On Becoming Fearless: In Love, Work, and Life

What are you afraid of? Being assertive? Looking fat? Getting older? Going broke? Are you afraid for your children? Afraid of losing love? Afraid of leading the charge? Whatever your fear, women everywhere confront the same fears every day.

Enter Arianna Huffington, bestselling author, Internet entrepreneur, journalist, mother, and one of the most influential people in America. She believes that conquering fear is crucial to living a full life and to making a difference in the world, and in this powerful and daring manifesto, she inspires us to take on the task.

Huffington is fearless but not by nature; she's had to learn to overcome her fears and relies on these hard-won lessons every day. In her own life and in the lives of women she admires, Huffington has again and again encountered moments of extraordinary strength, courage, and resilience. It is from these moments that On Becoming Fearless is built. Huffington shows us how to be bold from the inside out — from feeling comfortable in our own skin to getting what we want in love and at work to changing the world.

In order to live a happy, fulfilling life, we need to reach the point where our fears do not stop us from daring to think new thoughts, take risks, fail, start again, and, ultimately, succeed. Provocative, empowering, and enriched by the voices of remarkable women everywhere, On Becoming Fearless is the road map to a life without fear — a life of truth, love, and freedom.

"In her entry into the overstuffed semi-autobiographic inspirational self-help genre, Huffington's main message is more or less unassailable: 'Women have so much potential, yet we hold ourselves back. If my daughters, and women of all ages, are to take their rightful place in society, they must become fearless.' Huffington ruminates on the cultivation of fearlessness in all aspects of a woman's life: body image, love, motherhood, work, money, illness and aging, with contributions from other fearless females like Nora Ephron and Diane Keaton. Though the author's common-sense feminism is welcome in a sea of women's books dedicated solely to snagging a man, it can at times be overly simplistic; regarding the reason women stay in physically abusive relationships, Huffington states that 'if you understand women's deep fear of being alone, it's not a huge mystery.' But generalizations such as this are one of the pitfalls of picking a motif — 'fearlessness' — and using it as a litmus test for any given situation. Still, Huffington's strident voice and populist sympathies make this an encouraging, if not particularly inspiring, call to arms against the forces that would keep women 'sacrificing our personal truth to go along, be approved of, or just plain be "nice."'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"A few weeks ago I was out speaking at a library and was asked — somewhat routinely — what I was reading these days. I answered, a new book by Arianna Huffington, and was greeted by a spontaneous and heartfelt groan. These days, just the name Arianna Huffington can elicit spontaneous and heartfelt groans. That may explain why — along with all the other things Huffington chooses to think about --... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) she felt the need to write about becoming fearless.

All of us, on our bad days, have a tendency to assign sour motives to people who get on our nerves. In California, from where I write, Huffington carries a sour mythological biography. She's that social climber with the funny accent who married some rich Republican who tried to buy a Senate seat. When that failed, they separated, and she switched political sides. Then she gave many Gatsby-style parties, invited everyone, got a newspaper column and set up a blog called the Huffington Post. Groan. People don't care much for women who think, and it's not only men who get creeped out: If a woman like that disagrees with you — and has the nerve to say so out loud — it's more than possible that she may be right.

I went to one of her parties once and had a nice talk with Sylvester Stallone's mother. The hostess stood alone, aloof, luminous and apart. What had she actually done? Written a string of books on different subjects, obtained that column. She was a woman of strong opinions who didn't mind sharing them — had to share them. She ran for governor in the last California gubernatorial circus, appearing on television with a horde of other candidates, all men, who patronized her, ignored her, insulted her. They ended up looking like mindless oafs; she more than held her own.

So here is this short, vaguely disappointing little book, made up partly of platitudes or, more particularly, advice on what to do rather than how to do it. Women, for instance, should be fearless about our bodies and not think too much about what popular culture says we should look like. (We can have facials, though.) 'Instead of comparing ourselves to Angelina Jolie,' why not compare ourselves to 'a woman who lost her legs fighting in Iraq?' This is fine advice, but it doesn't work, the way it didn't work when my mother forced me to eat watery boiled squash while thinking of the starving Armenians.

We should be fearless in love, Huffington tells us. And adds that for women, 'the fear of being alone underlies all other love-related fears. It's the uberfear.' Again, she's quite right. She mentions her own book about Picasso, and how he used to boast 'that he liked to take goddesses and turn them into doormats.' Women tend to pine for men, the more churlish the better, and women certainly ought to get over it. Somebody ought to cure cancer, too. The question is, of course, how?

