 In this episode of Mind Pump, you know, we wanted to tackle something that's probably hurting a lot of people right now. And that's fear and anxiety. Weird times right now, right? We're all dealing with this COVID-19 situation. A lot of businesses have had to shut down. We're all self-isolating, uncertain, scary times. And, you know, we were thinking about, gosh, you know, they're going to tell us all to go back to work pretty soon. And we're going to have to not just deal with the, you know, being precautious and making sure we don't catch or spread this virus, but also have to deal with the fear and anxiety of being out in the world. And so in this episode, we talk about our own personal experiences with fear and anxiety. How chronic fear drove our behaviors in incorrect ways, in ways that were detrimental. We talk about what fear does to the body. Why it's essential, but also why chronic fear can actually be a huge health problem. How it affects your digestive system, your brain, your thoughts, and how chronic fear can cause a lot of problems. And then we give you actionable, constructive options, things that you can do for yourself to not just manage fear, but to bring it to a healthy level so that it's rational and no longer irrational. Now this episode is brought to you by Legion. Legion makes some of the best muscle building, fat burning, and health supplements around. My favorite product from Legion is Recharge. Recharge is a creatine product that also has carnitine L-tartrate in it, helps with recovery. Of course, creatine, the most studied muscle building, fat burning supplement ever. It does help build muscle. It actually improves health. Anyway, it's my favorite product from Legion, but they have protein powders. They have a pre-workout supplement. If you like the caffeine pre-workout type supplements, if you like the tingly feeling you get from beta alanine, try out Pulse. It's a great pre-workout. 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Helps you determine what you need to do before your workout. How you prime your body so that you can get into deeper, more connected squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. Basically, you can make your workout much more effective with a good, solid, individualized 10 to 15 minute priming session. That's what Maps Prime does. Now Maps Prime Pro is all about correctional exercise. You pick areas of your body that you want to focus on that have pain, mobility issues. You go in the program, you follow the outline, and you focus on those areas and you dramatically improve your mobility. Again, they're both 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and use the code Prime50. That's P-R-I-M-E-5-0. No space for the discount. You know what's crazy? I was thinking about this a lot the other day because we are getting to the point where we're in between a rock and a hard place. The rock is, there's a virus that's out there that can be dangerous for some people. We don't want it to spread really fast. Not going out there, not going to work, not being around people prevents the spread of it. This is a fact, right? Social distancing works in that sense. But here's the other fact. We can't social distance ourselves for that much longer. Definitely not forever. Probably not for that much longer. We've seen record numbers of unemployment. We need people to make products. We need people to provide services. We need the sense of purpose of going out there. It made me think to myself of an analogy of you're in a cave with your family and you need food. You're hungry. Your kids are hungry. You haven't eaten in days and you look out in the cave and you see lions. Every once in a while roaming around. And you know if you go out there, there's going to be a risk of getting killed. But if you don't, you know you're going to starve. And I feel like we're reaching that point because, I mean, people think, when they think economics, they think, you know, oh, not a lot of, some people will lose some money and have a big deal. It could be a very big deal and we're reaching that point. And I started to think about it and I started to get scared. And I started to think, God, what is it going to be like when, because we are going to get the order pretty soon. States are going to start saying to people, go out there. We got to get back to work. We got to get back to our regular lives. But now we've been so scared with all this information. And I thought, how is that going to affect people's behaviors? How it's affecting our health? Like fear itself is something that we also need to pay attention to. You know what I'm saying? This is a very touchy subject, right? Because, man, I went down the rabbit hole of reading your conversation back and forth on Lane's page. And, you know, boy, you got all kinds of hate over it because people misinterpret what you're saying right now to, you know, you're pushing the agenda of, oh, we shouldn't social distance and let's just get everybody out there. And this is all a bullshit. I think this is a conspiracy. No, no, no, no. I want to be clear. I'm not an infectious disease expert. I don't know when the right time is to go out into the world and go back to regular life or closer to regular life. I'm saying when the experts tell us to do that. And I'm saying that they're probably going to say it. It's inevitable it's going to come. And so it's like, how do we mentally prepare to then reemerge out of this? Because as I look at it as more of like a storm, like we're all kind of weathering this together. But now, you know, and there may be more storms that come, but like we have to live our lives. And what does that look like now? Well, I think you gave a great analogy. And I guess the question is this is, you know, are we starving yet? You know, are we borderline going to die of not eating? And of course, that's the