How Lewis Howes Conquered his Childhood Fear - Kwik Clips

I realized that there was 3 fears that we all have, and 2 of the fears were not a problem for me. The first fear that a lot of us have is the fear of failure. We don't want to fail, right? We've been conditioned or trained not to fail, right? Sarah Blakely, when I had her on, she said that every day when she got back from school, her dad would ask her, what did you fail at today? And would celebrate the failure because it meant she was trying, she was learning. We talked about this in the the interview we did. For me, I knew from sports that failure was the key to success. I always wanted to succeed, and therefore you had to fail in order to succeed. So failure was not a fear of mine, but a lot of people, when you ask them, what are you afraid of? They're afraid to fail. The second fear is success, believe it or not. A lot of people are afraid of the responsibility when you have great power, right? When you have success come your way.

Sure.

Now I'm responsible. I have to be able to show up consistently. And a lot of people are afraid of success. I always wanted to be successful because I thought that would give me more attention and love. And therefore—

Interesting.

Therefore I was like, well, that's what I want. I want to be successful. So if I've got to get there through failure, I'm happy to do that to get what I want. So I was never afraid of those 2. The 3rd fear is what really crippled a lot of my life, and that's the fear of judgment. It's the fear of other people's opinions, fear of other people's thoughts, conversations, gossip. This is one of your 3 truths that you talked about. was really not letting other people's opinions hold you back from going after what you want in your life. And judgment was the thing that held me back because when I would open up a book and read it aloud in the class, kids would laugh and make fun of me or whatever. So it was always the opinions of other people that would hold me back. And those 3 fears are something that I started to learn about, and I said, I no longer want to be afraid. So when I was a kid, I started to make a list of all these fears in my teens, my 20s, and just started checking them off my list. So the first key to building self-confidence and eliminating the doubt and insecurity is to make a list of your biggest fears, for me, and write them all down. Think of everything you can think of— talking to girls, even if it sounds silly, right?

Right.

Write it down. Public speaking, talking to girls, dancing. Salsa dancing, learning it, you know, learning to play guitar was a fear of mine.

And what is writing it down and making it explicit? What is that? What do you think? For me, it's just—

I think for me it was just like, I, I just thought I was afraid of everything, and I was like, okay, let me actually get it out on paper and see what this is so I can actually see how many things I'm afraid of.

Yeah.

And be aware of it and see it. I think when we can see it, then we can realize how to unsee it by breaking it down and by, you know, taking it on. And so I had this big list and I just said, okay, what's the thing that gives me the most anxiety? And I rated them.

Wow.

Top one.

You consciously actually—

I was like, this one gives me the most fear. Like, do I feel like dying if a girl rejects me? Right.

Yes.

Do I feel like dying if 1,000 people are watching me on stage? Yes. Or what level of death do I feel? You know, I would just create a list.

Or which one am I more afraid of?

Most afraid of. And what I started to do is I said, I'm gonna do the thing that scares me the most and go backwards.

Starting from the one that's most—

Most scary, which I don't know if that's the best way to do it, but for me, right, I think that was the athlete mentality in me. And I was just also at a place where I was sick and tired of feeling like so, so much insecurity, so much fear, so much worry that I was just like, I don't want this thing to control me anymore.