The Shocking Blessing of Fear

Listen, we all deal with difficult circumstances in poor ways sometimes and in others sometimes there's a mental shift, a mindset shift, a breakthrough that happens. That's what this is about. The shocking part about fear is fear will always feel shocking. The blessing is it can stretch you and can make you better. We have to stretch ourselves. We have to do it. No one's gonna set your stretch goal for you at work. It's gonna be a BS goal. Cause they're gonna make sure you can achieve it by the quarter end. Cause God forbid we do anything that takes longer than a quarter. Your boss doesn't have a clue about your potential. Your spouse doesn't have a clue about your potential. With all respect, the only one who knows your true potential is when you really tap deep into it and he who provided it. That's it. And so we have to realize you're going to have to stretch. So today I actually put a slide together for you to call this something cool. And I thought we would call today's talk the Shocking Blessing of fear. The Shocking blessing of fear. Because you know what? When I felt like everything's going good, I'm in flow back here at this MGM talking to all these people. And as many of you know, that wasn't the highlight of my career. I've been blessed now to keynote almost every major North American arena hotel, conference, convention center, you know, every company I ever wanted to speak and keynote to, I've gotten to do that. My daily life is from a huge audiences. And yet, yet when I didn't feel the edge back there, I thought, Brendan, challenge yourself out there. You can go out and you can do a walk, you can go out and do your thing. Challenge yourself out there. Because when you challenge yourself, it puts you in that place of I don't know how this is going to go. That's where you belong more often. That's going to bring life back. I don't know how this is going to go. That's where life is. If you always know how it's going to go. Boredom lives there. If you always know how it's going to go. The peddling of the, you know, self help gurus who say you need certainty, that's where they're at. That's not how life really works. Those who remain curious, open, those are the ones who succeed further, they're learners. If you're always grasping at some adolescent desire for certainty, you're in the wrong group. Because I don't know, I don't play at any levels in the Highest levels of the world, of anyone peddling certainty, what they're pedaling is the reality. You need to be adaptive. You need to learn. Yes, trust yourself, but be curious. Challenge yourself. Be so curious about how it could be different. Do something new. And when you do that, I promise you, that's where life really is. Grasping to make it exactly as we want. Didn't we just fail at that the last three years? Didn't we just find out that doesn't work so good. When you try to, you know, edict how the world has to be and how your relationships have to be and how people have to act. It doesn't always turn out so good. We need to be more adaptive, more flexible, more open, more curious. Not just in our own lives to ignite ourselves, but I think in our relationships too. Sometimes you forget in your relationship the persons that you love. You kind of forget. You don't pay attention to them anymore. You don't listen to what they want anymore. You don't know their goals anymore. You're not curious about them anymore. You know, I know my wife, wife. I know my husband. He's always this way. And then you put them in your little certainty and expectation box, and all of a sudden they're not thriving in the relationship anymore because they can tell you're not genuinely interested anymore. So we, we've got to change. We, we've got to do things that are new. Sometimes there's things in our lives that we have to do. It's going to be hard. And we have to teach ourself to show up and do hard things with trust, not a script. You know, this is important conversation today because a lot of people are letting their fear and their doubts stop their progress. They're freaking out. They're freaking out. I think, you know, traveling around the country, I've been talking with all these leaders, and I keep asking, what do you think the emotional energy of the world is right now? Shout it out. What's some words that come to your mind? Worry, anxiety, stress, patronizing, overwhelmed, disengaged, frustrated, unhappy, trying to survive. Let me give you a word that I've noticed and see if it rings a little bit true. I believe what we're seeing out there at a mass cultural almost hypnosis is one emotional dominant reality for a lot of people right now, and that's discouragement. They're discouraged. The world got interrupted. They thought they were strong. They thought they could handle the change. You know, I'm a resilient person. And then it went on for years. And they realized how hard it was. They got discouraged. This isn't turning out the way I thought it was. In all the change, they started something new. They got into a moment of transition, you know, new job, new entrepreneurial opportunity. They got hyped about it. They got their first sales. They got their website up. They got their social media account started. And then it got hard and they got discouraged. This is harder than I thought. I don't know if I can handle this. They got excited about a new place. Many people moved, many people moved out. Many, many people ended a relationship, started a new relationship, had kids. And then it got into it and it's like, whoa, this is not what I thought. This is hard. I don't know if I can handle this. See, sometimes everyone tells you about progress and they sell. Progress is the big dream. But a lot of people get progress and then it's not what they wanted a little bit or it's harder than they thought. And now they're discouraged. And then discouragement starts eating their brain a little bit because they're down. They start doubting themselves. And it's a slippery slope from discouragement and doubt into defeat. And so a lot of people, I think around the world feel defeated. They feel like their years were stolen from them. The kids feel like their high school was stolen from them. Some people feel like, you know, their future was stolen from them. Their opportunities were stolen from them. People, often we give our power over to everybody else. Oh, it's the government or it's this or it's that. And you know what the beauty about being defeated is? You can just blame everybody once you're that down. And trust me, I'm not going on big self reliance pep talk here because I'll talk you through some of the truths of the biggest fears of my life and how terribly I dealt with them. Just terrible. Who's dealt with a difficult fear or problem or discouragement in your life recently? And you dealt with it terribly. Look around them and this is an incredibly successful group of people. Okay? At home. I hope you raise your hand too. It's true. Like, listen, we all deal with, with difficult circumstances in poor ways sometimes. And in others sometimes there's a mental shift, a mindset shift, a breakthrough that happens. That's what this is about. The shocking part about fear is fear will always feel shocking. The blessing is it can stretch you and can make you better. The blessing of fear is it readies you in a different way. It stretches you to adapt, to climb, to deal. And right now, too Many people are sitting at home and they're scared. And instead of turning into that and engaging that, they're disengaging. And in all the discomfort, they're finding distraction. They're turning to their phone, they're turning to their TVs. And we'll talk about that today in epic ways. In epic ways. And I'm somebody. I've had so many fears in my life. I haven't overcome all of them. And then I started learning some simple ways to use my mind, some simple ways to deal with the fear, to turn into it instead of avoiding it. I know you already know that, but sometimes we need the reminder. I had terrifying fears of heights, of public speaking, of starting my own career as a writer and a coach and a teacher. Terrifying fear of being on video and stages. And now I've made that my career for a decade. But I was scared, and I didn't handle it well every time. But you know what? When you're scared and you don't handle it one time, that one time that you didn't do it right, that's supposed to be the teaching point, the training point, the readiness point. That's where you go, wait, I didn't deal with this well. What did I learn? Let me do it better next time. But the problem is, most of the world said, I didn't do it right. That's terrible. That's embarrassing. I'm out, sucker. Instead of saying, let me do it right next time, they said, I'm out. And there's probably been moments in your life where you did that too. I'm out. I quit. And other times you couldn't quit. Cause the job, the career, your back was against the wall. Someone was counting on you. You had that dream. You weren't gonna let it go. And even though it was hard, instead of saying, I'm out, you said, I guess I'm all in. And those moments changed your life, didn't they? Those moments were everything. I want you to be here for those moments for you today, even through my own stories, I want you to find those moments that. That are for you. Those moments where you go, oh, that's why I was here. Not just to hear from the sky, but to go, let me look at my life and think of where do I need to reinvent and when do I need to engage? Where can I engage? The difficult things, the scary things, those things that make us vulnerable or threatened or defensive or antagonistic. To turn back in and engage those hard things again. I know it's pop psychology. Except it really does work. It really does work. When we honor the struggle and the difficulty and we challenge ourselves through it, that changes everything. It's just not always easy.