Ep. 270 – The Gift of Fear: Book Review

🚨REALITY CHECK: Many lawyers live in what they think is fear, but let’s be honest — most of it is just manufactured worry.

That’s where Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear, comes in. He discusses the difference between real fear and everyday worries. 

🗨️ “Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness... it is a protection against future disappointment.” 

But REAL fear is different — it’s intuitive, it’s a useful signal to get yourself to safety.

AND (despite what y’all seem to think), winning your case is NOT a life-or-death situation. 🙃

When you spend hours obsessing over every possible terrifying outcome of your case, you’re wasting your precious energy. 

Not to mention, you are desensitizing yourself against the real fear signals that your body is evolutionarily hardwired to send. 

When you learn to separate the do-or-die moments from the not-so-serious ones, you gain the power to control your fear response, instead of letting it control you.

Tune in to fine-tune your fear radar. 🎯

Xo,
Sari

PS. I want to give you a trigger warning — in this podcast, I’ll read excerpts from the book that include violent situations that can be triggering for some. If that’s not your cup of tea, I’ll see you in the next episode! ❤️

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“Y’all talk about fear being a motivator, and I'm going to suggest that that is bollocks. Fear is the worst motivator in terms of the type of work that you're doing. And the author, Gavin de Becker, says that if we're scared all the time, we don't leave room for real fear to do its job when needed.”

sari de la motte

EPISODE 270 TRANSCRIPTION

Well, welcome everybody. I told you that I would be doing a book review every month, if possible. So far, my second one. So in your face, wait, I don't know how that's in your face. Well, I'm in your face every fucking Friday morning. That's right. So here I am again and today's book is an oldie, but a goodie. It's The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. I had to pick it up recently, for reasons that I will not say. It has nothing to do with Kevin. Don't worry.

But Gavin de Becker is the world's premier predictor of violence and whatnot, and you might be like, "Why are you reading that and why should I read it?" I'm telling you, this book is everything.

It's particularly important for women and if you're listening, you need to pick up a copy yesterday. It's that important. I'm telling you, if you're a female, you need to read this book. If you're a male, you also need to read this book and also get it for all the women in your life.

Because what this book does is it talks about the difference between manufactured fear and real fear. Trial lawyers will probably be interested in that because y'all are manufacturing fear all the time, but it talks about how our intuition - the book is all about intuition, is they're ready to support us and help us if we do not override it.

And that's why I primarily recommend it to women all the time because women are told and taught to override our intuition in service of being polite. And so often we do that and we find ourselves in very dangerous situations.

So, lawyers have a very interesting relationship with fear because y'all live in fear, but most of that fear is manufactured. And I say that because when we... He talks in the book, and I'll try and find that for us when we go through the review, but he talks about the difference between fear and worry. And most of what y'all are operating in is worry. I remember listening to a stage four cancer patient saying that worry is like praying for something that you don't want.

And so that's where you're manufacturing your fear, where he's going to talk about in the book how to recognize real fear and let it teach you what you need to know in situations that could be life-threatening. Now you might think, "Well, I'll never have a life-threatening situation." And if you're a man, that might be true. Most women in your life probably already have had one, honestly. If you talk to most women, most women have been in some type of threatening or harassing situation in their life by the time they're in high school. I should have looked up some of the statistics on that, but it's frightening.

But it will also teach you a lot about the difference between fear, how to tap into your intuition. So all that said, it is very, very important for lawyers to read this book.

Y'all talk about fear being a motivator, and I'm going to suggest that that is bollocks. Fear is the worst motivator in terms of the type of work that you're doing. And he talks about, which I think is so important, that if we're scared all the time, what we do is we don't leave room for real fear to do its job when needed. And I thought that was huge for trial attorneys. If we're always scared, then we won't actually be open to real fear and what it can do for us in those moments when it's actually needed.

So I'm going to read a little bit out of the book today to give you some context for what this book is all about. I do want to give a trigger warning. The first thing I'm going to talk about or read from has to do with rape. So if you are a rape survivor and that could be triggering for you, I'm going to ask that you forward, I don't know exactly how many seconds, but probably a good minute or two.

So here's what he starts the book with, "He had probably been watching her for a while, we aren't sure, but what we do know is that she was not his first victim. That afternoon, in an effort to get all her shopping done in one trip, Kelly had overestimated what she could comfortably carry home. Justifying her decision as she struggled with the heavy bags, she reminded herself that making two trips would've meant walking around after dark, and she was too careful about her safety for that.

