John Murphy explains how fear stems from subconscious programming formed by age six, then walks you through a five-year future-self visioning exercise across physical, relational, financial, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social dimensions. He uses the MVP framework (Mission, Vision, Principles) and a four-step process (Let Be, Let Go, Let See, Let Flow) to show how a clear vision aligns your actions and shapes what you perceive as possible.
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All right. Welcome everybody to episode 2 of Fearless, or Fear Less, as I like to think of it. And, you know, our theme for this show is to confront and understand fear, where it's coming from. And as a review from episode 1, it's coming from the mind. It's not something out there that scares us. It's what we think of out there that scares us. What do we think? So our thoughts are very powerful and we have no neutral thoughts. Our thoughts are either positive or negative. They're either forward-thinking and helpful or restrictive. All right? They're either true or false. And so a lot of times our thoughts are based on assumptions. So for example, if we assume something's going to go wrong in the future, it triggers fear. It triggers that emotion. I don't know if you made episode 1 or not. But I'll do just a quick review because a lot of these episodes are linked together. And the review is similar to what I just said, is that fear comes from projection. All right. What scares you doesn't scare me, perhaps, or what scares me might not scare you. It's all about how we see it. And so, you know, what do we see in the mind's eye? And our takeaway, our big takeaway from today's episode is— Essentially, what's our 5-year vision look like? It's a wonderful exercise. I see, is episode 1 replay up on Fuel? Yes, it is. It's also on YouTube. Okay. So anybody who didn't see episode 1, encourage you to go back and, and take a look at it. Because what I do is I, I, the, the takeaway, the big tool I, I talked about in episode 1 was called the 5 Whys. It's a root cause analysis tool. Where instead of just going 1 or 2 levels deep, why am I afraid? We go up to 5 levels deep. It's a world-class, best-in-class root cause analysis tool. It's something I teach in businesses and to help really get down to what I like to call leverage points. If we make a change at this leverage point, I mean, it changes all kinds of things in our life. So what are those leverage points? And in a nutshell, It really boils down to perception and these underlying programs that we all run on. Most of these programs are downloaded by the age of 6, so we don't even know what they are. They, they're deep into the subconscious mind, and they show up as habits and tendencies. If we have a tendency to get nervous in situations, we have a tendency to get angry, we have a tendency to get impatient. These tendencies are triggered by thoughts. And thoughts are powerful, extremely powerful. Another way to think about it is thoughts which come from the mind trigger the heart, trigger emotions. And we communicate with the field of energy around us through the heart, through electromagnetic field. So the head is electrical, the heart is electromagnetic, and one triggers the other. So if you stop and you think about watching a scary movie, And your blood pressure starts to go up and your heart rate speeds up and, and your stress hormones start to flow, your cortisol, things like that. It's all because of what you're thinking and what you're seeing. So it's very important that if you're going into a job interview, you're going into a sales call, you're going into the day, you wake up, you're going into the day, you're going into anything where there's uncertainty. Which is just about everything, right? The question is, how do you approach it? And if there's anything making you nervous, it's because of how you're seeing things. So I'm gonna share my screen because I gave everybody a, a little puzzle to think about from episode 1, and we'll bring that back up here in this episode. So think about it this way. We go through life managing our behavior to the best that we can to get results. And We, of course, want to get as positive a result as we can. We want to be successful in a number of different ways. I'm going to come back to that in this episode. So we work hard, we get up early, we do whatever we do. We, we eat right, we exercise. We just, we manage our behavior as best we can to get good results. And we've also been taught certainly that positive attitude makes a difference. That whole idea of positive thinking and optimism and you know what. That's critically important in terms of our behavior, right? But I want you to go even deeper than that. And this is where the why, the, the 5 whys or any number of whys come in. And, and we start thinking about, well, why, if I don't have a positive attitude, if I don't see things optimistically, if there's any anxiety or doubt or resistance or fear, why? What's going on