Embracing Fear How to Turn What Scares Us into Our
Greatest Gift
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reatest-gift/
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In loving and grateful memory of
Charles Leon Smith, Jr.
1918-2001
and
Antoinette McDonald Smith
1919-2001
real-life heroes and
authentic role models
of genuine courage
If I refuse to listen to the voice of fear,
would the voice of courage whisper in my ear?
—JANA STANFIELD, Brave Faith
Contents
Foreword vii
Epigraph iii
ONE Don’t Run, Don’t Hide: The Power of Fear 1
TWO Stepping Up: The Meaning of “No Fear” 21
THREE Walking Kirby to Class: Facing Big Fear 37
FOUR Making a Run for It: Getting to Fear 53
FIVE Why Me? Why Not Me?: The Question of Deserving 73
SIX Encore, Encore: Life’s Recurring Themes 91
SEVEN Unique Just Like Everyone Else: What We Have in
Common 109
EIGHT Up Against the Wall: When It’s Time to Challenge
Fear 133
NINE The Push: Leaning into the Fear 149
TEN Signing Up: Realities of Roads Less Traveled 165
ELEVEN Beyond the Wall: Living the Courageous Life 185
Thom’s Nutshells 201
Acknowledgments 205
About the Author
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Foreword
WHEN MY BOOK The Gift of Fear was first published, some
people recoiled from the title. “Fear’s not a gift I want!”
people told me. Really? You don’t want to receive nature’s
brilliant survival signal, the signal most likely to warn you
of danger?
Similarly, some may recoil from Thom Rutledge’s concept
of embracing fear. This feeling we run from, this emotion
that controls so many people, can be, as this book makes
clear, our most effective and protective ally—but first we
have to know what it is, and what it isn’t.
We confuse true fear with unwarranted fear, mixing them
up with anxiety, worry, and dread as if they’re all the same.
So to define our terms:
• True fear is a signal in the presence of danger. It is al-
ways based upon something we perceive, something
in our environment or our circumstance.
• Unwarranted fear is always based upon our memory
or our imagination.
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In day-to-day life, you can quickly tell the difference
between the two. Imagine, for example, you’re about to
board a flight and you’re suddenly overtaken with dread
and uncertainty about the pilot’s ability to fly the plane. If
that dread is based on a plane crash you saw on the news
three weeks ago, it is unwarranted fear. If the fear is based
upon seeing the pilot stumble out of the airport bar, it’s the
real thing.
True fear is the messenger that intuition sends when the
situation is urgent, and it’s not easily quieted. If you want
it to leave you alone, whatever questions it poses must be
answered. Thom helps us find those answers. He’s a funny,
compassionate teacher whose class could be called Fear
101—or more intelligently I suppose, Embracing Fear.
Thom shows us the power we gain when we stand up to
fear—and the bullies who deliver it. Governments have
embraced fear, but in a much different way than Thom
suggests. Throughout history governments have used fear
as the perfect method for persuading (and often bullying)
populations to accept actions they might otherwise resist.
All governments on earth want their citizens to believe that
only the government can protect them, and they know this
works best if they generate fears that are new and improved.
The old fears just don’t get our attention as well.
The fear du jour for both the government and the news
media, as if you need a reminder, is terrorism—but it’s al-
ways something. It’s as if there’s a space in our collective
mind reserved for things that frighten us, and that space
must be kept occupied. If we are not fearing terrorism, it’s
mad cow disease, or killer bees, or gas-tank fires, or danger-
ous tires. Before September 11, we feared enemies within:
AIDS, asbestos, the vengeful coworker, the local serial
Thom Rutledge / ix
killer, the home invasion robber, the rampaging high-school
student.
A scientific poll conducted before 9/11 asked Americans
what they feared, revealing a virtual catalogue of cata-
strophes right off the television news. About a fifth of the
respondents reported a fear being in an air crash.
