How to Overcome Your Fear So You Can Be Free

Welcome to the Effortless English show with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hoge Where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms and grammar drills. Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.

Hi, I'm AJ Hoge the author of Effortless English. Learn to speak English like a native. Join my VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com effortless english club.com you, of course you want to live your dreams. We all have dreams. All normal people do. Young people have dreams. Middle aged people have dreams. Old people have dreams. Right? We, this is just part of being human. Where do they come from, these, these dreams? And by dreams, I don't mean like the kind of dreams when you're sleeping, right, and you have a dream. I mean your imagination imagining a better life, imagining the kind of life you would enjoy the most. For most people, this means having a lot of freedom, having a lot of love and friendships, enjoyment, being healthy, fit, all these kind of things. You know, these are kind of the normal things that most people want. So when I say live your dreams, that's what I mean. I mean live that life that you choose that will make you happy, the most happy that you dream about and imagine and want. The problem is most people don't do that. Most people, at some point in their life, most people, people when they're young, they're dreaming and I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, you know, and they have all these great ideas about how they want to live and the kind of life they want to live. And they dream of travel and they dream of interesting experiences and great friendships and love and financial freedom and success, whatever that means for you. But at some point, most people give up, they quit. Most people decide, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't live my dreams. It's sad. What's most sad, however, is that most people don't even try. Most people quit without really trying. Maybe they try a little bit, but they don't really put their whole effort and energy into going for those dreams. You know, whether it may. Maybe the dream is to start your own business, to be a freelancer. Maybe your dream is to have some certain dream job or career that would make you the most happy. Maybe it's living a life of travel and who knows, you know, you're the only one who knows that. But, you know, and the sad thing is, most People know if they're honest, if they really think about it, they know what their dream life would be, but they don't really try. Maybe they try a little and they have a few failures or they have some difficulties and they just quit. And then they just say, well, I'll just do the normal thing like everybody else. But honestly, I think that's even. That's rare. I think the most common situation is that people don't even try. They don't even really try. They never take the chance. They never take the risk. Why not? Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Most people are so afraid, so worried about what? What is it they're worried about? What is the fear? What is this fear that stops so many people from trying to live a different life, a better life? People who dream of starting their own business but never do it. What's the fear that stops them? People who dream and imagine a different career, a different job, but they don't do it. What's the fear that stops them? People who dream of traveling around the world and having adventures and incredible experiences, but they never do it. What stops them? What's the fear or fears that stop them? We got to think about this. This is a very important question, because that's the thing that stops most people. It's the fear. So what is the fear? I'll tell you one thing. It's not rational. It's an irrational meaning, not logical meaning. Really, these are foolish fears. Now I understand. I mean, I had them in the past, too. So they're common. They're common fears. They're normal. They're human. But if we really think carefully about them, they're not logical. Let's say starting your own business, becoming a freelancer, for example, becoming financially free. What are we afraid of? You're not going to die. Okay? You're not going to die. That's a real fear. Doing something that might kill you. Okay? Like getting in a race car and driving in a race, and you're not experienced, that's probably a logical fear. You might die if you make a mistake. But in business, you're not gonna die. Guarantee you're not going to die. So what's the fear? Well, I think most people, two kind of fears. There's the fear of failure, I think, and the fear of criticism, of being criticized by other people. And they go together. And I think these are the two fears that stop most people in life from taking chances, from doing something differently, from trying to live their dream job, their dream job, or their dream life, or their dream Business or whatever it is, Fear and worry about failure and other people's opinion, criticism. Where do we learn these fears? Why are they so strong? Where do they come from? I think schools. You know, I think schools are a big part of the problem because schools train us to fear failure. For sure, they do. So that's a lot of years of training out of, you know, when you're too young to understand, you're too little, you're so small, you're starting at five years old, sometimes preschool, you're starting four years old. So you're too small to be able to understand what's happening. And at this very young age, they're training you to fear failure. Failure's bad. Failure is bad. Don't get a bad grade. Don't make the teacher unhappy and get a bad grade. Don't get a bad score on your test because then you get the red mark and you take it home. And then your parents are unhappy. Oh, be afraid of failure. You want. You want to get an A, right? How do you get an A in school? A is success, right? An A in school is success. And in most schools around the world, an a grade means 90% correct. 