#79 The Truth is... You’re Afraid

Rachel Denning (00:01.166)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life podcast. Man, I'm excited to spend some time with you guys again. I honor and respect your time. And I love that. It's so important. And I appreciate that. It's a huge honor to me and a privilege to have some of your time. And...

Love you guys, think about you all the time and I just genuinely wanna help you and me, all of us together, like as a tribe, as a community, live our very best lives. So we wake up every day seriously stoked. Like we're excited, we pop out of bed because we're working on big things, exciting things and we're facing our challenges which.

I know sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but facing challenges can be really exciting and invigorating. I know sometimes we're just like, my life. I hate these trials and struggles, but we can actually wake up and say, okay, bring it. Let's go get this thing. I'm going to conquer this mountain, but we can wake up like that and we can feel energized and optimized and weaponized where our lives are just absolutely fantastic. And that's why we share this. That's why we're here. I love it. Love that you guys are here.

Love you, appreciate it. Life is just awesome. Let's go get it. So I want to tell a story. So there I was. There we was. My wife and I had come up with this crazy idea in 2007 to load up our family and drive from the United States to Costa Rica. And...

We couldn't find any blogs about it. We couldn't find anybody who had actually done it. Like this was back before all the blogs and all the media and all stuff and like we were like are there even roads? well they have diapers for our little kids because our fourth was just born. So we had our oldest was four that we adopted and our fourth was just born. So we had four kids born under. We load up our car with all of our stuff.

Rachel Denning (02:26.926)
And we start driving south and we get to the border of Arizona and Mexico. And we feel like we're about to drive off a cliff into the unknown. We hadn't, we hadn't been in Mexico. Well, Rachel, I had flown down and had a little trip in Playa del Carmen, which real touristy area near Ken Kuhn. That's all we had had, right? But driving across the border into old Mexico.

So you guys, we get to the border and both of us, I mean, our stomachs are in a knot. I'm squeezing the steering wheel, white knuckled. Like, what are we doing? And our four precious little kids, our whole life, we dropped everything, we sold our stuff, kept a few things in a storage area. And then we were just, we were onto a big, bold, crazy adventure because we wanted to travel. We wanted our kids to have this experience. And...

And so we start driving, we're like, what are we doing? And we drive and then there's kind of a border. You drive for a while, you stop and do your paperwork and there's no signs, there's no instructions, there's nothing. Luckily I spoke Spanish and we were able to get all the paperwork done. And then we start driving and then nothing happened. We're driving along and it's this beautiful, beautiful desert in Northern Mexico. And drive for a few hours and we see some gorgeous.

beaches, stopped for some amazing food and stayed at some nice hotels. And we ended up traveling for weeks and weeks and weeks and having the most amazing experience. And that was just our first time of doing it. But we, after being inside, even for just a couple hours, we looked over each other and we're like, what were we so afraid of?

Why were we literally like sick to our stomachs with fear when we got across and there's nothing to be afraid of. And it reminded me of all the times in my life where I hesitated. I held back or more often than not I didn't follow through on something because I was afraid.

Rachel Denning (04:46.894)
And it's so fascinating, my friends, that we, we get in this space where fear begins to literally control and direct our lives. Let that sink in. Like let this sink in. Now, like most of us wouldn't like consider it, well, I'm not a fearful person. I'm not running around in fear, but when we stop and think about it, the truth is you're afraid.

And it's fascinating that most of the, as I work with more and more people all around the world, I'm doing it every day. Now I'm coaching and mentoring, speaking, training the vast majority of people are making a majority of their experiences based on fear. Now roll with me here for a minute. Roll with me. Sometimes you'd be like, no, that's not me. I just do this thing.