analogy for the line. We're not all going to, that's not going to happen for us here in modern times. But, you know, we can starve our economy at one point, right? I mean, at one point, if you shut, if we shut everything down, let's say a year straight. I mean, it would have this catastrophic everlasting response from that if that were to happen, right? And now we're not going to be shut down for a year. But then where's the place at? Is it two months? Is it three months? Is it nine months? Or is it soon? Like where is it that, you know, okay, we have to eat? We have to keep this thing moving. And at what point does the staying in become more risky than going out and taking your chances with the lines? There's a lot of people that are waiting and going to rely on and need this check from the government that could be $1,200, $2,400, whatever. They need it because they're not going to be able to make it without it. That's one check. That's over. How long has the country been effectively, you know, shut down now, four weeks, five weeks, whatever? So we're going to get another one. My point is they're going to tell us we need to go out into the world. The virus is still out there. It's still going to be out there. It's not going to disappear. It's still going to be out there. So what I'm thinking, what I'm saying, look, I think we should be precautious and we should be safe. But what I'm saying is, is that we need to consider the impact of our fear. Because fear, although it's a valuable feeling, we need it. It can also drive you rational behaviors and it can distort. It could distort your perception of things. You know, when people go swim in the ocean, you ask them what they're afraid of. More people will tell you they're afraid of getting eaten by a shark than they are of drowning. The odds of drowning are so much higher. You know, when we drive in our cars every single day, we run a, especially when you consider over your whole lifetime, it's not an insignificant risk of getting in a car accident. But we get in our car and I'm not afraid every time I get in my car. I just get in my car and I go... Isn't that interesting? You know what it is though, right? It's the two examples that you're giving right now. One of them is in our control. The other one is not, right? If I go swimming, you know, and I drown, it's by my own cause. If I get attacked by a shark, I didn't see something else than outside force. And that's what we're facing right now is this outside force. An infectious disease that we don't have a vaccine for. And the what if becomes scarier potentially than the actual likelihood of it actually killing you. Totally, totally. And this is a big thing. You know, in something like 20%, this is a big chunk, right? 20% of Americans have like diagnosed chronic anxiety type issues. It's growing. This is before, by the way, all this went down. So this is before... I would have to guess, again, I'm not a health expert on this, but I would have to guess that number is higher now, right? I would have to guess that there's probably more people right now suffering from chronic fear or anxiety than before. But so before all this went down, 20% of people had, you know, diagnosable anxiety type issues. And that drives a lot of your behaviors, you know? It drives the way that your brain perceives and remembers and thinks of things. I mean, it's funny because recently I did an antibody test for COVID and I was sure that I would come out positive. I actually came back negative. I got the test back. I don't have antibodies. And for a short period of time, I felt more fear again. All of a sudden, I felt vulnerable. Like, oh, I'm going to go out there. Maybe I can get a bit. But when I was thinking I had it before, I all of a sudden was my fear with... Now, I didn't change my behaviors either way in the sense that I was... I'm still washing my hands or whatever. But I know that fear can be a very powerful motivator and it can have some really negative detrimental effects on your health. So we need to think about how to handle that as we start to move forward. Well, you get to recognize, too, that percentage that you just brought up about anxiety and fear in people. I wish I remember the statistic on this, but I know it was north of 50% of those people have multiple types of fear. So it's almost like a characteristic that a person has. So once you accept that you are fearful of things, you're more likely to be fearful of other things, too. Totally. It's a state of mind. Right. And that is just a trickling. In fact, the number one reason why businesses or anything for this matter, even fitness goals fail, is just the failure to start and begin. Fear of failure. Yeah, fear of failure. And it's also the number one thing that feeds procrastination. I'm afraid that I'm not going to be good at it. I'm afraid it's not going to do well. You're going to hold on to it. You're going to launch it. It's your comfort zone. Yeah. The minute that you decide to put it out there, you're going to get judged. It's going to take on its form of either it's going to win or it's going to fail. And that is something that's very scary for a lot of people to get going. And that's something that'll hold you back almost indefinitely unless you address it. Dude, I'll give you an example. Years ago, my house got robbed. I was at work and I get a call at the time of my wife. Somebody broke in the house and ran inside. So I jam over there and someone broke in, took a bunch of stuff, went through all the drawers. There was a big mess or whatever. Obviously, nobody was home. Nobody got hurt. And this happens sometimes to people. But I have a family. I have children. I remember them going. They went through my kids' rooms. They stole my kid's piggy bank. The thought of some other person in my kid's room going through stuff. Because they're