90, 90% or more. That's how you get an A. So this is the message you get for all of those years from age 4 or 5 until age 18, or you go to university until age 22. If you go to grad school 24, 25, 27, that's a lot of years you're being trained with this idea. Failure is bad, and success means 90% correct. And what's failure in school? What do they teach you in failure? You get an F or a D. I'd say a D or an F. Those are both failing grades. An F is 50% in most schools that I've been around. Most countries, usually it's around 50%. So 50% correct means you fail the big F. The worst possible grade means 50% wrong and 50% correct. A D, like in the United States, a D. The next grade, which is also a very bad grade, is 60% correct. So 60% correct, 40% wrong. That's still a very bad grade. That's basically failing. So you just. You'll grow up with these scores with these ideas from so young, you don't even think about it. Right. It just seems like this all seems natural and normal. Yeah, okay. You know, 50% correct, 60% success or correct is failing is bad. And to succeed, I need 90% or at least 80% to get a B. B is kind of so, so it's okay. But really, for success, real success, I need AN A. That's 90% correct. Hmm. Can you see the problem? Do you understand the problem here? Life is completely different. Most areas of life. There are few areas of life where you do indeed need 90% or even 100% correct to succeed. This is where if you fail, you die. If you fail, you die. Or if you fail, other people die. Then yes, you need 99%, 100% correct. For example, if you're building an airplane, if you're making an airplane, you want it to be perfect, you need 100% correct and safe. For sure. Yes. If it's not, then the plane can crash and people will die. Very bad. However, in most areas of life, especially modern life, that is quite safe. You absolutely do not need 90% correct to succeed. Let me tell you something. In most areas of life, especially business, relationships, art, music, many areas of life, 40% correct makes you a superstar. It means you are fantastic. It means you are great. Only 40%. It means you fail 60% of the time. Fail more than you succeed. And yet you will be a high performing superstar. Big, huge success. For example, in sports, maybe you don't know about American baseball. I'll do a lesson about American baseball in the future because it's. Baseball has a lot of good ideas in it about life in general. In American baseball, you have to hit a ball. If a player hits the ball 40% of the time, so, so 40% they have a chance to hit. And if they hit it 40% right, which means they miss, we call it striking out or they get an out, means they fail. If they fail 60%, they succeed 40%, they are a superstar. Not only a superstar. If they do 40% success hitting for a whole year, they're one of the best ever, one of the best in all of history of baseball. That's how good they are. That's only 40% success. Makes them one of the greatest hitters ever. Not 90%, not 80%, just 40% in school. That's failing. That's horrible. That's failing. In business, guess what? In business, if you do an advertisement, you do an advertisement and 40% of the people buy the product that saw the advertisement, you are going to be super, super, super, super, super rich. In fact, that is almost impossible to achieve even 40% success in business and sales, in marketing, in fact, the truth is, in marketing and advertising, 10% is a huge, massive, gigantic, big, super success. And you're also going to become super, super, super rich. If you succeed just 10% of the time with 10% of the people in business. If only 20% or 30% of customers love you, love, love, love. Just super excited about you, but it's only 30% or 20%, you are going to have a massively super successful business. Let's imagine you're a young guy. You're a young guy and you know you want to date women, you want to date girls, you want to date beautiful women. And you go out to bars or restaurants or shops or coffee shops and you go up and you talk to girls and you ask for their phone number. You ask them for a date. If only 30% say yes, 30% success only that is amazingly successful. You're going to have hundreds of dates. All you have to do is ask enough girls. 