In which Wolf discusses the proper use of fear. Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/FZl_Gs54yrM
Hi. So I'm back from Funnel Hacking Live 2022 in Orlando, Florida. I've returned to the beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada area. And wow, it's late. I did a video yesterday while I was still at the convention center in Florida now I'm home and I'm really tired. But, I'm gonna do a video, every day.
So, here's what I've been thinking about today. As you know, my big subject is getting people to learn to think better. People ask me what the subject of my podcast, this podcast, Beware of Wolf is and I tell them it's about higher thinking. And, you know, what do I mean by higher thinking?
Part of that is critical thinking. Which is thinking reasonably, rationally, scientifically, evidence-based, all those good things that you know, we associate with the left-brain. But, you know, there's a whole lot more to our brain than the left brain. So I think it's important to, when I say "higher thinking" to include our whole brain. And that includes our emotions, our intuitions, our subconscious and even our shadow. If you know anything about union psychology, then you understand our shadow's this part of us that we repress and tend to project onto other people and not see in ourselves, and there's lots of ways of coping with that and processing that. And I'll have a lot more to say about that later. I said a little bit about that in my early audio only episodes. So I encourage you to check those out. Now I'm doing video! If you're hearing this on audio only, you're basically just seeing me sit in my living room. So there's not much to see visual-wise for most of these. If you're on YouTube or another video channel watching this then hey, this is where I live.
So I'm going to be talking about emotions sometimes too, because I think that's part of what higher thinking is. So let's talk about one of the most primal emotions humans experience, and that's fear. So, what are you afraid of? We all have fears, and some of us face our fears, some of us avoid our fears, some of us thrill to our fears. You know, we all have fears. So what I'm going to try to do is show you how I think you can see fear in a very positive light, because my very basic working model of emotions, and I'll talk about this a lot more in future episodes, is that emotions are reasonable. That is, there's always good reasons for emotions. Now they might not be, or the way emotions are triggered or expressed in any given circumstance might not be appropriate. It might be disproportionate. It might be out of touch with what's actually happening right now or reality. But emotions themselves all exist for reasons. Obviously fear exists for good reasons. Anger exists for good reasons. And so fear, it's natural, good reason is self protection. It's to protect ourselves from things that could harm us. One of the things that came up a lot at Funnel Hacking Live this year is the Hero's Journey. Which of course, Campbell wrote about and George Lucas used a lot in Star Wars. You know, you're familiar with it, the hero hears the call to adventure and goes off on an adventure off into a world unlike any he'd known before. Campbell calls it the "supernatural world." And slays dragons and saves princesses or whatever and then eventually returns a changed person and brings back some kind of treasure from the supernatural world back into the original world. But more fundamentally the hero himself or herself is transformed. They're no longer the same person they were when they left.
But early on in the hero's journey there's a phase where the hero hears the call to adventure and refuses it. And if you look at, for example, Star Wars, you know, Obi-Wan Kenobi invites Luke to go along to carry the message from the Death Start to the rebels and he says "No, I can't, I'm sorry. I'm a farm boy, I've got work to do here, I can't go." It's so far anyways. In The Hobbit the dwarves and Gandalf all show up and they have their party and recruit Bilbo, well try to recruit Bilbo as their burglar. But in the morning he has a change of heart. But what is this having none of it? We all hear this, and you know, I'm on my own hero's journey as well and you probably are as well if you're listening to this. And what is the refusal of the call in our case?
I think the refusal of the call is always based on a sense of inadequacy. That I'm not right for this job, I'm not the one to step up, I won't do well, I will fail, I'll bring shame on my community, I'll look ridiculous, I'll get cancelled, whatever it is. But I'm not the right one, and go find somebody else. I'll just watch. And so, when we feel this inadequacy, I think it's important to recognize it. What do you do with it then?
In Funnel Hacking Live, I saw a whole bunch of excellent speakers. Very like TedTalks, but all broadly on the subject of marketing. Not just marketing but on personal development, because many of the speakers are coaches, they help business people and people who just want to improve their lives. And most of them have very inspirational personal stories. They've come through a lot of very tough circumstances. You know, having been abused as children, or having been in an addiction, you know, just drifting through life. And they've arrived in a place where they're actually worthy to be on stage, in front of thousands of people. There were like, 7,000 people at Funnel Hacking Live. Because now they've millions, or tens of millions of dollars, they're doing charitable work, they're doing all kinds of amazing things in the world, and they're living proof that you can do far more than you have been doing. And in that sense they're all heroes.
