Scared? Good. Here's what you do next.

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Indeed.com/podcats13. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Do it the right way with Indeed. She said, "I'm nervous."

I said, "Me too." And then I got this look like, "You? Nervous?" And I said, "I'm scared. I have big goals for this year.

I'm scared that I won't hit them. But you know what? That's good. Fear means I'm alive. Fear means I care.

Fear means I'm standing on the edge of something important." And then I paused for a second and I looked at her and I said, "What is it that you want out of life?" What is up, my friends, and welcome back to the show. Guys, we are on the precipice of twenty twenty five. This episode is coming out on New Year's Eve twenty twenty four, and this is a time of both excitement, energy for sure, but it also comes with an incredible amount of anxiety, fear, nervousness, tension, because what is twenty twenty five gonna bring?

We all set these big goals, things we wanna achieve, accomplishments we wanna have, and that's natural and normal. And if we're really shooting for something that stretches who we are, the-- it's impossible for there not to be fear, for us not to be scared about what's gonna happen. Will I actually make good on the promises that I made? Will, will I be able to commit to the things I said I was going to commit to? And I wanted to take an episode, a few minutes, this conversation with you to normalize fear.

You are not alone in being scared. You are not alone in being nervous and feeling anxiety and feeling fear, doubt. Those are normal. Frankly, if you are not feeling those emotions, if the actions you're taking are not causing you, uh, tension, fear, nervousness, then you're probably not pushing hard enough. You're probably set in a place of comfort in a kinda doldrums, monotonous type lifestyle and have succumbed to whatever it is that life now gives you.

Because if you're pushing, you're scared. And I don't want you to feel like you're alone in feeling scared. I'm incredibly scared. I wake up scared and fearful every single day. I have enormous projects that I wanna get off the ground in twenty twenty five and deliver to this audience and to my insurance community.

I have, uh, Linkora, which I'm the chief marketing officer of, goes live full market in January of twenty twenty-five. I'm launching the Master of the Close program, the most dynamic, intensive, and effective inbound sales coaching program and course that has ever been created. I just got accepted to do a TED Talk in February, and I am publishing a book with one of my best friends, Chris Paradiso, which comes out end of Q1, early Q2. And we haven't even gotten to June yet. And I wanna make sure all those things hit because I've been working on all of them for more than a year.

And I'm nervous that they're not gonna work. I'm nervous that I have too many things going on. I'm nervous that I'm not gonna be able to make the time. I'm nervous that by having all these things coming to a head at the same time, which I didn't plan by the way, that I'm not going to be able to give a hundred percent to any single one of them and make it as big as it could possibly be. I'm nervous that I'm gonna put all this effort into a book and no one's gonna read it.

I'm f- nervous that I'm gonna put all this work into a course and that people won't buy it. I'm nervous that I'm gonna be part of this team that has trusted me to market their product, to deliver their message, to drive new opportunities, new business into, into that company, to bring AI to the insurance space, and I'm not gonna be able to make it happen. I wake up every day with that fear. But I also read a lot, and the best part about reading is you get to tap into the brain, to the mindset, to the thought process of some of the most dynamic, intelligent Deep thinking individuals, successful individuals who've ever existed. And what I'm gonna do is walk you through my argument for why you should be scared, but that it shouldn't stop you from doing what you wanna do in 2025.

There's this quote from Mark Twain, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear." And I want us to hold that idea in our brain. You will never not be fearful. You will never not be fearful. Whether you do or do not do, you will be fearful for one reason or another.

And our goal in becoming the best versions of ourselves, in finding the peak us, is accepting that that fear comes with trying to do great things and mastering it, not letting it become our master. In the Bible, there's a verse, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." That's Timothy one-seven. You can be a Christian, not be a Christian. You can believe in God, not believe in God.

I don't care. The Bible is one of the best handbooks for becoming the best versions of ourselves and leading a productive, happy, and love-filled life, a satisfied and fulfilled life that has ever been written, which is why it is still the most widely rel- read book more than two thousand years after it was created. So you don't have to believe. Personally, my belief is whether you believe or you don't believe, the good part is God believes in you. But you-- I'm not putting that on you.

