Episode 54: Feel The Fear, Do It Anyway

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie, and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing amazing today. I want to kind of go a little bit off the beaten path. I'm actually preparing for my first non marketing presentation. And I got to be honest with you guys, I geek out on marketing so much. I love marketing. I love teaching marketing. It's one of my favorite things. I also like to teach productivity. I mean, you guys know this, you're a podcast listener, so you know the kinds of things I love to talk about. But Brandon and Kaelin, who are the owners of Ladyboss, invited me to speak at their event in October in Chicago. 2000 women. They're none of them. I mean, not none of them. I'm sure many of them are business owners, but most of them are there because they're looking to lose weight and love themselves in the process. So it is not a marketing conference, it is not a business conference. And so I get the opportunity to speak on something that isn't necessarily business related. So I'm really, really excited. In fact, I spent all day yesterday working on my presentation, and I thought, you know what, you guys, I'm gonna test some of my material on you first, because this is the first time I'm actually publicly speaking about a lot of this. And I chose a topic that's near and dear to my heart. It's gonna be called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. And you know, it's funny, if anyone had told me five years ago that I'd be, you know, comfortable speaking in a room to a room of thousands of people on the topic of fear, I probably would have given some pretty serious side eye because I feel more fear than the average human. Most of my fear is felt in the form of anxiety and worry. I'm sure many of you can relate to that. But fear has really been a sidekick of mine since I was a very small child. In fact, I remember earliest memories age 5, 6, 7 years old, doing things that most 5, 6 and 7 year olds don't do things like taking down my curtains because they would drape on top of the heaters and I was afraid they'd catch fire. So I would, like, take my curtains down or remember those little, like, firefighter stickers that you put on bedroom windows? I would make sure that there were firefighter stickers on my bedroom window, on my siblings and then also my friends. I memorized bus routes home from school because if we ever had a substitute bus driver, I wanted to make sure he got me home safely. Just stuff like this. I mean, I could go on for hours with these little stories of how fear really plagued my childhood. But I guess that's all to say I know what it's like to live every day with a sense of anxiety, fear and worry. And I think I've been pretty public, even on this podcast, that for. For some of my adult life, I actually was on anti anxiety medication because my anxiety got really bad at several points in my life related to having children and toxic relationships and things like that. So I know it really well and I'm not someone who doesn't get it. You know, I sometimes hear people talk about fear and worry and anxiety, and I. I can tell that they're a natural personality type of person that doesn't feel anxiety very often. It's not that they don't feel it because we all feel it, right? We're human. That's part of the human experience. But you can tell they're not characterized by it versus the kinds of people who are really characterized by fear and anxiety. And there's a big difference. And so I preface all of this by saying that I feel like I am an expert on this topic because I've lived with it my entire life and I've learned methods of coping with fear and anxiety. And I've had some pretty significant, what you'd call traumatic events that while I still live a very privileged life compared to a lot of the world, I've had enough traumatic events in my life to be like, yeah, I have some really good coping skills. So the good news is, and this is one thing that I'm really excited about, is there is some amazing news about people who are afraid and about people who have a lot of anxiety. And sometimes people know this and sometimes they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't think of it like this. But without fear, there can be no courage. And so, you know, courage is the attribute of, like, facing your fear and living through it, right? And that's what my whole presentation is going to be on, feel the fear and do it anyway. And that's ultimately the way you conquer fear is by moving through it. And so the people that get scared more often, get worried more often, have more anxiety. They actually have more opportunity to show courage in their life. They exercise the courage button more frequently because it's not courageous to do something if you're not afraid of it. And I always use this example. So my son, kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to roller coasters. And again, this was a fear of mine. I am an example of someone who felt the fear and did it anyway and learned to really like roller coasters. So I would say to him, listen, I am waiting in line for this roller coaster and I'm scared to death. I feel like I'm going to vomit. My friend or whatever husband, sibling next to me is not afraid at all. They're super excited. Who is the one that's getting the opportunity to show courage standing in line? Well, if you're not afraid, there's no need to be courageous. The person who's afraid and still walking on that line towards the roller coaster, even though they feel like they're going to wet their pants and throw up at the same time, same time, is actually exercising the muscle of courage. And so I feel like basically spreading the good news that if you are the kind of person who is a worrywart or fear based, you actually have the opportunity to strengthen your courage muscle more than other people. And so I would say you're one of the bravest people on the planet. And I feel like a very, very brave, courageous person because I faced a lot of fears, fears that maybe some people would think are silly. So I have basically five lessons about fear that I think I'm going to use in this presentation. And for those of you guys who are listening, the cool thing about this topic is that whether you're dealing with life issues or you're dealing with business issues, fear is still an emotion that we all feel in, in both those experiences. So probably what I'm going to do for the next five episodes, I'm going to teach the five principles that I've learned about fear. So I'm not going to go through it all now because I'm already seven minutes into a podcast. I try to keep them less than 15 minutes if possible. But anyway, so there's five lessons about fear that I've learned over the last decade. And so here they are. The first one is leveraging logic when emotions can't be controlled. And so I will Go. That's probably something that I may have already talked about on the podcast, but this idea of when your emotions are out of control, it's very, very difficult to feel your way through decisions. And if you are a feeling type personality, you often make decisions with your feelings. And when your feelings are out of control, you're lost and you don't have another way to make good decisions. And so this is really about leveraging logic when emotions can't be controlled. So that's the first thing that I've learned, and I have a whole thing about it. And then number two is a bad day is still only 24 hours. And this is sort of a perspective exercise that you do when things are really bad. The third thing is called the magical mystery of state change. And I know Tony Robbins and lots of people talk about how changing your state can actually help fear and anxiety. One of the most probably obvious examples of this is when you're depressed. They say that exercise can change your state and release endorphins and make you feel happier. So I'm basically teaching people the magical mystery of state change that I used with fear and anxiety. And it's not exactly what you think. It's a really funny story. So I'll get into that then. The fourth thing is understanding the difference between good and bad fear. Because there is the fear or the terror of, like, something terrible happening, but then there's also fear that comes along that is still unpleasant and still uncomfortable, but it's actually pushing you towards something good, not something bad. And how do you understand when that feeling is a good fear signal or a bad fear signal? And honestly, in business, I think this one, the understanding the good versus bad fear is really important because I remember when I made the decision to step down from ClickFunnels, I felt a tremendous amount of fear about that decision. In fact, it paralyzed me. But the fear I had to unpack is that fear of, like, oh, something terrible is gonna happen to me, or was it fear that was really, like, pushing me out of my comfort zone into a bigger, better unknown, a place that I really needed to go. And then the fifth one is weakness, inverted and actually using fear to your advantage. So those are the five things that I've learned over the last decade, and I want to go deep inside each one. So if you guys are cool with it, I'm going to wait until this is published. And I would love for you to leave a review on my podcast about what you think of the things that I talk about. Obviously, I talk about marketing and business. But if you are enjoying this podcast and you want me to dive deep into my presentation in October for these women and go through these five the leveraging the logic the bad day that's only 24 hours the magical Mystery of State Change the difference between good fear and bad fear and weakness Inverted Using fear to advantage. Let me know by leaving me review or sharing my podcast because I would love to go deep into this if this is something that you're interested in. So I hope you guys have an amazing day. I would really encourage you if you are immersed in one particular market, relationships, business, health, it's actually kind of fun to step outside of it for a little while, exercise a different part of your brain. That's what building this presentation has been doing for me. It's been really exercising other parts of me that I actually kind of want to explore deeper. So have a great week. Talk to you soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.