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Lesson Info

Conquer Your Fears

(audience claps) Okay, so today is day 13 and we're talking about fears. Conquering your fears, and I know fear's not a very sexy topic. But I promise, I'm gonna make it worthwhile. Here are my three goals for today. One, I wanna show you how to make love to your fear. Like, drinking a glass of wine, taking it on a date, we're gonna make love to your fear. Second, I wanna show you how to be socially fearless. Get rid of that anxiety. And last, we're gonna talk about imposter syndrome. How to stop feeling like a fraud, and harness our inner worth. So, our warm up today, is actually, I had our audience members fill out their biggest fear. So, at home, I want you to write, in your workbook, what your biggest fear is. And what we're go do, is we're gonna pass around the hat with all the answers of our biggest fears, and we're gonna read off biggest fears that have been submitted, they're all anonymous. I didn't want anyone to feel like they had to share their fear, 'cause it's a little sca...

ry, so we're gonna read each other's biggest fears. Will you fill it out real quick, Lin? Sorry, I thought they were all in. Otherwise we'll run out, like last time, okay. "I am afraid that I am too awkward to pick up on "on conversation." I'm too awkward to pick up on conversation. Yeah, how many people does that happen to? Absolutely, in fact, I feel like I overhaul conversation, and I interrupt conversation, 'cause I'm a little awkward. Yeah. "Worry and fear." Worry and fear, so fear is your biggest fear. And we heard about that from Dana as well, and that's a very common thing, that we're afraid of fear itself. Lacy. "Fear of no achievement in my life." Lack of achievement. Yeah, absolutely, or not achieving your goals. "Fear of my husband dying." Fear of my husband dying, fear of of a loved one leaving, yeah, I think that's absolutely. I worry about losing my loved ones all the time, absolutely, yeah. "Fear of heights." Fear of heights, yes, a standard one, fear of heights, yeah. "Fear that the connection I'm making is not authentic, "they're not being genuine." That they're not being genuine, and so you don't know the person in front of you, if they're being real or not, yeah. "Being judged for failure." Being judged for-- Oh wow, yeah. And we're gonna talk about today how our failures don't define us. I love it, yeah. "Fear that they're judging me and finding me too loud, "quiet, crazy, boring, etc." Yeah, you're just too of something, yeah. I want you to own yourself, whoever that was, I want you to own yourself no matter what that is. Who cares what other people think, yeah. "Fear of seeing my loved ones get hurt." Oh gosh, another one, so you're not alone. And today, we're gonna talk about how we're not alone in our fear. We share our fear with a lot of people, that's the same one, I love hearing one of those same ones. Yeah. "Fear of disappointing my ancestors, "making my parents worry, and wasting my life." What a legacy one, right? Disappointing my ancestors, carrying on your legacy, that's a big one. This one says, "My biggest fear is not allowing myself, "to do and do and be all that I've dreamed to express, "and to give, to help others." Yeah, huge personal mission statement one there, right? Living up to your full potential, that's the very top, self actualization on the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yeah. "My biggest fear is not living up to my full potential "in relationships, love, business, I want to show up 100%." Show up a 100%. And sometimes showing up a 100% does not mean being perfect. It does not being having to have everything in order, and everything straight. Showing up a 100% is about being real, and today, we're gonna learn a lot about that. Nothing about today's perfect. "My biggest fear is getting a job." Yeah, support. Getting support, having achievement, having success, doing what you love. "Fear of not living up to my full potential." Another legacy one, I love how these, we're seeing some patterns, right, guys? Yeah, last one. "Fear of being alone." Fear of being alone, all about building connection, which is what the course is all about. So, the reason why I have this question, is because I think that when we have fear, is this quote by Alice Walker, "The most common way people give up their power "is by thinking they don't have any." When we have a fear, and we think that we can't solve that fear, or harness that fear, or make love to our fear, we feel that we lose, all of our power. And that is absolutely not the case, in fact, what happens is, is we have what I call gremlins. That all these things that we're worried about, "I'm afraid I'm gonna be too loud, "or too quiet, or awkward," I call all those little thoughts in your head, gremlins. So, even