But when we start digging in, like, why do you do that? And you're like, why do that? It doesn't, I'm not afraid at all. I'm like, okay, why do you do that though? Well, you dig a little deeper there. And often what we've done is we've kind of reacted to some of our fears. And so we settle into decisions and choices, actions, and habits that are comfortable to us. And we do those and there's no fear in those. So you're sitting there saying, no, I do that every day. I'm not afraid. Well, you're doing that often because you actually are afraid.

do what you really want.

chase down those dreams and to live boldly. And we're afraid. And so like, so my, my great friends and people I talked to coaching clients, they, they, they describe the fear as being crippling that the fear and the worry makes us, it holds us back. And our days, check this out.

Rachel Denning (06:43.502)
Our days end up being consumed.

with fear and worry and stress and anxiety about what? Fear about the future, fear about your health, fear about death, fear about the career, fear of being a failure, of a dream or a goal that didn't get accomplished, some expectation that didn't come out. And it gets so hard to move on.

And then we mentally slip into this negative state and we become a negative person sometimes inadvertently. And it's hard to pull yourself up. And so at that point then it's easy to slip into the darkness and depression comes in and discouragement comes in and we get caught in these cycles. And then all of a sudden we're realizing that so much of our life is being controlled and directed by fear.

and it gets in our head. And we spend all this time like trying to appease our fears and trying to avoid them and then stressing about them. And then if we're not careful, and I'm sure this has happened to you because it's happened to me, and it happens to all of us, is our minds start creating these crazy, we put all of our imagination to waste in fears. Right, our mind starts creating these insane scenarios where really at the end of every scenario we end up dying alone in the gutter.

right? Or just like, I took a business chance, you know, and the sphere is that whatever happens socially or financially, whatever the end result is, we end up dying homeless in the gutter with no one around to love us. And the mind can do that. But what's, what's crazy you guys. And it is truly amazing that we can fall so far without even realizing what's happening.

Rachel Denning (08:46.35)
and we can start to protect ourselves and our lives. Has this happened to you where you just kind of get in these avoidance patterns and you stop getting outside of your comfort zone and you stop going, you know, trying new things. You stop approaching new people. Some of us are, we live in such an amazing time. Some of us,

can literally do most of our life from a very comfortable space. We may not even have to leave our homes anymore because we can work from home. We can shop from home. We can do our stuff. And so we rarely go out anymore and we only engage with certain people and we only do certain things because of the things we feel comfortable doing. And we, we create this cage for ourselves that we feel like is protecting us from our fears.

But what it is, it's a prison that we've created by our fears, because of our fears. And our fears, most of our fears, 90 % of our fears, we create ourselves. And we create them with our thoughts. And so we go through life second -guessing ourselves, doubting ourselves, hesitating, procrastinating, worrying.

putting all this energy and emotion into fear. And you guys, here's the big stuff I want to hit home here. Fear is actually an optional thing. Because like I just said, like the vast majority of our fears are actually illogical. And they're, they're feelings. Fear is a feeling. It's not a fact. Like jot that down. Like take that in, make it, make it yours.

Fear is a feeling, not a fact. And obviously some fears are super helpful. Like some fears are super helpful to keep us from doing really stupid stuff like jumping off some cliff we shouldn't jump off. I mean there's fear to keep us alive, right? We're afraid of dying so we stay alive and don't do anything really dumb. And fear of going into places we should not be going into. There are some really good fears that drive us.

Rachel Denning (11:12.173)
And there's some really good fears. Like for me, my greatest fear when everyone asks, Hey, what's your greatest fear? My greatest fear is living a mediocre life. That's a fear of like getting to the end of my life and looking back and realizing that I had lived under in the prison of my fears, right? Living this, this mediocre existence. That's a fear and it drives me and it's good. It's a good, healthy thing for me. It doesn't always work for everybody, but it drives me.

So there are some fears that are good, but the vast majority of our fears are created in our minds. They're not facts, they're optional things. And usually when we look at the facts, it stops the fears. It shuts them down. But here's the problem and the solution. Most fear is just the result of a poorly managed mind.

just letting, we're letting our, we're getting in our heads and we're letting our imagination and all kinds of things go and we're kind of letting the thoughts and the feelings get out of control without actually stopping them, facing them, addressing them and saying, what is it? What is it? What is it you're actually afraid of?

