Excerpt from On Becoming Fearless

Ms. Huffington,
I didn’t want to intrude, but I wanted to thank you for your statements during the September 24th debate. You helped make it clear why women in particular should not vote for Schwarzenegger. While some have complained that your behavior was inappropriate, I realize that well-behaved women rarely make history. Thanks for taking on the fight.
Janice Rocco

My mother, who lived with me most of my life—through my marriage, childbirth, and divorce—died in 2000. Her death forced me to confront my deepest fear: living my life without the person who had been its foundation. I did lose her, and I have had to go on without her. But the way she lived her life and faced her death have taught me so much about overcoming fear.

How Fear Limits Us
Beyond the major moments of fear in our lives, there are many other times we sacrifice our personal truth to go along, be approved of, or just plain be “nice.” Because despite all our advances, there’s still a huge premium on women being “accommodating” and “team players” who don’t “rock the boat.” As Marlo Thomas once said, “A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold.” Or, as a friend of mine operating in the treacherous political world of Washington’s Beltway told me, “It’s good to be a team player, but you also have to know the difference between all of us standing together and all of us jumping off the same cliff.” If you let them, the hungry little gremlins of compromise will devour your soul bit by bit and come to dominate your life. They feed the fear of being left out, the fear that survival will be impossible outside the tribe. No wonder fear shoots through our veins, constricting our blood flow and shutting down our creative energy—we are in survival mode.

When we are in the grip of survival thinking, the dominant illusion is that once we vanquish the enemy facing us, overcome the obstacle in front of us, get over the next hill, life will be secure, free of problems, perfect. Then we will be fearless. Then we can start the life we’ve been planning on. But that long-awaited day never comes because there is always another enemy, another obstacle, another hill.