if though today it's called Conquering Your Fears, I actually think it should be called, Conquering Your Gremlins. We're gonna talk about those little Gremlins in your head. And here's why that's so important. We've been going along the path to connection from the start of the course. But if we don't harness our fear, we can never make it to the final level. We stay in shallow connection. We stay in connection that doesn't fulfill us. We have to be able to cross the boundary, to face our fears, to conquor our fears, to be able to connect on an authentic, and engaging level. And that's why today is so important, 'cause it's the gateway, to get us that final level of connection. The reason we have fear, is because we're trying to protect our core. And we've been talking about the inner part of our matrix, we've just learned the intelligence, but also we have our values and our love language, our fear protects us. And what happens is, something called the imposter syndrome. So, the imposter syndrome, is a psychological phenomemon where people feel unworthy of their accomplishments. Two women psychologists discovered this in a lot of high achieving women. That we feel that all of our success, all of our achievement, it's all luck. Didn't have to do with our actual hard work. That we don't feel worthy of our own accomplishments. And fear is what makes us feel unworthy. Fear, makes us stop ourselves. It makes us stop ourselves from achieving, which we talked about achievement just then, I heard a lot of achievement, that my greatest fear is actually not achieving. Well, fear itself is what stops us from achieving. Fear is also what stops us from connecting. And it inhibits happiness. It's impossible, to feel fully happy, when we're in fear mode. So our gremlins start young. And I've said that I would share some of my personal story. A lot of people say, "How did you get interested in people, "and social behaviors?" So, this is when it started. That's me, in 4th grade, great haircut, right? By the way, I loved this plaid vest, I wore this plaid vest like everyday, for like a 100 days to school, until it was like ratted, and the buttons were falling off. So, in 4th grade, it was a real hard year for me. I never really got along socially with people. I was like that girl, who always volunteered in the classroom, with the teacher. 'Cause I didn't wanna go out in the playground at recess. I just never really had a group of friends, I was never very close to people at school. I was incredibly nervous around people at school, all the time. So, November 1st. I remember this very well, I woke up, and I was covered in hives. From head to toe. Hives are like red welts, they're very itchy, they're very painful. And I was covered from head to toe, except my palms, the only part of my body that didn't have hives all over the them. My parents freaked out, we go to the doctor, and he said, "It's probably something she ate. "Probably an allergy, don't worry, it'll go away. "Give it 24 hours." So, we wait 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, still there. And something interesting started to happen, they started to kinda go away for a few hours, and they would come back for a few hours. And we realized, that they happened, when I started to go around people. When I was in social interactions, I made me nervous, especially at school. I would slowly start to break out in hives, all over my body. So, the doctors were like, "She's just gotta get over it." Like, "She's just gotta figure out, "so just keep sending her to school. "It'll go away in a few days." So, I went to school, everyday. And everyday, I get to school, and the hives would start. They usually started in my forearm, I actually have one right now. So, I thought they were mosquito bites, but they go away night, so here's one. Here's one. They come from stress and anxiety, around social interactions, I thought they were mosquito bites, but they go away at night. And they come back when we start filming again. They lasted for, consistently, all over my body, eight months. I had to keep going to school. That is when I became, oof, power pose. Interesting, Vanessa, because I've suffered severely, this is why I used to get hives, terribly as a child, but I didn't actually know why, maybe you finally nailed it for me. Patterns. Social patterns. Social fears, isn't it? They're reminders, yeah. Thankfully, I don't think I've had that, can't remember the last time I ever had them, but I do remember that was a big thing as a kid. And I was the kid who-- Who hated recess. Absolutely. And wore this plaid vest, I still do. (laughs) Still think, you still wear that, I love your plaid vest. And thank you for that save. So, that is when I became an observer of people. Obviously, when I had hives, I wasn't gonna go out to the playground, I wasn't