Let's talk about the number one controlling emotion in your world. This emotion drives so much of your action or [00:01:00] inaction. It really dictates the way in which you navigate the world. It has an incredible impact on what you do, who you do it with, what you say, how you perceive things, 

and generally the lens through which you view the world. I'm talking about an emotion called fear. Fear is the most potent emotion that us as human beings can really experience. There are a lot of potent emotions, distress, depression, heartbreak, sadness, sorrow. There are about a thousand different negative emotions that are potent.

There are some positive emotions that are incredibly potent as well. Pure joy and bliss, love, genuine fulfillment, satisfaction, meaning, purpose. Those are incredibly potent as well. They're contagious. They're magnetic. Fear though is something that we experience on such a regular basis. We don't even tend to realize most of the [00:02:00] time that is controlling our actions or lack thereof that is controlling our decisions or our lack of ability to make decisions.

Fear manifests itself in so many different ways in our lives, large and small, 

As small as the middle school boy who's too afraid to go talk to the cute girl Because he's afraid he'll get rejected all the way up to That incredible business that you've conceptualized and dreamed about for years, but you're too afraid to start it Because you don't know if it'll work out. You don't want to go broke.

You don't want to take the risk. You don't want to fail Fear of failure is one of the biggest fears that we have It's also true that we have a fear of success. One of the most self sabotaging fears is the fear that things will work out so well that we're not worthy of that success, that we're not capable of that success.

And so when we [00:03:00] achieve it, We become afraid, we become afraid that we're going to screw it up. We become afraid that we're going to get found out. It's called imposter syndrome. And so that fear brings us back down to earth. That fear brings us back to a baseline of who we've decided to be.

That we are fear works both ways on the spectrum fear in its most utilitarian form keeps us out of trouble. Fear is an incredibly healthy emotion to have. It's one of the things that keeps us from putting ourselves in danger.

It's what sparks our intuition, which by the way is normally spot on because intuition is just the recognition of patterns.

Our nervous system's ability to go, I've seen something like this before. Our intuition is what our body feels unconsciously before our mind even recognizes it consciously. Our fear is what sparks that. Our fear is what tells us this isn't a good situation. I shouldn't be here. I need to go and [00:04:00] get to safety.

Our fear is what says don't walk down dark alleys at night in bad neighborhoods. There's totally rational fears. There are fears that absolutely protect us. If we didn't have some healthy level of fear, we could end up in quite a bit of danger. There's a whole big world out there and parts of it can be quite unpleasant and even a little bit scary.

And so our fear is a tool that when used properly puts us in the best position to protect ourselves and succeed. What's interesting about our relationship with fear is that it has not evolved very well over time as a species, we've continued to get more intelligent as we've evolved, 

we've continued to build on our existing base of knowledge to grow wiser, to make better decisions, to create a generally more seamless human experience. And this is true all across the globe. 

There's a really great [00:05:00] example of this in the book Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, fantastic writer and philosopher, where he discusses the idea that almost all of the world's problems that we still face are entirely man made. World hunger, for example, is an entirely political man made problem. And I don't mean that to be critical of any politician or any political ideology.

All I simply mean is that between all of the world's largest economies, the world's superpowers, we could easily divert the resources to solve world hunger overnight. We have the ability to feed every mouth on earth. That didn't used to exist. The previous versions of our species didn't have the knowledge base to be able to build the complex systems.

It would take to even have the capability of feeding every human being on earth efficiently. We now can do that. It is more so global economic policy that keeps that from happening, but we are getting [00:06:00] smarter and smarter as a species. All this to say our relationship with fear hasn't developed nearly as much.

Most of the fear that we experience is still irrational fear. Irrational fear is the experience of having fear in a ratio that doesn't properly align with the reality of the situation that you're facing.

It's the fear of getting shot down by the girl that keeps you from even taking the leap to go speak to her.

So if you take that example, which is a fun classic one, right? And you just break it down for a moment and you look at all of the potential downsides, the thing that fear is supposed to be protecting us from. What is the danger? What is the harm? What do I need to be protected from by a healthy fear in this situation?

Well, most likely nothing. If I go talk to the girl and she shoots me down, I might feel a little rejected for a few moments.

My [00:07:00] ego might hurt a little bit. I might even get laughed at. Let's take it to an extreme. I might totally embarrass myself in front of a ton of people. Everybody might go, wow, what a goofball. Did you ever think that she was going to go for you? And then the reality is everyone will wake up the next morning, completely forget about it and move on with our lives.

