Fear is overrated. In fact, fear is a punk. 

Yet, nothing devastates the spirit, dreams and aspirations, more than our unreasonable fears.

We all experience fear. Myself included. My biggest fear is tied to being — or ending up poor. Why? Because I was homeless for six months of my life when I was 18 years old in Los Angeles. I can tell precisely where, and when. It’s not really reasonable to believe, at this point in my life, that I would now somehow experience true financial, or even social or spiritual poverty. But emotions — and our fears — are not rational. And that’s the real point.

Fear, feeds on our emotional and spiritual weakness. Our lack of faith, in something larger and more important than ourselves.

Some so-called tough guys will tell you that they don’t experience fear, but they are all either lying, or they are legitimately insane. Disconnected from our reality. There are good reasonsto have reasonable fears in this life. A bear chasing you in the wilderness, for example, is often reason enough. You may not respond in fear, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t experiencing any.

Most of us are so utterly destabilized by fear, that we cannot even tell you what we fear the most. It’s just too terrifying.

Ask the average person (or even yourself) and the answers would be mostly predictable, and wrong. Death, taxes, job loss, poverty, personal rejection, embarrassment, public speaking, and so on. But these answers are all wrong. 

The real answer, for what we fear the most, was best articulated by my friend, fellow Global Dignity co-founder and world renown philosopher, Professor Pekka Himanen, who said, “the thing we fear the most, is ourselves.” Boom. 

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