People buck at biblical verses sometimes when I share them on the show because they feel like I'm trying to push Christianity, and that's not the case. I believe in God. That's me. I don't care if you do or you don't. That's, that's your thing.

And being an American and believing in kinda the pure American values that were created back in 1776, one of those core values, not explicitly said, but implied, was you get to live the life you wanna live as long as you don't put your shit on someone else. Now, that hasn't always been the case. We haven't always practiced that, but it's one of the implicit core values of this country, and it's one of the things that I love about this country. So I'm gonna share biblical verses with you. If you don't like that or it offends you, you can stop listening or stop watching right now.

That's fine. But to me, whether you believe or don't believe doesn't matter. The book itself is a guidebook. It is the ultimate book on personal development that has ever been written. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear," meaning we are not naturally fearful.

We're filled with power and with love and with a sound mind. And while fear may exist and we may experience fear, it is not who we are. It is not intrinsic to us. It is an external force placed upon us, which gives us the choice to not give into it, to not listen to it, to not abide by it, and I think that's incredibly powerful. The Stoics also address fear.

Fear arises when we focus on external events rather than our m- own mindset, and we go to the master Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find your strength," meaning no matter what happens out in the world, no matter what that item is, no matter what that action is, that event is, that thing that hangs out there that causes you fear, you have in your mind the ability to move past it, to accept it, to take it in, and to keep going. You have that ability in your mind. All right.

So, so what is it, what is it that holds us back? What is it that, that, that-- why does fear hold us back? What is it that makes it so that fear just becomes so debilitating to us? And really, there's three kind of roots of fear if you're, if you dive into the research and not a professional psychologist. So those of you are, that are professional psychologists or professional armchair psychologists, I would love for you to jump in the comments on YouTube or hit me up on DMs, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever, and push back on me.

But there are three core roots of fear: fear of failure, fear of judgment, and a fear of success. When it comes to a fear of failure, thirty-one percent of people avoid big goals because they fear failing. That comes from a Career Build- Builder study from twenty nineteen. Thirty-one percent of people, basically one out of every three people, don't try for the thing because they're worried they may not hit the thing, so they do nothing. Think about that.

They don't even set the goal because of the, the created fear, the anticipated fear of not actually hitting that goal. Jordan Peterson has a great, great quote on this, "You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose not to pay a price." Meaning those individuals who allow anticipated fear to keep them from taking on that big thing, they then have a different price placed upon them, which is they don't get to dictate their future, right? They don't get to decide the rules.

The rules get pressed upon them. Because if we don't push forward and do great work that separates us and allows us to choose and direct our destiny, our destiny is put upon us by someone else. And I cannot think of something that I would wish even upon my enemy than to have their Their destiny dictated to them. That sense of being stuck, that sense of being enclosed and captured, tethered down, anchored. It's, it's devastating.

It's depressing. It's, it's overwhelming. Yet, because we may not hit our big mark, we refuse to even try. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this. Uh, there's lots of videos that you can go check out, Instagram or YouTube, whatever.

But there's videos of elephants that are in captivity, and I saw a video of an elephant in captivity in Thailand, and what they'll do is when the elephant is a baby, they'll tie the elephant to a stake with a chain, and the elephant creates a radius upon which it will walk, and it knows how far the chain will go. And when they reach a certain age, they take the chain off, and the elephant still will not leave that space because in its brain, it has, has been tethered so long to that point that it no longer even believes it's possible to move past that point. And this is what we do to ourselves when we allow fear to anchor us to a single point. The second root fear is judgment. What others think paralyzes us.

Eric Weinstein has a great quote on this. "The problem isn't taking risks, it's the fear of people pointing out when we fail." And I'm gonna make an argument in a second that kinda doubles into this one. And last, and this is one that people often don't think about, or when they're thinking about the idea of fear, is a fear of success. Many of us have a subconscious resistance to the increased responsibilities that come with success.

From the stoic perspective, fear is misplaced focused on the uncontrollable outcomes. Guys, now I wanna dive into the fear of judgment 'cause my TED Talk is actually on this particular point. It's all around the fear of status and my belief that we get stuck because of all these different fears, and we put labels on them, fear of failure, fear of success, whatever. But ultimately, it all comes back to status. We are fearful of the status change that accompanies a potential outcome.

