 The graveyard is just full of hopes and dreams and desires and things that were never created because people are just afraid of other people's opinions and rejections of them. Most fears today are not life threatening. My job is basically to talk about fear with people and to have them see how ridiculous their fears are. Something that holds so many people back, some people that are just completely terrified of this thing and this thing, they're so terrified of it that it holds them back from creating a life that they absolutely love and also absolutely desire and deserve more than anything else. And that is the fear of rejection. One of the things I hear the most whenever I'm giving speeches or I'm on Zoom calls and I'm asking people their biggest fear. One of the biggest fears that I hear almost every single time when the top two or three fears is the fear of rejection. So if you can overcome the fear of rejection in your head, you can go and create what is it you want to. Because in my opinion, the graveyard is full of hopes, dreams, desires, all of that from people who never fully stepped into who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do and the lives they wanted to impact simply because they were afraid of being rejected. So if we can figure out a way for you to get past that fear of rejection, then you can create the life that you actually want to. And it's sad to think that millions, if not billions of people have died without doing what it is they truly want to do because they're just afraid of being rejected by other people. Isn't that crazy to think about? If you just take a second and think that the graveyard is just full of hopes and dreams and desires and things that were never created because people are just afraid of other people's opinions and rejections of them. So let's talk about that. To get to the end of your life, to be on your death bed and go, man, I wish I would have brought more out of myself. Man, I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have impacted more lives. I wish I would have written that book. I wish I would have played more music in front of people and brought my music out to people for them to see. I wish I would have painted more. I wish I would have put my paintings on walls for people to see and brought my creativity to the world. That's got to be the worst feeling in the world. To get to the end of your life and know that you didn't even scratch the surface of your potential. And a lot of that comes from the fear of rejection. And so we're going to talk about that. Now, why does the fear of rejection exist? Now, I'm going to tell you that the fear of rejection is literally built into us. And it makes a lot of sense, but it doesn't need to hold us back anymore. Why do we have the fear of rejection? It's built into us. It's built into our genes. We are tribal beings. Which means if you go back, you know, 500,000 years ago and you were to see all of your ancestors, all of our ancestors together, they had to stick together in tribes for safety, for food, for water, for shelter, for everything. We had to, if we were alive 500,000 years ago, we had to stay in the tribe. If we happen to be kicked out of the tribe or rejected from the tribe, that's basically certain death. You're going to die if you're not part of the tribe. So of course we want to make sure that we fit in. Of course we want to make sure that we don't get kicked out of the quote unquote tribe. But nowadays, fitting in is one of the worst things that you could do. There's a quote that Jim Carrey has that says, your need to fit in will make you invisible in this world. If you think about everybody that you look up to, every big actor or inventor or business person or CEO or creator or scientist, they're always somebody who had to get out of the system, out of the box, think differently, act differently in order to create what they created. So if they're the people that you look up to, why would you want to not be like them? Why would you want to stay inside of a box because you're afraid of the rejection? Now you have to realize, if you go and you think about it, if we're talking about humans being tribal beings, I'll give you an idea of how ingrained in us it actually is. There was a terrible study. Let's start by saying this. It was a terrible idea, first off. In 1944, there was a study where they took 40 newborns and they were just curious if humans would be able to thrive without human contact, without other human contact. So they were just curious, would humans be able to thrive or is it so necessary where such tribal beings, even contact with another human skin to skin, is that something that we need? And so what they did in the study, they took 40 newborns and the only times that they were only touched was when they had the diapers changed, when they fed them and when they bathed them. And they had to cancel the study four months into it because half of the babies died in four months. It's a terrible study, absolutely terrible. But it shows you how ingrained in us that we actually have to be in contact, whether that's physical contact or close contact with other humans, it shows you it's ingrained in us, it's part of who we are. So it makes sense that we don't want to be rejected, right? It makes sense. Also they found that there's studies that were done and researchers have found that being lonely is the equivalent and as lethal as having 15 cigarettes per day. Being lonely is the equivalent of having, it's as lethal as 15 cigarettes per day. Lonely people are 50% more likely to die early and prematurely than those who have healthy relationships. So when you think of it, yes, of course it makes sense that we're afraid of being rejected because being around other people from the moment that we're born is something that is super important. It is something that is ingrained into our bodies and to have physical contact with other people is something that is necessary in order for a child to live. So, if you think about it, all of this makes sense. But we're not going to die now from somebody rejecting us the same way that we would die 500,000 years ago if we were rejected from the tribe. So does it make sense that we don't want to be rejected? Absolutely, it makes sense. But it doesn't have to be the thing that holds you back from bringing out your potential, from bringing your art to the world, from being creative, from stepping out, from creating the company that you want to. Can we override the system inside of our head to create what it is that we want to? The answer is yes. Hell yes, we absolutely can. And that's what we're going to talk about when I'm going to teach you. The first thing we have to do is we have to build the awareness of when we are being held back by the fear of rejection because a lot of times people just feel physical feelings of fear but they don't ask themselves, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? And they never actually take themselves out of the jar to read the label. What does that mean? You take yourself out of your head and say, what is actually happening here? They just feel physical feelings of fear. They shut down. Versus going, okay, I feel fear. What is this fear that I'm feeling? Why is it this way? And then you go through it and you go, I don't want to do this thing, right? Because I'm afraid of being rejected. I don't want to make this cold call. If you're a