I met somebody this morning, Funnel Hacking Live ended two days ago, yesterday it was either clean-up day, go-home day and then today I got on a plane. And I was having breakfast with my son in the hotel restaurant. It was mostly empty, a woman came and sat down near us. A very attractive woman, I think she was about in her 50's. She sat down, we struck up friendly conversation, her, my son and I. And it turns out that she is a very well accomplished entrepreneur at this point. She apparently had a huge setback in her life when she suffered a severe spinal injury. She spent, I'm not sure how long, recovering from it. She was walking fine, but clearly it was something that was a huge setback in her life, changed her career. I'm not going to go into details about exactly who she is, in fact, I gave her the name of my podcast. I hope she'll watch it, because that's part of what started this story, she asked me what my podcast was about. Anyway, she started a line of skin care products, all natural. And she's making seven figures a year now, and that's inspiring. She started from scratch, with nothing. And the fact that she can do this now is amazing. What surprised me is that she said that she's really fearful of public speaking. And of course we had all come from several days of watching public speakers, who were all successful entrepreneurs, talk to an audience. And I knew, based on what she was telling me, that she could do this too. She clearly was afraid of the possibility of getting up in front of thousands of people. I asked her if she had ever done any public speaking, she hadn't really. I said, "I know you can, you know, you have a pleasant personality, you look good." And then she dropped a bombshell on me, I said you know, obviously your skincare products work you know. She said, "Yes they do I'm 75 years old." I said what? Because like I said, I had put her at about 50 years old, and she looked really good for 50 years old. Well, she looks absolutely fantastic for 75, you know. I know she started using these products. But you know, that's part of the hook of her story as well, she's a living example of what good care for your body and your skin can do and that's the kind of thing that inspires people. So, she's basically earning seven figures a year, she's got these fears.
And these fears, and here's the secret I want to impress you with, which is to me, fear has always been the call to adventure. You recognize adventure because you feel the fear, because you feel like "What if I'm not good enough?" And to her credit, she's basically recognized that in herself. You know, a fear of public speaking is actually a fear of social rejection. And as I said, emotions have rational reasons behind them. In a tribal society, which we all have the roots in our minds of tribal life because we've evolved in society. Modern society with all it's alienations and so on is relatively recent in human history. But in tribal societies, if you were rejected by your kinsmen it could be a death sentence. And one of the things that could get you rejected is to bring shame on your tribe. To do something that was basically unforgivable. And so, people rightly feared bringing shame on their tribe. And so, when you get up there on stage, and you're doing public speaking, and I have spoken in front of several hundred people, you feel like, if you make a big mistake, that could be the end of it. You may never get invited back, people would not pay attention to you. And in fact, the best advice I ever heard about public speaking is that when you get up there realize that everybody who's there came to see you. They want to hear what you have to say, and they're rooting for your success. And if you get up there and you feel like you have something really valuable to say, they'll listen. And they'll appreciate it. Even if you aren't perfect, especially if you aren't perfect. I also heard some other great advice from people who specialize in coaching people on how to use YouTube. I was listening to a woman talk to a YouTube expert about doing her podcast, recording her podcast late at night. And just recording audio only. So why are you doing audio only? And she said well, the house is clearly lived in and my child is in bed, I'm kind of speaking kind of quietly, my hair's up, I don't really want to present myself to the camera. And he said, "That's what people want." They want people who are real. And that really impacted me.
My first episodes of this podcast, I wrote them, I performed them, I made sure all the little flaws were edited out, it sounds like national public radio or something. And I'm still very proud of those episodes, but obviously that's a level of perfectionism I can't afford, because there's a lot I want to say in these podcasts, and part of what I want is for my audience to know me. So even when you're in front of a friendly audience, we fear disappointing them. And because fear is there to protect us, that kind of fear feels like we're risking our lives in the circumstance. It's the same kind of feeling, it feels like death. So at a healthy level, when you are experienced as an actor or a public speaker or whatever, you still get butterflies in the stomach. And that's kind of a natural, healthy expression of that fear. It alerts you to be on your best game, and to bring it. And that kind of, that little shot of adrenaline, that little healthy shot of adrenaline really fires you up and gets you in the right direction.
I've actually witnessed, you know, I was a partner in a business start up quite a few years ago now. It was a toy that a friend of mine invented, actually created the company to market the toy. We were at our first annual sales representative meeting, so we had about 50 people in a hotel conference room. And one of my partners got up, he prepared some remarks. He was like the vice president of the company. And he got up there, and he froze. He just stared at the crowd, and then he started reading his notes word by word. And me and my other partners, we were just, we were aghast, we didn't know this would happen. Obviously he didn't even know this would happen. He was not a public speaker, but he had no reason to think that this would happen. And he hadn't you know, he hadn't rehearsed, he hadn't done any other kind of public speaking. So he continued reading slower and slower and he finally paused, looked down, and then said, "I have to leave." And then he walked out of the room. We partners followed him out of the room, and he was in the hallway leaning against the wall kind of gasping for breath. And we kind of took some minutes to calm him down, let him relax a little bit. At first he was saying, "I can't do this I can't do this." And we said you don't have to do it, but you know, the rest of us can go in there and finish for you. And he said, "No no, wait, give me a minute." And he did, he got control of himself and went back in and he finished it, and I was very happy he did that. I'm not going to say I think it was a breakthrough for him because he hadn't realized this before.
