Speaker 1: 0:06

Overcoming fear, limiting beliefs and self-doubt. Fears, insecurities, doubts, limiting beliefs and worries are normal. I am sometimes scared, unsure, overwhelmed, insecure and about a million other emotions when I start new goals. So I promise it's okay if you are too. You're not weak. If you're scared, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not a mess or any other negative thoughts that might be bouncing around in your head. If you feel these emotions or have these thoughts, you are human. I'm going to give you a bunch of tools to help you deal with fears, doubt and limiting beliefs, but the main one is this it's okay to feel scared. You're okay. As discussed in the previous chapters, wear the one in control. We don't have to let our emotions rule us. Feel the fear or the limiting belief or the doubt. Take a deep breath and then run towards your goals. I promise you, on the other side of fear is something beautiful. You got this.

Speaker 1: 1:26

My first step is always to give myself permission to suck. A few questions that help me when I'm struggling to let go of perfectionist thinking is what is the worst that could happen if I do suck? Would I still be okay? What am I so afraid of? Are there other times where I've sucked at something. The first few times I tried it, but then I got better and improved with practice. Could this be just like that? Are there other people who sucked at the same goal at the start, but then they improved the more they did it? If I really did suck at this thing, could I just find ways to improve and more on this in the chapter? Every problem has a solution. Run towards fear. A mindset that's helped me when I'm feeling fear or doubt or limiting beliefs is run towards fear. I repeat this to myself over and over again like a mantra. I use that burst of motivation to then immediately take action right, this very second, even just one tiny little baby step, and there's more on this in the chapter setting goals. It also helps me to remind myself of a quote that my girlfriend Emi said to me You're not brave if you feel no fear. You're brave if you feel fear and take action anyway. And after I've taken action, often the fear reduces a little by itself. Then I just keep continuing to take action. The fear usually dissolves over the next few weeks or months or, in some cases, years, as I gain competency and show myself that nothing bad will happen and I will be okay.

Speaker 1: 3:09

I also rely on other people to help me during all of this, and when I ask for help, when I'm asking for reassurance from my friends, I don't want them to just say, yeah, that sucks, because doing so would just reinforce my own suffering. So I proactively ask people to reassure me with positivity. For example, I will say something like I'm having doubts, insecurities and fears. Can you please reassure me and remind me that I can do this? I'm a big proponent of asking for what you want rather than just hoping that people will give it to you. People can't mind read us. They don't really know what we want unless we say it. But a big part of doing everything that I've listed in this chapter so far is letting go of my fears and just trusting that things will work out and more on that in a minute After I've started taking action.

Speaker 1: 4:02

I also question or investigate my fears to see if they're even true or if maybe I've just been over-worrying and stressing myself out needlessly. I'll pick one of my fears, something that I'm convinced is going to end badly, and I will ask myself is it true? As in, is it true? The thing that I'm scared of is definitely absolutely going to happen, and even if it did, can I be certain that it would even be a bad thing? Fear equals false evidence appearing real, and almost always the thought that comes into my head is well, I can't be sure that this is going to end badly. So, I guess, why am I stressing about it? If it does come true, then I'll just cross that bridge when I come to it. Anxiety is interest paid on a debt we don't even owe yet. This process of asking is it true? Is known as the work by Byron Katie, and if you're interested, you can learn more at theworkcom. It's completely free.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Another one of my cheat codes when I'm feeling overwhelmed or feeling fear is a video that I'll put on the screen as I keep talking. If you're looking for the video yourself, you can search for Ulrich Schnaus train journey and the channel name is Jackbox. I have watched this video hundreds of times when I've been anxious or terrified to work on my goals. I stare at the center of the screen, at the end of the train tracks, and I completely zone out, letting the train tracks take me on a beautiful journey, and I just let my worries sort of melt away. Many of the techniques that I wrote in the chapter failures, setbacks and stress how to become resilient apply to dealing with your initial fears or limiting beliefs as well. Things like meditation, listening to uplifting music, accountability, partners, taking a break if you need it, being kind to yourself, as well as all of the books and resources that I listed in that chapter, all apply here to your initial fears.