There's essentially no downside to going and taking a shot. Trying to introduce yourself and make a genuine connection with this woman. Almost no downside whatsoever. Now, if you look at the upside, it's essentially infinite because I have no idea what beautiful things might come from my relationship with this person.

I might be talking to my soulmate. I might be talking to the person that I am going to have an incredible life with. I might hit it off with this person and just have such a genuine connection that I experience [00:08:00] a level of joy and bliss that I've never experienced before.

That's certainly possible. Anybody who's really, really, really deeply in love understands what that feeling is, and that might be that person. So my downside is essentially nothing. My upside could be infinite blessings, but yet more often than not, I'll let that fear of rejection, that fear of being a little bit embarrassed, keep me from walking over there and talking to the beautiful woman.

This is a really easy example that we can all sort of relate to. The idea of being afraid of what we feel are difficult conversations. More often than not, our fear of uncomfortable conversations is well out of whack. That it keeps us from moving forward, actually keeps us from being productive.

It keeps us from interacting with people in a way that would be ultimately positive. The hard thing that I'm not doing right now, I'm not doing because I have an irrational fear of the [00:09:00] consequences. Normally the consequence is momentary discomfort. 

While the positive could include massive upside. And so you can see how our relationship with fear is designed not to serve us. For whatever reason, we have not evolved in our relationship with fear. We haven't gotten smarter and more practical organically around our relationship with fear.

But can you just imagine for a moment, can you imagine how powerful your human experience If you had a healthy relationship with fear, if every time you went into a situation, you were able to more accurately calculate the amount of fear that you should legitimately feel towards this situation based on the downside versus the potential upside, the worst case scenario versus the best case scenario.

If you were able to instantly underwrite How afraid of this situation should I be based on the negative outcome versus the [00:10:00] positive potential outcome? 

How would you experience your life if your sense of fear was perfectly in balance?

Take like five seconds to just think about that.

What if all the silly little things that you were afraid of that kept you in a state of inactivity or avoidant behavior, if you had a much more accurate depiction? of what the worst case scenario was versus the best case scenario or what the most practical bad scenario versus the most practical good scenario was.

My guess is that you'd operate with a lot more confidence. My guess is that you would live with a lot more vibrance if you rid your world of unnecessary and irrational fear. Now the truth is we're probably unlikely to develop the ability to accurately project the amount of fear we should be experiencing in any situation. That doesn't mean that we can't move closer to experiencing the world that way. It doesn't mean that we can't slow situations down and start to [00:11:00] rewire our brain by asking ourselves the right questions to get better and better at moving towards experiencing the right amount of fear for any given moment. 

So I want to give you two quick tips on how you can bring your rational fears to light and start to re underwrite the situations in which you experience fear.

The first thing that I want you to do is this, and you're going to need to be cognizant of doing this while you're in the moment, while you're experiencing the fear, not. While you're thinking about things that you don't want to do, you have to be in the moment.

Brian: So you need to be conscious about this for it to be effective when you're experiencing fear around something you do or do not want to do when you're experiencing fear, that's keeping you from taking a certain action in that moment, I want you to step back and I want you to rate your fear on a scale of one to 10.

How afraid am I feeling right now? Just have an honest conversation with yourself. 10 being, I am afraid for my life and one being, if [00:12:00] this doesn't work out, it'd be a minor inconvenience. What are you feeling on that fear scale? Fear scale in that moment. How intense is the situation now?

Ideally these tools work best when that number is at least a five on the fear scale, where you're feeling 50 percent of the way to some serious, serious fear. I want this to be in moments where you're truly feeling like, I don't want to go do this right now because I'm afraid I feel uncomfortable.

I don't like this situation for whatever reason. you get into that situation, whatever it is, the next time you feel that fear, I want you to take a step back for a moment. I want you to rate it on a scale of one to 10.

This is going to do two things for you. The first one is going to have an immediate effect. Having a conversation with yourself, a deliberate conversation with yourself around the amount of fear that you're having immediately starts to put the fear into perspective. When you're in a situation where you're feeling fear and you force yourself to step back and have a [00:13:00] conversation with yourself, it instantly becomes a pattern interrupt.

Most of our irrational fear is effective in keeping us in a state of inaction because we don't really sense the fear creeping up on us. We just experience the fear, but it's not like we objectively look at ourselves from the outside and go, wow, I'm experiencing fear. That's why I don't want to move.

