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Prepared, Not Paranoid

Don’t Live in Fear

The Walls You Built and How to Get Past Them

I lost a job I wanted because I was too chicken to talk to people

Let me say it again, because by the end of that chapter it is about you, not me. I had the skills. I had the experience. I ran the entire technical department at a store you would recognize if I named it, and I am not naming it.

The top job opened. CIO. On paper I was the obvious pick. They gave it to somebody else. Somebody who talked to people.

Everybody in that building knew my work and not one of them knew me. No allies. Nobody in the room going to bat for me when it counted, because I had never bothered to make a single one. The promotion goes to the person people know. They knew my code. That was nobody’s fault but mine.

I am an introvert, not a hermit. Get me talking and I am fine. It is the walking up to somebody that kills me, and every time I backed off I felt relief and called that relief good judgment. It was not judgment. It was a wall, and I laid every brick myself.

What is inside

Who this is for

Why me

Richard Lowe, the Writing King

I lost the CIO job to somebody who talked to people, after twenty years running technology at a company you would recognize. Thirty-three years in enterprise IT and I built every wall in this book personally, then spent the years afterward taking them down. None of this is theoretical and none of it is flattering.

Questions people ask

Is this just another tough-love motivation book?
No. It’s blunt, but it’s blunt the way a friend is blunt, someone on your side who cares too much to coddle you. The author never pretends the fear isn’t real. The shock that built your wall really happened. The book’s argument is that the current has been off for years, and it proves it with the author’s own failures, not with hype. It also does the thing motivation books refuse to do: it has whole chapters for the people who can’t leave, the walls other people build around you, and what happens after the big leap, including how the fear rebuilds.
What if I can’t get out of my situation?
There’s a chapter for exactly that, and it’s the heart of the book. The author spent years as caregiver to his chronically ill wife, where leaving was never an option and shouldn’t have been. The answer isn’t “leave anyway” and it isn’t “suffer nobly.” It’s the staircase: the whole range of smaller moves between suffering and the exit that trapped people skip because fear tells them the only two options are stay or detonate. When you can’t get out, a few hours of air isn’t nothing. Some days it’s everything.
Does it cover controlling relationships and gaslighting?
Yes, carefully. Two full chapters cover the walls other people build around you on purpose and the covert control that makes you doubt your own eyes, drawn from the author’s own experience with a manipulative marriage, false medical death sentences, and a church that told a fourteen-year-old he didn’t see what he saw. These chapters change the advice completely: for walls someone else is holding shut, the answer is not “find the nerve.” It’s get help, make a plan, and get out safely, and the book says so plainly, with resources.
Who is this book for?
Anyone who has ever felt the flinch and called it good judgment. The person in the job they’ve hated out loud for years. The one who won’t ask for the raise, won’t approach anyone, won’t start the thing, won’t say the sentence. The one who thinks it’s too late. The author started writing at fifty-three and published more than a hundred books, so that excuse gets a whole chapter, and it’s the shortest one in the book, on purpose. Every chapter ends with something to do, today.

Also in Prepared, Not Paranoid

The relief you feel when you back off is the wall

It has never once been good judgment.

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Filed underPersonal GrowthCareersSelf ImprovementMental Health

A chapter

Don’t Live in Fear

I lost a job I wanted because I was too chicken to talk to people.

Let me say that again so it sinks in, because by the end of this chapter it’s going to be about you, not me.

I had the skills. I had the experience. I ran the whole technical department at a store you’d recognize if I named it, and I’m not naming it, so quit guessing.

The top job opened up. CIO. I was the obvious pick on paper.

They gave it to somebody else. Somebody who talked to people.

Why? Because everybody in that building knew my work and not one of them knew me. No allies.

Nobody in the room going to bat for me when it counted, because I’d never bothered to make a single one.

The promotion goes to the person people know. They knew my code. They didn’t know me.

Look at the wall that did it, because you’ve got one just like it.

Table of contents

Don’t Live in Fear

  • Why I Wrote This
  • Everybody Lives in a Box
  • The Cave Is Empty
  • Quit the Damn Job Already
  • You’re Worth More Than You Ask For
  • Stop Marrying Your Fear
  • The Quiet You’re Afraid Of
  • Nobody’s Watching You
  • Three Men at the Same Fence
  • Get Off the Couch
  • Say the Thing
  • You Could Leave Tomorrow
  • Walk Out of the Bad Movie
  • Pick a Door
  • It’s Not Too Late, You’re Just Scared
  • Why Are You Afraid to Win?
  • When You Can’t Get Out
  • Four Walls, One Loose Brick
  • When Someone Else Holds the Wall
  • Chains That Bind
  • Is It Faith, or Is It Fear?
  • The Morning After You Get Out
  • You Can’t Drag Anyone Out
  • The Wall With Your Name On It

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