mind face to face – and hand to hand. All your new perspectives and defense mechanisms are but preparations for this one quantum of self-confrontation.
Nobody knows how the mechanics of this battle for sure. You will just have to make a leap of faith of some length and dare to venture a piece of yourself.
You’ve been on the high diving board for a while now, staring down at the water and the witnesses, too conscious of the harsh crispness of the air. Once you tip your body over the edge, you have decided. Gravity runs its course and there is no turning back. There is a fateful autonomy to it. Soldiers trained by generals must pull the trigger, alcoholics tempered by meetings must skip the party.
I think fatalism can be a factor in this moment, and so can love, and anger, and I’m sure many other things, many other volatile cocktails of emotions tailored to different people. It’s not useful to ruminate too much over it though. I just think it’s important to know that it’s there, looming, waiting for you. A singularity where you decide to sit down and write a business plan or a job application or the next great American novel.
That’s what the dot in Fear.less means to me. In a way I think that devoting yourself too much to fixing your mindset can distract you from the reason you want to do that in the first place. Your head is full of background noise and with our magazine we’ve trying to lead each reader to the stark silence of peering into his fear’s eyes and then making his move.
Get fearless. But then get the dot.
When You Can’t Get Answers
The speed and scope of the Internet can provide so much to us. Sports stats, TV spoilers, job opportunities, provocative thoughts, rare products, and overlong lists of things. It’s the Information Age, and information possessed by a person is called knowledge. Sweet, powerful knowledge. The curious and the hungry can find explanations for almost anything if they look. Almost.
Sometimes, you just don’t get any answers.
It is terrifying to be without knowledge. Not being able to make sense of something twists your stomach and melts your skin. Some dark beast at the periphery of your existence passed you up for a promotion, wrote you a Dear John letter of babbling incoherence, or ended the life of someone you love. Your attempts to connect the dots calls the whole design of your life into question. Where did I go wrong? What threads of perverse causality led me here? How is it narratively acceptable that I, the lovable hero of my own story, am flailing in helpless ignorance? When your search for meaning turns up nothing and you start to contemplate your irrelevance, you just hurt more. You receive (and probably have given before) half-answers and limp solace. It wasn’t the right time. It just wouldn’t work out. Shit happens. All men/women are scum. He’s in a better place. These thought-terminating clichés help no one. But here’s one that I think might see you through. It’s a revision of my Sweet Isolated Statement above.
Sometimes, you just don’t * need any * answers.
*insert expletives as appropriate to level of indignation
The universe is too big and mysterious for anyone to know everything, and too big and beautiful to waste time searching for rationalizations that are hiding from you or aren’t there at all. If you can muster the courage to celebrate life, love, time, beauty and earnest effort, you can make your own truth. There is no door so heavy that you can’t close it alone. You don’t have to be puppeted about by a cruel and hazy past. A lot of our past is a useless blur anyway.
You are in pain, no doubt. But how do you know an explanation would even help? You may just learn that hard work doesn’t pay, that you are not appreciated… it would actually be nice to have the doors slam shut on that kind of thinking. Instead of scrabbling for answers, ask new questions. You might not see them yet at your emotional nadir, but there are so many silver linings waiting to be woven into a coat for your chilling heart.
We may be owed explanations, but we aren’t slaves to them.
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.
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.
What Is That Thing?
“Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone’s neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what is that thing.” – Jack Handey
Harry Potter may be fictional, but if he were real I’d try my best to get his story into our quaint little Muggle book. There is one small attribute of his character that represents an enormous and liberating truth about the battle against fear.
Voldemort, the villain of the Harry Potter series, is such a terrifying and dark figure that the vast majority of the wizarding population can’t even bring themselves to say his name. They call him “You-Know-Who” out of fear of wetting themselves, annihilation at the hands of the Dark Lord himself, or both. Harry is one of the few characters in the books brave enough to say “Voldemort”, and that’s not just because being afraid to say a word is a ridiculous concept. Harry knows that to fear the name is to fear the being, and he figures, how can you fight something you can’t talk about?
It’s no coincidence that many of Fear.less’s contributors are writers and speakers. Pema Chödrön, Seth Godin and Julia Cameron are all prolific authors. Benjamin and Rosamund Zander have cranked out a book. William Ury has written a few. Immaculée Ilibigiza’s is great. Seth, Danielle LaPorte, Chris Guillebeau and others have popular blogs. The Zanders, Karen Armstrong, and Jacqueline Novogratz have all given TED talks. The list goes on. These are successful people who know how to get messages across. Their ability to articulate their fears is not only what makes Fear.less possible but also what helped them overcome their own personal Voldemorts.
