How to Manage Fear and Frustration

What if? And it's followed by a negative statement. What if they leave me? What if I am ruined forever? What if I could have done something better? What if I can't handle it? So it's always a what if statement followed by a negative statement that generates more worry, more concern, more anxiety, more stress, and yes, ultimately fear too. And like I said, there are real fears in life. There's real fears of physical safety. But for most the part when we go through our day to day life, what we're really dealing with most of the time is these what ifs followed by negative statements. And once we can learn to flip that and say, well, what if, yeah, maybe they don't like it, but what if I can carry on anyway? What if I can find my own independence in that? Yeah, what if it doesn't go the way I wanted it to be? But what if God is opening another realm for me that I didn't even see yet? What if it does fail and there is ruin here? But what if from that I learned the ultimate lesson that will unlock the gate to the next level? Yeah, what if this is going to be hard to handle, but what if it develops strengths in me so I'm able to lead in the future when called upon? Today happens to be on the topic of overcoming fear. I like to share four ideas about the reality of dealing with fear in our lives that I think can be helpful. So often we don't know what we fear, so we end up, as Roosevelt said, fearing nothing but fear itself. And I feel like anything in life when you turn to it and you face it and you see it for what it really is and you break it down for what it really is. Now it's not so scary anymore. It's just something of our imagination. I remember when I was, I think in, it must have been third or fourth grade, I was having trouble falling asleep and I was all covered up in bed with the covers. And I looked over and glanced and I saw this figure in the closet and it scared me to death. I pulled up the COVID over my head. I was terrified that somebody was in the closet. And I looked over and I was just frozen there. I felt terrified and I just laid there. And then finally I realized how stupid it was that if this was an axe murder in there, I was going to lay there and let him come chop me up. I thought, hell no. I'm kind of jumped up. Ran to the light switch, flipped it on and of course jumped towards the closet and looked in and it was nothing but My coat and my hat hanging there. And fear is kind of like that. It's this big thing we terrorize our mind with this thing that may or may not even exist, that we blow out of proportions or imagine to be something other than what it is. You know, fear tends to be just four mental routines we run. And these four mental routines, once you understand them, not so scared anymore. Of course, there is real physical fear. The threat of bodily safety, right? The threat of our ability to live or persevere or to have our next breath. That's real. So this is a concept about our mental patterns, though, that stop us from living the quality of life that we want or deserve. Four things. Number one, we fear rejection. We're so scared that we won't be long, that we'll be alone or ostracized, that we'll be abandoned. And this fear under being rejected is often really kind of like that thing in the closet that genuine, real rejection so rarely happens in life. A lot of misunderstandings, a lot of bad timings, a lot of once in a while you run into that bad character. But for the most part, if you thought about it, most of the people you've met in your life really didn't give you a care other way. What I mean by that is you've probably met 5, 10 bad characters in life, and yet you've met and interact with hundreds of people who really just kind of were going about their own day. They could honestly not care less, and at least they weren't evil towards you. And the ones who were in your life who were supportive or who let you do your own thing or let you be your own person, number in the hundreds who just let you do your thing, man. And when you realize that, wait, I'm obsessing about my fear of, you know, the odds of 10 people, when really there's hundreds or thousands who have had my back throughout my life, you start to go, maybe my odds aren't really playing to logic here. They're playing to this mental projection of the fear that I'm going to be rejected. I also personally believe that once you realize that life is full of second chances and that life is kind of circular and that there's so many coincidences and so many things set up for us by God or by destiny or by blind luck, that somehow, somehow we find and gravitate towards people who ultimately we do gain trust and belonging with, you probably have one or two great friends. You probably have several great relationships, friendships, team members in your life. What ends up happening Is we squander those opportunities to create depth. And so we're always scared of the superficial being taken away. What often happens is that rejection itself. We're just scared about it because we don't have those core group of people we know we can count on. So I say, you want to get rid of the fear of rejection in your life. Build stable core, long enduring, great growth, friendships, growth relationships, growth, partnerships. Because you know what? The people who superficially reject me in life, they don't know me. But my core, my team, my friends, my family, the people close to me, they don't walk away because those are real relationships. The more real relationships you have, the less you ever worry about rejection. Second big thing we're scared of is. Is ruin. Oh, my gosh, this is going to ruin my