Overcoming Fear

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to capitalism.com I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. And today I'm going to attempt to cover a topic that is nearly impossible to cover in one episode. But I'm going to try to, and I'm going to attempt to do so respectfully and without making anyone an enemy, which is hard to do in today's climate, especially on today's topic. Because today I want to talk about fear. And I want to talk about fear from the lens and the context of what we're seeing in the media and what we are seeing in our own community, this community of entrepreneurs, capitalists, freedom lovers and investors. Because what I see going on in our community right now is a lot of fear that is holding entrepreneurs back from creating everything that they want to create. Now, we all struggle with this. We all have things that trigger a fear response. And oftentimes that fear response prevents us from casting visions from a place of true excitement or building lives that we truly enjoy. We're so pounded by the media and by social media and by our peers who are posting their fears and sharing what might happen in the future or what so and so said that should make you feel alarmed. And so our fear bells are constantly going off. But especially today, especially since everything that happened from 2020 and on, we are on constant high alert. And I felt compelled to talk about this today because some of my very close friends. I'll drop names in this episode. People who are well respected in our community of Internet marketers and online entrepreneurs are creating very, very fearful narratives. And it's my opinion that many of these narratives are based in bad logic and false information. I only know this because I've gone down the rabbit holes. I've gone down the fearful rabbit holes of what could be true and what could be coming down the pike. And on the other side of that, I've come to the conclusion that much of what I previously was afraid of was simply not true. Right now. There are many reasons that we could find to be afraid. We can be afraid of the economy. We can be fearful of our government. We can be afraid of what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. We can be afraid of what all of this will mean for our businesses, for our families, for our livelihoods, or for me. I've felt afraid that it will make my skill set obsolete. I'm afraid of automation. Sometimes I'm afraid of COVID Sometimes I'm afraid of the vaccine. Sometimes I'm afraid of what could happen in the next election that could result in riots. I'm Afraid of how all of the fast changing technology could put my skill set out of use.

That makes me afraid to start new businesses. It makes me afraid to take on a client that now I'm secretly afraid to serve. Makes me afraid to post content because of what could be used against me in the future. Sometimes I'm afraid of people who disagree with me. Sometimes I'm afraid to disagree with people at all because of how they'll respond. All of this comes up for us. Or maybe it's just me. Those are the things that I'm afraid of at times. And my peers, my fellow entrepreneurs, seem to be afraid of Bill Gates or food famines or the World Economic Forum or Joe Biden and his advisors, or what might happen if Donald Trump is elected again. Or what could happen if hyperinflation hits, or what could happen if the stock market continues to go down, of what happens if bitcoin never recovers. These are all fears that I have worked through or dealt with or that my peers are currently dealing with. I have peers here in Austin, friends of mine, Mike Dillard, my neighbor Alex Becker, my friend Hal Elrod, a good friend, Tucker Max, one of my best friends in the world, JP Sears, have posted content consistently about what they see coming and how they're preparing. My friend Mike Dillard about a year ago sent out an email that really sent chills down my spine. It was an email about coming food shortages and a possible smallpox attack that could kill up to 20% of the population and how Bill Gates was behind it all. And he said in his email that he saw this taking a year max and that was almost a year ago, it was about 10 months ago and none of that has happened. My friend Tucker Max has become kind of famous in our community for posting a a large article called Doomer Optimism about how he was preparing for mass riots and food famines and supply chain issues and really high inflation. And most of what he has described has not come to pass. My friend JP Sears, I saw him a week and a half ago. He consistently puts out content about the media narrative about things that are going on in the world and people lying to us. And I have on his request, gone through a lot of his content and found most of it based in false information. My friend Alex Becker has multiple passports now and is preparing for a major economic collapse. These are all influencers. These are all friends of mine. These are people that I've had on stage at my events. These are people that I've done podcasts with. These are people that I admire and respect. And they have a platform and they have used their platform in order to spread this type of warning that I think is based in a flawed view of the world, a flawed view of what is happening in the world. Now I've done this too. Back in 2008 and 9, I was a new entrepreneur. I was watching the economy collapse during this time and I was convinced that there was going to be hyperinflation, that the dollar was going to lose its reserve status in the world, that there would be a one world government, that we'd be microchipped. These are things that I truly believed in 2008 and 2009 while I was building businesses, while