Turning Fear Into Power 👊🏻

Every single successful person I know, every single one of them doesn't think that failure means they are a failure. Every single one of them believes that when they fail something that they did or didn't do. All right, are you ready to turn fear into your power? Is it even possible to turn fear into power? A lot of people don't understand fear. And so the first question I'd like to ask is, can you turn fear into power? And welcome to another edition. Every Tuesday, I go live, and I had a discussion with one of my friends this weekend that said that, you know, he was really afraid of building his business in case he failed. And when I started asking him why was he afraid of failing, the thing that he said to me just shook me up a little. He said, well, I'm afraid of failing and what other people will think of me. And I'm like, what do you mean you're afraid of what other people will think of you? Most people aren't thinking of you. Right? So he's not going after his biggest goal and dream, which is to have financial independence, because he's afraid of what somebody else might think of him if he fails. And we got in a little bit deeper. He said, yeah, like, what will my wife think of me? What will my friends think of me? And I said, let me ask you a different question. What will they think of you? Okay. If you don't go after your bigger goals and dreams, what will they believe to be true about you that maybe isn't. So here's the question. Can you turn fear into your power? Right. Can you turn fear into your power? Can you understand fear a little bit better so that it doesn't disable you? Okay, so the discussion today is really around turning fear into power. So how do you turn fear into power instead of allowing fear to control you? Can anybody tell me? Maybe we can do a little bit of group discussion here right now. What do you think are the top three or four fears, okay, that hold you back? What do you think the top three or four fears are that hold you back? Right. What do you think three or four fears are that hold you back? We all know that fear of failure is a big, huge fear, right? If I fail now, so I see fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of being judged. Yeah. What about fear of being embarrassed? Right. If I go after my biggest goal and dream, if I write a book and nobody really wants to read it, if I leave my job and I can't find another one. Right? So fear of success. Yeah. Fear of not Having needs met, Fear of being visible. Now, here's a question I want to ask you. Where is fear happening in our brain? Right? And what is fear? We've discussed this in the past, but I have to assume that maybe this is your first time, right? When we're talking about fear, Fear of losing, Fear of loss. Yeah. Fear of no financial stability, Fear of missing out. There's a lot of different types of fear. There's about 55, zero types of fear that hold people back. But if we understand fear, is it possible for us to use fear as fuel? Is it possible for us to use our fear, okay, as power to actually take action instead of it controlling us? Let me ask you a question. This is, you know, I love going deeper, as you all know, around the neuroscience of what's happening. Were you born with any fear? Were you born with a fear of failure? Were you born with a fear of losing out? Were you born with a fear of being embarrassed or ashamed or ridiculed or judged? Were you born with a fear of disappointing yourself or your loved ones? And the answer is, we weren't born with it. We were not born with any fear. So that means that we learned what to be fearful of right now. Is it possible that what causes you to have fear may not cause me to feel fear? Is it possible that we all have a different meaning? Right? The meaning that we learned to give something creates the feeling. The meaning creates the feeling. So if we are thinking about how our brain operates, right, we have an idea. I want to become a coach. I want to start a business, or I want to grow a business. I want to leave a relationship. I'm not happy, and hopefully find another one? I want to ask for a raise. I want whatever. Is it not true that as soon as we either have this idea of what we want, our brain is processing? Is there any potential danger there? Is there any potential emotional risk where I'm not going to feel good? Is there any physical danger there? So when we understand, okay, that fear is nothing more than a signal based on past memories and the meanings that we learned to give those things, then we say, huh? Is it possible that the meaning that I have at a subconscious level, the meaning that I have at a subconscious level is probably triggering my fear because my brain's trying to keep me safe. My brain's trying to keep me in my comfort zone. My brain is doing what, his job? My brain is doing his job. So when that fear circuit is activated, is it true that the neurochemical release, Right, the neurochemicals whether it's cortisol, it's a neurochemical. Epinephrine, a neurochemical, Norepinephrine, neurochemical, right? Same one, adrenaline. These are the amp up neurochemicals, right? When we're in a