Two Methods To Make Yourself Fearless

Yes, in principle it’s easy to be fearless.  The first method is to arrange for the gene stathmin to be removed from your DNA.  This works for mice.  And the scientists say it will probably work for us too.  I told you it was easy.

But would it be really worth it?  Well, one huge advantage of having no fear is that it removes a potentially big problem.  This is when fear makes a person or an animal freeze with indecision and inaction.  Getting rid of fear would solve this for sure. 

A likely snag is that if this leads to fight a predator when the best defensive option is to flee, it could turn out that being fearless could be a big, big mistake.

Disadvantages of Being Fearless

In other words, having no fear or too little fear, can be dangerous if it leads to unnecessary risk taking or exposure to dangerous situations such as getting too close to powerful predators.

This has been highlighted in recent research (at Rutgers University, NY), which appears to show that the stathmin gene is critical in the production of fear.  Although present in all the cells of the body, like all genes, stathmin is only active in two areas of the brain known as amygdalas.

It is known that individuals with damaged amygdalas can be fearless.

Cat Combat Skills For Mice

As we know, mice are usually pretty timid and cautious creatures.  But tests have now shown that mice with their stathmin gene removed from their DNA lose their fear. 

As a result, they behave in ways not associated with normal mice.  For example, they will wander into open and exposed places where they could easily be seen by predators.  They are also less likely to freeze or flee at the appearance of a predator.

Interestingly, it seems that as well as knocking out the fear instinct of these mice, removal of their stathmin also knocks out their ability to learn fear from nasty experiences.  Otherwise, there don’t seem to be any side effects!

Now, unless the mice can come up with some great defensive and fighting skills fast, it looks as if this newly acquired fearlessness will rapidly prove fatal.  So maybe it’s not so nice for the mice after all.

In other words, it’s probably best for the mice to stay timid and not tempt fate too much by fearless over-confidence.  Otherwise, their cat-combat skills need working on.

Big Advantages Of Being Scared

So, being scared isn’t all bad.  For example, an advantage for someone with a fear of heights who stays rooted to the ground is that in a fall they have less distance to drop.  Likewise, a person with a phobia about going into public places has less chance of being mugged or knocked down in a street accident.

In other words, fear can be extremely useful.  It helps us to avoid or reduce risks from predators, critical conditions and perilous places.  That is, it helps avoid danger and injury.  Freezing would also be a great defense mechanism if survival depended on not being seen, for example.

So fear can be critical for survival in many ways.  The difficulty is that having too much fear can be a big and even lethal problem if it causes inaction when action is necessary.  Even at a lesser extreme it can still be a problem.

For example, exaggerated fear can develop of essentially normal and non-threatening situations, such as leaving the house or taking steps above ground level.  This occurs in pathological anxieties, various phobias as well as in post-traumatic stress disorder.

So, having no fear or too little fear can be just as big a problem as having too much. 

A Fearless Strategy

OK.  Having your stathmin removed might be impractical right now.  But some day it might well be possible.  Or at least a drug might be developed that eliminates or reduces its effect.  It’s not difficult to see that this could be very useful in a whole range of circumstances. 

For instance, it could be extremely helpful to people suffering from post-traumatic shock.  Likewise, its use in curing or inhibiting a wide variety of innate anxieties could potentially help millions.  Yet another possibility would be its use by the military to boost the bravery of soldiers.

Even better would be the ability to fine-tune adjustments in the level of stathmin as a particular occasion demanded.  This might leave a useful amount of fear but without the handicap of too much.

The snag is that this is as yet all speculation.  This means that in the meantime we need another strategy.

Living With Fear

As far as I know, mice don’t plan too far ahead.  They tend to run on instinct.  So if their instinct is interfered with they’re in trouble.  By contrast, most people run on a mix of instinct, a lot of learned reactions and a certain amount of thinking ahead.

Naturally, these abilities are more or less developed with different individuals.  Unfortunately, this means that those individuals who are less sensitive to the difficulties or pains of others can sometimes be a threat.  Likewise, those individuals with a high pain threshold can be a threat to themselves.

But the chief thing is that we can learn and plan.  This can help us use fear and overcome it when necessary without having to suffer the disadvantages of stathmin removal or damage to our amygdalas.

If we are to judge by our rapidly expansion over the surface of the earth in the last few hundred years, this strategy has been very successful for humanity.

The Second Method

The key to this success has been the ability to learn from experience and plan.  Now, this is never perfect.  But when it is successful, it is very successful. 

For example, we didn’t need to wait for the impersonal and random workings of evolution to develop wings to fly.  Instead, we did it deliberately and quickly by the invention of airplanes.  A host of other similar examples indicate the value of this approach.  In fact, it might be said that this is really what separates us from other animals.

So, given that we have this ability.  It would be a shame not to use it.  So, let’s use it.

Develop Your WITS

The way to develop your wits is to perform regular What-If-Tests.  You might ask what you would do if you found yourself in this or that potentially dangerous situation.  For example, how could you be taken by surprise in a parking area and be robbed of your money, keys and car? 

Thinking about a situation like this might tell you the most vulnerable time to be caught alone.  It might tell you the parking area where this is most likely.  It might indicate danger spots where someone could be lurking.  It could also tell you several ways in which an attacker might try to control you.  It might also tell you the likely escape routes.

AAA Self-Protection

Using your Wits like this helps you put into place the key elements of a system to protect yourself.  This is the Triple-A System:

In other words, thinking about it in advance would raise your awareness of the risks.  This is vital knowledge that you can use for the avoidance of danger.  Alternatively, if your choices are really limited in the avoidance department, you better get working on the actions you could take to get out of such a situation if you get into one. 

