”Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”
- Winston Churchill

In Joshua Tree, I walked a labyrinth at sunrise. The desert was still, the rocks glowing with first light.

A labyrinth is not a maze. There are no dead ends. You enter with a simple intention, follow one winding path to the center, pause, then retrace the same path back out. It is a walking meditation: step by step in, step by step out, carrying a mantra with you.

As I walked, old fears surfaced. Not new ones, the same familiar scripts:

Fear of failing.
Fear of disappointing.
Fear of falling behind.

For years, those fears carried me. They pushed me to prepare harder, to work later, to keep pressing when others stopped. In their way, they worked.

But near the center, a sharper realization came:

What if fear was never required? What if it was only the story I told myself?

And deeper still: I can no longer accept fear as my fuel.

Not in small doses. Not as background noise when life speeds up. Fear may have pushed me through the past, but I refuse to live my life in fear.

I want to drop it.

And yet, we often treat fear like tuition. Pay it, and you earn success. But science and experience say otherwise.

The Yerkes–Dodson curve shows performance rises with arousal, but arousal does not have to mean fear. Excitement, purpose, and vision provide the same spark without the cost. Harvard research proves that when nerves are reframed as excitement, outcomes improve. The same body, a different story.

Psychology shows arousal does not need to come from fear. Sometimes it comes from pure competitiveness. Michael Jordan was a master at this, finding ways to push himself into peak intensity without tipping into panic or losing composure.

A friend reminded me of this in a moment when I called myself a failure last week. We were in the middle of a project, and I said, “I feel like I’m failing.” He smiled and shared the concept of a CV of Failures (a résumé of rejections, not wins.) Then he added with a smile, “You take big swings, you’re going to miss a lot. I like to take big swings.”

That wisdom reframed everything.

Fear says failure means you are off course. Wisdom says failure means you are in the right game. And perhaps the only life worth fearing is one with no failures at all.

Even at the top, fear lingers. A recent survey found seven in ten CEOs admit to impostor syndrome. Leaders making billion-dollar decisions, yet still shadowed by old doubts.

The deeper truth is this: fear was never the fuel. It only felt that way. The wins might have come anyway. Perhaps easier. Perhaps bigger.

Fear may have carried you up. It does not need to carry you on.

True wealth is not fearlessness. It is choosing not to live life in fear.

You walk into the labyrinth carrying a mantra. You walk out the same path, lighter.

This time, mine was simple: I refuse to live in fear.

See you next Sunday,
Eric

P.S. Special Thank You! Last week, more than ten of you voted and reached out to say the post resonated. One of you even quietly bought me a (virtual) coffee and sent a note of encouragement.

I can’t tell you how much these small, unexpected gestures mean to me as I sit down to write each week. Thank you, friends. 🙏

If you want to keep this circle going, send this note to one person who would enjoy it.