Accept Your Fears | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Today, we're going to be talking about your fears. Ooh. All of those fears that you have. And I'm going to talk to you about how to accept your fears, how to dance with your fears, how to realize that there's a really big chance those fears that you have will never, ever, ever go away. And so I noticed this because I was given a speech not too long ago, and I was giving a speech, and I was in the back of the room of the speech, and I was about to be brought on stage, and there's over a thousand people that were in the crowd. And a couple times I've spoken to crowds that are that big. When you look at the podcast, the podcast is like hundreds of times larger than that. But I don't see people's face. I'm not right in front of them. If I screw something up in this, I could always get it edited out, even though we don't really edit anything here. But what happened was I noticed an hour before I was being brought on stage, I, like, the nerves started kicking in and I really started to feel it. And I was like, man, like, what could go wrong? And I started thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Oh, my gosh, what if when she brings me up, I'm all excited and then I trip on one of the chords that are taped down on stage? Or what if I'm on stage and I'm going through my talk and I've got the whole thing memorized and then it's just like I blank out and I just completely lose where I was and what I've talked about? I forget about it? Or what if I have a joke and I make a joke and I think it's awesome and then it doesn't hit? Or what if, you know, I'm up there and I'm giving this speech and it just bombs and it just sucks and the crowd's not accepting of everything that I say. And I had all of these thoughts that started going through my head, all of these fears that started going through my head, and it started making me really nervous. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, I haven't felt these nerves in quite some time. And I have probably taking even the podcast out. All that stuff that I've done probably out 20, 25,000 hours of actual in person public speaking experience, and I still was getting nervous before going on stage. With 20,000 hours of public speaking experience, I still get nervous before walking on stage. And it was nerves, nerves, nerves, nerves, nerves. And then she calls My name up, she introduces me, I get on stage, Silence, calm, no fear, no worries. And I was like, that's crazy, because I was thinking it as I'm giving my speech. I was like, I'm so calm right now. There is no fear. I have no worries. There's no problems that I have. And I was thinking to myself, man, it is so crazy because before I got on stage, it was fears, fears, fears, fears, fears, fears, fears. And I got on stage and they were gone. And it reminded me of when you think of. And there's a really viral video that happened of Will Smith giving a speech one time where he was talking about skydiving. And he was talking about how in the middle of the night, like he woke up and he was terrified the night before, and he started thinking about it and he woke up over and over and over again. He started replaying, like, what if something goes wrong? What if I die? What if something goes wrong? What if I die? And he was remembers being. Being nervous the whole night before. And then he gets into the van and they're all going to go skydiving in Dubai. And he's nervous inside of the van on the way to go there. And then he's sitting there and they're teaching him, okay, this is how you're supposed to hold your arms. This is how you're supposed to hold your legs. And he's like, nervous, nervous, nervous. And then they take up on the flight and there's nerves, and there's nerves in the flight up. And then the door opens and he says the door opens. And his exact words were, terror, terror, terror. And you get out to the edge and you're looking down at what is death. And then you jump. And within one second you realize it is the most blissful experience of your life. He said, there was zero fear while I was falling. And what he realized, what was really crazy about the whole thing was you realize that at the maximum point of danger is also the minimum point of fear. But the whole buildup, when he wasn't flying down, falling from the sky, and he was sitting in his bed and he was safe, he was fearful. He was fearful when he was in the van and he was safe. He was fearful when he was learning and he was safe. He was fearful when he was in the flight and he was safe. He was fearful even when he was on the edge of the plane and about to jump out and he was safe. But it was fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. Until he was actually falling at the moment of maximum danger, falling to the earth, there was no fear. And what he says is, the lesson is, why were you scared? Why was I scared when I was in bed the night before? Because everything up until the moment of stepping out of the plane, all of that fear was not necessary. And so we have so many fears in life that hold us back from doing amazing things. As he also says in that same video, God placed everything in life, amazing on the other side of fear. And so what happens is you feel the exact same way. If you've been on a roller coaster, you fear before, your brain and body are trying to keep you safe, but during you're excited, right? After you're excited, it's amazing. You know, there's a bunch of hell yeah, sometimes there's some oh, shits. But then after you're like, oh, my God, that was amazing. And what you realize is that a lot of times fear is fully 100% unnecessary. Now, fear is a protection mechanism to keep you alive. That is 100% true. But what's interesting about it is that fear is a protection mechanism to keep us alive. What we're usually fearing has nothing to do with any potential danger. So I'll give you an example of what I mean by this. Because all of your fears, pretty much all of your fears are fake. Almost all of your fears are fake. They're not real, they're not rooted in actual truth. Because when you go back to our ancestors, having fears make a whole lot of sense. Because fear meant that our ancestors were forecasting into the future of, you know, a rustling in a bush or going outside of a cave at night. And fear was always rooted in potential pain or danger. Like potential pain, potential death. Right? That's what our ancestors had to worry about, potential pain, potential death, whatever it might have been. Our fears nowadays is we've basically, in modern day and age, there's nothing that's really going to kill us. I mean, we've mitigated as many risks as we possibly can. There's very few things that are just going to kill you and a normal average person's day to day in modern life. So with that, though, we still have the part of our brain, the amygdala, that brings up all of these fears. And so what our brain does is it still continues to look for things to be afraid of. It still continues to look for things that are, quote, unquote, potential dangers. Now, once again, before, fear was always rooted to some pain or potential death. But fears nowadays are not rooted in pain and potential death. Now we still, if we're not cognizant of it. We're not thinking about it correctly. Our brain will still go to thinking as if it is. We are going to die or we are going to have massive amounts of pain. But that pain is not physical pain. The pain is, quote unquote, emotional pain. A lot of times, but a lot of times, I'll give you an example. You know, like our ancestors walking outside