How FEAR impacts your life. www.fearmasters.com

Welcome to Life Writing Live. This is Stephen Barnes, you know, best selling author and black belt martial artist and tai chi teacher. And more importantly than any of those things, husband and father. And in this time of stress, I think that it's important for us to be in touch with each other as often as we possibly can. I wanted to talk today about something important. I'm testing a slightly new setup here. I've got a lavalier microphone here, you know, right here that's hooked up with Bluetooth to the computer. Hopefully the sound, it's going to affect the sound quality. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If not, we'll go back to the other way of doing things. But fear is a very, very important topic. I mean, I think that in many ways it is what drove a half century of study in the martial arts to me and it's what I try to protect my family from. And some comments that were made over the last few days in response to our current health situation in the United States makes me feel like this is something that would be valuable for me to dive more deeply into now. For years taught using the Hero's Journey and just to re familiarize people with it. I've got my battle board here. So using the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell's model of it, what you have is the character is initially confronted with a challenge, then they fear will cause them to reject the challenge initially. Let me see on this side, I'm still figuring this out, so please forgive me. Fear will cause us to reject the challenge. If that challenge is large enough that the solving of it would cause us to step into a new phase of our lives. We are allowed to or forced to accept the challenge. We set out along the road of trials during which we meet allies and gain power. So these are really happening. At the same time we have the initial confrontation with evil in which we lose that sends us into the dark night of the soul. And that is the moment at which it feels that all of our innate capacities are insufficient to the task at hand. The way through the dark night of the soul is called the leap of faith. Now the leap of faith, it's not a religious thing or spiritual thing necessarily. It's also faith in yourself, faith in your companions, or faith in a higher power. So if you do that, if you take that leap, then, and you've done these other things, you've gained the right allies, you've accepted the challenge and so forth then in most of these stories, the ones that have come to us and lasted for thousands of Years, especially, or hundreds of years or generations, or even succeed at the box office, you'll have another confrontation with evil, and this time you'll be victorious. And the last step is the student becomes the teacher. It is the movement to the higher level. It speaks of that evolution. Now, here's the thing that's interesting. For years I've taught this, and I also knew that teaching this was automatically asked the question, well, if this is the hero's journey, then who is the hero? What is the hero? What is the nature of the hero? Because there are only two basic questions that we ask in philosophy or the arts. Who am I? And what is true? So if it is true that the world responds in this way to the hero, and the story is. The story is your view of the ethical structure of the universe. How does the universe respond to our actions? It is also your statement of what is it that human beings do in response to stress and challenge? So this has elements of both. But let's say that this is really kind of about what is true in terms of the universe. We're left with the question, what is the hero? Who is the person who was on the journey? Who are we? That artists are certainly answering that question. Whenever you write, you're talking, well, this is what I think human beings are. This is how I think human beings respond or react. And this is what I think this villain is. This is what I think this hero is. This is what I think the person they love is. This is what they care about, and so forth and so on. We need to have some sense of what a human being is before it makes any sense to. To talk about what it is to confront a challenge. And considering that all of us are confronting some serious challenges right now, our country is confronting a serious challenge. I thought it would be very useful to talk about the way that fear per se interferes with this process. Because remember, step one is confrontation with a challenge. The challenge is large enough that it would cause you to change or grow in the process of solving it, then you're going to feel fear. And any change, if it's large enough, whether it is distress or eustress, will trigger fear. So what we have to do is to acknowledge that is to be honest about that. Being able to. Saying that I am afraid is something that an awful lot of people have a hard time with admitting. Guys especially, quite frankly, they can admit to angry, but they can't admit to being afraid. And the thing is that fear is everyone feels alone and afraid. Everybody. The only thing that matters is what are you doing with that fear? Well, what you want to do is you want to do what nature intended you to do with that fear. Fear is a stimulus. It says, pay attention. Fear says pay attention. And if you pay attention properly, you don't need the negative emotional state, and. And you don't need to get rid of the negative emotional state in order to accomplish the things that you want in life. So let's take a look. This is a very bad stick