51: Winning The Battle With "Fear Of The Unknown" - #GrowYourLife

Hello, and welcome to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jeremiah Krakowski, and on this podcast, I talk about ways for you to grow in your life and in your business, to reach your goals and do more, accomplish more, and be more. On this episode, I want to talk about combating and defeating the battle with fear and anxiety. And right now, if you're listening, you can look at the data on this. We know that there's. There's stuff going on around the world. We have the coronavirus issue here in the U.S. but this episode, don't turn this off and think this is just related to that issue. This podcast episode is going to be about defeating the battle with fear and worry in every area of life that you can use. If you're listening to this a year, two, five years down the road from that situation that happened, this is going to apply to you. It's a. It's a specific situation that's on everybody's mind. But what I'm going to talk about is not related to that. It's going to be related to defeating and battling fear, worrying, and anxiety. And it applies to every single area of life, without exception. You have to be intentional with it. Now, I know that that can be hard, and I'm going to break it down for you here, simply and easily. If you're like me, I grew up in my life to where I was afraid constantly of things happening to me. And so I didn't do things that I knew were good for me because I was afraid of what might happen if I made a mistake or messed up or did the wrong thing. And I had to teach myself over time to intentionally not allow fear to control me, not allow worry and anxiety of what might happen to dictate my next choice, my next decision. You know, in business, being judged by people, you know, we deal with lawsuit issues. We deal with people that are coming against us. We deal with criticism. We deal with family and friends and anxiety around what people might say or do to us or talk about us behind our back. And we choose because of that fear, when we let it control us, to not actually do what will help us get to the next level in our life and our business. Because we're allowing that worry and fear to choose for us, because we're trying to avoid the pain of the feeling what might potentially happen if we do that thing that we're afraid of, that thing that we're afraid of is never gonna go away. It won't. And we've lived our life saying, well, once that thing I'm certain is gone, then I can have confidence. Then I can no longer be afraid. Then. Then I can build my business. Then I can do the things that I know that I need to do. Once that thing that I'm afraid of no longer is there, then. Then I can. And we're waiting until a day in the future when our fears disappear. Sometimes they do, but oftentimes they really don't. What you need to do is you disempower the fear. You take the power back from what you're afraid of. You take the power back from what you are worried might happen. Maybe you're in a situation of abuse. Maybe you're in a situation of you made decisions or you're contractually obligated to certain things and you can't do things and you're afraid of what might happen if you do them. Listen, there's. There's a difference between worry and fear and wisdom. I wouldn't suggest violating contracts that's, you know, unless you can pay for the lawsuit. I wouldn't suggest putting yourself in situations that would get you abused. But then many times we're afraid of getting abused out of a bad situation because of the responsibility that we come face to face to. If I leave that company, if I get out of that relationship, if I take the step forward in my goals to do the things that I know that I'm called to do, well, I'm going to have to come face to face with the responsibility of the choices, that other people aren't going to take care of me, that other people aren't going to do things for me, that I'm going to have to step up in my life, that I'm going to have to step up and make choices for myself and not rely on other people to make those choices for me. And that can be scary. And ultimately, that's really our worry and fear is what might happen if. If we step into the unknown and we don't know what to do, what we have to do next. And so we're afraid of the next and the next. The next step. We're afraid of the very next thing that might come down the pipeline. And so we stay stuck in our worry and fear because that's a comfort zone. That's a place that at least we know what's going to happen. At least we know how it's going to pan out if we stay there. At least we know what the future might hold. And we're relying on our certainty. We're relying on our. Our knowledge and experience of what has happened in the past to choose our future for us based on avoiding the pain of fear and worry and doing the thing that we're afraid of. Have you ever lived your life this way? Have you ever maybe not made that sales call? Have you ever not asked for the close with a sales deal because you're afraid of either being judged by somebody? Maybe you're afraid that you can't deliver on what you promised people. Maybe you're afraid that you're just not good enough. Maybe you're holding yourself to a higher standard than other people are. And maybe you're listening to this right now and you're nodding, yes, I do hold