Let's talk about fear baby let's talk about you and me let's talk about all
the good stuff you never do because fear takes over let's talk about fear speaking of fear
singing not one of my things I once karaoked some backstreet boys in a hostel in buenos
aires but that was about the peak of my career I will say we were definitely the best performance
of the evening so maybe there is a future this video we are going to get into fear because if
you are thinking about working for yourself or you currently do even fear is one of the
nastiest obstacles out there you know why it's so bad because fear takes over our mind and it
ultimately miswires us and it makes us have terrible perceptions it really really does it
leads us to do things we think are rational and safe but often are actually a lot less safe and
ultimately can cause a lot more long-term pain for evolutionary reasons we are wired to move towards
safety most of us now some of you probably are more wired like me to take some more risks and
have a bit more fun but ultimately we're still wired back to certainty and safety because
kind of makes sense right we've survived thousands of generations or I don't know how
many generations of people we've had but you've probably from a long line of ancestors right so
it makes sense that those who kind of played it safe especially historically
were the ones who survived and those who were like hey I'm going to go talk to this sabretooth
tiger because honestly I i think it's a nice guy and yeah occasionally he gets mad but I'm
gonna go talk to him right those people probably didn't survive quite as often and weren't there
to reproduce so we end up wired for safety and certainty and all this so whether it's finally
deciding to start something of your own or whether it's taking your existing business
and taking it to that next level saying you know what I'm finally I'm going to invest in a team
I'm going to invest in doing things right and actually growing this into something really
significant and special something that represents the real value I have to give to the world
whichever upgrade you're looking at doing there is going to be fear that is completely natural
in fact Maslow says that whenever we're looking at moving to a new stage in life it's natural
to feel fear and to avoid it because we're leaving something comfortable and familiar and moving into
the unknown but ultimately we need courage and support to move forward and move to these next
levels if we want to self-actualize and if we want to really become the best version of ourselves
so learning how to acknowledge fear to feel it to accept it and then look it in the face and
act despite the fear that is going to serve you for your entire life and I want to share with you
one approach that has served me extremely well in making changes and moving to the
next level or next stage of my life relatively smoothly in most cases now at this point I could
get into topics around self-belief and confidence because they are definitely related to fear and
taking action the more we believe in ourselves the more we have sort of a universal confidence
of being able to tackle the unknown the easier it is to jump into new situations so learning to
build that confidence and that's something that I can help you with in other videos it's beyond
the scope of this one but learning to build your confidence and belief in yourself specifically
around more of what I call a universal confidence so we can have specific confidence like you get
really good at your job or you happen to be a great kayaker so when you're in the kayak you
have all this confidence but then when you walk into a karaoke bar in argentina you're like ah
this is not something I'm comfortable with right so we have specific confidence we develop around
situations we're familiar with and then there's this universal confidence dealing with the unknown
that can be really helpful to develop and just a quick tip on that I can't help myself I've
got to give you something on it is honestly having some kind of a mantra you say to yourself and just
going through self-talk can really help with this you may not know this but actually my first three
books were on confidence and through that I've coached some really exceptional individuals around
confidence and self-belief and self-talk and honestly saying things over and over to yourself
as simple as it sounds can be really helpful so saying something to yourself like whatever
happens I know I have the ability to handle it or I don't care what happens I'm going to step up and
figure it out and make it work or my all-time favorite example of this in this clip here
I mean that is universal confidence where you think no matter what happens I am going
to make it happen so developing more of a universal confidence can be really helpful
but that takes time and one of the things that actually helps us develop our confidence
is taking action and doing things because our confidence is based a lot on our unconscious
perception of ourselves this is in my mind where the unconscious is just hanging out around here
so the unconscious is looking at how we behave and how we act and adjusting our self-image
based on that it sounds weird but it is what it is right so if you act really brave for a
couple weeks or a couple months suddenly you're gonna find that you feel braver and you have more
confidence if you act like a really good person you know you help the gram across the street you
pick up litter that wasn't yours your unconscious is looking at this and being like I didn't think
I was this good of a person I guess I am and it will actually change your self-image and your
beliefs about yourself and that ultimately makes you feel more confident this works really well so
one approach to conquering fear and building your confidence all in one is to make one big decision
that forces you to move forward I've done this many times in my life I'll give you
a couple examples of it one was buying a plane ticket to Costa Rica
I knew I wanted to start on this dream of mine of living in five countries before I turned 30.
