#1998 "Scared and Courageous" - Harps

isn't he? He's an interesting character, isn't he anyway? Irrespect of what you think of him, he's kind of Yeah, I was I was going to be judgy, but I am interested by him. I think he is at times weird, is at times brilliant, fascinating, clearly talented. But he does say some things that I don't agree with. But he also says some things that make me want to lean in a little bit. And he was talking on something that someone sent me about not being afraid of being afraid,

and I thought, I like that. I like that expression. I like that of being okay with fear and being able to put up your hand and go, hey, I get scared all the time, or I get scared sometimes, or I'm scared regularly, or it's something that impacts my life and my thinking and my choices and my emotions.

And you know, I guess that pretty much everybody that I talk to at some stage, we when I sit down and we go deep on something, or we're just even having coffee, But if we talk about life or career or kids, or growth, or health or well being or the meaning of life or purpose or any of those light things, we eventually come back to something which is,

you know, in the ballpark of fear. And it might be a manifestation or a symptom of fear, like overthinking or self doubt or self loathing, or apprehension or avoidance, or a whole bunch of things that can be linked to some kind of fear. And so human humans are fear. It's always been part of the human experience. We've always been all of us and will always be scared of something.

We might be more or less scared over time, the thing that once terrified us might not down the track, so that thing that was scary is no longer scary.

In fact, the thing that we're scary, for example, public speaking, might be something that over time, with work and skill and improvement and all of those things and cognitive shifts you become really quite fond of or even not only does it not give you fear or anxiety or any of those negative emotional things, but it gives you joy, It gives you pleasure, It connects you to other people, it gives you it's provided you with growth and development

and insight and all of those things. So we can the same person can go from being scared of something to somewhere in the ballpark of the opposite. But there will always be things that scare us, and that is part of this human experience. And some of those things that scare us should scare us. Some of those things that scare us in built evolutionarily. They've been there for a long time. The evolutionary purpose of fear is it's

a survival mechanism, you know, fight, flight, freeze. It's there to protect you from whatever the real or perceived or potential threat might be. It's not a new thing, and it's not a thing that's going away. But I guess the thing that I'm most interested in. And again I'm not an expert in this field. This is me talking to you, Me a guy who's been scared a lot. And continues to worry about things or be scared of things. And it's always hard to be objective about you. You

being objective about you, me being objective about me. But I think overall, I'm less fearful than I used to be. I still have fear, I still worry about things. I can still ruminate or obsess a little bit. But I think I'm far less influenced or controlled or limited or held to ransom by my fear than I once was. I think I've always been This might sound arrogant, and if it does, I apologize. I think I've always been a little bit brave, though, because I've always been prepared

to do things that scared me. Not everything that scared me, of course, But I think for me understanding that because I wasn't the super talented, gifted, you know, any of those things kind of human, you know, I didn't grow

up being exceptional in any way. I knew that if I was going to succeed or grow or learn or evolve or become a better version of me, or end up not broke, or end up in a career I hopefully loved, or end up in a physical condition that was healthy, I knew that I would have to do hard things, uncomfortable things, things that I was unfamiliar with, things that were uncertain, things that were for me unknown, and in summary, things that scared me. And you know,

I don't think there's a three step plan to overcoming fear. Also, I don't think all fear needs to be overcome. Of course, there are some things which are healthy fears. Hey, don't walk in front of the car, don't put your hand in the fire, you know, don't do that dumb shit. Probably don't walk home late at night in a dangerous area by yourself. These are probably wise things to embrace.

But then there are those other fears that can be that can be debilitating unless we offset that fear or we lean into that fear with a little bit of courage. And so I guess the idea is well for me, the idea and personally and for those that I've worked with, has not been to overcome fear, but to understand it, to understand it and from where it arises, and what we can do about it, and what we can't do about what's in our control and what's not in our control.

So I might be fearful about what might happen the next five ten years in the world on planet Earth. What the fuck is going to happen? I don't know

right now. It's kind of scary. It's kind of scary, and I could I don't, but I could probably start reading everything, listening to everything, watching everything, absorbing all the stuff that's going on around the world, everybody's opinion, both sides, all sides, whatever, and I could be pretty much stuck in some kind of analysis paralysis with you know, by lunchtime. But I know that that one doesn't resolve anything. It

doesn't fix anything, it doesn't change. I am not single handedly going to change the destiny of mankind or probably anything in particular, to be honest, but you know, I'll still keep speaking up and having a crack. But what is better in terms of managing emotional energy, my psychological energy, my physiological energy around fear is to pay attention most to the things that are in my control while acknowledging the stuff that's a bit scary and being okay with

being scared. Tom Cruise, I'm not scared of being scared, And that fucking weirdo does some incredible shit in his films, and so I think it's in the intentional and conscious choosing of to lean into the fear, to do the thing that scares us, to lean into the potential failure. You know, let's hope we don't failure, but maybe we can reframe the failure as a lesson or growth. We're scared of the unknown. We're scared of being alone. We're scared of what are we scared. We're scared of rejection.

