Managing Fear

I Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Welcome to my live. My dog is licking my other hand. I am going live to the Facebooks, to LinkedIn, to YouTube and Twitter. Thank you for joining. I wanted to come live quick tonight. I have a class that I'm supposed to log into shortly, but I wanted to talk about fear. I wanted to talk about how easy it is to get sucked into a fear spiral about the whole world going to hell in a handbasket. Because let's be real, that's what the news is telling us right now. We're seeing mass layoffs. We're hearing from dear loved ones who are getting laid off themselves. So it's really hitting home. Stock market didn't do great today. There's inflation, millennials can't buy houses, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's so much. And I want you to know that being afraid when you hear of all these dangers out there is so normal. It's so normal for your nervous system to get activated and think, oh, my God, I have to, you know, hold all my resources dear and, you know, tighten our belts and, and there's danger out there. Like danger. Will Robinson. Don't, don't move. Everyone frees and no one misbehave. And let me tell you, as someone who did the ultimate fear inoculation by crashing and burning my own life, I want you to know that even if your life goes to hell in a handbasket, you will be able to recover. There's this great exercise in the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss where he basically tells you to think of, like, if you lost everything tomorrow, if you lost your home, if you lost your car, all your money, everything, like, what would your first step be? You know, where, where would you get a quick and easy job? Whose couch would you stay on? Who would you reach out to to network for jobs or to grow your business back up? How would you recover? And can I just share as someone who has crashed and I crashed and burned my life, essentially. I, I mean, it was, let me tell the story. I never had a good relationship with money. I never really understood also how credit card worked through most of my 20s. So I got myself in and out of a lot of credit card debt. And, and there were periods where I was debt free and it was really, those were the exceptions. But leaning into credit cards was like a normal thing for me. And so when 2017 hit, I got in a massive car accident. Another driver T boned my car they did the illegal thing. It wasn't my fault, but I got this really bad concussion. It actually turned into a mild traumatic brain injury. And so I had to be off of work for eight months and on disability. In that time, I also managed to get myself in a short but abusive relationship with a man who, let's say he treated my money as his money and opened up some credit in my name. And it was devastating. It was devastating. I don't talk about this that often. It was devastating. And when I got out, I actually, like, this is also when I started my business. When I got out, I actually left my corporate job way sooner than I should have because I just couldn't. I couldn't handle being in that corporate environment anymore. I had ptsd. I was stressed out. Like, there was so much going on. The corporate setting just didn't serve me anymore. And I was, like, convinced I could make it on my own in my business and went like a month. And then I panicked. And then I tried to go back and get a job. And everyone that I interviewed with, and believe me, like, I interview very well. I've never interviewed for a job and not been offered it. I got to the final interviews on three jobs, and the feedback I got was, we think you should just go be a coach. And I wanted to shake them and just be like, I'm trying to be a coach. I just need you to pay me money so that I can go and be a coach on the side until I can do it full time. But I didn't, because that's not how you get hired for jobs. And I doubled down and I threw everything I had into my business and operating from a massive amount of debt. And it got to the point where I nearly had to declare bankruptcy. And I will never forget sitting on a stoop in Alleyway in Brooklyn in December. Hi, Steven. Good evening. Sitting on this stoop in Brooklyn. It's December. It's freezing. I think it was like 23 degrees. The wind is blowing. It's just like. It's bone chilling. And I'm on a FaceTime with my coach at the time. Time. And I'm just sobbing, sobbing. Like you'd think that my whole family had just died sobbing. And I didn't have any tissues with me, and I just had snot pouring out of my nose. And I'm hyperventilating and sobbing. And my coach is just telling me, like, listen, we're going to talk through this, but first I want you to experience. This is rock bottom. I want you to own and feel that, that you've crashed and burned your life. This is it. This is the worst it's going to get. And it sounds harsh when I describe it, but that was exactly what I needed in that moment. I needed to reconcile that this was what that was. I had crashed and burned my life, and the only way up out of there was up. Like, there was only one place to go. You know, I was so low. And it's insane that after that, like, after that experience, maybe it was just so traumatic why I disassociate. But no, I don't think that's it. After going through that and then successfully building my business to the point that it's at right now, I don't have any fear. I don't have any fear around, around, like, crashing and burning my life or things going wrong or if I lost everything, like, okay, I can rebuild. And I don't want you to crash and burn your life. I don't want bad things to happen to you. I don't want for you to lose everything. But I want you to know that if I can do it, if I can do that and recover from it and get to this point where I am in my life, you can too. I am not special. I am not special. I am an average human being with a very needy and affectionate dog. And if I can recover from crashing and burning my life, you can get through anything. And I know the news wants you to be scared. I want. Let's just point out that the news's job is ratings, is getting high ratings. And how do they get high ratings? They tell you that there's something scary out there. Because humans, we're naturally inclined to want to collect more information when we're told there's danger. So we're going to end up watching more news. We want it. We want to hear more about how bad things are getting and this and that and the other thing. So they want to feed the fear so that we keep watching. Not to say that there isn't some bad happening, but you do not have to focus solely on that. Instead, I want you to focus on all the skills that you've developed throughout your life. I want you to focus on the people that you have impacted, on those people that you have helped, that you've lifted up. If you. If you keep a box of letters of people who, like, reached out to you and thanked you for, you know, being a part of their life, go and read that right now. If you have testimonials from people who have worked with you. Go and read them. Just make a list of how you have positively touched the world. Because if you can positively touch the world in all those ways, you can recover from anything because you have it in you. You're a positive force in the world. And all the negativity, it can't steal that from you. So however bad it gets, I want you to know you can recover. Like. Well, I mean, let's just talk through it. Like, if I were to lose everything tomorrow, here's what I would do to pay the bills. I would go and I would get a restaurant job, okay? I've worked in restaurants before. I can do it again, okay? While I'm doing that, I would crash in a friend's house, or I would move home with my parents, whatever, or stay with some family members. Okay, totally fine. I would then start my business up again. I would need to rebrand it. I would need to do all this stuff like it's possible. And if I can do that, you can do that. So whatever is happening in your life right now, if you are subject to these layoffs, please lean into me and your network. If you're just stressed out and want some reassurance, come to my Brave Biz lab call. It's every Friday at 11am Eastern. And if you want that link, it's usually in my about section, but I have my Money Wealthy Weenies program link there. So if you want to come this Friday, then just shoot me a DM and I'll send you the link. I don't want you paralyzed by fear, though. I don't want you pausing and not moving forward in getting what you want, okay? Because that's our tendency, right? Is like, there's fear. We have to stop. We have to stop and we have to just, like, hold on until it passes. Until the scary thing passes. No, no, no. You keep going for what you want, okay? If you want to start a business, keep going for that. If you want to grow your business, keep going for that. If you want to get a better job, keep going for that. It's only when we only focus on what we need that our worlds get really small. They contract when we keep our focus on all the things that we want for our lives. That's when our lives stay the same size or grow further, all right? So don't contract your life right now. Grow it, expand it, keep going for what you want and keep being. You keep being the kind of person who has a positive impact on other human beings. Keep being the person who helps others. Keeping the person who uplifts rather than tears down with that. I'm late for class. Steven, thank you so much for joining. I hope you found this useful. And like I said, if you need a boost every single Friday, I do Brave Biz Labs. It's a free group coaching call for the brave of heart. And I hope to see you there. Just shoot me a DM and I'll send you the link to register. All right, much love, everyone, and have a great Wednesday. Bye.