with that? And this takes us into that world of programming, the paradigms that we live in that we don't even know we're living in, the phobias, the assumptions we're making about things, the perceptions and interpretations, perceptions we have about ourselves. Like, oh, I could never do that. I'm too old. Or I don't have the right schooling. You know, I didn't even finish school. Things like that. These doubts, these beliefs that are going on, limiting beliefs, that's a leverage point. I mean, that's huge. So I gave a, a little puzzle last time to, to play with this idea. And the puzzle was this. Take a moment. I'll give you 20 seconds here to take a moment to think about how can I solve this puzzle? I can only move 1 ring to form 2 separate lines of 4 rings, 2 straight lines of 4 rings. And if you were on week 1's episode, you've already seen this and you've had a week now, not 20 seconds to solve it. I also said in week 1, when I share this exercise in keynotes and workshops and seminars and things like that, very few people, just out of 100 people, maybe a couple people might get it right. Almost nobody, because you're in a paradigm, you're in a box, a limiting belief, a perception. That you don't even know about. And it's, it's blinding. Okay? It's blinding. So now let me give you that hint again. And here's the hint. Not much of a hint, is it, John? But you're trying to solve this puzzle. You're on the top line. You're trying to figure it out. You have good intent. You got a positive attitude, right? And if you don't, I could say, come on, you got this. Come on, you can do this. You know, like a rah-rah coach. And no matter how much I rah-rah you, you're frustrated because you, You don't know how. Okay? So that's critical. You can have all the come on, giddy up, you got this, pats on the back in the world. But if you're struggling with deep subconscious limiting beliefs, wow. Okay? That has huge impact. So when Einstein said the significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them, that's a very Very powerful statement. The level we were at when we created them, in essence, we are creating our own problems. Is that really? I thought it was the boss, you know, I thought it was this difficult customer. I thought it was this difficult instructor. All right. Nope. A lot of it has to do with each one of us and how we look at things and how we see not just the world out there, but the world inside of us. All right. So here's, here's the solution for you. I'll just go ahead and give it to you right now. And this is titled Shift Happens, as in perception or paradigm shift, a shift in the way we see things. Now, some of you might be sitting there going, John, this, this, this isn't right. There's 3 and 3. You said there had to be 4 and 4. Look again. There are 4 and 4. Now you're wondering, wait, like what? I see 3 and 3. Where's the 4th one here? Let me help you out just a little bit. It's right there on top of the middle one. Now people go, wait a minute, that, that, huh? That's a paradigm shift. Shift happens. We were trapped in a 2-dimensional paradigm where the, the answer appears impossible, right? And now we just shifted to, it's a 3-dimensional answer. And there's no rule that says you can't do that. Okay? We created the problem in our own minds because we were looking at it in a, in a flawed way. We were assuming something that wasn't So now I want to, I want you to think about going forward, the perception factor. So you want gain in your life. Your vision is to see something out in front of you that's exciting. It's enthusiastic. It's not scary. It's something you really want in life. But to get there, there's more than likely some degree of pain. That we have to go through. Okay. Think of it like remodeling your house. The first thing that happens is the construction people come in and they start tearing things up. It gets worse before it gets better. If you haven't been exercising and you suddenly decide it's time for me to start exercising, how do you feel on day 2 or 3? Usually worse. You're sore. You're like, well, that didn't work. And there's a temptation to quit and give up. When we start going through the pain. But the reality is no pain, no gain. The company I started 38 years ago, Venture Management Consultants, I used the word venture because of the old saying slogan, nothing ventured, nothing gained. So at some point we gotta take a risk. So what we're gonna do in this Fearless this week, I'm gonna stop sharing here, is we're gonna look into the future just a little bit. And say, five years from now, five years from now, what picture do you see about yourself? What picture? Now this is a visioning exercise more than a goal setting exercise. I believe it's very important to start out with vision before you start setting micro goals. Not to say goals aren't important. I set goals every day. I set what I call mini goals. So today I'm going to do these five ten things because they are. Productive, meaning they're going to move me closer