30% is amazingly high in. Let's say you're a musician. You're a musician and you're writing songs and recording songs. If just 40% or 30% of them are good and people like them, you will be a genius. People will say you are a musical genius if just 30% of your songs are popular. The truth is, you only need probably if you do an album, if you have one song on your album that becomes a big hit and people love it, you can still become a superstar. Just 10% success. Same with art. Pablo Picasso, perfect example, hugely successful. Like, people loved his art. He became super famous and he also made a lot of money from art. He was constantly painting and making sculptures and doing art. Just hundreds and hundreds and thousands of art projects. Most of them were not very good. Probably less than 10% became successful and famous and people bought them for a lot of money. Less than 10% success made Pablo Picasso one of the greatest and most famous and most successful artists in modern time. Can you see what I'm saying? You do, right? You see it in the real world. In most of life, you can fail more than you succeed and still be at the top, still have everything you want and still be a super high performer, a super, super successful person. Even though you have more failures, many more failures than successes. This is what we should be teaching in schools. Not 90% is the only way to succeed. And be afraid if you get less than 70% because that means you're a failure and something's wrong with you. That is a terrible, terrible, terrible message. And so this is what happens. People go through school and they, this goes deep, deep, deep into their brains and they have this belief. They don't even realize they have it. They think, I've got to succeed all the time, I always have to succeed like 90% of the time. And if I fail, oh, that's terrible. It's a really bad thing. And if I fail two times or three times, that's. That's really, really bad. And if I fail most of the time more times than I succeed, then I am a failure. If I fail 50% of the time, or 60% or 70%, that means I am a failure in general as a person or as a business person or as an athlete. It's crazy because it's not true at all. If you look at the people in business, business is nice because we can measure it. That's why I also like sports. Sports and business, we have statistics. There's a score, a number, right? With business, it's money. With sports, there are different statistics, like how many points do you score, how many goals do you make, how many hits do you get? But it's. It's very, very easy to measure it. So that's why I like to talk about these two areas of life. Just because they're clear. They give us good, clear examples. And if you look, a lot of the very, very rich people, very successful business people, a lot of them had many, many, many, many failures before they had a successful business. Finally, even Steve Jobs, he's a famous one, he was fired from Apple. He was fired from his own company, okay? He lost control of his own company. Of course, they brought him back later. They realized it was a mistake. But, you know, at the time, it was terrible for him. It was a huge, huge failure for him. And most entrepreneurs, most people who start their own business, the first one is not super successful. Most of them have few failures. First investors, okay, anyone who invests money, like, say, in the stock market, they will tell you that many of their stocks go down. They do lose money sometimes. Many people, while they're learning to invest, lose money for several years while they're trying to learn. Stock investors will also tell you that sometimes that you can lose money on 90% of your stocks. But if, if one of them is a big, big, big success, then you will still make money even if you're wrong 90% of the time. It's just if that one time you're right, if you're really right in a big way, you can still be a great investor. So can you see that this fear of failures is actually crazy? In most areas of life, if you're going to die if you fail, that's a good fear. But in the rest of the areas of life it's terrible because failure is actually normal. Failing more than you succeed in sports and business and most other areas of life is actually the normal situation. It's necessary. The superstars, the very best, still fail more than they succeed. The other kind of fear that stops you, that stops most people, is the fear of critics. The fear of criticism that other people will say something bad. They'll criticize you, they'll hate you. You start your business, they won't like your product, they'll hate your company, they'll hate you, they hate your personality, they'll say mean stuff. Maybe on social media they'll. They'll put bad stuff. Maybe they'll give you bad reviews on some website or something. Maybe they'll just be rude. And maybe people around you, you know, in your family or something, will say bad things to you and criticize you. People worry so much about the critics, the haters, right? This is the slang. We call them haters. I'm going to tell you a secret. You must remember this. Haters are losers. Losers. Okay, losers. This side. Haters are losers. Winners. People who are successful and happy don't waste their time insulting other people and criticizing them all the time because they're too busy enjoying their life and doing interesting things. The kind of people who are constantly insulting people and being negative all the time and saying mean things to other people and criticizing other people all the time, they're losers. They're losers. Their life is unhappy. They're not succeeding in their life, and that's why they focus on other people so much. Why would you stop yourself from having a great life and enjoying your life and living your dreams and trying to achieve what you really want? Why would you stop yourself? Because you're worried