state of calmness, we're in a state of love, we're in a state of, you know, togetherness. Chances are we're releasing, you know, maybe oxytocin, maybe serotonin, maybe a little dopamine, neurochemicals. So we have certain neurochemicals where we can be calm to respond and love and motivated. And we have these other neurochemicals that are more of the amped up fuel chemicals. For what? Our ability to fight, Our ability to freeze, just to stay still, to protect ourselves. Our ability to do what? Right? So it's fight flight, run away. Fight flight, run away, get away from the danger. And so what happens, right, is how do we turn the fear into the fuel? How do we turn the fear into the power, right? And so the first thing we have to understand is we first have to be aware of when it is that we are fighting, freezing, fainting, fawning, right? We have to be aware of when we are activating the fear signal. Now, a fear signal could be as a result of something that's happening in the physical world. So we're walking down the street, we're about to walk off the sidewalk and a car comes and we hear the sound of the car and so we jump back up, okay, onto the pavement. That's a good fear reaction. Fear reaction, right. If somebody attacks us, that's a good fear reaction. But for most things that we want to achieve, our brain is just sending us a signal that there may be danger here. So, so I want you to think about this. What is going to be bigger? Your desire to achieve your goals? Okay. Or the risk of being embarrassed. Now, if we think we're going to be embarrassed, that means that we're concerned about what somebody else might say about us, right? We might feel like if they reject our us, then we're not lovable. If they reject us, we're not good enough. If they reject us, okay, then maybe I'm not worthy. So can you see how the meaning that we give people, the meaning that we have learned how to give anything, determines how we're going to react? And here is one of the biggest keys. There's nothing wrong with the signal of fear, but most people have never gone deeper to understand what is the meaning that I give if somebody yells at me? What's the meaning that I give if somebody, you know, doesn't want to talk to me? What's the meaning that I give? Okay, If I try something and I don't succeed? Every single successful person I know, every single one of them, every one of them doesn't think that failure means they are a failure. Every single one of them believes that when they fail, something that they did or didn't do is the culprit, right? So we have to learn how to reframe things. And there's a process that I teach all of our students around the world that's it's a fairly easy process to grasp the 4R process to be able to have a greater awareness. So the 4R process is recognize. All right? And I'll give you the other three Rs in just a minute. So the question is recognize what? And the answer is you want to recognize when you are procrastinating. You want to recognize when you are self sabotaging. You want to recognize when you are rationalizing. Rationalizing is when you tell yourself and other people rational lies. I'm too tired. I won't do it today. It's not the right thing for me. Right now you start to tell yourself lies that are rational, right? So when we tell ourselves rational lies of why we're not going to take action to make those calls, why we're not going to leave the relationship, we're not happy, and why we're not going to ask for that raise, why we're not going to start that business, why we're not going to get that certification, why we're not fill in the blank, we start to rationalize out of the very thing that we want to do, right? So rationalization is a protective mechanism. So first we want to recognize why. Because patterns repeat themselves. Our brain develops patterns. Fear is triggered by pattern recognition and predictions. So our brain is consistently predicting what might happen, right? So if there's a scenario, something we want to do, our brain is predicting what might happen if we do it. And then it's causing the neurochemical release in the present moment. So we feel that we want to flee, run away, we want to fight it, right? Or we freeze and we don't do anything. We rationalize. So there's nothing wrong with the neurochemical reaction that's happening automatically. But when we become aware of, of the behaviors that cause us to sabotage, procrastinate, rationalize, and not take action. Now that's the first part. Why? Because awareness is what gives us choice. And choice is what gives us the freedom that we want. If we don't interrupt the patterns, then guess what happens? We reinforce them. Does that make sense? If we don't interrupt the patterns that are negative, destructive or disempowering us, we empower them by reinforcing them. We allow them to keep going and therefore nothing changes. Does this make sense? I'm sharing with you what's going on in your hundred billion dollar brain. This is what's happening in your hundred billion dollar. It operates in billions of seconds, predicting the future, causing the neurochemicals to be felt in your body in the present moment. And