APN80 - Fear & Expectations

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less Time. This is a mini chapter from Brian's book, A Philosopher's Notes. You can find it on Amazon.

Fear and expectations. Are you afraid of something right now? Pause. Pause for a moment and identify one thing that's kinda or maybe even really stressing you out. Might be that you'll never figure out your purpose in life. Tonight's date might suck. You won't be able to pay the rent next month. The world's going to implode. Kids are gonna grow up to be criminals. Whatever. You got it. Alright. Now I can guarantee you that your fear is tied to a negative expectation. You think something's going to go wrong, but perhaps really wrong. In the book, we've got a line with fear on the left and excitement on the right. We've got expectation on the top. We've got either a negative expectation which is tied to a fear, or we've got a positive expectation which is tied to excitement. So you get a spectrum. Negative to positive expectation, fear to excitement. The good news is there's a remarkably simple, though not always easy, way to fix it. We've got to shift from that negative expectation to a more positive one. As we do that, we shift from fear to excitement. Sounds simple and well, it is. The trick, of course, is actually doing this when the fear gremlins invade our minds. Let's identify the negative expectation that's producing your fear and see if we can create a more positive expectation. And if you're feeling spicy, let's imagine something so positive that you actually get excited. So first, my negative expectation. What's your negative expectation? You might want to pause right now and contemplate what is it that you're negatively expecting. In the book we've got some lines where you can write this down. You need to think about it or write it down right now. What is your current negative expectation? Alright, you got that? Now what's a little more positive expectation? You can have what's a little more positive expectation? And then if you're really feeling it, what's a super positive expectation? You've got your negative expectation. Can you shift it to a more positive one? Into a super positive expectation? That's fear and expectations. To recap, if you're feeling fear, check in on what you're expecting to happen. It's negative to shift from fear to faith to excitement. Shift your expectations from really bad to okay to great. It's really powerful stuff.

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