#97 Facing fears and coping with anxiety in times of uncertainty

Rachel Denning (00:00.846)
Good morning my friends. Wow, things have gotten crazy. Like corona crazy. Can you believe it? Like just wow. I mean they've been escalating right? But just yesterday they got real and fascinating. And what a time. I was talking with my wife and children yesterday. What an experience. What a time where I mean literally a

the globe things are shutting down and places are emptying out and there's some panic and some fear which is what we're gonna talk about today but what a time like think about it if you know ten years ago fifteen years ago even five years ago somebody suggested that there would there would be something that would just shut down everything you'd be like come on no what no

How could that be? You can't empty out the big cities of the world. You know, close down all the schools and churches and, but it's happening. man, this is crazy. What a time period in history. Like we're living in a significant moment of history. This is fascinating. We, I ran out of dishwashing detergent yesterday morning. We were trying to do the dish and we couldn't. So I'm like, okay, after work day I'm gonna run to the grocery store.

And during the day, of course, we got announcements, our whole area got announcements that all the schools are closed. And then we got announcements that the churches are closed. And then by the time I get to the grocery store, there was a run on the grocery store. It was crazy. And like the entire aisles emptied, right? The pasta and the toilet paper, eggs, I mean, just cleared out.

Luckily, you know, we picked up a few things and ended up filling up our cart and got some things because had I gone back even later that night or today, it'd be empty, man. Nothing. Unfortunately for us, we eat extremely healthy and well. So there's, there's, there was always a pretty decent supply of the healthy stuff. It was the unhealthy stuff that went first. Interestingly, but man, crazy times. So let's talk about fear, my friends.

Rachel Denning (02:26.414)
Fear is a part of life and always will be. There'll always be this element of fear and that's okay. And actually good. Cause fear keeps us from legitimate danger, but here's the problem.

If our fears are not controlled and directed, then our fears begin to limit us and control us and start keeping us from, well, they become irrational and our irrational fears start holding us back from things that aren't really dangerous. Excuse me.

And so because of that, if we're not really conscious and aware, we're going to talk more about that. If we're not conscious and aware of our fears and what fear, even what they are, most of us don't even know what fear is actually. And we'll talk about that, but if we're, if we're not conscious of it and aware of it and controlling and directing it, then it literally starts to control us. Right. Which is crazy when.

fear becomes this really manipulative emotion that tricks us into living a boring existence and a limited and unfulfilled existence and it leads to this half -lived life. Right? And see look, our fears should be counselors, not commanders. Right?

Our fish should be canceled and not commander. But I'm jumping ahead. I'm going to be all over the place. I have this gigantic file about the difference between fear and courage. And I'm referencing all kinds of books here. I got a stack of books in front of me, even more books I want to reference, but that would be an entire course, not a podcast episode. And I'm actually, I've already outlined a whole course on coping with anxiety because it's coming, becoming such a big deal and fear.

Rachel Denning (04:35.63)
Fear is so manipulative and so overrun in our day and many of us are being so severely limited by our fears. And then fear can turn into panic and anxiety and then cause crazy behavior. Obviously we just kind of default if we're not aware of it, we're not in control of ourselves. We default into fight or flight or freeze, right?

And interestingly, last night here at the local Sam's Club, like all kinds of fights broke out. And I met a gentleman at the store last night. He's like, I can't believe this is crazy. It's crazy that he's saying this. He said he was at Sam's Club right before he went over to the store and he saw a woman hit two guys over the head with a wine bottle because they were fighting over some meat, a package of meat.

And I was like, this is, this is unreal. That is, that is real panic right there and allowing your fears to overcome you. So let's back up. What is fear? Fear, my friends. And it's, it's greatly misunderstood. A lot of us, we think we understand fear, but most of us have actually never really even felt fear and pushed through it. I mean, some of you have, and some of you walk through it and you'll know, but for the most part,

people avoid the feeling of fear and they think that's fear that it's the fear of fear. Does that make sense? It's the fear of feeling fear that most people are experiencing and they think that's fear, right? Which I guess it is in a way, but like real deep fear. Have you ever actually felt it and then just allowed yourself to experience it and feel it and then move through it? And what is it really? What is it really? It's

It's kind of an emotional response. Now it can trigger some physical things like an increased heart rate or increased breathing, right? But like that also happens when we go to the gym and when we're out for a run. And it also happens when we get really excited. So what is it we're really afraid of and what is fear? Fear is an emotion that is mostly and almost entirely caused by our thoughts. Now if one of your kids,

Rachel Denning (06:59.405)
jumps out and scares you from behind the bush or around the corner of the house. You know, it's an immediate reaction, right? And that's illogical because they can jump out and there was nothing really to be afraid of, right? There was no real threat to your life. Nothing harmful was going to happen. Somebody was just teasing you. But the body has this instinct that's been built in for us. You know, it was years ago. It was to protect us when we were living in the wild.