gonna start talking to people. That's when I started realizing, what, why are these people so confident? What is it that they have, how do they find this inner confidence, how do they conquer all their fears? So, that is what got me on my start to loving people. So, gremlins start young. I still feel, by the way, like her, a lot of the time. Like, I still feel like this. That's why I still get those hives, but I've learned to figure out my fear, I have two. And that's a pretty good achievement, right? They're not hundreds. This is all about a self-narrative. This is a story that we tell ourselves, about ourselves. The story that we have running in our brain, about who we are. Why we do things, what we do. It's our own personal narrative. I love this, that, Al Capone, saw himself as a public benefactor. His self-narrative, to do what he had to do was, he was helping the public. That speaks to a very important self-narrative about what was driving him. So, in our self-narratives, there's lots of parts. Heroes, turning points, low points, life themes, high points, villains, transformative periods. Our life, in our head is like a movie. We have a story about how we've come to the place that we're at. And fear, defines a lot of our self-narrative, in fact, fear, is a cross-dresser. Fear likes to dress up as things that it's not. So, anger, people-pleasing, avoidance, denial, meanness, neediness, selfishness, defensiveness. That's how fear often dresses up, and these are our gremlins. It's fear dress up as something else. And this causes us to think these fearful thoughts. I'm not good enough. I'm less than, I don't care, I'm not special, I'm ashamed, I'm paranoid, or the flip side, the narcissist side, which is, I'm better than, I'm perfect. Right, the step back of superiority. Fear dresses up as all kinds of crazy ways. So, today, I wanna talk about how does your fear dress-up? And we're gonna talk about in a little bit, so I want you start thinking about, when you're afraid, when you feel those fear triggers, what happens? I'll give you some time to think about that at home, 'cause I'm gonna call you, and we're gonna talk about it. Lemme talk about some fear science, first. What happens, physiologically in the brain when we're in fear mode. So, there is amazing research on fear that finally explained for me, what was happening, inside my body, right? I have a physiological response to fear. What happens inside my body when I'm in fear mode? There's the low road, and the high road, in our brains. And they do two different things. The low road, when we feel fear, is automatic, intuitive. It's our primary fear response. It happens in a snap, it happens incredibly quickly. And it helps us survive. Right, so if we see, a snake, on a trail. We're like walking, we see a snake, (gasps) and our amygdala, goes into low road fear response. We just back, we open our eyes wide, we might scream, right. That keeps us safe. We make sure we don't step on it, we yell for help. Then the second one kicks in, which is our high road. Our high road is logical, it's thoughtful, it's our secondary fear response, and this helps us thrive. So now, we've seen the snake, we've taken a step back, now we go, "What was that poem, in elementary school, like "red and black is safe, and yellow and blue is poisonous?" Or we start to think, is it a poisonous snake or not? Should I tell someone, should I warn other hikers? Our brain starts to go into a secondary response mode of what to do next. Why is this important for us? Well, let me explain to you, so, let's see you see an accident, you're driving your car, and you see an accident right in front of you. In 12 milliseconds, 12 milliseconds, our low road fear response kicks in. And we brake, so we hit the brake. Our blood starts pumping, and our eyes widen, so we can take in as much of the scene as possible. It takes 30-40 milliseconds, for our high road fear response to kick in, and we think, should I call 9-1-1? Should I pull over, should I turn around? So, this is how the fear responses act. One's in 12 milliseconds, one's 30 to 40 milliseconds. Daniel Goldman, coined the term, emotional hijacking. That what happens is, when something makes us afraid, and it could be a snake or an accident, but it also could be awkward pause. It could also be someone who gives you, you think a dirty look, in a networking event. It could be walking into a big room of people. Your low road fear response is triggered. And because of that, our high road is not able to connect with people. Our low road is in such fear that, that we can't move past it. Our physiology, our body is like, we're a little bit afraid. So we have a really hard time connecting. So, at an event, your fear mode, goes, "I'm scared of rejection. "I'm fear of awkwardness, I'm anxious." Alright, all those fears that