SUMMARY

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of YouTube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

Beat back those fears. I got four big ideas for you and you’re going to love them. Number one, and you’re going to hate this one. I’ll make sure you like the rest.

1. Stop Blaming Fear for Your Progress

Number one, stop thinking the reason you are not getting ahead, has anything whatsoever to do with fear. Fear gets too much play in our lives. We’re always going to it. We’re always blaming it.

“Oh, it’s fear.”
“Fear held me back.”
“Well, I’m worried about this. So I stopped.”

And you know what it is? It’s a grand lie that’s been perpetuated by society. It’s a huge lie. ‘Cause look, real fear, physical fear especially, is there’s an external threat that’s imminent and it’s in your face. That’s fear. Everything else is a self-contrived story that we tell ourselves.

We need to realize that most fear is just bad management of our minds.

But we allow ourselves to loop it. What happens if you don’t know psychologically what’s happening? Fear is really just saying “what if” followed by a negative statement.

“What if she rejects me?”
“What if they don’t give me the promotion I ask?”
“What if I fail? What if they make fun of me?”
“What if I lose everything I worked so hard for?”

“What if”…followed by a negative statement. I have a question for you though. What if you started focusing more in your life on the “what if’s” followed by a positive statement?

“What if she says yes?”
“What if I get what I finally deserve?”
“What if I can grow this business?”
“What if I can accomplish that?”
“What if I believed in myself again?”

And you started stewing on the positive as much as you stewed on that old negative. It would change your story. It would change how you feel about yourself.

Fear is usually not the thing holding people back. What’s usually holding them back is a lack of connection with something more important than fear. Let me say that again.

Fear is not usually what’s holding people back. What’s holding them back is a lack of connection with something that’s bigger than fear.

I mean, how does a soldier run into harm’s way? How does a firefighter run into the burning building? It’s not that they’re not afraid. There is always going to be fear when you’re doing something where there might be risk, but instead the soldier is attached to his mission, his commitment, his pledge to his country, something bigger than the fear and himself. The firefighter runs into the building, he’s still afraid. He or she runs in that building because they have a bigger commitment to serve people and save people, that’s bigger than a fear.

If you’re not doing something, don’t blame fear. Realize that you’re lacking a connection to something that’s bigger than the fear.

Something that you care about more than your insecurity, your worry, your negative “what if’s.” And so that’s what the heroes do. The firefighter said, “What if I can save lives?” The soldier said, “What if I could serve my country?” The executive who finally tried that big, bold, crazy idea said not what if this turns out badly, but “What if this innovation changes the game and serves our customers better?” The woman who finally talked to her husband about that thing that’s bothering her so long instead of saying, “What if he’s a jerk?” She said, “Well, he’s probably going to be a jerk but what if I finally move them this time?” They allowed themselves to believe. She said, “What if he finally changes?” And she got over her fears because she said, “I care about our relationship and our future more than how scared I am to say something that’s vulnerable.”

You follow, stop blaming the fear my friend. This was a big thing for me. I probably started shooting videos about two years after I should have, ’cause I thought, “Well what if they make fun of me?” “What if no one watches them?” I wasn’t a good communicator. This like I’m doing now. I don’t have a teleprompter. I have a couple of bullet points in front of me. I’m teaching you from my life, from my experience of serving millions of people around the world. I didn’t have that ability before. So I sat there for years worried and not ready to start. And it was too unfortunate. I mean, I wish I’d started earlier but back then it was, “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if this is stupid?” And then finally I said, “You know what? This isn’t fear. There’s no fear preventing me from going around and pressing the red button on that camera. There is no fear. There’s no fear there. “There’s a story there.” There’s a “what if” followed by the negative statement there, but there is no fear. There is no lying between me and the video camera. It’s my own self stopping me. It’s my own lack of commitment to something bigger than that red button. Stop telling yourself it’s fear and that will change everything in your life.

2. Confront Your Fears on Paper

Number two, and this is huge, huge, huge. If you don’t believe anything I just said then fine. Get a piece of paper and write down the real fears. Write them down. I want you to think of the dream that you have, the ambition, the goal, and any reason that you think you’ve been stopping. Write down why. What would you have to go learn, do, or ask for in order to overcome that fear or that challenge? It’s simple. You know the biggest breakthrough sometimes for people’s lives is when they write stuff down. Have you ever had that? You’ve been to a seminar, you write in your journal, the idea hits you or you’re writing your journal at night or you’re typing your book or you’re doing something. And just by the act of expression or capturing you find your answers.

So if I’m talking to you and it’s just not hitting, that’s okay. Take that time. And you’ll find your own answers. When you say “I want this, but this is stopping me,” and then you take that next step to say, “Here’s what I should do to address, learn, re-equip,” ask for help to address that challenge. Then guess what happens? You usually do.

3. Take Daily Action

Third, big idea from there. You know what? Fear tends to dissipate with daily action.

Fear tends to dissipate with daily action.

So I’d love you to do this. All I want you to do is take three steps a day. Accomplish three goals a day. I know sometimes in your life when it’s really difficult—I mean, I remember in my life when I was seriously depressed and suicidal as a young man in college, after my girlfriend broke up with me. I mean, a goal for the day might be something as big as take a shower. Literally, I mean that might’ve been it, take a shower, eat some food, talk to a friend. Sometimes when you’re there that’s all it takes, but you can do those three things.

When you’re Uber successful now and we’re breaking through. They might be, “Call that person you’ve been waiting to call and ask for something from them.” Shoot that video, create that product, invent that thing, tell those people to stop, ask for help. Whatever it is, find three things that you can do every day that’s appropriate for where you’re at in your life and just do them, ’cause you know what? Momentum beats the pants out of fear. The more momentum in your life you get what we call in psychology the experience of the competence-confidence loop. Have you heard of that? The competence-confidence loop. It’s a physiologically proven reality where the better you get or the more momentum you get, the more confidence and the beauty is, the more confidence you get, the more you’ll try things and develop more knowledge, skill, and ability, thus more competence. And the more competence, the more confidence. These things grow together and all of a sudden fear isn’t such a thing anymore because you know what? You’ve gotten through things before. You’ve broken things before and because you did that things change.

4. Aspire to Reach Your “Crazy” Goals

And here’s the last big idea. What’s something crazy that you could aspire to or want? Crazy, like when you looked at your goals, was there anything on those goals that were crazy, totally out of reach? You were like, “No way, don’t know how, can’t do that.” Were there any like that? I want you to find those things. I want you to write that thing down.

“Here’s three big crazy things I want in my life.” Then I also want you to write, “Here’s the fear I would have if I chase those or I accomplish those.” Three big fears of “if I chased it or accomplished it.” ‘Cause sometimes it’s not just the fears we have today, we’re thinking we’re going to have fear tomorrow. “Well, if I go for that dream, then I might have fears later on.” Identify those and create an action plan for those too. ‘Cause you know what?

The more you think about your fears, the more you realize they’re silly. The more you realize those worst case scenarios almost never happen. And the more you realize you deserve something beyond them, you don’t deserve to live a life trapped by fear.

That cage of fear can only be rattled by you, only be broken by you, only be broken by your mind expanding into new possibilities for yourself and you taking new daily actions. It’s okay to think crazy once in a while. “I want something crazy and big and it’s a big goal and I don’t know how I’m going to do it.” Don’t let fear stop you. Get committed to what you want. Set those daily actions and quit making the excuses that it’s fear, my friend. It will be the biggest breakthrough you ever have in your life.