myself to a higher standard than other people. Absolutely. We must. We must hold ourselves more accountable than other people do. But not to the point that we are so afraid to take a risk, so afraid to put ourselves out there, so afraid of what might happen that we do nothing. And that's where a lot of people are, is they. They choose to do nothing because anything less than perfect is failure to them. And so we allow our fear of failure to keep us stuck in a loop, of never doing anything. Because the pain of it not ending up perfect for us is more painful than doing something. And maybe it not panning out the way that we saw it. You're never going to know how everything is going to pan out in your life. You're never going to know unless you take a risk and step out and realize and be okay with it not working out the way that you saw it. And yes, that can be painful, and failure can be painful, but we must have the tenacity and the grit to say, you know what? What? I'm not gonna let what beat me last time keep me knocked down. I'm not gonna let what beat me down before keep me stuck. I'm not gonna let what they said keep me from doing what I know that I can do what I was called to do and what I was made to do, because I know that this is the direction that I was destined for. Maybe you don't know what that direction is, but you have a vision, a drive, a desire in your life to do something different than you've ever done before. But you don't know what that next step is. That's where we need to ask for help. We need to humble ourselves, to admit, you know what? I don't know everything. And not allow pride to keep us stuck. The fear of how we might be perceived by other people if we ask for help often keeps us from asking for help because we're worried that if I show people the real truth that I don't know everything, they're going to judge me, they're going to look at me different, they're going to think bad of me and I think bad about myself anyways. And so it's a self defeating prophecy really of where we never get the help that we need and we stay stuck right where we are in our comfort zone of not learning, not opening ourselves up to learning what we don't know and not admitting that maybe we don't know everything and maybe there's some things that we could learned by other people by humbling ourselves. And by the way, humbling yourself is not knocking yourself down for another person to rise up. It's not what that is. That's saying, you know what, I don't need to be at the top of the mountain. I can come down and listen to other people, listen to other opinions, but filter them through my choices, my decisions. Because I trust myself to make the right decision in my life. I trust myself that I don't need other people to validate my decisions for me to be safe. And okay, oftentimes we're afraid that we maybe make the wrong choice. So we're looking to other people to make the choice for us and to tell us what the right choice is. Now listen, if you don't know what the right choice is. Yeah, get some advice from people, please. That's what my grow your life community is for. On Facebook, people can ask questions. That's what I do with coaching all the time. I coach people, walking them step by step through the process of, okay, this is what you need to do. This is what works. This is what gets results to take you to six, seven and eight figures in your business. And I show people how to do that and it works for them when they apply it, it works. But when they're afraid to really come face to face with, maybe I should change how I'm doing things, that's when they get stuck in this little spinning hamster wheel of their comfort zone, you know? And if you're somebody that maybe you're looking for a mentor, somebody that can help guide and direct you to the next step in your life and in your business, I'd love to help work with you and coach with you, you can schedule a free 15 minute consult on my website, Jeremiah krakowski.com, click on coaching and schedule. It's free 15 minutes. We can hop on the phone and talk about your goals, talk about some Things. You can win a free 30 minute coaching call with me by leaving growyourlife on my Instagram page where I pick one winner every single week on there. If you leave that in the comments, I pick a winner every single Sunday. To schedule time with me. You have to choose to make the decisions and the choices to do the thing that's gonna get you to the next level, even in the face of what you fear. And maybe you're like, you know what, I've asked for help, I've gotten advice, but I just don't know what the right decision to do is. Well, you gotta choose something. And that's where fear. We have to make the choice and the decision based on the information that we have. You're not going to be certain exactly how it's going to pan out. There's not, it's not going to happen for you. Maybe you've lived your life based on only certainties, but there was a point in time in your life where you weren't certain about that, where you didn't know everything, where you didn't know how to do that and you learned and you took risks and you step out. Maybe you're saying, well, I'm just too old to take risks or I'm too young, I'm not established enough to be responsible, respected by people, or I don't know what the right choice is. So I'm gonna do nothing. Take