 Fear is not real. The only place where fear can exist is our thoughts of the future. Danger is very real, but fear is a choice. Today, we're going to be talking about three ways to get past your fears. Now, why is it important to make sure you get past your fears? Well, most people, they feel some sort of fear, and then they allow that to stop them in some sort of way. They don't take the steps needed to achieve their dreams. They don't take the steps needed to ask that person out to take whatever action that they need to in order to create the life that they want. And most people will do anything that they possibly can to avoid fears. And these could be good fears. These could be bad fears. They just decide, hey, I'm just going to go and avoid them at all costs. And the thing that's really interesting is, and you've heard me say it before, it's been less than long enough. I hate when someone says, hey, let's let's give it up for our fearless leader, John, thinking that the CEO or the leader of whatever it is is some fearless person that's out there and they don't feel any fear, they just take action. And I think that that's ridiculous because successful people feel fear just as much as everybody else does. The only difference is they don't allow that fear to hold them back from what it is that they want to do or what it is that they need to do. And so you have to realize that people who are successful, whatever success means to you, I can say quotation marks success, those people have just found a way to work with their fears. And that's what we're going to talk about today is to understand that your fears exist, but to kind of work with them a little bit easier. Most of the fears that we have today are not life threatening in any sort of way. Humans themselves, you were only born with two different fears. You were born with the fear of falling. And you were born with the fear of loud noises. So you're born with the reaction. If you've ever had a baby in your hands, they have the reaction where if you know there's a slight movement, they think they're falling, they're afraid of that. Or if there's a big bang somewhere, the baby will start crying. Other than that, there are no other fears that are innate inside of a human. So like the fear of judgment or the fear of rejection, the fear of, you know, other people's opinions or the fear of what their mom will think of them, those are things that are learned along the way. Everything else we learn. Fears are just false expectations appearing real. It's all completely false. In the fears that we have nowadays, the false fears, the false expectations appearing real, none of them are life threatening. So if you think about today, what the, whenever, whenever I ask people, I'm talking in front of a group of people and I say, Hey, what is your number one fear? What I usually hear is fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of not being good enough, not making enough money to support my children, fear of my spouse leaving me, fear of not being loved. All of those are not, none of those that I just mentioned are life threatening any sort of ways, but I just got 95% of people's fears out of the way right there. None of them are life threatening. And so fear originally is a signal that you have potential death on the end of something. And so if you were to feel fear because you're walking through a forest in the middle of the night and you hear a rustling in a bush, that's because there could be potential death on the other side of that bush. But if you're thinking about, I don't know if I should post this post on Instagram because I'm worried about what my friends will think of me. There is no potential death attached to posting something on Instagram, right? So most of the fears that we feel, fears that we feel are signals that we're out of our comfort zone. Not that there's a potential death, but that we're out of our comfort zone. Not that there's potential death in that situation, but potential growth. And that's a really good thing to realize. When you realize that the fears that you're feeling don't have potential death, even though you'll feel the physical feelings of, hey, something might actually happen to me. I'm afraid of what could happen. Instead of feeling that, you can feel it and go, huh, there's not potential death attached to this fear right now. There's potential growth. There's growth on the other side of me feeling this fear. And the reason why we feel this is because every human has something inside of your brain in the limbic system called the amygdala. And the amygdala is basically just the fear generator inside of your brain to keep you away from danger. And your fear generator is working all of the time, but the difference is, it's not 200,000 years ago, and we don't have to be worried about a lion jumping out of a bush and attacking us or, you know, something coming out and attacking our children as we're walking by, you know, walking inside of the woods that are by our house. Most of the time, the fear that is generated from the amygdala doesn't have anything to do with potential death, but it's still working. So if you're inside of your house and you're completely safe and you're fed and you have shelter and water and everything that you need, your amygdala is still running and your amygdala is still searching for fears at all points in time. So it's literally generating things to be afraid of. And so if you're thinking to yourself, I want to post this vulnerable post on Instagram because maybe some people can relate and you feel the feelings of fear. You have to realize that that's a good thing because there's no potential death on the other side of you posting that thing on Instagram. But what there is is there's potential growth on you post another thing on Instagram. Or if you're going to go make some sales calls because you need to make sales calls for your company to make more money. There's no potential death by making a cold call. No one's going to call you're not going to call somebody and then you're going to, you know, like some black mirror episode, just die from having, you know, the phone up to your ear. That's not going to happen. What's going to happen is you're going to get fear because you're afraid of being rejected. You're afraid of someone