I was making money, while I was fresh out of college, trying to build my life. And those beliefs made me go down rabbit holes and find information that confirmed my fear, made me confirm my biases. But I was wrong. Very few of those things happened, if any of them happened. My background is in Austrian economics. It's what I have a degree in. I come from a school of thought that is always looking for the economic meltdown. If you're familiar with Austrian economics, it's basically the most free market school of thought in economics. So any government intervention sends up spidey signals in that community that the government is getting in the way of the economy and therefore we're going to have a meltdown. And as a result of that belief, I missed out on the biggest economic expansion in history. Because I was afraid to invest. Because I was afraid of what would happen to the stock market or the economy. I didn't invest heavily. I did not buy shares in companies that ended up 10xing over that 10 year period. My fear prevented me from experiencing some of the greatest financial gains that I could have earned during that time. And that's why this conversation is so important. Because if we are gripped in fear, if we are paying attention to media, whether that is Fox News or CNN or it's our favorite influencers, and that media causes us to feel afraid, we will miss out. And I take the opinion that if I believe something and I'm wrong, I want to know about it. If I believe something and it's based in misinformation or a false premise, I want to know the truth more than I want to be right. I want to know the truth. I believe the truth sets you free. But most of us don't actually want the truth. We want to be right. We believe that our own thoughts and our own beliefs are the truth. And we go out and we find Information that confirms that belief. Most of us are not pursuing truth. We're pursuing justification of our current beliefs. Well, I like to think that I am one of the rare few that likes to be proven wrong, that likes to find out when my assumptions are incorrect, because I already undid the deepest belief of my life. And that was the faith and the religion that I was brought up in. You see, my first thought, my first belief that I ever remember in my life was that I was going to hell. My family and my community had a very fearful faith. Their religion and their belief system was baked in fear. It was birthed out of the fear that we were depraved, that we were flawed, and that we were going to experience eternal punishment unless we believed the right things. Now, 30 years later, I have fully reconciled with my faith. I'm thankful for my background. It made me who I am today. But hopefully as an older and wiser person, I can now look back and realize how fear based my upbringing was. Now, I'm not going to preach in this podcast, but now that I have a different lens on my faith and my religious background, I believe that the leader of that spiritual movement, Jesus of Nazareth, came with a liberating message. He came with a message of hope. He healed people. He fulfilled the Old Testament covenant. It was an invitation to walk away from fear, not a warning for us to be afraid for what would happen to us. And hopefully, as we get older and wiser and as we develop more life experience and we see more predictions come true or not, hopefully we get a wiser view on the world. And I hope that is the case for me. And yet again, if I am wrong, if I am ever incorrect in my assumptions or my beliefs, I. I want to know that. And so I continue to question my own beliefs and assumptions in a pursuit of truth. Now, I happen to believe that truth is ultimately unknowable. We as human beings can't really know what is ultimately true because we have confirmation biases and we have different experiences and we have human brains. And so I don't know if we will ever find out what is actually true. Even when we die, I don't know. For all I'm aware of, I've only lived once and I will only die once. That may or may not be true. I don't know. The knowledge of truth, the knowing of truth is impossible in my opinion. So we can only pursue it. We can pursue truth, but when we claim to have found it, when we claim to know the truth and preach from that place, we're no longer pursuing truth, we're now defending it. And that is what I see so many of my peers and so many people that I admire and respect doing right now. And that's what I wanted to talk about today. Our brains are wired to keep us safe. They are not wired to make us happy. They are not wired to even feel fulfilled. Our brains are wired to keep us safe. So when we hear a scary narrative from someone that sounds smarter than us, or whether that is about the economy or climate change or the vaccine or Covid or the government, or the background of an individual who is in power, it triggers our primary response. Our lizard brain, the oldest part of our brain, goes crazy because its primary job is to keep us safe. Thank God for that. Thank God that we have a part of our brain that is desired to keep us safe. Because otherwise we die, right? But if we don't move past that, if we don't analyze, if our own fear is based in truth, or at least something that makes sense to us, then we stay stuck. And what I see happening right now is my entrepreneurial friends, my followers, and even the mentors that I look up to holding themselves back from, from creating something that they love in business and in their life because of the fearful narratives that they have created for themselves. I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me asking for my opinion on Mike Dillard's emails, or Tucker Max's opinion, or any of the other influencers in our