I knew if I talked to a lot of people about it I would get talked out of it they you don't have
enough money what about your business what if it doesn't work when you're gone and blah blah blah
so I bought the ticket and I'm a cheap enough person that if I buy a non-refundable ticket
I'm taking that flight absolutely right so I bought the one-way ticket
and once I did that things kind of fell into place and what I found from that experience and many
others like it is that fear fear is almost like a universal energy I know I'm sounding woo here and
it is what it is but fear is almost as universal energy and it looks at where it will get the most
out of its time so when you make a decision like when I buy a one-way ticket to Costa Rica
fear is like this doesn't seem like a good investment to try to talk dan out of this
because he's bought the ticket he's going to costa rica like let's go scare some kids about the ozone
layer or something I don't know let's invest our fear elsewhere and I found that whenever I make
a clear decision fear gets out of the way it's like okay this is done and this even happens with
people maybe people are the embodiment of fear sometimes so with this example of costa rica I
very consciously waited to tell my parents until the week before I went because I knew if I brought
it up months before they would have been sharing all this fear with me right they would have been
reflecting their own fears about everything so by telling them towards the end once the decision was
made they were supportive and they were like cool this is gonna be great you'll have a good time etc
and I found this all the time another example has been when I've started my own business if
you go to friends or family and you say hey I'm thinking about maybe quitting my job and
starting this thing people are going to share fear with you most of the time some people not if you
have the privilege of being surrounded by awesome peers who are probably entrepreneurs themselves
of course they're not going to be that way but most normal people will share their fear with you
whereas if you tell people I have this business I'm doing this business right you kind of keep it
to yourself as you're working on it and then once it's public you share it people don't come to you
and say hey your business is going to fail hey this will never work hey you shouldn't have quit
your job it doesn't happen it only happens before when you go to people in this fearful state when
you go to people and you say hey I i don't know I'm thinking maybe I should quit my job maybe I
want to start this business then it's almost like fear is like oh yeah we can't let them take an
action like jump in on that and fear will attack at that point because it sees an opportunity
but when you make a big decision and you commit to something fear's like I'm out I'm done I'm wasting
my time here this is already done why would I bother and that's what I would encourage you to do
think about one big decision you can make that commits you to that next step in your life what
can you do that will tell fear hey I'm done here this is this person's committed they're all in
there's no room for me at this point what you'll find is when you make a decision like that
everything shifts your mind especially if you're maybe an ENFP where you're always thinking about
what ifs what could go wrong what could be bad here right all that thinking turns to solutions
it's like you jump in the pool you're not thinking about is the pool gonna be cold you're thinking
about swimming once you're in the pool right when you make one big decision it changes everything
and now you can apply all that mental energy to finding solutions to making things work rather
than all that wasted wasted mental energy on what if should I do this is this the right thing
that kind of anxiety is draining and tiring and ultimately leaves us feeling like crap
at the end of the day if you ask me whereas the energy you'll have once you commit to something
is a very powerful energy of decision of problem solving of future oriented action
and when you're working in that space you will find a way to make things work and
then ultimately your relationship with fear your relationship with yourself and your confidence and
your beliefs about what you're capable of will start to shift if you find yourself on the edge
where you're not quite able to see what that one action could be because fear will distort our
perceptions and crush our brainstorming ability or you know what that action is you need to take but
as you get closer and closer the fear is growing because it senses it's on its way
out so it's always going to be the worst the closest you get to actually banishing
fear from your life if you find you're in that spot and you want to talk to someone to help
you know have a little nudge over the edge or help you figure out what that one decision is
that you need to make and that action ultimately that you need to then take
I am doing free consultation calls I almost never do these you if you've been following for a while
you probably know that I'm doing free consultation calls this thursday friday saturday and tuesday
these are 20-minute calls one-on-one with me where we can talk through some of this stuff
only book one if you really are ready to take action and move to that next level of your life
if fear is strong that's okay fear is something we can deal with very easily together but you
need to ultimately be ready to take action and move forward see you in the next video