violating. Yes. They went through my wife's underwear drawer. The thought of some person doing that or whatever. And being the father, having the fear of what if I'm at work or what if I'm on a business trip and something happens. And that fear drove me to make some pretty silly, looking back, silly decisions. I bought a crossbow. I bought a sword. I had a sword next to my bed. Wait, why a crossbow? Let me hear the logic behind that. You want to know why? You're watching Walking Dead. No, no, no. Let me hear the logic about the crossbow. Because me, okay, I've been robbed or two of my cars have been stolen. I think shotgun. So why a crossbow? Because you have to wait. Because I got the gun. I went to go get the gun. You got to wait 10 days. I'm getting the crossbow. But there's an example. What a great example. You were so fearful at the moment that this could happen again. That I can't wait 10 days for the shotgun. I needed a crossbow for tomorrow. In case they come back tomorrow. I got this freaking black blade, weird sword looking thing that I could get. It's the fastest thing I could do in my house. Put it next to my bed. Just in case I couldn't get to something fast enough that I'd go through hacking with it. Every noise I heard for a month afterwards, I was on hyper alert. Everybody that walked in our neighborhood that I didn't recognize, I'm going to watch you. But it drove me. This fear drove me. If I had let it, it could have. Luckily I was okay. Everything was fine. But I could see. I experienced what that did and how that drove my behaviors and things. A lot of those were irrational because the odds of something bad happening again were still low. You could do the rational stuff, get an alarm system and all that stuff, but boy did it drive me. That's an acute situation too. I wonder how much of that overall situation then has this compounding effect of built anxiety inside you and that just feeds into everything else that you feel anxious or nervous or fearful of too. You see that too when people will have a woman who is assaulted by a man and then now she's fearful of men. That can cause that, right? Now I'm afraid of men because one time I was assaulted by a person, by a man. Or you get in a car accident and then after that now I can't drive the car anymore because it's fear run amok. In the situation that we're in now, we have this invisible virus, this invisible pathogen. You go out into the real world. It's time to go back to work. Take the precautions, but if you let that fear seep into you and control you, it's never going to be back to normal like it was before and it's consuming you. Yeah, all your interactions with other people is going to be affected by that rooted fear there where even just meeting people, acknowledging, greeting people, all this stuff is going to change if it's all based off of your sense of fear that you still carry with you versus giving somebody the benefit of the doubt and really trying to immerse yourself again with other people. I remember the story you told when you were a kid speaking in front of the classroom. Yeah, that affected it. That's the thing. I could trace back all the way back to fourth grade like it was yesterday because it was such an impactful moment for me where I wasn't prepared and I was in front of my peers and I was trying to speak on a subject I didn't really know anything about. And all the insecurities, everything else started to flood in immediately and I didn't know if I could get out. I felt like almost a claustrophobia in front of everybody to where I just stopped mid-sentence, I froze and then I walked off and then later on everybody tried to console me like hey, it's fine. But just that moment, it stays in my psychology. So then when I go into a group and I'm about to say something it's that fear of this might come up again. This might always come up. Did you avoid it afterwards? 100%. I avoided any sort of situation where I had to present in front of class in front of my team, my peers, sports events, things like that. Me doing myself. Me always doing myself and doing it the best I can do. And so this is something I'm still working on. I'm still really trying to break this fear that's deep rooted within me and face it. And that's something that's a very big challenge of mine. I think you've done a pretty good job actually. Well, I like you using that example too because a lot of times our fear is insidious and it's something that is deeply rooted in this insecurity that you've had since you were like a child and you don't even realize it. And I'll give you an off analogy that has nothing really to do with like health and fitness or even like COVID right now but just how fear can creep in and be this kind of forever driver and until you learn to become self-aware about it and then begin to unpack it, do you ever get, move forward with it or overcome it at all. And for me, and I've shared on the podcast before that a lot of my motivation. There's another thing too. A lot of times that we justify fear that were motivated. This motivated me. Like when I was a young kid there was situations where we didn't pay our PG&E bills so lights were out could have the refrigerator running we were living out of a cooler evicted from houses, stuff like that, right? And as a young kid what I thought was or what I didn't connect as this childhood fear that I had it was I don't want to be like mom and dad and that's what motivates me to be successful and that was like this main driver for me but the truth is I was fearful my fear as I got older was I don't want to be like that or I never want to be in that situation and so it would cause all these other behaviors that I would do and sometimes that could be something like I lost relationships. I was so driven financially to be successful and was so fearful of not having or potentially being out on the