How to Beat FEAR in 15 Minutes | Elon Musk’s Radical Courage Formula

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael, my one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the major problems of the world. So today's message is act despite fear. Over to you, Elon Musk.

Ahh! I wake up every morning, espresso keeps me going. I wake up every morning.

You are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something is crazy, and I know a lot of pretty crazy people used to stand out. Where does that come from, or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Or where do you get the internal strength to do that?

Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I, I think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are just times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that You do it in spite of the fear.

So speaking of important things—

Like, people shouldn't think, I, I, I should— people shouldn't think, well, I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it. It's normal to feel fear. Like, you'd have to definitely do something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear.

So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?

Yeah. You know, actually, something that can be helpful is fatalism. To some degree. If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. So when starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. And I just accepted that actually, probably, I would just lose everything. But that maybe we'd make some progress. If we could just move the ball forward, even if we died, maybe some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward. So that would still do some good. Yeah, same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.

Fear is normal. It's part of what makes you human. You would not be human or you'd have some crazy condition if you never felt fear. I think the people who say don't be afraid aren't giving you practical advice. It's be afraid, feel the fear, And then step into it and do it anyway. And the more you get used to taking on those fearful projects that you're scared of, the stronger you'll get, the more resistance you'll get, the higher tolerance you'll get to do bigger, better, bolder, badder things. I think the trick though is spotting the fear. Here's what I think happens to most people. There's some opportunity that comes along, there's some moment that comes along, whether it's with a client or meeting somebody, or an event, something comes along that you're afraid of. You're afraid of doing it. It's gonna stretch you beyond what you've ever done before. And then what you do is you rationalize saying no. I don't have the money to go to that event. I'm too busy to go and do that thing right now. You find the reason why you can't go and do it. You rationalize it, but really deep down the reason is you're just afraid. And until you spot the fear fear, until you understand that it's really just the fear, then you're never going to solve the problem. So step 1 is understanding when there is fear. Step 2 is then stepping into it and doing it anyway. And a lot of this stuff is just so subconscious. You know, we as human beings are kind of trained to, when we're afraid something's going to go wrong, and to be safe. And so it's trying to catch that subconscious action and proactively change it. So as an example for me, when I was starting my YouTube channel, my agent would tell me, "You have to go out and do videos in public. I want you to go out on the street and make a video in public." My natural reaction was fear, but I didn't catch it. Initially it was, "The gear won't be as good in public, you know, I can't control the light settings, I'm going to be bouncing around with the camera, it's not going to be a great experience." experience for the people watching. Why would I do that? I'm rationalizing a reason why I don't have to do it, where really I'm just afraid, right? You could solve all those problems. And he told me, "Stop being afraid and just go out and do it." He cut through it and let me see my own fear. And so I did it. And when I first went out and filmed in public, I took out— it was my phone or my camera, I don't remember— and I'm walking down the street, and then the postman is there. And so as soon as I see the postman, I quiet down, I put the camera away, just walking normally. And then when the postman leaves, I'm back to filming. And that time I noticed, like, I'm doing it because I'm afraid. And I got pissed. Okay, next time I gotta speak up. Next time I gotta do better. And so I went out and forced myself to go and do it again. And I was walking past and there were these construction workers. And instantly again, the panic sets in, like, "People are watching, construction workers." I know they don't really even care about me and what I'm saying, what's happening on the street. But I forced myself through it. It was awkward, it wasn't great. I think I had to redo it again anyway, but I took the step. I got better at it. I recognized the fear and I jumped into it. And now it's to the point where I'll make videos walking down the hall, I'll make videos when I'm at Disneyland, Disney World, you know, I'll make videos in the streets of anywhere. And there's still a moment, even now after how many videos I've done, there's still a moment of, "Who's watching?" I think it's natural, normal. It's not as strong as it used to be, and more importantly, it doesn't limit me from doing the things that I want to do. And so, spotting the fear and not rationalizing it away and not just doing what your subconscious always does, that keeps you down where you are is so important. Being truthful that the reason why you said no or you're not taking this opportunity is just because you're afraid. And the answer to saying no should never be because I'm afraid. You wanna rejig your system. So whenever that's the answer, because I'm afraid to do it, now you have to do it. Because you're afraid, now you have to go out and do it. And you build your muscle to get stronger, to take on new opportunities, so you don't play safe and play small for the rest of your life. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what's one thing that you are afraid of or recently were afraid of that you want to tackle? Be bold, be brave, leave it down in the comments below. Really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Dave Lucas from Misfit Entrepreneur. Dave, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I hope you enjoyed the read, man, and I really appreciate the support. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of Enespresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

The only way to deal with fear that I found in my life is a couple of ways. One of those ways is to turn it on itself and ask yourself, what am I afraid of? I'm afraid of that? I gotta be more afraid of what I'm gonna miss out on. Missing out on my mission. Missing out on who I'm supposed to be. Miss— in other words, if you're not getting rid of fear, then use fear. Use fear or it uses you. It's that simple. So you gotta say, okay, what's the price if I just stay doing this? What's the price? What do I need to really get scared if I learn all this and I don't follow through? That's something to be scared about. And then that fear will get you over your fear. It'll push you through. Turn fear on itself. Second way you can do it is use what you've probably heard me say, because I've used it since I was 17, is my little rocking chair test, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna sit myself in my rocking chair. I'm 85 years old and looking back on my life, and I say, I didn't do this, or I did.