As she climbed the steps to the apartment building door, she saw that it had been left unlatched. Again. Her neighbors just don't get it she thought. And though their lax security annoyed her, this time she was glad to be saved the trouble of getting out the key.

She closed the door behind her, pushing it until she heard it latch. She's certain she locked it, which meant he must have already been inside the corridor. Next came the four flights of stairs, which she wanted to do in one trip.

Near the top of the third landing, one of the bags gave way. Tearing open and dispensing cans of cat food. They rolled down the stairs almost playfully as if they were trying to get away from her. The can in the lead paused at the second floor landing, and Kelly watched as it literally turned the corner, gained some speed and began its seemingly mindful hop down the next flight of steps and out of sight.

'Got it. I'll bring it up.' Someone called out. Kelly didn't like that voice. Right from the start, something just sounded wrong to her. But then this friendly looking young guy came bounding up the steps, collecting cans along the way. He said, 'Let me give you a hand.'

'No, no thanks. I've got it.' 'You don't look like you've got it. What floor are you going to?' She paused before answering him. 'The fourth, but I'm okay really.' He wouldn't hear a word of it, and by this point, he had a collection of cans balanced between his chest and one arm. 'I'm going to the fourth floor too,' he said. 'And I'm late. Not my fault, broken watch. So let's not just stand here and give me that.' He reached out and tugged on one of the heavier bags she was holding. She repeated, 'No, really thanks, but no, I've got it.' Still holding on the grocery bag he said, 'There's such a thing as being too proud you know.'

For a moment, Kelly didn't let go of the bag, but then she did, and the seemingly insignificant exchange between the cordial stranger and the recipient of his courtesy, that was the signal, to him and to her that she was willing to trust him. As the bag passed from her control to his, so did she.

'We better hurry,' he said, as he walked up the stairs ahead of Kelly. 'We got a hungry cat up there.' Even though he seemed to want nothing more at that moment than to be helpful, she was apprehensive about him. And for no good reason she thought. He was friendly and gentlemanly and she felt guilty about her suspicion. She didn't want to be the kind of person who distressed everybody.

So they were next approaching the door to her apartment. 'Did you know a cat can live for three weeks without eating?' he asked. 'I'll tell you how I learned that tidbit. I once forgot I promised to feed a cat while my friend of mine was out of town.'

Kelly was now standing at the door to her apartment, which she just opened. 'I'll take it from here,' she said. Hoping he'd hand her the groceries, accept her thanks and be on his way. Instead, he said, 'Oh no, I didn't come this far to let you have another cat food spill.' When she still hesitated to let him in her door, he laughed understandingly. 'Hey, we can leave the door open like ladies do in old movies. I'll just put this stuff down and go. I promise.' She did let him in, but he did not keep his promise."

That's how he starts the book and he goes into talking about how she knew even before she knew that this wasn't a good situation.

So she says, "It was after he'd already held the gun to my head, after he raped me. It was after that. He got up from the bed, got dressed, then closed the window. He glanced at his watch and then started acting like he was in a hurry. 'I got to be somewhere. Hey, don't look so scared. I promise I'm not going to hurt you.' Kelly absolutely knew he was lying. She knew he planned to kill her, and though it may be hard to imagine, it was the first time since the incident began that she felt profound fear.

He motioned to her with the gun and said, 'Don't you move or do anything. I'm going to the kitchen to get something to drink and then I'll leave. I promise, but you stay right where you are.'

He had little reason to be concerned that Kelly might disobey his instructions because she had been from the moment she let go of the bag until this moment completely under his control. 'You know I won't move,' she assured him, but the instant he stepped from the room, Kelly stood up and walked after him, pulling the sheet off the bed with her. I was literally right behind him like a ghost, and he didn't know I was there. We walked down the hall together. At one point he stopped and so did I.

He was looking at my stereo, which was playing some music, and he reached out and made it louder. When he moved on toward the kitchen, I turned and walked through the living room. Kelly could hear drawers being opened as she walked out the front door, leaving it ajar. She walked directly into the apartment across the hall, which she somehow knew would be unlocked, holding a finger up to signal her surprised neighbors to be quiet. She locked their door behind her.