advice, filter it through who do you trust? And start to do something. Break it down to what's the first step? What's the first decision? What's the first choice to do? You know, this week my wife and I, we went and got a little extra food couple days before everybody else did because we were predicting, you know what, probably not, probably gonna need to do that. And we're thankful that we did. We're building our business. We're helping other people. We're helping people defeat and get past the fear and worry of what's going on in their life. You know, maybe you're not sure what tomorrow holds. None of us are. You are not in control of tomorrow. You can only control what your decisions and your personal actions are. You can't control other people. Worrying about it does you no good. It's not wisdom, it's not analytical, it's not planning and coming up with what the right choice is. It's really not. It's just you feel good by worrying. You feel good because you feel like you, you plan for everything. By the way, I'm a chronic analytical planner. My friends, I come up with a thousand million billion scenarios for everything in my head all the time. So I get it. I totally get it. But if I allowed those scenarios to dictate and choose my next step for me, man, I wouldn't. I wouldn't make this podcast. I wouldn't be launching courses. I wouldn't be coaching people. I wouldn't be doing anything in my life. I would be settling into a comfortable job that pays me well. You know, I easily get seven figures working as a CEO somewhere. I could do that. I have job offers all the time that come in for that type of thing. But I know that there's something better for me to go out there, that there is no guarantee building a business for myself. There is no guarantee of a paycheck, but there is certainty that I know that this is the direction that I need to go in and that every day, I'm not sure how exactly it's going to pan out. I'm not sure exactly how things are going to fit together. But I know, based on experience, based on wisdom that I get from other people. I listen to podcasts. I have mentors that I talk to, and I ask them these questions. I ask them questions, you know, how do you work with people that. That aren't willing to, you know, make the hard choices? And it all comes back to, we're responsible for ourselves and our choices and our decisions. And in the face of fear and worry, we can't worry about how other people are going to react. We can't worry about how other people are going to do things. We can't worry about how other people are going to choose things. We can only worry about ourselves, our choices, keeping ourselves responsible, responsible to ourselves. We are not responsible for other people's feelings or emotions, but we can choose to be respectful other people. We can choose to be honorable of other people. See, those two things are different. Choosing the right thing because of wisdom and because of fear are two opposites of each other. And yet oftentimes people think that they're the same thing. Sometimes the decisions, they are the same. Absolutely, totally, totally get it. But fear is the. Is the easy one, because it's certain. Sometimes we got to take a risk. Sometimes we have to speak up. Sometimes we have to say the hard things. Sometimes we have to come face to face with the very thing that we're afraid of, to say something, you know, maybe in a conversation to confront conflict, embracing conflict, being okay with the fact that we're not always going to get our way in things. Because we can't control other people, but we can control how we react in a situation. We can control how we decide to move forward based on that. But we also can control whether we're going to step out or not. My friends, choosing to do nothing because you're worried how somebody else is going to respond. That's letting fear and worry dictate your life. You can't do that. You have to make the decisions to choose the right thing that you know inside of you to do. Even if you might get judged, even if people might get mad, even if, you know, people might get hurt. We have to choose. And that's a hard one right there. Because we don't want to feel responsible for somebody else being hurt by what we say. So we don't say anything. I've been guilty of that one for years. Not speaking truth because I'm worried about offending people. Not speaking what I know inside of my heart will help people because I've worried how they might judge me. I know what it's like. And the only thing that got me past that is being intentionally and choosing. You know what? I'm gonna love myself enough that I know what the truth is. I'm not gonna be brash or belligerent to people and push people down and aside, even though that might be the example that I've seen other leaders do. I'm gonna choose the right decision to come with kindness and compassion and realize everybody is in this together and we're all just trying to make it really. It's true. Nobody has it all together. Nobody does. Even the people that tell you they do, they're the most afraid to admit they don't. Once we realize that we have compassion for our fellow man, we have compassion for other people, and then we have compassion for ourselves. My friends start to have the same amount of level of compassion that you have for other people, for yourself. Give yourself