This isn’t surprising given that, through the magic of
video, we are there whenever a plane falls to earth, wherever
on earth that happens to happen. So there are people who
drive to the airport obsessing about their plane crashing
even as they do something far riskier than flying: drive
without paying attention.
While 20 percent of Americans were worried about being
in an air crash, 18 percent worried they’d become victims
of mass violence. The two fears collided on 9/11, so, while
the percentages of fearful people would be higher today,
my point is that these fears are not new.
Even before 9/11, there were people who’d cancel a trip
to see the pyramids in Egypt for fear of being killed by ter-
rorists, and then stay in Detroit—where the risk of homicide
is twenty times greater!
One in three Americans fears being a victim of a violent
crime, even though only one in one hundred and fifty actu-
ally will be. This fear of being harmed by other people is
understandable (though often misplaced), but what about
the fear of electromagnetic fields (16 percent of Americans),
or the fear of foreign viruses (30 percent)? I actually met a
lady with that fear, by the way. Where? In a television news
studio, of course. The station was doing a special segment
on a lethal new disease virtually certain to kill us all before
the end of sweeps week. It was a scary sounding, hard to
ignore, got-to-see-this, “Honey, get in here!” made-for-TV
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disease. As you may have already guessed, it was the flesh-
eating disease. Lacking anyone who actually suffered from
the malady, television officials brought in a woman who
was worried that she might have it. I was introduced to her
before she headed to the studio, and as I watched her inter-
view, it crossed my mind that she could have told me all
this before shaking my hand. But no matter, she didn’t have
it, and I didn’t catch it, and neither will you.
What’s left to fear? Well, more than a third of Americans
fear getting food poisoning from meat, a fear as rich in irony
as meat is rich in cholesterol, because uncontaminated or
“safe” meat contributes to many more deaths than does food
poisoning each year.
When I think like this (you know, reasonably), I hear the
words of the television news producer in Chicago who as-
sured me that “A little worry never hurt anybody,” and that
is just not so. Through high blood pressure, heart disease,
depression, addiction, and a myriad of other stress-related
ailments, anxiety kills more Americans each year than all
the foreign viruses, bad meat, electromagnetic fields, and
airplane crashes put together.
Think of the times your mind just wouldn’t stop chewing
on something, just couldn’t stop tossing and turning on its
own bed of nails, just couldn’t find peace. Television news
is that exact same mental energy given a billion dollars in
resources, inspired to dwell on every fear, wired to propel
itself far and near, spinning around the world until it reaches
terminal velocity.
The news media is a giant mind, a giant unquiet, over-
stimulated mind that won’t let itself rest—and won’t let the
rest of us rest either.
In millions of homes, newscasters are guests who arrive
Thom Rutledge / xi
in the afternoon full of frightening tales and gory pictures.
They stay through dinner, enthusiastically adding grisly
details that make the kids wince, and they’re still around at
bedtime to recite a scary story or two. While newscasters
are showing slides of thier awful vacation, you slump to
sleep, only to find in the morning that they are still there,
eager and fast talking, following you around the kitchen
warning you about the dangers of coffee.
Little wonder we Americans are steeped in anxiety and
unwarranted fear: having lived through the previously un-
thinkable, our minds are more open to the unfathom-
able—and television news has rushed through that opening.
We are built to anticipate what’s coming next, and television
feeds this natural interest with stories about things that aren’t
actually coming next: worst-case scenarios and dark predic-
tions delivered by presentable-looking “experts” who valid-
ate our wildest worries. Footage from past disasters is mixed
with scary graphics; in all the confusion, the qualifying
words (might, allegedly, possibly, could, potentially, con-
ceivably) drop from consciousness, leaving only the sense
that danger is everywhere around us. Combine the words,
the graphics, the logos, the music, the urgency and you end
up with a small amount of information hidden behind an
unhealthy dose of sensation—and the sensation is fear.
Since there can’t be a video of what isn’t happening, tele-
vision news producers show us terrifying footage of some
other incident. They call someone a “nuclear terrorism ex-
pert,” which is an unusual expertise considering there’s
never been an act of nuclear terrorism.
