Why You Must Conquer Your Fears in Life

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How to become the most epic you:

How to Conquer Your Fears in Life

Risk aversion is what holds us back from achieving our personal maximum in life.


Why conquer your fears in life?

Let us do a thought experiment: imagine a life in which you took NO risks in life. A life where you always took the safe option in life. Would this be a life worth living?

Do you believe in an afterlife?

The only fact in life is that we will (one day) die. At best, the maximum human lifespan is 120 years. At worst, you might die today in a texting while driving accident.

Furthermore, another question for you:

Do you believe in an afterlife?

I personally don’t believe in an afterlife. To me this is insanely empowering, because it means that this life is all upside, no downside. No fear of the firehell, with little devils poking my butt. No promise of an eternal blissful life in a cloud somewhere. No— the only reality is this one; this physical world which we currently inhabit.

In fact, I believe a lot of people don’t take interesting risks in life because they are living for the afterlife, instead of our current life!

Even if you do believe in an afterlife — what is the afterlife is WORSE than this world? What if in the afterlife you don’t have your same human consciousness?

Thus for us risk lovers, I think we must banish the notion of an afterlife from our minds.


Why fear?

Obviously the fear of death is a good one. Also the fear of permanent disfigurement is also healthy.

But besides these two fears — all other fears are silly. For example these fears aren’t worth anything:

  • Fear of social stigma

  • Fear of being “hated on” or criticized by others

  • Fear of financial bankruptcy

  • Fear of impoverishment

  • Fear of losing your possessions or your current lifestyle

    Once you no longer fear these petty things — then what should you do with your life?


What does a fearless life look like?

A fearless life is a life in which you only do what YOU want to do, according to YOUR standards, for YOUR own personal purposes.

Your personal motives can be selfish, selfless, or a bit of both. It doesn’t really matter.

Once you are devoid of fears in life, you can do what you truly desire to do in life, instead of doing what society and others want you to do.

In other words, when you no longer have fear, you are no longer a slave to others.


What do you desire to direct your human metabolism and life force towards?

My buddy Luke Warsnake gave me an insanely deep, profound, and fascinating idea:

The purpose of my life is to best effectively leverage and use my human metabolism towards a meaningful and impactful purpose.

Human metabolism is a fascinating way to see things, because every day, you have a limited amount of human metabolism (energy) to do things.

It doesn’t really matter how much “free time” you have in a day, if you don’t have the power, motivation, or inspiration. So the notion of “time management” is faulty. I prefer the idea of “metabolism management”.

What is “metabolism management”?

Essentially every day, you want to be able to maximize your own human metabolism, to direct it towards your personal desires and needs.

Things that rob your metabolism:

  1. Consuming sugary or starchy foods or drinks
  2. Negative people, drama
  3. Lack of movement, exercise, or sunlight

Things which stimulate and increase your metabolism:

  1. Lifting heavy weights at the gym, or challenging physical activity
  2. Walking around or standing
  3. Coffee, tea, caffeine
  4. Stimulating music (preferably with a heavy bass line)
  5. Having an interesting and fun challenge to direct your energy towards

It means maximizing your personal energy in a day, to have the willpower to do epic work.


What epic substance do you wish to create in life?

Ultimately I think the most important thing in life is the work you produce.

Consider, “work” can apply to all these things:

  1. Artwork
  2. Ideas in books
  3. Dances, theater, plays, movies, cinema, videos, films
  4. Your actions towards others, or how you lived your life

The Latin word for a “great work” was “magnum opus”.

I think this is a simple goal in our life:

Seek to make as many great works in our life while we are still alive.

Personally speaking, I don’t think there is such thing as the one ultimate magnum opus you’re “supposed to” make in your lifetime. Instead, I prefer the idea that you can make MANY great works while you’re still alive!

And of course it is impossible to know whether your work will become a magnum opus in advance. But it doesn’t matter — we must still strive, attempt, and work towards that epic goal — to direct all of your soul energy to doing the most epic work while you’re still alive!


Help yourself and help others

My simple formula in life is this:

Focus on helping myself and others.

Helping myself means augmenting myself, my mind, and my personal strength in order to empower others! Ultimately for myself, I want to best empower humanity — my current fellow humans, and also future generations of human beings. But how can I do that if I don’t empower myself to the zenith?


Make fear your slave and obedient servant

The point isn’t to eradicate the physiological manifestations of fear from yourself. The point is to HARNESS the power of fear in a positive and empowering way.

You want to make fear your slave— like an obedient wolf, who will assist and help you.

For myself, fear helps guide me and my life. Generally speaking, fear tells me what I should do. If you live a life in which you do things which you’re afraid of, you will live the most epic life possible!

That means, still feel fear — yet don’t let fear PREVENT you from doing what you truly desire in life!

Conclusion

To conquer your fears in life:

  1. Vividly imagine your death and ask yourself, “What regrets do I NOT want to have in my life?”
  2. Generally speaking, taking the risky option in life is often more interesting, fun, and will bring out the best in you.
  3. Adopting a more ascetic lifestyle will help you conquer the fear of financial ruin.
  4. If you’re hungry for fame, notoriety, and to leave a legacy — you MUST take epic risks in life! No notable individual in history took the “safe options” in life.
  5. Read stoic philosophy (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus) to conquer fear aversion. I thank Seneca especially for helping me conquer my worst fears in life— by identifying then, by dissecting them, then laughing at these fears in the face.
  6. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, you will hustle harder in this lifetime.

Of course this is all just my opinion. You must dictate how you decide to live your life, according to your own standards.

Dictate what epic shit you want to do in your life while you’re still living, and never let your personal fears get in your way.

BE BOLD. ERIC