...our fears that exist in the workplace; fears regarding money or lack of it; fears having to do with God, religion, and spirituality; fears of leadership, public speaking, and speaking up for what you believe is important.

Huffington touches on all of it and concludes, "To live in fear is the worst form of insult to our true selves. By having such a low regard for who we are--for our instincts and abilities and worth--we build a cage around ourselves."

Huffington then proceeds to help you fill your soul's tote bag with all that you need to face down the fearful foe that threatens to destroy you...and win.

Throughout On Becoming Fearless, Huffington enhances her thoughts, experiences, and ideas with essays contributed by other successful, talented, fearless women such as actress Diane Keaton and writer, Nora Ephron among others.

It's comforting and strengthening to realize that these women who seem so unassailable had, and have, their own battles with fear, and that they every day take up the sword bravely even as they demonstrate that it becomes easier to face fear with every experience of success and even the inevitable, even for them, learned-from failure or mistake.

Huffington offers us a "straight-to-the-point manifesto on how to be fearless." Huffington seems to assert that what you need most in life is not a new job, a new car, boyfriend or husband, different zipcode, bigger breasts, a different anti-depressant, but instead what you need most is fearlessness.

Not the lack or banishment of fear, but the realization of the reality of fear's existence and staunch willingness to look it in the eye and act anyway.

Mariska Hargitay is quoted in On Becoming Fearless as saying about her role as Detective Olivia Benson in Law and Order that, "Olivia's fearlessness defines her. She looks at a situation, feels the fear, then does what she has to do anyway...the character has been such a teacher to me."

The fearlessness of which Huffington speaks will sustain, inspire, and transport you through every day of your life whether you are on top or at the bottom of where you want to be in life, or society says you should be.

As Huffington says, "We're social creatures and trying to determine our place in the social hierarchy is a natural human instinct. The question is, how much of the determination of our own status do we outsource to others?".

Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth expounds on this idea in On Becoming Fearless when she tells of traveling to developing countries where women face grave problems like rape, slavery, mutilations, oppression, and injustice and coming away with the realization that,

"...being derided or criticized or devalued-suddenly seemed very trivial. If it's not going to send me to a gulag or get me tortured, I now feel that, on behalf of other women who face real terror every day, I had best simply get on with it."

Huffington's final thoughts are that is it important for us not only be fearless in our personal life, but to extend your fearlessness to the world by being a part of something bigger than yourself.

Huffington elegantly expounds that doing so puts your own fear in perspective, and that, "Fear is much easier to overcome when the focus of our lives moves beyond ourselves to a cause we are passionate about."

Huffington shows us that we can become fearless leaders both in our personal lives, public lives, and in the world, "...simply by connecting with the leader in the mirror".

So grab your soul's tote bag, now thanks to Arianna Huffington's On Becoming Fearless, chock full of what you need to take on the world with joy and gusto, look in the mirror not at a witch to see if you are the fairest in the land but to see simply and wonderfully you, and go forth fearlessly...

Book Review by Karen Gossett