saying no to you. And what that is to go and step into that is not potential death. It is potential growth, but your brain doesn't know the difference between good fears and bad fears. That's the thing you have to rise. A good fear is one that gets you out of your comfort zone, which is the majority of things you're going to deal with in your life. So what your brain does, because it doesn't know the difference between good fears and bad fears, this is what you have to learn to start categorizing. But because your brain doesn't know the difference between good fears and bad fears, you think that you just need to avoid them at all costs. You know, you need to avoid all of the things that caused you discomfort and could possibly push you out of your comfort zone. The beautiful thing about this is when you really understand this, you really start to realize how the feeling of fear can be amazing to push you out of your comfort zone and to push you to grow. When you feel fear, you have two different choices. Number one is you can give in, you can just give up and say, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, if you think about making the cold calls, you're just like, I don't want to do this anymore. Or instead of giving in, you can lean in, you can be conscious and say, what am I feeling? I'm feeling a little bit of fear. Okay, is there any death that's attached? Something that could possibly kill me on the other side of this fear that I'm feeling right now? No, I'm sitting at my desk. I'm about to make some cold calls. Okay, so instead of giving in, what should I do? I should lean in knowing that my growth is on the other side of that. A real great quote that has to deal with this is Will Smith says, fear is not real. The only place where fear can exist is our thoughts of the future. It's a product of our imagination causing us to fear things that are not present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Don't underestimate me. Danger is very real, but fear is a choice. So this is what we're talking about. Danger is very real, which is like, yeah, that's some, that's a fear to be afraid of, but fear of the feeling of what we have throughout the day is a choice. Now we can't go in and just, you know, pop out your amygdala and you just never have fear again. And this is why I love teaching about the brain is because you can understand the mechanisms that are inside of your brain and you can understand how they work. You can be very self aware in the moment and say, okay, I'm feeling fear. I am safe. There's no potential death attached on the other side of this. The only thing that could happen is potential growth. And so instead of giving up, I'm going to lean in to what I feel is my fear. You know, you have to, you have to start to break down your fears. This is what's important. And I think that it's important when you feel these things to take a pen and paper and to literally start to write them down. Because when something is inside of your brain, your brain is very abstract. And, you know, there's times where if you're like, what are you fearing? And you're like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But if you get down with a pen and paper, you start writing down, what am I fearing? And that's the first question you want to write down whenever you feel fear. What am I fearing? Let's say that you're, you have a fear of making phone calls. You know, if you feel like we've been talking about this, right? You have a fear of making those cold calls. What am I fearing right now? I feel a lot of fear, feel a lot of anxiety to go and make these phone calls. Okay, question, write it down. What am I fearing? I'm afraid to make these phone calls. Why am I afraid to make these phone calls? I'm afraid that somebody on the other line might say no to me. Okay, if somebody says no to me, am I going to die? No. What's the worst that could happen? Maybe they could yell at me and then hang up. Okay. And what's the best that could happen? Well, maybe this person could buy from me and then I could get commissioned to be able to, you know, if I stack up enough commissions, put down payment on a house I've been looking for. Okay, the worst that could happen. And you can now look at your piece of paper. The worst that could happen is that you could get yelled at and someone's going to hang up. That is very, very rare in the world of cold calls. On the other side, the best that could happen is if I get enough commissions, I could buy a new house for my family. Well, looking at these two things, I think that leaning into the fear seems like a better idea. And you start to realize that sitting there and fearing making phone calls and talking to another human on the other line is absolutely ridiculous, but you didn't think it was ridiculous when it was inside of your head. When you started writing it down, you start to realize that you're just creating all of these fears in your own mind. And we scare ourselves by thinking that the negative outcomes that might happen, the negative outcomes that might happen if we go and we go towards our fears and we go towards our dreams. But luckily, the thing about it is beautiful is that we're the ones that scare ourselves. We're the ones that make up these fears, but we can also stop ourselves from thinking that way when we become self aware. The feeling of fear is a very good thing because it's showing you that you're getting past, you're pushing past the point of your comfort because your comfort zone, you've heard me long enough, is where your dreams go to die. So if you're sitting there and you're feeling the feelings of fear, it is a good thing because you're now pushing past your comfort zone. Well, how do we start to work with your fear? All right, so I'm going to give you my three tips to do. So number one is to change your mindset. It's never about the actual fear itself. And so let me give you an example, the phone example. If you think that somebody is going to hang up on you. I'm feeling these feelings. What am I afraid of? Say it out loud. I'm afraid of somebody hanging up on me. And you're like, that's kind of dumb, isn't it? I'm afraid of someone hanging up on me like am I a child? Is that really big of a deal? Say it out loud. What are you afraid of? And you write this down and so you