The Fear Bubble. Ant Middleton

an essential component of the fear bubble technique is the positive mindset. Simply know that your days stuck in that same corridor you’ve been in for years are now numbered.

      WELCOME TO THE FEAR BUBBLE

As you read this book, I want to tell you the story of my journey up Mount Everest. It was during those long days in the spring of 2018, a great many of which were spent quietly putting one foot in front of the other, that much of the thinking you’ll find in these pages was done. After that, I want to tell you the story of my coming down Everest, which ultimately turned into the most fearful and humbling experience of my life. But most importantly, I want to use my adventures, encounters and conversations on that mountain as a springboard to dive into everything I’ve learned over the years about how the ability to harness fear and use its power can enable anyone to live without limits.

      I’m going to explore how damaging fear can actually be to the individual and everyone around them if it’s not contained. Living in fear is corrosive. It creates negativity that spreads throughout a whole life and actually changes the way you perceive reality. Just as it did twenty years ago on Snowdon for the lad just above me who became terrified and suddenly saw the mountain as one huge death trap, fear makes the entire world seem threatening, dangerous and populated by aggressors. This is why living in fear creates a victim mindset – a mindset that’s spreading like wildfire in today’s society, creating a generation of men and women who seem motivated only to stamp their feet and hope that everyone else will take responsibility for them.

      I’ll then take a deep look into the three kinds of fear: fear of suffering, fear of failure and fear of conflict. I’ll explain how exactly the same fear underlies all of these – the fear that you’re not good enough. If you can learn to harness this one – and you can – there will be absolutely no stopping you.

If you’ve read my previous book, you’ll already be familiar with the finer details of my life. After the death of my beloved father, I endured a tough childhood in France with a new stepfather and a mother who forbade any of her children to mourn. I joined the army at seventeen, crashed out at twenty-one, went through a dark period of alcohol abuse, steroid abuse and street violence before finding direction, structure and passion in the Marines, with whom I served a tour of duty in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, and then as an elite operator in the Special Boat Service for four years. When I returned to civvy street in 2011, an altercation with a police officer led me to prison, where I served four months of a fourteen-month sentence for assault. After my release I worked in a variety of jobs that can be very loosely bracketed under the term ‘security’. And then I received the call from that posh man from the TV.

      But, as I said, if you’ve read First Man In you’ll know all this already. The pages you hold in your hands now contain a very different piece of work. That book was my story. This book is my soul.