Today’s menu
🍽️ In this week’s issue:
The Main Event: What’s up with this ‘over-50’ fear? Stuff the heeby-jeebies back in their box with ancient wisdom techniques
The Year of Small Changes: The week of meditation + the truth about Plan 50X + share your ‘comeback’ story
Your thoughts: How’s your habit stacking going? Let me know.
The Main Event
🧗🏻 Face fear willingly and un-crap yourself by up to 25 points
Funny thing happened this week.
I was minding my own business, climbing a wall as I do every week.
As I have a long history of lower back pain, I feel a tingle of fear in my fingers and toes when I get to the top of the wall for the first time in any session.
No matter how secure and easy the climb.
I consider my first effort a ‘fear-cleanser’ if you will, to get rid of the nerves.
Like when you see improv comedians blowing air and twitching their limbs to get the butterflies out.
It’s also a gauge of how much fear I’m carrying that I wasn’t aware of.
We drive over an hour to get to the climbing centre through some of Dublin’s most ignorant and selfish traffic to get there, and it’s all just fine; the close shaves, the tailgating, lane crossing, zig-zagging Paddy-wagons, you name it.
Then I climb 5 meters (more like 4.5 or 15ft for the trans-Atlantics), and I’m going ‘oooh, but what if I fall, I’m so old, I’ll hurt myself’ like a big geriatric baby.
But for the last two weeks, this hasn’t happened.
Not a flinch.
In fact, it took me a while to notice, and it only dawned on me after I had clocked a couple of tricky routes that had eluded me for some weeks.
When I was a kid in the 70s, I used to run and jump off the roof of our bungalow house into the garden.
At 57, a slow climb to the top of a 15ft wall with a deeply cushioned floor below me gives me the willies.
Don’t be that guy
So what’s going on? Where’s the fear?
I didn’t coach myself.
I didn’t hypnotise the fear away.
No chanting, pre-climb Tibetan breathing techniques, or manifesting my lion-like masculine power.
But… I have been going to bed earlier, doing breathing exercises during the week, and getting in my regular short meditation sessions daily.
Conclusion: that fear you occasionally feel before doing something small, like jumping over a small wall, might not be completely psychological.
In fact, it’s probably all or mostly physical.
Lack of sleep = the body is tired and hence both prone to and fearful of injury.
The breath is shallow and too fast = feelings of mild panic.
The mind is always running = that ‘calmness’ you feel is actually your habitual state of low-level anxiety
Fix these three things, and your baseline level of fear will go down.
No psychology required.
“I've been afraid a lot of times in my life. But I didn't know the real meaning of fear until... until I had kissed Becky."
So choose your poison.
Be it swimming, running, climbing, martial arts, but do something to challenge yourself at least weekly, or better, daily.
If you’re not regularly experiencing just a little fear, you’ll be unaware of your baseline, and it can creep up on you at any time.
Traditional Chinese Medicine Has Answers
For those into Chinese Medicine, it’s ‘Kidney’ energy that is responsible for courage.
When Kidney (capitalized intentionally) is low, it leads to nerves, jumpiness, and fearfulness.
Seafood and other naturally salty foodstuffs are recommended by practitioners, along with keeping the lower back area warm and maintaining regular hours.
Especially if you’re on the victorious side of 50.
If you’ve found yourself getting more jumpy or easily startled as you evolve into a 50+ King, you’re not wrong.
Kidney energy declines with age, and the wise will seek to conserve it.
Get those early nights, gentlemen!
*Never forget - I’m not a doctor. I studied and practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is not the same thing.
The TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) ‘Kidney’ is not the anatomical kidney of Western medicine.
See a doctor if you’ve got issues - always!
Read on if you enjoy stats and science 🔢 & 🔬
A standardized mean difference (SMD) of about −0.5 (typical in meditation anxiety meta‑analyses) corresponds roughly to meditators ending up about 20–25% lower on anxiety scales than non‑meditating controls, on average.
In the student MBSR trial, state anxiety dropped from 55.33 to 49.83 in the meditation group (about a 10% reduction), while controls barely changed; trait anxiety showed a similar ≈9–10% reduction.
The larger meta‑analysis on test anxiety with effect size −0.716 implies roughly 25–30% lower anxiety in mindfulness groups compared with no‑treatment controls after the program.
Here are more of the key sources.
I didn’t read these because life is too short and I’d rather meditate instead and feel my fear levels actually decreasing as I inhale and slowly exhale.
‘Sorry, but I’m a rationalist. I’ll need to see some proof on that.’
Hoge EA et al. “Meditative Therapies for Reducing Anxiety: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Depression and Anxiety. 2013;30(4): 367–378.
Mak WW et al. “Effects of mindfulness on test anxiety: a meta-analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology. 2024;15:1401467.
Khoury B et al. “Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on anxiety, depression, and stress in clinical and nonclinical samples: A meta-analysis.” Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 2015;78(6):519–528.
Vonderlin R et al. “The efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction in higher education students with test anxiety.” (Check conference/journal record; often cited under MBSR and test anxiety in higher‑education students.)
Pandya SP et al. “Impact of Heartfulness meditation practice on anxiety, perceived stress, and burnout among healthcare professionals.” Frontiers in Psychology. 2023;14:1158760.
Schlosser M et al. “Unpleasant meditation-related experiences in regular meditators: Prevalence and associations with practice characteristics.” PLOS ONE. 2019;14(5): e0216643.
Schlosser M et al. “Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a large sample of regular meditators.” (Look up under meditation-related adverse effects and Schlosser to get the exact journal and year.)
Want an easy goal planner? Use mine: Plan 50X Goal Setter
Need a 12-month good habit plan for 2026? Try this awesome one here: The Year of Small Changes
The Year of Small Changes
🤔 How’s it going so far
I hope that your Year of Small Changes is absolutely cracking on.
And I’ve got something in store for you all (exciting) 🥁🥁
Based on 17 years (and counting) of helping people gain core strength, age-busting flexibility, calmness of spirit, and clarity of purpose, I’ll be creating an actual Plan 50X blueprint.
More than just a happy newsletter packed with actionable nuggets to improve your well-being and mindset, this will be a step-by-step plan worthy of the name.
And further…
I’ve been seeing and hearing the most incredible ‘comeback’ stories from new connections over the last few weeks.
Watch out for interviews with people, a lot like ourselves, who’ve survived the ups and downs of life and come out the other side.
But back to our week together.
If you’ve been following along, you’re already going to be earlier, engaged in deeply healing breathwork, and you’ve just solidified your 5-minute daily meditation.
I’m proud of you.
Progress has been steady, but not linear, for me.
I have absolutely stuck to every habit and extended my meditation from 5 to about 10.
But true to form, I’ve had a few restless nights where I had to implement my Medieval calm and middle-of-the-night breathwork.
Energy levels remain high.
We’ll see about the fear when I hit the top of the wall tomorrow 🤞🏻
If you are following along, let me know how it’s going.
If you aren’t, it is NEVER too late to start 🏃🏻➡️
🙏🏻 That’s it for this week.
You know I love hearing from you all, even if it is to poke fun and challenge my iron-clad conclusions.
I especially love hearing those comeback stories, so if you’ve got one you’d like to tell, get in touch.
We are yet a small group, so I will reply to everyone.
Please do share this with any wise, maturing 50+ King you think could use a few tips on breathing, exercise, health, and restarting their beautiful 2nd chapter to the big 💯
Liam KB.
PS Watch out for posts on social media if you’re that way inclined.