[Advanced] Conquering Fear (1) 6/2

Two experts offer advice on how to live adventurously | By Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz

Whether it's reaching for Mount Everest or reaching for a promotion, plunging from a perfectly good airplane or plunging into marriage, [we] can [live] adventurously, if only we confront those primal fears that so often hold us back.

[Two] authors with varied perspectives weighed in on the value of taking risks and releasing the stranglehold of fears that can keep us from pursuing potentially enriching experiences.

Feeling fear
Feeling afraid evolved as an adaptive trait, an intuitive reaction that allows you to make a quick judgment about whether something is a threat when you don't have all the information, said David Ropeik, a risk perception consultant and author of "How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts" (McGraw-Hill).

"Risk is not a fact," Ropeik said. "It is a feeling."Although that instinct worked wonders for our primitive ancestors fleeing lions and bears, the more complicated risks of the modern world require more careful thought, Ropeik said.

Otherwise, we fear some things too much and some things too little, and the mistakes can be dangerous. For example, many people might fear going scuba diving on vacation in the South Pacific, lest they encounter a very unlikely shark, while they wouldn't hesitate to venture into the sun for hours without sun protection, despite plenty of evidence of the dangers.

Pushing past the fear
"We should challenge ourselves to be more critical thinkers," Ropeik said. "Don't just react and you're done. Get the facts, have more say in the combat with your feelings."

Individual life experiences as well as personality traits influence what we see as risky in the world, which is why some people are terrified of earthquakes and others are far more petrified of commitment.

Several characteristics of the risks themselves also feed our gut feelings that drive our fears.


Vocabulary Focus
hold somebody/something ↔ back phrasal verb
to make someone or something stop moving forward:

petrified adj.
extremely frightened, especially so frightened that you cannot move or think




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