CHAPTER 3

GIVE YOUR MIDDLE FINGER TO FEAR

When you give fear your middle finger, you’re telling it to get lost. Only when you lose your fear will you find real happiness. Fear is an illusion and an illness. Reckon with it by leaning into it. This is the only way through it.

Giving someone the bird is an act that dates back to ancient times. It was a gesture that both expressed displeasure and diverted the threat of the evil eye, which is what I had in mind in the hospital when I began to move finger number three. Though my prospects for recovery looked good, I still had my doubts about my future. Will my hand ever be normal? Will I get a job? Will anyone love me if I am disabled?

Fear, the fight-or-flight response that caused us to run for our lives when being chased by tigers 50,000 years ago, remains a force to be reckoned with today. Fear continues to stalk us. It can short-circuit our dreams, leaving us full of doubts, then do-nots, and finally did-nots. Ask yourself these questions:

         •    How many relationships have you abandoned in your life because of fear?

         •    How many times have you chosen the safest way because you felt fearful of failure?

         •    How many career moves have you not made because they were too risky?

         •    Have you ever feared asking for what you believe you deserve at work?

         •    What about the fear of doing what you really want to do?

         •    How many times have you put aside something you were afraid to do?

         •    What would your world be like if you had the courage to attempt something you fear?

Let’s find out.

THE TALLEST FINGER

The middle finger is the tallest because it has the tallest order: to conquer fear in your life and fear’s cousins, jealousy and revenge.

When you give fear the finger, you are standing in harm’s way. Get fear out of the way and what’s left is a clear path to your dreams.

Fear is part of life, but it doesn’t have to be a part of yours. By getting to know your fears and rejecting them, they will be a lot less threatening—even losing their power.

When you give fear the finger, you’re telling it to get lost so you can find your authentic self. When you abandon your fears, you will begin to feel fully alive, adventurous, and open to new experiences you previously avoided. You will be on your way to the life you have always dreamed about.

FEAR OF THE DARK

I was once afraid of the dark. My parents told me it was due to a housekeeper who used to tell me ghost stories. The fact was that as a child I felt unsafe. My salvation was a nightlight. It kept the monsters hiding away in the closet and helped me quickly find the light switch.

The dark still frightens me. Only now, the dark represents the tunnels we go through in life and the holes we fall into on the way to building our dreams.

Nobody lives without fear, but shining a little light on the darkest part of the night will bring comfort and resolve. In this chapter we’ll move together toward the light. Face your fears and understand how fear puts dreams on hold and holds hope hostage.

TEACHING OURSELVES TO BE SCARED

For years, children have been taught scary messages that adults never thought twice about communicating. Kids of my generation were sure that if we didn’t brush our teeth at night, the boogeyman would get us. Some of us were even told that in the happy-sounding nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosie,” everyone falls down and then the plague descends on the town.

A world where London Bridge is falling down and Humpty Dumpty can’t be put back together again is really a pretty scary place. What are the messages these rhymes convey? Don’t rush it, don’t push it, don’t touch it, and don’t do it or you’ll get hurt.

Unfortunately, many of us never outgrow the fears of childhood. Do you know that when babies get scared they clench their fists? A clenched fist cannot receive. When adults clench their fists, we cannot receive what the world holds out to us.

WELCOME YOUR PROBLEMS

We all have problems. As discussed, it is how you look at problems that makes all the difference. A problem is a lesson you didn’t necessarily ask for, but when you embrace it and search for and discover a solution or a life lesson, you grow.

The Chinese symbol for “chaos” can also mean “opportunity.” Problems solved are opportunities. Problems are games that need to be won. So welcome them in. Just not for too long.

The word “ruminate” means to think deeply about something. The word sounds like roommate. Our thoughts are like our roommates. They bunk in our head and talk to us all the time. Sometimes our roommate will ruminate on some negative aspect of our lives. This kind of chatter can unnerve the best of us. Try switching roommates if yours is disrupting your thoughts and messing with your mind.

THE BEST WAY OUT IS THROUGH

The only way to beat fear is to meet it a little at a time. Find out where your fear lurks and when it cries the loudest and go there. Is it before a speech, an interview, at the beginning of a relationship, or at parties? When we can do the thing we fear, the power shifts and the death of fear is assured.

When I was twelve I went to overnight camp. One day I saw all the “cool kids” signing up for a horseback riding and camping trip. I had never ridden a horse before, but I said, “Why not?” The counselor asked me if I could post and canter. I said, “Sure, but my gallop is a little rusty.” Perfect! I thought. No galloping, but the rest will be a cinch.