some grace. To mess up, to make mistakes, and to pick yourself back up. And to choose to maybe get back on the horse, choose to be tenacious, choose to have the grit to keep moving forward even when you fell down 5, 10 times in the past. I know it's painful. I know it's hard. I know it's difficult. I get it. And I get what. Fear keeps us paralyzed from moving forward, from doing what we know we need to do. We're afraid of what might happen, and we choose to stay stuck. I know what that's like. I've done it for years in so many different areas in business and Relationships. The only thing that ever got me past that, the only thing that ever got me past that was trusting, saying, God, I need you. I need you to give me some strength where I don't have any. This is what I know I need to do. I've worked out every single scenario in my head and God says, you know what? You just got to put one foot in front of the other. That's it. Trust that even though you don't know what step number two is, you know what step number one is. And do step number one. If you're somebody right there that's listening to this, maybe you know what your step number one is. Maybe you've been listening up to this point. I want to commend you for listening through this. This isn't, this isn't to condemn you, to tell you that you've been doing everything wrong up to this point in time. It's not. But it's to say, you know what, there's decisions that you have to make that you have to come face to face with. What am I afraid of? And if you want to talk through some of those as well, I'd love to. We can talk through that on our 15 minute call. That's what I work with and coach people with. They're like, you know, I want to build this business, but I'm afraid of what might happen here. I don't know what the right choice is. That's what I help people with, with coaching in their business to make the choices that deliver profits, that grow their business to seven and eight figures. Come on, my friends. Foreign it's time for you to make the choices that are going to get you to the next level. It's time for you to step out and take a leap of faith and stop being so afraid of how you might look, how other people might judge you, what might happen when you step out. What's your step one? That's it. Just what's your step one? I'm going to write that down as a quote. What's your step one? I want you to write that down. You know, my step one recently was launching my social media ads course and I had fear of doing that and I finally did it and it feels so good. I finally broke through, I finally pressed through. What's your step one? What's your step one to get to the next level? You might say, well, I don't know what step two is. So I can't make step one because if I mixed up one, I don't know if what step Two is stop it. You know what step one is. Whatever that step one is, maybe you don't know what step one is. Again, the only reason we don't know what step one is because we're afraid to make it. We're afraid of the five different steps and decisions we could make. We don't know which one to make. You have to choose. Trust yourself. And if you. You're still. You're worried about what that might look like. Often that comes from experiencing pain and trauma, of how painful it was to make a decision last time, how painful it was to make a decision the time and the time before. But you have to get up, you have to make a choice to do something. Doing nothing is more painful than doing any of those things. Figure out which door can I walk through the easiest today? Oftentimes, maybe we try to do the the hardest thing, pick the easiest one, and if you don't like it, then go pick. You might realize, okay, that one didn't work, so let's choose the next one. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to choose the wrong door. It's okay to choose the wrong option and change your mind later based on learning new information. But you have to open yourself up to learning. You have to open yourself up to realizing and put yourself in a position of realizing that any mistake you make is just part of the learning process. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't be afraid of learning. Embrace failure. As a teacher, you might realize the very thing that you've been afraid of is your teacher to get you to the next level, to get you to your next lesson. And for us to grow in our lives, to grow in our businesses, to reach the next level, we have to be willing to come face to face with what we're afraid of, come face to face with our worry, fear, and anxiety, and do the thing that we fear the most, the thing that we're scared of. Listen, maybe you're hitting a brick wall in your life. Maybe you're having trouble with breakthrough. Maybe you're having trouble every time you hit resistance. You know that you're called to go to this next place. You know that you're called to go to that next level. But every time you go after it, you hit resistance. Oftentimes it's because there's something that you are fearing, doing that you're avoiding and you're trying to skip that thing to get to your destination. You can't skip steps in that process. You have to do the thing that you Fear the most. That's your step one. Or maybe there's a step one of that thing. Maybe you're afraid to do something and there's a step one that you've been avoiding, or