But for the most part, most of us aren't gonna experience any life threatening situations like that. It's gonna be very rare. So we have these fears now that are predominantly led and created. This is so important. Please, please, please, like, sink this into your mind, your conscious, your subconscious, into your soul and teach it to your friends and your family. Our fears are created...

by our thoughts.

fears are created by our thoughts. We think something, no, most of us aren't even aware of that. We haven't thought through the process enough. They're like, I'm just afraid. Well, what are you afraid of? Just pause with it. What are you afraid of? Don't, don't let the I am afraid mean I'm stopping, I'm not doing it, which is what most people do. They say I'm afraid and boom, they're out there. They won't even go near it. They won't process it. They won't think about it. They won't touch it. They just are so afraid of being afraid.

And whatever this fear is and often play the victim to it thinking it's out of my control. I'm terrified of that No, like and they you know what I'm saying and you've done this I've done this I did this I used to do this a ton because I was terrified you guys I had all these these Irrational fears, especially as you know teens and early 20s. I was terrified. I was terrified to talk to people

Rachel Denning (08:56.557)
talk to girls especially. I mean how irrational is that? That I was afraid to talk to girls. I was terrified. Well are they really scary? Was my life in danger? No. But I didn't have the skill set or the knowledge to process this, right? I was terrified of getting in front of people. And that's been reported as the number one fear, the fear of public speaking. More than people...

say they're more afraid of public speaking than they are of death.

what in the world, right? Because it does feel terrifying. Now, the feeling of fear, it's real. So I don't want to, I don't want to negate that when you and I, when we feel fear, it's real, but it's not always right. That's important. Fear is real, but it's not always right. And it's intense and it's there, but it's mostly created by our own thinking.

And you're like, no, I didn't create that fear. I didn't just sit there and think through it. But we have to pause with it and get it out and look at it and say, what meaning am I giving this? Because there's no actual physical threat to my life. If I stand up in front of an audience, like I'm not likely to be stoned to death by what I say, so what am I really afraid of? And what it comes down to is the thoughts we have and that we give meaning to.

And there's the ticket. We often give meaning to certain things. And so it creates the feeling or the emotion of fear and it starts to control us and manipulate us and limit us. And it grows out of control. We literally

Rachel Denning (10:51.245)
like let it take over our lives and you'll know people like this. Maybe you've experienced yourself. I know a lot of people like this. It comes up a lot when I'm coaching or working with people or just meeting people. They're allowing fear to control and direct their lives. And I've talked about this in other episodes where feel fear is this, this dominating force and the vast majority of our decisions and actions are being controlled and directed by fear. Even, even if it's indirectly.

Right. So let's, let's dive into a little bit of the brain science. I've talked about this before, but we have the amygdala and the hippocampus, right, which are two centers. They, they're controlling, you know, what's important and what to be afraid of, like what's dangerous, what's important. And it usually hits those first before it gets to the prefrontal cortex, which is the front of our heads that actually makes the decisions. What's interesting is we can control and direct that. And.

we can actually override it. So even past neural connections where we've been terribly afraid of something and it's all hyperactive, right? We can literally override those with new neural connections. There's some credible research behind that in the book, The Power of Habit. She starts with a story with this lady Lisa just totally transforms her whole life. And as they scan her brain,

She still has all those old tendencies for overeating and smoking and, and, you know, other just horrendous habits she had that was just wrecking her life. And it was still there, but she had overridden them. Like she had developed new neural connections and new cognitive abilities. And we can do the same thing for a lot of us. What's happening in the hippocampus and the amygdala is out of control.

And most of it is simply because we haven't learned to manage our thoughts better. So much of fear is merely the result of a mismanaged.