we just listed. So, instead of being able to connect, network, and build relationships, which is why we're there. We can't, because our fear road is blocking it. Our fear road makes us unable to go into that high road response, which is more logical, and thoughtful and emotional. So, how do we take back control? How do we get our low road into gear, and I do this everyday, to make sure I don't have hives all over my body before filming. And it's called, fearvana. Alright, I want us to go into fearvana. And this is skill number 18. Enter fearvana. We know 33 different people skills. And fearvana is about examining, interpreting, and reframing our fears with compassion. So, here's how we do that. It's a three step process, we're gonna do it together. First, introspection. Introspection's when we examine or observe our own mental, emotional processes, with curiosity, instead of judgment. So, this is, we feel our anxiety, we feel that we are a little awkward, and it's not looking at that, like, (sighs) "Just anxious again. "Why does this make you feel so awkward?" But instead saying, "Hmm, I feel a little anxious, "I wonder what triggered it, I wonder what happened." That process is called introspection. And to help you with this, I've created something called, a fear file. So, in your workbook, which is a purchase bonus, I have your fear file, which we're gonna go through together, and I also want you spend a lot of time and do this on your own, 'cause it takes a little bit of, a little bit self reflection to do it. So, yes? Everyone at home know where we are in the book? Yes, we are on day 13, page two. Yes, perfect, so, here's what we're gonna do first. In your fear file, we're gonna talk about your fear triggers. Your social fear triggers. What happens with people, in anyway, it could be negotiation, it could be pitching, it could be mentioning your price, it could be interacting with someone, it could be awkward pause, it could be asking a girl on a date, whatever it is, what triggers your fear into low road? Pitching, flirting, teasing, as I mentioned. And then, how does that fear, dress-up? So, does it come across as anxiety? Or does it come across as defensiveness? Or anger? Or superiority? Or people- pleasing? Or being a yes-person? How does that fear translate? Defensiveness, shy, meanness, people-pleasing, showing-off. So, I want you to turn to your partner, and I want you to do one right now, and at home, I want you to actually do three, four, or even five, of these fear files. I want you think about what triggers your fear, and how that dresses up, and I'll bring two people on stage, to talk about just one fear, and how it dresses up. Alright, so who hasn't been up in a while? Who wants to come up and talk about their fear, I know it's awesome. Yeah, Lace, come on up. And you guys, you already have a partner, so go ahead and talk to your partner about your fear file. Great, Lace. Here you stand right there. So, first, tell me a trigger. Feeling like I have to save somebody. Wow, when does that come up? We're in conversation. Yeah. Something happens, somebody has an epiphany, it's emotional, and I have to save you. What do I do, what do I say? So i just triggered that, when I was here? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I need to help her. I need to help her. Yeah. So, how does that dress-up? What happens? My mind goes blank. Okay. So it's the emotional-- Shut down? Yeah, so your feelings-- So, now the opposite. Of what you need. Of what I want to do-- Happens. Happens. So, do you have an example of when that happened? Broad, protect the innocent. Probably at networking events, I don't know somebody well. If I know you well, different. I don't know you well, something gets unloaded, that I'm not expecting, and I don't know how to respond. Because my mind's blank. Okay, so your fear trigger, someone needs help, or someone shares an emotional surprise. Right, right. And your, the way that your fear dresses up is shutting down, or going numb. So, numbness, is a self-protective gesture, with fear. So, the next time, which we're gonna talk about, how to reframe that fear, and actually, I wanna do that with you right now, so. When that happens, what could you call it? What could I call the fear? Yeah. How could you notice that fear response, and be like, "Ah, this is that." Oh. Let's come up with a fun name for it. Something that's not judgy. If it had a name, it's like Freddie, or something. It actually has a name. Right, I like it. Oh, this is Freddie. Oh, this is Freddie. Which is super cheesy. Which is super cheesy. But also keeps me here, like I don't numb out. So, this is Freddie, right? And that makes you laugh, which, it makes me laugh too. Which is hopefully going to flip back that low road response, of like, ah, of curiosity, which I wanna talk about