Speaker 1: 6:45

Let's talk about overwhelm. As I mentioned in the chapter setting goals, sometimes I get a little bit overwhelmed when thinking about the big goals that I want to achieve and how much work I might have to do to achieve this thing. I call this looking at the mountain, where we're stressing ourselves out over how far we have left to climb. And, as I said in the previous chapter, the thing that has helped me the most is breaking down my goal into smaller goals and then smaller and smaller and smaller baby steps until the steps no longer intimidate me and I can actually take some action. But it is completely normal and I promise it's okay to get a little bit scared or overwhelmed by your goals. Just do your best not to think too far ahead, particularly when you're just getting started. Humble yourself enough to just take things one step at a time. Do not disturb yourself by imagining your whole life all at once.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Marcus Aurelius, the power of faith and letting go. Often, when I'm stressed, I will use the techniques from the book Letting Go by David Hawkins to just surrender and let go of my fears, trusting that it will all be okay. Essentially, this is giving up to a higher power, the mantra I'm letting go and trusting you. Universe works well for me. The word God might resonate more with you. If so, use that. If the universe or God don't resonate with you, you can let go and just trust in the self-improvement gods, whoever or whatever is in charge of rewarding us for putting in effort towards our goals, or just life itself.

Speaker 1: 8:26

I also let go and trust in the people who are further ahead of me when it comes to the goal that I'm trying to achieve. I let go and I blindly trust their advice. After all, they know more than me. I trust them when they tell me that I'm gonna make it and I trust that if they can do it, then I can probably do it too. Some of this requires humility and blind faith. After all, they're the expert. I'm the newbie. How the hell do I know what is or isn't possible? And here is me giving you the exact same thing. I promise you are going to make it.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I also let go and trust that everything in the universe will be okay and that I will be okay. I repeat this to myself as a mantra everything is okay, everything will be okay. I say this to myself a lot, each day. It brings me a lot of comfort and a lot of peace. And if, after hearing all of this, letting go of your fears and surrendering is difficult for you, give yourself permission to suck with it. It took me a long time to trust the universe, to trust other people, to trust life. I was very cynical for a long time. It took me a long time to trust the people that were giving me advice and, especially, to trust and believe in myself, and that last one really did take me a long time. Especially, I had to build up a lot of evidence and proof that I was capable of change before I finally started to really believe it and internalize it. So it's okay if this all takes you a long time too, or if you never get it. That's okay too.

Speaker 1: 10:03

If you struggle to believe in yourself or don't trust that you're capable of succeeding, remind yourself that you're here right now listening to this. You literally found this content. You are clearly capable of seeking out answers, working on yourself and improving yourself. You aren't capable of giving up on your dreams or living an unhappy, complacent life. You have proof that you'll go hunting for solutions Again. You're listening to this video course right now. You can play out this thought experiment.

Speaker 1: 10:34

If you were to be complacent for a little while, you'd most likely get very frustrated and angry with yourself. Right, and that frustration, that feeling of I'm wasting my life, would most likely cause you to take more action to fix it right. You couldn't just ignore that, building a sense of frustration for the rest of your life, could you? You're probably not capable of that. You'd probably do something to improve things. So trust in yourself that you have an inbuilt mechanism inside you that won't let you stay complacent. It won't let you not improve yourself. It won't let you not achieve your goals. You're already on the path to an amazing life. You're already capable of greatness. You already have everything you need to succeed. It's just a matter of continuing to do the steps. You're already a winner. You were just the last to know it.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Sometimes I still struggle to let go and blindly trust in all of that. So in those cases I go hunting for evidence and proof. Are there other people who've done what I want to do? Have others succeeded with the same goal or a goal that's very similar? The motto of my content and this community in general is if I can do it, you sure as hell can too. So I go hunting for others who've made it and I remind myself if they've done it, I can probably do it too. I also look at those who have made it and I ask myself can I do just 10% of what they have done, or even just 1%, and would that still be a huge success? And then I aim to do just 1% or 10% of what they have done, and so as not to overwhelm myself, I just start with trying to achieve 1% of what they've done, and if even that is scary, then I break it down into an even smaller chunk and just try and do a tiny little bit of what they have done.