Rachel Denning (13:00.141)
Please let that hit home. Let it sink in.

so much of our fear and the controlling factor of fear is simply because we have not managed our thoughts. And so if we identify our fears and we think through them thoroughly, we'll get to this kind of at the end here, if we think through them really thoroughly, then we'll be able to identify them and acknowledge the meaning we've given them.

man, this stuff is crazy, right? But we let it get out of control. So I'm gonna share a whole bunch of quotes and bunch of ideas and really kind of get this concept here. I really want to just say that we don't allow your doubts and your fears to be the decision makers in your life. Take counsel from your courage, from your vision, from your ambition, from your priorities. My fears can be counselors, but not commanders.

I do not take orders from my fears. I'll pay attention to them. I will always ask why that's that critical key factor there to understanding what why we're afraid and we have to get to the facts. So here's here's a cool thing is that fears are feelings not facts. Let that sink in. Fears are feelings not facts. And you have to stop and you say well I'm feeling this fear. Is it a

Is it an actual fact? Now what's funny is we'll tell ourselves stories. Like, well yeah, coronavirus is real or whatever else. It's a real, it's a real threat, people are dying. Yes, but are you dying? Do you have it? Are you 100 % guaranteed to get it and then die? And a lot of this fear, which we're gonna talk about again, so much of it is it's created by media.

Rachel Denning (15:01.997)
by hysteria, by people intentionally stirring up fear. In fact, I think his name's James, James Altutcher. He's a very well -known writer. He worked for the newspaper industry and he said, essentially, every day at the newspaper, you're told to find the thing that would scare people the most and write about that. And he said, essentially, every day is Halloween at the newspaper and we're trying to scare people. I mean, that's the objective.

And so they'll take things and they'll blow them way out of proportion because fear sells, man. It spreads like wildfire and it sells. And so they take things out of perspective and they create these, they literally create these problems. And so, well, I'll come back to that as a solution. We've got to be very careful. And man, isn't that, isn't that just wrong? Are you guys with me on that? That's just sick and wrong. Like there ought to be some kind of justice. People ought to be held accountable for stirring up fear.

Look what it's doing to people. It's just crippling so many people's lives. Please share this. Share these principles. Share these ideas. Teach them to your children. Teach them to your friends and family. Share this podcast. We've got to get this out there. I want to help people manage their thoughts better, with more power, and take back control of their lives. Because they often have given up control. They've allowed their fears to control them. So when I say fears, get the facts. When I say facts, I mean facts, not the opinions of others.

no matter how common or how popular. Get your facts from the right sources. Generally the news and other media is not one of the right sources. Very often asking why will reveal an unfounded fear and it'll expose silly social conditioning or other foolish ideas and prejudices that often cause unnecessary fear. Right? Other times asking why,

Interestingly, like Zig Ziglar said, he said, fear and faith have something in common.

Rachel Denning (17:31.245)
They both expect something to happen in the future. The interesting aspect is that we usually get what we expect." Close quote, that's from Zig Ziglar. So fear will cripple you. It's one of the major, if not the major deterrent to following and achieving dreams. It's interesting, the most common statement in question that we would get while we were doing our trips, Rachel and I were driving, traveling all over the world with our kids,

The most common question we got was, aren't you afraid? You guys are so brave. And it was interesting, Rachel and I would kind of look at each other and like, really? And I mean, when we first started, we were terrified, right? So legitimately, yes. When we first started traveling, we were terrified. We were so scared. So we got to the border of Mexico and we were like, white knuckled, I was gripping the steering wheel. Both of us, our stomachs were in knots. The kids weren't back playing. They didn't know. And we were like, what are we doing? it's so scary.

And we were terrified and we only, in our first road trip all the way across Mexico, we only stayed in like, you know, four or five star resorts and all inclusive resorts, only ate at restaurants we were familiar with. And it was very silly looking back. And we were terrified. But then after we'd been traveling for years, and well, and the problem was once we got through, we were driving for a couple hours that day and then we looked at each other and we're like, what were we afraid of?

This is awesome. Like what were you so, then we went to the beaches and waterfalls and the people and then we've been traveling for years all around the world and never really have felt threatened at all. Like never felt threatened. It's just been amazing. It's been incredible. Our fears, those crippling fears were only our imagination. They weren't the facts. They were feelings, not facts. And it was ignorance and prejudice that had created so much fear in our lives.