salesperson, you know this feeling. I don't want to make this cold call because I'm afraid of being rejected. I don't want to ask this person out because I'm afraid of being rejected. I don't want to start this company because I'm afraid of other people's opinions and them rejecting me and making fun of me. I don't want to make this YouTube account. I don't want to put my videos up because I'm afraid of what could possibly happen. I'm afraid of being rejected. But then when you look at it, so you say, you look at it and you go, okay, so what's the worst that could actually happen? Because our brain immediately, if you don't pay attention to it, will immediately go to fear, fear, fear and fear is attached to death, which means if you make a YouTube video, you're not going to die from making a YouTube video unless you're one of those stupid people that jumps off of buildings and does all the parkour on top of buildings. You could die if you're making YouTube videos off of that one. But if you're making a YouTube video about how to get better at yoga or mindset or coaching or fitness or whatever it is, you're not going to die from creating those videos. So you ask yourself, what's the worst that could happen? And you start to actually assess what the worst that could happen is. Okay, if I'm making a cold call and I'm afraid of being rejected, I'm afraid of this and I'm going to go, okay, what's the worst that could happen in this situation? Maybe the person, like, absolute worst that could happen in a cold call, they scream at me, they yell, they call me a P.O.S. and then they hang up the phone on me. That's the worst that could happen. Am I going to die? No. What are the chances of that happening? Really, really small. One of a thousand maybe? Okay. Well, it seems like there's more upside than downside. So I might as well go ahead and try it. Because what'd you do? You took yourself out of the jar to read the label. Perfect. Okay, let's go ahead and make the cold call. Maybe you're afraid of asking somebody out, like we said, right? What's the worst that could happen if you ask somebody out? They say no. Okay. Are you going to die? Nope. Not going to die. But they could say yes. And wouldn't that be pretty awesome if they did say yes? So it seems like once again, the upside is better than the downside. So should I do it? Hell yeah. Go for it. Ask that person out. Okay. What if I start this company? What's the worst that could happen? It could fail. And then I have to go get a job. Okay. What's the opposite of that? It could be massively successful. I could create the life that I want to for myself, for my family, to be able to travel the world and have the abundance that I want to. Once again, it seems like the upside is better than the downside. Okay. YouTube video. What's the worst that could happen? You could get some hater. They exist. What's the best that could happen? People could start watching it. It could go viral. You could impact millions of lives. You could start a business from YouTube. You could make money doing it. Seems like once again, the upside is always better than the downside. So should I do it? Yes. Will you die from making a cold call, asking somebody out, starting a business, or putting up a YouTube video? Absolutely not. And that's what you need to bring to the forefront of your mind. And tell yourself, I'm not going to die. There is much more upside than there is downside. So if I'm smart and I'm a betting person, I'm going to go, okay, if I'm looking at a stock and I say this stock has way more upside than downside, well, then I should probably invest in it, right? And that's usually how most things are. We end up making mountains out of ant hills more than anything else. It's just like, we make things to be so much worse. Rejection is 100% safe. You're not going to die from being rejected. Unless somebody rejects you, unless you ask somebody out on the edge of a mountain, and then they say no, and then they decide to push you off the edge of the mountain. That's the only way that it's not really safe. Rejection is safe. You won't die from someone hanging up on you and yelling at you on a cold call. You won't die from someone not going on a date with you. You won't die from starting a company, and you won't die from creating a YouTube video and some haters saying that your stuff sucks. You won't. It won't happen. And so if you can look at it from that standpoint and go, there's so much more upside than downside. I might as well do it. And the reason why I have to do this is because your brain is really sneaky if you haven't noticed. Your subconscious is super sneaky. It's very sneaky in keeping you in your comfort zone, right? Like it's good at keeping you in your comfort zone. Your brain automatically goes to rejection is bad. Bad, I could starve. If I starve, I die, right? That's kind of the whole flow of what your brain actually goes through. But in reality, none of that stuff can actually happen, right? You get rejected. Not a big deal. You'll live. You will live. Let me say that one more time. You will live. You will not die. And if you have gone through this process and you've realized, okay, I will not die. Then what should I do? Take action. Now, will you still have feelings of fear while you're taking action? Yes. Will you still have feelings of fear before you take action? Yes. But the good thing is you can kind of turn the dial down on the fear because you know that you're not going to die. Because ultimately when we feel fear, the thing about fear that's really interesting is that when you feel fear, like the fear of rejection of somebody saying no to you, it's a physical feeling. You can feel it inside of your body. It's the same physical feeling that you have when you know that there's something that could possibly be approaching you. I'll give you a perfect example. Here's what it is. It's the same physical feeling as if you've ever been in the middle of the ocean and you think to yourself, there could be a shark around here. That same physical feeling is the same physical feeling that you fear of like, I don't know if I want to put this YouTube video up like I put so much time into creating it, but I don't want people to say that it sucks. I don't want to find haters. It's the same feeling inside of your body. And if you're not paying attention, if you're not intellectually diving into your own head and creating awareness around it, it's going to hold you back. But the beautiful thing is that if you're listening to this podcast episode, you want to change yourself. And one of the, if not the very first step to changing yourself is self-awareness. So when you feel these feelings of fear, that's when you once again, take yourself out of the jar. You read the label and you're like, is this going to kill me? Absolutely not. I will live if the worst thing happens right now. I will live through it. If I fail in a business, if this person rejects me, if my YouTube video ends up sucking and people make fun of it, I will live. Because our brain tends to make it so much worse than it actually is so that we stay inside of our comfort zone because our brain only cares about our survival. That's what it's designed to do. It is a survival mechanism. That's a beautiful thing. But if you don't pay attention to it, it will ruin your life and ruin your potential and everything that you could do in this world. And so you've got