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All our fears boil down to one simple thing: our fear that we're not special. We're afraid that we're replaceable, one of a crowd, that there's nothing unique about us. And we're afraid, as a result, that we won't be able to meet whatever challenges life presents us with.

And while this fear is ancient, it has been greatly exacerbated in the modern era because of our culture of lovelessness. If you're not made to feel in your earliest years that you are of infinite value, then you will usually spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you are.

Bad and distracted parenting is one of the principal causes of the culture of fear in which we all walk. When kids have to fight for their parents' attention, when they see it is not them who brings their parents happiness, but rather good news from the office, they internalize a mentality of valuelessness. The fear that results from that sense of valuelessness can often animate their actions for decades to come.

This is constantly reinforced by our culture, which tells us that we're nothing. The designer tell us, "You're nothing, unless you're wearing my jeans. Your own name is utterly unrecognizable; nobody's heard of you. I am somebody, while you're a nobody. So you better have my name on your butt."

The culture tells us: "You're nothing unless the plaque on your desk says 'Vice President.' You're nothing, unless you jump into bed with this rich and powerful guy. You're nothing, unless people will pay to buy a magazine that has your naked photos in it."

And so our individuality is under assault, every minute of every day. A woman looks in a mirror and instead of seeing the lines on her face as souvenirs of all the adventures and triumphs and tears and laughter that have marked her life, she sees an old hag, one that compares unfavorably with the Hollywood actress in the advertisements for an expensive skin cream. What makes her unique are her experiences; shallow lives lead to shallow lines. Celebrating her difference, her uniqueness, is really the way out of her insecurity. But her fears of being undesirable, of being abandoned, lead her to try to conform to an ideal, a cookie-cutter stereotype. Soon she's got needles in her face, as if poking your head with sharp metal objects is going to make you forget your fears.

Fear is the emotion of conformity. If Abraham Lincoln was correct that we all come into this world as God's original but usually depart as man's copy, then nothing is more responsible for the erasure of this dignity than fear.

Of all the fears that currently plague our lives; from the fear of terror and death, to aging and illness, to professional setbacks and public humiliation; perhaps none is more tragic that the simple fear of being yourself. Wow. Take a moment to think about that and to fully grasp how serious that is: You're afraid just to be.

I counseled a 20-something woman, who had already experienced multiple rejections from men, and she told me that she had become so uncomfortable in her own skin and so depressed about her life that she was even self-conscious around her own family. As a result, she avoided family celebrations and holiday get-togethers.

"My whole life involves my being whatever others want me to be. I have no self-confidence, so I have no backbone. I fear every new day, and I'm cowed before every new experience."

From my own experience, I certainly know what it's like to be afraid just to be. When I was a boy of 8, my parents divorced and we moved from L.A. to Miami, where I was enrolled in the fourth grade of a Jewish day school. The boys, who had formed a clique since nursery school, bullied me endlessly as a newcomer. The experience made me afraid not of them, but of myself. I couldn't for the life of me understand what about me was so hideous that they so forcefully rejected me.

I remember well the experience: the terror of being myself. I did everything to conform, everything I could think of to fit in. I laughed at their dumb jokes, shot spitballs at the uncool fat kids who were rejects like me. And while I had a mother to comfort me, I did not have a father in my immediate vicinity who could give me backbone and inspire me to be myself and find a better circle of friends. My father loved me, but he was 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. The situation got so bad that, I'm embarrassed to say this even as I write it, I started buying these boys gifts just to be my friend.

It wasn't until the seventh grade that I developed the courage to do my own thing. I knew I was a better person than they were. Maybe not as cool, but more compassionate. I didn't want to treat other kids like garbage. It didn't make me feel good about myself. I rejected these miserable, mean-spirited bullies, and the contempt I developed for them made me unafraid, because they were now beneath me. I made a point of getting to know the new kids who came into our class, and I treated them like they had been there for years. In the process, I came to know that the bullies in my school were even more afraid than I was and could only feel good about themselves by passing on their fear to others.

So when my 10-year-old son recently went through a bullying experience, I told him neither to fight them nor to simply ignore his tormentors. "Rise above them," I told him. "Look at them and determine never to become like them. Be everything they're not. Reach out to the kids in your class who no one else takes an interest in, and soon the admiration you earn will make you a leader in the class."

How tragic it is to be afraid to be you! A leading New York attorney told me that she disagreed with my philosophy of fear.

"When I was in eighth grade," she said, "I had a teacher who hated me and always put me down. She always said that I wouldn't amount to anything. And it was that fear of failure that spurred me to work so hard. I graduated top of my class at law school and became the first woman partner at my firm. Her comment was always in the back of my mind, and it motivated me: I always wanted to prove her wrong."

I responded, "That's ridiculous. Instead of a bitchy teacher to react against throughout the whole of your life, you could have had a loving parent to make you believe you had a gift to give to the world. Instead, you were led to believe that you had something to prove to the world. When you're inspired by fear and a need to show that you matter, you may eventually get to your destination, but one thing's for sure, you'll enjoy neither the journey nor the view once you're there. There are many things that can motivate our success, but when it's motivated by fear, it is always accompanied by suffering."

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