Workout: Rise Above Fear and Regret
10 May 2021 · 8 min
In this motivational podcast, the speaker (Brendon Burchard) addresses how fear—particularly fear of ruin and fear of regret—paralyzes action and leads to a life of missed opportunities. He explains that catastrophizing thoughts create a mental block, and urges listeners to replace them with the simple question, “What should I do today?” and the mantra “Next.” By reframing ruin as a learning opportunity and viewing regret as a signal to act rather than a reason to avoid action, he encourages a learning mindset, forgiveness of past mistakes, and daily intentional steps toward growth. Personal anecdotes, such as a car accident at age 19 and experiences in hospice settings, illustrate the cost of disengagement. The speaker concludes that embracing hope, appreciating the present moment, and consistently taking small, purposeful actions dissolve fear and prevent future regret.
Chapters
What will I do today? If there is tomorrow, there is no ruin. If there is tomorrow, there is no ruin. So what do you do? As soon as you start feeling yourself catastrophizing, remember to ask yourself better questions and say, okay, not what I wanted. So what should I do today? Not what I wanted. What am I going to do tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow evening to start moving it forward to making that next dollar or that next right Action of integrity to make that next call, that next email. There's always a next right? Always a next. It's like it's one of the great four letter words of all time. Next right? So ruin shouldn't be stopping you. Fear of ruin. You just have to know where that is. Because what you're doing is you're catastrophizing. And this is really important. If you don't feel like you made big leaps this year. You were scared, you were like, I'm going to jump off this cliff and take this action and I'm going to fall to my death. Ruin, destruction. Instead of saying, I'm going to jump off this cliff and I'm going to fly, baby. I don't know how. And I might fall for a little bit, but I'm gonna flap those wings at some point. I'm gonna catch that wind. And here we go. Your expectancy was in the gutter versus in the air. You were looking down versus looking up. You were feeling down versus animating yourself so you felt better and that you moved further. So, my friends, be wary of the ruinous thoughts, those global catastrophizing, dead, negative forever things that you have. As soon as you hear it, you gotta flip it. As soon as you hear it, you gotta flip it. Fear of regret, it's like a stake in the ground that you're tied to. You know, you want to go beyond a boundary, but this fear of regret stops you because you know you don't want to regret taking an action. Because if you took an action and you rejected and you were ruinous and then you felt like, I knew I shouldn't have done that. Well, how doubly like, doesn't this make everything else worse? Right? If you fear these things and they happen now, you regret the action, it's 10 times worse. But that's what we keep doing. We 10 times our fears by going, well, if I do it, I'll regret it. And so we gotta flip this a little bit and we have to go, oh, okay, what if I do positive things so that I don't have negative Regrets versus saying, well, I don't want to do that because I would experience negative regret. Most people use regret the wrong way. They use regret as a reason to not do something. I don't want to do that because I'll regret it versus I'm gonna do those things so I don't have regret, right? Many of you guys know my story from my car accident as a 19 year old kid. Part of the reason I live so courageously and boldly and I put myself out there so much all the time is because I don't want to get to the end of my life and say, you know what? I served half ass because I was scared. I don't get the end of my life and regret. Going through so many days not present. Going through so many days just going through the motions. Going through so many days not engaged with my passions, my enthusiasms, my loves, my people. Like, I don't want to be that guy who's rocking on the rocket chair saying I wish I woulda, shoulda, coulda at the end of my life. So I take positive daily actions to avoid that type of experience. I don't want to get to the end of my life wish I woulda, shoulda, coulda and act like there's still not a tomorrow. The ideal of hope for a better tomorrow is one of the great deconstructors of fear. There's a block there, like fear introduces like this black wall in front of us and we forget on the other side there's all this open field of freedom and we just keep thinking our fear like narrows our view so tightly that we forget that there's tomorrow. So people, their regrets are held so close. Like I don't want to do that because I'll regret that and it will be irrecoverable. And I'm just like, well, when you have a learning mindset, there's not much regret. Just like, I don't have a lot of disappointment. I also don't have a lot of regret because I was like, oh, I did that didn't work out. Darn it, okay, shouldn't have done that. Learn, adjust behavior. And so what I tell people, I say, look, if you got a lot of guilt, the path out of guilt starts at the path of forgiveness for yourself, for other people. I mean, you gotta let it go. You can't advance with all the baggage of self hate. You gotta let that stuff go. And so what I tell people is as much as we fear that like I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna regret And I have a lot of guilt. And they don't let that go. And they think forgiveness is just about themselves and others. I also go, you know what? Forgive. Yesterday, you weren't as wise or intentional or thoughtful as you could be today. That's the ideal of hope. I don't have to regret yesterday. I don't have to be guilty about yesterday, because you know what? I'm better today. I learned from that. I'm telling you, the learning mindset is the great release of fear. Because as soon as you approach it, it's like, I'm gonna learn through it and get better. Now the fear doesn't stop you anymore, because you don't, well, I'm gonna get stuck here or stuck here, or this will happen forever. The forever goes away when you finally step into the realization that there is hope, there is a tomorrow. Because you know what? I think one side of regret would be to have lived your whole life with a bleak outlook, because you'll get to the end and you go, damn it. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't appreciate all those days I had. I didn't appreciate all the second chances I had. Every time I woke up a new Monday morning, I didn't appreciate it. I missed the whole ride. You know, I stood in line for the ride of life the whole time. I never got on the ride. I was just a waiter. I was just a watcher. I was just. I never really engaged. That's real regret. And I can share with that, because I've been there in hospices with people in the last weeks, hours, minutes of their life. And if there is regret, it's usually a lack of full engagement with life. I didn't really show up. I didn't appreciate what I had. So if you got a lot of regrets, you got to learn to forgive the guilt, forgive the bad days, and start appreciating today again. Because you know what? When you fall in love with the moment, when you fall in love with this opportunity you have, when you really appreciate the now, then there's not a lot of room for fear in that, right? In that deep feeling of appreciation. It's hard for fear to edge itself in. So let go of the regret concerns, my friend. There's a tomorrow, and it's gonna be amazing. Sa.