In this solo motivational talk, Layla (referred to as Layla throughout) reframes the feeling of being "stuck" as being "scared" and explains that fear is an emotion, not a fact—essentially "fake news" the brain creates. She outlines three practical tactics she has used herself and taught others to manage fear and move forward: 1. Use evidence over emotion – Recognize cognitive distortions like over‑generalization and disqualifying the positive; combat them by writing down concrete evidence that contradicts fearful thoughts. She illustrates this with a personal panic‑attack episode as the CEO of a $100 M company, showing how a list of scenarios helped her see the low probability of repeat panic. 2. Befriend fear – Instead of trying to eliminate fear, accept and converse with it. She uses metaphors (keeping fear in a purse) and self‑talk (“hey there, little friend”) to reduce its power, especially in public‑speaking situations, emphasizing that fear is a normal, unavoidable part of life. 3. Tiny tweaks (exposure therapy) – Gradually desensitize to feared situations through small, incremental steps. She recounts preparing for a bikini competition, progressively exposing herself to increasingly challenging scenarios (photos, private posing, public posing, live audience) to diminish anxiety. Layla concludes that feeling stuck is often a symptom of fear, and applying these tactics can help individuals live with fear rather than trying to eradicate it.
Chapters
A lot of people come to me and say, "Layla, I'm stuck. I'm feeling like I don't know what to do to move forward." Every time someone says that to me, what I tell them is that you replace the word stuck with scared. I want to talk about the top 3 tactics that I've used in my own life, as well as deployed with many people that I've worked with to help them overcome fear and get unstuck. What is fear? If you want to overcome something or manage it, we need to understand what it is. Fear is an emotion caused by the thought that something is a danger, a threat or possibly going to be able to harm us. It's an emotion. Fear is not a fact. Fear is actually just fake news pretending to be a threat. Every time that I notice something pops up in my head and I'm like, ooh, that's a scary thought, I say to myself, that's my brain playing fake news. The reason that fear is such a tricky thing is because the more we try to avoid fear, which is the natural inclination of humans, the greater the fear becomes. What we're doing is we're teaching our brain that it is a danger or threat. People have a fear of something, it starts out really small. And then they avoid that thing, and over time the fear gets bigger because of their avoidance of it. It's literally natural consequence of teaching ourselves that the more we avoid something, it's telling the brain that thing is a threat. I have plenty of fear, anxiety, moments of panic. I have just learned tactics and coping mechanisms to deal with fear, to manage fear, to befriend fear so that it's not so difficult and I can move forward in my life while still being afraid. The feelings that you're experiencing that are keeping you from moving forward in life and keep you feeling stuck are completely normal. And the better we get understanding the brain and learning how to manage it and cope with these feelings, the better we will move forward in life. The biggest thing I want to tell you is that if you're feeling scared and because of that you feel stuck in life, understand that our brains are wired for survival, not success. Tactic number 1: using evidence over emotion. Our brains love to generalize. This is one of the cognitive distortions. If one event occurs and it is upsetting and it provokes a strong negative emotion, we tend to then take that and extrapolate it over every other circumstance. If you have a girlfriend, she cheats on you, then you look at all these other women and you're always looking for them to be cheating on you. Your brain likes to take those events and generalize them to keep you safe. So when the brain is overgeneralizing, what it's typically doing is it's building up an argument. If it were a lawyer, it would be building a case for why all of these experiences are negative and why you should avoid them. This is called disqualifying the positive. It's something our brains are very good at. Instead, the way that you can overcome this and you can manage it is by qualifying the positives, by literally writing down all the evidence and all the reasons why your brain is wrong. The first time I learned how to use this was about 3 years ago. I had a panic attack and I had it when I was by myself thinking about all these things I had to do. I had a speaking event coming up. I had an event that I was going to run. I had a presentation I had to make. I think I had 2 other presentations I need to memorize. And I remember sitting there feeling just incredibly overwhelmed and then a state of panic just washed over me and I had a full-blown panic attack as the CEO of a $100 million company.. I remember feeling terrified. I thought to myself, how can I be this person with all this success, with all these people that report to me, with all this responsibility, and still have panic attacks? I should have this shit under control. And I remember thinking that there's something wrong with me. It took me a while to realize what I need to do to work through it because the emotion of wanting to avoid any situation that I thought would induce panic was so strong. And not necessarily because I didn't want a panic attack, but because I didn't want to be somebody who had panic attacks. It was so outside of the identity that I'd created with myself. I made a list of all the scenarios and all the situations that reminded me of that panic attack. And then you know what I realized? Every time I read that list, it's really a very small portion of the time that I'm even at risk of having them. It was a one-off scenario, and that the norm is that I don't have a panic attack. I learned to overcome that and to not avoid situations that could provoke those feelings again. So the next time you feel like you're trying to avoid a certain situation, You're