to become very self-aware and you've got to start to think about those. And then when you take action and you realize you don't get the terrible result that you were originally fearing, what does it do? It builds confidence. So if I'm going up and let's say I go up and I want to go ask them that. Let's use that as an example. I'm terrified. Same physical feelings that I feel if I'm swimming in the middle of the ocean, I start thinking, oh my god, there could be a shark around here. It's a physical death feeling. It is. Because that's the only feeling that your body can pull up for fear. It pulls it up. I'm like, all right. Am I going to die if she says no? Not. All right. Let me go ahead and I'm just going to do it anyways. I'm going to approach her. What's the worst that could happen? She could say no. I walk up to her. Maybe she's really nice. Maybe she's super sweet. Maybe she doesn't say yes, but she says she has a boyfriend. Okay. Well, that at least gives me a little bit of confidence because number one, I stepped out of my comfort zone. Number two, she wasn't, you know, to me. Number three, she was really nice. Number four, there's other fish in the sea. Okay. What does that do? That builds a little bit of confidence. Let's go to the YouTube video. Let's say that I post up a YouTube video. What's really interesting about haters is you'll get haters every once in a while. I mean, I have like 1.5 to 2 billion views online. I don't know how many it is with somewhere in that number. Right. For every hater, you have like 150 people who are super nice, super supportive and super sweet. But for some reason, you always focus on the haters. Like that's just the way that it goes. Right. But if I put up a video and I have a hater, I can look at that hater and say, okay, that's one person who hated my stuff. And they're just projecting the hate that they feel for themselves on top of me. And if I can be aware of that, then I can go, well, look, there's one hater and 150 people who loved my stuff. And if 150 people, even if there's just five people that loved your stuff with one hater, you still impacted five people's, five times more people's lives than the people who were the haters. And so what happens is when you put yourself out there and you feel the fear, but do it anyways, and you put yourself out there and do what you want to do, then what needs to be done, and you get a little bit of a result that you want to, it starts to build your confidence to do it again. But you can't build your confidence unless you step off of the ledge and just do it anyways. And so what you have to realize, people are always like, oh, I wish I was more confident. I wish I was confident like you. I wish I was better public speaker. Confidence isn't something that people are born with. I say it all the time. Confidence is something that you get from results. And the only way that you get results is by taking action. So the only way to take action is if you're feeling fear to do it anyways. And that's the way that you have to do it. So you're not going to die from rejection, which is a beautiful thing. But when you feel the feelings of fear, you feel the feelings of fear of rejection, you have to take yourself out of that feeling and go, okay, I'm not going to die. There's a lot more upside than there is downside. And this is something that I truly want to do. And if you do that and you put it out there, whatever it is that you want to put out there, you put that thing out there and get a little bit of a good results, you start feeling better about yourself. You get a little bit of confidence. And confidence is like stacking blocks on top of each other and your confidence grows and it grows and it grows and it grows. But your confidence cannot grow unless you put yourself out there. So you will feel the feelings of rejection and fear inside of your body. You will fear other people's opinions. But don't let that hold you back from doing what it is that you truly want to do. Because the worst thing that could happen is that you join all the people in the graveyard with hopes, dreams, and desires that didn't come out of you and potential that wasn't seen in your lifetime. The issue with fear is that fears are holding you back from creating the life that you want. At its simplest form, that's really what it is. So fears are one of the worst things in the entire world because they're holding you back from the life that you truly, truly want. And so learning how to work with your fears is probably one of the biggest skills that you can learn. And it is an actual skill and you'll realize why that is as I start to dive in. And most people, they never learn how to get past their fears. They never do get past their fears. And then I would assume a lot of people get to their lives and I'm like, damn, I wish I could have done more. I wish I could have impacted more people's lives. I wish I could have done more in the world. I wish I would have created the art that I wanted to but I was too afraid to. I wish that I would have spoken up more about what I truly believed in but I was too afraid to. So in this episode, we're going to talk about how to get past your fear so that it doesn't hold you back anymore so that you can ultimately go out, stop being afraid, and create the life that you truly want to. Because most people, I don't want to say most. I guess most people probably will do almost anything to avoid their fears. Almost anything. To the point where they'll live a life that they don't truly want. Every waking moment of their life, they have the opportunity to go out and do something great. Whatever greatness looks like to you. And so most people will try to avoid fear. And people have this preconceived notion that successful people have no fear or they're fearless. We always say, oh, this is the fearless leader. No. And I've said this before many times in the podcast. This is the truth. Is it successful people fear as much as people who are quote unquote unsuccessful. But the difference is successful people don't listen to their fear and they go and do it anyways. That's the truth of the matter. And the fact of the matter is that most fears today are not life-threatening. Now when you understand what fears are used for and why they actually make sense you kind of respect them a little bit more. But there's only two fears that a human is born with. That's it. Number one, is the fear of falling. Number two is the fear of loud noises. The fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Everything else. This is very important. Listen to this. Everything else is absolutely learned from our upbringing. Whether that's our parents whether that's society brothers, sisters, people that we know. Every other fear besides the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises are learned by a human. And fears aren't real because ultimately as you may have heard it's like an acronym false expectations appearing real. How often, and I would guess probably pretty often have you feared something that never even actually happened? Have you worried so much about something that could possibly happen in the future and it never happened? How often does that happen? Well, in case you're curious there was a study that was done on this and found out that 85% of what humans fear and worry about never even actually happens. So 85% of the stuff that's holding you back from the dreams that you truly want will never happen. That's crazy if you actually start to think about it. And why I say that they're not life threatening is this is because the ultimate thing that you have to realize about the brain is that fear is put into us for our survival. