Book Review: The Gift of Fear

 In The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker, the man who Oprah Winfrey calls the nation’s leading expert on violent behavior, shows the reader how to spot even the most subtle signs of danger before its too late. Through dozens of compelling stories taken from his own career and life, featuring some of the most famous Hollywood stars and government agencies, he unravels the complexities of violent behavior and details the pre-incident indicators that can determine whether or not someone poses a danger to us. Readers learn how to:

• Recognize the survival signals that warn about risk from strangers
• Rely on their intuition (or gut instincts)
• Separate real from imagined danger
• Predict dangerous behavior
• Evaluate whether someone will use violence
• Move beyond denial so that their intuition works for them

In the Gift of Fear, Debecker delineates the difference between necessary fear and fear that causes unnecessary anxiety. Worry and anxiety are distractors from real fear signals that could help people in the most harmful of situations. Debecker’s book expertly retrains people to listen to their intuition, pay attention to surroundings/environment, and to be aware of danger signs that they would otherwise prefer to ignore. This book is a great way to learn how to overcome future situations, deal with situations that may have occurred, or just simply to obtain a new outlook on life. Ultimately, the book teaches how several negative events can be avoided if one just so happens to learn how to properly use his or her “gift of fear”.