next. Okay. Freddie, I like it. That was awesome. Thank you. Alright. Okay, so. We're getting a deeper right, we're on day 13. And it's like, oh, we're talking about fears. So, I wanna give you an example of how this works. So, a fear trigger could be negotiating. And how that dresses up, is defensiveness. So people who're afraid that they're gonna lose out negotiation, they get really defensive. And then, we're gonna talk about a reframe name. So, how do we reframe that? Lemme go into that next section. Oh, before we do that, I wanna share an interesting piece of science, on this low road, high road fear. Which is about skydiving. So, Aloe did a really interesting research on skydivers. He was told by skydiving instructors, that this weird thing happens, that when people on the ground, and they're not worried, they're typically the people who don't want to jump, once they get up on the plane. And so we asked him, could you research this? Could you figure, well, what's going on here? Is this actually just me, or this happen all over the country? So, they found was, yes, indeed, people who were calm on the ground, overall have the most trouble jumping, once they're up in the air. Why is this? It's because they had not recognized their low road fear on the ground. People who know that they're afraid, they know they're in low grade anxiety, just noticing it, going into introspection, and being like, "I'm terrified, I might not jump up there." It's actually the people on the ground who say, "I don't think I can do it, "I don't think I'm gonna be able to jump," those are the people who jump. People who say, "Oh yeah, no problem, I got this," because they're not introspection, they're not acknowledging that low road fear, getting support, feeling not alone, getting reassurance. Which is the next step. Reframing, interpreting your inner happenings for emotional clarity. So, Stanford researchers found, it's easier to reframe thoughts than repress them. This section is not about repressing your fear. Your fear is there, alright, we're not gonna try to repress it. Believe me, I know, that only makes things worse. It's about reframing it. And this called, naming and taming. Matthew Lieberman, at UCLA did research on what naming our fear does. That it actually changes our physiological response. He found that labeling your emotions, lessens physiological reactions in the amygdala, which lowers our fear response. This is like incredible. He put people in MRI machines, and he showed them fearful images. And then he said, "Name the fear, how fearful are you?" And they said, "I'm really afraid." And immediately, the second they did it, their fear response in their brain dropped. Just naming our own fear, saying, "Yup, I feel pretty anxious, "I feel pretty anxious right now." Even that, our brain goes, "Ah, I've been recognized." It's almost like a kid, that's like, "Mom, mom, mom." As soon as you say, "Yes, honey, what is it honey?" They're like "Nothing." Right? They're just calling 'cause they want you to notice them. It's kind of a similar thing with fear, once it gets noticed, the physiological response lowers. So, clarity, this anger is showing up as fear. This anxiety is showing up as fear. This defensiveness is showing up as fear. Noticing how it cross-dresses, turning that negative self-talk into clarifying self-talk. I don't need you to do positive self-talk. I just want it to be clarifying. What triggered it, why did it happen? "Hmm, it's making me feel sick to my stomach. "That's interesting." Right, clarifying self-talk. And this lastly, this one takes some guts, it's renaming your fear, to something else. So, I tend to call my fear, my 10 year old self. Or my eight year old self, I'm like, "Oh, there is my 10 year old self, here she is. "She's back, even though I'm 29, my 10 year old self "is still here." So, I want us to make love to that. Making love to your fear, is accepting it, saying, "I hear you, I feel you, I get you." And then, deciding how you wanna rename it, because research has shown, self-compassion helps take the sting out of our fears. Self-compassion is the best way that we can say to our fear, "It's okay, calm down." Self-compassion happens in three ways. First, globalizing your anxiety. So, okay, take a step back, "I am not the only one in the world who fears this fear, "feels this fear." The reason we started this lesson, with fears, the reason we talk about anxiety a ton in this course, is so that you watching, so people here can know, I am not the only one who feels this way. Globalizing that anxiety, that's the first aspect of self-compassion. The second aspect of self-compassion, is knowing that you're not alone, and building your support system. In your workbook, I have your support system, that I want you to build. I actually want you to write it down. And