community that are believing similar things to what I believed in 2008 and 2009. That there was going to be one world government, that those in power were fundamentally evil, that the dollar would lose its reserve status and that we'd have hyperinflation. It's remarkable to me how similar the narrative is today as it was in 2008 and nine when I was experiencing this for the first time. But it's important to know that being an entrepreneur requires some level of optimism. Being an entrepreneur requires that we at least can see a vision of the future that is better than what is present and especially what's been in the past. It's nearly impossible for us to believe that we can make more money if we see the potential for the economy to collapse. It's hard for us to start new businesses from a place of abundance or creativity when we believe that the world is about to melt. It's hard for us to make day to day decisions if we believe that the government is corrupt and is going to come after us or it's Going to crumble and create an era of unsafety. Now, that's not to say that these things can't happen. I don't believe the idea that it can't happen here. I think 2020 and all of the events that happened then showed us that really anything is possible. We could be stuck in our homes for months at a time. We could have bad actors get elected. We could have false narratives shoved down our throat only to be proven untrue later. So it makes sense that people would be so on edge right now. And plus, something that I've discovered personally is that 30 to 40% of people who ever contract Covid experience some form of new psychological disorder within 12 months. I experienced this myself. I was diagnosed with COVID Diagnosis that even the right word. I contracted Covid in June of 2021, and I had it bad. Once I recovered, I experienced an anxiety and a depression that was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. I went on medication for this, and it didn't help. I tried supplements, I tried meditation, I tried thought work. And some of those things helped to some extent. They all helped to some degree. But I was still left with this crippling anxiety and depression that could compare to nothing I had experienced in my life that did not get better for nearly a year. And I never put it together that it may have been related to contracting Covid until I caught Covid for the second time. You see, right before I had caught Covid, I had finally gotten back to feeling like myself. If you follow my work and my content, you noticed me talking about going through a hard time and how I was finally feeling like myself again. After a year of feeling like I was getting punched left and right, I finally got to a stable place in which I was optimistic again. I could make good decisions again. I had the energy that I was used to having. I felt like my best. And then I got Covid again, and this time I had been vaccinated. I had the antibodies from the first time that I had it. And of course, the virus has weakened in its severity. So I didn't have nearly the experience that I had the first time, But I still had Covid. This time. It was no more than a bad cold, and it passed within about 10 days. But once it passed, that old anxiety and depression came back. Now, it didn't come back as hard, and it didn't last nearly as long as the first time, but it was as bad as when I contracted it the first time and could barely get out of bed. And that was When I realized that so much of how I had seen the world was clouded by Covid brain, it was clouded by this phenomena that is now reported. It's now science, that so many people who get Covid experience a severe psychological disorder to some degree that was new that they hadn't experienced before. And when I talk about this with my peers, they say, oh, my goodness, this explains so much. I've experienced anxiety for the last year, and I could not put my finger on it. When I talk about this, I think it gives permission to other people to talk about their experience. And it makes me wonder how much of the chaos that we've experienced in the last several years has just been millions and millions of people walking around with COVID brain with undiagnosed anxiety and depression that came from the virus. Now, I don't know that to be true, and I can't speculate on what's going on with other people, but I have noticed this increased anxiety and depression because the world just seems so fragile. We're constantly afraid of what's happening in the stock market or the crypto market. We're afraid of what our politicians tell us, and we don't trust the media anymore. And some of that is justified. We should be skeptical of the media. We should be skeptical of our government. We should be skeptical when everyone is going in one direction and no one seems to be questioning it. But I have observed that some people have taken it too far, my opinion, and that it's preventing entrepreneurs from building businesses and creating lives that they love. And I want to talk about that for the rest of their time together. Around the 2020 election, I noticed a very interesting phenomenon, and it was that I had peers who were gripped in fear about COVID or about certain situations in the world. But after the election, it flipped and those people were no longer afraid. It was my other peers who were afraid. I found this so interesting. I had peers who were afraid of COVID they were afraid of Donald Trump. And then it flipped after the election, where now people were afraid of the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and the rise of potentially socialism. Why was there such a drastic change in this around the 2020 election? It's my opinion that 50% of my peers trusted