Intuition vs. Fear | Jack Canfield

Hi, I'm Jack Canfield, and I'm here to share some of my tips on how to create more success and more fulfillment in your life. Now, recently, one of my students asked me a question that some of you might relate to. She wanted to know how to tell if her intuition was telling her not to do something or if it was just her fear that was holding her back. Here's what she wrote to me. She said, I'm standing with my toes right on the edge of the cliff. Everything is right in front of me and all I have to do is jump off. But the fear still has such a tight grip, I just can't seem to do it. Sometimes I get confused on whether I don't want to do something anymore or I'm just scared. Do you have any tips on how to figure out how to stop convincing yourself you don't want it when deep down you know it's fear? So let's talk about the difference between fear and intuition and how they're different and how they show up differently in the body. Now, the first thing to be aware of is that fear usually shows up as an experience of contraction pulling in of your body in an exaggerated form. You see people curling up in a bow and they're really, really scared. And on a more subtle level, it might feel like a constriction just forming in your chest or your stomach. But when your intuition is speaking to you, you'll get an experience of expansion, of opening up to what is right for you. You might feel like a deeper breath or an opening of the chest or a deep sense. Now, I wanted to share with you something called a somatic decision making process. And this is something I've taught before, but it's really relevant to right now. So basically what it is, you're going to stand like this with your body and you're going to have your feet shoulder width apart and you're going to close your eyes and you're going to ask your body, tell me what a yes answer is. Now, for most people, it tends to go forward. Some people it goes back, Some people go right and left. But you know, you'll have to calibrate it for yourself. So basically, if I ask my body right now, tell me what a yes answer is, my body just starts to lean forward. I have to take a step to stop myself from falling over. And if I ask myself what's a no answer, it just starts to go back. And so what you do after you've got that and you find out which way your Body's going, then what you want to do is calibrate it for accuracy so you can ask some questions like is my name Jack? And for me, I get a yes answer. For you, you'd probably get a no answer. Unless your name is Jack, you can ask, do I live at this address? Am I a man? Am I a woman? Did I grow up, in my case, West Virginia, et cetera. And if your body is answering correctly, it's always a yes or no answer, never either or, but yes or no, you know, should I take this job, etc. So basically, that's a great way to ask your body, which is tapped into your intuition to know whether or not something is good for you to do. Now let's take a deeper look at fear and how to move through it. You've probably heard that fear F E A R stands for fantasize, express experiences appearing real. And we create our own fear by imagining something bad happening in the future. Now it could be a loss of something like money or friends, your job, your parents, approval, your children, respect and admiration of others, your good reputation, your health, your driver's license, loss of mobility, loss of freedom. It could also be a fear of experiencing physical or emotional pain, injury to your body, even death. Now, if you're gearing up to move beyond your comfort zone and imagining worst case scenarios that haven't happened yet, and there's no real indication or likelihood that your imagined scenario is likely to happen, that's a sign that you're caught up in this fear of fantasizing things that haven't happened yet in the future. Now, one of the great success hacks of all time is when you're afraid. You close your eyes, figure out what you're imagining, just notice what pictures are you bringing up in your head that are creating in your mind. And what you want to do is actually then create the opposite picture. Intentionally create the opposite image what you want to happen, not your fear of what you might might happen. And basically imagine yourself achieving the successful result that you want. Like people congratulating you, money in the bank, successfully making sales, your boss granting you a raise, enjoying your vacation, whatever that might be. Now, because the body can't tell the difference between a real event and a visually imagined event, you will actually be building your self confidence. Because self confidence is primarily the result of successfully surviving a risk, whether it's in real life or just in your mind. Now let's talk about yellow alerts for a minute. A yellow alert is something you notice that's a clue that something might be happening in your life that you need to pay attention to. You know, maybe it's your husband coming home with lipstick on his collar. That could be a yellow alert for your relationship or a week of sleepless nights and yellow alert that there may be a challenge with your health that you need to be paying attention to. Now, net revenue is going down every week in your business. That's also a yellow alert. Now, if you're paying attention to these yellow alerts, that's a sign that your intuition is trying to tell you something that is potentially off or maybe come off. For example, every time you think of working with a particular client or company, you get a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Even though everything seems fine on the surface, that's a sign your intuition is warning you that something's off. And that's a good time to use the somatic decision making process which I just showed you, and ask a question like, should I work with this person? Should I engage in that project? Now, another important distinction to make is that fear and discomfort are, are actually two different things. Almost every time you do something you've never done before, you're stepping outside of your comfort zone, your zone of what's familiar. And