Book Review: The Fear Bubble by Ant Middleton

Without fear, there’s no challenge. Without challenge, there’s no growth. Without growth, there’s no life. Ant Middleton is no stranger to fear: as a point man in the Special Forces, he confronted fear on a daily basis, never knowing what lay behind the next corner, or the next closed door. In prison, he was thrust into the unknown, cut off from friends and family, isolated with thoughts of failure and dread for his future. And at the top of Everest, in desperate, life-threatening conditions, he was forced to face up to his greatest fear, of leaving his children and wife without a father and husband. But fear is not his enemy. It is the energy that propels him. Thanks to the revolutionary concept of the Fear Bubble, Ant has learned to harness the power of fear and understands the positive force that it can become. Fear gives Ant his edge, allowing him to seek out life’s challenges, whether that is at home, pushing himself every day to be the best father he can be, or stuck in the death zone on top of the world in a 90mph blizzard.

In his groundbreaking new book, Ant Middleton thrillingly retells the story of his death-defying climb of Everest and reveals the concept of the Fear Bubble, showing how it can be used in our lives to help us break through our limits. Powerful, unflinching and an inspirational call to action, The Fear Bubble is essential reading for anyone who wants to push themselves further, harness their fears and conquer their own personal Everests.

My Review: 
I've been interested in the life of Ant Middleton since I first saw him on SAS Who Dares Wins and this second book is even better than the first book, both of which I really enjoyed. I like the way it mixes events from his life with lessons that these events taught him, and shows how the reader can use this to make changes to their own life. Those who like self-help books can get something out of these books and for those just interested in Ant's own experiences, there is lots to enjoy in this book too. Being a big fan of Everest expedition books means I was looking forward to this book more than ever! 

Ant begins this book trying to deal with his sudden popularity and feeling paranoid that everyone knows who he is and wants a piece of him. He talks frankly about starting to crave the fear that he has always been able to thrive on, even playing a form of chicken with the city traffic just to give him a jolt of it. Knowing this is not healthy, and fearing a return to drinking and fighting, he looks for a better outlet for his desire for fear and comes up with the idea of climbing Everest, an idea that doesn't exactly thrill his wife. Ant decides to go on a low key expedition with sherpa guides and no fanfares but as soon as the TV people hear of his plans, they want to send a camera crew with him, something that Ant isn't greatly keen on, fearing he will loss control of the whole thing. In the end he agrees to it as climbing Everest is expensive and having someone else foot the bill made a lot more sense than paying for it himself.

Ant introduces the fascinating idea of the fear bubble. He talks about when we dread a coming event, we can be scared about it for days or weeks in advance, when in reality we only need to be scared of the moments during the event. He talks about his fear during tours in war arenas, and training himself not to fear it while he was preparing at home, travelling to war, settling at the base and heading out the mission. He tried to imagine a bubble around the place and event ie he needed to gain entry to a room where the bad guy was, and to not be afraid until he stepped into the bubble. As he steps into it, he is permitted to be afraid it the bubble pops and he is rewarded with the rush of adrenaline from dealing with it. This was so interesting to read about and his talk of popping your personal fear bubbles allowing you to move forward in life instead of being stuck in a rut of fear of moving forward. 

The talk of fear bubble goes along with the theory of entering a corridor with closed doors. If you open the door, you could find something scary or difficult but if you push through, you will grow from the new experience and improve. If you refuse to open the doors, you may stay safe but can miss out on the other experience that life offers. I thought that was pretty interesting along with popping fear bubbles. It was easy to find examples of this in my own life, like going through the door marked dentist after years of fear about it and finally realising that I could cope with it, which was personally satisfying.

The book is not all life lessons though. It covers the whole of Ant's expedition to Everest, his alpha male dominance games with his cameraman, trying to learn more about his new sherpa friends, hating the tourist circus of the hike to Everest and the show off attitudes of some of the climbers whose mouths were a lot stronger than their climbing skills. He describes the headaches from being at altitude, the fear of trekking through the Icefall, pushing on through exhaustion and bad weather, and reaching each camp. He discusses his willingness to push his body to his limit and cut corners in order to get to the top ahead of other groups. The whole summit attempt is fascinating to read about and it is pretty gripping. I've already seen the TV show of the Everest trip so I knew in advance what happened but I still enjoyed reading more detail about it. 

I certainly hope that Ant continues to write these books as I enjoy them a lot. I'm also going to have a winter binge on all the seasons of SAS along with Mutiny and Everest!

Read December 2019
5 stars.