There is no hack. Alex Honnold is blunt about it: the only enduring way to overcome fear is to get really scared, over and over, for long enough that it eventually stops being that scary. Fear is not a wall you break through once — it is a skill you build through relentless, repeated exposure.
Honnold describes fear as a constant low-level companion in climbing. There are always consequences on the wall, and that never fully goes away. What changes, through years of confrontation, is the ability to manage it.
The numbers behind his experience make the point concrete. Before free soloing El Capitan in Yosemite, Honnold had already climbed it approximately 60 times via different routes. His first major free solo — Half Dome in 2008, above a 1,700-to-1,800-foot drop at the crux ledge — came after years of accumulated exposure to exactly that kind of high-stakes fear. He had been climbing five days a week for 30 years.
The Free Solo documentary, filmed over two years, captured only a fraction of this. It missed the nine years of prior Yosemite preparation Honnold had accumulated since 2006 — roughly three months per year, every year, on those same walls. That invisible groundwork is precisely what his fear-management method looks like in practice.
Honnold also notes that fear of public speaking was not exempt from this process. After the release of Free Solo, he went through an extended film tour that required him to speak in front of audiences repeatedly. The same mechanism kicked in: enough repetition, and it stopped being that scary.
This is the part of his answer most relevant beyond climbing. The process is not domain-specific. Hear Honnold develop this further on Listenly — the episode goes into the texture of what that repeated confrontation actually feels like from the inside.
"There's no hack. You just get really freaking scared over and over for so long. And eventually it's not that scary anymore. But that's a very enduring way to overcome your fear."
Alex Honnold — Professional Rock Climber.
Honnold is best known for free soloing El Capitan in Yosemite, a feat documented in the Oscar-winning Netflix film Free Solo. He completed his first major free solo — Half Dome — in 2008, and has since climbed El Capitan approximately 60 times via different routes. He has been climbing five days a week for 30 years. His early career was funded by a North Face sponsorship of around $10,000 per year while he lived in his van.
Honnold rejects the conclusion that he does not experience fear, explaining that the fMRI scan showed him black-and-white photos inside a sealed metal tube — a context far removed from real climbing. He does feel fear; decades of training have simply changed how he responds to it.
Honnold spent roughly nine years going to Yosemite before the Free Solo documentary was filmed, spending around three months a year climbing its walls. Over that period he climbed El Capitan approximately 60 times via different routes before he ever attempted the free solo ascent.
The deadlift is identified as the single best exercise for brain protection because, when done correctly, it uses almost every muscle in the body — driving the hormonal and cardiovascular responses most beneficial to long-term brain health.
This answer comes directly from an episode of The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett. Listen to the full conversation on Listenly.
Listen to the episode on Listenly