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in just a few minutes, but fear is the signal that we're about to get out of our comfort zone. We're about to leave safety. We're about to get out of our comfort zone and that potential death could be coming. Now you know that if you go and ask your boss for a raise and you feel that feelings of fear, he's not going to kill you. Right? I hope not. You probably need to get a new boss. But ultimately you know that's not going to happen. But the feelings that you feel of fear are the same types of feelings as if you're walking in the middle of the night and you hear sounds in a bush. It's the same physical feelings of fear inside of your body. So fear is telling you that you're getting out of your comfort zone. Here's the really important thing to realize though. Getting out of your comfort zone, you know if you're listening to this or if you're watching this you know that feeling like getting out of your comfort zone and getting out of your comfort zone is ultimately a good thing. You need to get out of your comfort zone. You know that. So if you feel fear in fear is the the thing that's telling you you're about to get out of your comfort zone. That means that that Feeling is not bad. That feeling is actually good. So if you can switch your brain around to realize this feeling is good that I'm feeling, I should lean into this. Your life will be completely different because ultimately you have two choices when you feel fear. Number one, you can give in and you could just give into the fear. Or number two, you can lean into the fear and go, you know what? Okay, now if I think about it, my brain is telling me right now it's sending the signals of I'm about to get out of my comfort zone. I know that this thing that I'm about to do is not going to kill me. That's a fact. And so if I think about it, I should actually know that these feelings are good because it's telling me that growth is on the other side. It's telling me that I'm about to get out of my comfort zone because ultimately I know getting out of my comfort zone is a really good thing. And where your fear comes from is a little tiny part of your brain in the back of your brain. It's called the amygdala. And they call it the reptilian part of your brain. And it generates fear in order for you to get away from danger, which is incredible. So it's an incredible tool because it kept our species alive for two million years. But you have to realize there's no potential death. For most of the people that are listening to this, you don't have potential death when you're walking outside every single day, right? So when the amygdala was first around and we were a million, two million years ago, all of that, you have to realize if we heard a rustling in the bush, the amygdala would click on and say, hey, there's something to fear there. Okay, do something different. We need to get out of this place. We need to run, fight or flight, whatever it is that we need to do. Now, you're not gonna leave your house and be attacked by a lion. So you still have those physical feelings though. That part of your brain still exists, which means it's gonna be used at some point. It's gonna click on. So even though our external world has changed vastly, and even just in the last hundred years, we're still working with the exact same hardware that we've had for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. And so we're working with the same hardware that kept our species alive, that kept us away from lions and kept us from everything that we needed to fear because it meant potential death. But now if you're gonna go ask your boss for a raise, you're not going to die and you know that. But that part of your brain still exists. So it generates fear to get you away from danger, potential danger, aka getting outside of your comfort zone now in modern day. The difference is it doesn't know the difference between a good fear and a bad fear. And yes, I said that correctly, a good fear. Because most people listen to this, probably think that all fears are bad. No, there's bad fears, which is potential death on the other side of that fear. Someone comes at you with a knife. There's gonna be a fear mechanism that's clicked on to get you to go to your fight or flight to either run or to attack that person to make sure you don't get stabbed, right? Fend for yourself, whatever it is you need to do, that's a bad fear. A good fear is like I said, feeling it and not giving in, but leaning in going, okay, I know what my body's doing. I know why it's doing this, but I'm not going to die. So I need to lean in because it's actually telling me, Rob, you should lean into this because this is outside of your comfort zone. And I know outside of my comfort zone is where I grow and everything that I want is outside of it. So it's incredible if you actually start to realize that this is how you can use it. When you understand it, you can use it. And when you can use it, you can change your life. And so it does another difference between good or bad fears or good or bad risks. It just wants to avoid all of them. That's it. But you can consciously think, is this something I should be incredibly afraid of? Or is this something just telling me that I'm about to step out of my comfort zone and I need to lean in? So, you know, the amygdala, amazing for fear and it's amazing for avoiding danger, but it's terrible if you want to grow a business or if you want to ask somebody out or if you want to ask for a raise if you want to create content on the internet and put it out there and be judged by everybody or make a shift in the world or stand on stage and speak publicly to impact people. It's not good for that, but it's really, really good for avoiding death and danger. So it's like Will Smith said. Will Smith said, fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It's a product of our imagination causing us to fear things that are not present and may never exist. That fear, that is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me. Danger is very real, but fear is a choice. Fear is a choice. You can't remove the amygdala. It's in your head, so you gotta figure out a way to work with it. You gotta figure out, that's just the way it goes. And that's why I love teaching you about the brain. That's why I'm writing a book about the brain. That's why I have a course coming out about the brain. It's cause I just love the brain cause if you can understand the hardware that we're given and you can understand why it's there and how it works you can then use your brain to your advantage to then create the life that you want to. Hey, if you're enjoying this video, do me a favor and hit that like button down below. It helps with the YouTube algorithm so that more people can see this message cause it helps us get it out organically. So hit that like button and I appreciate you. So we need to feel the fear. That's a good thing, but we can't let it stop us. We've gotta lean in and continue moving forward. And so you really have to start thinking about and breaking down your fears and thinking about them. I remember that long time ago, I used to run a