And so then when we get asked that question now, we're like, it's like we're like Indiana Jones fighting off enemies that are trying to kill us at every turn. The reality is it's not scary at all. Right. And we, we face our fears only to realize that there was no need for fear. And my friends, I want to declare that boldly to you. The vast majority of your fears.

Rachel Denning (19:55.725)
are created in your mind.

And their feeling's not facts. And so fear, again, I've repeated this already, but fear is a good thing to keep us from real danger. But there's no real danger in speaking in front of a crowd, of putting yourself out there, of chasing your dream, of being your best self, of trying new food, of...

Even donating blood, people are terrified of that. They're so afraid of the feeling of the pain, right? Or the experience. And then they get this little needle prick and they're like, okay, that wasn't near as bad. And what's interesting and ironic is our fear of something happening is often so much worse than the thing itself. Wow, right?

Man and so again the fear of failure right have you failed before not that bad I failed in fact we've had some epic failures in our adventures and and the things we've tried and The fear of that failure was way worse than the failure itself even Jack Kenfeld said that he said don't worry about failures Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try

If you want to fear something, be afraid of missing out. Be afraid of not achieving your dreams, of not living your life to your full potential. That's a real failure. Paulo Coelho said, there's only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve, the fear of failure.

Rachel Denning (21:39.629)
Dale Carnegie said, do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it. That is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear. And we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit here. All right, let me share some more thoughts.

Rachel Denning (22:00.301)
there's so much. man. Life. Well, Tony Robbins said this, life is a dance between what you desire most and what you fear the most.

Somebody one time said, do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.

Somebody else said he who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret to life and I agree wholeheartedly like we have to start facing our fears and and in facing them will learn a couple of things like I've already mentioned we'll either realize they were unfounded and you know unreasonable they weren't logical

or we'll learn that we can face a fear or we'll get deep in there and say, yeah, okay, this is legitimate, right? But we have to face it. We have to get into it and not let it paralyze us and cripple us, right? because it's holding us back. I know people who, they just...

consistently restrict their life a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, until I now know like wonderful people who are afraid to leave their home. Because they've gotten so comfortable at home and they start conjuring up misusing their imagination now, they don't go anywhere or do anything because everything is a big scary place, right? Which is crazy. Let me share this information from an article.

Rachel Denning (23:42.317)
First, a quote with Michel, Michel de Montaigne. He said 500 years ago, he said, my life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened. Close quote. Emerson wrote about that too, how we'll just torture ourselves with things that never actually happened. And it's this fear, the fear of things that is often worse than the thing itself. And then this is what this article said in the Huffington Post.

Now there's a study that proves it about what Montaigne said there. This study looked into how many of our imagined calamities never materialize. In this study, subjects were asked to write down their worries over an extended period of time and then identify which of their imagined misfortunes did not actually happen. Lo and behold, it turns out that 85 % of what subjects worried about never happened.

Let that hit home my friends. 85 % of what people were worrying about never happened. And with 15 % of it that did happen, 79 % of those people discovered that they could either handle the difficulty better than they expected or the difficulty taught them a lesson that was really worth learning. Which then bumped that up to 97 % of what you worry over is not much more.

than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misperceptions.

Rachel Denning (25:25.805)
Think about it. We're punting ourselves with our thoughts. And literally those thoughts are just the meaning we give to it. So like the fear of talking to strangers or meeting new people, right? What are we so afraid of? The fear of putting ourselves out there, of trying something new. I work with people who want to share something. They want to either write a book or publish a video or start a blog or something. And they're often just terrified to put it out there.

And when you stop and think about it and really get through it, like what are we so afraid of? And it's often we just, we conjure up this idea, we give it the meaning like, well no, if I'm quote rejected or people don't like it or they laugh at me, if I get up to speak and I mess up, they're gonna think I'm terrible. But we give that meaning, we think it somehow defines us. Or we take it on as an identity.

That's why people are unbelievably terrified of looking like a fool.

Right? Many people are less afraid of failure than they are of being seen as a failure or the other people seeing them fail. That's actually, I found in my experience, we're in a lot of people, they're actually more afraid of people seeing them fail than they actually are failing.

Isn't this crazy?

