The Fear Project A new book exploring life's most primal emotion
Archive for July, 2012
How Alcohol Affects Anxiety and Fear
Being in Porto, home of that famous mix of brandy and fermented grapes, I thought I would do a short post on the affects of alcohol on fear. It’s well known that having a drink or two takes the edge off, reducing stress, but psychologists at the University of Wisconsin recently showed alcohol doesn’t affect [...]
The Art of Expecting Nothing
Right now I’m traveling through Portugal with my wife, Amy, and our six-month-old son. It’s our first time to Portugal and an experiment for me. While I couldn’t help dreaming of a wonderful trip while we eagerly planned where to stay, I also made a point to read almost nothing about Portugal before coming. The [...]
Fear Not the Dreaded Pick Up Grasshopper
Spiders. Snakes. Heights. These are the common fears people list in polls. But a lot of us would rather confront any of these three terrors than have to ask a random beautiful girl or guy on a date. Our fear of rejection is so overblown, many evolutionary psychologists say, because the tribe was such an [...]
The Magic of Fearlessness
While researching my upcoming book, The Fear Project, a lot of people have asked me why I chose fear. My answer never seems to come out right so I thought I would answer in a different way. This is a chapter from my memoir, Saltwater Buddha, called Wizards and Water Walking, a story about overcoming [...]