“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933

By spring, everything had gone.

I was over a hundred thousand pounds in debt, I’d sold every asset I owned, my income had fallen below what I’d earned in 1999, predators were circling, and even my relationship had ended. There was nothing left.

And then something strange happened. For the first time in decades, I realised I had absolutely nothing to lose. That sounds depressing, but it wasn’t. In fact, it felt suspiciously like freedom.

The Difficult Middle

Years earlier, I’d had stage three oesophageal cancer. The odds weren’t good. During my recovery, I spent some time with a wonderful woman called Maria, who had survived breast cancer. Her prognosis had been much better than mine, but the trauma she carried was profound, and she lived with the fear that the cancer might return.

Talking to her taught me something unexpected, sometimes terrible odds are easier to live with than favourable ones. When you have a fifteen percent chance of survival, there isn’t much room for negotiation. You hope you’re one of the lucky ones and get on with it.

When you have an eighty-five percent chance, your mind is free to torture itself. What if I’m one of the unlucky ones?

Over the years I realised that the same pattern appears elsewhere. It’s easy to have an abundance mindset when you have everything but it’s also surprisingly easy to have one when you have nothing.

The difficulty lies in the middle, that’s where fear lives. Enough money to worry about losing it, enough success to become protective of it, enough comfort to stop taking risks, but not enough security to feel secure.

It’s what keeps people in jobs they hate long after they should have left. It’s what keeps people in relationships that no longer nourish them. It’s what makes people accept misery because they’re frightened of losing something that may already have gone.

I’m fortunate in one respect, I started with nothing. My first business began with almost no money, no house, no children, not even a car. Failure was cheap and courage came naturally because there was very little to protect.

My friend Scott Sorry understood this instinctively. Long before cancer entered his life, he never seemed particularly interested in protecting things. He cared deeply about people and experiences, but not about appearances. Then cancer took even more away from him and, somehow, he became even more alive. He crammed two lifetimes into one, powered forward like a machine, and achieved things that many people would consider impossible. Looking back, I wonder whether part of his strength came from the same place. What exactly was left to fear?

Flexing, Not Breaking

But for me, over time, life happened. Responsibilities accumulated, expectations accumulated, possessions accumulated and so did obligations.

Gradually, the things that had once brought security started creating pressure.

Some of that pressure came from debt. Some came from family and friends with expectations I could no longer fulfil. Some came from people I cared about who had battles of their own and needed support. I tried to be strong for everyone. Eventually, I reached the point where I simply couldn’t do it any more.

But I didn’t break, I flexed.

I decided that I would rather be broke than continue carrying that weight. I would rather fail honestly than survive dishonestly. I would rather be homeless than continue living under that pressure. And so I started saying no.

Not angrily, not dramatically, just honestly: I told people what I thought.

One of the companies I was working with didn’t appreciate my honesty and promptly concluded my contract. But then, the following day, one of my oldest friends and most esteemed colleagues called and asked whether we should go back to doing what we used to do. I responded simply with “fuck yeah”. Then others reached out.

Some opportunities led nowhere. Some became disappointments. Some became conflict. But I engaged with all of them, because I was no longer trying to protect something fragile.

Thirty-six hours ago, we released my first game in nearly a decade.

Twenty years ago, almost to the day, King of Defenders was released and became one of the most successful web games of its era. More than a quarter of a billion people played it, and now… we’ve brought it back.

But the story doesn’t stop there, we’ve already started work on the sequel and a mobile version will follow. If we’re fortunate, perhaps a hundred million people will play it over the next couple of years.

Or perhaps they won’t.

Twenty years ago, that uncertainty wouldn’t have consumed me: it was the dawn of my career, I had nothing to lose and no idea what was possible.

But over the following decades the pressure mounted: the success of each game felt even more important than the last and as I amassed resources and notoriety I became more fearful.

Interestingly, though today, it doesn’t either. I want it to succeed. I’m working hard to make sure it does. But I no longer need it to… That feeling is remarkably freeing.

Calais

As I write this, I’m sitting in a restaurant in Calais. I have an hour before my ferry.

The restaurant brought me an amuse-bouche I wasn’t expecting. I’m eating a sublime pepper steak that I won’t finish because, after all, a third of a stomach is a third of a stomach and, earlier, I ordered a glass of Saint-Julien and was astonished to discover that it came from a bottle produced in 1988.

Nearly forty years old.

And… just to top it off… one of the greatest winemakers in the world, Stéphane Derenoncourt, is sitting a few tables away. We’d met earlier in the day at his “masterclass” event that I was honoured to be invited to by my good friends at Calais Vins. It was my favourite kind of event: informal, enthusiastic and genuinely informative which is very much their style and why I’m such a keen customer. Before leaving the restaurant I walked over and handed him my card. We chatted for a while and agreed that we should do an event together in Canterbury sometime. Which is delightful.

But a few minutes ago I received much better news. A beautiful little girl called Connie underwent a serious operation today. She’s the daughter of my former girlfriend and someone who I’m immensely fond of. The operation had been successful. She’s okay.

And suddenly the wine became just wine, the steak became just dinner, even seeing Stéphane again became just a lovely surprise. Wonderful things, but not the point.

I enjoy wine very much, and food, and cheese (which is still food).

But experiences are meant to be enjoyed, not possessed. The wine will be finished, the steak will go cold, relationships change, children grow up, bodies age. Eventually, like everyone and everything else, I’ll disappear too.

And strangely, I find that comforting.

Because I don’t think any of these things were ever mine. They were moments, experiences, borrowed, not owned.

Fear

Perhaps that’s what freedom really is. Not having nothing, or wanting nothing or being fearless. Just reaching the point where fear is no longer in charge.

Tonight, sitting in Calais with a pepper steak I won’t finish and a doggy bag by my side, I know that I am an extraordinarily lucky man, not because of what I have but because of what I don’t.

And the most valuable thing I no longer possess is fear.