Rachel Denning (26:58.413)
it's amazing. And it's, and then it gets deceptive to we tell ourselves stories like a lot of people say, they'll say they're stressed. But that's more like the achievers word for fear. Right? They're often afraid. They call it stressed or another one is that they say they don't know and I did a podcast episode on that if you haven't listened to that one yet, listen to that one. It's called the I don't know syndrome.

and they'll often use confusion or not knowing is like this. It's this buffer to keep them from facing their fears. So like, no, I don't know, I don't know what to do. Yeah, I haven't decided what to do, I haven't taken action yet. They're not pursuing their goals, they're not chasing their dreams, because they're like, well, I just don't know yet what to do. Very often, it's not that they don't know. Excuse me. Excuse me. It's not that they don't know, it's that they won't know.

man, I'm doing my Batman voice. fear. It's they won't know because then they got to face their fears. And so they use I don't know, as a buffer, use stress as a buffer, use all these excuses as these buffers, they say they're super busy, they use busyness as a buffer to not face their fear, because they're so afraid of trying. Sometimes they're afraid of failing, sometimes they're afraid of succeeding.

Sometimes they're afraid of the work it's gonna take. Sometimes they're afraid of the pain. Sometimes it's just fear in general, fear of putting themselves out there, fearing to attempt, fearing what people might think, fear of being judged. They're so afraid, so then they keep themselves really busy or really bored or really anything. I mean, think about that. I wanna invite you to consider that. Think through that. How many things are you doing in your life?

as a buffering or as an avoidance pattern for fear.

Rachel Denning (28:55.373)
Some people stay with their careers and jobs they really don't like that aren't really satisfying for years or their entire life. And the only real reason when they really dig down in the only real reason because they were afraid to try something else. Afraid it wouldn't work out. Afraid of losing what was good, but not great. How often have we missed out on greatness because we settle for good because of fear.

Rachel Denning (29:27.245)
man, how often have we held back and not said something that we needed to say we should have said because we were afraid? How often we missed out on incredible opportunities because we refused to try because of fear.

Rachel Denning (29:43.405)
You with me? And so there'll always be something to be afraid of. Flying, driving, skydiving, which is awesome, you should try skydiving. Meeting new people, going new places. People are gonna be terrified to travel now. Well, and they haven't. I mean, it comes out all the time. When there's terrorist attacks, everyone's afraid to travel. Now there's the virus, everyone's afraid to travel.

And we conjure up these, we get our imaginations running wild in the wrong directions, we mismanage our minds, and we create all these fears. And again, we are often very afraid of things that are not real. I hope.

I hope you decide with me you choose to deliberately face your fears. Right. In this great book the powerful engagement he said be the more preoccupied we are with our own fears and concerns the less energy we have available to take positive action. And what's interesting is action.

dispels fear. All right, we covered that yesterday in one of my coaching sessions. Taking action dispels fear. But a lot of us fear, like fear leads to inaction, right? And so it just perpetuates fear. Taking action and things that aren't truly and genuinely scary or threatening. Right? Like in the book, Lynchman, he points out, you cannot become a true Lynchman. You cannot become indispensable.

if you agree to feed your fears and worries and anxieties. In the great book, The Hiding Place, she wrote, worry does not eliminate.

Rachel Denning (31:39.277)
today's or tomorrow's sorrows, it eliminates today's strength. What? And so the fears we don't face literally become our limits. And they prevent us from living an extraordinary life. Terry Crews one time said he said I'd rather die doing something I feel is great and amazing, rather than be safe.

and comfortable living a life I hate. Emerson said God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. We have to have courage and courage sometimes in the face of fear, we feel it and we we decide to go for it anyways, because we think through and say no, this is irrational. Right? It's irrational. I don't have to be afraid of this. And we walk into it. And we can develop the habit we can practice that it makes us so much stronger.

Right? So much better.

Rachel Denning (32:42.573)
once we face it. And so look at the reality of a thing of money. Some people are just deathly afraid of not having enough money, of getting sick, of having poor health, of ruining relationships or being betrayed. Right, there's all these things we can be so afraid of. But let me ask you a question. Is it helping you to be worried?

and afraid?

I don't think so. Yoda said, named must your fear be before banish it you can. I love it. I love it. So we have to name it. We have to know. And so this is the first, the first kind of piece of like, well, how do we, how do we solve it? And how do we get into this? And you guys, what's interesting is in mythology, I've shared this before in mythology, the dragon often represents all that you fear.