career. This is going to ruin my life. This is going to ruin my finances. And we believe that there will be this indestructible blow against us, and we will never be able to get up again. And the longer you live and longer you mature, you realize that ruin. Listen, man, I can tell you one thing. I know people who've been up and down and up and down and huge struggles in their life, but also great triumphs. That's the human story, a story of struggle and triumphs. And all of us have both those narratives in our lives. And so ruin tends to go away. Once you adopt the learning mindset, you think, okay, that was not what I wanted. That was not what I intended. That was even painful, hurtful. And still I will find the next right action of integrity for me to take. Still, I will carry on. It is a decision to carry on. Another thing we fear so much is the ideals of regret. Oh, if I don't do this now, I'll regret it. I'll have this fear of missing out. Oh, if I do this and it doesn't go well, I'll regret it. If I do this and it goes great, but I didn't choose this other opportunity that could have been greater. I'll regret it too. And we take ourselves in this mind whirlpool in which we're considering every other opportunity that could have been versus just being with what is. The more present you become to life, the less regrets you have, the more present you become to this moment, the less you're living in the time zone of yesterday. And sometimes all those regrets, sure, you could go revisit them. You could go make the case for why they shouldn't have turned out and how much you screwed up and you could beat yourself up over and over and over again. But as Mel talks about in her high five challenge, at some point you have to learn to be the encourager in your life again. And even if you did things you didn't like or life didn't go the way it was meant to be, in this moment today, you can still face this day with encouragement. You can still speak to yourself not as a regretful person, but as a person ready to move on and to grow and to build and to do good things in life again. Fourth thing that we fear is actually responsibility. We actually fear that we won't be able to handle more. That more responsibility is piled on us as leaders, as parents, as caregivers, as business owners, as teammates, that the more responsibilities that come our way, the less maybe we'll be able to handle them. And if we get a lot of responsibilities, we can't handle it. Maybe people reject us, maybe we'll screw it up and ruin it. Maybe we'll make the wrong step and regret it. And so it's an interesting thing that so many people actually do fear. Having more power, more responsibility, more obligations, more day to day realities that they have to face. They worry they'll be overwhelmed, inadequate, incapable, and that will make them feel bad and be seen poorly in the eyes of others. Now, as I share all this, maybe some of it resonates and you're like, yeah, okay, got it, Brennan. But let me share this with you. All of these things are mental patterns. They're just thinking processes. You think of something, you think of the negative and you go down that wormhole and that downward spiral, it's that merry go round of doubt. That always happens when you say what if? And it's followed by a negative statement. What if they leave me? What if I am ruined forever? What if I could have done something better? What if I can't handle it? So it's always a what if statement followed by a negative statement that generates more worry, more concern, more anxiety, more stress, and yes, ultimately fear too. And like I said, there are real fears in life. There's real fears of physical safety. But for most the part when we go through our day to day life, what we're really dealing with most of the time is these what ifs followed by negative statements. And once we can learn to flip that and say, well, what if? Yeah, maybe, maybe they don't like it, but what if I can carry on anyway? What if I can find my own independence in that? Yeah, what if it doesn't go the way I want it to be. But what if God is opening another realm for me that I didn't even see yet? What if it does fail and there's ruin here? But what if from that I learned the ultimate lesson that will unlock the gate to the next level? Yeah, what if this is going to be hard to handle, but what if it develops strengths in me so I'm able to lead in the future when called upon? We all have choices about those what if statements. I'd encourage you to journal on those today. What do you fear? What are you really scared about? And make a list of the things you're fearful of and ask what's the what if statement you're making there? Because it's always a what if statement followed by a negative statement. What is that? What would happen if you change that? Every day truly is a new opportunity to learn something new about ourselves, to open our self awareness, deepen our self mastery, to become better role models and leaders and parents and caregivers and teammates and creators. Every day is a good day to grow and we did that here together. No matter what's happening in your life today, take a beat, take a breather. You're here doing the good work of personal development. Just by showing up today, listening to this little coaching audio from your coach Brendan here, you're doing something good. You made a good choice. You're going to find some motivation, you're going to find some peace, you're going to find some new ways to strive and healthier and more meaningful ways. It's okay. You're here, did a good action, take a beat, take a breath. You know, yesterday I did a daily audio on momentum and I was talking about