Jul 16 • 📝 Journal
An insight about fear and hair
🍅 Meet Dom Tomato - one of the top athletes in the world of parkour. He's famous for doing some of the most insane stunts, like a long front flip off the stairs of Lyon 25 in France, or more recently, a full on 10 meter drop front flip onto sand in Germany.
While the stunts he performs are both awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time, Dom is usually chill and completes even the scariest jumps and drops without any harm. He has gotten seriously injured only a handful of times out of hundreds, or even thousands of attempts.
He said it himself, that he usually doesn't get injured because he commits to a jump with 100% of the power. And while it's the most scary thing to do, it's ironically what keeps you most safe. It's also a testament to the power of setting your mind on something and fully committing.
And what does he do when something doesn't go his way? He repeats it, with little fear. Even though he could've gotten mentally traumatized and scared. It's foolish, one might say. Or brave and dumb. But it works out for Dom's cases, as he eventually succeeds anyway, despite his failures. And here's where the most fascinating part comes:
📼 In this interview here https://youtu.be/CppGsxP4tj8?t=579 (9:39), Dom tells a story about his father.
When his father was younger, he attempted to climb a high mango tree to get a mango, but fell, and seriously injured himself and had to get 50 stitches in his head!
The next year, he returns to the place, but instead of being fearful and learning from that injury, he climbs the tree again, only to fall again, and get 50 stitches in his head!
Then the next year, he returns, climbs and falls AGAIN, and gets 50 stitches in his head!
He concluded by saying that failure and dire consequences don't affect his father nor him, and that they don't have fear in that sense. *Even if things go worse than anticipated*. They know they'll survive, and don't stress out about it.
👱 Now, more on topic with this place - Dom also has incredible hair and a great hairline. Even though he's doing some of the most stressful stunts ever performed, he doesn't exhibit any signs of stress induced hair loss. And his physiognomy reflects his lack of fear and stress.
I see a connection between his lack of fear and (sometimes foolish) bravery and his lack of any hair loss. While he says his lack of fear is genetic, I think his fearlessness is also the reason he doesn't enter into any chronic stress mode. His lack of fear (or inner calmness and confidence) protects him from physiological stress.
And not only that, but Dom also proves that you can do incredibly stressful external things without losing your hair. The way I see it:
Occasional big stress - OK ✅
Chronic, constant low level stress and anxiety - Something to change; causes inflammation and eventually balding ❌
Dom proves that despite doing really scary and stressful things, he doesn't cling to fear and internalize it. He doesn't need fear to protect him, and because of that his body doesn't stay in defense mode, and he thrives because of it.
Likely, he has some strong inner beliefs that allow such things to be done without much worry, and don't contribute to chronic stress. How beliefs contribute to chronic stress I want to write about later.
Do you also see that connection? Let me know :)
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An insight about fear and hair
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