Speaker 1: 12:29

Sometimes I also go hunting for evidence that I myself have achieved difficult things in my past, and so if I was able to do those hard things before, surely I can do this hard thing as well, and sometimes I might have limiting beliefs that seem to be based in logical, actual reasons. For example, I'm too old, it's too late for me to build a great physique, or one that I hear from quite a few men. I'm short, and so I can't find a dating partner. In those cases, I go hunting for evidence of other people who have the same handicap or weakness and I wouldn't call it a handicap or a weakness, but those words might resonate with you In other words, people who are in the same situation that I'm in, who've already done what I'm trying to do After all. Again, if they can do it, I can probably do it too. I may as well try. What have I got to lose? The worst that happens is I don't succeed. Well then, I just keep living the life that I'm already living. Nothing bad happens. And if nobody else with my handicap has ever done it which is almost never the case well, at some point in human history, no human being had ever walked on the moon, and yet somebody did it.

Speaker 1: 13:43

So if they can be the first at something like that, can I be the first person to achieve my goal, given my unique circumstances, fear of the Unknown, no matter how a fear might be presenting itself. It is almost always a fear of the unknown or a fear of death, but they're pretty much the same thing. So what if we were to make the fear a little bit more known? Whenever I have a fear, I research what others have gone through when it comes to this same fear. For instance, did they end up being okay? Did they succeed and make it? This helps me see what might happen.

Speaker 1: 14:19

If I start taking action towards my own fear and I'm taking the unknown a bit more known, then I start taking some tiny, tiny little baby steps towards that fear, in other words, carefully dipping my toe in the water, so to speak. This is known as exposure therapy. I am exposing myself to the fear, gradually and gently, showing myself that my biggest fears might not be as bad as I imagine them to be. Reality is much kinder than our stories about it. Byron, katie, we suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Seneca, once I've done a tiny little bit of research and taken a tiny little bit of action, the thing that I was scared of often becomes a lot less scary to me, because now I'm more familiar with it. It's no longer a fear of the unknown. Now it is more clear, and it's usually just a set of steps that I now need to take in order to reach my goal. Plus, I now have the evidence that other people have done it, and so I can read through their journeys if they've shared them, which most people do To see what they went through, what solutions they came up with to their problems and how they managed their own fears and all of that sort of stuff. I also like to open up and directly tell people that I'm scared, and then ask for their help with facing my fears. Having them listen to me, talking through my fears, just makes the fears less unknown and scary. Often just talking it out makes me feel better and, if nothing else, it makes me feel less alone, like I have somebody in my corner who's there helping me and cheering me on. This is one of the big benefits of our coaching program Everybody there supporting you, cheering you on and listening to those fears, so you don't feel like it's just you against these big, scary fears.

Speaker 1: 16:09

I also ask myself what is the worst case scenario. If this fear does come true, I will then do what I call playing it out to its logical conclusion. For instance, if I'm scared that I'll never lose weight. I will ask myself what's the worst case scenario if I don't lose weight and the thought that comes into my head might be well, then I'll be fat, then nobody will want me, then I will be alone, with nobody loving me, then I will grow old and lonely, with no sexual partners, and then eventually I will die. Next I will ask myself okay, what would I do if all that was done? What would that happen? And then the thought that might come up for me is well, in the case of me being fat and alone and having no sexual partners, well, I guess I would spend my time working on my business. I'd probably spend a lot of time with my friends. I'd probably work on my mindset and try and live a happy, fulfilled life where I help other people. Wait, that actually sounds like a pretty okay life. This exercise almost always brings me a little bit of peace because it shows me that even if the worst case scenario was to happen the thing that I am most terrified of if that were to come into fruition, I would just adjust and I would find other ways to be happy. I would roll with the punches, I would be okay, you can try this yourself with your own fears and see if it helps you.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Balance and logic. Sometimes I find myself getting so caught up in my fears and the things that I am worried about, focusing on all the possible negative things that might happen, but I like to be a person of rational logic, so I choose to then also write out a list of the positive things that might happen to balance things out a little bit. In other words, my fears are the worst case scenario. So, to be a bit more logical, I think through some of the possible best case scenarios. For example, if the worst case scenario that I am scared of is I might never lose weight and I will always be fat and I will die alone, I would turn that around to. The best case scenario would be I lose all the weight, I learn to love myself, everybody loves me and is inspired by me, and they go on their own self-improvement journeys. I have an amazing, rewarding sex life. I smile every time I look at my body, all of my relationships and friendships are amazing and I live a charmed life.