With all the risk and danger television sprays at us each
day like tear gas, it occurs to me they should simply open
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each evening’s show by saying, “Welcome to the Channel
Two News; we’re very surprised you made it through an-
other day.”
We can really use Thom’s help with all this, particularly
given that fully 90 percent of Americans feel less safe today
than they did growing up. But let’s take a look at that “safer”
world of your youth. It was a world without airbags or
mandatory seatbelts, before the decrease in smoking, before
early detection of cancer was possible, before 911 systems
showed dispatchers the addresses of people in distress. You
remember those carefree fifties before CAT scans, ultra-
sound, organ transplants, amniocentesis, and coronary by-
pass surgery. Remember those oh-so-safe sixties when angry
world powers struck war-like postures and schoolchildren
practiced monthly air-raid drills on how to survive nuclear
attack?
The fact is that young people are more likely to survive
childhood today than in 1960. Vehicle fatalities have dropped
25 percent since then, deaths by other accidents have been
cut in half, and cancer deaths have been reduced by 30 per-
cent.
Admittedly, the violence we see today is far more grue-
some than what we saw growing up—but that’s the point:
it’s the violence we see. We have a far larger catalogue of
fears to draw upon, and I believe we’ll all be safer (and of
course happier) if we throw that catalogue out with the
other junk mail.
The book you’re holding can help you do that.
With fear, as with physics, everything we give energy to
takes energy from something else. Thus, needless worry has
several costs. My suggestion is to explore every intuitive
sig-
Thom Rutledge / xiii
nal (of which fear is one), but do so briefly and not repetit-
ively. When faced with some worry or uncertain fear, ask
yourself the following: Am I responding to something in
my environment or to something in my imagination? Is this
feeling based on something I perceive in my circumstance,
or merely something in my memory?
If the feeling is a worry, we just chew on it, giving the il-
lusion that we’re doing something, when in fact, worry is
stalling us from doing something. Conversely, when a
dreaded outcome is actually imminent, we don’t worry
about it—we take action. Seeing lava from the local volcano
ooze down the street toward our house does not cause any
worry; it causes running.
The best antidote to worry is action. Hence, if there’s an
action that will lessen the likelihood of a dreaded outcome
occurring, and if that action doesn’t cost too much in terms
of effort or freedom, then take it. The worry about whether
we remembered to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs
can be stopped in an instant by checking. Then it isn’t a
worry anymore; it’s just a brief impulse. Almost all worry
evolves from the conflict between intuition and inaction.
My work has focused on fear of violence and death, but
of course, those aren’t the only fears that hold us back. After
all, everybody dies, but not everybody lives. I’m confident
this book will help many people to really live. As Thom
teaches, “Sometimes fear is part of the problem. Sometimes
fear is the problem.” When we are really paying attention,
he says, fear can also be part of the solution.
We’re funny creatures who can always find some fear or
worry to get in our way. For example, without the help of
xiv / Embracing Fear
Thom’s concepts, I’d probably be closing this foreword with
some awkward reminder to the reader about the relevance
of my own book, The Gift of Fear.
Thanks to Thom, I just don’t have to do that anymore.
GAVIN DE BECKER
Bestselling Author, The Gift of Fear
CHAPTER ONE
Don’t Run, Don’t Hide
The Power of Fear
There is only one freedom: the freedom from fear.
—ORIAH MOUNTAIN DREAMER
WE ALL KNOW FEAR. I’m not talking just about the big
fears—terror and panic—but fear in all its variations. Fear
is our constant companion, our day-to-day nemesis, and our
ultimate challenge.
Fear fuels our negative and judgmental thoughts and our
need to control things. Fear underlies guilt and shame and
anger. Every difficult emotion we experience represents
some kind of threat—a threat to our self-esteem or to the
stability of a relationship (personal or professional), even to
our right to be alive. And threat translates to fear. Start with
any difficult emotion you choose, get on the elevator, press
B for basement, and there, below the guilt and shame and