I must have been on that horse for less than five minutes when he was spooked by a snake. We took off like a bullet at what felt like a thousand miles per hour. The loose stirrups repeatedly struck my ankles as I tried with all my might to hold onto the horse’s neck, screaming at the top of my lungs. This must have deafened the horse because the word “whoa” meant nothing to him. My counselor caught up to me and saved my life and my horse’s eardrums.

“Never will I get back on a horse,” I said. And I never did.

That is, until my honeymoon. Cynthia wanted a real adventure to kick off our marriage. I said, “Why don’t we go on an African safari?” She said it was a great idea—as long as we do it on horseback. What? I thought. But I wanted to do something special for her, so I decided to conquer my fear and get back on the horse. I took a month of riding lessons to prepare.

Cynthia and I saddled up and rode nearly 200 miles through Kenya. I never fell off, and I even galloped. Believe me, there’s nothing like the freedom of riding through the wind—except for the freedom from fear. Our “Out of Africa” adventure was also a trip out of fear for me.

THE FEAR OF FEAR

My friend and psychologist, Professor Art Markman, said something to me while I wrote this book that changed the way I look at life. It is sure to do the same for you. It was about the two ways people approach their days—openly or fearfully.

When we approach life with open arms, we live it to engage our ideals and dreams. This leads to happiness and fulfillment.

But when we live life to avoid an outcome, our best outcome can only be relief. Think about it: Dodging a bullet creates a lot more stress than aiming our energy toward our dreams. Put another way, fear of a result results in fear. An approach in which you have the best in mind is the best approach.

THE BIGGEST LIE EVER TOLD

I do not have a degree in psychology, but I have learned a lot about life over the past six decades. One lesson I learned is that fear is an illusion. It’s not real. In fact, fear is the biggest lie ever told. I love this acronym for F.E.A.R.—False Evidence Appearing Real.

When you fear something, you are telling yourself a lie. The evidence in our lives rarely adds up to the fear we experience. The fear is a result of projection—negative outcomes we’ve conjured in our minds.

We tell ourselves stories about how we are not measuring up, not doing the job, not getting the grade, the promotion, the girl or the guy. These nots become knots that seem impossible to unravel, but the stories they’re based on are fiction.

To write our story truthfully, we need to look through a different lens than the one magnifying our fears. It is the lens of reality.

Consider the work of the American psychologist Albert Ellis and what he called the ABC Method. A is the activating event that actually happens. B is what you believe to be the truth, and C is the consequent feelings you have due to your belief. This method became the basis of cognitive therapy, which helps people process thoughts in healthier ways to cope with depression, anxiety, and other disorders. Ellis believed that by changing the way you think about your fears, you could change your response to them. The combination of the actual event, your belief of what that event was, and the consequential action stemming from your belief, will dictate your action.

SAYING “GOODBYE, FEAR” IS AS EASY AS ABC

Here is an example involving my family. The activating event (A) was a call from a pawnshop telling us that our son Alden had pawned a necklace. Coincidently, Cynthia was missing one.

Our belief (B) was the possibility that Alden took the necklace and pawned it. Was he in some sort of trouble and needed money? Our minds raced toward all kinds of possible scenarios, many of them negative. Our angst meters were redlining (C).

When Alden got home, he told us that he had done a good thing. He had sold a necklace for his friend Igor (the necklace was a gift to Igor from his grandparents) so that Igor could buy his parents an anniversary gift.

See how ABC works? The actual event led to a belief that was false, which led to an anxiety-ridden consequence—fear. There was no evidence other than our mistaken thinking that showed Alden did something wrong. In fact, he had done something beautiful.

A more typical example is a teacher or boss telling you that you could be doing better work. You can choose to think (1) that you are a failure, which will lead to anxiety and worry or (2) that you did the best you could, which might leave you feeling disappointed but confident in your ability to improve—and NOT riddled with fear.

Remember, we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. We need to mind our mind-set. Through the lens of fear the world looks like hell, but through the lens of faith, heaven appears.

PUTTING YOUR FEARS ON THE COUCH

When Cynthia and I got married we sought out a top psychologist, Dr. Arthur Cohen. We were very happy. We didn’t need help saving our marriage. Rather, we wanted to savor it. So, we went into counseling to be proactive.

Our sessions were sensational opportunities to discover ourselves and plan the life we had always dreamed about.

