prospect rather more than we're inclined to. Many things that we need to tackle are

left aside because we're scared, we're scared to fail, scared to be alone with

our own feelings, scared to reject certain people from our lives,

scared to tell our partners who we really are, scared to take our dreams

seriously. From fear

we delay the lives we know we should be leading. There is a dark but useful

solution to this delay it doesn't involve reassurance or reminding

ourselves that there is time,

it involves aligning our thoughts to something radically larger and scarier

than any of our doubts and hesitations, something that can joilt us from our

timid lethargy.

We should use the thought of death not to make us despair of life but to shake

us into more committedly pursuing the life we know we need to lead.

We will act when the fear of death is finally allowed to trump the fear of

failure or humiliation, compromise or shame. We need with the best of

intentions to nurture fear.

Imagine you're 34 and will live optimistically to be 90.

This is how many winters you have left. Frighten yourself at every turn,

consider how often cancer and heart disease strike far ahead of the average

death age. Read of the violent random ways of strokes and aneurysms. Talk to

people at 55 and let them explain to you how swiftly their years went. Terrify

yourself

not in the name of despair but of inpatient courageous authenticity. In the

olden days people would buy a skull and place it on their desk to keep their

thoughts focused.

It can now be awkward buying a skull, let this be a skull.

Fear is the big obstacle to doing the important stuff.

Deliberately scare yourself about the only thing you need to fear and thereby

be liberated to get on with everything else that so badly needs doing.