we need support in a couple of different ways. We need emotional support. We need problem solving support. We need logistical support, we need inspiring support, we need a listener. I want you to think about, who are the people in your life, that are really good at those areas. Do you have a friend that you can call, or a person in your life, who's a wonderful, emotional supporter. High agreeable. Do you have someone who's a problem solver? Who's really good at fixing things when you're overwhelmed with that? High conscientious. Do you have someone who's the inspirer, who's really great and taking a step back and saying, "You can do this." Pep talker, typically a high extrovert. Do you have someone who's a great listener? Typically a low extrovert, who can just be there when you vent. I want you to go through this, in your workbook and fill out who is your support system. And the last aspect of self-compassion, is a personal pep talk, right? So, this is going into your success routine. And your superhero activity list. In segment five, I talked about how to find your own fire, how to light your fire. Once you've gone through introspection and reframing, you might be ready to go into that success routine, to find your fire again. To find your inner worth. And my pep talk for you, right now, is you're amazing. You're fantastic, you're here in this course. Being super uncomfortable, facing your fears, sharing things on camera, and writing things at home, doing self-exploration exercises that probably get you out of your comfort zone. And you are awesome for it. I am like amazed, at already the changes that I see in this room. Of how you're supporting each other, and how you're talking to each other. And it is inspiring for me. So, coming up, we're doing, number 14, creating value. I'm gonna teach you the nine different value languages. This is gonna help us create deeper bonds, understand human motivation. What motivates us. And then we have the half-time show. We half way made it through the course. I'm gonna give you a pep talk, support, I'm gonna review our path to connection, and I'm gonna give you some insider tips, now that we're halfway through the course, and that's gonna get us, solidly, into the connect part of the path to connection. Your challenge today, is to build your fear file. So, I want you to fill out your triggers. Your responses, and your renames. I want you to identify your support system. Have those people in place, 'cause when we're in fear, it's very hard to think, because our low road is going, our high road has trouble thinking about who can we reach out to. So, when you're in low road fear, you've already done it. You already know who exactly you need to call. Your high road doesn't need to kick in, they can help kick in your high road. And lastly, I want you to rewatch this near your birthday. So, we all have fears, they come up, they change, they're new, so I want you to set a little timer, for you to rewatch this on your birthday. Starting a new year with wishes, and conquering a new fear every year. That's my wish for you. It's time for what's the most important thing you learned today. Jake Hail, will you join me? So, I want three people, at home, I want you to write about what your most important thing you learned today was, tell me on twitter, with the #peopleskills, @Vvanedwards. The best answers will win my free dating entrepreneur course, and I can't wait to hear from you. So, we have any big aha-moments? Yeah, Maggie? Just finding your fears, just identifying 'em, recognizing 'em, and not necessarily, like yeah, just to confront them, makes them less painful. Right, they actually make us stronger to confront them. Yeah, yeah. Basically like everything, validate your fear. Acknowledge it's there. Yeah. Validate yourself. And we often do the opposite, right? We push down our fear, we're like, "No, no, I'm not anxious." I'm hopefully asking you to take the courage to do the opposite. Yeah, thank you for getting that. One more, yeah. It's just interesting that the fear is, it's like that fear is the thing that you manifest. So when we were talking about it, it was just, "I'm afraid of this." And what you're doing in the all of the and the masking and stuff, is just you manifesting that fear. You're bringing it out, so. Yeah, thank you for your courage today. Thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for being patient with me, and my vulnerability. And I hope that you enjoyed and felt inspired at home as well. I think it's inspiring an awful lot of people. And don't forget you can have the bonus purchase, which is the workbook, I forgot what it was called there for a second. The workbook, which is a 122 pages, really do recommend that you have this. And we hope that you'll join us for our next segment, we'll see you then. (audience claps)