company and I had hundreds of sales reps under me. I had a few thousand that I trained and this was when I was younger so it was about 15 years ago. And they used to be really afraid. My sales reps were really afraid of making cold calls. And so it would happen all the time. And so I'd have to make their fears silly. And so I would sit down with them and I would say, okay, so tell me what's going on. I'm just afraid to make phone calls. Okay, what are you afraid of? I'm just afraid, it's just the fear is coming up every time I pick up the phone. Okay, so are you afraid of the phone? Yeah, I guess I am kind of afraid of the phone. And so I would go, okay, hey, do me a favor. Go ahead and pick up your phone real quick. And they'd go and they pick up their phone. I said, they say, here it is. And I say, okay, I want you to look at your phone. They look at your phone. I say, okay, I want you to look at that phone and say, I am afraid of you. And they go, wait, what? You know, I want you to look at your phone. And I want you to say, I am afraid of you. And they're like, why? I'm like, just do it. And they're like, I am afraid of you. I'm like, do it again. I am afraid of you. I'm like, do it again. I am afraid of you. Okay, do it in a deeper voice. I am afraid of you. Okay, do it in a higher voice. I am afraid of you. And what I'm trying, eventually I started laughing and what I tried to make them do is try to take their fear that really was a ridiculous fear of just pushing buttons. That's all that it was. The fear of just pushing buttons and talking to another human on their side of the phone, taking that fear and making it ridiculous and seem ridiculous because if you can make it seem ridiculous to the brain, the brain can release it and go, oh, there's no death on the other side of this phone. This customer's not going to come through with a knife and stab me. So you got to kind of make it a little bit silly because it's either scary, which you can allow it to be or you can go, this is ridiculous. This fear makes no sense. This is silly. And that's how you start to get past it. So the good thing is luckily, we're the ones that make our fears up. We're the ones that are afraid of the phone calls. We're afraid of going up and talking to that person because of what they might say. We're afraid of being on stage because ultimately we're afraid of missing up and people making fun of us or whatever it is. So we make our fears up. So the difference is we have to figure out a way. If we're thinking of those fears, we've got to think differently about the fears that pop up. And when we feel the fear, it's a good thing. Once again, I'm going to say it a million times as podcast episode. Lean in, lean in, lean in. You have to push past the point of comfort because ultimately that's where the change happens. So how do you remove the fear from your body? You can't, but I'm going to go ahead right now and give you a few tips to help you work with the fear to make it a whole lot better. So the first one is you got to change your mindset around fear. You've got to change your mindset around fear. How do you change your mindset around fear? Well, you know, the phone example is a perfect example. You make it silly so that it's, you're like, oh, that's ridiculous. Why do I need to hold onto it? Or you have to show your brain why it's wrong or why it's ridiculous. And the best way to do this is to take pen to paper, not to type it out on your computer, not to type it on your phone, but to take pen to paper and write it out and to ask yourself some questions. So you write them down and you ask yourself, what am I afraid of? You write that question down and you answer that question. What am I afraid of? And you write it down and then you look at it and you say it out loud. Here's the interesting thing. The reason why you want to say it out loud because not only are you saying it, but then also what's happening is you're hearing it. And have you ever thought something before and then you say it out loud and you're like, oh my God, that was ridiculous. So if you ever feared something and you say it out loud and you realize with saying it, it almost turns ridiculous right away. And you're like, oh my gosh, why am I fearing that? Well, that's what we're trying to do right here. We're trying to actually make this ridiculous. So you can say it out loud to yourself. You should say it out loud to yourself. So you write it down, what am I afraid of? And then you say, I am afraid of getting up in front of people and speaking because I'm afraid I'm a mess up. And then you just say it out loud to yourself, okay? The next question you want to ask yourself is what good can come from doing XYZ, whatever it is. Let's say it's the fear of public speaking. What good can come up from me going up on stage and speaking in front of people? And then you answer it. What good can come from it? I'm trying to find more positives in the speaking than the negatives. I'm trying to make my brain weigh out the options and go, oh, I'm not gonna die by hopping on stage. And I could possibly help this person, that person, this person, that person. And then your brain starts to go, all right, maybe I should let go of this and let Rob hop on stage. So what good can come from this? Next question, why should I not be afraid of this? Why should I not be afraid of getting on stage and speaking in front of people? Well, because I ultimately do want to do some more public speaking. I know that you can really impact people from stage. It is something that I'm passionate about. I love watching public speakers. And if I love watching them, I love to be one. And you could go on and on and on and on. So what good can come from this? And why should I not be afraid of this? Another reason why you shouldn't be afraid of this is because people aren't gonna make fun of you. They're gonna understand. Everybody's afraid of public speaking. So if you're afraid of people making fun of you, they're not gonna be making fun of you. They're gonna understand if you do happen to mess up. And then the next question is what action do I need to take right now? This is the last question. What action do I need to take right now? And then you answer, okay, what I need to do is I need to plan out my talk even better and I need to practice and practice and practice because practice makes perfect. So if I practice more, I'll be more confident and I'll probably deliver a better speech. If I'm not fumbling around and I'm not looking through the papers and trying to figure out what I'm supposed to say, I'll present more confidently if I have all of this memorized. Why do you wanna take action? Here's the reason why is because we ultimately have programmed into us when we feel fear to basically lock up, to not do whatever it is, to give into that fear. It's the same way where if you hear rustling in the bush, you're gonna run or sometimes you're just gonna lock up and you're gonna stare and sit there for a second and you're gonna look around and see if you can see any lions. So a lot of times what we've trained ourselves to do over 20, 30, 40 years, 50 years of your life is that when you feel fear, you give in. When you feel fear, you give in. When you feel fear, you give in. Right now you've gotta retrain yourself, teach an old dog new tricks. Now you've gotta train yourself. When you feel the fear, you've gotta take action. You feel the fear, you