Hello and today we are talking about fear. Fear of not being able to do something, fear that leads to inaction, fear that may be stopping you right now to go after your dreams, or fear that maybe stopping your clients to be able to go after their dreams. So today we are going to discuss this very tricky topic of fear. How to get past it? What does it really mean to be in fear? What can it lead to? And what are some of the things that you can do about or questions that you can ask that will help you get past these fears in life? What we are going to discuss will also help you help your clients get past their own fears. Now, before we get started, let's talk really quickly about what is fear first let's understand what is fear. Fear is basically our response to something that is uncertain in life.

And that feels like the uncertainty that is waiting for us on the other end is not something that we desire as an outcome. Fear shows up as a physical or an emotional response to something that is unforeseen. Something that is a made of future, that we are projecting based on what is showing up in front of us. Even physical fear, like a tiger coming in front of you, is a physical response that you're having, because you think that the Tiger's gonna come eat you. So you start making up a story of how Tiger's gonna come eat you fairly quickly. And fear of response is generated in your body. Now not all fear is bad. Some fear is actually there to protect you. It's a safety mechanism. Say for example, that tiger was really there. Well, you better be scared because you have to come up with an exit strategy else.

You might be eaten. So not all fear is bad, but a lot of fear that we currently operate from that leads to inaction is not real fear. These are fears that we have constructed in our lives because of past behaviors, current thinking, and thoughts that we have, or somehow stories that we are telling ourselves of a potential future that is not a desired future for us. So before we get into how fear shows up in your physical body and how to turn it around and address some of the questions that will help you navigate your fear, let's understand how fear gets generated and created when it's not an obvious fear. Say, for example, you're about to go on stage. You are about to go on stage and you feel the fear of the stage, the fear of public speaking. You may go something like, oh my God, I'm about to go on stage.

I'm scared. But if you really think about it, that fear of public speaking is not a fear of public speaking. It's a fear of public response. You're more concerned and scared of what people would think than the actual fact of you going up on stage and speaking, which means while you're feeling the fear of public speaking, what you're really feeling is the fear of how people may not respond, how you want them to respond when you go up on stage and speak. And that is most often the case when somebody is finding themselves in the middle of a fear that is stopping them to take action or their feeling of visceral fear, which may impact the action they're about to take. These are stories that we create. Thoughts that originate in our mind with no particular feeling create the emotion of fear because we come up with a thinking a story that tells us that we should be scared of that situation.

Recently in my life, I decided to buy a house. And while I was investing in this property, I had real fears showing up in my life. I was thinking about, am I making the right financial decisions? Am I making the right cautionary decisions? Do I have savings for my, for my kids and my wife, do I, am I being irresponsible? When it comes to taking care of my family, of my parents and so forth while all of these fears were happening in my body, I could realize that a lot of these things that I was projecting outside into the future were all made up stories. Fear is very much present in our lives and our clients' lives. And there is no way that we can absolutely completely take away that emotion. Like I said, fear sometimes is helpful. Fear sometimes can actually help us be more cautious and aware of our surroundings and keep us safe.

So fear itself is not always a bad thing, but what we want to learn is how do we navigate when we are in that fear full state? How do we navigate this emotion of fear and continue to take action towards a progressive future for ourselves? So let's understand a little bit more about our fear response and then understand some of the questions that can help you get past that debilitating fear and get into action. So firstly, what you need to understand is fear and excitement shows up the same way in our body. It only depends on what story we tell ourselves is, if we recognize it as fear or as excitement. So let's take the same example of going up on stage and giving a presentation, the experience, the physical experience that you feel at that time can be qualified as fear or excitement. Science shows that neurologically they show up the same way.

And that's why the sensations in the body that you experience is the same, which is why, the reason why you may feel fear when you are about to go on stage versus excitement. While you're about to go on stage is merely the story that you tell yourself. If you tell yourself the story of how your presentation's not gonna work out or how it will all go wrong, or how in the past your presentations haven't worked out, you will tend to generate a fear response and tell yourself a story of fear and failure. Whereas if you tell yourself the story of how excited you are, how pumped you are and how you're gonna crush it, how much preparation has gone into it and how you're going to be among the best stocks that the person had and have a great impact in their life, you would start to feel the excitement.