We don't want to be rejected. We want to belong. We want someone or something, an organization, a group, a religion, a person, a dog, a pet, a cat, you know, a partner. We want someone to love us and want us and need us. We want to belong. We don't want to be a fucking island in a sea of humanity. We're terrified of that. And sometimes we're like, oh, fuck, I wouldn't mind being an island. Two people drive me nuts. That's cool until that actually happens, and we're social creatures.

Where social creatures, we need love, we need connections. So the inherent fear that many of us have are being rejected and being alone and being unseen and being unwanted or being you know, not desirable on some level to someone These are normal and completely understandable fears, fear of embarrassment, fear of pain, fear of an uncertain future, fear of people figuring out who we are, who we really are, and hopefully you know, most of us are okay, we're

not terrible humans. Where we're not perfect humans. We're flawed humans. We're trying. But I think some of us think way worse of ourselves than anyone else ever would or probably could, because we're so scared of them discovering what goes on inside our head. We're so scared of them seeing behind the curtain or behind the mask. And we are who we are, and that doesn't mean we can't change or

be better. But this is an ongoing thing. It's trying to navigate life through the myriad of you know, corporate things and personal things and interpersonal things and health things and academic things and social settings and opportunities and problems and fuck ups and all of this normal stuff. In the middle of that, we're constantly dealing with things that

scare us or can scare us. And so not to be trapped in fear or controlled by fear or driven by fear, but to go fear is going to be a constant in my life and the volume will go up or down. It could be a one out of ten, this scares me, it could be an eleven out of ten. I'm fucking terrified of this thing. I feel totally paradised, paralyzed.

I can't breathe, you know, for me over the years, even now, like even right now, I'm going to be one hundred percent honest, even right now, and I try to be one hundred percent honest if I but like in this moment, part of me, a very low level part of my awareness has gone. Is this bullshit? Is this okay? Will they like this? Will they hate this? Should I have done? Should I have picked another topic? Is this relevant? Am I explaining this in a way

that makes sense to people? Will this build connection? Have people turned off already? Am I explaining thing in a way that is understandable? Or I just fucking babbling on? So in almost anything that we do for me, there's always a potential problem or hiccup or something that I'm aware of that there might be low level fear wrapped around.

While right now I don't feel overwhelmed by fear, but there's a very low level fear with everything that I do, whether or not it's corporate speaking or putting a post up on Instagram, or whether or not it's helping someone or serving somebody, that I might be giving someone the wrong fucking advice, or I might be speaking a language that people don't connect with, or I might be heading down a path that just is in the path that my leaders, listeners or followers want to go on, right

and that on that journey. And so this is all just normal stuff. But I think be mindful that you know, fear can save your life, fear can destroy your life. You know, if I really pay attention to that wisdom, that kind of that's interlinked with that kind of rational fear, the rational fear that, hey, Craig, this is you putting all your eggs in this, for example, this corporate venture

or this commercial opportunity. You know, you're sixty one, you've got a few dollars, you've been moderately successful, maybe taking ninety percent of what you've gotten throwing it into that thing that you're not really passionate about anyway, Maybe that's

not a great idea. Maybe that fear, maybe that apprehension, maybe that anxiety, maybe that little kind of emotional alarm bell that's fucking banging in my head is there for a very good reason, and it's that very sound and rational fear that's going to keep me out of trouble moving forward. So there is good fear, there is rational there is empowering fear, and there is disempowering and destructive fear,

you know. So for me, I've been scared of, like many of you are, uncertainty in the future, rejection, growing up, being you know, rejected, and all that crap which everybody does to an extent of being found out, that imposter thing that I've spoken about many times, of people figuring out he's really not as smart as he likes to think he is, and bibbity bobby boo, here he is that of I'm not only of failure but also of success. Like that's such a weird one. People think, why on

earth would anyone be scared of success? And I think for some people, with success comes. And I think it varies from person to person, because I think pressure is a self created thing. On many levels. It's stimulated, stimulated by what happening or triggered paths by what's happening in the external world, but it's an internal world production like I my story, my fear, my self doubt, my overthinking, my obsession, my rumination is turning up the volume on