Rachel Denning (33:43.373)
and breaking through gives you your greatest reward, right? Your greatest conqueror. So you're gonna face the dragon, but in order to do that, you have to know it. You have to identify it, right? Otherwise, it's vague and it's controlling. anyways, we're hitting this from every angle. I'm all over the place, you guys. I get it, but like, this is a big deal and I wanna share as much as I can.

in a short time with you. Victor Hugo said, the future has many names. For the weak, it is unattainable. For the fearful, it is unknown. For the bold, it's ideal.

Okay, here we go. So what do you do about your fears? First, write them all down. And here's why. When we write them down, it actually gives us tremendous power, we get to see our thoughts on paper. And often when we see our thoughts, when we say things, I do this all the time with my with my coaching clients and friends and students, I'll be okay, what are you afraid to write it down? And they write it down. They're like,

you know, now that that's out, now that I say it, now that I get it in writing, it seems kind of ridiculous. And that's the point. We want to see what's happening in our mind. And so write it down. What are you afraid of? So start with the piece of paper. What are you afraid of? Write it down. Boom. You get your fears all written out and then say, well, why am I afraid of that? Like dig a little bit deeper. I'm afraid of public speaking or afraid of, traveling to a different place or afraid of talking to someone or afraid of, being rejected or afraid of.

being betrayed afraid of being misunderstood afraid of being judged afraid of saying the wrong thing I mean just go through it all and then when you when you identify it then just stop and say why am I afraid of that and enforce yourself to do it you've got to understand your own mind and your thinking because again I'm gonna just keep repeating this fears are feelings not facts and those feelings are generated and created by our own thoughts we are the master of that like

Rachel Denning (35:50.989)
And we're the creator of that. So many of your fears and your irrational fears are the direct result of your own thoughts, but you may not be aware of the thoughts. So write them down and say, why am I afraid of that? And you might get in there and say, well, actually I'm afraid that, well, if people see me fail, then they'll think I'm broken or I'm incompetent. Okay. And that can be terrifying for some of you. And then why, what would that mean?

See, and it's all about the meaning we give it. What would that mean if other people think you are incompetent? Well, then people wouldn't like me. Okay, what does that mean? If you think people don't like you? Who are these people you're talking about? Right? This random they, the elusive they people. We get so afraid. And here's the problem, our mind will create these imaginary situations where we start thinking that

Everyone will think that way about us. And then if everyone thinks that way, then they'll all just mistreat us and we'll end up in the gutter, dying alone and broke and broken. Right? Our mind loves to run out these scenarios that are just extreme and completely unreasonable. So get it all written out and realize it. And then you can get down and say, my goodness, I realized that, you know, maybe in some of your examples, it might be...

I have this insecurity that I've held onto for years or decades about these random people not liking me or making fun of me and the meaning that I attached to that it was now I'm not a worthwhile person and I don't matter. See that and it's our thinking has created that and given it meaning.

And so we can take back control of our life by getting control of our thoughts. Man, this stuff is so powerful. I get a lot of responses, a lot of requests and questions actually, and from emails and messages from people who are experiencing anxiety and fear. And what's interesting, some of that is instigated by dark, scary, evil movies.

Rachel Denning (38:15.245)
Some of it's by the media. I've shared that before about people I know that if they're listening to or watching the news a lot, they're often very fearful because the news is just all about that. And so here's some suggestions. If you want to eliminate fear from yourself and from your family, I'm going to throw out some standards here and I want you to try it. Just give it a try. Watch. In fact, even if you don't consider yourself a very fearful person, try this. Watch how it changes your thinking and your feeling, of course.

So absolutely no scary things at all. No movies, no videos, no video games, no songs, no stories, no jokes, no news, no conversations, nothing. Just completely eliminate anything scary, dark or bad. All of it gone. Consider doing a media fast for a couple of weeks. Just eliminate all of that. And then of course, feel just absolutely

Fill your mind with beautiful things. Kind things, inspiring things. Read great books that have no trash. Watch good wholesome videos and movies and have uplifting conversations. Now if you're doing a media fast, like you're turning off all video outlets, social media, all this stuff, do it. Do it. It's actually really, really healthy. In fact, I would say that every single day,

You and I and our children, especially children, all of us actually should have a few hours where we are disconnected from the screen every single day. Do that. Watch how it just settles your mind. It is unreal. And then you ought to have, if you can, a day or two a week where you have no screens. For example, if you can do weekends with no screens or maybe, maybe your life setup where you can do, you know, a Wednesday and a Friday, no screens.