we want to move away from the feelings that we don't like. Well, when we have cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, you know, adrenaline, too much in our body, we want to move away from that. And the way we do that is we rationalize to go back to where we are comfortable, even though we may not want to stay there. So that's part one. So we have to become aware, right? Recognize the thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations and the behaviors. And when you do this for our, what I call then inner size, right, you have to do it without and pay close attention. When you are looking and being introspective and looking at yourself and really being radically honest, you have to do it without judging yourself, without blaming yourself, without being embarrassed, without being ashamed, without, you know, being ridiculed or judged. You have to just be calm, you have to be compassionate with yourself because you're just looking at a pattern. And if we can look at patterns, we can then interrupt patterns. Why? Because we're dealing with what cells in the brain that fire, electrical activity and chemical activity. And if we can interrupt what's firing, okay, that activity or when it fires, we respond instead of react. We just become better at mastering our mindset and our emotional regulation, right? So no judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification. That's R number one. Our number two. So recognize. Now we want to reframe, Reframe. So second R is reframe. So how can I take, you know, maybe an old belief that I have an old trauma. I have maybe. How can I take something and reframe? How do I reframe it? Well, how do we reframe it? So one way to reframe it, all right, is if we know that I'm afraid of being rejected. Let's say I'm afraid of being rejected. I'm afraid of being embarrassed or ashamed or ridiculed or judged or I'm afraid Of being disappointed. And that's keeping me stuck in a state of fear. Can I reframe it? For example, you know, if I fail, then I'm not a failure. What I did failed to produce the results I want. I will try something else if I'm afraid of being disappointed, right? Then what we can do is reframe the disappointment. So I'm going to turn my disappointment, okay, into fascination so that I could learn more about what happened, so I could adjust and make it better. If I'm afraid of failure, if I'm afraid of being embarrassed or ashamed, right? Can I reframe it? To say what other people say about me really has no bearing on how wonderful and good I feel about myself. So here is the. The key in the second r is we have to learn reframing techniques so the things that hold us back and trigger our fear now do not have power over us. And one of the ways to reframe something is this. No matter what it is that I fear, I am bigger than the fear. The fear is not bigger than me. That makes sense. If we reframe that. The fear is not bigger than me. I am bigger than any fear that wants to hold me back. Now I'm opening up my brain to see fear as smaller than me versus fear as being bigger than me. That's a mental construct. So now we have recognize, now we have reframe, and now we want to do a release. So let's say I've recognized the pattern, right? I've reframed it. Now how do I release the emotion of fear? What is emotion? Is it not energy in motion? Energy in motion is what emotion is. So let me help you understand this. So when the fear circuit is activated, the amygdala, okay, activates, releases the neurochemicals and into our bloodstream. That's called a feeling, right? There's a difference between emotions and feelings. Emotions are triggered in the subconscious mind. They activate neurochemicals and electrical activity. Those neurochemicals that are in your body is you're feeling something. Now what do most people do about feelings they don't like? They want to suppress them or move away from them. Are you aware? Pay attention. Inner size number one. In my number one Amazon best selling book, inner size number one, is called take six, calm the circuits. There's many, many ways to do this, right? But inner size number one, called take six, calm the circuits is when you feel fear. If you just stop and breathe in through your nose, slowly, hold it at the top for 1, 2, 3. 3 seconds. Then breathe out slowly. When we breathe in deeply and we release slowly. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowly. We're actually sending a signal to our brain to deactivate what's known as the sympathetic nervous system, which is the reactive fight flight, freeze nervous system reaction. And we are training our brain to shift over to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the calm to respond system. If we just did some breathing for 60 to 90 seconds. Are you aware that the neurochemical just dissipates and leaves your bloodstream? It's the simplest thing in the world, but very few people do it or practice it. Unless you're a Navy seal, an astronaut, a trained athlete. Okay. A firefighter. So we need to be able to calm to respond. So we have recognized reframe release. That's just one release technique, and there's many. And then we