Because, and I've said this before on the show, I do not believe there a such thing, there's such a thing as a fear of failure. I don't think that that's a real thing. I think failure is a word that we put onto an item. It's a label. It's a construct, but it's not real, and here's why.

How many founder stories, how many success stories, be it an athlete, an artist, an entrepreneur, have you heard where it's like failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, huge, enormous success, and then all of a sudden we go back in the record books and we don't call those failures anymore. What do we call them? We call them lessons. So they're all failures. Missed business opportunity, went bankrupt, a bad business deal, horrible litigation, huge, enormous success.

Everyone knows their name, and they're worth millions, if not billions of dollars. Now, failure, failure, failure, failure, huge win, and if we go backwards, it's now lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson. They're no longer failures. They're lessons. If we can do that, if it's possible to go back and change those things from failures to lessons, then failure isn't a real thing.

What we are really worried about is not being successful. It's not a fear of failure. It's not a fear of going bankrupt. It's not a fear of any of those things. We're scared of the status change that will happen associated with the action we are considering taking.

If I quit my job and join this startup, what will my golf buddies think, my drinking buddies think, my mom, my dad think, my kids think, my spouse thinks? What will my colleagues think in the industry? Will they think I'm crazy? Will they think I've lost it? I couldn't handle the pressure of a corporate job, or I couldn't hack it, whatever.

Having a midlife crisis. If you take on a new hobby, or you get sober, or you wanna get fit, and that's, this is a big one with fitness, a big, big reason that people do not take on and keep with fitness and wellness journeys is because the status change associated with them going from being, you know, dad bod to fit dad over 40 is because they don't want the status change. Now you have to tell all your drinking buddies that, "Hey, I'm not coming out on Friday, guys. Seven beers on a Friday night doesn't get me to where I wanna be for my fitness goals." And now your status changes in that group.

You know, out on the g- out on the golf course, everyone else is having a couple beers or a Bloody Mary, and you've said, "Can't do it. I'll play with you, but I'm not gonna drink." And now they stop inviting you, and you're, that, or you at least you think they'll stop inviting you. That status change keeps us from doing it, right? Frankly, if you're fit in general, but certainly fit over the age of 40, you are the exception, and people do look at you differently.

A year ago, I was probably in some of the best shape I've ever been in my life, and I am k- kinda took a little break from that for a while, and I'm now back on that train. I've been on it for about a month, and things are starting to go well. I kinda get my numbers back up, and whatever, it's all good. But about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I was probably in the best shape of my life. I was about 195 pounds.

I could deadlift 465. I could bench press 275. Uh, I was ruck walking every day. I had just done 75 Hard. Like, I was kinda lean and mean and, and in real good shape.

And people look at you differently. They do, and not always in a positive way. Now granted, I just- my brain is broken, and I could literally give a rat's ass what people think about me in general, uh, which has been a, uh, superpower I didn't realize was a superpower 'cause it hasn't always been a positive. But my point being, people don't always look at you and aren't always happy for you. Uh, they're n- it's not always a positive experience when you're the fit person and you're surrounded by five or six other people who are all 20, 30 pounds overweight.

And people don't want that change. They don't want to have to explain to everyone what their fitness regimen is or what they're doing, or how they get up at 5:00 AM to get their workout in, or how they're counting calories, and then people, "Oh, that's stupid," and, "Oh, I can't do that. I don't wanna take that time," and blah, blah, blah. And you know, there's all these stupid conversations that happen when you're getting fit, and it's all a status change, so we don't change. We fear the status change.

And my friends, if I can push you past this in the next year, this is so much of the work that I do on this podcast, and I hope you're gonna be around for this journey. I hope you'll dial in. If you're not subscribed, please do. Is gonna be about pushing this idea of breaking through these status barriers, of breaking down the idea that you need to care what other people think. And I've explained this before on the show.

If you listen to the show on a regular basis, you've heard me talk about this concept. It is not that I don't want you guys to like me. I do. I do want you to like me, but if you don't, it will not change how I feel about myself, how I feel about my relationship with the people in my inner circle, and how I go about my business. It will not change it.