how when you have clarity and you communicate your goals and you take command of your distractions and your, you know, your discouragement and you build a community that you tend to get a lot of momentum. But of course I also know that some people just feel that ever growing sense of frustration about the momentum and the progress they have in life. And you know so often that most of what we're dealing with in life is really just our emotions. You know that. Okay, yeah, I got it, Brennan. I know tactically how to improve in my life. I know tactically how to get ahead in my life. But I get stuck or I have this emotion that I don't like and frustration is one of them. And it's such an easy emotion to completely screw up. You know, we can get. I think discouragement and frustration are probably the two most, most easy to overreact to most easy to let build up emotions that we even have. And so frustration, to me, I always tell people, if you feel this perennial sense of frustration, here's five big ideas. The first one is when you feel that, please move. When you feel frustration, get up, you know, do some Vinyasa flows. If you do yoga, you know, do 10 jumping jacks, take a walk around the house, take a breather. That's so important, you know. Our physiology also drives our emotional response over the long term and vice versa. But most often a frustration is a lingering feeling. Frustration is usually not the initial impulse or emotion. There is a difference between emotions and feelings. And emotions tend to be those automatic, impulsive, immediate auto emotions that we feel driven by our physiology and our immediate reactions where a feeling tends to be. We took emotions, we stacked them on themselves, we gave them a meaning, a label, and we kept doing that in a pattern response until a feeling pervades, sticks with us. Emotions actually don't stick with us in the body that long, research shows. But in a feeling, you might have a feeling that sits on you for two, three days. And that is because of how we are defining things, how we are attributing meaning to things, how we are stuck in recurrent unconscious or conscious self talk that gets us there. And often, you know, we're in our heads when frustration is happening. It's a feeling, it's defining, it's these meanings. We keep growing and growing and growing. And you know how this goes. You know, you're, you're in washing the dishes, someone comes in, they say something to you one time, you're like, I don't want to hear it right now. And they say it two or three more times. And all of a sudden the frustration builds and you freak out on them. And it's because all that self talk was happening before from the, from the initial incident until, you know, you explode. And so when you start feeling that gathering force of frustration, move, walk, stretch deep, breathe. If you have to do some push ups, do, do something. And I'm not saying this is the cure, but I am saying it's part of, is something that can help you deal with it. And a lot of people these days don't move. We have a very tragic reality of a time in which a lot of people are struggling with their health during a time in which so many people are making very poor health decisions for themselves and very, you know, very consistently around the world, more and more people are becoming obese or out of shape for what they could or want to be. And so we just get in this place where too often we're a sedentary culture. And that has a lot of costs in how we manage our mental health and emotional well being. Movement is absolutely critical to all the research we have ever done in high performance in productivity in mental health. Exercise movement. You know, most people only think of exercise, so, oh, I got to go do this hard exercise. I'm like, no, no. Movement is an incredible and valuable tool to change your state of mind, your emotional state, how you are feeling with or dealing with frustration. So next time you feel frustrated, soon as you feel it coming on, take a couple nice deep breaths and go for a little stroll. Even if it's just around the house, go into another room, do some jumping jacks. As you all know, I practice qigong, where I just bounce in place, take 10 deep breaths with my eyes cold or my eyes closed while kind of shaking out my body. And I think that's been something that's been incredibly powerful for me in dealing with a lot of frustrations and stressors in life. Second, big idea around frustration perspective. Frustration grows when we narrow the timeline in our lives to immediacy. We're frustrated right now, need it right now, gotta get done right now, overwhelmed right now. Oh my God. When sometimes what we need to do is give perspective. Think about how far you've come since you were a teenager. Think about how far you've come and how much has changed in just the last two years. Think about all the success stories. You hear of people who worked and toiled for a decade, two or three, before their big breakthrough, that they reached their 50s, 60s, 70s, before they had their first real quote, unquote success. That when you realize how long you've been alive, how much you've been through, and how long it takes to achieve anything significant, suddenly perspective comes into play. And as you learn to keep a longer term perspective, you become ultimately less frustrated. You realize you have time to pivot, to change, to shift. You adopt the learning mindset. One thing I've come to discover as much as I talk about the learning mindset, is that people who tend to be hyper frustrated and chronically frustrated tend to have a very poor learning mindset. Once you have a learning mindset, you