Arianna: 'What It Means To Be Fearless'

Everyone experiences fear sometimes -- it's part of being human. But no matter how overwhelmed and paralyzed your fear is making you feel, you can break through to fearlessness.

What does it actually mean to be fearless? Arianna tackled this question in her book "On Becoming Fearless... In Love, Work, and Life." Here's her take on the subject:

Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. Rather, it's the mastery of fear. Courage, my compatriot Socrates argues, is the knowledge of what is not to be feared. Which is to say, there are things we should be afraid of -- we want to stay alive, after all. We will never completely eliminate fear from our lives, but we can definitely get to the point where our fears do not stop us from daring to think new thoughts, try new things, take risks, fail, start again, and be happy.

Fearlessness is about getting up one more time than we fall down. The more comfortable we are with the possibility of falling down, the less worried we are of what people will think if and when we do, the less judgmental of ourselves we are every time we make a mistake, the more fearless we will be, and the easier our journey will become.

"Fearlessness is like a muscle," Arianna says. "I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me. The first time we take that first fearless step, we begin to change our lives. And the more we act on our dreams and our desires, the more fearless we become and the easier it is the next time."

As Arianna -- and fearless people everywhere -- have found, being fearless doesn't mean living a life that's completely without fear, but living a life in which we don't let our fears stop us from pursing our dreams.

What are your experiences with fear and fearlessness? Share them in the comments below and tweet us @HealthyLiving with the hashtag #BecomingFearless. If you tweet, you will be automatically entered into Toyota Corolla's Most Fearless Tweet Contest. So tweet away, and you might win a signed copy of Arianna Huffington's book "On Becoming Fearless." One lucky finalist will get to meet Arianna in person! (Click here for the Official Rules.)