maybe you think it's just stupid. Why do I need to do that? Or why do I need to do that? Maybe you're. You're judgmental of what that might be. Maybe you've judged what you've seen other people do. I've done that, my friends. I've judged certain speakers, teachers, podcasters, influencers, social media people for what they've done in their choices and decisions. Two, three, four years ago, I thought was stupid. And now I'm like, you know what? They knew what they were doing. That was right. That was. That was the right choice to make. You know what? I'm starting to see the breakthrough. I'm starting to see the decisions. I'm starting to see things fall in line in my life and my business. By making the right choice, by trust, I realize, you know what, that person was actually a pretty good mentor. I'm going to go listen to more of what they're saying, and that's how I start to find mentors in my life. And I'm hoping, my friends, I'm hoping that this is helping you. I hope that this is helping you get to that next level. Take you to the place that is going to create the breakthrough in your life. Trust the process. Lean in. Ask God to give you direction and wisdom. Trust him to guide your footsteps. If you've never done that, pray, say God, I don't know what the next step is. I don't know what I need to do next. And ask him to point. Maybe you don't have a big connection to God, but maybe say God, show me in a dream today, or highlight something to me this week what that next step is. And start to journal. Start to write things down. Start to write it down. You could use Evernote or Apple Notes, or there's Even websites like Penzew.com that you can use a journaling software to write things down. I started doing that recently and started to have some massive breakthroughs by just writing things down, writing letters to people, writing things down that, you know, maybe I don't want anybody to know that I'm experiencing and going through, but I wrote these things down. I started to write them down with the intention to come face to face with what I'm afraid of. And breakthrough started to happen in my life. I want to encourage you that breakthrough will happen in your life. If you do that, I believe in you and I know that there is a next level for you. Every single person who listens to this podcast, there is a next level for them. But you have to realize that breakthrough comes by taking a leap of faith, by doing the thing that we fear the most, that thing that we're worried about what might happen if we do it. You have to do it. Take a step forward, have discipline in your life. Be disciplined. To put one foot in front of the other, to wake up each day with the intention, with the purpose, with the on purpose explicit. This is what I'm going to do today. And then doing that consistently each day. You know, I have a couple podcast episodes about being focused when things are knocking you off track. And maybe you're like, that's my thing. I know the right decision. But then I get knocked off track. Go check out podcast episode number. Which one is it? 46, staying consistent when you have a lot going on. This is about staying consistent, keeping consistent with things. It dovetails on this. Episode number 46, staying consistent when you have a lot going on. And there's another one that I, that I did as well. Let me find it. Episode number 14, how to Become unstoppably disciplined and focused in your business. Episode number 14 and 46 of this podcast. If you listen to those, please go listen to those. Maybe you've been avoiding the, the word, the D word. Discipline, focus, man, I, I avoided those words for a long time, but I realized I had definitions for those words that weren't even true. And so I break that down for you and I unlock the ability to stay consistent, to stay disciplined even when absolute chaos is going on around your life. If you can choose to be focused, to be disciplined when things are uncertain, when you don't know how things are going to pan out, when you don't know what's going to happen next, you can become unstoppable in every single area of your life. And when you connect with God to direct your footsteps and stay consistent with your communication with God and saying and not letting that be an afterthought for you, nothing is impossible in your life. Promise you that. Grow your life, everybody again. If you want to win a free 30 minute coaching call with me, leave. Grow your life. On my Instagram page, I pick one winner every single week. If you want to schedule just a quick 15 minutes with me, anybody can do this. One per person. Go over to my website, click on coaching and schedule that 15 minute call. I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to chat and go through some of this with you. There's no obligation. You don't need to sign up for coaching with me. I am going to send you an offer of what coaching is going to cost. After that, just be a simple email after our call. No pressure, but I'd love to talk with you and hear where you're at, hear what you're going through, start to work with you. I benefit from hearing from people, from hearing these things, because then I can make better podcast episodes. I believe in you, and I know that it's possible for you to get to the next level in your life and your business. Grow your life, everybody, and we'll talk soon.