Evan Carmichael gives a gymnast advice on conquering fear of backward skills. His four steps: remember why you want it, imagine your older self regretting not trying, find a mentor who's done it, and break the skill into tiny pieces. He shares how he pushed through terror before his first big speaking gig.
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How to overcome your fears. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers. Love you guys. Amal, who wrote in to say, thanks for this great video, and please, could you do a video about fear? I mean, how to not be scared to do some skills and to have that courage to do what you want to do. I'm a gymnast and I'm scared to learn backwards skills, and I want to improve and be a good gymnast more than anything. So please, if you have anything that can help me, even a motivational text, Have a nice day. So this is a great question, and, and Amal, I really, I really fear for you because you're not alone. You know, fear is something that holds, holds people back from achieving great things in our lives. Anything that you do that is big is going to come with a healthy dose of fear, and that's natural, and that, that is normal, and you have to bust through that to achieve great things because your life is here, and to get here, there's There's a lot of unknown, and unknown equals fear. So how do you get through that? Step number 1 is remember why you're doing it. Your why has to be important. Why do you want to do this? So if you're a gymnast, why is being a good gymnast important to you? What do you want to accomplish with your life? Right, if you're an entrepreneur, why is that important? You want to launch a business? Hey, it's going to be hard. Why is this so important to you? Are you doing it to have an impact in the world? Are you doing it for your kids? Are you doing it because, you know, your dad died of this disease and now you want to go out and solve it? Why are you doing this? If you have a big enough why, then the fear becomes smaller. Because you're here and you want to get here and the only thing stopping you is your fear. If this is super important to you, then that fear shrinks. Yeah, you're still going to be afraid, and everybody's still going to be afraid, okay? Someone tells you, "No, I'm not afraid of anything," they're lying. Along that path, you're going to be afraid, but you push through the fear because that end goal is important to you. Okay, that's first. Remember why. Two, no regrets. I try to live my life with no regrets, and, and I think people should too, because you look at people when they're in their 70s or 80s and, you know, they're on their deathbed, they're breathing their last breath, and you talk to them and they're looking back on their lives, and one of the most common things that people say on their deathbed is they wish they took more chances. They wish that they took that opportunity. They wish they took action on this idea they had instead of just staying in the status quo. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy who, when I'm on my deathbed, I look back on my life and I say, wow, I wish I went and did that. I had a dream, I had a goal, I wish I chased it. So fast forward your life to 70, 80 years old and look back. If you don't learn these backflips and you don't become a great gymnast, Is that going to haunt you for the rest of your life? Probably will. And again, it's not that the fear goes away. The fear is still there, it just becomes smaller because you don't want to be that person looking back on your life wishing you had gone for it. No regrets. Number 3 is get help. Having people help you makes a goal easier to go out and accomplish. And it could be somebody, you know, if I were you, I'd go to find a gymnast. Find a gymnast who's done this, who knows how to do backflips, and tell them, you know what, I want to be a great gymnast, I'm working hard, I'm killing myself, I'm trying to make this happen, I'm just afraid of doing the backflips, can you help me? And having somebody who's gone through it does two things. One, it gives you confidence and technique in that they're showing you the right way to do something. Right, you're learning from somebody who's done it, so the chances of you doing it wrong go down. So it can decrease your fear. But also, just being accountable to somebody, right? A lot of times our goals we keep to ourselves because we're too afraid to share with other people. Because when we tell somebody, then we better go out and do it. That accountability is good. Having somebody there to help you, just even if they don't know what they're doing. In that skill set that you're trying to learn, just to be accountable to, to tell that person, yeah, I'm making progress, or I'm not, and they hold your feet to the fire because you don't want to tell them, yeah, I'm still afraid, I'm still afraid. At some point you're gonna be like, I gotta just do this. So get help. And number 4 is break it down. And I found that this helps me a lot where, you know, you're here again and you have this goal to be up here. And you see this huge fear in between because it's a giant step to get to, to where you want to be from where you are. The reality is you're not going to take this one giant step. It's going to be a little step and a little step and a little step and a little step, and eventually you're going to be up here where you want to be, but through a series of little steps. And taking a little step is a lot less scary than taking that big step. So break it down. What do you need to do that is the next smallest, simplest, easiest step that you might be a little bit afraid of, but you can get through? And once you've done that, then you can do it again. You're not afraid of it anymore because you've done it, and you can take the next step and then take the next step up. So if you're a gymnast, you're afraid of doing a backflip, how can you break that backflip down? How can you break that down to something simpler where you're still going backwards but maybe not doing a full flip? I don't know what it is. Break it down so if you get halfway there and you know you can do that consistently, then you can go all the way. Here's a quick example. One of my first speaking engagements internationally was in Brunei, and I was asked to go over there and speak, and I've been used to doing, you know, small sessions And here was going to be, I don't know, 1,000 people. I don't know how many people were in the room. It was broadcast nationally on their TV stations. It was over 2 days. And I get up on stage and I'm like freaking out. Before that happened, I kind of secretly wished that they would cancel on me, you know, like the day before my flight, say, oh Evan, it's off, you don't have to come. You know, kind of put all my fears to rest. And I got up there and I knew that she ended up being great, you know. I didn't, I didn't choke, I didn't throw up, you know, but I was still scared. I pushed through the fear, but now I know I could do it again, right? It was scary the first time, but it's not so scary anymore. Scary might be packing the stadium at Madison Square Garden, you know. I might be scared doing that, but if I do it once and I'll be okay, I can do it again. So same thing for you. Right? Break it down. Find an easy step to help you get started. Then the next steps and the next steps aren't as scary as you go forward. So that's my advice, and I hope you, I hope you push through because fear is a really dangerous thing, and it's a dream killer, and it holds people back from being the people they could be. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, thumbs thumbs up below. Let me know how you deal with your fear. I'm really curious, your strategies, what's worked for you, what hasn't worked for you. Leave it in the comments below. I want to hear from you. And you want to see more videos like this, click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
