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The Loudest Guest: How to change and control your relationship with fear
2021 Australian Career Book Awards - Finalist
2021 Living Now Book Awards - Silver Medalist
An award-winning guide to reducing fear and taking control of your life from Amazon bestselling author and renowned psychologist Dr Amy Silver.
When fear looms as the loudest guest in your mind, it dominates your thoughts and controls your choices.
Author and psychologist, Dr Amy Silver, believes that if you reduce the control that fear has on you, you take back control of your life. Fear is merely a guest in your mind, albeit a noisy one, and you are the host.
In The Loudest Guest, you will learn the six essential steps to calm your fear so you can run your best life.
This book is for you if you:
- are prone to worrying or over-thinking
- desire to do something new but feel you shouldn't or would fail
- talk yourself down, either out loud or in your head
- know there's a gap between what you're doing and what you could
- do if you had more courage
- spend too much time thinking about what people think of you
- are too 'in your head', full of doubt, regret or indecision.
In this easy-to-read, practical book you'll learn to quieten your fear voice so you can be a more powerful version of yourself.
2021 Living Now Book Awards - Silver Medalist
An award-winning guide to reducing fear and taking control of your life from Amazon bestselling author and renowned psychologist Dr Amy Silver.
When fear looms as the loudest guest in your mind, it dominates your thoughts and controls your choices.
Author and psychologist, Dr Amy Silver, believes that if you reduce the control that fear has on you, you take back control of your life. Fear is merely a guest in your mind, albeit a noisy one, and you are the host.
In The Loudest Guest, you will learn the six essential steps to calm your fear so you can run your best life.
This book is for you if you:
- are prone to worrying or over-thinking
- desire to do something new but feel you shouldn't or would fail
- talk yourself down, either out loud or in your head
- know there's a gap between what you're doing and what you could
- do if you had more courage
- spend too much time thinking about what people think of you
- are too 'in your head', full of doubt, regret or indecision.
In this easy-to-read, practical book you'll learn to quieten your fear voice so you can be a more powerful version of yourself.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
194 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 20, 2021
A lovely book by Dr Amy Silver on how to make friends with, detach from, and find a way to reorient through our fears. Useful insights into managing emotions.
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October 30, 2021Fear is a guest at your party. By first recognizing and understanding your fear, separating yourself from it, evaluating its truths, creating a contract with it, and experimenting, you can turn fear into a commentating rather than controlling voice. You don’t want to exclude fear from your party, but you can make it a little less loud. This is your party, and now you know exactly what to do!
actionable advice:
Get feedback from others.
Fear doesn’t want you to do this, of course, but imagine the helpful feedback you could get from others. Other people see you in a different light from the way you see yourself. They probably know more about you than you think, and perhaps better than you do yourself. Asking them for information about how they see you gives you an opportunity to grow and work toward being a better person. Don’t let fear hold you back.
---
Recognize and understand your fear.
When the author took up soccer, she faced many fears: Would she be safe? Would she let the side down? Would she look unattractive? Would she be too unfit? Would she fail?
Fear wanted to save her all this embarrassment and possible injury. Had she listened, she’d never have experienced the joy of scoring a goal while her children watched, or celebrated after a match with her husband and teammates.
She still considers herself the worst in the team but, at the end of the season, she received the coach’s award trophy. That trophy reminds her of the rewards of controlling her fears.
Here’s the key message: Recognize and understand your fear.
The first step in understanding your fear is to understand your goals.
Make a list of what you want to achieve in terms of your health, wealth, love, family, and other aspects of your life. You can even draw up a 30-day, 90-day, 3-year, or 10-year plan. Then, think about what fear is telling you about achieving each of your goals.
Next, get to know what actually triggers your fear – people, places, times, and spaces. Specifically, think about physical, social, and emotional risks, and your fear of the unknown and of failure. What are the physical symptoms you experience? Often they’re the same regardless of when or why you experience fear.
And how do you react before, during, and after being triggered? Perhaps you avoid the situation you’re afraid of. Fear saves you from whatever the risk is. But this is only a short-term fix – your real problem, the fear, remains. Avoidance prevents you from discovering whether the risk is real, and robs you of a learning experience.
When you know how, when, and why you experience fear, you become more conscious of your behavior, and can begin to understand how it contributes to any situation. By controlling yourself, you can start to take control.
To get closer to understanding your fear, try spending more time with yourself – meditating, for example, or simply being alone with a cup of tea. Writing down your thoughts will help you clarify them and highlight any repeated messages. It’ll also help you change your relationship with your feelings.
Recognizing your fear and understanding how it both helps and hinders you in achieving your goals, puts you in a better position to control it.
---
Decide to be courageous, and create a contract with your fear.
Imagine that you no longer listen to your fear and tomorrow you suddenly find yourself more courageous. How would your day begin differently from today? How would people react to the new you? What would they see in you that makes them realize you’re more courageous? How does this “new you” think? And what could you now achieve?
This is the key message: Decide to be courageous, and create a contract with your fear.
Your goals may seem out of reach, but if you could make fear-free decisions you could probably achieve much more.