The meetings also helped us understand the power of intimacy and the fears that can undermine it. We learned about Dr. Cohen’s Bubble Theory, an amazingly valuable framework for protecting a couple’s intimacy.

Here’s how it goes. You and your significant other live in a bubble. No one can enter that bubble but you—not your children, not your parents, not your friends. Your bubble is the safe and sacred place where the two of you build your love with passion, intimacy, and constancy. Your extended family lives in the bubble right outside yours. And your friends live in the bubble outside their extended families’ bubbles.

The Bubble Theory has two rules:

         1.    You and your significant other create a bubble for your relationship that is impermeable. No one can get in but the two of you.

         2.    You are welcome to enter the bubbles around your bubble—your children’s, parents’, and friends’. But they can’t invite themselves into your bubble.

Your bubble protects your intimacy. Cynthia and I found this especially helpful in creating the intimacy that we still enjoy today.

Put into practice, the Bubble Theory will help keep your most intimate relationship bubbling with love and teach others what it means to be a committed couple. Unfortunately, you bring your fears with you everywhere you go, even into the bubble. Getting to know your fears, I have learned, diminishes their power.

When the fears do pop up (and they will!), we use Dr. Cohen’s four R’s: recognize, reject, replace, and reinforce. First, recognize your fear. Call it out. Then reject it as unsound and unwarranted. Next, try to replace the fear with healthier, more loving thoughts. Last, reinforce your new, more nurturing thinking every day.

This is not a quick fix or a magic bullet. But it’s a great framework to help you think about intimacy and how fear can scare it off. If you are looking for something that will change your life in a day, call in the anti-bummer squad.

THE ANTI-BUMMER SQUAD

I have a friend named Danika who lost her way. She had been in a business partnership that soured and she felt stuck. I called her and said, “Let’s have Danika Day.”

This was a day created just for her and those she trusted. I asked Danika to bring five people to the table, where we would all focus on creating the life she had always dreamed about. We were her anti-bummer squad, and we were there because we cared.

Caring is having a deep knowledge of someone else so that you may help them grow. To have a deep understanding of another, you must listen deeply. And that’s what we did. We learned so much about our friend—everything from her love of making pies to her love of connecting people. Caring for another is not about instilling your ideas but distilling their thoughts in service of them. Care is the great enabler of our time.

Our hope was that we could discover what Danika cared about through our caring, and we did. Her future was present. She would create a social media company connecting her clients to everyone and everything. I named her company Everywhere. And now, because she did the heavy lifting—actually lifting herself out of her rut and building her enterprise—her company is everywhere.

And the anti-bummer squad can be everywhere, too. A teacher can turn a C–student into a student who seizes the day. Parents can convey that they are present for their children when things go wrong, not just when things go right. We want our children to be happy. A thumbs up will often get them there, but listening up always will. In a unique way, parents are anti-bummer squads for their children. Have a family meeting. Discuss the worst part of your day as well as the best.

Instead of threatening people with firing, anti-bummer leaders fire people up. They see the word “care” in “career.” At work and at home, we all need to replace Who cares? with Who do you care about?

THE FORGETTERY

I have two places in my head for things that happen to me. If the experience is a good one, it gets stored in my memory. If its not so good, I bring it to my forgettery.

Of course, there is no part of the brain with that name. But I use it to describe the place in my mind that shreds everything I don’t need—regrets, anger, and other negative thoughts that prevent me from remembering all the good stuff.

Sometimes it helps to take yourself to the forgettery. When we get outside ourselves and expand our orbit of caring to include others, life is grander. Forget about yourself and focus on another. As I tell my sons, if you want to impress someone, let them impress you.

FEAR HATES TRUST

Trust is amazing. It is the glue of every relationship. It makes couples strong and safe and leads them to freedom and intimacy. These two words may sound like strange bedfellows, but they’re really not. When you have trust you are free to be yourself. When you are truly your genuine self with another, you have found intimacy. Without trust you are not free to be “me,” which gets in the way of the intimate “we.”

A marriage vow is a trust. When you and another human being enter into such a contract, you put out a contract on fear. Trust is a bounty hunter of the fears that break the bond between people.

PUT YOUR FEAR IN MY POCKET

I’ve got a confession: I’m scared to ski. At least I once was. While I was on my first ski trip with Cynthia in Vail, Colorado, a ski instructor taught me the secret of being a great skier. He said, “If you let me put your fear in my pocket, you’ll be able to ski down this mountain or any other in the world.” I handed over my fear and then I swooshed and whooshed on the slopes all day.

