Don’t Feed the Wild Fears

Look, we’ve both read a lot of books, right? Self-help, motivation, and so forth. In fact, if you’re like me, you’ve even made it a permanent sub-set of your lifestyle. So we read books. We attend seminars. We expose ourselves to all kinds of positive, uplifting input. And the advice we find there often comes down to some version of “Just Do It.” Well, that does sound logical. Simple, even. But isn’t it a shame how poorly that advice works out in real life?
How often, when you’re facing a big, difficult, daunting task, are you able to “just do it” and be confident going in that you’ve got it covered? If it’s less than 50%, then maybe we need to consider some kind of change in strategies.
If you’ve been thinking along the same lines, then here’s a book you might find interesting. My friend Craig Desorcy wrote “Starve Your Fear” out of his own experiences … his own personal, sometimes agonizing odyssey of discovery.
The book is more helpful than most. But fair warning. It’s a bit … well … different. Refreshingly so.
Different also is its author, Craig Desorcy. He shares his story in a simple and straightforward way. In fact that pretty well describes Desorcy himself. He’s a no-BS guy. He tells about a mentally ill mother who rejected him and who eventually drove him out to become a homeless street kid.
As you read about his “childhood” and early life, you just know this guy is going to have a different take on what the rest of us call self-help. For him it was more like grit-driven survival.
Desorcy says about motivation: “I was never a real big fan of Nike’s popular saying, ‘Just Do It’ because it’s not that easy. If it were, we all would be ‘Just Doing It’. ”
Well finally! Somebody who admits it isn’t always easy (in fact it usually isn’t) and then advises what we can do about it. Yes, in real life. It’s all presented right there in black and white (or, on a Kindle, you can opt for sepia and umber if you prefer). Desorcy explains why your fear, if you’ll let it, can be pure wisdom for you … it always has been. Then, much more usefully, tells you how to give up your addiction to it.
You learn how to make real, honest-to-gosh 16-minute breakthroughs. He also tells you how to, at last, get out of your head and into your life. And much more, of course.
Now, when one person reads this book, s/he can find nuggets scattered everywhere. On the other hand, the next person might race through or skim over it and then, in their wisest, most condescending and well-informed voice, say: “Nope, nothing new here … it’s all the same old ideas.” Partly true, but partly VERY untrue.
Sure, the big pieces, the principles and the laws are unchanging.
But the little pieces, the details of applying those principles, those are where you’ll find the real differences, the real action. They make up the secret sauce that allows one teacher, one coach, one trainer to stand head and shoulders above the crowd. And you’ll totally miss that sauce if you’ve just sat yourself down and read the book like a novel.
On the other hand, if you’ll read this book slowly, reflectively, taking the time to think about how the ideas in every paragraph, every sentence, can be applied to your situation, then you’ll start finding gold everywhere you look.
And you’ll come away with a clearer idea of who this Craig Desorcy guy is and what his book has just done for you. More importantly, you’ll know more about who YOU are (and how you can benefit from it).
But you can’t JUST do it. You’ll need to do it with real open-mindedness, real thought, real awareness. Do that and it can lead you to the real-life, practical how-to of starving your fear.
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