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How to Train Yourself to Be Fearless – and Become Ready for Whatever Comes Next

NEXTletter is your practice for shaping what’s next. More than a newsletter, it’s a space to pause, reflect, and experiment. Every other Friday, you’ll get one question, two perspectives, and one experiment — to help you create the future you most want to live in.

Author

Frederik Pferdt
January 30, 2026

Prefer to listen 📻 > click here.

A few days ago, I watched Alex Honnold climb Taipei 101 with no ropes.

I watched it three times.
Once alone.
Once with my wife.
Once with my kids.

Each time, I noticed something different. Not the height. Not the risk. Not even the precision of his movements. What stayed with me was how he prepared.

Honnold, as he mentioned it after the climb, doesn’t just rehearse the route. He rehearses the feeling.
He imagines how he will feel when he is calm.
When he is tired.
When fear shows up.
When focus narrows.

He doesn’t try to think his way through fear. He feels his way through it.

Neuroscientists later put him in an MRI and found something extraordinary: his amygdala, the part of the brain that triggers fight, flight, or freeze, barely reacts to threatening images. Not because he was born fearless, but because he trained his response over years of exposure.

Watching him, I realized something important.

This wasn’t about courage.
It was about preparation for uncertainty.

And that led me to a question that feels especially relevant right now:

ONE QUESTION

How do we train ourselves to be fearless - not to avoid fear, but to meet whatever the future brings?

Because being future ready isn’t about knowing what will happen. It’s about trusting how you’ll meet it.

A personal note before we go further

I’ve trained fear myself.

I used to be afraid of heights.
So I jumped from the highest bungee jump in South Africa.

I used to be afraid of public speaking.
So I exposed myself, again and again, to larger and larger audiences – until stages that once terrified me became places of curiosity and connection.

Fear didn’t disappear. But the story changed.

Each time, I learned the same lesson Alex Honnold seems to live by:

You don’t become fearless by avoiding fear.
You become fearless by meeting it.

The most meaningful gift isn’t something you unwrap. It’s the future you help someone create.

Use FUTUREREADY as your code and get 50% off our online course “Your 8 Days Future-Ready Mindstate Training” here, Future Creator!

You can also share the code once with someone you love or care about and who you think might need it. Just forward the link or the email.

TWO PERSPECTIVES

1️⃣  Fear is not fixed. It’s trainable.

Fear is one of our oldest survival systems. It evolved to keep us alive. But neuroscience is clear on one thing: the fear response itself can be reshaped.

Honnold’s brain scans are extreme, but the principle is universal. Through repeated, controlled exposure, the brain learns a new truth: this feeling is intense, but it is not fatal.

This is why exposure therapy works for phobias. People don’t start by facing the fear head-on. They start by imagining it. Then approaching it in small steps. Over time, the nervous system recalibrates.

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux puts it simply:

“We don’t erase fear. We change how it’s processed.”

Fear becomes information, not a command.

That matters for the future. Because the future rarely feels safe. It feels unfamiliar. Unclear. Unfinished.

Training fear is training your nervous system to stay present when certainty disappears.

2️⃣ Most of our fears are stories about the future

When people say they are afraid, they are rarely afraid of the moment they’re in.

They’re afraid of what might happen.

Afraid of failing.
Afraid of losing someone they love.
Afraid of being alone.
Afraid of not being able to provide.
Afraid of becoming irrelevant.
Afraid of a future they can’t control.

These are not irrational fears. They are deeply human.

But often, what paralyzes us isn’t reality.
It’s the story we tell ourselves about where this could lead.

“If this happens, everything will fall apart.”
“If I say this, I’ll lose everything.”
“If I try and fail, I won’t recover.”

The future arrives through transitions, not predictions.
A job ends.
A role changes.
A relationship shifts.
A diagnosis appears.

Being future ready means we don’t wait for certainty before acting. It means we train ourselves to stay grounded inside the story before it becomes overwhelming.