If there was one concept that I would suggest to people to take a daily confrontation with is fear. The problem with fear is that it lies, right? So fear tells you, hey, you know, if you say that to that girl, she's gonna know she has you, you know, and she'll never really be attracted to you if she knows how much you attracted to her. Don't say that, no. How we get her is when she walks by, ignore her. Right. Right, so slip it, pop it on your shoulder. Fear tells you dumb shit like that, right? You know, so for me, the daily confrontation with fear has become a real practice for me since about 3 years ago. I went skydiving in Dubai, right? And skydiving is a really interesting confront with fear, right? So I got to stand up. I'm sorry, I got to stand up. All right. So all your friends, what happens?

You go out.

Oh, sorry. Oh, I dropped my thing. So what happens is you go out the night before and you take a drink with your friends. And somebody says, "Yeah, we should go skydiving tomorrow." And you go, "Yeah, we'll go skydiving tomorrow. Yeah, yeah." And you go, "Yeah." And everybody goes, "Yeah." Right? And you go home, you by yourself, you like, "Mm." Right? You like, "Well, I mean, they was drunk too." Right? So maybe they not, maybe, I mean, we don't have to go. We don't have to do it. So then that night you're laying in your bed and you just keep, And you're terrified. You keep imagining over and over again jumping out of an airplane, and you can't figure out why you would do that, right? And you're laying there, and you have the worst night's sleep of your life, but you still have the hope that your friends were drunk, right? So you wake up the next day, and you go, you know, down, and you say where you were going to meet, and everybody's there. You're like, "Ah, shit. All right, all right, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool," right? So you get in the van, And you don't know that your friends had the same night that you had, because they're pretending like they didn't. They're like, yeah, man, my uncle's a Navy SEAL. And you know, this is going to be great. I've been looking forward to this. And you're like, oh my God. Oh my God. And your stomach is terrible. You can't eat and everything. But you don't want to be the only punk who doesn't jump out of this airplane. So you get there. And then you have the safety brief. And you're standing there. And the guys will tell you, well, if the chute doesn't open, what's going to happen is you're doing— well, why the hell— what could happen? The chute wouldn't open, right? So you do a thing, and what you do is your first jump, you're attached to a guy who is going to, you know, he's going to walk you out. So you go and you get there and there's an airplane and nobody's stopping. Everybody's still going. So you get onto the airplane and you're sitting there and, you know, it's extra because you're sitting on some dude's lap, some stranger. You're sitting on his lap. And it's like, you know, you're trying to make small talk. Yeah, man. So you be jumping with people all the time, huh? Right? You know. So, and then you just want to make sure, you got kids, right? You got people you need to see, right? You just want to make sure he's serious, right? So you get in there. So everything's normal. So you fly and you go up, you go up, you go up, you go up to 14,000 feet and you notice there's a light. It's red and it's yellow and green, right? So right now the light's red. So then you start thinking at some point the light's going to go green, but you don't know what's going to happen, right? And you wait and it goes yellow and the light goes green and somebody opens the door. And in that moment you realize you've never been in a frickin airplane with the door open, right? Terror. Oh, sorry, I'm spitting. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry. No, terror, terror, terror, terror. Right? So you go and then, you know, if you were smart, you sat in the back so you don't go first, right? And then people start going out of the airplane. And you go and the guy walks you up to the end of the thing and you're standing and your toes are on the edge and you're looking out down to death. And they say, "On 3!" And they say, "1, 2!" And he pushes you on 2 because people grab on 3, right? Right? And you go, "Ahh!" And you fall out of the airplane, and in 1 second, you realize that it's the most blissful experience of your life. You're flying. Right? It doesn't feel like falling, right? It's like the— you actually are kind of held a little bit by the wind, and then you start, and you, you start falling, you falling, and you— there's zero fear. You realize that the point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear. It's bliss. It's bliss. And you're flying, right? And you're doing it, and then 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 40 seconds, and you have enough time to just kind of be like, "Ah, shit, that's that building I saw like that one." "Oh, you can see the ocean!" Right? You start doing all of that, and the lesson for me was, why were you scared in your bed the night before? Why did you— what do you need that fear for? Just don't go. Why are you scared in your bed 16 hours before You jump. Why are you scared in the car? Why could you not enjoy breakfast? What did you need that— Fear is— Fear of what? You're nowhere even near the airplane. Everything up to the stepping out, there's actually no reason to be scared. It only just ruins your day. You don't have to jump. And then in that moment, all of a sudden where you should be terrified is the most blissful experience of your life. And God placed the best things in life on the other side of terror. On the other side of your maximum fear are all of the best things in life.