Many years later, as my mother lay dying in a hospital room, ten-year-old Alden told me he was scared about his grandmother dying. I told him to put his fear in my pocket. Soon he was sound asleep.

Darkness looks a lot less scary when someone is with you, whether you’re facing a mountain or life itself.

THE SAFE WAY IS A GROCERY STORE

Fearless people live life fully. Anything else is a compromise. Remember what Theodore Roosevelt said about daring mighty things versus living in the “gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat”? I tried to write something like that for years.

I was once asked by an advertising journal to sum up my business philosophy and everything I know and want to say into one sentence. My response? The safe way is a grocery store.

It says it all for me—take the safe way and instead of being made “Head of the Company,” you’ll end up with the title “Head of Lettuce.” And to those of you who have gotten somewhere and don’t want to lose ground, I have a message for you. When you minimize future risks by pulling back the reins, forgetting the boldness that made you what you are today, be careful, because you just might fall off the horse.

If you’re not taking a risk at work, you’re not doing your job. If you’re not taking a risk in your relationship, you’re missing out on the gift of intimacy. If you’re not taking a risk, you’re not taking home the rewards. Life is for the living, not for the “ifing.”

BEFRIEND A FEAR

It helps enormously to share your fear honestly with a partner or a friend.

A friend of mine was petrified of falling off a mountain or other heights. She didn’t like the feeling of losing control and ultimately was diagnosed with a spatial disorder that affected her balance.

She shared the problem with her husband and he was empathetic and asked how he could help.

Together they attacked the fear, bringing in a professional to help. My friend’s husband learned how to reassure her, to hold her hand as they approached the edge of a height slowly, without belittling or downplaying her fear.

Her anxiety was very real, but she also learned to trust and lean on her husband more. He reaffirmed her and made her feel safe, not fragile. He encouraged positive self-talk and, over time, she made significant progress.

To their credit, they have traveled to many high places including Schilthorn, a nearly 3,000-meter peak in the Alps, and Mount Masada in Israel. My friend still does not love heights, but she has learned to treasure the views and the experiences. She refused to let fear stop her from enjoying life with her husband, a travel enthusiast and fun-loving daredevil.

STOP FEAR COLD

What’s worse than fear that’s out of control? Fear in control. Every time I got a sore throat I thought, “Oh my God, I’ve got throat cancer.” Okay, I was a little bit of a hypochondriac, but that was my fear.

I would make all sorts of little deals with God on the side. My favorite was, “God, I hope it’s a cold. I really pray it’s a cold. Oh, please make it a cold and not cancer.”

You know what I was doing? I was making a pact with God to give me a cold. Looking back on those days, I realize that I got more colds than anyone else I knew—all because I made a cold the answer to my prayers.

This is the power of negative thinking and proof that sometimes you are your own worst enemy. The next time you are under the weather or feel like you have been left out in the cold, try comforting yourself with good thoughts. They can stop fear cold.

DON’T “SHOULD” ON YOURSELF

What do you fear? Take a moment to think about it and then write it down. Are you afraid of giving a speech? Too scared to speak up? Are you fearful that you will fail at work? Are you scared to ask someone out?

Here’s a little trick I learned many years ago. The next time you tell yourself, “I’m scared,” exchange the word “scared” with the word “excited.”

Both emotions cause a rush of adrenaline in our bodies, but one leaves you with a woe and the other a wow. And for heaven’s sake, stop saying the word “should.” It’s a terrible word. No, it’s the worst word. Worse than any four-letter word I know.

Here’s one “should” I strongly recommend. Go to your backyard, dig a hole about a foot deep, write the word “should” on a piece of paper, and bury it.

A simple device I use to ward off foreboding thoughts is the rubber band exercise, which is effective and inexpensive. Put a rubber band around your wrist. When a negative thought pops up, pull it and let go. The thought is gone in a snap.

BREAKING THE SHACKLES OF FEAR

Losing your fear takes concentration. After all, when was the last time you tried to lose something? Try losing your car keys. It’s almost impossible when you try to lose them because you’re thinking of losing them rather than gaining something else. So, if you want to switch jobs, don’t say, “I hate my job,” but rather, “I love that other job.” Then you’ll be spending your time finding what you love rather than losing what you hate.

I know it’s hard. Fear is everywhere. News thrives on it and for good reason. “Three people dead!” makes a better headline than “300 million people still alive!” My wife, a former TV news anchor, taught me the newsroom rule, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Advertising sells fear. If you don’t drive this car, you won’t be going places in life. Use the wrong breath mint and no one will talk to you. Most insidious to me is the subtle message that if you use this product, you will be loved. The other side of the coin is that if you don’t buy the product, people will not buy you.

