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.

Can’t be bothered to read it? Too much screen time lately? Listen to the 5-minute podcast.

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:
  1. Losing turns you into a loser
  2. Fear is the best motivator
  3. Only the fittest survive
  4. If you’re not in, you’re out
  5. Feelings are for failures
  6. 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.