John Assaraf tells the story of being too afraid to ask a girl to dance in high school. He explains how fear works as a protection signal in the brain, and offers science-based tactics to recognize and retrain it.
Hey, this is John Assaraf. And although I'm a New York Times best selling author and you may have seen me in the hit movie the Secret or Quest for Success with the Dalai Lama and Richard Branson, I've got a little bit of an embarrassing story to share with you that I think will help you understand something about emotions. And specifically it's a story about why I was afraid to ask a girl to dance when I was about 15 years old. Now here's a question for you. Have you ever been in a situation yourself where you've tried to avoid being rejected by other people, feeling ashamed, or maybe even being ridiculed by other people, whether it was in school or at a party or at work? Well, the reason I ask you is because 40 years ago or 38 years ago or so, I was at a school dance and with me were members of my basketball team from the high school basketball team. And there was this girl standing across the way from us. I don't know if you remember how guys used to, you know, stand on one side of a dance hall and girls would stand on the other side and either a guy or girl would go across the dance floor to ask the other person to dance. Well, for me there was this one girl, I won't mention her name, that used to look at me and I used to look at her in class, but we never really talked. And in my particular situation I was a little afraid, believe it or not, I'm not today, but I was back then of being rejected, being ridiculed, being laughed at. And I remember the feeling of wanting to go across the dance floor to ask her to dance. And my buddies who were standing next to me were nudging me with their elbows. Come on, go ahead, go and ask her to dance. And I was like, nah, I don't want to do that. Don't even know if she's interested in me, et cetera, et cetera. But what I was really feeling was the fear of rejection, the fear of going across and asking her to dance and her saying no to me, and then me having to turn around and do the walk of shame as my friends ridiculed me and elbowed each other, really shaming me. That was really what it boiled down to, is feeling ashamed that I was rejected. And what I know today, that I didn't know now was that our emotions are protection mechanisms and signals that will a keep us away from pain and suffering and shame and guilt, our pain and suffering. And so is the feeling of blame. And what I didn't understand is that the signals were just signals that I could actually learn to override. But being young, inexperienced, and not knowing anything about emotions and about skills to overcome certain emotions, I didn't ask the girl to dance. And later, many years later, I found out that she actually had a little crush on me as well. And so I couldn't help but, you know, remember, you know, my feelings back then, wishing that I would have actually gone forward and asked her to dance. And it's interesting because it's 38 years later and I'm still sharing that story, which I haven't shared very, very often anywhere. And the question that I want to ask you is, what is the cost of not recognizing the times when you are afraid of being rejected? The times where you're afraid of being ashamed, the times where you're afraid of stepping into your fear? What is the cost of that? Because most people don't recognize that the bigger pain and suffering comes from you being a prisoner of your own emotions, from you becoming and being a prisoner of, of not having the skills and the knowledge and the strategies to deal with the emotions that are going to hold you back. Now, there's nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about, because most of us never had anybody teach us about fear. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of not feeling smart enough. Nobody ever shared that with us, at least not in my household. And so what I'd like to do is share with you what I've learned in the last 30 years about emotions, about fear, about learning how to recognize the fears that are really holding you back and holding you hostage from achieving and being your very, very best in life so that you can have purpose and meaning and more importantly, you can enjoy your life to the max. And on my Winning the Game of Fear webinar, I'm going to show you specific strategies and tactics based on science, based on the latest brain research on how you can master your emotions and how you can recognize them and how you can really be the one who is taking action despite of fears. I've coined the term turn your fear into fuel. And when you learn how to recognize, reframe, release, and retrain your brain, you. You'll be able to release anything that's holding you back from achieving your goals and dreams right now. So I look forward to seeing you on the webinar. And remember, fill out your little manual that I gave you and come prepared, because what you put into this is what you're going to get out so my goal is to help you release your fears, get rid of them, so that you can really live the life of your dreams.
Millions of individuals around the world are grappling with various mental & emotional health issues
