Once again, the only real fear is when our life is threatened. All other fears exist only because of the way we think about things. They exist in our mind.

In his book, Intelligent Fear, How to Make Fear Work For You, Michael Clarkson shows you how famous athletes, public speakers and mountain climbers make their fear work for them.

Without a goal, man's life is hopeless. Focusing on our goals not only gives meaning to our lives, but ensures our mental health.

Clarkson distinguishes between pressure and stress. Stress is what we feel when under pressure. There is good stress and bad stress. He shows us how to harness the energy of bad stress.

He provides numerous exercises to help you identify your mind-body, emotional-feeling, reactions and alarm points. To manage those fears requires the ability to focus on staying in the here and now, concentrating on you skills and the job at hand and trusting yourself.

As with most mental pain that we inflict on ourselves, our expectations of how the world should be evolve around us, cause our emotional stress.

This is the ideal book to explore the cognitive-behavioral relationship of our minds and bodies. Clarkson has done much investigative work and research. In his tables he challenges the "chemical imbalance" idea that so many of us believe is our problem. He explains in simple terms what hormones flow based on what we think. He shows that our thoughts create our emotions, our moods, which result in shifting hormones and cause us physical distress. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to explore our mind-body relationship and maintain their mental health.

(Paperback)  ISBN-13: 978-1569244890 Publisher: Marlowe & Company (February 2003)