figure drawing of a person sitting in a meditative pose. Nice smile on his face. And this represents the seven, what are called chakras. Chakras are just metaphors. They're just images. They're ways to look at something. So please don't think you can cut somebody open and find a chakra spinning around inside them. Okay, so basically, the Sanskrit, this is from 6000 years of yogic psychology. The Sanskrit. Muladhara, svasana, Manipura, Anahata, Vijati, anja, and sahasrara. So basically, what you're talking about here is core survival, sexuality, power, emotion, communication, intellect, and spiritual transcendence. One way of looking at this that will help this be simpler for you is to group these three into the belly, brain. This is instinct, animal instinct. These two into the heart center, this is emotion. And these two here into the head center. This is intellect and spirit. So fear is going to hit you at this level. It is something, especially something threatened, survival, sometimes ego survival. And you're going to feel fear is going to be any negative emotion that is stimulating you to take an action, to move towards pleasure, because you have fear on this end and you have pleasure on this end, or joy, love, fear and love, let's say, on this end. And fear has all sorts of other emotions associated with anxiety and anger and stuff like this. And love has all sorts of emotions associated with that, joy and pleasure and so forth and so on. But everything that every animal does, as well as every human being does, is to move away from fear toward pleasure. So anything that is causing you to change over here, confront, reject, is going to make you think, oh, God, if I do that, I'm going to risk something. If I do that, I'm going to lose something. If I do that, something bad is going to happen to me. So a lot of stories will deal with someone who's been confronted with a challenge. Star Wars, I use that as an example a lot. Come with me, Luke. Learn the ways of the Jedi. And Luke has to reject that challenge because he has responsibilities at home. I'm sorry, I Promised Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru that I'd work on the moisture evaporators. There's a threat. If I become a Jedi, the old Luke Skywalker will die. Not only that, but I will have to confront the Empire. And the Empire will kill me and my family. Turns out he was accurate to think that there was a problem with that, wasn't he? So it's not that these are false fears. Real fears hit us left, right and center. Right now we're surrounded by it. And it's very tempting. If you have a depressive tendency. If you don't believe in tomorrow, if you don't believe that tomorrow can be better than today. If you don't believe there's a way out. If you don't connect with that divinity within yourself. Or at least that animal right to survive. This is the animal right to survive down here. You don't have to have a spiritual connection to things. You can simply start with an animal right to survive. And you will be fine. So if you do that, because you can take the laziest, most depressed, even suicidal person. And stick their head in a bucket of water. And they will fight for their lives. So anybody who is feeling something less than that, you know I'm going to do it. You know I'm going to do. Is simply has lost that connection with their animal self. Now, the animal is not all that's there. It's not all there. But it's there to protect us. It is not a negative thing. It is there to help facilitate our survival. You see what I'm saying? It's almost like you spend the first half of your life or the first chunk of your life. Learning the skills that will enable you to survive in the world. To earn money, to take care of your body, to keep a roof over your head. To find someone that you can share your sexuality and sensuality with. Create a family. Be able to nurture that family in a way that brings you joy. So that's all about fear. I want to move away from fear. I want to move away from lack. So we go to school, we get jobs and stuff like that. But after you've climbed that mountain, the next question is going to be, is that all there is? If that's all there is, if all there is is movement away from fear. Then you will literally create more things to be afraid of in your life. You will literally begin to find things that hurt. So that you are validating your existence. By the way, people are calling in saying, hi, Phil Feldman there. How you doing, buddy? And let's see who else is. Warren Lepine is there, and Brenda's there. Brenda Cooper's there. Dear, dear, dear friend. Jerry Jackson is there. Hey, I'm glad to see you, too, buddy. And Jamie Rodriguez. My thought is that one of the things that we can do during this time is to connect with each other more, is to be sure that we're actually reaching out and touching each other. So what I'm doing is I'm spinning off of things that I see people saying on Facebook, because I've spent over half a century studying how to deal with these things. And it's not that I don't have fear. Of course I have fear. But the fear is in the appropriate place in my life. The fear motivates me to care. It motivates me to work. It motivates me to play. I want to have joy every day because there's no part of me that thinks I'm going to live forever. So it makes me want to say that I love you. It makes me want to take the time every day to let you guys know on Facebook or YouTube, wherever you're seeing this, that I really. I see you. I know that you're there. And I know that sometimes we can feel disconnected, not just from