What Are You Afraid Of?

Before I even get into this week’s episode recap, can someone donate so that Tim and John can get some quality audio equipment? Maybe Radio Shack can become a corporate sponsor or something. They were on air for a total of 1 minute this week, but as Freddie Mercury sang “the show must go on”…

This week’s radio show topic was “What are you afraid of?” and the concept of living fearless which is so relevant to everything we are about both on the radio show and the website.

Michael Luckman, Author of Overpowering Fear Defeating the #1 Challenge in Sales and Life! tells us we need to overpower fear instead of always trying to overcome it. We will probably never be completely comfortable with fear or eliminate it altogether but what we need to do is take action despite that fear and face it head on. Just like when we were kids and would get triple dog dared to do something, it helped us push through the fear. We lose that as adults.
Lindsay Behrens, A life coach and motivational speaker talked about fear of judgment, often times we do lots of things because we think “I am supposed to be doing this”. This is brought on by pressures from parents, friends, mentors and even society as a whole. That feeling of “if I choose to go an alte
ate route, is it not good enough or not expected of me in other’s eyes?” really holds us back in life.
We talked about fear of failure too, which in my opinion is the biggest fear that holds most people back from doing what they truly want to do and I think it is very much related to fear of judgment. I also think fear of failure is so ironic because it’s exactly what keeps us from having success. It’s easier to play it safe and make everyone else happy than to step outside the box and be vulnerable. Lindsay believes that’s because we need validation from others so bad that we become afraid of their reaction or disapproval. However, she states that often times these fears are in our mind and aren’t reality. Michael agrees saying, “They are delusional thoughts in our mind.” How many times did you think your parents would react a certain way and they totally surprised you with the opposite reaction?

The discussion was rolling along great until I put my foot in my mouth and told Lindsay her near death experience was fortunate. My point was that it gave her a chance to wake up and live life her way and as she put it “screw anyone who tells her anything different”. Let’s face it most people don’t ever have an event like that happen that allows them to wake up and live life.

“Everybody dies but not everybody lives”, Michael added.

This reminded me of when my Mother died and what I thought about as I stood in her room watching her pass away. I started wondering about what she was thinking in that moment and although I can’t say what those thoughts were, I was pretty sure while she was literally taking her last breaths with her family standing around her that she wasn’t thinking about someone leaving the toilet seat up or a bill collector. I believe in those last moments we hang on to our experiences, loved ones and perhaps regret.

Michael pointed out that we also regret more not what we did but what we didn’t do and of course fear is the reason we never “get around” to those things. I live life the opposite; I do things because I fear something will turn into regret. In other words, I ask myself “will I regret it if I don’t do this?” and if I answer yes, then I’ll find a way to do it. That is what ultimately drives me because I fear regret the most.

One of the main lessons we talked about is learning how to fail up and fall on your face. Lindsay brought up how kids today many times still get a trophy even for last place. They don’t learn how to lose and fail. It’s a disservice.
Kimanzi from Milwaukee called in with comments about something many people can relate to which is staying in a job you hate because of fear. Then of course that misery starts affecting other areas of your life like relationships.

He adds “figure out what work you’d like to do, research options and take action toward it.”
Michael said “and taking a risk doesn’t mean you totally have to jump off the cliff, you can come up with a plan and take calculated risks. And it usually works to improve your life.” Because of this mind set, Kimanzi wrote 2 books and sold over 20,000 copies. Now, he is doing what he loves and his family is moving to Hawaii.

I’ve never seen anyone have great success without past failures. There is a fine line between a “loser” and a “rock star”. You can’t play it safe and be a rock star.
People around you will question what you are doing, the decisions you make and the chances you take and they may even try and tear you down but know this is only because they aren’t happy with their own situation. It is a clear sign that they are unhappy with themselves and they have to face the fact that they can’t be as fearless and free as you are (or they don’t think they can because they are fearful which again is totally delusional, all of us have that power inside).

Michael said that fear is good in some ways especially for our ancestors who might have been eaten by a tiger if they didn’t have that sense of fear. What’s interesting though is we still have that fear even when there is no danger present like when we want to approach a girl at a party and delusional thoughts and non-existent fears start creeping into our mind and prevent us from doing so. I said I would rather be eaten by a tiger than go up and talk to a girl.
Jeff, who has quickly become a regular friend of the show came on at the end and told us he had the same fear of women which caused him to meet his future wife from the Philippines through being pen pals. I wonder if my wife would mind if I found an Asian pen pal. I’ll ask her. That must have been a long time ago Jeff, nobody writes letters anymore.

You have to listen to this entire show here http://www.itdoesntmatteryouregonnadie.com/idmygd-radio

You can connect with our expert guests here: Michael Luckman at overpoweringfear dot com and Lindsay Behrens at thequoteIwrote dot com

I love you all,

Dave Arena