expand that horizon in which you view things because you understand that you have time, you understand that you can get empowered, you understand that you can change, you understand that you can pick up new skills. Perspective is really key. I always say with frustration, it also grows in silence. And so when you communicate with other people, positive people in your community. Positive people who just get it. Suddenly they share their perspective with you and you realize you're not alone. You realize other people have been through it. You learn their strategies, their practices, their tips, their advice for what helped get them through. And now your frustration doesn't live and suffer in silence, but rather it becomes something where other people can help share their experience and you can learn faster and you can feel that empathy and encouragement that comes from a community that does have perspective. That's why your network is so important to your mental health. They can give you perspective. Third, simple piece of advice is people who experience a lot of frustration tend to manage their day in reaction mode. So I just love for to make sure that every single day you've at least written down three actions, what we call planning that you're going to do that day. And you work those three. You do those three every day. Those are the commitments. So there's a minimal viable actions you will do that day. I tell people all the time, try to do them in the morning before you react to everybody else. Check all your inbox, do all your social media, do everything else, whatever the three primary things you need to do that day. If you've ever heard me teach high performers before, I have this phrase of done by 1 by 1pm in the afternoon, you've done the three major actions that you're supposed to do that day. And when you can do that time after time after time after time, you feel this great sense of momentum and you're less reactive. This is why I also recommend to people if you haven't, especially this time of year, please go to Amazon, type in High Performance Planner and order that thing for yourself or your loved ones or anyone you know who's frustrated. You know, the High Performance Planner is, you know, one of the most successful things books I ever created and obviously it's a scheduling tool, but it's more than that. It helps you track and manage your morning mindset, your evening review, your you know, some of your high performance habit scores and has your agenda and your priorities and your goals all in one sort of layout. And for those who love growth day, if you like the morning mindset prompts or you like the evening review, you can also write that physically the High Performance Planner. It's an actual book. So if you pick up the High Performance Planner, I think that will serve you because what I found and I didn't anticipate this because if you know the origin story I made the High Performance Planner for Myself, after coaching people, you know, at the million dollar level or above for almost a decade, I realized just how much they worked on that piece of their life and I wasn't good at it. So we conducted a two year long research study and the termination of that, the output of that was the high performance Planner, still the most research backed planner I think that's ever been created and it really will help you plan better. And there's something about writing it down. Now, as you all know, I use the Growth Day app and I use my high performance planner because in the morning I like to have, I'm a physical person, I like to write and so I like to write out my answers to the morning mindset. I like to write out my agenda. Even though my agenda is actually in my Google calendar in the mornings. What I do is I open up my high performance planner and I open up my calendar and I write down the calendar items in the planner and then under each one I write, what would that meeting be like if it was successful? What are the questions I have for that meeting? What would make me successful in that meeting? As an example, I just kind of say, even it's a block time, it says, you know, right book, I'll take two or three bullets to write about what would make that session great today. And I just like to do that. But one of the primary things I love about the planner is it asks about your priorities and your goals every day. And just by focusing on that and looking at that every day, I find myself more often on task. Now I know a lot of people go, oh my gosh, that's so tedious. You do that every day. We, well, what if you have a bad day? What have you missed? Do you ever not feel it? I'm like, yes, tons of times. I forget tons of times. I get caught up. But I would say, okay, I shouldn't say tons. I'd say maybe about, let's call it 20%, but that other 80% because I'm on point, because I'm focused. I'm working towards those three major actions, goals or priorities each day. Guess what? I'm less frustrated. The more distracted you are, the more discouraged and frustrated you become. So grab a high performance planner. If you've never tried it, try it for a month. Thank me later. Last big idea. At some point, as mature adults, we get to make the choice for peace. We know that the frustration comes up and at some point we just say, you know what? Frustration is no longer going to dictate my life. I'm no longer going to be slave to this feeling of frustration. I'm going to learn to manage my mind, get more mindful, get more grateful, get more perspective, move a little bit, make sure I'm focused. And I'm going to learn to let go of the frustration and yes, even frustration with others. We learn that we can't solve