'I knew if I had stayed in my room, he was going to come back from the kitchen and kill me, but I don't know how. I was so certain'.

(Gavin says) 'Yes, you do.' I tell her. She sighs and then goes over it again.

'He got up and got dressed, closed the window, looked at his watch. He promised he wouldn't hurt me, and that promise came out of nowhere. Then he went into the kitchen to get a drink supposedly, but I heard him opening drawers in there. He was looking for a knife of course, but I knew way before that.' She pauses.

'I guess he wanted a knife because using the gun would be too noisy.' 'What makes you think he was concerned about the noise? I ask.' 'I don't know.' She takes a long pause, gazing off past me, looking back at him in the bedroom. '

Oh, I do know. I get it. I get it. Noise was the thing. That's why he closed the window. That's how I knew.'"

Now, this story was so compelling when I read it for the first time because what Gavin is able to allow her to see is that her subconscious, her intuition, put it all together before her brain, her prefrontal cortex, could actually understand it, meaning the brain or the subconscious, intuition.

There's no reason to close the window if he's not going to hurt her. There's no reason to turn up the volume if he's not going to hurt her. But the intuition put it all together and so she just got up and knew if she had stayed, that something bad was going to happen, and so he goes through the whole book. Again, it's not all about these types of situations, but that one's a pretty compelling one.

Talking about how we tend to override our intuitive symptoms or... what are the words I'm looking for? The messages. But that if we do that, we can often find ourselves in even worse situation. So he talks about after this first one, in the first... I guess it's the second chapter, where he talks about the technology of intuition. He says, "What many others want to dismiss as a coincidence or gut feeling is in fact a cognitive process faster than we recognize and far different from the familiar step-by-step thinking we rely on so willingly. We think conscious thought is somehow better, when in fact, intuition is soaring flight compared to the plotting of logic.

Nature's greatest accomplishment, the human brain, is never more efficient or invested when its host is at risk. Then intuition is catapulted to another level entirely. A height at which it can accurately be called graceful - even miraculous. Intuition is the journey from A to Z without stopping at any other letter along the way. It is knowing without knowing why."

Don't you think intuition is something that you can hone and use to your advantage as a trial attorney? Absolutely.

In the next section, he talks about prediction. So it's not just about intuition and how to tune into your intuition. He talks about how human behavior is not a mystery and that we can predict what is going to happen actually way better than we think we can, right?

We're like, "We don't know what people are up to." So often, kind of when I say, "Y'all know what jurors are going to say in jury selection, your saboteur just keeps telling you."

"I don't know what they're going to say. It's so scary."

You know exactly what they're going to say in most cases. He talks about these signals that you can watch for, especially by people who are trying to get you to trust them that are not trustworthy. He talks about forced teaming, using the word "we" very early. He talks about charm and niceness very, very early. Talks about giving too many details. Some of these things we want to avoid as trial attorneys. Do we not?

Because that is what's giving the person this underlying thought of this is not a good situation, but what's actually happening is we're trying to get the person to trust - I think this would be something that most trial attorneys would want to avoid. Over here, further on in the book, he talks about how intuition is always learning.

He says, "Intuition is always learning, and though it may occasionally send a signal that turns out to be less than urgent, everything it communicates to you is meaningful. Unlike worry, it will not waste your time."

I love that. Let me say that again. "Unlike worry, it will not waste your time." I just think that's fantastic.

"Intuition might send any of several different messengers to get your attention, and because they differ according to urgency, it is good to know the ranking. The intuitive signal of the highest order, the one that is the greatest urgency is fear. Accordingly, it should always be listened to."

And that's why when he goes into later talking about when you're scared of everything, you will not be able to pick up on the situations that are actually scary. Helpful, no? For trial attorneys.

He talks about the difference between... well, first of all, he talks about how you cannot have a checklist. So he says, "I've discussed at length the warning signs that can help you avoid being a victim of violence. But even if you make excellent predictions, you might still find yourself in danger.

Though I'm often asked for advice on how a person should respond to a robber or carjacker, for example. I cannot offer a checklist of what to do for each type of hazard you should encounter because cookie cutter approaches are dangerous. Cookie cutter approaches are dangerous. Some people say about rape, for example, do not resist, while others say, always resist. Neither strategy is right for all situations, but only one strategy is - listen to your intuition."