have retrain our brain. So there are a variety of different ways, okay. To retrain our brain. And Glad Sherpa official breathing activates the vagus nerve that runs from the brain stem all the way down your spinal column. Right. And activates the party that can be calm to respond. So then how do we retrain our brain? So one of the techniques that I teach all of my clients is you take something that may have held you back, all right, in the past and a fear that you've had. And here's what you do. You deliberately sit quietly and you activate that fear. So you create like a little mental movie or of what it is that you are afraid of. All right? So I'm afraid of failing. I'm afraid of being disappointed. I'm afraid of my husband, wife, my children. I'm afraid of them saying this or feeling this or whatever it is. So you actually play a mental movie of being afraid, activating the fear. And then you do the take six, calm the circuits inner size. And then you see yourself overcoming that fear. Why? Well, when you can rehearse mentally the thoughts, the emotions, the old behavior, and then you see yourself letting it go and actually being bigger than the fear and taking action no matter what, because you want to achieve that goal of a raise, a bigger business, a nicer lifestyle, overcoming X, Y or Z. When you practice that in your mind, think about this. Visualization is simulation. Visualization is crystallization. So now you're teaching your brain that when this fear signal activates, you can calm yourself down, you can respond instead of react. And the very act of practicing, it's called mental rehearsing. The very act of practicing does What? It gives you another bite at the apple to overcome a fear. If you don't, okay, if you don't overcome fear, all right, then fear is going to consume you and reinforce. So what about feeling anxious and overwhelmed? Well ask yourself a question. What's causing you to be anxious? What's causing you to be overwhelmed? Being anxious is an effect. Being overwhelmed is an effect of you trying to process too many things in your conscious short term memory. When we're talking about turning fear into power, there's nothing wrong with your fear signal. The lack of power is because of lack of skill and awareness. And if you want to conquer fear and use fear as your fuel, then you just have to upgrade your awareness and your skill. Right? You have to upgrade your awareness. There's nothing wrong with how your hundred billion dollar brain is working. But if you don't know how to use it, it will reinforce the patterns that are maybe negative or destructive or disempowering you. So it's all in your control, but in a state of ignorance, not stupidity. Ignorance just means not knowing. I don't know this, I've never practiced this. I've never had any inner sizes to do. I've never had somebody teach me this. So then you're going to be ignorant, you're just not going to know and then you're just going to keep repeating patterns over and over and over again and patterns reinforce themselves. Your brain doesn't care whether your pattern is constructive and positive and empowers you or your brain is disempowering negative and disempowers you, it doesn't care. The subconscious mind, once it becomes conditioned, just operates automatically to conserve energy. Right? Does that make sense? So we have to practice awareness, we have to practice techniques, okay, to rescript, reshape patterns and then reinforce new patterns through training our brain. Just like you train your muscles to get stronger, you can train your neuromuscles to get stronger. Just like you take a weak muscle, make it stronger. You can take a weak neuromuscle and make it stronger. Stronger. Now here's what you can do. You can go, wow, that's great, that's interesting. And just go about, do your own thing or dive a little bit deeper and get more control of your life, get more self confidence, get more awareness, get more skill and then you'll achieve more. So you're not going to achieve more, okay, than you can conceive. You're not going to achieve more than you can conceive. And if you can conceive, it and. And believe it, you can achieve it. But you have to change some patterns, especially if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. So my team is gonna put up a link for you if you'd like to go deeper. It's a free virtual training, and I do a lot of free virtual trainings, and we always offer some of our brain training programs. You know this for those of you who want to go deeper and work with me for a month or six months or a year. And we also do a lot of free stuff like we do today. So the link will be in the chat or in my bio. And I hope you have an amazing day. And if you like this, would you mind sharing it? Many, many people share my training so that we can help other people. I will see you either on the virtual training that you can hop onto, or I will see you at one of the other trainings and gatherings that we do. All right, have an awesome day. Thank you so much. And thank you again for sharing this. Appreciate you so much. Hey, this is John, and if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.