and closer to my vision. All right, and if they're not moving me in that direction, they're not productive. I'm confusing productivity with activity. A lot of people are active and they're doing all kinds of stuff, but they're not— those activities aren't moving them in the direction they want to go. So when we confuse activity with productivity, we end up wasting all kinds of time and then getting tired and stressed and. And aging faster than we should. So think about this now, 5 years from now, what do I look like physically? What's going on with my body? Let's start with that. What do my relationships look like? Who am I with? What's going on with my friendships? What about financial? What's my bank account look like? Am I carrying any debt? Where am I living? What kind of a house am I living in? What kind of a car am I driving? We want to be specific. We want to see in the mind's eye. Again, this is about perception. We want to see something that is awesome, not just little improvements. Because if it's just little improvements, that's telling you something about your programming. It's telling you, well, I'm not really deserving of something that great. I'm not worthy. I grew up with those programs. And it wasn't until I found that leverage point in my own life and said, wait a minute, how is it that God created somebody not worthy? That doesn't make any sense. What, I'm just, something wrong with me? By the way, I was born on Friday the 13th and my last name's Murphy, as in Murphy's Law. I like to kid about that, but if you're gonna be superstitious, it's not gonna, certainly not gonna do a whole lot for somebody named Murphy who's born on Friday the 13th and had a black cat for For quite a number of years. So we'll come back to that on Halloween anyway. So I want you to think about your, your physical being, your relationships and your social network, your social being, your financial situation. Okay? What about your emotional situation? How do you feel 5 years from now? Are you living in bliss? Joyful, at peace, no worries, nothing to fear. Stress in your life is gone. Okay. Why not envision that? Oh, and then you say, no, no, no, no, that's not possible. Again, you've just uncovered another program. All right. Think about mentally your sharpness. Okay. Your, your intelligence, not just intellect, but emotional intelligence. Your, your awareness of things. You're like surrounded by highly intelligent people. And you're, you're, you're at a much higher level of intelligence than you are today, for example. What about spiritual? Your connection with nature, your connection with the world around you energetically. How does that feel? Okay. Do people, are people telling you you light up the room when you walk in? Are people attracted to you? Mag— are you magnetic, so to speak, in, in terms of attracting people? I really want you to think about defining yourself 5 years from now. Really think about that. And I'll give you an example because I've, I've been doing this exercise now for like 40 years. All right. And about 35 to 40 years ago, I was, I was invited to design a class to teach and it was called MVP Success. MVP. A lot of people think most valuable player in sports, right? Nope. M was mission. What's my mission in life? Why am I here? A raison d'être, as they say in France. What's my reason for being here? We all have a purpose. What's my purpose in life? V was vision. What does, if I carry out my mission day after day after day, what does that look like 5 years from now or 10 years from now? What does that manifest to look like. And then the P is principles. These are my constants through life. The world's changing, everything's changing, but certain things aren't for me. So I am going to do this honestly, ethically. Those are constants. All right? I'm gonna work interdependently with people as a team. I'm not gonna try to do all this by myself. Okay? So, so principles like that, I'm gonna, I, I'm committed to excellence. I'm committed to doing my very best. Always. Those are principles. But vision really helps us understand and gives us sort of a north star direction. And success isn't just how much money am I making? All right. I live in Palm Beach. I've got billionaires all around me here on the strip. And some of them are not the most happy people in the world. Okay. Or their, the relationships are a mess. Okay. They're, they're com— they're, they're completely outta touch with spirit, things like that. So it's success is more holistic. Yeah. So think about whatever that is, draw a picture. And now, how do you feel when you see that picture? So when I did this for the first time 40 years ago, I was just a scrappy young consultant trying to get, make it work. I didn't really honestly know what I was doing. I was just trying different things. I'll try a seminar. I'll try a workshop. Maybe I should write a book, things like that. Well, what I did is I actually painted a pretty clear picture of myself 5 years out. And I was on world stages speaking with