A few contributors (I won’t spoil which ones) present the idea of taking a good look in the mirror to figure out what exactly you’re afraid of. Identifying, classifying, pinpointing the nature of their fears play a big role in their stories. These people know that if something has a name, it exists. If it exists, it can be destroyed. With talking, writing and fleshing out comes information and knowledge, and knowledge is power. There’s a reason “the truth will set you free” is such a popular Bible passage.
Other contributors go on about support systems or transparency which are neat entrepreneurial jargon words for discussing your concerns with others. In general, things get less scary when everyone knows a lot about them, and that’s sort of the point of Fear.less in a nutshell.
In commemoration of seeing your fears in your reflection, today’s Fear.less editing soundtrack sample is Nine Inch Nails – Right Where It Belongs. It also features the notion of your world being all in your head, another theme among various Fear.less contributors. And I didn’t give one for the previous post on Seth Godin, so here: A Perfect Circle – Rose, a great song about rising up from the paralysis of fear.
What is that thing? Find out, and you will be empowered.
Seth Godin… Transforms!!
Seth Godin did a lot more than just contribute to fear.less. The whole project materialized in the first place as a result of his Alternative MBA program, which brought together a tight platoon of amazing, innovative people, two of whom are the creators of fear.less. Since the fear.less team is working under Seth, and I am working under them as editor, Seth Godin is basically my grand-boss.
Seth is a marketing master, brimming with business know-how, which he uses to fill many best-selling books. I read one. It was called Tribes, and it was delightful. His blog is read by more people than you will probably ever meet in your entire life. The man is certainly on top of things.
What sort of words pop into your head when you think of salesmen and entrepreneurs like Seth? “Shrewd”? Perhaps “calculating”? If Seth is the Optimus Prime of marketing, he must be a robot in disguise, yes? With his bald head and knowing smile, he is the poster boy for icy composure. He is like Agent 47 from Hitman, except for marketing. There’s no way this ultra-calm and collected man feels fear, right?
Wrong!
It turns out Seth is cool exactly because he isn’t cold. Seth may be the most panicked entrepreneur in fear.less, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Soon, you will get to read how Seth transforms from a guy armed with only a newsletter, an idea about lavender livestock and a severe case of failurephobia, into the radiant paragon of marketing wisdom leering at you above.
I think that’s pretty inspiring, Mr. Godin, even if you can’t morph into a truck.
The Profound Effects of Sound Effects
I don’t want to spend every single blog post lauding contributor after contributor, or there wouldn’t be any surprises left by the time the book came out. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t absolutely love to discuss fear and tools for dealing with it with you, though. In the future, watch this space because the Fear.less team is on the hunt for resources, articles, or anything at all that involves overcoming fear. If you can help us along, that would be awesome. Our contact information is up top.
Years ago a friend who was much older than me gave me the following advice:
Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.
Not much of a card player, I was confused. Basically it means if you are struggling with adversity, introduce a random element and see what happens because you have nothing to lose. Many times, a sudden and unexpected action or development can work wonders against your fear. I’ll give you a humble example.
A few months ago my roommates were sprawled on their couches, wallowing in misery and dread over upcoming final exams. It was an almost constant torrent of basketcased dismay – about illogical grading practices, the impossibility of the material, everything. It was as if a C in aeronautics translated to an F in life.
I wasn’t immune to the malaise, but I was getting tired of it. I unplugged my headphones and turned up my volume, and after one roommate’s particularly incensed mini-rant, I fired off a clearly misapplied Instant Rimshot.
The positive effect was immediate and stunning. After we stopped giggling like hyenas, we realized what we had learned – that just because circumstances are outside your control, the forces that do have control are not necessarily malevolent. The Instant Rimshot represents a theme that is brought up over and over again in Fear.less – looking at your situation from a different perspective (in this case humorous).
Fear.less contributor Danielle LaPorte wrote an amazing blog post on how to be depressed (certainly a common partner of fear), and one of the tips involves casting your feelings in an absurd light by playing dramatic music, flailing your arms and declaring your plight. I’ve confirmed that moaning “I’m so depressed!” and then playing the sad trombone works equally well.
Sometimes all you need to reframe your perspective is to shake things up a little, and sometimes all you need to shake things up a little is a goofy sound clip. I stated above that we at Fear.less are being vigilant for useful fear-related material, but vigilance can also help you catch something that can turn everything around, if nowhere else, at least in your mind and heart.
Today’s fear-related song of the day is Morcheeba – Fear and Love. Love – now there’s something that comes up a few times in Fear.less.
THE DOORS CLOSED BEHIND ME
“When I initially went into the ashram, the first thing that entered my mind was the fear of living in a strict environment and leaving my family. Perhaps because of a deeper commitment to my soul, which seemed to give me enough courage to follow my heart, I keep them at bay for a little while. It wasn’t until the doors actually closed behind me that all the stuff hit the fan!”
-Rev. Tom Kelly, monk and spiritual seeker for over 40 years