How to Conquer Your Fears

Fear is mostly poor management of your mind. And you must stop having fear as a frame when you anticipate things are going to cause fear. When you fearfully see something you will not approach, you will avoid. And as you fearfully see something, I'm so scared to get up on stage. No trust. When you get up there, you will serve two different things. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Back, back, back, back, back. And you wonder, why did five years go by and I've been so timid? Because you saw fear in advance, not faith in advance. You can proceed in fear or in faith. You are a person and you are coming from one of the two. You are entering every situation from one of the two, every situation. I'm gonna enter this situation in a place of faith, and I'm gonna trust that it's gonna work out just as it needs to. Or I'm terrified. I don't know how it's going to go. And people don't understand how binary that conversation is in your brain. And I'm just somebody. I'm so proud that a long time ago I said, you know what? Fear is so much to me, you know what fear is outside of physical threat. Physical threat is real. Okay, physical threat is real. But outside of physical fear, threat of safety, right outside of physical fear, most fear is just poor management of the mind. Write it down. Most fear is just poor management of the mind. I am not utilizing this brain to see this in a positive, confident, faithful light. And soon as I can use this brain to see this and write this down in a positive, confident, faithful light, I do that to myself anytime I feel worry or fear, and trust me, I feel it. Emotions are automatic. They're from the body. Often they're impulsive, unregulated. They happen immediately. They're in and often they're out. Most research shows an emotion rises and it's gone and dissipated within two minutes. But you feel it. So I feel it. And I don't choose to hang onto it and grab it and hug it and claim it and say, that's me. And some of you did that with fear. You got scared a few times in your life and you grabbed it and you held onto it too long and you integrated, and now it's you. And you say, I'm just afraid all the time. I am just afraid all the time. Be careful of putting a negative statement after the word I am. If you put a negative statement after I am, you are building a negative personality. In spiritual texts, we would also say that you are also offending the divine, because I am is how God claimed himself. I am that I am. So you say I am, and you put something negative behind it. That's offending you, and that is offending something bigger than you. At least that's how spirituality people would say. And so I want you to be attentive to that. I'm just afraid. I'm an afraid person. I'm always afraid. No, you're not. You're managing this bad. Remember, there's a difference between practices and personhood. Many of you guys know, like, Motivation Manifesto. You know, we've given that to prisons all over the country. And I would love if any of you could help us give it around the world. Thank you. Yeah. And I remember the first time I. I was in lockup, and I was like, trying to work through this concept a little bit. And it was really hard because people take the identity that they're terrible, Right? I am this terrible person. No, no, no. You did something really bad, right? There's a practice. There's just like many of you, you're like, I'm terrible in my relationships. No, you don't have any practices, skill sets of how to be great in relationships. I'm terrible at friendship. I have no friends. No, you have no friendship skills yet. It's skill set, it's practices. Well, I think that we have to realize that this fear that we all think fear is this big thing. And I always go, oh, no, no, really, you just have to choose. Okay, I am going to proceed now and see this in a positive light, in a confident light, in a faithful light. It's kind of like that, just intention. You have to set up, to enter it and to trust the process and to flow with it a little bit more. And to know nothing has to be perfectly architected. It just has to be in motion. And when you realize the world and the universe works like that, it's beautiful, right? It's beautiful. There is nothing you see in nature that is perfectly architected. It's just in motion and it's happening and it's growing. And when it's growing, sometimes it's ugly. You ever see a flower grow? It's super ugly, right? Comes out looks like this in the ground, right? Sometimes the thing, the bulbs are facing down. You're like. It's squirreled up and around. You're like, what's going on? Then all of a sudden, bam. It's like a. Like, oh, wow. That's amazing. It's that ugly caterpillar into that beautiful butterfly. It's A process. Nothing in the middle of the process looks that great. And so you just have to say, oh, I'm gonna go engage this process positively, confidently with. With faith that it'll turn out just as it needs to turn out. I would tell you that will give you superpower. That will give you. Everyone's like, how are you so relaxed, Brendan? I'm like, oh, I chose an identity that isn't fear based, that's faith based. And I, again, I'll acknowledge in this room, not a lot of people in this room have religion. Not a lot of people in this room are of a spiritual, you know, background or upbringing or spirituality is not a high