It was a silly time to try to make a living out of words, but it was a silly time in general. - Steven Kotler

This is what the self-help books don’t tell you. Fully alive and deeply committed is a risky business. Once you strip away the platitudes, a life of passion and purpose will always cost, as T. S. Eliot reminds us, “Not less than everything.

Treat fear like a playmate,” suggests Ulmer. “This transforms the emotion from a problem to be solved into a resource to be savored.

The move from self-authoring to self-transforming for example? Fewer than 5 percent of us ever make that jump.