A lot of what happens post the physical responses is recognized and acknowledged to be a particular direction, changes the way your mind, your thoughts, approach, that particular action. If you're in fear, you'll most likely be nervous when you're on stage, you might pace a little or pace. Not at all. You might say things, but not really be confident about it and blabber a lot more than actually make the presentation if you were in a fearful state. But if you take that physical sensation and turn it into excitement if you tell yourself I'm excited about this presentation, I'm going to rock this presentation. People are gonna love it. They're gonna have a transformative experience, you are sending a signal to your body, that the experience it is having is of excitement that it's ready. It's ready to get on stage and ready to make an impact. And that will put you into a state of excitement, which of course will translate into a powerful presentation.

So firstly, let's understand that the body sensation that you feel when it is fear or excitement is the same, which means often you are, miscategorizing what you're actually feeling. And you can translate your fear into excitement, or if your stories around fear, you can turn that story into excitement and hence have an excited response instead of a fearful response. Sometimes you are fearful of something that is a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more real than getting on stage and making a presentation. Now, sometimes you will have a real fear, a fear that is actually present a fear that really needs to be addressed because it's not something that is a physical sensation. It's actually a thought it is generated at the thinking level. And hence it's creating a physical response to address such kind of fear. Questions can be really, really powerful.

So let's discuss some of the questions that will help you translate your fear, your thinking into action into excitement. The first question that will help you get past any irrational or rational fear that is in your mind that you've created through your thinking is to ask yourself the question, what are you afraid of? What are you really afraid of? Say, for example, I am really scared to put out my message on any social media channel. I'm scared to post about my messages out to the world. I am, uh, scared to get on a sales conversation or a discovery call with a potential client, ask yourself, are you really scared of the act? Or are you scared of the outcome? What are you really scared of? What is it that you're really fearing in that situation? Most of the time, you would see that we give a surface response.

Like I'm scared to post on social media, but what you're really scared of very often is what happens once you do post on social media. Now, this awareness of what you're really scared of can change the way you approach that particular fear and that particular challenge. Once, you know, it's not posting on social media, that is getting you scared, but it is the response that people will have is getting you scared or is making you fearful of the act of doing. You can now dissociate the act of doing from the outcomes they're doing. And once you dissociate the act and the outcomes, the act becomes slightly simpler, it becomes less scary, which is why I encourage you to look at if you're scared of something you're fearful of something or your client is fearful of something to really rationalize that fear, ask yourself the question.

What are you really scared of? What are you so concerned about? What are you fearful of? The second question that brings more realness to your current fear is asking yourself the question, what I'm scared of, is that a real thing? Or is it something that have made up stories around? You see a lot of our past programming influences our current actions, things that have happened in our past people, we have met in the past stories that have been told to us in the past create our current reality. And very often, if you ask yourself the question about being honest and being truthful about is this fear real you'll find that a lot of those fears are actually just programming of the past things that happen. At some point, somebody didn't do something, you didn't get the response that you wanted or expected. And hence you created a story around that particular belief about you.

This is you being fearful on autopilot. This is where you haven't had a chance. You haven't given your conscious mind a chance to take action towards that fear and not let your past hold you back. What happened in the past is passed. What happens in the future is defined by what we do today. If we get ourselves into the state of action, if we get ourselves into the state of excitement, we will conquer our fears and get better outcomes than yesterday. A few years ago, I was very scared to do this turn on the camera and make a presentation, make a video that can help other people. I was really, really scared of it because the first time I ever turned on the camera and recorded something, I found myself mumbling or not being able to put my thoughts together, not being able to create a really powerful conversation straight off the bat, not be able to make a really powerful presentation straight off the bat.

And that trained me to believe that I would never be good on camera that I can not do this thing of creating videos. That I have to be someone who's behind the camera and never in front of the camera. Well, thankfully I was able to address that fear by asking myself what was I really afraid of? And I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of people won't watch it and that I would be not brilliant at it and that I will never get good at it in time. I realized that that fear was originating from my past experiences. And once I let that go, once I rationalized that my past is governing my present, and that is no way to build my future. I was able to step back and ask myself a better question of asking, what am I excited for? Can I be excited for the process of creating then the outcome of what people may think about this?