take action. You feel the fear, you take action. If you do this long enough and you're conscious enough doing this, if you continue to keep doing it over and over and over again, fears won't hold you back anymore. You've ultimately used classical conditioning on accident to yourself and if you wanna know what classical conditioning is, you can look it up, but you've used classical conditioning on yourself on accident for when you feel fear to be paralyzed by it. That's what you've trained yourself the same way you train a dog. You've trained yourself to not take action when you feel fear. Why do you think it's so damn hard to not take action now? Because you feel the fear and you lock up. You've trained yourself to do that. Same way that you train a dog, sit. You say sit and they sit because they get used to it. It's just an action they get used to. So now you've got to retrain yourself to when you feel fear, you gotta take action. You gotta go. And then what you say is for each one of those, you say them out loud because there's power in writing it down. There's power in saying it and then there's power in hearing it because you're trying to program these things into your subconscious. You're trying to get your brain to realize that your fear is ridiculous and it needs to release it because your brain wants to conserve as much energy as possible. If it doesn't need to worry about whatever this thing is, it'll let go of it, okay? What's the next thing that we need to do in order to get rid of our fears? We need to make our goals or the things that we're going for a little bit more bite size. So instead of saying, hey, I want to make $100,000 this year if you've never made $100,000, what you can do is you can take that number and break it down and say, I want to make $8,333 this month, right? That number seems much more digestible than the entire $100,000. And so you take your numbers and your goals and chop them into bite size pieces. Have little check marks that are on the way because the bigger that something feels to you, the less likely you are to take action. If you can chop it up into smaller sizes, you're more likely to take action, which means you're more likely to do what you need to do, which means you're more likely to hit your goal. And then when you do $8,333 in a month, you're like, I can do this again and it gets you excited and then you do it. It's just important to make sure that you chop them up so that they don't seem as large as they are. And then the last thing is this, learn to dance with your fear. That's what I always say, dance with your fear. You're going to feel it. Once again, as I said in the beginning, successful people and unsuccessful people all feel fear. The difference is what they do when they feel it. If you train yourself long enough, you'll realize that people that don't take action have trained themselves not to take action. They've trained themselves. You've trained yourself not to take action when you feel fear. But if you can use these steps, if you can write them down, if you can become self-aware and next time you feel the fear go, what am I feeling? Okay, I'm a little terrified right now. Okay, why is that? What am I afraid of right now? Because ultimately when you're just thinking things, when things are in your brain, it's very abstract. When it's in your head, it's super abstract. But when you write it down on a piece of paper, you can get very clear on what things are going on. And so you can feel it. What am I feeling right now? Okay, I'm feeling fear. Okay, what should I do? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and write down. What am I fearing? You start to write it down and you look at it and you go, that's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. That's not that bad. I think I can deal with this. I think I can work through this. And then ultimately, what do you do? Then you take time, go through this whole process and you say, what action do I need to take right now? What action do you need to take right now? Whatever it is, take that action because you've trained yourself not to take action. Train yourself to take action because fear is a good thing. You'll never conquer fear. You'll never overcome fear. But what you will do is you'll learn how to dance with the fear. You'll feel it, you'll understand it, you'll know why it's there and you can either give in or you can lean in. What you want to do is lean into that fear because it's showing you that you're about to step out of your comfort zone. And you know that everything that you want is on the outside of that comfort zone. The things that are holding you back from this amazing, beautiful, incredible life that you want are complete BS. That's what we're gonna be talking about today. And you might be listening to me and you're like, that doesn't make any sense. Of course they're real. No, they're not. The only thing that's holding you back from the life that you want, the money that you want, the family that you want, the happiness that you want, the joy that you want, the peace, the love, the success, the traveling, the abundance, the lack of stress, the environment that you want. Every single little thing that you want in your life, the only thing that's holding you back from that is your fear of something. That's it. And we're gonna be diving into those today. And what I want you to think about, I want you to ask yourself is what is your biggest fear? Think about that for a second. I don't mean fear of like spiders or fear of heights. What is your number one fear that's holding you back from creating the life that you want? I want you to think about that in your mind real quick. What is it? Do you have it? Do you know what it is? Now, I want you to realize this. My job is basically to talk about fear with people and to have them see how ridiculous their fears are. So I'm gonna take a guess that I probably know 95% of you that are listening to this, what your fear is. Here's the ones that I hear the most often. The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of running out of money, the fear of being a terrible parent, the fear of your spouse leaving you, the fear of not living up to your parents' expectations, the fear of being unlovable, whatever it is. There's so many different fears that are out there, but I just probably covered about 95% of the people listening right now by saying those. Out of all of those things, I'm gonna ask you this question. How many of those can kill you? Have you ever thought about that before? How many of those fears will cause you to stop breathing? Will cause your heart to stop beating? How many of them? I know the answer to it. The answer is zero. It's zero. I got about 95% of the people who are listening to this in the actual fears that are holding you back cannot kill you, because the fact is we're actually born with only two fears, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Those two are actually born into humans. Every other fear outside the fear of loud noises and the fear of rejection is learned. Yes, you heard me correctly. The fear that's holding you back from the life that you want, from everything that you truly want in your life is learned. You either learn it from your parents, you learn it from your brother and sister, aunt, uncle, family, society, advertisements. You're learning your fears from, you've learned your fears. How crazy, just let that