And it's, I'm not saying that you're the feeling isn't real. You're feeling it. And it feels really real. Like when I was at the border, I, it was physically causing me like physical angst and pain and discomfort. And it was all because of my own thoughts, but there were no facts. It was just my thoughts which created my feelings. And a lot of that, you guys, is because we, we spend so much time feeding our fears.

and starving our faith.

Rachel Denning (13:05.453)
We spend time.

You know, what's another word? We're like inputting fear. We're consuming fear, right? Without, you know, consuming facts. You with me on this? So we're feeding our fears and starving our faith and we're consuming fears and not consuming any facts, right? And we listen to and watch things and we talk about things and we think about things that are just scaring the wits out of us.

From horror movies, those kind of fears are not natural. They're not born with those things. They're planted in there. From horror movies up to watching the news. When I meet people who are really afraid and they're constantly living in fear, first thing I acknowledge is like, hey, you watch a lot of news, don't you? Like, yeah, yeah, I gotta know what's going on in the world. I'm like, you gotta shut that down.

Rachel Denning (14:08.909)
that when we're consuming that stuff, it's negative, it's dark, and there's all that negativity and energy, it's all out there. And we gotta remove that from our lives. So a lot of it, we're actually creating ourselves. And so I wanna invite you and challenge you. Like this is a big deal. Because I don't think there's any one of you wants to live a life in fear.

There's not anyone who wants to live their life in fear. Who wants to just go through life being like, yeah, my fears hold me back. I love this. I love this feeling of being so afraid that I don't actually do what I want to do, but we acquiesce to our fears. So what do we do about it? How can you have that courageous, bold, confident self that's super you?

When you see yourself, and do this with me right now, imagine your very best self, your super self, right? The hero, the heroine, just confident, bold, courageous, proactive, assertive, ambitious, driven.

Are you cowering to fear? No. If there are fears, you face them. Your best self, you face them. But most of the fears, I'm telling you, like, trust me on this. If you're having a hard time wrestling with this, just trust me on this one. Most of your fears, when you face them, they'll just dissolve. They'll just dissipate and go away because they're not founded on anything real.

And so we gotta face those fears and just question them, right? Like, okay, is that real? If I take this action, is that really gonna happen? And go through a logical worst case scenario. That's actually really healthy to do. If you're thinking about a business investment or just a financial investment, you're thinking about meeting new people or moving to a new place or traveling to a place where you've never been or going to a restaurant you've never eaten at, like, look at your fears. Like, are those real fears? Is that real?

Rachel Denning (16:17.965)
Or is it imagine? Have you let your mind get the most of you? Get the best of you and hold you down. So, number one, cut out negative input. Just trust me on this one. Like take this challenge, will you please? Take this challenge. Cut out all negative input. No scary movies, no news.

If there's people that you talk to all the time, every time you talk to them, they're just negative, negative, negative, and all this and all that, and the world's falling apart and everyone's horrible, the world's out to get you, it's a terrible place. If you're around people that have a huge scarcity mentality and a fear mentality, and every time you talk to them, it's bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. I want to challenge you right now, absolutely remove all of that stuff from your life. With me? Will you do this? Take this challenge.

Remove all negative input. Stop feeding your fears. Number two, feed your mind with great stuff. Great stuff. Read fantastic books. Listen to podcasts like this. Watch great videos. Some movies. Be really selective on your movies. Watch movies that are uplifting and inspiring. That you're not, you're hopeful, not fearful.

Feed your faith. Feed your faith in humanity, in the world, in success, in yourself. Get training. Remember, it's all about training, you guys. We're training ourselves. We're training for greatness. So you're training your mind in the way you think. And you'll actually do, in this feeding process, you're gonna believe and say to yourself positive things instead of believing and saying to yourself negative things. We literally are, almost every moment, we're standing at a crossroads.

where we have a choice. We can choose to believe the dark or you can choose to believe the light. We literally have a choice to choose. Like you can choose like is today gonna be a good day or bad day? And a lot of us think, it's gonna happen to me. Like I'm a victim here and I wanna invite you to take on the attitude of like, no, I'm gonna make this a great day. My day isn't dependent on what happens. My day isn't dependent on what others do. My day is dependent on what I do.