Can I be more excited about the process of impacting just one life, just you who's watching this video right now. Can I help one person? Can I make this video for one person? And can this person have a better life because of this video? And if my answer was, yes, I should go ahead and not let my past control my present and definitely not control my future. My past created this version of me and I'm grateful for it, but at the same point in time, it also gave me certain beliefs and that I have to suspend for me to be able to get past my concerns, my life, and create a new life for myself. This is what I invite you to do as well. Write down. Is your fear real? Is there any truth to it or is it just past programming? Is it just the stories of your past about something that may have happened?

Someone may have said something and now you're still being limited in your potential because of that past, or are you being currently limited in your potential and pure potentiality because you're letting your past run your present. The third question hopefully will challenge your current paradigm and allow you to get into movement and action. The third question is what would accepting this fear and not getting an action cost me? What would it help me with if I got past this fear and what are the potential outcomes I can get, if I could choose courage and move forward with excitement in this direction and not let fear control it, this question will help you diagnose the pros and cons of being in fear. It will help you identify what you have to lose. If you stay in fear and what you have to gain, if you chose excitement and courage, once you've identified those pros and cons, you'll be able to identify several reasons for you to stay in action, to get into excitement instead of letting fear control your life.

Sometimes it is important for us to be able to see the benefit of the future to let go of the challenges of the past. The fourth question that I have for you is to identify what is it that triggered fear in you? The reason for this question is once you know your pros and cons, once you know that this may be just a figment of your imagination, once you know that there may be a better way to experience this fear and turn it into excitement, and you're still not able to get into action, it may be because there is something that triggers fear in. You say, for example, when I wanted to get on video and create presentations for the world, sometimes I would find my fear of not feeling good enough to be on video was triggered because I looked at other people who were doing this work for decades and they were so good on camera.

I was like, there's no way I can be this good. There's no way I have something new to add. There's no way I can make a better presentation than what already is present on the interwebs for everybody anyways, to watch who am I to create this? I doubted myself unlimited myself because I was comparing myself. There was a specific event when I watched somebody who was a very successful coach, somebody who had been doing camera and video work for a really long time. And I would compare myself and limit my own self. And it would create that fear in me of not feeling good enough fear of saying that I won't be able to create that impact that that person did on video. And that fed my fear. And that continued to feed my fear for a very long time until I recognized that that's the event that is causing it.

And because that was the event, what I started doing was to ignore the other trainers for a minute, to work on my methodology, to clarify methodology, what is it that I do? How is it that I'm able to create an impact in my client's life? How is it that I'm able to work with people and get them great results? Despite the circumstances that may come in when they are starting to work with me, and that eventually gave me the confidence and allowed me to not feel the trigger of the event, even if I saw somebody that was fabulous, I understood that I don't have to idolize these individuals who are amazing at their art. I have to be inspired by them. If I idolize them, I would always be chasing and always feel less than if I was inspired by them. They were my peers, they were doing good quality work in the world, just exactly as I was.

And we were all trying to hope to create a better world for everybody. So ask yourself this question and your clients, this question of what is it that may be happening in life that is triggering fear in you and how can you isolate those events so you can ignore them, limit them, or completely eliminate them? So you can act a lot more from a place of excitement, action, and courage. The next question I have for you is what are the small steps that you can take to get past this fear? Very often we think a big, massive action would help us get past anything that may happen in life. While that sounds like a really cool idea. It doesn't actually work. What really works is you being able to take small, tiny actions every single day. So you can build a new muscle to be able to get past that fear.

So you can build new courage to be able to get past that fear, to be able to be in action. So you can counter that fear with actual results. And once you start taking those tiny actions, start to see your confidence rise and your abilities rise, your habits rise to the occasion you see slowly but surely the fear goes away. So I invite you to think about what are the tiny steps that you can take, the tiny habits that you can bring in to your life that will help you get past any fear that you may be experiencing right now in your life. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Ajit Nawalkha and you are listening to the Evercoach podcast. I am your host, Ajit Nawalkha, and every week on the Evercoach podcast, I will bring the world's best thinkers, coaches, trainers to share some of their best ideas to solve real client problems, live a prosperous life, and be an even better version of ourselves.