By planning ahead you enhance your capacity to avoid trouble.  But if you get into trouble, you enhance your capacity to escape it.  If you can’t escape, you enhance your capacity to negotiate your way out.   And if you can’t negotiate a way out you enhance your ability to fight your way out of it.

Planning Ahead

The reason you plan ahead is because in an emergency it’s usually too late to plan.  You are already at a severe disadvantage.  You may also suffer shock as well as pain at being forced to react to an attacker’s initiative.  A problem with this is that because action is faster than reaction, you might never recover.

Now, as with anything in life, your planning WITS may be imperfect.  In fact, they surely will be.  Life has a nasty habit of not going according to plan.  But compared to being clueless and helpless, your plans give you options.  Options help you survive.

Great Advice - Shame It’s Not Practical

From every direction, we are told you must be confident.  BE CONFIDENT.  Sounds like a terrific piece of good advice, doesn’t it?  It also sounds like you become confident somehow by an act of will.  The snag is that an act of will is merely an act and will be exposed as an act at some point.

In other words, for someone who has no confidence, how much real help is this advice?  Is it any more help than advising someone who is short to be tall?  Or telling someone who is starving not to think about food?  Or how about telling someone who is afraid not to be afraid?

The snag is that Telling Isn’t Selling.  Nor does telling provide the tools to be confident.  In other words, the advice to be confident only has the appearance of being helpful.  In reality it isn’t much help at all.  This is because real confidence, as distinct from fake or false confidence, is based on real ability rather than merely on a subjective feeling.

Two Types of False Confidence

But what is the difference between false and fake confidence?  False confidence can come from faulty amygdalas or a deficiency of stathmin.  Alternatively, it can come from a misreading of a situation whereby dangers are simply not seen.

Fake Confidence

Fake confidence is different from the false confidence.  Fearless confidence is genuine though misguided.  Confidence through misreading the situation is also genuine and also misguided.  But fake confidence is just pretence.  It is a posture adopted to fool someone.  It is acting.

Better than any of these is real confidence.  So, the really key thing to know is this: where does confidence come from and how do you get it?

If you know that you are not capable of something then it is impossible to believe that you are capable.  Of course, you could still try faking the belief by acting.  In fact, it might be your only option.  So let’s hope it works. 

But faking it is tough against an assailant who is brute enough not to back down, back off or let you go.  His internal rage means he is looking to rob you or hurt you.  You have probably been selected because he thinks you are vulnerable.  He will not do the right thing or the fair thing and you are his target.  So your acting may not be good enough. 

Real Confidence

We know that fear is a useful mechanism to warn of impending danger of pain and injury.  It’s a sure sign of vulnerability and not being in control.

Its main cause is a lack of knowledge of how to combat the threat and prevent injury and pain.  Naturally, when there is no confidence, fear can easily take over and prevent effective action. 

What I’m saying is this: real ability is a far better basis for confidence than acting ability.  You can’t always fake it.  Real confidence and self-belief come from the knowledge that you do know what to do, how to do it, that you’re capable of doing it and that you will do it. 

Yet in an emergency, most of us simply don’t know what to do.  So, the really helpful advice is to get to know. 

An Infallible Way to Hit Your Target

One method of hitting a target is to be a really good shot so that your arrow or whatever hits the bullseye every time.  This takes a lot of hard work, practice, skill and that kind of thing.  Another snag is that it’s hardly an infallible method.  

So most of us adopt another approach.  This is to shoot the arrow first and then move the target to where it lands.  Is this so bad?  After all, governments do this all the time with shifting interest rate targets, inflation rate targets, employment rate targets, and so on.  In any case, in reality targets are rarely static.  This means that if they are moving then you’d better move too.

In other words, like anything else that needs doing well, you need to keep practicing.  The snag with defending yourself against attack is that there are so many ways of being attacked and hundreds of ways of defending yourself.

This makes it very hard to learn all the options without a tremendous amount of dedication.  It’s similar to getting fit in that the body has hundreds of muscles and the possible ways of exercising them are practically endless.

Attacking Back

The Fitnessblasting Manual is designed to overcome this problem by a concentrated focus on the main elements for fast and effective all-round fitness.  Naturally, having the speed, strength and stamina needed in an emergency to protect yourself is very important. 

But to give yourself real ability and real confidence you need real attacking back and mental know-how.  So, look out for the forthcoming eBook from faster-safer-fitness.com.  It will show you the fastest and most effective methods for self-defense without needing years of training or martial arts.

In other words, it will show how a normal person, without knuckles of stone, funny clothes or peculiar chants, can rapidly learn how to defend himself or herself.  It will do this without putting you through a martial arts acrobatics course or a foreign language course.

In fact, it will show you how martial arts are not nearly as good as just about everyone thinks for self defense.  

Real Ability

What I’m saying is this: real ability is a far better basis for confidence than acting ability.  You can’t always fake it.  So don’t rely on fake confidence or acting.  Make sure your confidence is based on real ability and know-how.  Otherwise, sooner or later you will be exposed.

But where does real confidence and self-belief come from if not from the knowledge that you do know what to do, how to do it, that you’re capable of doing it and that you will do it. 

Yet in most fight situations most of us simply don’t know what to do.  So, the really helpful advice is to get to know. 

This is what the new eBook will show you.  It will give you the know-how.   In other words, you will feel better because you are better.  Your confidence will be rooted in reality instead of bluffing or acting in ignorance.

Therefore, the best advice is to grab it when it appears.

Meanwhile, take full advantage of the faster-safer-fitness.com web site.

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