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We
are pleased to present the following
excerpt from the book
On Becoming
Fearless...in Love, Work, and
Life
by Arianna Huffington
Little, Brown and
Company - September 2006
On
Becoming Fearless
How Fear Limits Us
Beyond the major moments of fear in our
lives, there are many other times we
sacrifice our personal truth to go along,
be approved of, or just plain be "nice."
Because despite all our advances, there's
still a huge premium on women being
"accommodating" and "team players" who
don't "rock the boat." As Marlo Thomas
once said, ''A man has to be Joe McCarthy
to be called ruthless. All a woman has to
do is put you on hold." Or, as a friend of
mine operating in the treacherous
political world of Washington's Beltway
told me, "It's good to be a team player,
but you also have to know the difference
between all of us standing together and
all of us jumping off the same cliff." If
you let them, the hungry little gremlins
of compromise will devour your soul bit by
bit and come to dominate your life. They
feed the fear of being left out, the fear
that survival will be impossible outside
the tribe. No wonder fear shoots through
our veins, constricting our blood flow and
shutting down our creative energy -- we
are in survival mode.
When we are in the grip of survival
thinking, the dominant illusion is that
once we vanquish the enemy facing us,
overcome the obstacle in front of us, get
over the next hill, life will be secure,
free of problems, perfect. Then we will be
fearless. Then we can start the life we've
been planning on. But that long-awaited
day never comes because there is always
another enemy, another obstacle, another
hill.
To live in fear is the worst form of
insult to our true selves. By having such
a low regard for who we are -- for our
instincts and abilities and worth -- we
build a cage around ourselves. To prevent
others from shutting us down, we do it for
them. Trapped by our own fears, we then
pretend that we're incapable of having
what we want, forever waiting for others
to give us permission to start living.
Pretty soon, we start to believe this is
the only way.
The most common response to this crisis
of self is conformity: "The individual,"
Erich Fromm writes in Escape from
Freedom, "ceases to be himself; he
adopts entirely the kind of personality
offered to him by cultural patterns; and
he therefore becomes exactly as all others
are and as they expect him to be . . .
This mechanism can be compared with the
protective coloring some animals
assume."
So, ironically, the woman who appears
well adapted may be the one who has simply
become most comfortable being governed by
her fears, while the "neurotic" one is
still gamely struggling to reach
fearlessness.
Mastering Fear
Fearlessness is not the absence of
fear. Rather, it's the mastery of fear.
Courage, my compatriot Socrates argues, is
the knowledge of what is not to be feared.
Which is to say, there are things we
should be afraid of -- we want to
stay alive, after all. We will never
completely eliminate fear from our lives,
but we can definitely get to the point
where our fears do not stop us from daring
to think new thoughts, try new things,
take risks, fail, start again, and be
happy.
Fearlessness is about getting up one
more time than we fall down. The more
comfortable we are with the possibility of
falling down, the less worried we are of
what people will think if and when we do,
the less judgmental of ourselves we are
every time we make a mistake, the more
fearless we will be, and the easier our
journey will become.
I remember once talking to my
eight-year-old daughter before a school
performance. She kept saying she had
butterflies in her stomach because she was
afraid to go on the stage. What if, I
asked her, the butterflies were actually
there because she was excited to go on the
stage? She considered the idea. In fact,
it became a little joke between us. ''I'm
not afraid, Mommy," she would say. ''I'm
excited." The more she repeated it, the
more she believed it and the less afraid
she was. Since fear is such a primal
reaction, making the choice to move
forward despite fear is an evolved
decision that transcends our animal
nature.
In the chapters ahead, I will provide a
road map for achieving fearlessness in
every aspect of our lives, a
straight-to-the-point manifesto on how to
be fearless. How to be bold. How to say
what we need to say and do what we need to
do in a way that has us embracing, not
fearing, the reactions of others. Why
speaking out is almost always better than
silence. How to assess what's holding us
back from being our best, most honest
selves and what we must do to change. Why
the world will be a better place if we
actively work for the things we want and
believe in.
I have my own key to overcoming fear. I
look for the still center in my life and
in my self, the place that is not
susceptible to life's constant ups and
downs. It doesn't mean that I don't lose
my head and that I wouldn't rather have
success and praise than failure and
criticism, but it does mean that I can
find my way back to that center, that
secure structure of inner support, so that
all my negative emotions, and especially
my fears, become opportunities to achieve
fearlessness. If we can find that greater
inner freedom and strength, then we can
evolve from a fearful state of living to a
state of freedom, trust, and
happiness.
We have so much potential, yet we hold
ourselves back. If my daughters, and women
of all ages, are to take their rightful
place in society, they must become
fearless. This book is dedicated to them
and to that goal.
Copyright
© 2007 Arianna Huffington. Reprinted
with permission.
Arianna
Huffington has written eleven widely
praised books, appeared on numerous
television and radio shows, and founded
the Huffington Post, an enormously
successful online source of news and
opinion. In 2006 she was chosen as one of
Time magazine's "100 Most
Influential People in the World." She
wrote this book for her two daughters, in
the hope that they will lead fearless
lives.
Read
Dr. Dolhenty's Review of this Book
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