Fight Your Fear and Win: Seven Skills for Performing Your Best Under Pressure--At Work, In Sports, On Stage (Hardcover)

by Don Greene Ph.D. (Author) "On Sunday morning Ed McMahon, a client of mine who works on Wall Street, attended the 8:00 A.M. mass at his church without his wife..." (more)
Key Phrases: last day for rest, process cue, optimal energy, Courage Log, Merrill Lynch, Ranger School (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Renowned performance coach Don Greene, Ph.D., leads readers on a strategic, goal-reaching mission in this compact, powerful, and often fascinating handbook. A former Airborne Ranger and Green Beret (among a long list of other impressive credentials), Greene believes fear is only conquered by action--not by lying on a therapist's couch. To that end, he urges readers to assess their current skills (by taking a relatively simple survey provided in the book), pinpoint their weaker performance tendencies, then "embark on a training regimen" to flex seven specific fear-conquering muscles: determination, energy, perspective, courage, focus, poise, and resilience.

Greene uses each chapter to tell a story or two about a client--ranging from Olympic athletes to professional musicians to SWAT teams--whose fear scenarios provide a steppingstone for analyzing the seven skills mentioned above (determination, etc). He then quite eloquently describes how fear attempts to thwart each particular skill, and offers clear methods for retaliating ("centering down" to counteract ineffective nervous energy, or using anger constructively to develop resilience). The eight appendices outline his three-week prescription for mastering each skill, plus the key for scoring the skills survey. While his occasional military references and sports analogies offer glimpses into his commando training and sports psychology background, Greene never comes off as a stony General nor as a hyped cheerleader. Rather, his graceful writing style is rich with humor, candor, and valuable information. Forgivably cocky at times ("Nobody in the world has done as much as I have to bring out people's best"), Greene simply knows his stuff and--to the reader's benefit--presents it beautifully. --Liane Thomas

From Publishers Weekly
A self-help powerhouse with specific appeal to the business market, this persuasive book delivers concise analyses of stress, self-defeatism, the problem of identifying goals and so on, and recommends specific programs to overcome them. As a sports psychologist and performance coach to world-class athletes, Wall Street traders, police sharpshooters and professional musicians, Greene has perfected a plan for performing under intense stress, which he claims has helped thousands of clients. Like Rhonda Britten in Fearless Living, (see Forecasts, p.79), Greene does not focus on the source of one's fear. Yet in contrast to Britten, who treats underlying emotions, he concentrates on techniques for improving one's performance, drawing on military training, martial arts, visualization and mind mapping. Greene identifies seven areas of concentration namely determination, energy, perspective, courage, focus, poise and resilience and their components. Readers can measure their performance tendencies and identify difficult areas with an assessment test (soon to be available online at www.dongreene.com), though it's somewhat tricky to grade. Appendixes offer ambitious three-week programs to help readers hone each of the seven skills. With its neat separation of exercises from descriptive text, careful summaries of each point and exhortations to toughen the skin and build muscle, the book is reassuringly logical and lean. When Greene (a Ph.D., former competitive diver, West Point graduate, Green Beret) says it's never too late to recover from a major setback, readers will believe him. Agent, Alex Smithline, Scovil, Chicak & Galen. (On sale Mar. 6) Forecast: This muscular book's true-to-life examples and tested methodology will win legions of readers, and could earn Greene long-term bestsellerdom.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1st edition (March 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076790625X
• ISBN-13: 978-0767906258
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #78,424 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The technique of mastery: an Actor's perspective, April 24, 2001

By	Michael Milligan "[e-mail]" (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

As a professional actor I have searched the dusky shelves of libraries across the states studying the writen record of the craft of acting... and there are thousands of books offering endless advice about how to cultivate one's performance skills. The books are often esoteric and require some strange practices bordering on the mystical. From lying on the floor doing primal screams to over-analyzing the script as if it were a lab animal as opposed to a wild thing... these books always begin with promise and then lead me further and further into a labyrinth of confusion. Finally, I have found the book which contains a precise yet playful process which addresses the fundamental concerns of acting. Don Greene's book presents a technique for Mastery. As human beings we are constantly learning new skills and we rarely ask ourselves about how we learn. Don Greene gives a clear and practical account of how to cultivate not just 'skill,' but rather, the skill of developing skill, the mother of all skills. Prior to working with this material, I would come off stage after a good performance and have no idea how I entered into a creative state. Vice/versa, sometimes I would give a bad performance and despair that I couldn't act. I felt like I was at the whim of some unseen forces, the 'theatre gods' perhaps. Now I am discovering that my creativity is entirely within my control. I create my own states of creativity or blockage based on how I process the information coming to me all the time. How I interpret this information is largely responsible for the quality of my experience of life and how I perform in my own life. Whether I am performing Hamlet, dealing with an agent, auditioning, or enjoying liesure time at home, I find the new skills I am cultivating from Don Greene's book to be of immense value. Although the book is always scientific, precise, and practical, it suggests a profound transformation in the way we view what is possible for human beings. It challenges us to push the limits of the known and discover the vast resources within ourselves. Furthermore, Don's free online performance test helped me see clearly what my strengths and weaknesses were and thereby, focus my efforts on those particular skills which would improve my performance as effectively, efficiently, and economically as possible.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-have book you'll keep re-reading, March 22, 2001

By A Customer

A lot of self-help books have just the opposite effect than is intended: You feel so overwhelmed, so daunted by the work in front of you, you want to just hide or lie down. Not this one! Here's advice you'll enjoy reading and can't wait to put into practice--and you'll see results immediately.Greene is inspirational without sounding mushy; he's insightful without sounding like a shrink; and despite his military background, his tone is anything but drill sargeant--he's actually funny. I usually hate spending $20 on a hardcover, but this is the least expensive and most effective "therapy" I've ever gotten.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for any woman who wants to perform her best, March 11, 2001

By A Customer

Thank you, Dr. Greene, for giving me an easy to follow, step by step program for overcoming my fears when facing life's most critical moments. I used the online survey... to identify the areas that were the most troublesome for me. What a help it was to then use the chapters in the book that addressed these areas so I could begin improving them. Once I began using the recommended strategies, everything looked less frightening and I began noticing positive changes both at work and in my personal life. As I'm continuing to improve my ability to center and take risks, it's becoming easier to tap into my own inner strength and courage. My confidence is growing and I find myself approaching otherwise daunting tasks with a new attitude. I believe that this book will help other women do the same.