top leaders, top influencers, which by the way manifested into me speaking on stage with Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, his mentor, Zig Ziglar, Dennis Waitley, General Norman Schwarzkopf. I couldn't have imagined. I did imagine that. That's the whole point. So my vision said, I'm going to be a published author. I'm going to write a book. Turns out now I've written 20. All right. By the way, the second book I wrote, which is, which is an allegory, a story, like a novel about leading change in a company. I modeled one of the characters after who I wanted to become. Okay. A really sage consultant. And I modeled him after a boss I had who was really sagacious and wise. So I actually, in a story, Wrote very detailed descriptions of something ideal for me. So what does that ideal look like, and how can I continue to keep that in front of me? And it's critical that it's energizing, it's inspiring, because when we're in spirit, all right, when we're in spirit, we're fearless. So true inspiration is synonymous with. Fearlessness. Think about it, the, the physical. Okay. This was a long time, 40 years ago. What do I look like and feel like physically? Now, clearly we understand that there's an aging process, right? But what does that look like for you? And so I, I was very clear about that. And, and I'm essentially the same size now that I was in college. Same weight, same waistline. As a matter of fact, I just had my internal age measured about a month ago, and I'm 65 years old chronologically, but my internal age was 33, essentially half my age and younger than 2 of my kids, which I kid about. But when you have a very clear picture of what it is you aspire to physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, Socially, financially, professionally. What am I doing 5 years from now professionally? All right. And for me, that was a stretch. Let me just say a huge stretch to think that I'm going to be teaching workshops and seminars and giving keynotes around the world to people in 50+ countries with 20 books published and reaching millions of people. And if you want to know one of my 5-year visions for right now, it's to help 100 million people. 100 million. So to continue to expand and grow, that motivates me. It excites me. I get up every morning enthusiastic, and then I think of what I can do to make that happen. Now, it's also critical to think here really only about the what and the why. And not the how, because as soon as you start thinking, how am I ever gonna do that? You start getting in your own way. So forget about the how. The how will reveal itself when you're crystal clear on the what and why. And what I mean by the why is it's got to really matter to not just you, but the world around you. If you approach this selfishly, It's all about me. I'm going to be rich and famous and I'm going to, you know, drive a fancy car to impress people and get a big mansion and a boat to impress people. That's not the why that's going to really help. Okay. If I can help 100 million people and that manifests into $100 million, great. But it's the people that I'm going after. So the why has to be about how can I help others? How can I give more than get? And that's an essential leverage point because some of our programming might be all about what can I get? What can I get? So let me get some of your feedback in the chat. Let's, let's see what we've got. I see there's some takeaways being posted from Marilyn. Who else has something to— share or ask. Maybe it's part of that 5-year vision, or maybe it's a program you've uncovered. I know some of this is very sensitive. I'm pretty open about sharing my story, my history. And I mentioned when I first got going in this direction where how powerful it was to have clear vision like this. And keep in mind, you know, I was, I was rubbing elbows with people like Zig Ziglar, who's the late Zig Ziglar, A very renowned legendary speaker on goal setting and living a prosperous life. You know, you probably know Tony Robbins and what Tony's been teaching for a long time. And so when you rub shoulders with people who are big and bold and appear somewhat fearless, there's an energy about that, that if you stay in that field long enough, you stay in that energy. You read the books that have high frequency energy that are really helpful as opposed to trashy stuff. You turn off negative things in your life, like the news, like drama shows that do nothing towards moving you toward your vision. They're just time wasters and they hold you in the present. So that's one of the tips I had to do was turn off the television. Okay. Unless it was something, maybe it was a documentary, something that was truly helpful. And every once in a while, of course, you know, watch something fun, watch a sporting event, watch a comedy show, things like that. Keep it light. So, all right, what's one thing somebody's identified 5 years out that they really aspire to physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, financially, whatever? Be