Speaker 1: 18:35

You can try this exercise yourself and, after you've completed it, think about this how do you feel when you fantasize about the best case scenario. Does it make you feel a little more motivated versus when you were living in fear of the worst case scenario? Do you feel like taking more action when you think about the best case scenario compared to thinking about the worst case scenario? Does focusing on the best case scenario empower you a little bit more? Does focusing on the best case scenario excite you? Do you think it makes you more or less likely to succeed? Now, when you're thinking of the best case scenario, you might have a thought appear into your head of this is silly, it's a pipe dream, this is a pie in the sky, fantasy that'll never actually happen. Well, let's be honest, it's no more silly than the fears of I'll be fat forever and nobody will ever love me and I'll die alone. If we're going to make up stories, we may as well make up some positive ones to balance out the negative ones. When working on goals, sometimes we are terrified of making a bad decision or getting it wrong. Sometimes this fear is so strong it can become crippling and we procrastinate, never actually taking any action for fear of fucking up.

Speaker 1: 19:53

I like to remind myself that there are no correct ways of doing something. Nobody's keeping score. Life is not a test. Nobody's judging me for how perfectly I make every single little decision, despite what some religious teachings might try and tell me. There are often multiple solutions to a problem, multiple methods of doing things. A philosophy that's helped me is everybody has a different rule book. Some people like living life according to one set of rules, other people like another set of rules. Some people like using one method, others like another method. Neither method is wrong, just two different methods for two different people. I don't need to pick the correct method, just any method that works for me. This is all just a big experiment. We're just trying different methods, seeing what works for us, seeing what doesn't work for us. I also give myself permission to suck with picking which method I want to use. I simply try one method and see if I like it or see if it works for me. But I'm allowed to change my mind later or adjust the decision or the method as needed.

Speaker 1: 21:03

I'm never locked in to a decision forever, even with things where it might seem like I am, such as a job or a relationship or marriage etc. Sometimes for me it's just been a case of taking a leap of faith and trusting that eventually things will work out. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes only sooner. To Lula Bankhead and taking a leap of faith took me a little while to get good at. At first I was utterly terrified to do it. Don't beat yourself up if you struggle too. Give yourself permission to suck. I promise you'll improve with practice.

Speaker 1: 21:41

In my experience, there is no such thing as failure. There are no mistakes. Every time I've thought something might be a mistake or a failure, I've realized but wait, I learned something. It wasn't for nothing, even if sometimes what I learned was okay, don't do that again. We're just figuring out what works, what doesn't work, and a mistake is simply a stepping stone, something that gets us one step closer to the thing that will work. A mistake is actually a learning lesson, and I try my best to be as kind to myself as I can whenever I make a mistake or a fail at something. I was doing my best. We are all always just doing our best. In every given moment. Whenever you're caught up in fear, stress, doubt or uncertainty, remind yourself this too shall pass.

Speaker 1: 22:49

That was a free chapter from my new video course Play to Win how I Built a Winner's Mindset, so I hope you found that helpful. If you would like to grab the full video course, the link is in the description below. You can pay whatever you can afford, even if that's literally just $1. I also have $200 coaching calls. If you want to sit down with me one-on-one, we'll sit down for an hour or so, go over any problems that you might be having, any struggles, what you want, come up with a plan of action, pick my brain and ask me any questions that you might have. Whatever you want, however, you want to use that time link is in the description below to that and we have a hardcore coaching program Change your Life 12 Weeks, all In Plus Lifelong Access to Our Accountability Members Only. Group Link is down below. As always, ladies and gentlemen, go out there, crush those goals and have a bloody good time doing it.