Fearless Being

by Swati Chopra

As we embark on a journey to implement new learnings, frameworks, and habits, often inspired by the vast number of self-help books, leadership memoirs, and inspirational books, we tend to make a common rookie mistake. This mistake is either neglecting to assess our starting point in our excitement to reach the ‘Go-To Point’ or, worse, failing to acknowledge the journey so far that has brought us to that starting point.

This book is meant to be a celebration of your journey so far. Only when we appreciate and acknowledge our BEING now will we ever take a leap forward to enrich that BEING. Sometimes, our presumed clarity of our BEING vanishes, especially in moments when we are regretting certain past decisions, or lamenting missed opportunities, or perhaps worrying about the future. These are the fear-causing moments, the “Momentary Unknowns,” that tend to make our BEING unacknowledged, hazy, and blurred. When we decide to take a leap, we face those “Momentary Unknowns” and make a decision despite them. That does not make us ‘fear-free’ but makes us ‘fearless’ until the next leap over the next unknown.

This book offers the tools necessary to make choices according to our unique context, such (i) we reduce the occurrence of those unknowns, and (ii) we manage those unknowns better when faced with them. This means exploring avenues to put into practice one or more of the crucial ‘Tenets’ (Curiosity, Mindfulness, Gratitude, Capability, Flexibility, Adaptability, Infallibility, Consistency, Credibility, and Service Orientation), suiting our unique personality, vision, environmental influence, and performance context, and helping us embrace those unknown moments with poise, move through them confidently, and continuously conquer them unfazed, to always deliver performance to the best of our abilities.

The reality is that fear-causing ‘momentary unknowns’ will always be there, and our BEING is never fully present as a whole, but rather a summation of our actions and behaviors in minuscule parts of our lives as per situations and circumstances. It is all about embracing this ever-evolving journey, for it is through each step, each challenge overcome, that we reveal and celebrate our unique “Fearless Being”.

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 18, 2025

About the author

Swati Chopra is a New Delhi-based writer whose work explores spirituality and religion, and their engagement in contemporary life. She is author of 'Dharamsala Diaries' (Penguin, 2007) which is a travelogue of the spirit, and 'Buddhism: On the Path to Nirvana' (Mercury Books, London; Brijbasi Art Press, New Delhi, 2005), a modern introduction to Buddhism.

Her essay (‘Gentle Bridges and Golden Seeds: The Dalai Lama’s Dialogues with Science’) appeared in the anthology, Understanding the Dalai Lama (Penguin, 2004).

Swati has worked as editor of a quarterly journal, Life Positive Plus, as contributing editor of India’s premier English language magazine on spirituality, Life Positive, and as spirituality correspondent of one of the largest English dailies in India, The Times of India.

In her career as writer and journalist, she has interviewed and written about significant thinkers, spiritual masters, philosophers, artists and activists of our times, including the Dalai Lama, Fritjof Capra, James Lovelock, Sulak Sivaraksa, Vandana Shiva, Carlo Petrini, Ven. Khandro Rinpoche, Tenzin Palmo, among many others.

Swati’s writing has appeared in journals in India and abroad, such as the British eco-spiritual magazine Resurgence, American magazine Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and The Hindustan Times, Daily News and Analysis in India.

For the past three years, Swati has been involved in researching a book project that documents contemporary women’s spirituality. For this research, she was awarded a fellowship by Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), a South Asian research initiative that facilitates the leadership of women in areas of peace, security and international affairs. WISCOMP is affiliated with the Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (FUR).

Swati presented a paper on the findings of her research at the First International Conference on Indology, Goa, India, 2007, and has written several articles on this subject which have appeared in Life Positive, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times in India, and in the Algerian literary magazine, Arabesques.