Rachel Denning (18:41.133)
and I'm going to show up and make this an awesome day. And what if something unexpected happens? Well, if I'm managing my mind and I'm feeding my faith and I'm facing the facts, then I'm good. I got this. I got this. And the facts might even come in some days that are, those are bad facts.

And yet even in that moment, especially in that moment, we don't give in to our fears.

I wanna, you guys, we're gonna come back to this. This is just one episode. I'm gonna come back to this because a huge majority of people are living under their fears, especially the fear of failure. And when you look at that even, right, what is it you're actually afraid of? What is a fear of failure? It's so vague, it's so general. It's interesting, I'm like, hey, why aren't you doing that? Why do you have to go over your goals?

Like what would you love to do? Like, this would be awesome, but there's no way, I can't do that, I'm afraid of that. And we take that as some kind of gospel truth, as the way things are. Well, I'm afraid, so I can't do it. See, remember, fear is optional. See, that's not true. What are you really afraid of? Well, I'm afraid of failing. Well, what's that? What do you mean?

And so often it's another fear. It's a fear of looking stupid.

Rachel Denning (20:11.277)
It's most often that.

Deathly afraid.

of looking dumb, looking foolish, looking like a fraud.

disappointing other people. That's our big fear.

We're afraid of what others might think of us. Some of us, you guys, and this is at the end of the day, you realize how irrational it is. Some of us are so terrified that they, this undefined they will think poorly of us. And when you start digging, you're like, well, who, who, who exactly like name, name the people exactly you're afraid or, you know, we'll say something or perceive something.

Rachel Denning (21:01.773)
And often it's these unknown people. Might be some random dude with an alias name on the internet. You're like, seriously? You're afraid of what that dude says?

And so we have to face those, get to the bottom of it, say, what is it, what is it I'm actually afraid of? And very often you'll find it's just illogical. And it's just a mismanaged mind. We've kind of allowed this creativity or we haven't really faced it. And when we get the facts, we realize, well, I'm not, I'm not going to be afraid of that anymore. That's silly. And then sometimes we'll, we'll get to a real fear and like, yeah, I'm afraid of that happening. And that, and the, the, the reality is that could happen.

And so you think through it and you decide to act in spite of it. High achievers are acting in spite of some of the fears they do have. They're facing all the fears that pop up in their heads. And they're saying that's ridiculous. And the ones that are illogical, like, go, you're gone. I'm not feeding my fears. I'm not even going to entertain you or listen to you, like, get out of here. I'm feeding my mind with goodness. I'm keeping any fear based stuff out.

And so that alone will eliminate so much. I'm reading great books, which is calming my mind and my spirit. It's training my mind to think clearly and think about positive things. And then when there is a legitimate fear, I think through it and say, yeah, you know what? I'm actually terrified to go speak in front of an audience, which is one of the most prominent fears among mankind is the fear of public speaking. I say, yeah, I'm terrified.

terrified to put myself out there. I actually am. You might be saying, I actually am terrified to try something new and knowing I'm just gonna flop and other people will see me flop as I try to learn a new instrument or a new language.

Rachel Denning (23:00.813)
or I try to meet new people or I'm going to try a new business adventure. What will people say?

But you're like, this is what I want. This is how I want to live my life. And so I'm gonna do it anyways. I'm gonna go forward.

My friends, we were born. We come here with trailing clouds of glory from heaven and God put us here to do great things and not to live like terrified little mice hiding underground. We're here to be lions and bears and tigers chasing our dreams down, running bold and confident and strong.