this animal self of having the right to be here, but the emotional self of feeling there's someone we can share our hearts with, someone we can communicate with. So it's critical that you understand that if you don't have this animal self, if you open your heart up, you can actually make yourself vulnerable. You can actually attract predators. There's reason to feel that if you are vulnerable, if you're soft, if you're sweet, you can be in danger unless you have opened this part of yourself up first. Marie Stanley says that, I love you, too. And Philip says, I love you, too, my brother. I am so gladdened. I am so glad. It matters so much to me. It matters so much to me to have a tribe of people that I can simply be myself with. I don't have any notes. I'm just talking from my heart and talking from my head and talking from that sense of integration that I've gained from so many wonderful, wonderful teachers over the years. So if fear affects us at the point of rejection, step two, where does it hit us again? It affects us when we lose. Step six, when we confront evil and lose, which spins us into the dark night of the soul, where it feels that nothing we do is going to be enough. But the truth is also that the road of trial Step four is a series of these loops. So there's loops within loops. Chris Soth, who is a fine writing instructor, who's right there on Facebook, has a concept that he calls Soth's fractal, which is basically the notion that story has a large pattern, but that in the scenes, in the acts, the scenes, the sequences, there are small versions of that larger pattern. So it recapitulates. And I call that vertical integration. That actually vertical and horizontal integration in storytelling is a theory of mine that has to do with vertically. You have to be sure that all of the values line up, the images line up on all these different levels. Horizontal integration has to do with the fact that the larger structures of story recapitulate the smaller structures of stories. Every scene has all of these elements in it. If I want to kiss a girl and I lean towards her, then I'm accepting the challenge of intimacy. And hopefully my courage is an ally. And hopefully she's an ally. She wants it too. And she might slap my face, in which case I'm going to go into the dark night of the soul. I made a mistake. You back up. And this is the chance where you can either be an adult or an incel. You can either realize, my God, she had the right to reject me, or you could say that such and such she's friend zoning me. No, no, no, no, no. You take responsibility. You take responsibility. If you take responsibility and you say, I'm sorry, you're just so pretty. And I thought that I read the signals wrong. Please forgive me. She's likely to say, this is a nice guy, I'm not attracted to him, but I got a friend who is, who would be, who could be. So it's always best, no matter what you're doing, to trust that faith in yourself, that I'm an attractive person. Faith in your companions. There's nothing wrong with her. She's on a different road. I'm not what's appropriate for her at this moment. Maybe later, maybe not at all. In a higher power that every chipmunk in the forest can find a partner. It's not that hard to find a partner if you are the equal of what you're looking for. So whatever it is that my hungers are, I'll work to express myself at that level, right? So if you take those steps, you'll be victorious and find a partner. At that point you become an example of how to have a good relationship or whatever else it is that you're doing. But this fear then impacts our survival. Obviously, core Survival. Fear impacts our ability to express ourselves sexually. How much guilt do people have around that issue? How much aversion do they have around that issue? How much insecurity do they have around that issue? That tangled web of thoughts and feelings gets in the way. Fear, and this is power. The ability to exchange goods and services with your community and to demand the respect to be paid what you're worth. In other words, in the animal world, that's just hunting, gathering and nest building. The fastest way to increase, for instance, a man's attractiveness. Is he off his mom's couch? Does he have his own house? Does he have his own career? Is he going someplace? What self respecting female is going to want to partner up with a guy who has no path in life? So literally, just looking at this stuff realistically, but in order to look at it realistically, the fear can't interfere with your ability to look into your own heart. You can't be afraid of yourself. You can't be afraid. If I look at myself on a deep level, I'm going to find there's something ugly, something bad, something, you know, something corrupt. Okay? So you have to feel that it's okay to look at this. So now if you love yourself and you say, you know something, if I'm not good enough right now, I can learn to be good enough. I can find a way to be good enough. I can use the hero's journey to find allies who I can model to become a better person. So now I can look at this. I am afraid right now that I cannot defend myself. I am afraid that the virus is going to affect my family. I am afraid that I am out of control. If you love yourself, then you will forgive while doing everything you can to make your life secure and make your life better, protect your family. You also understand that all we can do is the best we can do. And if you love yourself, you're also going to be willing communication to look honestly, to tell the truth to yourself. That we all have to face