bold. Don't be afraid. No judgment here. And another critical exercise here is to say, when I see that picture, when I see myself 5 years out, Living a blissful life, helping lots of people, receiving all kinds of positive things, including a paycheck. All right. We got money chasing us now rather than us chasing it. There's a paradigm shift. What I— when I see that picture, what does it feel like? And this is critical because if you feel doubtful, Anxious, skeptical, like, that's not me. I, that's a, I'm, that's a dream, John. That's just some ideology. That's just not reality for me. You're stuck. Okay? You're stuck in a reality that shows you only the past. That's when we see what we see now. It's usually a reflection of the past. And our programming. I'll often ask people, what if you were going to describe the world today, right now, in 1 or 2 words, what would you say? What would those words be? Contemplate that for a minute, because whatever it is you say is a reflection of what's going on inside you. So if you see a world of conflict, Chaos, stress, it's negative in any way, you got some inner work to do. Because the world's just reflecting back to you what you're putting out, your thoughts and your feelings, whatever you're putting out there. Think of it like a big, great big cosmic mirror. The universe is reflecting back to you. You see what you're looking for. You see what's going on inside you. So if you are full of doubt, you see a doubtful world. If you're skeptical and worried and stressed, you see a skeptical, worried, stressed world. If you don't trust yourself and your capabilities, you see a distrusting world. It's the perfect exercise to see what do I have going on internally by seeing what's going on around me externally. We could be sitting together on a beach and I'm seeing seagulls and sandpipers and looking for sharks going by. I do this almost every night and fish, things like that. Saw a manatee the other night. And your mind isn't there. Your mind is thinking about, God, I have this relationship problem and I don't know what to do about it. Or, you know, I'm really scared. I've got a performance review tomorrow and there's, there's talk of layoffs and downsizings and your mind is completely elsewhere. You're completely missing the world I see. And the world you see is full of fear and doubt. So a huge takeaway for today's episode is to think about what do you see? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? And identify anything going on in the mind that's getting in the way. Your thoughts are powerful. Your thoughts are not neutral, ever. They're either positive or negative. They're either true or false. They're either for or against. And what's essential here is that you identify those, and if they're negative in any way, all right, they're resistant, they're skeptical, You've just identified something you need to let go of, something you have to let go of. And we'll talk more about letting go in the next, in the next Fearless. So if you've got any friends or family or people you know who could benefit from what I'm talking about and sharing, please invite them to the next Fearless. It'll be next Friday at same time, 11 Eastern time. And we'll be talking about, okay, I've identified some programs that I'm running on John that that are getting in the way, a fear-based program. How do I get rid of that? What are some techniques? I also direct you to my course at Fuel. I have a couple courses there, but one's called Beyond Doubt: 4 Steps to Inner Peace. It's based on an award-winning book I wrote, believe it or not, about 15 years ago, 16 years ago now. But the 4 steps are let be, let go, let see, and let flow. Let be essentially means get present, do the analysis, do the soul searching, if you will, of what we just talked about. Let be and take inventory, so to speak, about your feelings, your thoughts, your actions, your behaviors. What's going on? And where are there any limiting factors? Which takes you into let go. So in the let be, we're identifying what's getting in my way. Of my vision. And we're going to talk more about let go of that in a future episode. Next week we'll start. And then when we let go, when we let be and let go, we let see very differently. All of a sudden we see that this is possible. There's so much more I can do. I have so much more potential than I even know. And we start to tap that potential. And see something very different. We go into let flow. So let be, let go, let see, let flow. And if you want to learn more about that, you know you can check out the course on fuel beyond doubt. So with that, I want to thank you all for coming. We are at our time. So reach out to me on social media if you can. I've got a YouTube channel, Author John J. Murphy. Go to YouTube to see some of my other clips and my website johnjmurphy.net. And, uh, you can find me on social media, LinkedIn, and elsewhere. So I, I'd love to connect with you and, uh, hopefully I'll see you next Friday. All right. Cheers, everybody.