This is what I say all the time - that the search for you all for a formula about what to do in trial. There is no such thing, even H2H. Because H2H is one way of doing things. And if anything that H2H says, it's trust your instincts. Something that we teach in H2H may not work in the moment in front of those jurors that you're in front of right there and then. You cannot put yourself in a box and say, "Have a checklist of this is how I do things every single time." You need to learn to trust your instincts and that needs to be trained.

He talks about the difference between, for example, intuition versus predictions. He says, "We predict the behavior of other human beings based on our ability to read certain signals that we recognize.

In Desmond Morris's Bodytalk, he describes the meaning of gestures and body movements and notes in which parts of the world various meanings apply. Amazingly..." - and I didn't know this y'all.

"66 of the signals are listed as being valid worldwide. Universal to all human beings in every culture on earth. The majority of them are presented unconsciously.

Everywhere in the world, the chin jetted forward is a sign of aggression. The head slightly retracted is a sign of fear. The nostrils flared while taking a sharp breath is a sign of anger. If any person anywhere on the planet holds his arms forward with the palms facing down while making small downward movements, it means calm down. In every culture, stroking the chin means I am thinking."

Just as these movements are unconscious, so is our reading of them usually unconscious.

If we asked you to list just 15 of the 66 worldwide gestures or physical movements, you'd find it difficult, but you absolutely know all of them and respond to each intuitively. Earlier I mentioned the predictive language of dogs, which is all nonverbal. Desmond Morris has identified one of the nonverbal parts of human language, but we have many others. Often knowing the language of a given prediction is more important than understanding exactly what a person says."

He also says "Intuition is just listening. Prediction is more like trying to solve the puzzles with logic."

So there's a difference between what your intuition is telling you between predicting and then predicting what's going to happen. And he talks in the book, also, about how to do those things. He talks about various things in the book about how, if somebody threatens to kill you, to know if they're serious. I thought that was very interesting. He talks about the difference between an actual threat and an intimidation, and there's four words that an intimidation will use versus a threat. He talks about how to deal with stalkers. Many women have dealt with stalkers.

I always remember his advice of if you tell the person one time, do not contact me again, and then you never, ever, ever, ever contact them again. Because if you pick up the phone or you email them back after the 400th time that they've emailed you or called you, you've now just told your stalker that it takes 400 attempts to get you to talk to me. So they'll continue that.

He talks about workplace violence, he talks about all kinds of things, but I'm going to end on hopefully you're already putting this in your cart to get the book and it's an oldie. It's an oldie. It was in 1997, and the one thing I will say that I didn't really love reading about domestic violence, he really does a little bit of victim blaming.

I don't think he means to. We've come very far in that space, but that's one place the tone in the book kind of hit me wrong. So I will say that ahead of time that I didn't love his section on domestic violence. There's good things in there, but when it got to the women can leave and they still have a choice. Of course, I believe that, it just verged on... it was just a little victim blaming for me, but it still holds up.

So he says about worry, "Worry is the fear we manufacture. It is not authentic." I just love that. "If you choose to worry about something, have at it. But do know doing so is a choice. More often we worry because it provides some secondary reward.

There are many variations, but a few of the most popular follow." See, if you identify with any of these. "Worry is a way to avoid change. When we worry we don't do anything about the matter." So it's kind of a buffering thing. That's Sari saying is a buffering thing.

He says, "Worry is a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something since worry feels like we're doing something. Worry is a cloying way to have a connection with others. The idea being that worrying about someone shows love." And this is where I think y'all use it. "Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After taking an important test, for example, a student might worry about whether he failed. If he can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it so to speak by worrying about it, then failing won't feel as bad when it happens."

But y'all know that that's not true. It does feel just as bad.

And I love what he says at the end where he says, "If you worry about everything or if you're fearful about everything, then you won't be able to actually tune into the real fear signals that your body is so perfectly poised to send."

So despite all of the violent rhetoric and things that he talks about how to avoid, the book is so much more than just about how to avoid violence. It really is a masterclass in influence and prediction, but also very, very helpful for those violent situations.

So my review of The Gift of Fear is that it is a definite must read, especially for women and all the women in your life. Go ahead and pick it up. Let me know what you think, and I hope that that was helpful. Thanks so much.

Have you ever wished you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I’m about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys. It’s called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind, and it will help you understand what the jury is thinking so you can feel confident and trust yourself in the courtroom. 

Ready? Head to sariswears.com/jury and enjoy!