my fear. But for many people, they succeed and then they're scared of not being able to maintain that success, and all of a sudden, people have put them on a pedestal and people think they're amazing, and people think they're great, and now they're exactly where they aimed to be. They've reached the goal. They're making lots of dough, or they're making some dough there. And it doesn't necessarily need

to be something grandiose that everybody sees. It might be within a building company, or it might be a photography business that you have, or whatever it is. But then then we can get to the point where we think, what if it all goes away? What if I lose the money, What if I lose the momentum? What if I do a shit job? What if people discover that I was kind of lucky, not brilliant, and they figure out because I do the next thing, and the next thing is not as good as the last thing, And

that's all anybody sees. So it's not unreasonable that that people have both this fear of failure but also simultaneously, if not simultaneously, eventually of success. So I guess the outcome of fear depends like, what is the end result of your fear? What is the end result of my fear? Okay, so we're all scared, we all get scared of shit. We do dumb shit, we do smart shit. Some fear is good, some fear is bad. Sum's life destroying, some's life saving. But I guess that one of the important

questions is, so what's the byproduct, what's the outcome? What's the net result of your fear? And I guess that depends on what you do with that fear. If what you do with that fear is sit on it and you let it build an emotional and psychological and behavioral prison for you that you stay in. You're now in your own self created fear prison because you're too scared to try anything, or do anything, or say anything. And I'm not saying, by the way, that any of this

is easy. This is not criticism. This is just how we work. I know many people, including myself, at times, which have overthought and underdone things. A thing many things for a very long time. But when the outcome of fear, if I'm scared of something, but I realize or I believe that that might be that course that I'm scared of, that action that I'm scared to take, that decision that I'm scared to make, that conversation that I'm scared to have, if I truly believe through all of that fear, I

actually need to do that thing to break through. I actually need to do that thing to get where I want to go. I can't get where I want to go without dealing with this fear without negotiating this emotional and this psychological anchor that I drag around with me every day. I need to lean into it, and I will be scared, and I will be scared, and that

is okay. And guess what often, very very often. I think Paul Taylor mentioned a quote on this show once and it was something like he was referring to some legit research and it was something like, outed for every hundred things that people worry about in the future, so things that they fear happening in the future, ninety two I think it was ninety one or ninety two of the one hundred never happened like ever, Right, So they invested all of that energy in all of this shit,

like the majority of things that never happened, and of the eight percent that do happen, I think it was something like the majority of that really was little more than speed hump. It wasn't the catastrophe or the major problem that they thought it would be. And then the one or two percent that was actually quite a problem they got through anyway. They got through anyway, and it

wasn't it wasn't a total devastation. And so, you know, we stuff happens, you know, this external word sits worlds, situation, circumstance, environment, other people, you know, Korea, academia, relationships, all that stuff, you know, and then the internal world, we're processing it, we're thinking about it, we're ruminating on it. We're trying to figure out whether or not it's good for us or bad for us us, whether or not we like it, whether or not we want to do it or don't

want to do it. And in the middle of that is emotion and beliefs and values and fear and anxiety and self doubt and trying to rationalize things. And then we end up in this state that might be empowered or disempowered. And sometimes you know, we need to move forward in faith and belief, maybe the faith and in yourself or someone else or something else. But drowning in our fear is definitely not a way to move forward. I think the Stoics said something like, we suffer more

in our imagination than in reality. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. And it's so true. It's so true. And that's not to say that there are not real problems and real catastrophes and real damage. Of course, we know that we're not pretending that life's a Disney movie. We're not pretending that we're not pretending that shit isn't hard. We're not pretending that people don't get cancer, and that wars don't happen and bad shit doesn't happen to good people.

We're not pretending that we realize that, we know that, we acknowledge that. We're talking about day to day, you and me living, doing our thing, wherever we are, whatever we do, whatever relationship we're in or not in or want to be in, or you know, our colleagues, our workmates, our family, our friends, all the things that we need

to do to live our best life. In the middle of that, there's always going to be challenged, there's always going to be peaks and troughs, there's always going to be fear, And so I think it's important for us to see fear as information rather than the enemy. So this is, oh, this is interesting. What is this about? What is this fear about? Where does this come from? Or what is this apprehension? What is Why am I avoiding this thing? Why am I not doing this thing?