Take some time to reflect on your goals in various aspects of your life and write them down. What are your work goals? Perhaps you see yourself in the top job one day. Do you have social goals? Maybe you’d like more friends or deeper relationships. What about fun goals like surfing Maui or trekking in the Amazon – or even something a little less dangerous, like baking your own bread? What are your well-being goals – eating three helpings of fruit per day or making sure you’re doing some movement every day, for example. Add in your financial goals – maybe investing an amount of money; and your learning goals – like enrolling in a photography course, or learning a new language.
Make sure each goal you want to concentrate on is SMART – that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive. Think about what fear says about them. Ask yourself how your goals would be different if fear wasn’t involved.
Of course, fear doesn’t want you to risk change, but if you want to move forward and be courageous there has to be some discomfort. But you can decide to accept that discomfort and move forward.
Rose was having difficulties in her relationship. Fear wanted her to avoid confrontation and the hard work of changes necessary to save it. Fear told her to walk away. But she decided to be courageous and stay – to work through the pain and rejection. She decided to overcome her fears and make her decisions based on what she wanted – a deep and meaningful relationship.
You can even write a contract with your fear – to approach it and experience discomfort rather than opting for avoidance and comfort. Sign and date it. You could even have someone witness it.
actionable advice:
Get feedback from others.
Fear doesn’t want you to do this, of course, but imagine the helpful feedback you could get from others. Other people see you in a different light from the way you see yourself. They probably know more about you than you think, and perhaps better than you do yourself. Asking them for information about how they see you gives you an opportunity to grow and work toward being a better person. Don’t let fear hold you back.
---
Recognize and understand your fear.
When the author took up soccer, she faced many fears: Would she be safe? Would she let the side down? Would she look unattractive? Would she be too unfit? Would she fail?
Fear wanted to save her all this embarrassment and possible injury. Had she listened, she’d never have experienced the joy of scoring a goal while her children watched, or celebrated after a match with her husband and teammates.
She still considers herself the worst in the team but, at the end of the season, she received the coach’s award trophy. That trophy reminds her of the rewards of controlling her fears.
Here’s the key message: Recognize and understand your fear.
The first step in understanding your fear is to understand your goals.
Make a list of what you want to achieve in terms of your health, wealth, love, family, and other aspects of your life. You can even draw up a 30-day, 90-day, 3-year, or 10-year plan. Then, think about what fear is telling you about achieving each of your goals.
Next, get to know what actually triggers your fear – people, places, times, and spaces. Specifically, think about physical, social, and emotional risks, and your fear of the unknown and of failure. What are the physical symptoms you experience? Often they’re the same regardless of when or why you experience fear.
And how do you react before, during, and after being triggered? Perhaps you avoid the situation you’re afraid of. Fear saves you from whatever the risk is. But this is only a short-term fix – your real problem, the fear, remains. Avoidance prevents you from discovering whether the risk is real, and robs you of a learning experience.
When you know how, when, and why you experience fear, you become more conscious of your behavior, and can begin to understand how it contributes to any situation. By controlling yourself, you can start to take control.
To get closer to understanding your fear, try spending more time with yourself – meditating, for example, or simply being alone with a cup of tea. Writing down your thoughts will help you clarify them and highlight any repeated messages. It’ll also help you change your relationship with your feelings.
Recognizing your fear and understanding how it both helps and hinders you in achieving your goals, puts you in a better position to control it.
---
Decide to be courageous, and create a contract with your fear.
Imagine that you no longer listen to your fear and tomorrow you suddenly find yourself more courageous. How would your day begin differently from today? How would people react to the new you? What would they see in you that makes them realize you’re more courageous? How does this “new you” think? And what could you now achieve?
This is the key message: Decide to be courageous, and create a contract with your fear.
Your goals may seem out of reach, but if you could make fear-free decisions you could probably achieve much more.
Take some time to reflect on your goals in various aspects of your life and write them down. What are your work goals? Perhaps you see yourself in the top job one day. Do you have social goals? Maybe you’d like more friends or deeper relationships. What about fun goals like surfing Maui or trekking in the Amazon – or even something a little less dangerous, like baking your own bread? What are your well-being goals – eating three helpings of fruit per day or making sure you’re doing some movement every day, for example. Add in your financial goals – maybe investing an amount of money; and your learning goals – like enrolling in a photography course, or learning a new language.
Make sure each goal you want to concentrate on is SMART – that is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-sensitive. Think about what fear says about them. Ask yourself how your goals would be different if fear wasn’t involved.
Of course, fear doesn’t want you to risk change, but if you want to move forward and be courageous there has to be some discomfort. But you can decide to accept that discomfort and move forward.
Rose was having difficulties in her relationship. Fear wanted her to avoid confrontation and the hard work of changes necessary to save it. Fear told her to walk away. But she decided to be courageous and stay – to work through the pain and rejection. She decided to overcome her fears and make her decisions based on what she wanted – a deep and meaningful relationship.
You can even write a contract with your fear – to approach it and experience discomfort rather than opting for avoidance and comfort. Sign and date it. You could even have someone witness it.
August 6, 2021
Excellent book, love Amy’s insight on fear!! I learnt so much!
December 30, 2022
A really insightful account of fear and how it can affect our behaviour and lives. Often its subconscious and we don’t even realise the paralysing affects fear plays, but this book really offers a perspective many of us don’t even know or think about.
October 30, 2021
Blinkist.
Separate what is so from the story.
Separate what is so from the story.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews