Scare Your Soul

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 17 OCT 2022

This competent debut from performance coach Simon encourages readers to chase their dreams and face their fears. He shares strategies to build courage and outlines seven principles to facilitate a fulfilling life: gratitude, adventure, energy, curiosity, awe, forgiveness, and work. The author recounts growing up as a shy child until a moment of panic on a flight to Israel for his first post-college job led him to adopt the mantra, "Do one thing every day that scares you." Explaining that the brain's amygdala can bypass consciousness when sending fear responses to the body, Simon discusses how to overcome this knee-jerk response by slowing down to evaluate if a fear is legitimate and developing new understandings of past events that may contribute to one's fears. He details steps one can take to enact his seven principles, urging readers to nurture gratitude by considering the "nontangible gifts that nature, spirituality, community give," as well as practicing forgiveness by considering the ways in which the offending party is a "wounded person raised by other wounded people." Exhortations for readers to lean into what they're afraid of are not new (Simon's mantra is an apocryphal quote often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt), but Simon's enthusiasm and sincerity buoy the familiar advice. This is worth a look.