streets that I would just completely get tunnel vision ignore my partner because that's all that mattered to me and the reality of it I've never had to want or need since I've been a young adult since I started working at 19 years old I've always had money I've always had a savings I've always been okay but not in my head in my head because it's so deeply rooted in this fear of not having or being in that situation my perspective it still to this day even when Katrina and I have conversations the difference is that I'm aware of that fear now and I'm aware of how insidious it is that when it rears its head in today's time for me and if I start to notice it cause an issue in my like a relationship like with Katrina and I and this is literally this is a true story literally fucking three days ago Katrina sends me over the bill that we have to pay our housekeeper and obviously I'm in a place where I can afford to have a housekeeper and do these things I have the savings we're invested we run our business very conservatively and I like come on glued on her cause it's like $60 more than what it was like before or whatever right and I'm just like why don't I understand and I'm like blaming her for not telling me sooner and she's like you know that we have this you're the one who wants it why are you giving me such a hard time and I'm all heated in the moment and I'm pointing other things out that well you didn't tell me the week before and why is it this cause it was this before and I'm like and then I have to catch my breath realize that it doesn't fucking matter if it's north or south $60 at the end of the day I do want to help in the service we have the money and the savings it's not a big fucking deal whatsoever all that shit comes all the way back to my fear as a kid of not having him being broke and therefore I overreact on all these other things and so it's crazy when it's very easy when it's an obvious thing like COVID-19 you know that's in front of all of us right now and you know even the people that don't claim to be fearful there's got to be some part of you or you don't have a heart or compassion if you're not fearful for a loved one you know everybody's got an obese or a diabetic family member who is a direct threat or in risk the high risk category for this and so you should have at least some sort of fear or compassion of them potentially getting it even if you don't think you think you are invincible so these are obvious fears in front of us but there's a lot of these things that are deeply rooted and cause our behaviors and the way we react today and learning to understand them and go through them is extremely important it's very important and again fear is it's essential it's natural a certain amount of it is healthy just like you said Adam if you had literally no fear it would be a very dangerous world that we would live in but it can definitely run amok it can cause some problems and I think now more than ever at least in my lifetime this is the risk that we have to kind of pay attention to because kind of what's going on now fear does a few interesting things to your body of course it's now it's needed to help you prepare to react to danger that's why we have it in the first place the reason why you feel it in the first place is because it actually prepares you and your body to deal with danger it actually sharpens certain functions that help you survive like your eyesight eyesight actually sharpens when you're scared your amygdala gets activated to focus on present danger and store it as a memory okay so this is good this is a good thing when it's beneficial to you this is a bad thing when it's not because now why is it why is it a good thing to focus on present danger and store it as a memory well if I walk around that tree over there and there's a a group of guys that you know try to rob me I'm gonna remember that corner I'm gonna remember that part of the neighborhood I'm not gonna go back there go back thousands of years it was a lion went around oh there's a group of lions over there I definitely remember the location we're not going over there anymore that's a very important thing but check this out here's the opposite side of that it actually chronic fear and here's where the problem is okay it's chronic fear this is when it becomes an issue chronic fear actually starts to damage parts of the brain like the hippocampus and it impairs long term memory so you remember fearful shit more and you forget everything else more so over time chronic fear actually starts to paint a scary world dude it's so important I had to cut in and say something to you because this was something that I not that long ago had this epiphany of what exactly you're explaining right now and maybe this will speak to somebody else who has a similar experience and this has helped me with my relationship with my parents so I have a lot of animosity because of the shit that what happened as a kid but part of what I've recognized is I've gotten older and become more aware and to the point you're making right now Sal is that it's really shitty that this works this way but I know you know even though my memories have faded a lot since I was a kid I know every day it wasn't fucking turmoil and sad my fucking life wasn't that bad the shitty part is the way we're wired I remember all of that clear as fucking day I don't remember the Disneyland trip I don't remember the freaking time we were all laughing as a family together I don't have those those are not solidified in my brain all of the fucking bad shit is and all the stuff I was fearful of or the moments I was scared in my life as a kid growing up and there was a lot of those but I know there, here's the thing there was a lot of those but there was still a lot more good times but the shitty part is understanding the way the brain works and knowing that my brain did