PNTV: Fearless by Steve Chandler (#108)

Hey guys, what's up? This is Brian with another Philosopher's Notes TV episode. This one's on a book called Fearless Creating the Courage to Change the Things yous can by Steve Chandler. We profiled Steve with his wisdom from his great book 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself not too long ago. Another great book. This one's packed with big ideas. Steve tells us in all quests for success what people really want to be fearless. And this book is all about showing us how to do that. It's packed with big ideas. We're going to see how many we can get through in this quick 10 minute episode. The first big thing is we need to move from looking at our problems as problems to seeing them as life changing gifts. Huge perspective shift. We want to challenge fear thoughts. We want to focus on giving rather than getting. Talk about a recipe for stress and how to dissolve it. We'll look at the importance of embracing failure. It's a tectonic shift in our awareness when we embrace failure. He has a great game where you want to be someone else to do the thing that you fear. Imagine yourself as someone else. Pretty cool. You want to move to the front of your own line. Take care of yourself. Look at the fact that the disciplined, not the meek. As we understand it, the disciplined shall inherit the earth. And then the secret of life, doing things. Fun idea there. So first big idea on becoming fearless is this. He says that's the fascinating thing about problems. When taken on they are life changing gifts. All problems become advanced. Seminars in what I now need to learn to advance on the spiritual journey up the ladder of consciousness to some real fun and good mischief. Now there's a fun way to look at problems. Problems to life changing gifts. If you have problems in your life right now, how can you change your perspective so you see them as life changing gifts? Well, one way to do that is to challenge the fear thoughts. He says thoughts create fear. And he says so whenever I had a fear underneath something, I want to write the thought down behind that fear. I want to challenge the thought and challenge it and challenge it. If I were an attorney in a very important case, challenging a witness because that thought is going to turn out to not be true. So if you have fear, you have a thought behind that fear. You need to challenge your negative thoughts. Be like an attorney. Chandler tells us and this is the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy. Albert Ellis, Sony Lieborsky, these great teachers tell us we've got a challenge of our barrier thoughts. We've got to identify what thoughts are leading to our fear. Too often we think that it's things outside of ourselves creating fear, but it's not. It's our interpretation of those things. We talk about that again and again and again throughout these notes. So challenge your negative thoughts. See a more positive interpretation. For example, see your challenges as gifts and opportunities for growth. The next Big Idea here on dealing with fear and is to he says most people focus on the big get. The big get. And rather than thinking about what they can give, which requires creativity and courage, they focus on getting. He says that's just another form of fear. I talk about the fact that I have a stress recipe. If I want to stress myself out, I do two things. One, I make it all about me, and two, what I can get. And two, I have zero patience. I want it yesterday. How about you? Do you notice that when it's all about you and you have no patience at all, you want it done now? Do you find yourself stressed? We want to move out of the big get into the big give. So rather than focusing all about us, let's think about how we can give. And rather than having no patience, let's be patient and let things happen. On divine timing as we give ourselves most fully to the world. Another powerful way to build some fearlessness. Next Big Idea here says focus on creating something masterful. Always a good idea. We're going to skip that one for right now though, because we only have so much time. He tells us about another great idea here. Tectonic shifts. He says, quoting James Barry, who says, we are all of us failures. At least the best of us are. The best of us are failures. What does that mean? It means we need to embrace failure. We got to be willing to fail more. Again, as we talk about in all these notes in these videos, echoes T.S. eliot's wisdom who says only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go now. When you risk going too far, you're going to fall down, you're going to make mistakes. Mistakes. You're going to make things that just don't quite go the way you want, like that sentence. And we got to be willing to fail. And when we embrace failure, it's like we have a tectonic shift. Life becomes an experiment. We have freedom. We can be in the growth mindset that we talk a lot about and we can really, really grow rather than thinking that every single thing we do is a life or death trial on our worthiness. So another fun idea here really quickly. He talks about this time with his mentor and he was having a challenging time and his mentor said, well, be someone else if you can't do it. If you're not smart enough or you're not, you know, young enough or old enough or whatever the excuse is, well, be someone else. Be someone who can do that thing that you're afraid to do. Make it a game. Have fun with it. Assume that identity that's more empowered. He says, we want to move to the front of our own line. And the big idea here is that when your life capsizes, usually you stop taking care of yourself. We talk about this throughout our notes. Carol Dweck and Mindset says people who live from a growth mindset, when they get depressed, they work harder. They do more work to move through the challenges in their life. What do you do when your life is not working? Odds are you're not doing things you do when your life is working. So identify the things that you do when your life is working really, really well. When you're feeling just totally on fire, everything is awesome. What are you doing in your life? Well, do that now. We talk about that with Tim Sanders as well. It's just a common idea. What are your number ones? What are the things you need to start doing and stop doing that you when you're functioning at your highest capacity? Next big idea Here is a really cool one. I'm going to go off on this in a separate video, but the basic idea is that apparently when we learn from the Bible that the meek shall inherit the earth, it's actually a mistranslation of the Greek word. Preos doesn't mean meek as people have always thought, he says. He says, in fact, it is more accurate to say it means disciplined. Not meek, but disciplined shall inherit the earth. A very big difference in those translations. It's much more encouraging to now realize that the disciplined shall inherit the earth. Now we talk about willpower and self discipline, self control. It is huge. I'll go off on this idea in an entirely separate video. But know that willpower is where it is at at how can you develop your discipline? We've got a bunch of videos on that for now. We'll wrap this one up with the Secret of Life is Doing Things. He quotes Southwest Airlines brilliant founder Herb Kelleher, who says, yes, we have a strategic plan. It's called doing things. If you're stressed out and you're thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking, get busy, do things. It's one of the best solvents to to dealing with fear is to get busy and get to work. Dale Carnegie in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living says spit on your hands. Get too busy. You don't have time to worry. Get to work. Do things. That is an amazing remedy to fear. And here's a final thought from Steve. He says you will notice something when you are plugged into the present moment. When you're right here, loving and thriving in the now, there's no more worry or anger. Some would use the word fearless to describe how that feels. So get busy. Get into this moment, do with this moment demands and you will create the courage to change the things you can so again remember life changing gifts. That's how we want to look at our problems. Challenge our fear thoughts. Focus on how we can give rather than get. Make the tectonic shift. Embracing failure. Be someone else and make it a game and do what you you fear by imagining you're doing it as someone else. Kind of fun. Move to the front of your own line. Take care of yourself. What are the things you do when you feel best? Do those consistently. Remember the disciplined shall inherit the earth and the secret of life is doing things. Here's to fearlessness. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. See ya.