You're just shut down. Fear can just shut you down and so when you step back from it and you become intentional about facing your fear by rating it by giving it a number, it immediately breaks your pattern and it forces you into a position to look at your fear objectively. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much fear am I actually experiencing?

Am I actually experiencing enough fear to stop myself from moving forward? Or was I just not going to move forward because I sensed fear and I didn't like it and I just never had that conversation with myself. So immediately that's going to break your pattern. And I think that you'll start to see that your fear ratings are going to [00:14:00] be lower than your body was initially sensing.

So you're already starting to move in the right direction. Now the second thing that this will do is crucial and this is the second tip. want you to take that number that you rated your fear and I want you to ask yourself, what is the number on your fear scale of the opposite not being true? So what I mean by that is the positive outcome that you stand to gain. How afraid are you of never having that possibility?

How afraid are you? Of not having what the best case scenario could possibly be from you taking action. So for example, how afraid am I of going and approaching that beautiful woman that I would really love to get to know, maybe a four or five.

Maybe I'm like really afraid at a five. Like it just would be really uncomfortable. I don't want to get shot down and look like a fool and have my ego all bruised up. How afraid am I of [00:15:00] never meeting the woman of my dreams. If knowing that that could be the perfect person out there for me, that that could be the person that I spend the rest of my life with, how afraid am I of never finding that person?

If I knew for certain that I was never going to find that person because they were right there and I didn't do anything about it and they walked out of my life, I'd say my fear of that is way higher than a five.

If I'm asking myself, how afraid am I? of not experiencing the best possible outcome. Well, now I've got some pretty good perspective. The worst case scenario is that I experience a five of pain, and that's like embarrassment. Some, some decent level embarrassment where I'm like, Ooh, that's going to take a little while to shake off.

I am a 10 afraid of not finding the right person that I'm going to experience a joyful, blissful life with, an incredible [00:16:00] partnership with, create a family with, 

I'm a 10 afraid of never having that person. 

We can use this exercise on anything that we are afraid of that difficult conversation that you've been putting off with your boss. When you think about that conversation and let it go by for one more day and one more day, I want you to step back and just rate the fear that you're feeling around that conversation on a scale of 1 to 10.

It might be a five, might be a six, might be a four, but what is the conversation about and how afraid are you of never getting the potential positive outcome that that conversation could lead to my guess is at the very least. Those numbers are about the same, meaning everything that we're irrationally afraid of is at worst a net neutral.

We're just as afraid of avoiding the downsides as we are of never capturing the upsides. You'll tend to find That a [00:17:00] whole lot of times we get in a state of inaction over things that we are irrationally afraid of and we miss out on experiencing the upsides because we're not calculating how afraid we really are of never getting to experience them.

We just don't go through that thought exercise. We allow our irrational sense of fear to just shut us down. We think fear first and everything else second. We will do so much more to avoid pain than we will to experience pleasure.

So much so that the amount of pain that it takes to create avoidant behavior in us Is so small in comparison to the potential pleasure that we could experience if we move forward, if we took that action, if we took that risk, if we did the thing, if we talked to the girl. And so I want you to start to rewire your brain to getting a little bit closer each day to accurately [00:18:00] underwriting the requisite level of fear for any situation. This is not going to happen overnight, by the way, but I do promise you this, if you really feel fear and take a step back next time and do this exercise, you're going to notice a miraculous change in your state immediately.

You are going to notice a change in your posture. You're going to notice a change in your energy levels. You are going to rid yourself of the unnecessary unconscious fear because you've all of a sudden brought that irrational fear to light.

And you will stand up straighter, you will look at things more objectively, and you still might be too afraid to take action the first time, but just bringing awareness to it. Just bringing awareness to the idea that I realize that the amount of fear that I'm experiencing is probably too much for my own good right now.

We experience way too much fear for our own good. If you get in the habit of exposing that fear, you'll start to. Reduce the amount of unnecessary fear that shows up in your [00:19:00] life. 

You'll get a little bit closer to experiencing an amount of fear that is actually healthy for you. So try this next time that you're feeling fearful.

Just a couple of basic questions or really simple thought exercise. And I think you'll see a massive difference. I would love to know how this works for you. I would love to know what you got out of it. I would love to know what actions you took because you weren't afraid anymore. Drop a comment. Get in touch with me.

I truly appreciate you watching another episode and I look forward to talking to you soon.