death, we all have to face an ending to life. That the more honest you are about that, the easier it is to do the following little bit of conceptual judo. Look at the things you're afraid of losing. Your family, your health, your body, your wealth, your home, the security of our country. If you're afraid of losing those things, that means that right now you have them. And if you would be afraid to lose it, why are you not giving thanks and celebrating the fact that you have it? If I am afraid of my daughter leaving the House in the time of plague that I will celebrate right now. My God, she's here. She's under my roof. I can take care of my Nicky. My Nicky is here and my Jason is here and Tananarive is here. And the people I love the most are right here where I can protect them. That moment is going to seem so sweet to me because I'm afraid of losing those things. So instead of that fear making me step away from my emotions, I am afraid to love because I might fear. It makes me cherish things I have all the more. It takes courage to admit that you are afraid. And it takes clarity to then put that fear in its right position to get us to pay attention. Pay attention to what you have. You have your health today. You have your home today. Are you enjoying those things? If you're not enjoying those things now, how much sense would it make to miss them later? Because the fact is you're missing your life right now. That right now we have the resources to talk with each other right now. I can tell you that I care about you right now. I can work hard every day because I won't always be able to do that. I still have Larry Niven, you know. My God, it's so wonderful. I've got this new series of books, the Legacy of Herod and Beowulf's Children and the New One Starborn and Godsons, because Tony Weiskopf at Bain Books saw something here. So I was able to celebrate my love for Larry and Jerry by doing the last book with them. And yes, I knew then that I was going to miss Jerry when he was gone. So I have a book. I have a series of books. I have the memories of having done these things with people. Life I love. If I'm going to miss them later, build memories for them now. Have the courage to understand that this is the process of life. Don't hide from it. Don't shy away from it. Okay, now, in communication, the fear. How many people are afraid of speaking their truth? How many people are afraid to say, I will not be treated this way, or this is what I see or this is what I think, and put it out there. And you know you're going to be attacked, and it's okay that you're going to be attacked because you have your family, you have the people you care about the most, or you simply know that the most important thing is to be in touch with and connected to your own soul. If you know that, then you can stand up and you can say, this is what I believe is true. And. And although you know that maybe you could be wrong, at least you put your ideas out there and you can say, this is who I am. And people know who you are and you will attract your tribe, okay? You will attract the people who are on your wavelength. I can't appeal to everybody. I'm not going to appeal to everybody. And I can love everyone, but I know not everyone will love me. So what I can do is I can speak to the people who speak my language, who do love me, who look at the fact that, you know, I've done this in the realm of writing, I've done this in the realm of relationships and my family, and I've done this in the realm of martial arts. Over here. That's all I am. I don't have any more than that. What you're seeing right now is just all that there is of Steve, okay? So that communication thing and then there's intellect. To build a map of reality. To build a map of reality, you have to be willing to throw away your old maps. And that is tough because throwing away your old maps means admitting you were wrong. And how many of us can admit we were wrong about something that we've invested in deeply? But if your commitment is to being right, not thinking that you're right, then you will create the clearest map you can. You'll find some way to error check it. I error check it by looking at, well, the people who believe the things I believe, are they getting the kinds of results that I want? What do their bodies look like, what do their relationships look like, what do their careers look like? If they're good in all three of those areas, then I'm going to take a closer look at those belief patterns. If they're blown out in all three of those areas, I'm going to respect them and say, go with God. But it's not my responsibility to change who it is that I am to make them happy, especially if they're not getting good results. If I don't like your cake, why would I use your recipe? Seriously, go with God, my friend. Have fun. Check back with me. I'm very interested in knowing how you're doing down the road. But right now I have a family to raise, I have a career, and I have martial arts students to teach. I've got to be as clear and honest as I can be and what I say has to be as effective and efficient as I can make it because I have a limited amount of time to be here, a limited amount of Time to sit and talk with you guys, to share with you, to let you know how much you matter to me. It's limited. I'm going to run out. So today is the time that I have. This is it. This is the time I have today. I will love my family today. I will work out today. Already did tai chi and yoga. Did yoga with my wife. That served two things. It both worked with my body, worked with my spirit, and connected