And we should be fearless in motherhood. But, as Francis Bacon wrote long ago, 'He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.' He was suggesting that if you were a parent, you wouldn't be free to do great things, but that sentence can be read in a far different context. Once you have a child, you're doomed to be a nervous wreck for life, because what if they die or are horribly sad or contract a disease or drive the family car into a tree trunk? I'd dearly love to be free of fear about my children, but just telling me to do it won't make it happen.

About halfway through the book, though, Huffington gains some traction. In her chapters about fearlessness at work, about money, about aging and illness, God and death, she allows herself to speak more clearly and specifically about her own experiences. She was born in Greece; her mother went through the Second World War. Arianna went to England, where she managed to get into Cambridge and its famous debating society, the Cambridge Union. She went for it, as they say, with the help of her resilient and terrific mother, who lived with her daughter for most of their lives. When her mother hit a bad patch of her own, she hired herself out as a house manager — anything to keep going, bring in some money, live. Her resilience and generosity serve as the author's example.

As for God, Huffington is matter-of-fact: Over the centuries, men have put humanity between a theological rock and a hard place, with hellfire-and-brimstone organized religions on the one hand and bleak existentialism on the other. She recommends a third way — recognizing an overarching spirituality above the strictures of any particular belief and praying to aspects of our own choosing of the Divine. For her, it's the Virgin Mary, Hestia (the Greek goddess of the hearth) and Hermes (the god of serendipity and change). It's an appealing idea.

Even more interesting are the chapters on leadership, learning to speak out and changing the world. Huffington actually had to learn to speak out — in the Cambridge Union — and once she did, there was no stopping her. She had those strong opinions, and they cost her. When she became a Democrat, she lost more than a few friends and gained more than a few enemies. Her daughter even lost a godmother. All this opinion-having carries a price. Perfect strangers groan when they hear your name. But keeping quiet exacts its own price, too. 'I don't tell ... all,' Pat Nixon is reputed to have said. And the dead looks of women in public (or private) who can't (or won't) say what they think or feel is a caution to us all. They've made the transition from goddess to doormat with no help from Picasso at all.

So 'On Being Fearless' makes you think. The subjects it addresses don't really go together (and Huffington's left out snakes, trains, terrorists, elevators, cats and fast lanes on the freeway). But this book may encourage readers to prioritize their fears — to do something, perhaps, about what they can change and to accept being scared to death about the rest." Reviewed by Carolyn See, who may be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"[S]urprisingly refreshing....[A] wide-ranging look at the challenges women face in family, faith, careers, and personal fulfillment to explore the rewards of facing up to fears and working steadily toward fearlessness." Booklist

"On Being Fearless makes you think. The subjects it addresses don't really go together....But this book may encourage readers to prioritize their fears — to do something, perhaps, about what they can change and to accept being scared to death about the rest." Carolyn See, The Washington Post Book World

"Huffington's very current reading, particularly in such subjects as motherhood, working women and female brain chemistry, adds depth to an otherwise superficial book." Los Angeles Times

Huffington, a woman who embodies fearlessness, pens a manifesto for women on how to overcome fears at work, in parenting, in love, in aging, and more in order to achieve their dreams.

The Huffington Post has a new feature section devoted to promoting fearlessness in all aspects of our lives. Using as its springboard the themes in her new book, the section contains blog posts, news stories, and special features on relationships, work, parenting, health, sex, food, entertainment...in other words, life.

Observing that her own teenage daughters were beginning to experience some of the same fears that had once burdened her--how attractive am I? do people like me? do I dare speak up?--Arianna Huffington began to examine the ways in which fear affects all our lives. In stories drawn from her own experiences and from the lives of other women, she points toward the moments of extraordinary strength, courage, and resilience that result from confronting and overcoming fear. And she outlines the steps anyone can take to conquer fear. Her book shows us how to become bold from the inside out--from feeling comfortable in our own skin to getting what we want in love and at work to changing the world.

Arianna Huffington was raised in Greece by her fearless mother and graduated from Cambridge University, where she headed its famed debating society. She has written eleven books, appeared on countless television and radio shows, and launched the Huffington Post, an enormously successful online source of news and opinion.

While taking on a variety of roles, Huffington has embodied the fearless woman throughout her life. In 2006, she was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. She has written this book for her two daughters in the hope that they will lead fearless lives.