Just do that, no media, no outside input. Just read great books and just get in nature and do just beautiful, peaceful, classical music and instrumental music and try painting, try drawing, learning an instrument, learning a language, connecting with good people. Learn about good things and watch nature.

Rachel Denning (40:37.485)
shows. Like there's so much out there. But what's interesting is our lives are literally filled with drama. That was one of the major things that stood out to me. Every time I came back to the United States from living abroad, traveling abroad. It was it was literally shocking to me how much drama how much everything was so dramatized. It's not like that in other countries that I've been in. It's just calmer. It's more peaceful.

And I think that's our natural state. So those are my recommendations. man, I got, you guys got so many good books here and so many great things to share. Let me, let me just wrap up with this.

Rachel Denning (41:21.997)
man, we're even, you guys, even we're afraid of making the wrong decisions. We often don't even make decisions because we're so afraid of making the wrong decisions. We actually fall into inaction because we're afraid of action.

It literally is a controlling element in our lives. So let's overcome that. There's this, I was reading this book in a little short section here by a woman named Amelia Boone. She's an obstacle racer, it's like a four time world champion. Basically she's been called the Michael Jordan of obstacle racing. And she said this about fear.

She said, I'm risk averse by nature, but in the last five years I've learned how to run toward fear instead of running away from it. My nature has always been to take the straight and narrow path, to take the path with fewer unknowns. But by forcing myself to face the unknown and embrace the uncomfortable, I found that I actually thrive in it.

And this is what happened to me. That's literally my story. I was afraid of so many things, but I started facing my fears and going in the exact opposite direction. So if I was afraid of something, like I used to be afraid of getting in front of people, I ended up doing performances in front of thousands, even tens of thousands of people. Right. And I, man, I love, I was terrified in high school. I was terrified to raise my hand and answer a question or when somebody called on me to read a paragraph.

I was I would just literally get sick my stomach would get in a knot to just read out loud. Right and now I just love I love presenting and speaking in front of a large audience making videos for you guys in this podcast right I love it but I had transformed that I lean into it so actually thrive and I thrive in the unknown of taking adventures and trips and going out there. She continues so I now take fear and discomfort as a sign that I should be.

Rachel Denning (43:31.213)
doing something. That's where the magic happens. Whoa, I totally agree. I totally agree. So look at your fears, examine them thoroughly what thoughts are creating your fears. Look at every single fear you have and identify the thought that is creating the fear and you'll realize that you are the creator of most of your fears. And then face your fears. Lean into them, my friends. Like I, like I encourage people to

Like what I'm working with with going through fears, I have actually have a session all about overcoming fear. We talk about this a lot. Actually, there's one of them on just living and embracing courage, and then a whole section on fear in the high performance coaching, because we have to walk through this if it's controlling our lives, then it's limiting us, it's keeping us from living living at our best. And we have to face and conquer our fears and realize that we are often the creator of those fears. And so then I encourage them to lean into it, like to even embrace.

mottoes and affirmations, declarations of like one of them was I eat pressure for breakfast, right to lean into it. And so instead of avoiding it, constantly looking at all the areas of your life where you've been avoiding decision, you've been avoiding action, you've been avoiding boldness. And if it's if it's because of fear, and most often it is, then you lean into it, you embrace it, you go for it. And you face the fear and you feel it.

feel it and face it. And if there's no real danger there, then move forward, go after it. When I feel nervous about something or like, and I realize it's not a real risk or danger. I'm with her like I'm, it's the right thing to do. I should be doing something getting after it, right? So let's, let's face our fears. Let's embrace them. Let's live lives of courage and boldness. Let's teach this to our children, our friends, share this stuff, share these principles, share this episode. Get it out there. We need to overcome our fears so that we can live at our absolute best.

Fear will keep you small. It will literally lead to a half lived life.

Rachel Denning (45:37.485)
What could be worse than a mediocre existence? Let's be bold and courageous and chase down our dreams. Love you guys, awesome is always an option. Reach upward.