Product Description

What is stopping you from being the person you want to be and living your life the way you want to live it?

Fear of tackling an issue with your boss, fear of getting to grips with a problem in your home. Fear of change. Fear of taking control...

Everyone has their own list of fears which seem to run through their lives. Susan Jeffers’ inspiring and mould breaking book shows us how to become powerful in the face of our fears. Feel the fear, she argues, but do it anyway.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #901596 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
accessible, with lots of exercises and information to dip into and apply to real situations. Life-changing stuff --Spirit and Destiny

Simple yet profound reasoning --Independent

Like the title says, just go for it
--Elle

Review
Reading this book was a revelation. It's a wonderful book for life

Review
Susan Jeffers' classic and actually very level-headed mega-bestseller

Customer Reviews

Excellent view on handling fear
This book is about the fears that we all have in our lives to some degree. Fear of failing. Fear of succeeding. Fear of decisions. Fear of aging, of loss or of helplessness.

The books basic premise is, that your aim should not be to get rid of your fears. You should feel your fear, but not let it stop you from doing things you really want to do.

The book describes three levels of fear. The first level is the actual event that you fear - say losing you job. The second level is the deeper fear, triggered by the first level - eg. rejection (if being fired would make you feel rejected). Beneath that on the third level there's only one fear: The fear that you won't be able to cope. If you knew in advance that you could take it, there would be nothing to be afraid of. So all fear reduces to fear of not being able to cope.

This is interesting, because this means that the best way to handle your fear, isn't to make your life safer - it's to increase your abilities, or your faith in your abilities. The more you know you can handle, the less reason there is to fear.

This point is illustrated with several stories of people who have diminished their lives time and again, to keep safe. This doesn't reduce fear, quite the contrary, these people lived in perpetual fear. When some catastrophic event interfered with their reduced existence (say the death of a spouse), some of these people found that they were forced to reconnect with life, and that they could cope. And this reduced their fear.

The book also emphasizes positivity as a way to reduce fear. The book argues that you need to constantly train your positive thinking, or you'll revert to negative thinking.

There's also an excellent chapter on decision making, which argues that many of us see a decision making process mostly in the light of what we'll lose or risk in each alternative before us. To reduce the fear (or discomfort) of making a decision, we should realize that all options are good, and that no mater what we choose, it's still up to us to make it work.

The book contains many illustrative stories and exercises you can try yourself. I found it informative, entertaining and thought-provoking, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in the mechanisms that hold people back from growth and change.

I wish I had read it 20 years ago!
I had heard of this book often enough, but never read it. As they say when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear. If you are really struggling with your life this book will give you heart, if you have been working on yourself it will remind you of all that you have learnt and prompt you to keep it up. So what is it all about? Firstly, it points out that everybody gets fearful, but that some people rise to the challenges they face more positively than others and so succeed in their lives, while others just seem to shrink, becoming more and more overwhelmed by everything. This book shows you how to turn your thoughts around to the positive, to switch off your inner nag and just get on with life. It isn't corny, it isn't gimmicky, but it is truly uplifting and calming, and it works. Last night my dishwasher broke and rather than get into a stew about finding the time to get it repaired and the expense etc as I would have done I just remembered ' I'll handle it' and got it sorted. This is a fairly trivial example, but those of us who are prone to worry and anxiety, are easily overwound by the most mundane things, so it is so good to have some tools to get life into the right perspective.

Worth returning to again and again
As I embarked on my re-reading of Feel The Fear... I realised that the concept I always quote as the book's message is actually only chapter one! That basic principle states that it doesn't matter what happens to you in your life - what matters is how you handle it. Having now read all the way through again, I've reminded myself that every one of the 12 chapters presents a key principle.

Some of the principles covered are: procrastination (your fear won't go away if all you do is wait), taking responsibility for your life, dealing with others who don't want you to grow, achieving balance, creating meaning and purpose..... These are all, of course, themes you'll find in other self-development books, but I consider Feel The Fear... to be the mother of all those other books! Plus Susan Jeffers writes with wonderfully down-to-earth clarity and simplicity.

You'll probably know from the title alone whether this book appeals to you or not. For me it contains timeless wisdom, worth returning to again and again. So if you've read this before and forgotten how fabulous it is, give it another read. And if you've not had the Jeffers experience yet, well why not feel the fear and do it anyway?!