ARTICLE BY TAYLOR LEE OF GRITDAILY

“Your mind creates these cages that hold on to the fear, you hold the key to unlock that cage.” —Brandon Webb

Fear can either be paralyzing or a great motivator to drive the effort needed to achieve your goals. It’s about how you respond and overcome that fear that molds the person you become.

The U.S. Navy Seals are the primary special operations force and a component of the Naval Special Warfare Command. The SEALs are trained to operate in all environments including: sea, air, and land for which they are named.

As a top US Navy Seal sniper, Brandon Webb has had a life full of coming face-to-face with fear. An accomplished pilot, CEO of men’s lifestyle brand, Hurricane Group, and New York Times best-selling author, Webb believes tackling fear head on is the best way to overcome life’s greatest challenges.

His newest book, Mastering Fear, shares his experiences and offers advice on how to harness fear to overcome life’s challenges.

Grit Daily spoke with Webb about his experience with the US Navy Seals and his latest book.

FACE TO FACE WITH FEAR
Grit Daily: Can you recall your earliest memory where you came face-to-face with fear?

Brandon Webb: My earliest memory was when I was 13 years old, I worked on a scuba boat just off the coast of California. We performed dives on the northern island that was inhabited with sea lions, as you know one of the favorite meals of great white sharks.

One evening, the weather was bad, and the captain of the ship woke me up in the middle of the night, telling me to pull the anchor, because he needed to move the boat. I remember having the thoughts in my head of great white sharks swimming around us, just like in the movie Jaws.

Your mind creates these cages that hold on to the fear, you hold the key to unlock that cage.

GD: What is the importance of identifying your fears and leveraging them?

BW: Purpose, it’s all about what you want to do in life and how you want to get there.

GD: What is the difference between danger and fear, in terms of when to be cautious?

BW: Fear is a great motivator that helps to keep us alive. Something the military does well is mitigate risk, when you mitigate that fear you become in control.

GD: Can you give us an example?

BW: Sure. Let me introduce you to Mike “Bear,” a great friend of mine in the SEAL Teams. We were at separate Teams, me 3 and him 5. I reached out one day after coming back from a short vacation and his platoon informed that he had passed away after a skydiving training accident. He had a rare malfunction where the main canopy was not deployed properly and when he tried to cut it away and deploy his reserve chute it went into the main and both chutes were tangled.

It’s the worst scenario and I remember thinking, “if this can happen to him, it sure as hell can happen to me.” I was about to go to HALO school to learn to sky dive and this terrified me knowing that could easily be me if it happened to Mike.

GD: How did you approach training moving forward?

BW: I was doing advanced jumps from 20,000 feet, and I had to figure out a way to get out of my own head and overcome that, I just forced myself to think positive and changed my self-talk to reinforce that I could do this.

MASTERING THAT FEAR

GD: What inspired you to write Mastering Fear?

BW: One of my very good friends is a very successful person, but he doesn’t know how to swim. The success that he has gets him invited to many places with pools or on boats. His fear of the water and not being able to swim causes him to have a lot of anxiety when faced with water. My friend has had several people try to teach him how to swim by teaching the strokes and different movements, but it never seemed to work for him.

I took a much different approach by breaking down into his head what caused the fear and how he could overcome it. In just a week he was doing cannonball’s, going down twelve feet deep and popping right back up. He’s the one that told me I needed to write a book about overcoming fear.

I tell real stories in my life both personal and such as this with my friends.

 

Read full article here: Mastering Fear: This CEO Shares The Secret Weapon of Success