It’s as if there is a global conglomerate called Misery Loves Company made up of all the negative people in the world. All you have to do to be hired is be scared. Be fearful. Be negative. And make someone else feel the same way. Today, there are local branches of MLC springing up all over. If you’re a card-carrying member, quit. Now!

Fear is addictive, like cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs. Think about all the negative people and situations in your life. Would it hurt you to let them go? Can you let them go? Or are you like the smoker, the alcoholic, or the drug addict who cannot imagine life without the substance? If it hurts to let go, you are addicted.

In fact, people can get used to anything, even if it’s bad for them. A study was conducted with convicts who were incarcerated for more than twenty years. Once released, the majority would commit petty crimes in hopes of returning to their comfort zone—the prison cell. We do this all the time, but in place of cells, we have fears. It’s time to break out and break free of the fears that imprison you.

GET RID OF FEAR IN A SNAP

It takes time to make peace with your fears. Here is a helpful exercise that uses your middle finger with a little help from your thumb.

Look at your middle finger and visualize a fear that you have. Say it in your mind and let the words travel from your head, down your neck, across your shoulder, down your arm, and up your middle finger until it’s so small it can fit only on the tip. Now, snap your finger. The snap you hear is the sound of your fear exploding. It happens every time your thumb goes up and your middle finger goes down. Repeat this exercise in the morning and night before you go to bed. Thumbs Up, fear down.

FEAR OF LOSING IT ALL

Fear of failure is one of the most common fears. One semester in college, my fears convened in my dorm room. My girlfriend had left me for a dentist, so I felt that nobody loved me. I didn’t know whether my screenplay would be recognized, so I couldn’t tell if I was worthy of calling myself a writer. I wasn’t pursuing my parents’ career dream, so I thought I had failed as a son. And I was losing my hair.

I called my mother to share my woes. “Mom, my woman left me. I don’t have a job. And I’m losing my hair. Chances are I’m going to end up single, homeless, and hairless!”

Mom responded, “Would that be so bad?” I thought about it and realized it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I was living and that was what mattered. My mother said, “If you are not living, you are dying.” At that moment, I decided I was going to live.

When I changed my attitude, I changed my altitude. Everything was looking up. First, I stopped comparing myself to the dentist. He gets to stare into mouths for the rest of his life. How much fun could that be? Second, I decided I was a writer. I didn’t need permission from anyone. As Popeye the Sailor Man says, “I am what I am.” Third, I realized that what was in my head was far more important than what was on my head.

The real irony about losing it all is that only when we let go of it all will we have nothing to lose, including the worry about losing it. So let go of everything, because you can’t control anything. No one. No thing. Not even your hair. When everything is gone, you are everything.

FEAR OF HAVING IT ALL

There are those who are afraid of heights and those who get vertigo when reaching for lofty goals. That’s because most goals fall short of bringing us true and lasting happiness. Reaching the top of our profession or accumulating all the money in the world is not the grand prize. Not even close.

The having-it-all mentality probably gets its start around the fourth grade when we are degeniused. Yes, I believe we are all born geniuses, with the ability to dance, draw, and sing. Then, school makes young adults out of us by taking the children out of us.

The word “education” is from the Latin word educare, which means to draw out that which lies within—that is, within the students’ hearts. Instead, teachers and parents push stuff into their heads. The result is young adults who have memorized life instead of being mesmerized by it. We graduate from school as excellent sheep.

So it’s time to unlearn what “having it all” really means. I propose a new definition for having it all: living the dream.

Goals are ephemeral. They disappear once you reach them, and in their place are other goals. Dreams, on the other hand, never die because they are what make life worth living.

Try this exercise. Sit with your loved ones and make a list of goals. Now take money, fame, and success off the list. What remains is a Gold List, which defines your dreams.

Here is my Gold List, for example:

         1.    To love and to be loved

         2.    To help my children never lose the child within

         3.    To have good health

         4.    To create a home, a soft place to land

         5.    To write things that make a difference in people’s lives

You are not your money, your house, your car, your job, your career, your jewelry, your clothing, your travel itineraries, or your corner office. If you were to lose your goals, you would be left with gold. All that counts is the stuff you can’t count.