sink in for a second. You have learned to fear that thing that is holding you back, which means that it's actually not real. Now I know some of you out there are like, but Rob, it is real. The fear that's inside of me, I physically feel that fear. Yes, you can physically feel it because your thoughts create emotions inside of your body. Your thoughts happen. They send a chemical messenger called a neuropeptide from your brain down to your body, which then creates hormones and actual feelings inside of your body. You can feel the feelings of fear, but they don't exist. They're not real. So you've learned the fear of rejection. You've learned the fear of failure. You've learned the fear of success. You've learned the fear of running out of money. You've learned the fear of your spouse leaving you. You've learned the fear of being a bad parent. You've learned the fear of not living up to your parents' expectations. You've learned the fear of being unlovable. You have learned those fears. None of them are actually real. They're not real. They don't exist. You can't physically hold them in the world, right? And really what it boils down to is this. It's a thing that one of my friends and I came up with and it's primal fears versus intellectual fears. And let me explain the situation. If you listened to my podcast a couple weeks ago, I actually talked about this friend of mine who went and actually lived with a native Brazilian tribe in the middle of absolute nowhere in Brazil. Like literally lived inside of a teepee, slept with a machete next to him because jaguars were known to roam in in the middle of the night and hunted anacondas for them to be able to live. I'm talking about like native Brazilian tribe. Like they are native people. They don't have roads. They don't have cars, any of those things. And one of the things that he said to me that was super, super interesting. He was talking about how when he walked around in the forest, he always had to have a machete with him because you never know when a jaguar would run up on you. You just never knew. And that was always prominent in his mind. Like he's walking through the forest. He's got to have some form of protection on him at all times to make sure that he doesn't get attacked by something. Because one thing that he said that was really interesting is he said, if you see a jaguar, you're pretty much done. And the reason why is because it's not them just seeing you. They've been seeing you for a long time. If you're just now seeing that. They've been watching you. They've been stalking you. If you can visually see a jaguar, they've been looking at you for a while. And what he said to me that was really interesting is he goes, it really makes you understand the primal fears that we don't feel anymore in society. We don't have to worry about, you know, an animal coming out and attacking us. Most of us that are listening to this podcast, you know, I can see all of the places this is downloaded like 190 different countries listening to this podcast. In the majority of people who are listening to this, you don't have to worry about an animal coming out and attacking you. I don't have to worry about walking down the street here in Austin, Texas and an animal coming out and attacking me. I don't really have to worry about running out of food. Like even if I lost all of my money and I was homeless, I would still be able to figure out a way to get food. Right? So that's also not really something that I have to worry about. Those are primal fears. Primal fears means that there is death attached to it. So if you can attach death to something, it's a primal fear. And of course, that makes sense. We should be afraid of things that could possibly kill us because our brain is designed to keep us alive. And so we should have a mechanism that creates fear inside of our bodies, inside of our brains to make us avoid anything that could have possible death attached to it. Completely makes sense. Makes sense. I get it. That's a primal fear, something that has death attached to it. All of the other fears that don't have death attached to it, we call intellectual fears. They're fears of the mind. All of the fears that you have that are holding you back from this life that you want are all fears of the mind. There's no death attached to them. There's no death attached to the fear of rejection. If you get rejected by somebody, whatever it is, you're not going to die. It's not gonna happen. If somebody gives you their opinion, they don't think something great of you and that's a fear. If Sally in accounting rejects you or doesn't like what you do or talks trash about you, you're not gonna die from that. If you fail at running this business that you want to start, if you were to possibly fail at it, would you die? No. I mean, would you have less money? Maybe, but would you actually cease to breathe? No. So that's an intellectual fear. How about the fear of success? If you were to become successful, would you die? No. If you were to lose everything, if you were to become successful and then lose everything, would you die? No. If you were to raise your children not perfectly because one of the things I hear from parents the most is that I'm so terrible, I'm so afraid that I'm going to raise my children in they're not going to be what I want them to be. If you aren't the best parent in the world because obviously you're trying to get better, are you going to die? No. If you are, you know, bring up another fear. If you are, have the fear of being unlovable, if you're unlovable, are you going to die? No, it's not going to be awesome if you're not unlovable, if you're unlovable but it's, you're not going to die from it. If you don't live up to your parents expectations, are you going to die? No. If your spouse leaves you, are you going to die? No. All of these things I understand, listen, I don't want to say that I don't understand not wanting them to happen. I understand. I wouldn't want to reject it. I wouldn't want to fail. I wouldn't want to run out of money or be a terrible parent or my spouse to leave me or be unlovable or not live up to my mom's expectations. Of course I understand the fact of not wanting these things to happen but you can't justify fearing them because they're not something to fear because they will not kill you. So what you really have to do is you really have to take a step back when you're starting to feel the feelings of fear and start to self assess. One of the things that I always say is that if I could give everybody in the world super power, it would be extreme self-awareness for people to take themselves out of their current circumstances, look at themselves as if they're looking at somebody else and actually self assess what's going on right there. Hey, if you're enjoying this video, do me a favor and hit that like button down below. It helps with the YouTube algorithm so that more people can see this message because it helps us get it out organically. So hit that like button and I appreciate you. You sit there and you go, okay. All right, I'm feeling fear. I'm feeling fear right now. Am I going to die? I'm not. Okay, so is it a primal fear? No, it's not a primal fear. It's an intellectual fear. How do I know? Once again, a primal fear is where death is possibly attached to it. I could actually die. Like cease to breathe. I could completely stop breathing. An intellectual fear, your ego or your