my heart because I am helping to lead my wife, to take good care of her since I get to enjoy the fact she's got a slamming body and great energy. I mean, it's really, what can I say? I am motivated by this animal stuff down here. It's just the honest truth. That's that map. I want to have an accurate map. And I can't be afraid of what's true because that will get in the way of the accuracy. And then ultimately, spirit, asking yourself the question, what's more important to you than your own life to understand that you're going to die? The way my mother, who was a very devout Episcopalian would put it is only when life soon has passed, only what's done for God will last. She put it in that framework. I put it in the framework of I don't know what happens after death. Matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, only changed in form. But the pattern known as Steve Barnes. I have no commitment, no attachment to that at all. What will be, will be. But what I can do is to try to be the greatest influence, the healthiest influence I can during the time that I have. Fear can interfere with all the different levels. But if you start from the bottom, what is your relationship to your survival? What is relationship to your sexuality? What is relationship to your sense of power? How is fear affecting you and all these things? Look at the hero's journey and look at how you've been interrupted. Because the fact is, the hero's journey in many ways describes the path between moving upwards. These chakras first deal with survival, then deal with finding a sexual partner. Then deal with creating, with creating a safe nest haven. Then open your heart to love. Then learn to communicate your truth. Then develop that map of the universe and then prepare to meet death with honor and dignity. So this is the fear. Now, what can we do to deal with fear? Well, I'm going to take this all the way back to the thing I have. I will say every time, for God's sake, if you are roasting in fear every hour, stop and breathe deeply. For just 60 seconds. Deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. What is diaphragmatic breathing? Diaphragmatic breathing is you're breathing down here. When you inhale, your belly expands. When you exhale, it comes in. Inhale, expand, exhale, contract, right? So your diaphragm is expanding. You do that for 60 seconds of deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing every hour. Now, in ordinary circumstances, I say do this once every three hours. You know, 9 o', clock, 12 o', clock, 6, 3, 6, 9, 9, 12, 3, 6, 9. In these times, I'd suggest doing it every hour. That's only, you know, in a 15 hour day, that's 15 minutes out of your whole day. And once you've committed to that small amount of time, you can build on that, you can add visualization, you can add affirmations, you can do all sorts of different things during that 60 seconds. Brendon Burchard suggests that you spend five to ten minutes every hour taking a break if you want to have peak efficiency throughout your entire workday. So you could add, you could do exercise during that time. I could do martial arts during that time. And the concept of synaptic facilitation means that if I divide a task up into many different pieces and practice it multiple times during the day, I'm going to advance in my skill faster than if I do it all in one lump. So if I have an hour to practice piano, if I broke that up into 10 six minute segments or six 10 minute segments, I'm going to do better than if I do it for an hour overall. So we're going to keep trying to connect these things with these lectures into five minutes, for God's sake, five minutes a day. Breathe deep, slow, diaphragmatically, set your alarm for three hours or 60 minutes and every time it goes off, stop for 60 seconds and give yourself that gift. Don't you deserve five minutes out of every day? You're taking care of everybody else. Your family is looking at you, your children are looking, they're saying, what do I do about this? What does it mean? Is the world ending? And if you are a source of strength in your own life, if you've lined up your survival drives with your heart, you know you can take care of things and you've accepted that all we can do is the best we can do and you know that you're doing the best you can do. You can relax and simply love the people that you love and love your life and enjoy this time that we have together. I wanted to thank you so much for being here. I'm going to try to connect with you as often, you know, much more often right now while we're all shut into our homes and we can't hug each other physically as much as we want to. If you have enjoyed this, please share it. It's the only way that we know what's working for people. If you'd like a deeper dive into these concepts, please take a look at the Warrior's Journey course, available at www.fearmasters.com. we've cut the price in half during this time of stress. We're trying everything we can do to help people as much as possible. Please, please, please let me know what I can do to support you. Let me know what subjects you'd like me to cover. The three things I'm willing to do a deep dive into the family and things connected with love and martial arts and things connected with the physical body and career, especially concerning the creative arts, which I love so deeply and have given me so much. Once again, that's www.fearmasters.com. i'd like to close this time today with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste. Have a wonderful day and love the people you love while you can.