Won't change my mood, won't change my emotions. Trust me, I have had plenty of people take full on hater runs at me, and I just don't care. And those are legit hater runs, not like, you know, I have some receipts. I'm not gonna share them 'cause I'm not gonna do that, but like, not like one of these things, "Oh, there's haters out there." No, I've had people take real runs at me before, and, uh, whatever, right?

I am who I am. Now, I have plenty of other freaking issues, don't get me wrong, but this fear of status with the people that I've consulted with over the last year, with people that I've mentored in my various businesses and throughout the course of my career, with people that have been on my team or in the companies that I've owned, this piece is so vitally important to getting unstuck and becoming the best versions of ourselves. We cannot care what other people think. We can want them to like us. We obviously create to add value to others, whether that's the work we do creation or actual creative projects, but we cannot allow their opinions, right?

I just shared a LinkedIn post, uh, with a, like, a meme on it, and it was a dollar bill, and what it had written on it is, "Your opinion don't cut me checks," or something like that in, like, handwriting and black marker because th- that's the way that I feel. And in my career, the biggest mistakes that I've made are when I have considered the status associated with a move or an action and played for the status. Those are the biggest mistakes that I've ever made in my career were those moments where, "Well, geez, I can get a country club membership if I take this job because of how much money I'm making and think of the job title and..." But those were the biggest mistakes that I have made in my life were those moments. And looking back on those moments, I'm able to share with you today that if you can, if you can remove the fear of status from your life, you will watch doors in your mind open and energy come flooding back into you.

It is fucking incredible, I promise. Okay, I went way longer on that particular section than I had wanted to, but, uh, let, let's talk-- I wanna, uh, now move into a section real quick, some myths about fear that we run into because these myths do hold us back. The first myth is that fear means weakness, that we kinda-- we should get past that just logically. If everyone everywhere has fear, regardless of where they are in their life or what status they're in or what, how much success they've had, they all have fear in some regard, and many of them we would consider both publicly and socially strong people, then fear is not weakness. It's just not.

You can't logically put those two things together. Fear is a part of life. Fear, it, fear and weakness are mutually exclusive items. You should feel fear. Fear is a vector to action.

It's not weakness. Brene Brown has a great quote here. "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen." Think about Jesus Christ. He experienced fear at the highest level and then acted with the ultimate courage.

Myth number two: fear can be eliminated. Again, cannot. Fear cannot be eliminated. You can only accept and move past fear. You cannot eliminate fear.

Eliminating fear should not be the goal. That is wasted time, wasted energy, wasted brain cycles. Every action you take to try to eliminate fear is a waste. It is not moving you forward. Understand that fear will absolutely be present, that it does not make you weak.

Accept that fear and move past it. I try to tell my children when they're feeling fear, uh, particularly in the sports arena around various things, "Use your fear as positive energy." It's just energy. That fear comes in and you feel it and you tense up and you're, you get a little twitchy and you get, you get, you know, you get tense and everything gets a little tense and you get a little slow and your, and your, your, your butt puckers and, and you're nervous. And if you can learn to accept the fear You can channel it back as positive energy, and it becomes a catalyst to moving even faster.

Very tough to do. Certainly not gonna solve that particular problem on this podcast, but it's out there, right? "He who has overcome his fears will be truly free, not he who has removed his fears, he who has overcome." That's Epictetus, great stoic philosopher. The third myth: courage is the absence of fear.

We've already discussed this. It's not going to happen. You will always have fear in your life. It will always be there. You're always gonna be a little scared.

You're always gonna be a little anxious. You're always gonna be a little tense. Grow the fuck up and deal with it. Don't pop a pill. Don't drink yourself into oblivion.

Don't smoke yourself silly. Accept the fear and channel it into something highly productive. That could be spending time with loved ones, showing them love, being present. That could be doing 100 pushups. It could be running 20 miles.

It could be coming back down after everyone's in bed and doing another hour's worth of work to get ahead on your side hustle that you're really interested in. The fear is always gonna be there. It's what you choose to do with it. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid.

Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." So how do some of the most well-respected leaders and thought leaders that we come across social media, the people out there doing things, thinking about these topics daily, how do they handle this idea of fear? Well, we got Goggins, right? Callous your mind, right? Be resilient, right?