of a cave in the middle of the night, there should be massive amounts of fear because you never know what's going on. There's lions, there's tigers, there's bears. Oh, my. But now when it's like, okay, I just created this Instagram reel and it's. It's talking about how we should all be nicer to each other or whatever it might be that you want your Instagram reel to be, and you feel fear right before you go and post it. Now, if you post an Instagram reel, is there any potential pain that is attached to that or any potential death that is attached to that? No, but it still feels physically exactly the same inside of our body. 99% of what you fear is not going to kill you. It's not. 99.9% of what you fear is not going to kill you. So why do we place so much into not doing what we fear? Psychologists have also found, too, that 85% of what you worry about doesn't even happen in the first place. So what is the damn point? What you realize? What I've come to realize is it's not about overcoming your fears, because I don't know if you can actually fully ever overcome fears. Like, I have worked on myself for years and years and years and years, and my fears are not gone. I still feel all of my fears, but they're just turned down a lot more than they used to be. So, like, maybe my fear of being judged by people was like a nine before or an eight before 15 years ago. Now it's like a one or two. It's still there, and maybe it'll go away, but I don't actually think that it'll ever go away. I am okay with it never disappearing. The big misconception, like, I always hate when people are like, and now we're going to bring on our fearless leader, Todd, and they bring out their fearless, quote, unquote fearless leader. As if the people who run businesses or do things that are different than what the average person does are fearless. No, they're not fearless. They still feel all of the exact same fears. The difference is they just don't listen to them. The average person will feel a fear and allow that to stop them from taking the action that they need to create the life that they want. Another person can feel the fear, but decide to do it anyways. Think about that for a second. You can still think and fear all, all of the exact same things that you fear, but you don't have to let it stop you anymore. So if you're feeling that, oh my gosh, I'm going to put this picture on Instagram, or I'm going to go and give a speech or whatever it is, none of those things, you're not going to die. There's no pain. There's no real physical pain attached to that. In the end, there's no potential danger of death coming around the corner from that fear that you have. It's not the same as our ancestors used to deal with. But. But even though our external lives and our safety and all those things have changed immensely since our ancestors. 200, 500. A million years ago. 500,000. So I meant 200,000. 500,000amillion years ago. When you look at that, our brains haven't changed all that much. They've changed, but they haven't changed all that much. We still have the amygdala, the fear producing part of our brain. And so the thing that I want to get across, and I want you to start to realize through today's episode, is most people, when I speak with them are like, well, I just, I just need to get rid of my fear of public speaking. I need to get rid of my fear of judgment. I need to get rid of my fear of failure. And I say to them, what the fuck makes you think that you're gonna get rid of it? Like, who told you that the fear's gonna disappear? Cause if I'm being honest with you, I don't think it will ever. I think you can get to. If you have a fear of judgment, if you have a fear of public speaking, whatever, it might be some sort of fear, you will probably have that fear till the day that you die. It just might be a lower grade version of that fear. So a lot of people like to wait. They tell themselves, quote unquote, that I'm going to wait until I get past my fear and then I'm waiting till my fear is gone and I'm going to do it. I'm here to say your fear probably will never go away. Why don't you just do it? Just do it. Because another thing that's great about the fear is if you're listening to this podcast, you're the type of person who wants to get out of your comfort zone. You are the type of person who wants change. You're not listening to this podcast because you want your life to stay the same. You want to get out of your comfort zone. You want something to be different. You want to be different. So if you're going to get to the edge of your comfort zone, the best part about fear is that fear is the physical manifestation of the edge of your comfort zone. Fear. When you feel fear, it is your body and brain telling you, hey, Rob, you're approaching your comfort zone. And so if we know that we want to change our life, we know we have to get out of our comfort zone. And so when we feel fear, we can take a step back and be like, oh, my gosh, no, I don't want to do it. And we can retreat, or we can feel fear and go, okay, I'm feeling fear right now, which is telling me that I am on the absolute edge of my comfort zone. This is a really good thing, because I want to get past my fears. I want to get past my comfort zone. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to. Instead of just giving up, I'm gonna just lean in a little bit further. I'm feeling this feeling of I'm about to post something on Instagram and I'm afraid to post it. Let me lean in. Let me go. One, two, three. And on three, I just hit post and just do it. Ah, shit, it's up. I can't do anything about it now. All right, I won't allow myself to delete it. And what you do is you actually start to use your fear for good. You start to use your fear to grow, and you have to start to realize that fear is actually a good thing. You feel the fear. You think to yourself, okay, I'm at the edge of my comfort zone. I consciously want to push past my comfort zone. So this thing that I'm fearing right now, I'm going to do it. And what happens is, it's like the volume button. Your fears might be screaming in your ears right now, but the more that you do something over and over and over and over again, the quieter they get. The quieter they get, the quieter they get. And the more that you train yourself to feel your fears, but do it anyways, because for too long, you've trained yourself to feel your fear and retreat, to feel your fear and retreat, to feel your fear and retreat. And now retreating is just like an automatic thing for you. No, no. You need to build the muscle of feeling your fear doing it anyways. Feeling your fear doing it anyways. Feeling your fear during your doing it anyways. And then your muscle of doing it anyways will start to become stronger and stronger. That's what we're trying to work towards. To being the type of person that feels the fear but decides to do it anyways. That doesn't wait until the quote unquote fear disappears or we overcome the fears. It's not about the fear disappearing. It's not about overcoming the fears. It's learning to dance with your fears and using it for good versus allowing it to hold you back. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories right now and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R I love to see every podcast episode that we share. There's hundreds of you guys that share it and help us spread this message. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate. It costs absolutely nothing to share this podcast to other people. So if you do that, I'd appreciate it. And I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.