FOPO: Fear Of People's Opinions

But I do think that fopo fear of people's opinions is one of the greatest constrictors of people's potential. It is the water that we're swimming in. There is a biology that has helped us survive over the last 250,000 years that you and I are here. This. This thing of knowing how to be part of the community, part of the tribe is ingrained in us. Because if you and I were doing whatever we're doing, and the elders of the tribe say, listen, you're creating too much noise. Like, I'm giving you a warning. Sharpen it up here. You know, like, all right, all right, all right. Come back around. Hey, listen, this is the second time we're serious now. Like, we don't. This behavior over here, you messing around over here and doing this and playing with fire. And by the way, you're not holding your weight when you're out hunting and gathering. Like, get it together. This is the last warning. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not until we get kicked out of the tribe where you and I are now trying to figure out how to fend and forge and fight and protect and hunt and gather. And, like, it's too much. It's a near death sentence. So we have this mechanism in our brain that is scanning for potential rejection. Because rejection 250,000 years ago was a near death sentence.

Yeah.

It's not now. It is not now.

It feels like it, though, because the.

Brain is optimized without having to think to respond to threat. And the threat of rejection was a near death sentence. So when somebody scrunches their forehead or kind of cocks their eye or gives you some sort of statement like, really, dude? Or I don't get. I don't get you. That. That is such an intense thing, whether it's in a living room or a boardroom or social event that we conform, we contort, we. We will critique them or critique somebody else to take the heat off of us, or we'll just disconnect from the relationship. So it's such an intense thing that we will abandon our sense of self for the approval of others. And it's so radical that that's why I think public speaking is the number one fear for most people. There's no snipers. There's no one, really, that's gonna take you out, so to speak, if you make a mistake on stage. But the most dangerous thing is what's behind the eyeballs.

There's some neurology going on. Is it amygd? I had a guest on the show. Mark Wolin, he's the founder of Family Constellations. They deal with generational trauma and there's studies about mice having traumatized rat or mice gets five generations projected on to their offspring. There is something to be said about the way that we experience it, or I've experienced it when I started the podcast, or when I've spoken on stages. I feel it too. It's real for me. And then I just, I do my box breathing and I tell myself, it's not about you, Josh, it's about the message that you're giving. And I have different dialogue that I share with myself now. Am I perfect in that? Hell no. But it's something that works kind of most of the time for me. What is the neurology of why we feel that so deeply? That fear, the fopo, what is that really?

Well, it's not so much the neurology, it's more the general need to belong that is the survival mechanism. So it is primal. And again, because if we're rejected, it meant a near death sentence. So what happens from a chemistry standpoint is that it's very similar to the fight flight freeze mechanism, which is that full on endorphin based readiness to go to war with a wildebeest, you know, like to run away or wrestle with a saber tooth, whatever it might be. That mechanism is so powerful that it hijacks our ability to think clearly and creatively and critically. And so if we don't have a good relationship with how our inner body, our inner self is working, we're caught off guard. And if we don't have the tools to be able to manage that, it's very difficult.

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