That's what we're here to do. And so I wanna invite you and challenge you.

take action. Whenever you feel afraid, ask yourself why. Get really clear. I'm afraid of my health. I'm afraid of my... Okay, stop right there. Is that something that's in your control? Can you do something about your health? Yeah. Get in the best health of your life this year with us. Like literally eat fantastic food in the right amounts and exercise all year long with it. Get in the best health of your life.

Rachel Denning (24:25.773)
I'm afraid about my career with, you know, it's all uncertain and I don't know. I know I've hit some goals in the past. Can I hit them again? That's within your control. Turn it on, man. What can you do to absolutely ensure your success? What knowledge, what set of skills do you need to ensure your success? That not only can you maintain a good career, you can actually double it or triplet or 10 exit. And I'm not kidding here. I'm not throwing this out just to be fun. And you know, Hey,

motivational, I'm being dead serious.

How are you using your time to ensure your success? What are you going to become world class awesome at? How are you going to become a lynchpin? So that you know if everybody else gets let go, you're staying. Because they need you. And even if you go, you got doors wide open, people begging you to come because you are a playmaker. You get things done.

Now, if you're sitting here in your mind going, well, it's not me. I can't do that. Stop that. Stop. Like, I got this. I got this. You can figure this out. You can make this happen. You can take control of your life. We've got to stop playing fear. Often. Let me hit this. Fear often comes from when we play the victim, when we get, we slipped into victim Ville and we're playing the victim and we think life happens to us and fear happens to us.

and all of these things are out of my control. There are some things that are out of control, so why worry about them? You can't do anything about them. You know, the weather, the economy, the world economy, but you can change your economy and you can change your weather. You're having the right gear. There's stuff you can do. It's so ironic, isn't it, you guys? We worry and stress and get all caught up emotionally and mentally in things we can't control.

Rachel Denning (26:25.933)
to the neglect of the things we can. So take back charge of your life. I'm getting passionate here again, my friends. Let's do this. Let's take back control of our life. When I realized that I could control my outcomes, it changed everything for me. I lived in fear. I know fear, my friends. I know worry.

Terrified, sick of it.

Years ago, I just lived in fear. Fear of what others thought. Fear of starving. Fear of not being able to get a career, a job. Fear of not being able to pay the bills. Fear of being alone.

Fear of failing in marriage, fear of failing as a parent, fear of failing as a leader, as a disciple, as a learner. What if I'm not good enough? What if I can't do it? And when I took back control of my life and I stopped playing the victim and I got really clear about the things that are in my control and I worked on them, the fears melted away.

and then the legitimate fears have stuck around. I was able to think through clearly and say, yeah, that scares me, but I'm going anyways. I'm gonna take the leap anyways, because this is my life purpose. This is what I need to do. In order to be my best self, I've gotta take this risk. I'm going. Who's coming with me?

Rachel Denning (28:06.829)
This year can be the absolute best year of your life. But it won't be, I promise it won't be. It won't even be close. If you go into it with timidity and trepidation and worry and anxiety and stress and worried about the future and about what might happen, what others might think and if you're hesitating and second guessing and doubting.

you're gonna live in your cage. That's gonna stink. But I want you to tear that cage down. I want you to stare it down first of all, and let it's Can you picture this in your mind? Those fears that are illogical that are irrational, you just stare them down. It's a staring contest. You have that look in your eyes like I'm going to eat you for breakfast. And a lot of them will just slink away into the shadows. Because you're irrational, they're gone.

So half your cage is going to disappear immediately. And then your other one's saying, you know what? I got this. I can figure this out. I'm going to go get her. I'm going to make this happen. This is figure outable. And I can do this. And you face it down. You chase it down. You make it happen because you're feeding your faith and not your fears. So do the opposite, my friends. Starve your fears. Feed your faith. Live the life that you know you can. Become that person.

your head up, your shoulders back, walking confidently in the direction of your dreams, running, chasing those things down. So you live a life you love and fear. Irrational fear is no longer a part of your existence or who you are. You're living in your confidence and in your power. Love you guys. Let's go live like this. Reach upward.