FEAR OF IMPERFECTION

We invest more money trying to look younger than on healing our bodies from illness. According to the Huffington Post, Americans spent more than $10 billion on cosmetic surgery in 2011 alone, altering their faces and bodies, hoping that the repair will replace their despair.

Here’s the wrinkle: Lifting our cheeks and chins fails to lift our spirits. Movie idol and leading lady Katharine Hepburn never had cosmetic work in ninety-six years of life. She believed that old age was a privilege.

Hepburn must also have been an “imperfectionist.” The healthiest and happiest souls I know are those who believe nobody is perfect. For imperfectionists, perfect is imperfect because it is insatiable and impossible.

Perfectionists are the Joneses next door. You know them. They are the people you are always comparing yourself to. He makes more money. She’s smarter and skinnier. They have better jobs. They have a housekeeper. Their relationship is better. He has it all. She’s got it easy. They go out more. They have a pool.

Perfectionists always come up short. They can never be smart enough, rich enough, or young enough. Imperfectionists, on the other hand, are enough. And that means they have it all.

Ninety-nine percent of all the misery we feel daily is due to one thing: comparing ourselves to others. Believe me, if you don’t compare, your life becomes incomparable.

Stop asking the mirror who is the fairest of them all. You are. There is no one like you in the world. If you have doubts, watch the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s a story that proves we are all a part of a bigger story.

Perfect needs a comparison. Nothing compares to you. In the perfect world, imperfect is really perfect.

FEAR IS A FORM OF ATHEISM

You are on a personal road to discovery. The road is well lit, which makes it easy to skip down the path, dance down it, run down it, and go down backward. You’re not scared because there’s light. But there’s a dark part of the road to discovery, too—the scary tunnels where you can’t see what lies ahead.

It is here that we must be the strongest because if we stop, so does our journey. Fear is a tunnel. And the only way out of it is through it. If you want to face and fight your fears, this is the perfect place to meet them. Because it is in the darkness that we also meet the superhero Faith. The next time fear knocks on your door, send Faith to answer it. You’ll find no one there.

Where faith opens doors, fear shuts them. You could say fear is a form of atheism. The only scary thing about faith is you have to take a leap, knowing that the net will appear below. I promise you it will. Keeping the faith means putting those negative thoughts aside and giving fear the finger.

Fear is a disease. It is the illness of our time. Thoughts have wings, and the negative ones must be clipped, because negative thoughts that fly away always carry back negative messages.

FEAR OF SPEAKING

According to the Book of Lists, public speaking is our number one fear. I have given more than a thousand speeches that have reached more than a million people. And I still get the jitters when I walk out on stage.

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned along the way:

         1.    Lack of fear leads to a lackluster performance. Without empathy, expectation, and nervous excitement, you can’t perform your best.

         2.    Passion is more important than knowledge. Talk about something you love.

         3.    Don’t read your speech. It’s a talk, not a read.

         4.    Break the ice with a joke. It warms up your audience and calms you down.

         5.    People love an imperfectionist. So be one.

Finally, remember that rehearsal and preparation will head off anxiety. But if you’d rather die than go up there, talk to your doctor about the beta-blocker Atenolol and, if suitable, take one tablet before your talk. It will keep your heart steady while you knock everyone off their feet.

The secret to a standing ovation is this: Lift people higher than they were when you found them. Open with your heart and close with theirs.

FEAR OF DYING

I wonder what our world would be like if we were taught from day one to give back. That giving was more gratifying than getting. Well, our days would be very different. We wouldn’t want to just get to work but rather to give ourselves to work. Getting a promotion would be replaced with promoting another’s dream. Getting love would go hand in hand with giving love. We would not be trying to get the most but rather to give the most.

Perhaps, then, when we finally give back the ultimate—our bodies—we would not fear death. Rather than fear the end, we would feel we are giving back to the earth.

WITHOUT FEAR WE CAN MARCH FORTH

I know of a Native American legend in which teenagers are taken up a mountain and told to jump from one peak to another. In one particular tale, a teenager, though at first scared, is encouraged by the chief and taught to have faith in his ancestors who all made the leap across the chasm. The teen jumps and, like those before him, makes it to the other side. In so doing he becomes a warrior.

Life is full of chasms to jump. We hesitate less because we are afraid to fall and more because we are afraid to fail. What would you do if you could not fail? What do you love? Do it. Whom do you love? Tell them. Without fear, all of life is possible.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt told a tired and struggling nation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

This is not only the most famous quote about fear but also the secret to beating it. Knowing that fear is not real, will not reason with you, and has absolutely no reason to be in your life, you now can march forth.