3. Fear. Welcome to Hotel Earth. Fear does not prevent death. It prevents life. Buddha.

The epic battle of Marbharath is about to begin. The air is thick with anticipation. Thousands

of warriors finger the hilt of their swords as their horses snort and pour at the ground. But our

hero, Arjun, is terrified. He has family and friends on either side of this battle and many

of them are about to die. Arjun among the fiercest fighters of the land drops his bow. The

Bhagad-gita opens on a battlefield with a warrior's terror. Arjun is the most talented archer in the

land yet fear has caused him to totally lose connection with his abilities. The same thing happens

to each of us. We have so much to offer the world but fear and anxiety disconnect us from our

abilities. This is because growing up we were taught directly or indirectly that fear is negative.

Don't be scared, our parents told us. Scared he caught our friends teased. Fear was an embarrassing

humiliating reaction to be ignored or hidden. But fear has a flip side which Tom Hanks alluded to

in his commencement address at Yale University. Fear he told the graduates will get the worst of

the best of us. The truth is we'll never live entirely without fear and anxiety. We'll never be

able to fix our economic, social and political climates to entirely eliminate conflict and uncertainty,

not to mention our everyday interpersonal challenges. And that's okay because fear isn't bad. It's

simply a warning flag. Your mind saying this doesn't look good. Something might go wrong. It's what

we do with that signal that matters. We can use our fear of the effects of climate change to motivate

us to develop solutions or we can allow it to make us feel overwhelmed and hopeless and do

nothing as a result. Sometimes fear is a critical warning to help us survive true danger. But most of the

time what we feel is anxiety related to everyday concerns about money, jobs and relationships. We

allow anxiety every day fear to hold us back by blocking us from our true feelings. The longer we

hold on to fears, the more they ferment until eventually they become toxic. I'm sitting cross-legged

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