your brain and your nervous system are wired up to protect you, to protect you from the unknown. Your brain's first job is simply to keep you alive. Now, however, most things we're about to do, like give a speech, do your first podcast, do your first Facebook live or dance on TikTok, or ask your boss for a raise, or make you invest in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, ask someone out for a date or buy a piece of property. None of these things are going to kill you. So one of the things we know from a ton of research in neuroscience, the science of the brain and the mind and how it functions, is that the ability to tolerate discomfort is a prerequisite for success. In other words, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Now, just take one small step at a time as you build up that muscle. Start with a talk to 20 people, not a thousand. You see, I started out as a high school teacher with class sizes of 30 or 40 students, and now I talk to audiences of a thousand or more people, the largest having been 20,000. So just take one step at a time. Now, another thing to keep in mind is to always want to keep your mind on the end result you're working to achieve. What is your why? Why are you wanting to do this? What's the payoff going to be for you? Is the result worth the effort? Think about what you'll have once you achieve the result. The feelings you'll experience after you've achieved your goal. And remember, your goals are related to your dreams. So if you are feeling uneasy, ask yourself, is this something I really want? Or is this something I think I should do? And focus on the things you really want. Now, another tip for strengthening your action muscle is to intentionally choose to do a difficult task every day. Something that challenges you and helps you build confidence in your own ability to do difficult things. Now, some people take a cold shower every day or at the end of their shower for one minute of the coldest water you can stand. I do that and I always survive it and it invigorates me first thing in the morning. Now getting up and exercising is another great way to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Now for others, it could be the opposite. It could be sitting quietly in meditation for 20 minutes, or it could be just making five sales calls. Now another tip is to do your research. Ask people in the know for their input. For example, if you have a bad feeling about a potential client or company, ask people who've worked with them before and ask them about their experience. And if you've worried that a particular endeavor will fail, talk to people who've already accomplished that goal to get their insight and input on how well you're setting yourself up for success. For instance, when Mark Victor Hansen and I were writing our Chicken Soup for the Soul book and we wanted to be a best selling book, we called up, I think probably 10 or 12 people who were best selling authors and we asked them what they would do, what they had done in order to create a best selling book. And we told them about the things we were planning to do. We learned a lot of valuable stuff and when we did it, it took a while. But our book Chicken Soup in Soul eventually made the best seller list and took about 14 months. We hit the New York Times and then it went up to the top and it stayed there for three years. So do your research and if you do, you're going to gain more clarity and most likely it will increase your confidence, allowing you to realize that all of the negativity or self talk is just in your head. At that point you can make a conscious decision to feel the fear and and do it anyway. Every time one of us goes beyond our comfort zone, it is uncomfortable. You're not alone in that. Now here's another way to disappear fear that's to use EFT tapping. You know, EFT tapping. I'm not going to go into it in great detail, but what it is you're going to be tapping on nine acupuncture points as you think about the thing you're afraid to do and literally as you do this and you can go online. I have a couple of videos there about eft. There are many people that are teaching you how to do it on YouTube. I have a book called Tapping into Ultimate Success. Nick Ordner wrote the Tapping Solution. Lots of things out there and you can just Access it on YouTube and it'll walk you through this process. And it was originally evolved from something called the Five Minute Phobia Cure, literally curing lifelong phobias in five minutes or less. And so literally working with these acupressure points that relate to meridians like acupuncture, puncture, you can actually disappear the fear so that you have fearlessness in your body when you want to go do that. So make sure you check out EFT now, finally, remember that growth only happens when you've taken the leap and moved out of your comfort zone and into the unknown, because that is where growth happens. It's only when you're in unfamiliar situations and forced to learn new skills and behaviors to thrive, and that you're able to expand your mindset and grow your skill sets now. Above all, remember that it's better to take a chance and fail and learn something in the process than it is to remain where you are and learn and achieve nothing at all. So if you find yourself standing on the precipice of everything you've ever wanted and dreamed of, I encourage you to use the tips I just shared with you and take the leap. You'll be amazed to discover what you're truly capable of achieving now. Thank you for watching today and if you have a question you would like me to answer in the future episode, please post it in the comments below. I want to hear from you and make sure that my team and I are helping you overcome your challenges so you can get better results in everything you do. And if you found this video helpful, please make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one, and for additional tools and videos on how to cultivate your intuition and and take brave action toward your goals. Make sure to check out the resource page at my website, jackcampfield. Com and thanks again for watching and have a great day.