ask yourself what you're afraid of. And you write down, I'm afraid of somebody hanging up on me. Okay. Next question you want to ask yourself, what good can come from this? So instead of, because we have two choices at every point in time, we can either think about the bad in every situation or we can think about the good in every situation. So if I'm feeling my fear and I want to change my mindset, I'm going to see what I'm concentrating on. And I'm going to ask myself, hey, what good can come from this? I want to start writing down all of the things that are good that could possibly come from it. Okay, next question I'm going to ask myself, why should I not be afraid of this? Why should I not be afraid of making cold calls? Okay, write down all of the reasons why you should not be afraid. Next question, what action do I need to take now? What's the best action for me to take in this moment? Write down the action you're supposed to take and then you're going to ask yourself, why do I need to take this action? And so this is a formula for you to be able to go through and actually process your fears, take them out of your brain, put them onto a piece of paper and realize that what you're worried about is not really a big deal. And the best things in life on the other side of taking action. So that's the first thing is to change your mindset around that. The second thing is to make your goals bite-size. Here's a big thing is a lot of times our goals are so big that they tend to paralyze us. So if you're a musician, for instance, you're like, you know what, I want to sell a million copies of a record. Okay, well that's great, that's a big goal, but why don't we make it a little bit more bite-size? You look at your band and you're like, you know what, we've actually never played live together. Okay, so my first goal is to make sure that we get a live show in the next month and then you can start to process and work through it. Make your goals bite-size. So instead of a million records, hey, let's get our first, in the next month, let's get our first live show. And then let's get our first, you know, in the next month, let's get our first song written. Let's get our first two songs written. Because if you don't have an entire album, how the hell, you know, if you don't have one song, how are you going to get an entire album with a million copies sold? So you take your goals that seem really big and make them easier to digest. So instead of looking at your 10-year goals, figure out what your goals are just for this year. And then take your goals from this year and make them even more bite-sized. So what is your goal for this quarter? The first three months of the year, what is your goal? Okay. The next three months of the year, what is your goal? All right, the next one after that. And so instead of thinking about these long-term goals that can seem really big and can actually paralyze us, how can we take those and chop them down to make them bite-size? So if you want to sit there and make, you know, 80 phone calls in a day, don't think about all 80 that you have to make. Just think about that you need to take, you need to make 10 phone calls this hour. That's it. I just got to get 10 phone calls done this hour. That's six every, one every six minutes. That's it. I can get that done. Seems a lot easier than thinking about all of the calls that you need to make. If you want to run one mile, don't think about the entire mile. Just think about the next tree that's in front of you. And then when you get to that one, think about the next tree in front of you. Think about the next tree in front of you. And just continue to put one foot in front of the other and eventually you will have run that. So what I'm saying is don't shrink your goals, just make them more bite-sized, more easy to digest. And the last one, the last tip to working with your fear is to dance with your fear. Realize your fears are never going to go away. You're not going to wake up one day and just be like, oh my God, I'm completely fearless. That's ridiculous. Learn to dance with your fears. Learn to play with them differently. Learn that these are not things that should be holding us back. These are things that you should become very aware of, because when we're aware of them, we can start to work through them and realize feeling a fear is a really good thing, because this thing is showing me that I am on the edge of my comfort zone. And if I'm on the edge of my comfort zone and I keep pushing through, that means that I'm going to be getting potential growth with every single step that I take outside of my comfort zone. You know, it reminds me, I was listening to a guy that I know that has a, he's a neurologist and he's got a whole VR area, virtual reality set area set up inside of his lab. David Goggins came into it and David Goggins hates sharks, like just hate sharks. And when he found out that the virtual reality to feel fear, like they actually will go through and try to say like, hey, are you afraid of heights or you're afraid of sharks? They try to make you feel fear and they measure all of these different wavelengths in your body and your brain and everything. And David Goggins is like, wait, you have shark virtual reality? And he's like, yeah, and he's like that. And he goes, I have to do it. What happened was David Goggins could feel that he felt fear, but he knows that his potential growth is on the other side of that fear. So he's like, you know what, I'm terrified of sharks. I have to get myself into the shark VR. And so how can you start thinking of your life that way? You know, write down the questions, the question I said before, what am I afraid of? Say it out loud. What are you afraid of? What good can come from this? Why should I not be afraid of this? What action do I need to take? And why do I need to take this action? Because if you can consciously remind yourself at all points in time that fear is a good thing, it is natural. It will never go away. All you've got to do is learn to work with it. Then you're going to be constantly pushing the edge of your boundaries in your comfort zone. And the more that you push your comfort zone, the more that you will start to grow. 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. Like, what is actually scary about that?