Why when I know that I should stop doing that thing that's bad for me, do I keep doing it? Or why do I not do the thing that I know I should do? What's the fear around? That's what's keeping me trapped in a behavioral groundhog day that's more destructive than productive. Why am I doing that? So fear is not the enemy. Fear as part of life. And like Stephen Covey said in his book, seek first to Understand, he wasn't talking about this, but I think that's not

a bad sentence to insert seek first to understand. And this is one of the ever present challenges. I believe with all things personal growth, all things psychology, all things human behavior is for us to understand the thing that we're trying to manage, the thing that we're trying to navigate, be that a person, be that a situation, be that a destructive habit. I think the starting point is insight and awareness and information. How can I navigate the thing

I don't understand? What is my fear? Why am I fearful? Where did this come from? If I can understand it logically and rationally, I can do something about it. I

can build my courage muscles. Just like you take your body to the gym or the running track or wherever you exercise or work out can take, you can take your brain and your emotion and your mind to that training ground of life where you just you just keep showing up, you swipe your card, you walk in, and you just go and put yourself in a situation where you've got to build, You've got to grow, you've got to learn, you've got to evolve. Because you're lifting those weights,

you're working against that resistance of fear. You're working against that apprehension and that self doubt and all those fear related states and emotions. I want you to also think about, maybe think about how you contribute to your fear, like, is this fear logical or irrational? Again, no judgment in that call. We're just trying to open the awareness door. Like I know, there have been things with me over the years that have scared me or derailed me somewhat

that were illogical fears. There's no logical reason to be scared of that thing, but nonetheless I was. And you know, I guess one of my friends is terrified to fly. And there's no judgment. It's a guy, and he travels for business and whenever he can, he'll any time he can take any option other than a plane if he can drive there, even if he's got stuff in Sydney, he will often drive to Sydney rather than catch a one out flight or whatever it is. And I've spoken

to him many times in loving caring way. I go, dude, you know that you're more likely to die in your car than in a plane. And he knows all the data, he knows all the statistics, he knows the probability, and he also knows that statistically his fear is irrational, but nonetheless it's there. And so you know, I've over the

years been working with him on that a bit. You know, It's not something that's been a big project, but just something we go back and forth on, and in my very bro science kind of evaluation, I would say his fear has gone from pretty much a ten out of ten where he couldn't almost just couldn't do it, and now his fear is about a three. He flies pretty regularly. He doesn't love it, he doesn't enjoy it, but it's not paralyzing anymore. But I mean, getting on a plane

is still getting on a plane. You know, there's still some risk. That's not like there's no risk, but there's much lower risk statistically anyway. But nonetheless, So how did he start to turn down the volume? How did he start to mitigate that fear? How did he start to manage that fear rather than being managed by the fear?

While he just started scared, He just started scared. He was scared, and he started He got on the plane scared, He went to the airport scared, endured that whole fucking flight scared, and then he worried for the next three days while he was doing meetings and conferences and whatever in Sydney, worried about the plane. He didn't worry about his presentations. Or his work or the out he worried about the fucking our twenty minute flight that was going

to happen on Friday or whatever it was. So but this is, you know, this is part of the human experience, is that we have the opportunity, like, we don't need to go. I'm just terrified. I'm scared of that. That's it, because when we go on, we're also then saying, well, I'm not in control. It's in control. The fear is in control. I am not in control of whether or not I can get on a plane. The fear is I can't control it. Well, we can't switch it off, we can't go right, I'm ten out of ten fearful

of this thing, whatever the thing is. And now hang on, let me just breathe deeply. Fuck now, I'm a one. No, that's not happening. But what we can do over time is we can decrease that number because we have experiences. We did the thing that scared us. We don't die, and we desensitize ourselves somewhat to that thing, and so

we contribute to our own fear. Many of us anyway, with perception, with storytelling, with catastrophizing, with ruminating, with overthinking, with making assumptions, and then we take something that may be a little bit true or maybe not true at all, and we turn that thing into an internal catastrophe where we've just we've taken something that we really do not literally need to fear, but now it's a big part

of our story. And so back to seek first to understand and being choosing to be courageous, I mean encourages it literally a choice. Fear is not a choice. You can't choose to be not fearful. If you're fearful, I'm not critical of you fearful about things perhaps you shouldn't be fearful of Well, I'm not critical at all. That's very, very common. I think everybody, me included still as we all have something that's kind of dumb, but we're scared of whatever it is or it's but on a level,

maybe it makes sense. But the challenge for us is to try to live our best life, to explore our talent and our opportunities and our resources and our genetic potential and our intelligence, our brain so that we can in the middle of the apprehension and the fear and the self doubt, we can still choose to be courageous and move forward anyway. The challenge ain't to be fearless. The challenge is to be scared and brave, to turn down the volume on the fear, to go where we grow,

to not be held ransom by our fear. It can be a training ground where we grow, learn, evolve, gain understanding, inside awareness and confidence. Or it can be the thing that derails us. Don't let it derail you.