the government or the president prior to the election, and then when they lost their way when they didn't get their candidate elected, that it then flipped, that the other group now no longer trusted their government and their leader, and they started questioning the narrative once again. It's a healthy thing to question those in Power. It's a healthy thing to question the overall narrative, but I saw it as such a drastic change that 50% of my peers were now feeling safer. And then it flipped to the other side, feeling afraid. A good example of this is I like to ask people, when was the last time you heard about a racist statue being pulled down? When was the last time that you heard about cops being racist? And in both cases, that narrative has quieted since the 2020 election. Did statues no longer represent the old way of doing things? Did they no longer represent racist ideas? Did we pull them all down? Or did that group of people now feel pacified and satisfied because there was a changing of the guard in government? At the same time, around the 2020 election, I started hearing my peers express concerns about people like Bill Gates or the World Economic Forum, which is interesting because the examples that they would show me were things back from 2016 and 17. That information was out there before. Why is it a concern only now? And it struck me that the group of people who now felt afraid because they no longer trusted their government, who were seeing the entire world through a fearful narrative, and the people who now had the President that they wanted, all of the fears that they had were suddenly satisfied. It started to calm down. I found this so interesting and it made me wonder, are we afraid because of what we are seeing? Or are we afraid because of what we are feeling? And our feelings are going out and getting additional information that is confirmed, confirming our biases. I mentioned earlier that I grew up in a very fear based religious upbringing. And part of that religious upbringing was believing that the Rapture was coming at any time. If you don't have a religious background, there is a belief in some Christian circles that at any time there's going to be a rapture of all the Christians. All the Christians are going to disappear into the clouds and be welcomed by Jesus in heaven or while the world is left for seven years of tribulation, seven years of chaos, before Jesus returns for a second time. Now, I no longer believe this. Specifically, I don't find a scriptural basis for this. I don't think that this is, this is taught in Scripture. But for those who believe this, there was a constant seeking of evidence that the Rapture was coming at any time. I remember a family member coming out of a class one Sunday morning and telling me that at their class they had discussed the evidence for the Rapture happening in the year 2000. And this same family member saw Y2K as evidence for why the world would descend into chaos in the year 2000, furthering their belief that the Rapture would happen that year. Now, of course, the year 2000 came and went. There was no big Y2K event, and as far as I know, the Rapture did not happen. So of course that didn't make them question their fundamental belief that there was going to be a Rapture. It made them change the deadline. And this family member is still alive and continues to find new evidence for how the Rapture is right around the corner. Now, is this based in analyzing evidence, or is this based in a fear that this person now goes out and finds information to justify? I have another family member who was absolutely convinced that Barack Obama was the Antichrist, that Barack Obama would be the last president, that Barack Obama would usher in an era of socialism or communism and would elect himself dictator. Round up all the Christians, and then Jesus would need to come back. Barack Obama has not been president for 10 years, and they were wrong. Will they admit that they were wrong? No, they simply have changed the narrative. Now, this is my Christian background coming through in this conversation. But I see the same type of logic happening with my peers who believe that the economy is about to go through irreparable damage, that there is going to be such a change in the world over the next several years, that they are no longer building businesses. They are preparing for civil war. They are no longer casting visions from a place of abundance or creativity. They're no longer building lives that they love. They are now preparing to survive through this chaos. Now, they might be right and I may be wrong, but when I look at their evidence, I find it very easy to debunk. I've been doing some content on YouTube recently about the World Economic Forum, and I have people reach out to me and say, what does this have to do with business? What does this have to do with entrepreneurship? And I understand that question. This is my own personal interest, examining this stuff. But yet I see entrepreneurs who are going down these rabbit holes, who are no longer focused on building their businesses or building wealth because they're afraid that it's all going to go away, that hyperinflation will erode it away, that government might come in and take it. They might take your money or they might freeze your assets like we saw happen in Canada, or they might take your Bitcoin, so you better hold your Bitcoin in cold storage. These are all fearful narratives based in things that I believe are very easy to debunk. Once again, if I'm wrong, I want to know it. If there is a tyrannical government, I want to know it. If there's going to be economic collapse, I want to know it so that I can prepare. But the more that I have dived into this, the more that I have found a lack of evidence. I have actually had my fears satisfied once again. I was very afraid when the pandemic happened. I was very afraid of the vaccine at first. I had peers who some of my closest friends were literally boarding up their homes in preparation of potential riots and people trying to come to their homes to take their food. I started having panic attacks for the first time in my life every single day in 2020, I literally had a fearful narrative that there would be an angry mob coming to the rich part of Austin, Texas, and setting my house on fire. I would have nightmares about people taking my children. I had this very fearful response that caused me to look at evidence in the world through a very filtered lens. And we all had some form of trauma in the year 2020, whether it was based in losing loved ones or just the traumatic experience of being stuck in our homes. It makes total sense to me that people would be afraid. I was afraid, too. But my biggest fears were eased as we started to return to a sense of normalcy. But I have not seen a lot of my peers do the same thing. Instead, they have simply found more evidence for the world getting worse because they have not reconciled the fear that is going on with them, and they've started to cast blame on those who are in power or those who they perceive to be in power. I'm fascinated by Bill Gates conspiracy theories because this man, who wasn't the top of conversation a few years ago, is now in their media all the time and is often painted as, like, the puppet master behind all of the things that are happening in the world now. Again, if that's true, I want to know about it. But when I investigate it, I find these claims to be very, very easy to unravel, very easy to explain. On YouTube, I've been doing these videos about the World Economic Forum because there is this idea. There's this. The phrase that is thrown around of you'll own nothing and you'll be happy, which was a prediction made by the World Economic forum back in 2016 that by 2030, we would be 3D printing organs, would be preparing to go to Mars, and human beings would be able to rent almost everything, so they would own nothing and they would love it because they could be transient and move all over the world and really have no obligations to stuff and I have a lot of friends who see this as this large organization trying to push socialism and take away private property rights. And I have peers that have painted the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, as the most evil man in the world, the most evil man in history who is trying to end private property rights and own everything, when in reality he never even said, you'll own nothing and be happy. That idea came from a Facebook video. That idea came from a fictional article that was posted in 2016. Now I don't want to bore you with these details. If you want to go into that rabbit hole, you can look on YouTube. I tell you this because as I've questioned my own fearful narratives, I have found peace in that. As I have questioned, is there going to be an economic meltdown that I can't recover from? As I've investigated that, I found that that's not true. Now, there might be an economic meltdown. I happen to believe that we're going to go through a period of about four years of no growth, maybe recession, maybe even a depression. Depression defined by four quarters of a shrinking in the economy. We might go through that. Now if that's true, if that's reality, there's two perspectives to this. One perspective is that that will cause irreparable damage to us and to the economy. And if that's true, then it makes no sense to build a business. It makes no sense to invest for the long term. It makes no sense to buy cash flowing real estate or to invest in businesses because there's going to be so much damage in the economy that why would we put our money somewhere? Why would we not put it into something like Bitcoin or put it in cash? But there's another interpretation too. If there is going to be a sustained period of low or no growth, then we're going to have four years of the best accumulation period in history. Accumulation period, meaning it's going to be the best time in my lifetime to start buying stock in companies that are going to emerge in the next bull run. It means I have four years to accumulate as much Ethereum as possible because I think the world might run on Ethereum in 10 years. It means that the next four years are the best time for me to double down on my business because there's going to be a lot of joblessness. So I will have the opportunity to hire the best people and invest in them and nurture them and build a company culture that produces growth, that helps other people produce growth, that helps other people start New businesses while everyone else is scared, while everybody else is running for the hills. Now, I don't know which is actually true, but I will tell you that me preparing for the worst created a horrible life for me. It created this experience in which I was afraid to make any decisions because I was always waiting for something terrible to happen. But when I think about a four year accumulation period, I start to think about all the wealth that I could create over the next five to 10 years. And that's exciting. That actually makes me want to double down right now. It makes me want to serve more. It makes me really excited for every entrepreneur that joins our programs or every entrepreneur that follows my content, because I see them as part of the solution of starting and creating new businesses that will take us out of a downturn and create the next bull run, the next era of optimism and positivity. My friends, if we do go through a dark time, we need entrepreneurship and capitalism and optimism more than ever. The more entrepreneurs and the more optimistic capitalists that we have, the more creative solutions we will bring to the marketplace which will become a self fulfilling prophecy. Because if you genuinely believe in what it is that you are creating and you can see a positive future for you and your family and your business, you will attract other optimistic, positive people. People who want to work with you, customers who resonate with your message, and investors who want to back and be a part of an optimistic visionary who is creating the next big thing and changing their lives, other people's lives, their family's lives, their community and the world at large. Do you see that if we do go through a terrible period, then we need an optimistic viewpoint more than ever because that is what will lead us to the next bull Run. That is what will take us to the next era of expansion. So do you shrink during this time? Do you protect yourself? Do you look at the fearful narratives put out by my peers who are literally building bunkers and buying ranches and preparing for food shortages? Or do you double down on building a life that you actually love and a business that actually means something to you and to your community and to the world. Now, full disclosure, I'm actually jealous of my friends who are buying ranch land here in Texas. I want that life. Like I want to be that person who lives on 25 acres and has chickens and fresh eggs and grows their own food. Like I've considered it, but not for the reasons that they have in which they are banning together in preparation for riots and famines. I want it because it actually sounds really fricking fun. Sounds really fricking cool. I love the community that comes out of that. I love the personal responsibility that comes from that. I love the fresh food that comes from that. And you can do almost anything from a place of fear or from a place of love or a place of creativity or a place of abundance. And I'm yet to see an example in which doing things from a place of fear ends up with a net benefit. Now, I would love to have debates with people about Bill Gates theories or the World Economic Forum or who's running the show in the Biden administration. I would love to have these debates, but that's not the purpose of this episode. Maybe another time. If you find this interesting, let me know ryanapitalism.com and maybe we could go into these things a little bit further, because once again, as I examined them, I found them to be easy to debunk. And the more that I did that, the more free that I felt. But for the rest of our time together, I want to share with you how I pulled myself out of a really dark spot. A dark spot in which I was having daily panic attacks. I was constantly afraid of what was going to happen in my portfolio, what was going to happen to my wealth, and I felt just stuck in this fear, like I couldn't create my content sucked. My service to my clients was not what I wanted it to be. And I just felt frozen in fear for a period of about 10 months. And I finally pulled myself out of that. And I want to share with you what I did in order to get to a good spot in hopes that it can be helpful for any of you who are struggling with this right now. The first thing that I did was that I went on medication. And this is something that I said I would never do. Right. I don't believe in taking a pill to try and solve anxiety or depression, but I was so lost in the sauce that I needed something to give me the space in order to work on things. And I found it very helpful. I found it very difficult at first because there is a really hard adjustment period for that, and that was a really hard time. But as I adjusted to it, I found it immensely helpful. I actually explored it because some of the people closest to me suggested that I consider it because they had or because they knew people who had really good experiences with it. And it's honestly something that I wish I had done sooner. It's something that I wish I had explored earlier in the process because it gave me the COVID to start to work on things and it got me to slow down my negative thinking. And that helped quite a bit. I also started supplementing. I found a lot of relief with Kratom, which is. That's a rabbit hole all on its own. But you know, some people have great opinions about it, some people have very negative opinions about it, but I found a lot of relief from it. It can have addictive properties to it, so this is not a recommendation or a suggestion, but I found relief with it in the right doses. I also found relief in just basic supplementation. Like Dr. Amen is a. A brain doctor who does a bunch of scans. And he said for people with anxiety and depression, specifically Covid related anxiety and depression, that High amounts of Omega 3 Liposomal Vitamin C and quercetin, I think I'm saying that right, are like his elixir for helping inflammation in the brain. And I found some relief in that. So also just cleaning up my diet, you know, focusing on a mostly low carb whole foods diet and sleeping a lot, the basics that obviously helped. The next thing was turning off, like even to my own detriment, turning off all media. My. I have a family member who says, don't you want to be informed? And I say, no, no, I don't. Because I don't know if I even trust the information being given to me. How am I supposed to know what's going on in the world? Like, I have enough to deal with in my own life. I cannot fix the problems in other people's lives. I have to focus on my own. So relentlessly shutting off the noise and focusing on my own life, because we all have enough junk and stress to focus on just in our own lives. And I think that many people use the stress in the media as a distraction from the stress in their own lives. And if they can see a worse narrative going on in the world, then they don't need to focus on the stress in their own lives. But that's a lie. That's a false God right there. We have to turn off the noise to work on our own stuff. And for me, that meant allowing all of that junk to process, allowing my anxiety, allowing my addictions to food or distractions to be there so that I could process through them. And it's hard to do that when we're constantly beating our brains with more of that negativity. It just keeps us stuck. The third thing that I did was I completely restructured my investment portfolio to focus on cash flow. So I had a large amount of investments in growth stocks that sucked I actually sold a House in 2021 and put it all into the markets in growth stocks because I bet on Cathie Wood and I, I bet on inflation continuing. And oh man, I got absolutely crushed in that. And I went through times where I could not sleep. And it made me realize that the purpose of an investment portfolio is to allow us to relax so that we can keep growing in our business, so that we can keep doubling down on the most important investment in the world, which is the things that we are creating. So why am I putting my money into things that are stressing me out? It didn't help for me to have money in bitcoin when I'm constantly refreshing my phone, seeing bitcoin go up or down, and my day being determined on whether or not bitcoin is up or down. The foundation of my portfolio needed to be cash flow. And that means things like dividend paying stock, which look really sexy right now. Oh my goodness, Verizon is paying a stock a 7% dividend. Like, give me all the Verizon. This is not financial advice. I don't know anything about your situation. I'm an idiot on the Internet. Don't listen to anything that I do. I've lost a lot of money in the last couple years from my investments. I have, my largest investments right now are private deals, private syndications that pay a monthly or quarterly return. That's real estate, that's businesses, and again, that's doubling down on my business. And those two things go hand in hand. The more that I'm protected by my passive income, the more that I'm free to serve my clients and customers in my business, which, what do you know, is the thing that makes my company grow. It makes me feel present when I do content, which attracts the right clients and customers and makes my business grow. So by building a portfolio of cash flow rather than growth or speculation, man, did that help me sleep better at night. I still have money in Facebook and Costco and a bunch of other growth stocks, but the majority of my money right now is in cash producing assets that are going to pay me money every month or every quarter. And I plan on sharing more about these in my NFT community, which is called the capitalist pigs. Capitalism.com pig and inside of the 1%. Because this is helped me focus so much on my business. When I'm not worried about what's happening to the external prices of publicly traded companies, the next thing that I started to do was to question my fearful thoughts and to question things going on in the media. Meaning, do I really know that this is true? Do I really know that I'm going to fail? Do I really know that this project isn't going to work out? Do I really know that what I'm being told in the news is true? Do I really know that this person that was wrong about the economy 10 years ago is going to be right this time? I don't know. So why am I giving it attention? Do I really know that my fearful thoughts are true? Or my fearful thoughts just my lizard brain telling me that something could go wrong? Because something can always go wrong. And if I question that, then are there perspectives that I'm not seeing right now? Like, this could all work out, like, this could be amazing. A good example of this is when I bought back my old company, Sheer Strength Labs. I actually backed out of the deal in December of 2021. So I was in the deal. We had negotiated great terms, but then I backed out of the deal because I was in such a place of anxiety that I just could not take on a project. And I could only see that project going wrong. And then from January to about April, I questioned that. Do I know that this is going to go wrong? Do I know that I'm going to look like an idiot? Do I know that this is going to fail? Do I know that I'm washed up and can't do this anymore? Is that true? Is there a different perspective here? Is there a perspective that this works out wonderfully? Is there a perspective that this is not only the best decision I can make, but it's the best thing for my audience, for me to document the relaunch of the company that I wrote my book about. Could it be the best experience in my life? Well, if that were true, how might that look? And as I questioned my fearful thoughts, I found different perspectives that were really liberating and really fun to think about. And I was so lost in the fearful thought that I couldn't see the other perspective that was actually exhilarating. Byron Katie's work on this is phenomenal. She has a process of looking at the fearful thought, questioning if it's true, and then finding alternative perspectives to that same thought. And that was really helpful for me, and it allowed me to make wise decisions rather than anxious decisions. And the final thing that gave me peace during this time was that I started accepting my life. I realized that I had a story in my brain of how my life was supposed to be, of how my business was supposed to be, of how successful I was supposed to be of what my family was supposed to look like. And the reality was different than the picture in my brain. And that made me feel like a failure or it made me feel anxious or depressed. But as I realized that that picture in my brain was a lie, I started to show up more present in my life, and I started to be with my kids and be with my business and be with my clients and customers. I accepted that this is my life right now, and there are changes that I want to make. But even though I want to make changes, it's not helpful for me to be resistant to what is. Because if I'm resistant to what is, then I have no power to change it. If I am constantly in resistance to my life, then I have no juice or energy to change the pieces that make it closer to the picture in my mind. So instead of being so attached to the picture in my mind, I started to relax into the acceptance of this is my life. This is my life right now. And as I accepted my life, I started to see things in my life that I found exciting. If I'm not in resistance to my life or my business, I'm in my business and I'm excited about my business. If I'm not resistant to the time I'm with my kids, I love my kids and I'm there with them, and they behave better when I'm present with them. If I'm not resistant to the results I'm getting in business, then I'm present in my business and I can identify the changes that I want to make that came from me dropping this attachment to the story I had in mind and just started being present with my life and accepting things as they are, that is much easier said than done. And I can tell you that I can only get to that place after a lot of pain, a lot of fear, anxiety and resistance to my life and fear about what the media narrative is or what's going on in the world. So I share all of this with you because there is so much pessimism porn in the world right now, even coming from our community, those who think that the world is going to go through economic collapse or that there's going to be mass riots or food shortages, they might be right. But as I look at their reasons and their justification of those beliefs, I find them easy to debunk. As long as I'm not attached to the fearful response that I have when I look at them, if I look at them objectively, the same way that I looked at some of the beliefs from my religion or some of the beliefs that I had in 2008 and nine when we were going through a major recession. If I look at things objectively, I see a different story. Which story do I want to believe? The one that is empowering for me and exciting for me, or the one that keeps me stuck in a fearful narrative? Now, you can choose whichever one you want. Ultimately, I believe in pursuing truth, even if it sucks, even if it makes me feel afraid. I want to know what is true. But as I have honestly pursued truth, I've found more peace because the fearful thoughts in my mind and the fearful perspectives that I had and that many of my peers had, I ultimately found to be false. Or we'll see. Maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm wrong, I will die a happy man. You cannot build an abundant life if you are stuck in fear. You cannot build an exciting business if you are waiting for it to collapse. You cannot build a thriving relationship when you are distrustful of people. I want an abundant life. And therefore that starts with me questioning the fearful thoughts in my head and questioning the fearful perspectives that even my closest friends hold dear to their hearts. My friends, you're a capitalist. And as a capitalist, you are required to build a more optimistic future. And that means seeing the future being better than the present and the past. That means convincing yourself that things are going to get better or you'll simply make them better. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran with capitalism.com Let me know what you thought. Thank you. And now a quick word from Katarina, one of our members from the capitalism.com community.

I would definitely join. I would join. 1% it is. There's so much learning to do in there, but you'll get so much business from other people and helping each other with that. And as long as you give, because you have to give to get right. So that if you need help and everything, you've got to figure out, what is it that you can offer. Like every week I have a goal. Every week I do a give. So I think all week, what can I give the group? What is. Even if it's something small, it might be something small, might be something bigger. But based on what I've been reading this last week, what is it that I can help everybody with? So figuring out how you can refer somebody to somebody else, like whenever someone has, like the guy that Christopher Cho with the spice thing, I said, well, contact Myra, find out, you know, so you can collaborate with each other, and that's the kind of thing that will help you in 1%. But if you just go in there and sit there and not participate, you're not going to get much out of it.

If you found value in this podcast and you're ready to go Deeper, here are three resources where we can help you. One, you can grab my book 12 months to 1 million on Audible or Amazon. It has over a thousand reviews and it's the playbook to building a seven figure business. Second, you can join our community of entrepreneurs who are following a plan to build a 1% net worth by building businesses and investing the profits. You can get plugged in@cat capitalism.com 1. And third, if you're looking to go deeper and build a seven figure business that you can sell, you can work closely with us inside the Capitalism incubator and you can get on the waiting list and find out what we do over at capitalism.com Inc. That's capitalism.com Inc.

Sam.