feeling stuck, make a list of evidence, read it before you enter the situation and remind yourself of the logic, which is that most likely the new situation that you're approaching is not dangerous at all. It's not scary and you can manage it. The second tactic is actually learning how to befriend fear. A lot of people talk about how do I get rid of fear? How do I rid myself of these negative emotions? Good freaking luck. Negative emotions are 50% of life and it's going to be 50/50. You can't have one without the other. The reality is that your relationship with fear is what needs to change. So when you're experiencing very strong negative emotions, oftentimes people who have a harder time getting over them or getting unstuck, they fear fear itself, or fear creates anxiety, fear creates anger, frustration. Just the fact that fear is there and present in their life creates more fear or more anxiety. I have a friend who actually has a really great metaphor for this, which is she talks about how she always keeps fear in her purse. I haven't gotten over fear. I just keep fear in my purse. Sometimes he comes out to play, sometimes he doesn't. We never know, but it's okay if he does. Much of the reason that fear feels so bad is because we're trying to resist fear, and what we resist persists. If we accept fear, naturally it will actually get smaller and it will feel easier to move through. You wake up to feeling that kind of like a shot of cortisol in the morning, thinking a thought about something that's making you nervous or scared. If the first thing that you did instead of trying to eliminate that feeling was to say, oh, hey there, good to see you today. Guess I'm going to be scared today, and that's okay. So what? I can still move forward and do things anyways because I have befriended fear. I can speak on stage while I'm feeling scared. I can go make a presentation while I'm feeling panicked. If we learn to befriend fear, we're much more likely to take steps forward in our life. The attitude we have when fear arises that makes the biggest difference as to are we able to move through a situation that causes fear. And so even the way you speak of fear— stop saying that you're trying to eliminate fear. Stop saying you don't want to be scared. Start embracing it. Start looking at situations that might provoke fear and say, I would like to do that because I want to be scared. The more you try to eliminate the fear, the the greater it becomes. The biggest way that I've used this in my life is when it comes to public speaking. A lot of people assume that just because I've run a big company and I've had a lot of responsibility that I might not get nervous at all when it comes to public speaking. The reality is I get insanely fucking nervous at public speaking. Most of the time before I walk up on stage, I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack. My mouth goes dry, my hands get really sweaty, I start shaking. I don't even know if the words are going to come out. Every time I feel that fear when I'm about to get on stage or am on stage, the first thought that comes to my mind is, oh, hey there, little friend. I know it sounds insanely ridiculous and actually pretty stupid and kid-like, but it really helps. Guess you're going to be here today. We can hold hands and I can speak while you're still here. I know it's ridiculous, but if you can bring some comedic relief into your brain when you're having those feelings, it's going to help you move forward a lot easier than if you're trying to fight it. The next time you're trying to overcome fear or get unstuck, ask yourself, how would I speak to a friend rather than an enemy? That is what you should be doing with fear. The third tactic is tiny tweaks. I deployed this tactic when I was prepping for my first bikini competition when I was 22. I decided to compete in a bikini competition. I had been overweight most of my life, and so the thought of even being in a bikini in front of humans, let alone on a stage, was already terrifying. Usually at the beach, I couldn't even get out of the pool without putting a towel on. Even though I'd lost a lot of weight, I still felt like a fat kid inside. And so I had this insane fear of people seeing me in a bikini. I knew that if I wasn't doing something to expose myself to that fear before I got on stage, I would probably pass out or throw up or something when I got on stage. I remember reading about this technique about exposure therapy and making tiny tweaks, a story of talking about a woman that was afraid of spiders. First they'd show her a picture of a spider, and then a picture of a bigger spider, and then they would bring a little bitty spider into the room, and then they would have spider webs go on her hands, and then eventually the big climax was she would hold a spider. I thought, how could I use that technique when it comes to getting used to being in front of people in a bikini without throwing up? I started to, one, take pictures in my bikini and then post them on social media because I was like in fitness. Then I started to practice posing in a bikini at the gym in a private room so there weren't a lot of people that could see me. And then I started to do it in a public room where there were people who could see me. And then I started to ask people to come watch me. And then eventually when I got on stage, it wasn't that bad. Now, was I scared? For sure. But did I throw up? Did I panic? Did I pass out? No. A lot of people, they think this thing that I'm so scared of, it's so big and so scary, I don't know how to tackle it. You tackle it with tiny little steps. You could even write it down. If there's this huge thing you're scared of, what are the 10 steps that you could take before doing that big thing that would reduce your fear or help you manage it better? Help you befriend that fear so that when you get to the big thing, it doesn't feel so bad. I want you guys to understand, fear is not something to be eliminated. Fear is something that we need to learn how to live with. And saying that we are stuck is often just a symptom of fear itself. So the next time you're feeling scared, try one of these tactics.