not was not wired to hold on to all the good stuff it was wired to remember the scary shit and solidify that and so what takes a lot of self-awareness as we age and get older is to learn to detach and separate that and understand that fact that oh wow a lot of this this negative view I have about someone or something or situations is my own perceived view of it because the way my brain operates that it saves it saves all that stuff like on the hard drive bad bad bad bad but it really wasn't that bad so that's something that you have to think about you can see that too how we prop up a lot of entertainment a lot of news a lot of all these things that are very much you know negative focus like things that were fearful of happening and if it's happening on any part of the world we want to know about it you know that's the most important thing is to avoid you know whatever's happening way the hell somewhere else that I should not be concerning myself with right now but that's been the pattern because it's so much easier now with global access to information across the world for us to consume whatever we can in terms of that type of information this unfortunately just keeps you know perpetuating this this vision of the world being intermole and everything being like negative and that's that's what you're focused on you fixated on it totally it literally what ends up happening is it literally starts to because your perception is your reality whatever you think reality is just how you perceive things so some people can have a perception of reality that is more positive more gratitude that is silver linings everywhere you know my wife Jessica is excellent at this you know when she talks about growing up and her life and all that stuff I know she had a hard life I know she wasn't growing but she's very good at the silver lining so she has she does a good job of framing things and so when she thinks of things and talks about them you know I shake my head wow you a lot of what you say and think is positive even though I know a lot of so if you don't do that and you allow chronic fear to take over your perception starts to slowly change and we know this even physically with your brain hippocampus starts to shrink amygdala is always activated so now it ends up happening you have a scary perception of the world that's also confirmed by your memories so now it's like a self feeding you know feedback loop and things feel worse and worse it can be so hard to get out of a fear loop it can be so hard to stop it because it feeds itself continuously fear slows down and changes digestion now it does this because when you're when there's a real present danger you want your digestion to stop for a second you want all the energy to go to your muscles and your eyesight and your hearing so you can escape but over time chronic fear damages your digestion actually leads to IBS it can make you more susceptible to things like ulcers chronic fear decreases fertility now why would chronic fear decrease fertility well you think your body thinks it's wise for you to produce a child in an environment that's scary it doesn't have to be scary by the way again it's how you perceive it to be so if you perceive it to be scary your brain and your body it is scary so now we're going to decrease fertility hormones start to change testosterone levels actually drop in men short term fear can actually sometimes make it spike but long term chronic fear makes it go down now you're becoming weaker your body is actually starting to become weaker it accelerates aging in extreme cases fear can actually cause death and premature death they know this for a fact and we know through studies of people who live a long time that one of the reasons why they could live a long time is that they they don't have they don't suffer from or at least I should say they perceive things to be okay you don't have to be fake by it you don't have to perceive things to be amazing but they tend to perceive things as being okay and fine rather than being super super scary all the time so we know about all of this we know that chronic fear can cause problems health problems we know that chronic fear can drive irrational behaviors we know that it can change our behaviors with our partners and families it can change our if we decide to open a business or take a change our jobs I know people that are stuck in jobs that they hate but they're so scared of something different that they stay in something that they know that they hate it can change your your diet and what kind of foods you're driven to eat of course your body is looking for quick energy maybe you're looking for quick reprieve so you're more likely to eat foods that are unhealthy it drives things it can drive things in a negative way knowing that and knowing the current situation what do we do well there's things that you can do for example pain voluntary arousing negative experience these are examples of roller coasters scary movies going into a situation that you know is dangerous or scary but it's your choice to head into that build confidence you're exercising that muscle that part of the body how you react to it mentally and physically and this is really connects to our mindset episode this really connects to the story of sharing Jessica's childhood and my childhood part of what is why I've had a lot of success as I've gotten older is because I thought I had incredible training ground when I was younger so if I went through all this stress and scary and sad stuff when I was younger you start to exercise that and it becomes easier and easier every time you face that so then when you do get hit with something that maybe everybody else thinks oh my god so scary it doesn't even really crack that for you in fact I said that on my questions the other day when somebody was asking me about how am I handling anxiety during