value for them, or they might not feel a connection to energy, universe, divine God, whatever it is. So I get that. I always. I go, I know that's a unique thing to me. But even when I'm saying faith, you understand, I'm not saying faith in God. Only when I'm saying faith, it's trust that things will turn out well, that you have faith, you believe. You believe that it's gonna be okay. Could you imagine entering the day that way? See, I work with some of you guys. Know, I had the blessing of working with a lot of monks. And a funny story was one time I was working with a very stressed monk, very stressed. And he'd been called to another level of service, and I mean, really high level of service, and was very stressed about the situation. And I was observing it, and it was. It's this funny story. But what I noticed was you can have someone meditate and you can have somebody learn all the skills of life, but if they don't enter the situation faithfully, all the breathing activities and all the meditation won't do it. It's a frame of reference of life. If your dominant frame is, this is gonna turn out just great. I'm gonna engage it, right? Cause notice where I'm teaching this. If you put that slide back up for me, you'll notice where I'm teaching it. There's a reason I'm teaching it here. If I know that things are building me up, if I know that I'm intentional, I'm on offense here. I'm approach the situation, I'm gonna approach it faithfully. It's gonna turn out well. If I can do all these things. That's why it looks so graceful. That's why it looks like he's glad. It's why it looks she or he has no cares in the world. Oh, they do. They just didn't freak Themselves out in advance. Raise your hand if I'm saying, okay, so now you're going to close your eyes one more time with me and you're going to do the thing on the heart again. And you're going to say to yourself, I am going to stop freaking myself out. I am going to stop freaking myself out. I am going to stop freaking myself out. Open your eyes. Remember, fear is mostly poor management of your mind. And you must stop having fear as a frame when you anticipate things are going to cause fear. When. When you fearfully see something you will not approach, you will avoid. And as you fearfully see something. I'm so scared to get up on stage. No, trust. When you get up there, you will serve two different things. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Back, back, back, back, back. And you wonder, why did five years go by and I've been so timid? Because you saw fear in advance, not faith in advance, right? Those who are of spirit or of biblical training, you know it. He precedes you. Oh, that's one of my favorite lines. I was like, oh, he precedes me, right? I was like, wait, wait, there's goodness and planning in advance. Oh, let me walk right in that stream. That's a lot easier than right. I was like, oh, oh, okay. There's something precedes me. Okay. I like that idea. I don't know. And even if you don't like that idea, you know, from a biblical nature, think about that faith and that trust of the caterpillar. Trusting in the process of nature, trusting in evolution. That, that when I go in and I hunker down and I trust in process, I'm going to come out better. What an unbelievable act of faith. To go from the wanderer to enclosing, trusting and focusing so that I can bloom. That's faith. That's a big trust. I'm going to enclose myself. I'm going to go into my room and I'm going to write this book. Not knowing what's going to go on out there, I'm going to trust that this thing is going to come out. Could you imagine the faith in that? Could you imagine? I hope you can. All human beings, what we really desire, once we get past safety and sustenance, are these four aspirations. We want a greater sense of aliveness. That might mean presence, consciousness, awareness, vibrancy, passion, enthusiasm. We all want more of that. Some people call it adventure, some people call it just the spice of life or joie de vivre. Whatever it is, we want a sense of aliveness. The second aspiration we talked about was deep connections. That means your relationships. At the end of our lives, it's the relationships that matter so much to us. And we know from research that the deeper relationships you have, the longer we live. Third, Meaningful pursuits. Some people get this through creating, some people get this through service. But I'm here to tell you the important phrase here is meaningful pursuits. You have to pursue something. We all want to get better, to become more, to be a better leader. A parent servant role model. That sense each day that we have something to do that matters. Growth Day World's number one system or achieving it. We know from research. To improve your life long term, you got to track your habits. You need a mindset journal. You got to have a goal setting system. You need deep dive education. You need coaching. You got to have ongoing conversations with other people about your personal and your professional goals. Our goal for you is to help you make self improvement a way of life by giving you things that give you the guidance, the inspiration, the drive and the motivation to continue becoming more and more successful, healthy and happy in your life. Every day is a great day to grow. We say that every day in Growth Day. Let's make this day the day you begin that journey.