1030. Develop a fear practice

Alright, 321, let's get it. Let's talk briefly about fear today. Because that is the one trait that we all have in common. And fear is never going to go away. It was with you at birth, and it's going to be with you all of your days till you leave us on this earth. So since you cannot escape fear, then why not embrace it and learn to use it to your advantage? And that's what we're going to talk about today. How to use fear. Stephen Cotler in The Art of Impossible said that every successful person is running away from something just as fast as they're running towards something. And that's the operative word, successful person. Because the unsuccessful person is running away from something, but they're not running towards something. So they're running away from something, and in an effort to hide, to mitigate the risk, to escape that fear, they cope. They shop, they eat, they drink, they lay up, they just dull themselves out. The only difference is they keep going. So they're running away from something. They remember how it used to feel. So they never fully escape that feeling, but they use fear as a motivator and they drive toward something better in their life. Every successful person is running away from something just as fast as they're running toward something. So since fear is going to be with you no matter what, why not learn to embrace it and learn to dance with it? Fear becomes that forcing function that forces you to focus. And to Collar's point, flow follows focus. You get into this zone. And bro, when you learn to embrace the fear and you learn to dance with it, the competence and the confidence that you earn because you embrace, you dance with that fear, oh my God, it is literally life-altering. So, how do you learn to dance with it? You have to develop a fear practice. Cotler speaks of Kristen Ulmer, and she is a world-class athlete who is danced with fear and accomplished the impossible. And she said, the first thing that you have to recognize, so when you feel that fear, both mentally and physically, recognize it. See it for what it is. Fear can be misinterpreted as blame, as anger, and as sadness, which becomes a trigger for irrational thoughts and irrational behavior. So, first thing first, see fear for what it is. And many times it's labeled the wrong way. So that anger that you're feeling, that sadness that you're feeling, these irrational thoughts, you're like, bro, where'd this come from? It's it's fear. That's all it is. So see fear for what it is, and now we're gonna develop a practice. Two ways that you're gonna do this, and I use them interchangeably, I use them all the time, is flooding and systematic desensitation. The flooding part is where you literally do that. No negotiation, you just you do the thing. And it's not that you're reckless because you have to understand imagination is bigger than fear. So the thing that you imagine is gonna happen often doesn't. And when you actually do it, you take it on, you're like, I mean, you've been, let me let me put it to you like this you've been in situations in your life where your back was against the wall and you had no choice, nobody was there to help you out, and you were like, here goes nothing. And then you come out the other side and you're like, oh my God, I didn't die. I'm okay. As a matter of fact, my life's even better for it. See, that's that flooding, but life forced you and and flooded you with that fear where you were like, good luck, pushed you off the cliff, pushed you out of the nest. So that flooding becomes a practice for you. I love Mel Robbins' five-second rule. So you feel this trigger, and instead of it kneecapping you and you back down from it, you just take it on. So the Mel Robbins rule is you from five to one, you count from five to one. Before you get to one, you do the thing. No negotiation. You just like literally, I think about rip the band-aid off. So that's the flooding function. The other way to develop a fear practice is systematic desensitation. I love this because you get triggered with the fear, yet you don't let it disable you. So with flooding and systematic desensitation, you just do the thing anyway. So the systematic desensitation is just you're familiarizing yourself with the situations. How do you get better at anything if you shrink from it? You got to sit in that tension. It feels uncomfortable, you feel inept, you feel unqualified, all these thoughts are flooding in your head, yet you sit in the pocket, you sit in that tension and you figure things out. Okay. It may mean that sometimes you got to break things, sometimes you got to look foolish and embarrassed. But when you make this a practice, when you practice something, you keep coming back to it. So with the flooding mechanism and the systematic desensitation, see, you keep coming back to that same thing over and over and over again, and you become more familiar with it. And you're like, that ain't so bad. And again, it's the competence and the confidence and the skill set and the courage that you develop. Nothing's for nothing. You are richly rewarded by developing a fear practice. One book that I really love is uh rejection proof. And it is literally flooding and systematic desensitation. That's what the whole book is all about. Doing the thing even though you're scared. And then also the more you do it, the more familiar you get with it. And he wrote a whole book. Giajang wrote a whole book about it. Great, great book. We've talked about it before. Sales is actually a forcing function for fear because everything you don't want to do, you have to do in sales if you're gonna be successful. Because you have to talk to people who do not like you as a salesperson. They just don't like your profession. You have to talk to people that they feel like that you're gonna screw them and you have to win them over and establish trust in a short amount of time. But it never just gets like comfortable. Dude, I'm 28 years in sales and I still don't like being rejected. I still get nervous when I talk to customers, but I do it anyway. But I've desensitized that fear. I don't let it disable me. I actually use it as a motivator and just push myself in there and figure things out. And it has opened up doorways for me that I couldn't have opened if I just shrunk to fear. So this week I want you to develop a fear practice through flooding, doing the thing, no negotiating, five-second rule, and systematic desensitation. So the more you do it, the better you get at it. Just because you blew it up the first time, you felt embarrassed and all that, man, keep doing it. You'll become more familiar with it. You'll get some great benefits. And you develop the skills necessary to sell your way through life because selling is a life skill. Those skills that you're gonna need are communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, and productive confrontation. It's the spine of what this podcast platform is all about learning those life skills. So let me give you a forcing function for developing a fear practice this week. Communication. So when you feel that trigger of fear, I gotta have this conversation and I'm just fearful of it. Do it. Our curiosity, maybe I feel outgunned. This person I'm talking to is like way more successful than me. I'm intimidated by it. Follow that curiosity. Tell them, like, man, I don't know nothing about that. Like, embrace that weakness. Embrace the fact that, look, I don't know anything about that. That's how you learn. Creativity. When you don't have the perfect scenario, how can you get creative? Using what you got instead of bitching about what you don't have. What can I use right now? Or how can I present something through communication and creativity and say it very confidently like, look, here's another way of looking at. Here's something else you may want to consider. So I use that creativity to show them what's the worst they can say? No. But sometimes they say no, but and then it opens up something else, and I chase that curiosity. And then continuous learning. This is the primers that I do every single morning. 10 to 15 minutes of reading out of a book, write about it. How do you see it? Then go live it. I do it from a random book every single day. So that's a fear practice that you can take on. I'm telling you, it's life-altering, it's gonna change everything, it's going to begin to change your week and change the course. You may not see big results right away, but just stay with it. I'm telling you, I would rather know than assume. I don't want to assume life. I want to know for sure. Okay, I can't do something. Okay, it's not possible for me. Prove it. Let me find out. And then you're gonna find out that you know what, it's not that bad. You know what? I'm not that far away from doing it. Maybe I need another year. Okay, I'll be back. This is what I'm gonna work on in the meantime. Boom. All right, let's wrap this up. Fear is always gonna be with you, no matter what. So learn to use it. Fear is fuel. Think of it like gasoline. If you swallow it, it's gonna corrode, it's gonna kill you. But if you light it, boom, it's gonna explode in a good way. It's gonna take you to the top. All right, let's get out of here. Share this episode with one person who needs it. Remember, keep it simple, keep it moving, never settle, stay tough. Peace.