As part of our ongoing work into the barriers to innovation, we will be focusing over the next few months on: the role of fear, language and motivation in the context of innovation. Warren our Futurist is blogging about these topics, and our second e-book will soon see the light of day … it will also deal with these topics.
I however thought of sharing Kosta’s story in the interim … I have known Kosta for a few years, and was inspired, to see him write about Fear … our Toxic Friend.
I recently caught up with Kosta and decided to ask him a few questions …
Firstly Kosta, I would love to hear more about the journey you have been on, and in particular what it takes to be courageous and actually write a highly personal book?
My book is a collection of all the things that I have been through in the past seven years. At a very young age I got the opportunity to get a very high profile job in Dubai and in that period I believed that I was living the life of my dreams. I was so wrong. When in 2008 Dubai was hit by the recession, everything that I worked for simply vanished. My story begins in those moments of greatest pain. I literally lost everything I worked for. My daughter was just born and I remember asking myself, what will I give to this child, when I am a complete failure? I allowed fear to take complete control of my life. One day, after a very strong anxiety attack, I ended up in the emergency ward of the American Hospital in Dubai. As I sat on my hospital bed, I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a person that I did not know. My story begins at the moment of my greatest weakness. My book is basically a story of a friendship. A friendship that changed my life forever. A story about me and my friend—Fear.
If I asked you to summarise your book in 3 sentences, how would you do that?
This is a story about the battle for my life. A story about taking responsibility for everything that happened in my life, and for understanding my true purpose in life.
Who were the readers you were writing for?
Fear, besides love, connects all of us. This is a book for everyone that feels that there is so much more to life. It is a book for all the parents, who want to provide the best life for their children. It is a book for all the entrepreneurs, who want to change the world. This is a story about all the people suffering from anxiety. At the end of the day this book is for everyone, who wants to leave a mark on this world.
What do you wish for them after they read your book?
I wish for them to take full responsibility for all of their actions and to search for the hidden lessons in their failures. I am certain that the greatest failures bring with them the greatest lessons in our lives. Lessons that eventually will help us make all of our dreams come true.
Do you agree that passion and courage need each other and that they can be powerful motivators to help overcome fear?
Passion and courage are very important, but based on my experience the key to eliminating fear, is getting out of the comfort zone and searching for the real meaning of things such as happiness and failure. Most of us, allow fear to take total control of our lives. The key to success is for us to take back that control and look behind the curtain created by our fears.
What do you wish to talk and write about next?
I am currently working on the English translation of my first book- We’ll Meet at the Top, which broke all sales record in Macedonia in 2013. I hope that it will achieve the same success worldwide.
Central to our discussions at the April PurpleBeach Experience, will be the lessons we can learn from those, who overcame their fear and chose to play at the extremes …
The Fear is available on Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/The-Fear-Kosta-David-Petrov-ebook/dp/B00I28UQ5Q