The one sentence summary

Fear is natural but if you deal with it effectively you can find your true voice and live a fulfilled life.

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WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • The cause of your dis-ease may well be the level of unspoken fear underlying your day-to-day actions.
  • Fear spoils your fun, keeps you small, betrays your trust, restricts your mental freedom and shackles your expectations. This can lead to the tragedy of low expectations.
  • There are 4 basic types of response to fear: fight, flight, freeze, appease. But it can be much more complicated than that.
  • In-the-moment fear can be as simple as missing a shot or messing up a speech. It is relatively easy to identify and understand.
  • Not-good-enough fear is more complex. It includes feeling that nothing you do feels good enough, you’ve stopped trying, or your relationships are suffering. Strategies for dealing with it include: process it, distract from it and rationalise it. See it, face it and replace it with something else.
  • Winning shallow is when you get what you wanted but remain unsatisfied.
  • Winning deep is real fulfilment.
  • Always wanting more is relative – the idea that what you have is more important than what you are.
  • The scarcity myth says that there isn’t enough winning to go round, but it’s a myth that there must always be winners and losers.
  • Success myths include:
    • Losing turns you into a loser
    • Fear is the best motivator
    • Only the fittest survive
    • If you’re not in, you’re out
    • Feelings are for failures
    • You need to sacrifice

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • Fear-full environments are unhealthy and usually promoted by inappropriate leaders. Their behaviour includes passive-aggressive, predatory, power-based and possessive.
  • The Hawaii suite is when someone is deliberately excluded from conversations that would help them function well, but they are still subject to performance expectations.
  • Horoscopey is a derogatory word to describe views that are unscientific, unproven and therefore invalid – in other words, I dismiss your opinion.
  • Obeying rules isn’t the same as buying in.
  • There is too much battlefield language in life – suggesting that everything is a fight when it might not be.
  • Fear is the thief of fulfilment. It gets distorted into other things such as staying separate from others, being jealous, perfectionism and self-criticism. You can replace this with a different story or purpose, dreams, desires, passion and laughter.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • The amount of resonance in this book will depend on the relationship the reader has with fear – an already content reader will find less of interest than a fearful one.