Thread by @startupdaemon

I spent a good portion of my life cringing and cowering in fear, usually fear of my own shadow.

These days people more often think I'm crazy because of my fearlessness.

How do you make the shift from snivelling cowardice to absolute fearlessness?

Fearlessness and shamelessness are Integral values to be treasured and essential Character to be cultivated. They go with one another really well.

Don’t believe me. Try them sometime.

Most people underestimate the monumental impact of fear in their lives. Because lo-awarenes.

You probably underestimate the crippling effects of fear in your own life, too.

Because it’s normal to have fears. Also normie.

You don’t have to be like the normies.

To conquer fear, you must understand how it works and how it affects you.

Growth often begins with new Awareness.

You’ve heard about ‘fight or flight’ response, right?

Well, that’s not how fear works, not even close.

Fight and flight aren't equal or concurrent.

They are an afterthought, too.

Don’t be surprised that people routinely gripped by fear are also sluggish and slow.

Cowardice is associated with being ‘low-energy’ and ‘sleepy-eyed’.

Stereotypes are often wrong but never accidental.

Fear rides on stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine. Cortisol, the big kahuna of stress hormones, is released by the adrenal gland.

When the adrenal gland is always busy secreting cortisol, it becomes conditioned to do so.

Habit becomes preference.

Cortisol secretion crowds out adrenaline secretion, and the gland itself becomes depleted, so even fear response is dampened.

No amount of physical training will save you from being low-energy if you keep feeding cowardly thoughts and your self-image of cowardice.

Fear literally saps the life out of you.

Fear feeds inflammation and insulin resistance.

Fear makes fat.

The cortisol in your bloodstream stimulates the release of glucose. Your body ends up in a cycle of boosting and dampening your blood sugar.

Doesn’t take much for this chronic stress to become obesogenic, especially if you eat junk as a coping mechanism.

Fear makes you fat.

The 'fight or flight' cliché is just a reflection of mass ignorance. The broken culture is gripped by fear because it’s clueless about fear.

The fear response comes in three stages, not two, and they really are stages which always occur sequentially even if you can’t see them.

The graduated fear response is to freeze first, flee next and fight last.

Fearlessness is the only way to avoid this cycle.

Those deer that get hit by cars don’t freeze out of courage. They freeze in the headlights because that’s their primary fear response. The deer that can’t move past freezing into flight end up dead.

It's the perfect metaphor for most people's lives.

Most people are massively passive in life because they are permafrozen in the first stage of fear response, and they are so desensitized that they don’t even realize it.

Apathy is a marker for unconscious fear, whether repressed or unarticulated.

The dumbphone has become the most powerful enablement of fear among the lo-awarenes mass. It offers quick decision-making substitutes for everything.

So anyone can survive without ever having to move out of the deer phase.

You don’t know how to get from A to B – dumbphone.
You don’t know where to eat – dumbphone.
You don’t know how to do something – dumbphone.
You want to vent and complain – dumbphone.

It’s a pseudolife of perpetual avoidance.

If you can't operate without your dumbphone for a day or two, you are a certain prisoner of the freeze-in-fear response.

It’s a clear tell.

Get triggered all you want.

If you feel stuck in your life, it’s because you have become addicted and desensitized to the freeze reaction.

You live frozen in fear without even knowing it.

With your dumbphone, you're suspended in digital distraction and fall easy prey to corporate marketing.

You're not just the consumer anymore, you're the product.

The dumbphone makes you disposable and substitutable with the next datapoint and statistic in the database.

It's how the corporations want you – docile and fearful.

The cure to the freezing stage of the fear respons is cheap and easy.

Simply move – move into anything.

Anything is better than a life in suspended terror.

When you move, you become conscious of fear. The flight and fight stages of fear response become available. Either of them is better than being frozen.

Make decisions and take action immediately, even if it’s utterly frivolous. Get on with getting over your fear.

The flight response kicks in when being frozen becomes untenable. You must take action or be hit by a truck.

The shocking thing is that so many people choose the truck –

fat, diabetes and death;
toxic marriages;
soul-sucking jobs;
self-isolation;
self-loathing and complaining.

In flight, you get the curative effects of movement. You are energized and invigorated even if you’re still stuck in fear. You now have options to change direction.

Get this on a deep level.

Flight is better than 'standing your ground' in suspended terror.

Whatever toxifies your life, you can literally move to get back on track – on to a new home, a new city, a new country even.

It’s the most underrated way to pull the plug and make a fresh start.

Because most people in need remain frozen in stage-one fear response.

Even apex predators like lions and killer whales go through the freeze and flee stages before they go on to fight.

It’s how nervous systems have been wired for aeons.

To master fear, you must become Aware of the stack of fear responses.

You master fear by moving into it.

Over and over and over.

It's the only way.

Run towards fear and fear will run from you.

If you’re stupid enough to move towards someone waving a loaded gun in your face, that’s on you.

I support evolution through natural selection against stupid.

To become completely fearless, you must let go of attachment to Ego.

No amount of running into fear can substitute for that.

My daily emails can help you along.

Wake up and sign up.

It's still FREE.

startupdaemon.net