The Fear Chronicles 1

November 2014

Climb Fly

As you may know, I’ve been running crack climbing clinics in Moab and Indian Creek for the last 3 years now. When people register, I ask them what they are most interested in learning. Invariably, at least one person (and usually a few) says, “I want to learn how to deal with fear when climbing.”

I also receive a lot of interview requests from people as diverse as Bulgarian climbing websites to airplane magazines to yoga studios to weed growing journals, and the one question everyone asks is: “You do a lot of scary things. How do you deal with fear?”



Apparently many folks think I’m particularly brave, I have no fear, or I have some simple formula I use in order to not be afraid while doing scary things. I think you know where this is going….I hate to disappoint people 🙁 However, it’s true that I’ve been doing things that scare me for a very long time, and so far I’m still around to think about them. I’ve also lived through some of my worst fears. So I have spent a lot of time dealing with fear and trying to understand it.

Here’s what I know about fear right now: it’s the opposite of love. It’s confusing. Sometimes it helps you, sometimes it hurts you. Not doing things because you’re afraid makes you a slave. Doing things solely because you’re afraid makes you a pawn. If you don’t figure out how it’s influencing you, you will either be trapped and unhappy or injured/dead. You have a relationship with fear, and that relationship will change for the rest of your life. Thinking about it and talking about it will help you to understand that relationship.

Recently I noticed how much I talk about fear with my friends–amazing athletes who are doing extremely terrifying things on a regular basis. And I know too that I think about it by myself a lot. So my idea is to do some posts here where I share with you some of these ideas. I’m telling you upfront that I don’t think there really are any answers, but anyway we can talk about it.

What do you think?