embarrassment is attached to it. So if you get rejected, you're not going to die but your ego might hurt. You might get embarrassed if you fail at something. You're not going to die but your ego might hurt. You might be embarrassed about it and so on and so forth. And so what you do is you have to prove to your brain how ridiculous this fear actually is so that it starts to release it because at this point, if you don't really start to self-assess, it feels in your body the same as if you're about to be attacked by a lion. Like you can physically feel inside of your body fear. You can and it's the same physical feeling that you're feeling if your life is possibly online but you have to prove to your brain that the thing that you're feeling is really not something that should be feared at this point. Not something that's going to hold you back. Not something that's going to be a death attached to it. And so in a way, you almost have to prove to your brain how ridiculous your fear is. So when you're feeling these feelings, you've got to self-assess. Think about the fear and then you've got to prove to yourself how ridiculous holding onto this fear actually is. So how do you do it? Let's go ahead and walk you through exactly how to do it. And so the first thing that I like to do is I like to prove to my brain how ridiculous the fear is. And I don't even call it a fear. I refuse to call an intellectual fear an actual fear, right? A primal fear? Yes, I can call that a fear. But an intellectual fear, I don't call a fear. I made up a word that I used to call it because I like to make myself realize how dumb it is. And I'm trying to diminish the severity of these fears, quote unquote, fears in my brain. And I call them scaries, scaries because it doesn't sound scary when you call something, it's scary. So it's like, oh, you know, I've got this scary inside of my head that I might be rejected by Sally in accounting because she doesn't like the work that I do. No, I've got this scary that I, you know, I've got this scary that possibly my wife could leave me. I've got this scary that I'm gonna fail at my business. I've got this scary that I might fail at this other thing. I've got this scary that I might become successful and I've never been successful. I don't know what that feels like. I've got these scaries. Like that's the way that I think of it in my head. Like it's so, it's so ridiculous to hold on to these things because you can do something to make these things better. You can make sure you don't fail. You can make sure you don't get rejected. You can make sure that your spouse doesn't leave. You can make sure that you are an incredible parent. You can make sure of all of these things. So they're not fears because when you say fear, it's like, I could die. That's what fear means in my head. Scaries are just a little bit scared. Like that's the way that I feel scaries are. And that's what I try to make them feel in my brain of like, these are not on the same level. This primal fear is not on the same level as these intellectual fears. These intellectual fears are so much smaller. They're so much diminished. And I'm not going to allow these things to hold me back from the life that I want because how ridiculous would it be if I didn't live the life that I want because I was worried about Sally and accounting's opinion of me? How ridiculous is that if you actually think about it? And so that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to actually diminish it in my brain so that I can see how dumb it is to actually hold on to it because it's holding me back from the freaking life that I want. And I only get one of these lives. So why would I let Sally's opinion of me or the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of success, whatever the fear is, hold me back from doing the thing that I truly want to do, right? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to self assess, figure out what this thing is and I'm going to freaking get past it because it's not going to hold me back anymore. So then I ask myself these questions. Number one, is this a primal fear or is this an intellectual scary? Is this a primal fear that I'm feeling in my body or is this an intellectual scary? Think about that for a second. Which one is it? Okay. And this is the self assessment I want you to go on and you can do it right now and you can do it anytime as you start to feel fear and you write it down. Is this an intellectual fear or is this a primal scary, right? Which one is it for you? Number two, am I going to die? Am I going to die? This will really help you figure out which one it is. Am I going to die? No, I'm not. Okay, cool, I got that. And then number three, and here's the key. The key is to shift your focus because you're focusing on the wrong thing when you're focusing on these scaries. I want to be more afraid of what I'm going to lose than to be afraid of this intellectual scary. I want to be afraid of what I'm not going to have in my life and what I'm going to be missing out on. If I listen to this intellectual scary, then if I allow it to actually control my life. So here's what I do. Okay, if I look at this intellectual scary over here, the question I'm going to ask myself is what am I missing out on if I listen to this intellectual scary? What am I missing out on if I listen to this thing? I want to think about what am I missing out on? I want to think about what are my children going to miss out on? I want to think about what is my family going to miss out on? I want to think about what is the world going to miss out on? I want to figure out why I should be scared of not taking action than why I should be afraid of this intellectual scary. I want to diminish the intellectual scary in my mind so much that I have to take action because I'm more afraid of not taking action than taking action. And so what are the three questions? Number one, is this a primal fear or is this an intellectual scary? Number two, am I going to die? And number three, shift your focus, what you're focusing on, to what am I missing out on if I listen to this intellectual scary? I'm trying to diminish that fear to seem so minuscule versus thinking about, when I think about what I'm missing out on if I listen to that intellectual scary, if I think about what my family is missing out on, what my kids are missing out on, what travel I'm missing out on, money I might not be making, the life I might not have, I'm going to start to diminish the feeling inside of my body. And I'm gonna go, wow, I just went from anxious, fearful, if I don't, fear of taking action to I actually feel anxious if I don't take action. I'm actually afraid of what my life looks like if I don't start taking action because it looks way worse if I don't take action than if I do. And so that's the key is you've got to number one, identify. Is it a primal fear or is it an intellectual fear or intellectual scary? And you've got to identify what you need to do to get past it by diminishing that fear, that scary that you have, and making you realize you should actually fear not taking action versus fearing taking action because of this intellectual scary. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about Master Your Mind, click right here and watch this video as well. Have you ever felt like I can't fully allow myself to be in this moment because there is a chance that one day it's going to be gone?