Stay hard. You can meme David Goggins all you want, but he's right. Right? The stoic tie-in here is amor fati. Fati.

Amor fati. I'm gonna mispronounce that. Embrace the challenges life throws at you. Marcus Aurelius, "A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything thrown into it." Right?

Get after it. Fear is a vector for action. That fear is an indicator of where you need to go to become your best self. Brene Brown, she... Vulnerability as a power, right?

She addresses leaders and their fear through vulnerability. Recognize that f- fear of failure is often the fear of being seen, back to the idea of a fear of status. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." That's Corinthians. Jordan Peterson, "Face what frightens you incrementally.

Break it into smaller, manageable parts. How long are you going to wait before you demand the best of yourself?" Epictetus. So here are a few practical strategies for mastering your fear. I wanna leave you with this.

We're gonna end on this, this idea of a few practical strategies for how we, how we address our fear if you're still struggling with it, right? If this episode hasn't completely rewired your brain , that's not assuming it would. Hopefully, however, you got a little juice going, you're feeling a little fire, you're not alone, right? Fuck fear. Fear is a vector for action.

Let's go after it, right? Hopefully, you're feeling good. If you have one particular fear that just eats at you, write it down and name it. Name the fear. Make it tangible.

We can overcome tangible things. Sometimes emotions, they're ethereal, they're shifty, they're tough to grab onto. Make that fear tangible. Give it a name. Then write down everything that would happen if you overcame that fear.

Everything. What would your life look like if you overcame that fear, that thing, that tangible item, that named emotion? And then write down everything that would happen if you don't, and then weigh the two. What does your life look like if you overcome this fear? What does your life look like if you don't, and you acquiesce to it?

Which would you rather have? The choice is yours, my friends. And then take action, right? Take action. David ran towards Goliath.

He didn't run away from him. I find sharing your fears helps a lot with an accountability partner, someone you truly trust. Oftentimes, it's good to share your fears with your spouse, but depending on the nature of your relationship, they may not be the best one for you to get advice back from. Oftentimes, they know you too deep, and they know you too deep as the person that you are today. And it is very helpful, in addition to your spouse or your partner, that you find a true accountability partner, someone who accepts you for, for all the crazy shit that makes you who you are, someone that accepts you from all that and still wants to spend time with you.

Share your fears with that person, and take feedback from them. Get advice from them. How would they approach this problem? How would they attack it? What actions would they take?

What do they believe the positive outcomes of con- overcoming this fear are? What do they believe the negative outcomes of overcoming this... of, of acquiescing to this fear? What do they, what do they believe the outcomes of acquiescing to this fear are? Which would they prefer? Are better than one because they have a good return for their label.

Ecclesiastes. Hopefully... I always mispronounce that one. You guys are probably crushing me in the comments today for all my mispronunciations of these biblical references. I love them, I read them, but I have no idea how to say them.

All right. And last, I'm gonna leave you with this, right? As far as actions. I've always struggled with the idea of gratitude and gratitude journals. It sounds very, like, hippy-dippy-ish and nonsensical.

However, I read a really great book. It's called Claim Your Power, and in there, there's a large section on gratitude. And one of the things that I took from that, it is, is it's very... When you are grateful for what you have, it is very difficult to be scared about what you don't When you're, when you're grateful for what you have, it is incredibly difficult to be fearful about the things that you don't have. Gratitude is very powerful.

"Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself," Matthew six thirty-four. So here's, here's our kind of closing call to action, right? We're gonna identify that fear. We're gonna commit to accepting it and facing it. We're gonna write a list of the outcomes if we do overcome that fear.

We're gonna write a list of things if we do not overcome that fear. We're gonna pick which one of those equations we would rather have, and make a choice, and push forward. Fear is a vector for action. I'll leave you with this final thought. Fear is not a stop sign.

Right, Walv- Waldo Emerson, one of my absolute favorites, "What are you afrai- Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of my absolute favorites, "What you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do." Fear is a vector for action. My friends, twenty twenty-five is gonna be an incredible year. We are not gonna let fear keep us from the things that we need to do, from becoming the best version of ourselves, not just for us, but for those we love and love us back. This is the way.

If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening. Happy holidays. Want to give your host a gift?

Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy holiday.