As Susan Jeffers famously wrote:

“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Not recklessly.
But consciously.

ONE EXPERIMENT

This week, I invite you to try a simple but powerful experiment.

Use your non-dominant hand for one week.

Brush your teeth with it.
Unlock your phone with it.
Write a note with it.
Pour your coffee with it.

Notice what happens.

Your dominant hand is confident. Efficient. On autopilot.
Your non-dominant hand is awkward. Slow. Uncertain. Curious.

That’s the point.

This practice isn’t about dexterity.
It’s about identity.

The future will often ask you to be a beginner again.
To operate without mastery.
To stay present when competence disappears.

Using your non-dominant hand trains you to stay calm, patient, and compassionate with yourself when things feel unfamiliar.

Once you notice that shift, extend the practice:

Have the conversation you’ve been postponing.
Sit in silence instead of filling the space.
Engage with someone whose worldview challenges yours.
Stay with discomfort one breath longer than usual.

Each moment is not a test.
It’s training.

Life works. But something inside you wants more.

Not more to do. More alignment. More clarity. More you. My 1:1 Future Being Coaching is a space to reconnect with the future you actually want to live. Together, we uncover what’s quietly holding you back and turn insight into real steps you can take now, in your life as it is. This is for people who are ready to stop waiting for the right moment and start shaping what comes next from within. If that feels familiar, you’re invited.

Podcast - with Ivy Ross

If fear is something we train, then we also need places where the nervous system can soften.

That’s why this conversation with Ivy Ross, VP of Design at Google and co-author of Your Brain on Art, felt like a natural extension of this reflection.

We talk about art not as decoration or taste, but as something essential.
As a way the nervous system softens instead of tightens.
As a practice that helps us stay present when things feel uncertain.
And as a doorway back to imagination when the mind gets stuck.

Ivy shares why aesthetic experiences change us biologically, why art helps when words fail, and how attention to texture, sound, light, and making can recalibrate us in moments of transition.

As Ivy puts it:

“Art isn’t a nice to have. It’s imperative. It’s the way the universe designed us.”

If being future ready means trusting how we meet what comes next, then art may be one of the quietest forms of preparation we have.

You can listen to the conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you prefer to stay with the visual experience, you can now watch the full conversation on YouTube as well.

Join us for NightShift

Most of us train productivity all day.
Very few of us train how to let go.

And yet, when uncertainty shows up, it’s the state of our nervous system that decides how we meet tomorrow.

NightShift is a free, 11-day community practice designed to gently change how your day ends.

Each evening, you’ll receive a short audio invitation and a simple practice.
Nothing to optimize.
Nothing to fix.
Nothing to perform.

Not to sleep better
(which might happen).

But to meet tomorrow with more presence.

I’m co-hosting NightShift with my friend Els van der Helm, one of the world’s leading sleep experts. Not to explain why we don’t sleep. But to create a calm, human transition from doing to being. Explore the podcast we had together.

Over 11 days, you’ll get:

  • short evening audio practices

  • a shared rhythm with others around the world

  • and a gentle reset you can carry forward

If the future has been keeping you awake,
NightShift is an invitation to end the day differently.

🌓 11 days. One gentle rhythm. A shared pause. Free to join.

You’re warmly invited.

With love
Frederik

My recommendations

You might have noticed something while reading this.

None of this requires a recommendation for where to go next.
It asks a different question.

How do you want to feel in your future?

That question is at the heart of my Future Being Coaching. Not about making big life moves, but about shifting your inner posture toward what’s ahead. So your future feels more spacious, more intentional, more like yours, no matter where you are standing.

The same is true for the 8-Day Future Mindstate Training. It doesn’t ask you to go anywhere. It meets you where you are. At home. On a train. Between meetings. One small daily practice at a time. The journey comes to you.

And then there are my books. They’ve traveled to many places I couldn’t. Different countries. Different climates. Different lives. You can take them anywhere you want to feel differently. Sometimes that’s the most portable future tool we have.