Your Fears are Stopping You from Life

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and I just got home from a walk, my normal 20-minute walk that I've been taking for so many years, decades, around my neighborhood. But this was not an ordinary walk. People are living in fear, massive fear. When you go to the stores now, this time of COVID there's a lockdown. People are freaking out. I call it the the COVID hop. You know, this social distancing where you have to be a meter, 3 feet, 6 feet from somebody. If somebody sees you even approaching them, they do the COVID hop and they hop away. They don't step, they don't glide, they literally hop away. Everybody's freaking out like crazy on this walk I just went on. People are nuts. I was walking and there was this wonderful overlook at the top of a hill. This house had beautiful lighting. It was so beautiful, it looked like a church when a church is lit up at night, when, you know, they put the lighting on the church so the building shines and shows off its best features. And I looked over the overlook and I was looking at this building saying, it's beautiful, very well done. And as I'm doing that, a car comes by behind me on the street and they stop. And they're watching me. They're taking out their mobile phone. What am I doing? What is this man doing? How dare he look at these houses? So I did a test. I was done looking at the house anyway, and I could feel the tension in the air. So I started to walk away, and then they immediately rolled their windows up And they drove away. They did their job. They saved the neighborhood from the scary man. And I was like, "God, all I wanna do is go for a little walk, and I got people thinking I'm gonna rob them or break into homes or I'm surveying the neighborhood. I've been living here longer than most of these other people have." So I keep on walking, and I run into this man who's got these two little kids on like little tricycles, and his two little kids on the side of the sidewalk that I am. He's on the other one and I see him getting nervous. So I said to myself, let me neutralize this. And I tell him, your kid's got massive amounts of energy. And immediately his fears in his eyes about the scary man, so near his two little kids, he started laughing. He says, yeah, it's good to get them out to use that energy before they lay down and go to bed. And I go, good idea. And everything was calm and everything was nice. So I talked to people before they freak out. So I'm continuing on my walk, I'm going down this slight hill, and at the bottom of the hill in this narrow pathway is this woman. She sees me, I see her. She stops in her tracks, looks behind her, and starts shaking. We must be 50, 70 meters, 70 yards from each other. And she doesn't know what to do. She looks at me, she looks behind her. She doesn't know whether she should turn around and go back the other way or continue to walk towards me. So she lifts up the collar of her coat. I'm not kidding you. She lifts up the collar of her coat, picks up her— pulls down her hat so she can't see her face. And then starts walking at a brisk pace towards me, but as far to the right as possible. So as we approach each other, I figured, let me say hi to her as well, just to neutralize her and calm her down as well. Her head is turned so far to the right and she is hyperventilating. Oh, scary man. I'm not exaggerating. So I figured if I said hi to her, she would have had a coronary on the spot, and I would be responsible for somebody having a heart attack. So I didn't say anything, and I turn around after we have a good distance from each other, and she is motoring up that hill like there's nobody's business because of the fear that she has in her. The fear that we generate in our minds when nothing has happened and nothing's going to happen. But we make it up. So I figure, God, this is a pretty damn eventful walk. How many of you, when you go for a walk, experience this? This is a 20-minute walk in my neighborhood, right? It's not like I took a car and drove to somebody else's neighborhood. So I continue to walk. And now, a couple of minutes later, a woman walks by me very quickly. No eye contact, no nothing, just flies by me. I don't think anything of it. About 5-7 minutes later, she comes out of a store in the local neighborhood and we walk by each other, but now there's a light shining right above me and she sees me. This woman and I have known each other for, wow, 14 years, and whenever my wife's around— not around, she flirts with me. And she sees now that it was me who she walked by. She now also is embarrassed because she didn't want to make any eye contact. She was— her whole energy, her aura was obviously negative and like, get away, get away. But now that she sees me, she's like, oh, hi. And then at the same time, she realized she was also very rude. So she just walked away, just smiled and just walked away in a different direction. And then I continued to walk. I'm not making this stuff up. This is all a 15, 20-minute walk. And then I continued to walk towards this park where we have these things where you could do gymnastics, these bars, you pull yourself up and all that stuff. And as I approached the park, this man sees me who's there and he freezes. And I'm going, God, I just want to get home now. I just want to get home. And as I approached the bars in the park, and I'm not going to use the bars in the park, I just have to walk by to get to this bridge to cross over this stream to get to my home. He doesn't move. He doesn't move the whole time approaching. And you can see he's frozen like a deer in headlights. So I continue on the path past him, and the moment he realizes that I'm not going to go to the park and I'm not approaching him, his shoulders drop. He puts his head down and goes, Fear. The fear we put into our lives. The fear that we create. The fear that is killing us. On my short little walk, I ran into people who are killing themselves, who are afraid of other people. Life is all about other people. Life is about loving other people. Life is about being with other people. Life is about touching other people and other people touching you. But yet these people walk around with so much fear. Stay away from me. Don't look at me. Don't approach me in the park. Don't look at me when I walk by you. God forbid you're 70 meters from me, you see me. Don't live in fear. Don't use this excuse of COVID and the lockdown as an excuse to live in fear. Do the exact opposite. It's your life. You decide. Do not let someone else who you've never met and never will meet, who has some sort of political power, decide for you that you should live in fear. Your immune system should turn off. You should no longer love anybody. You forget how to love anybody. Nobody gets to love you. Nobody's allowed to see you. You don't want anybody to see you. And you go home at night and you wonder why you're so damn lonely. Figure it out. Get rid of the fear and let people back into your life. It's really sad. What people have done. The question is, what are you going to do? Go forth and spread beauty and light. When you see a tall, dark, handsome Black man approach you, don't go into fear. Just smile. Smile back. I love you. This is Thomas Anglero, always and forever. Until next time.

Thank you for listening to that episode. If you want to contact me, you can contact me on my website at anglero.com, and you can also subscribe to the newsletter, or you can find me anywhere on social media with Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Thank you so much, and I hope to hear from you very soon.