about these losers and what they're going to say. I'll tell you something. These losers will always be negative. It doesn't matter what you do, they will always find a way to criticize and they're always going to find a way to be negative. They are not your friends. They never will be your friends. There's nothing you can do to change their mind. Maybe the one thing you can do, actually, maybe there is one thing you can do, you can also be a loser. See? Losers like other losers. So if you just follow your fear, if you don't do anything, if you also become unhappy and rude and insulting and super negative, then the other losers might like you. But do you want that? You don't want that. That's a unhappy life. So whenever you think about this, just realize it's. Also part of success, part of life. You can never make everyone happy. Never, never, never, never, never. The most loved people in the world in all of history have people who hated them. I mean, I don't know, let's think of people. Mahatma Gandhi, you know, he was all about peace and love, and somebody shot him, okay? Someone hated him enough to shoot him and murder him. You can think of any celebrity, any movie star who has millions of fans that love him or love her. Guess what? They also have probably millions of people who hate them and hate their movies and think they're terrible actors and think they're ugly. Okay? This is just. This is life. Politicians. Politicians. In any country, right? Almost always, at least 40%. Usually almost half of the people in the country vote against them and hate them. Musicians, right? No. There's no musical group that everybody loves. Even like super popular ones like the Beatles or something. I've met people who don't like the Beatles. Hate their music, hate their personalities. There's no way to avoid it, so you might as well just forget it. Just push the haters away. Just ignore them. Instead of worrying about the haters and being afraid of the haters, why don't you focus on love? Because even if 50% hate you, hate your business, hate your ideas, hate your music, hate your art, hate your personality, hate how you look, whatever, guess what? I guarantee there are some people who love all of those things. You should focus on them. Even if it's just 10% of the people that know you, if you have a business, if it's 10% of the people who find your business and try it, if 10% love you, you have a business, you have a successful business, and instead of worrying about the others that hate you, forget them. Focus on the ones who love you. Serve them, make services for them, make products for them, connect with them, focus completely on them, and you will build a very, very, very successful business by focusing on the love, not the hate. And again, this is also true with, you know, your social life. If you're trying to make friends or you're dating. Like if you're dating, let's say you're. You're dating, you're young, you're dating, you go out, you go on several dates. Why would you focus? You wouldn't focus on the date where the person hated you and didn't like you. You just forget them, right? You'd want to focus on the dates where you like the person and they also really like you. That's the one you would ask them for another date. And another date, hopefully, right? That's who you'd want to focus on. You'd focus on the love. You'd focus on the good feelings. And if someone really didn't like you, even if you liked them, you thought they were beautiful or handsome. If they didn't like you, why waste your time? A lot of people in the world, right, just don't call them back. Focus on the ones that you like and they like you. You can have huge success in life by just focusing on the love and the positive and the good connections. Focus on the excitement, focus on the enthusiasm, the love. Focus on the passion, focus on the positivity, focus on the gratitude, focus on the kindness, the appreciation, the respect. Focus on the people who give you those things and that you give that to them as well. There are enough people in the world for that. So again, forget the critics. What does all this mean? I say it all the time. It means trust yourself at the bottom of this, at the center of this. It means trust your self, be kind to yourself. Respect yourself. That's more important than the haters and their opinion. It's more important than the critics. It's more important than being successful and being correct 80% or 90% of the time. Realize that 10% or 20% success can be enough to be a superstar. And realize that haters are losers and that you need to focus on the love. That's how you trust yourself. And that's how you get rid of all the fear that stops you. And you start trying to live that life of your dreams, whatever it is. You start trying to start that own business or start your side business or become a freelancer or take that trip or change jobs or go back to school or study what you want to study, whatever it is. Or ask that girl or ask that boy that you really like for a date, whatever it is. You trust yourself and you focus on the love and the positivity. That's how you achieve real success in life, not what they teach you in school. I'm giving you the truth about real life. All right? Join my VIP program VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com Lots of love to you. Trust yourself and I'll see you next time. Bye for now.