Author Chat: Becoming Fearless by Benjamin Ritter

Imagine living a life with no limits, overcoming self-doubt, and making the most of every situation. What if you could go to bed every night without worrying about tomorrow? Dr. Benjamin Ritter offers a powerful roadmap to build self-confidence, resilience, and a fearless mindset.

In this edition of Author Chat, Disrupt Your Career speaks with Dr. Benjamin Ritter about his new book, Becoming Fearless: 65 Strategies to Journey from Self-Doubt to Self-Mastery (Live for Yourself Consulting, September 2024). In this transformative guide, Dr. Ritter provides actionable strategies to help readers overcome their fears, defeat self-doubt, and unlock their inner strength. An edited version of our insightful conversation with Dr. Ritter follows.

What inspired you to write this book, and what specific audience did you have in mind when you were writing it?

Generally, when I think about what type of information in the written word is helpful, at least for myself, I don’t like reading 400 pages to find the one little nugget. I like to think that I learned in a kind of cookie cutter type of wisdom and that’s the kind of the content that I tend to create. So I ended up releasing an audio form of this book called Fearless Fridays. About two years ago, every Friday I’d jump on I would do a two to three-minute version of a tip that I feel helps myself and might help the world live a little bit more fearlessly. Because when you can be fearless, all doors are open to you. And I got such response from my audience. They are generally mid-career to executive professionals that are also interested in breaking free of that traditional career – they want to disrupt their career. I thought to myself, “Okay, well, what other form can I put this content in? And how do I create a book so that I can even create more impact?” And so we went through all the episodes. I earmarked the ones that I thought would be most relevant, most impactful to help people become fearless, and then rewrote them. Verbal is very different than written and I crafted the book really hoping that it offers those nuggets and those little epiphanies that helped me learn and helped me change.

Could you summarize and share the key concepts, methods and insights you discuss in your book?

The entire book is actually founded on this general concept that fear is just information. If we want to live fearlessly, we have to accept that belief, and we have to interrupt the fear cycle, which is basically: we feel something we then think about it in a certain way based on our beliefs, and that reinforces whatever belief is a focal point from the thought itself. The first couple of entries in the book are all about how to feel your feelings, how to think about your thoughts and how to challenge your beliefs. If we can realize that the danger or threat that we are feeling, thinking and believing is related to whatever we’re afraid of, and we can understand that it’s actually a choice based on experiences that we’ve had in our life, we can make a new choice. So the book shares different ways to make that new choice, and basically 65 different strategies, mindsets or actions that you can do to help you start believing that fear is just information, and then how do we reinterpret that information to actually achieve our goals and create a life or career that we truly are interested in.

65 strategies is a large number… Could you share some of the success stories or case studies in the book to illustrate the importance of becoming fearless?

The number 65 can indeed be a little overwhelming for individuals that are overwhelmed, also just for anyone that is trying to change their life. It’s really important to remember that becoming fearless is not something that happens overnight, but it’s actually a lifestyle. I think it took me about four and a half five years to go explore and become curious and develop confidence, and then another four and a half to five years to figure out what to do with that confidence, and then I’m still making changes today. So the clients that I’ve had, the pre-readers, the beta readers, the pre-orders, they’ve all said, either way reading through this is inspirational and helps you feel a little bit more empowered about your life, really realizing that you have more control than you think or maybe than you thought because of the fear that you are feeling or thinking or believing in. When you can find something that really resonates with you, though, in the book, because generally, a strategy will relate more to someone based on what they’re experiencing. If someone may be very happy in their personal life, but at work, maybe they’re going for a promotion. So that individual would resonate with the entry that talks about how to show up more as a leader, how to act as if you’ve already been promoted, and shares different ideas around if you’re interested in being promoted, like this is what your manager’s thinking, and this is who you need to be within the work environment itself. So the idea of act as if you’ve already been promoted, that basically says you need to change the perception of the people around you and take control of your career, be more proactive in that next step that you’re trying to achieve, instead of waiting and thinking that someone is going to give it to you. Because that’s not really how it works. Generally, we hold ourselves back because we’re afraid of acting outside of our role, or we’re worried about, maybe a failure, or what people might think of us if we want to be promoted as well as maybe we’re just going to get more work. Well, we kind of takes a look at that fear and helps to reframe it, and then to adjust behavior based on, well, what you need to do tomorrow to ensure that you can grow into that next role. 

What is your favorite piece of advice or the one that you find most difficult still to put into action for yourself?

Each of the entries in the book actually come from my own life, and then are reinforced through the clients that I work with. They’re also based on different research in the realm of job satisfaction, self-fulfillment and such. For me personally, one of the things that I always have to check in on is this concept that you can never really have too much work. Sometimes I’ll catch myself saying, “Oh, I’m so busy or there’s so much to do”. But in reality, I’ve chosen to put that on my to do list. I’ve decided to give work my attention and always constantly checking in with myself to say, like, what do I want to create? Like, finish today, and then at the same time closing the door and work when maybe I’m on a podcast or with friends, like today right now, I can’t do the work. I can’t go into my inbox. I can’t do any can’t do anything about it. So why would I worry about it? And oftentimes, even myself, we invest our energy into things that we can actually impact, that relate to the task lists or the work that we have to do. And too often, we’re working when we’re not even at work. It’s five, at six, at seven o’clock in the evening, or it’s in the morning, we woke up, and we have the opportunity to, like, really be with ourselves, or be with the people that we care about, or you shared earlier, like our pets, and give them our attention. I should not be spending more time on work.

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