this time during this time and I said honestly when I use and I put in quotations this time and I talk about it a lot of it is coming from a place of empathy that I know a lot of people are I know a lot of people are having a really really I've got family and people close to me that do have a lot of anxiety that have lost jobs that are extremely stressed out but if I'm being completely honest this doesn't even hit my top 100 of the most scary and stressful times in my life so I'm handling it like I would have every single day now a part of that is the preparation both physically financially mindset wise that I have going into all this I think that has a lot to do with it but a lot has to do with the mindset too of being okay with exercising this you know finding your fears and facing it and going through it the more you do that the better you will get at that practice well you know why that sounds why there's something very positive about that because I know a lot of people when things start to go back to normal when it's time to go back to work it's time to start with precaution and all that stuff people are going to be very afraid of walking into the office with 30 other co-workers and it's going to suck it's going to really suck but what's comforting about what you're saying Adam is when you do it the more you do it the less it will suck know that you're doing it voluntarily go into it and know that it's going to get better but yeah that is a training technique is to put yourself in scary situations that you can control and you get better at it and why I do like talking about this is because it bleeds into business it bleeds into fitness you know how many clients I had that when we first started to start their training and I'd ask them why today you're 40 something years old you're finally getting started a lot of the fear was the fact that they would fail before I didn't even want to start because I didn't know where to start or that I would just gain it all back I tried a few times before and then so they had already decided in their brain that you know they're going to fail or they would they fear of failing if they tried again and the only reason why maybe they're there today is because their doctor said if you don't do it you're going to die and it's like almost scared them into that position and so again motivated by fear to come in to hire this personal trainer but I know there's a lot of people out there that are like that that are just afraid to and that again could be your fitness goals it could be a business or leaving a company like you said Sal and going to do something else at the end of the day if you don't practice that if you don't practice facing those fears and overcoming and becoming comfortable you said this in the mindset episode become comfortable with the worst outcome except the worst thing that could happen the absolute worst this is a tough exercise to do it is and make peace with it and then move forward from it because any energy that you waste dwelling on the uncontrollable is wasted energy that you could be using to move forward totally I think you need to accept what you can't control so you do what you can and then leave the rest to the fact that you can't control it if you think that if we worry about it it will be better somehow if I keep worrying about this you're going to solve something I think a lot of people can identify with trying to be a fixer I want to keep mulling this over in my mind so that way there's something that makes sense to me that I have a plan of action or something I can do but these are things that are uncontrollable and there's many forms of that in life and the more that you can put your brain around the fact that there are going to be the unaccounted for types of forces out there that are going to come and you're going to experience it and you have to make friends with the fact that they exist and that you can only control what you can control and just know what those things are and stay there there's also ways for you to train this so part of what makes this stress in the fear is that fight or flight part of your brain when it goes there it thinks you're in danger and so it goes to the flight or flight and then there's ways for you to learn to get out of that so you know sexual activity, meditation exercise all these things are ways to move you out of that part of your brain and so when you get into this situation especially when it's uncontrollable like we're dealing with right now so much, take action by trying to do some of these things that will pull you out of that flight or fight and the better you get at recognizing outside uncontrollable fear and taking action quicker and you get quicker and quicker at that the less fear you'll have yeah, meditation is good because it helps stop the loop because when you're in chronic fear mode it can so does masturbation it's funny sexual activity is a great way to get out of fear mode the problem is getting aroused while scared for some people might not be possible I can't be alone as a guy your wife's like I'm so scared take your pants off, what the fuck I can't be alone as a guy whoever couldn't sleep when I think about being in my head at night I can't sleep I know that some of that's rooted in anxiety thinking about where's the business going to be tomorrow this employee there's fear and anxiety that breaks that loop right away you fall right to sleep it's true connecting with people physical activity physical activity is a great one too hard physical activity can make you feel present why is that beneficial you don't want to abuse that one but if you use it properly how does hard physical activity help besides the physical health that you can get from it besides the fact that your your muscles are going to be stronger and your leaner and your brain's working better from a physical standpoint