How to Become Fearless

Fear out of weakness is something to be conquered:

1. Foolish fear?

The first step is to realize when your fear is foolish. Wisdom is the goal. From a rationalistic perspective, if your fear holds you back from achieving your desired outcomes, then fear is bad.

I feel like in order to become fearless, obey your rational side.

2. Practice

In order to become more fearless, you must practice facing your fear. For example, whenever I see something I want to do, and I feel fear, it is simply another mark of enthusiasm.

For example, when it comes to street photography, when I see something I wanna photograph and I feel a small bit of fear, it is a sign that it might be a good photograph.

3. Lean into your fear

To feel fear is human. But what if we don’t want to be human, and we desire to become more inhuman? Then to me, being able to abolish your fear is a good idea.

When it comes to something you fear, face it head on. Then once your face it head on, you realize that what you feared is often not that bad. I called this the ice water bath theory: just jump into it. The best way to build cold-weather and cold water tolerance is to not think and just do it.

As a personal note, I’ve only taken ice cold showers for the last seven years with great results.

I also find that a good way to hype yourself up is take huge breaths of air. This is what I did when I first started doing cold showers, and also would I do before powerlifting a one rep max attempt.

4. Get into powerlifting

Fear is a physiological phenomenon. I find the best way to conquer your fears is to build your physical strength. For example, powerlifting. There is a small bit of fear associated before you attempt a new one rep max attempt, but the more you do it, the less fear you will feel.

The more you do one rep max attempts, and the longer you get into powerlifting, the more accustomed your body is to the physiological feelings of fear. And even though there’s a small bit of fear you might hurt or injure yourself, and you just do it, and you either succeed or fail but don’t get injured, it is a huge confidence booster. You feel invincible.

The best way to avoid injury in powerlifting is simple: don’t use belts or straps or any of those strange equipments. when you’re warming up, do lots of yoga style stretching, and the more flexible you become, the less likely you are to injure yourself.

Also, with squats use a power rack with safety pins on the side, so in case you can’t get up, you could just bail the bar behind you.

With deadlift, do sumo style, with a mixed grip and chalk on your heaviest lifts.

And instead of benchpress, just do very heavy dumbbell presses. This way you don’t need a spotter, and in case you can’t get up the weight, you could just bail the dumbbells to the side.

5. Pride

Make it a point of personal pride to know that it is in your power to become fearless. It is a goal that you want to achieve, and studying stoicism also helps.

STOICISM 101

Become invincible:

The Stoic Masters

Marcus Aurelius

Learn from the master stoics:

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