Sometimes, if you kind of know that you're prone to that kind of fear, it makes you never want to engage at all, it makes you never want to walk up to the lectern or onto the stage. And a lot of people avoid it just because they know they're fearful of it. But again, my point is when you feel that fear, it's a call to adventure. When I was 16, 17, I learned how to drive. I grew up in Los Angeles, and I would borrow my parent's car and I would take it down to Santa Monica beach. And at Santa Monica beach, they had gym equipment in the sand. My favorite was what they called the traveling rings. It was 10 rings on chains, spaced about 20 feet apart. And there was a post, like a stand at the start, and you would swing off the stand, and you would swing from ring to ring to ring. This wasn't the little ones they had on like school playgrounds, these were like full, adult size traveling rings. And I got to the point where I could go all the way down all 10 and all the way back and for flourish again you actually swung around the stand that you leapt off of and went back and down and again. It was a lot of fun. Some people did tricks, a lot of spins and so on and whatnot, I neve got that fancy. But one time, I actually hit the stand, and I fell off and hit my foot hard on concrete the stand was set into. And you know, I limped away that day with my foot and my pride hurting. I was determined to come back, but it was like a month of coming back every weekend before I could go around the stand again. And it still felt kind of weak because I was afraid. Because I hurt myself. But I was determined I would recover, and I did get back pretty much everything I lost. But it took some time, and it took a tremendous effort because I wasn't fearful before and then I became fearful. And that again was something, was I going to let the fear beat me, or was I going to transcend it? And it was tough, it was tough. But bit by bit I did transcend it. I think that's the important thing about fears, if you are afraid of something and it's not something that will actually preserve your life. Some people are afraid of air travel, some people are afraid of spiders, whatever, or public speaking. And you're not literally in danger of dying, so the best proven methods for dealing with fear are to expose yourself bit by bit to whatever you can handle.
And my friend who I met today, who I referenced today, she said that when she gets home she's joining Toast Masters, which is an international organization that teaches people public speaking, trains people at public speaking. And I've had a little bit of training myself. And it's a great experience because they work you up from nothing, having never publicly spoken before, to accomplished public speaker in a very kind of gradual way. So I definitely recommend training in whatever it is you are fearful of. If it's public speaking, join Toast Masters, or make a YouTube video or something like that. If it's spiders, you know, just think about spiders or look at a picture of a spider. Check out a book at the library about spiders and read about spiders. It may creep you out, it probably will. Go at whatever level you can handle. And over time, you'll actually become more, well desensitized is the term they used, but I like to think it's courageous. Because you may still feel, I mean, nobody really likes, okay, maybe some people like spiders. I don't particularly like them, but I'm not also going to be afraid of them. And over time, I think people, almost anybody could reach that point to. Whatever the stimulus is, whatever the phobia is. But the proven way to master your fear, to slay that dragon, to get back to the hero's journey phase, is to make the leap. Even if it's a little leap at first, because like, in The Hobbit, Bilbo was tested in a lot of different ways before he found himself face to face with the actual dragon. And if you look at any hero's journey, when the hero finally accepts the call, they're still not ready to face the final tests. And it takes time and practice to become that finished hero. You all start out green, and I'm still at that stage here. I'm a master at certain things in my life, I've mastered a number of things. I've not mastered making YouTube videos, I'm starting raw here actually. I was hiding behind written words, now you're just seeing me. And I, everything I've heard: it takes 100 episodes to find your voice. I've committed to doing a year's worth, every day. We'll see.
I've often really admired, for example, webcomic creators. When you look back at their archived webcomics and you look at their earliest comments, and how crude they are. How crudely drawn, how the writing, the state the writings in. And then you jump ahead and see how much more polished they are, how much more confident the art is. How they've hit their stride in terms of their characters in these situations. These things don't happen overnight. The only way you do it is by doing it. For me, my commitment to making one of these videos every day is my own confrontation of the dragon. Sitting here, talking me and saying you aren't good enough. Well I have to be, because as I've heard some people say, there's a world to save. And there's a lot of bad thinking out there. And the world needs people who are willing to step up and say, hey, learn to think better. And all of us will be better for it.
If you resonate with this message, please leave a comment. Tell me about your fears, tell me about what you're doing to overcome them. And come back tomorrow, watch my next video. Goodnight.