all of that stuff helps gets you out of your head and makes you present expended energy you're there, you're working hard you are thinking about what you're doing right now and what it does is it breaks the loop so when you're frozen with fear you're stuck in this fear loop and sometimes all you need is enough reprieve to be able to look at it but you can't look at it when you're in it so hard activity going on a hike doing a hard workout putting on some music and getting a good lift in you're out of it long enough to where you broke the loop you're like oh man I feel so much better now you can look at man I was in a fear loop there like and you can examine it meditation does the same thing meditating is literally practicing for lack of a better term practicing just being present and it breaks that loop so you can move out of it and I say that because it's and this is my experience so I could be totally off base with this but in my experience a lot of my friends that I know that are serious like power lifters actually are internally tortured by other stuff and part of why I think they love power lifting so much because any power lifter will tell you this throw 600 pounds on your back you ain't thinking about nothing but that you can't it completely takes you out of everything else that's going on in the world and it puts you 100% focus and what it takes to become a 600 pound squatter or dead lifter is an immense amount of training under load for a very long period of time so a lot of times those guys and girls that I've met they have got a lot of other outside stress and bullshit but that's their church their safe space that's their place where they have the most common focus is under the most physical demand and stress it's pretty crazy I can identify with that on some level I think too like you know just getting out of your mind and focusing on the body and like being in the body like it really helps to kind of close or shut down that that perpetual loop quite a bit and just expending energy it helps to kind of divert a lot of that energy that's going into these thoughts which is you know it's super beneficial for me like I need to spend energy constantly to be able to keep my mind sharp and the key is to understand this is you're not going to like get rid of fear so that you're all of a sudden fearless that would make you not human it's that the fear doesn't control you in unhealthy and irrational ways and it's accepting that you have some fear you know when a firefighter runs into a burning building do you think they don't have fear of course they do it just doesn't control them it doesn't stop them they're disciplined enough to acknowledge the fear but to move forward anyway so that it doesn't influence their behavior so that they make big mistakes so one way you can reframe some of this is to think of yourself as a hero well we we are when things open back up and it's time to go back to work you are doing the world you're doing your country and the world a good thing by getting yourself out there risking yourself so that things can move forward again you take the precautions you wash your hands be careful who you're around all that stuff but you move forward anyway and sometimes you know years ago I was going to do a talk in front of a very very large group and talking in front of people not really an issue for me normally I'll get the normal amount of nervousness but not a big deal but this was a group of people that were above me in position they were all people I looked up to there was a lot of them I was going to go out there and I do my thing and I started to get real nervous and I remember I think that the manager I worked under recognized that I was a little nervous and he told me he says Sal I need you to go out there and I need you to get these people to feel passion and motivation like you feel and all he did was make me feel like the hero still scared but now I felt like I had to do this for other people I was up there fear is still there but now I'm moving forward this is just one way you can reframe just like the cave story you know I think about that because I think to myself because believe me listen this is hitting me right in my fear spot there's certain things for me that are very difficult to deal with and I'm a bit of a germaphobe anyway so this is like a worst case scenario for someone like me and I think about this cave scenario because when I think about doing things for my family no amount of fear will stop me still feel it it's not going to stop me in fact it feels empowering and that's back to the control thing that I think you were talking about so reframing the situation but when things change when it's time for us to step out into the world again take your precautions but also be rational don't let the fear control you and what you may need to do is you may need to incorporate more practices to help solve this for you may need to develop a meditation or prayer practice maybe you don't have one now you might need one you might need to practice things like gratitude, gratitude is a great way to to offset fear when you're scared to consciously think about things that you're grateful for exercise is more important now than it was when you wanted to lose 15 pounds I'm just going to tell you that right now it's nice that you wanted to burn body fat and you want to build muscle and you want to look great that's all great but if you're feeling controlled by your fear or you're afraid of getting back into the world exercise is a much more important role for you it's not fat burning it's not building muscle it's helping you deal with your fear helping you control it rather than control you and with that go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides and resources you can also find the three of us on Instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam