Overcome FEAR: Use It As a BLESSING
A motivational talk by Daniel Borschel about treating fear as a blessing that prepares and stretches you. Through a detailed skydiving anecdote and other examples (speaking, relationships, career changes), the speaker argues most fear stems from poor mental management and insufficient preparation, and that engaging difficult experiences—despite being messy and hard—leads to growth and achievement.
Chapters
The blessing of fear is it readies you in a different way. It stretches you to adapt, to climb, to deal. Most fear is just poor management of your mind and how you show up and your energy is vital. Most likely, you have to show up prepared. You have to have done the training. You have to have done the learning and the curing. Curious part, to actually be able to engage and do something. Now, I know I'm preaching the choir here. You guys do the work. We do the work in Ultra. Yes, we do it. I thought we would call today's talk the shocking blessing of fear. I'm about to throw up my eggs. This morning in the car, I was so nervous. They're like, I don't. I've never seen you this nervous. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm nervous. Why? It's your best clients. They like you. I'm like, I like them, too. We love you. We love you. Why are you so nervous? It's not. It's not 30,000 people. It's not these million people you've had watch on the Internet. It's. It's just. It's like a hometown crowd. Why are you nervous? I said, because I'm gonna challenge myself, and I don't know how it's gonna go. Let's see. I think I put it over here. Let me. I'm gonna jump off camera. I want to show you guys something. Okay, get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. I got two hours with you. This is the whole show. Yesterday, I was with the amazing gentleman who runs this whole show named Miles. Miles. Telling me, oh, yeah. For people doing stuff like this, they, you know, they usually rent the theater out for a couple days. They do load in the day before. They're up rehearsing the lights and the sound and everything else like that. And they've got prompters up here, and they. They've got a script, and they're reading the script. I'm like, yeah, I'll talk you through some stories of my fears of heights, my fears of speaking, my fears of falling in love. The biggest scare. Fear of my life ever. Heights. Heights. I was so scared of heights. I remember in high school, I had friends. They'd climb up into trees when we were young kids, and I'd watch them scuttle up the tree, and I would just look out there and like, no, that's just. I just would leave. I would just leave. They'd climb the tree. I'd walk away. What's wrong with the show? You just walk away scared. Then My friends put me in a position I could not turn away from, and they decided to go skydiving on this bachelor party one time. And my friends up there, you can already see from the photo, something's a little off. They're hyped, they're talking. They're having a good time. I'm looking at them like, what the are we doing? And then when we showed up, you know, we pulled up in two SUVs, and there was a barn. And then there was kind of like the hangar where the plane was. And in the barn there was a bar. A bar. Like a bar. And so we pulled up and I said, I'm not getting out of this SUV till I see which of these buildings the pilot walks out of. I'm freaked out. They're like, okay, watch this five minute safety video. Okay? I'm watching the video, and my leg, it's lost its mind. And I'm watching. I'm shaking so hard. I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. And I'm. I can't. I can't hear. You have to be so scared. You can't hear a word. Nothing. It's just going right there. And I'm just looking around, everyone. I'm waiting for the joke to be over. And we're sitting there, and we're watching the plane come around. And I remember watching the plane come around. It's one of those one prop planes, you know, it's got a propeller on the front, and in the back, it's got a big hole cut in it. And there's no door. It's just a hole cut in the back of the plane. And they're, like, excited. They, like, skip in there. They're excited. Let's go. Let's go, let's go. And I'm walking. I'm like, this is stupid. So we get up just a little bit, a couple thousand more, and I start panicking. Full on panic attack. I'm like, I'm just terrified. Terrified. My friends are sitting on, like, a little bench across from me. And next to me, we're on these little tiny benches. The plane goes. And my friend on the other side, Jesse, goes, sh. Falls out of the plane on purpose. Just hold on. I'm like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. And the guy goes. My guy's like, what? He says, yeah, you'll be okay. Listen. 5,000. Pull 5,000. And he's motioning towards a big wristwatch called an altimeter. It tells you how high you are in the air. And it's basically saying, when this hits 5,000, that means you're 5,000ft in the air. Reach back, grab this little, you know, tennis ball and pull it, and it will deploy the chute and we will land safely to Earth. I'm like, oh, 5,000 pull. I can do that. 5,000 pull. He goes, 5,000 pull. 5,000 pull. We start sliding down the bench. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We get to the door. We get to the door. I'm so confident sliding down. We get to the door that's open, and I look at him like, ooh. He goes, one. I go, no, two, no, three. And then you are falling 150 miles an hour, plus you are falling. And I'm screaming, but of course I can't hear anything because the wind. And I'm screaming. I remember screaming so loud, I'm thinking there's dogs on the earth bleeding out their ears. And then I don't know if you can see in this picture, something goes wrong. Can you see the picture? Let me zoom in for you a little bit. Well, first the hair is being ripped off my body, but then this little. This little strap on the goggles snapped. You see the little strap? It's not a big deal, but unless you're falling 150 miles an hour, the wind, the thing goes. I'm like, ow, ow. And then it caught wind, and this thing's drilling a hole through my head. And now Buddha in the back, he points to the ground like, hey, you need to do something or we're going to hit the Earth. But I'm screaming, I'm flopping like Gumby all around, screaming, terrified out of my mind. This thing's drilling a hole through my head. I don't get it. I don't get it. So now he's serious, like a great coach, like a great teacher. He grabs my hand to show me the time that altimeter, show me the height, remember, 5,000 pole. So he goes to show it to me, but I'm screaming and my arms are going around. He goes and he goes. And he grabs my hand. He goes. And it catches wind. You ever been punched by your own hand at 150 miles an hour? Nearly knocked me out. Called, oh, my God, why did you hit me in the face? Down, down. Oh, my God. Hits me again. So I reached back to grab the thing and to save my life. Now, they never tell you how hard anything is in life. Everything in your life, they told you Let me tell you about it for five minutes, and then just go do it. You're gonna start your business. Let me tell you about it for five minutes. And go. Go do it. You're gonna have kids. They tell you about it for five minutes. They give you safety. They never tell you what a hot mess you are going to be as you try anything terrifying. Everything was about the jump and the 5000 pull. They never told me when you pull that damn thing, when you rip that thing, I remember, I'm like, ah. Oh, Grab it. Bam. My leg. I remember watching my leg go above my head and come back down. I remember thinking, I didn't even know I could do that. As soon as I hit the ground, my friends call it the hero shot. Yes, I did it, ladies and gentlemen. It's not like the commercial. It's not like the safety video. They should tell you how terrified you're gonna be. They should tell you do it anyway, but at least let you know it's gonna be hard. You want to fix your relationship, it's going to be hard. You want to fix your finances, way hard. You want to change your life, move to a new city, start a new business. Hard, hard, hard. And if you don't engage that and honor that as a challenge going in, you're going to be screaming like a baby the whole way down. If that relationship with the kids isn't doing well, you jump back in. You engage. You might not want to be in the ride with that relationship or that career or that job, but you're on the plane. You're on the plane now. You're in the game now. You're going to jump out, and you're going to choose your experience. I had my other friends. We land, they all come together. We did it. They're celebrating their hug. And wasn't that awesome? I go, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. There's. So you want to go again? I'm like, I'm good. I'm going to go to that bar over there. We know when. The one with the alcohol. That's where I'm going. They wanted to go again and again and again. Why? Because they told themselves a completely different reality about what it's going to be. This is going to be so fun. I'm so ready. When I was sitting in the barn, I thought, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And how many times have you done that recently where you're like, if I do this, they're going to forget me. They're going to call me this. I'm going to go bankrupt. I'm going to be ruined. That's what we say. I'm going to be ruined. If I try that, they'll judge me. Did you know most people can't even predict their own happiness? They don't even know what brings them passion or joy or fulfillment. They haven't been in rooms like this to do the work on ourselves. But you got to reengage it. It doesn't get any better. But if you can change your mind and tell yourself a different thing, this will be fun. It will be hard. But I will have achieved something. I will have made something different. I will have overcome a fear that was my own fear. Most fear is just poor management of your mind.
