There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.

1. You are the captain of the ship of your life

Primo, you are the captain of your ship of life.

You cannot control whether you will hit waves or suffer shipwreck. But you can control what direction you steer your life.

For example, I don’t think it is good to have hard goals in life. It makes us inflexible to seizing new opportunities. Too much focus on a goal makes us option-blind.

However, I like the idea of having a general DIRECTION which we wanna take our lives.

For me, I want to make information, and empower others. I am dedicated to the DIRECTION of open source. I don’t know exactly what my ultimate open source goal is, but I want to promote free, and open information to help others who are less fortunate than I am.

2. Sail toward what scares you

Generally, I find that what we fear… is the general direction we should take our lives.

For example almost all the good street photos I’ve made, has scared me. For example, I don’t know what might be a good photo. But if I see something that scares me, I must photograph it.

To me, fear is excitement. Fear is what drives us forward.

If we do more of what we fear, we will peer more into the depths of our potential. And the more small risks we make in life, the more epic and cool shit we will do.

For example, whenever I wanna write something that I’m worried might be controversial, I write it anyways and publish. Generally whatever I write that is controversial is good.

What scares you? Sail toward that.

3. Don’t think too much

For myself, when I think too much I am paralyzed. I don’t act.

To me, to act is better than to be passive.

For example, I fall into “paralysis by analysis”– I fear negative consequences, and therefore am scared into passiveness.

Now, I make small “calculated risks”. I calculate my maximum loss before hand.

For example if I create a new HAPTIC product with Cindy, I calculate the maximum amount of money we can lose. Then we create the product, and promote it with confidence.

In photography if you see a scene and you’re not sure if it will be a good photo or not,

JUST SHOOT IT.

BE STRONG,
ERIC

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