everybody's issues. We can't be the hero to everybody, we can't save everybody. Some people, we can't be responsible for the train wrecks in their life so that we don't have to keep feeling frustrated that they're not perfect. We're not in charge of them. We can't save everybody. Even though we can be kind, empathetic, supportive, we have to realize that a lot of our frustration comes with expecting other people to be perfect. And we choose instead peace, which comes with acceptance of ourselves, acceptance of others, acceptance of the moment. Peace comes from learning to accept what is. Doesn't mean we don't want to change it, but we acknowledge it, we accept it, we can see it as it is. And then we can say, okay, either I'm going to emotionally let myself get hooked because it's not perfect, or they're not perfect and I'm frustrated and I'm not perfect and I'm not going fast enough and I'm angry. Or we can acknowledge and give empathy to the reality of the difficulties of life and say, I'm going to honor this struggle. I'm going to meet this moment, even though I usually get frustrated today I'm going to take a lot of breathing through this moment, through this time. I'm going to breathe, I'm going to move, I'm going to do these things Brendan's talking about. I'm going to choose not to be frustrated. I work with a pretty outstanding person one year who happened to become a billionaire. In the year we were working together, his tech company had taken off and he had this commute in Silicon Valley. And I'd often talk to him first thing in the morning, so after his commute, and he would just complain about this commute for almost, you know, I don't know, an unbroken week, which, if you've ever worked with me before, you don't get to complain a lot. We get to plan a lot, we get to debrief a lot, we get to think through things a lot. But the tone of complaint, as a high performance coach, I can't let you do that. And so complain about the traffic, complain about the traffic. And I said, finally said, how Long have you been doing this commute? And he'd been doing it for just over nine years. I said, for nine years you've never ever even thought to adjust your attitude and choose to make that commute a place of peace, optimism, planning, faith, prayer, positive thinking, brainstorming. So you decided for nine years instead that I'm choosing the feeling of frustration every single day for something. You know exactly how it's going to go. You know that drive, you know there's going to be delays, you know there's going to be challenges, you know it's going to be bumper to bumper and you're still frustrated. I just said, if you're still frustrated about something that happens on the regular in your life, that's a sign of immaturity. That's a sign that says, you know what? I'm not. I'm gonna either A, improve it or B, improve the way that I perceive it so that I don't have to suffer. See, that's what happens with people with frustration. They don't realize they had that choice. Well, I'm just, I'm always frustrated about this. Always. This many years, you're still frustrated about it. Well, what would happen if either A, you solved it, changed it or shifted it, or B, you shifted yourself and your mindset and your attitude so that you could endure even if you can't change it, at least you don't have to suffer. That was a game changing moment for this client. And by the way, I know, as I say that today, it can sound like I'm being condescending, but this was said in complete support and encouragement of knowing that this person, when they shifted, that would feel better. And maybe it sounds condescending or, or tough lovey, but I think calling people out on their complaints can be an incredibly empowering thing if you have that relationship with them. And of course I was this person's coach, so I'm literally compensated to say stuff like that. But I hope it gives a little perspective of maybe you can make a choice not to be frustrated with things you have to consistently deal with. It might be a game changer for you. Because frustration is not something that takes us over. It's something that we are generating and creating patterns and feelings behind. As soon as we realize we're not slave to it, but rather we're master to it, then we have more emotional intelligence, we achieve a higher level of self regulation, of self mastery, and we feel a whole lot better. If you like this one today, maybe open up your journal and capture some thoughts. What are some things that have been frustrating you? What's the way you can solve it, deal with it or shift it? Or a way that you can look at it in a different way or deal with it in a more peaceful way so you don't constantly feel so negative or frustrated towards it. I think that might be a cool opportunity today. If you would like again, hop over to Amazon, order the High Performance Planner. This time of year, everyone's grabbing one and I just love seeing that. And I support you in trying to take a few of the concepts we do in growth day and physicalize it in the High Performance Planner. I like to use both the app and the planner together. It just is my artistic way of doing things and maybe you'll enjoy it. If you want to try something new, I'm here for you every single day trying to motivate you, inspire you, encourage you, keep you going. I know that every day we can find some new way to access self awareness and when we do, that just feels better, doesn't it? So congratulations on your progress. Thank you for committing to personal development today. Congratulations. You showed and you proved what we talk about all the time that it is true. Every day is a great day to grow.