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[Music] you welcome to the ultimate guide for dealing with fear part 1 this is going to be a two-part series where we're gonna take a deep look into the nature of fear warning this is an advanced teaching in advanced episode which means that a lot of the stuff I'm gonna be talking about is gonna go over the head of many people simply because you're probably gonna need five or ten years of basic self-help work before you can appreciate some of the stuff that I'll be saying here today you know of course don't let that be an obstacle or a limiting belief for you I mean try to go through it anyways try to understand it because really I'm not saying anything super complicated it's just a matter of are you mature enough to really appreciate what's being said and then to follow through on it and then to find it in your direct experience and to start to do the practices to make this a living reality for you anyways though you want to really make sure that you stick with me for part two a lot of you guys watch part one but then skip out on part two part two is gonna have a lot of important content in it and to help you stick around I'm gonna promise you two things number one is that in part two I will give you the top ten ways for overcoming fear and dealing with fear now don't worry though we're still going to cover a lot of that material we're gonna build up to it here in part one so the part one is necessary to really understand what I'll be sharing in part two and then I'll also answer the following question for you what is the most important quality that you need to succeed in life what do you think take a guess I'm gonna give you the answer it's gonna be a one-word answer at the end of Part two so stick around for that otherwise let's just begin so fear is not merely some psychological problem or some like psychological annoyance that you experience once in a while here and there and it's also not merely a human problem fear has a very deep existential dimension it's really a universal problem of consciousness people don't appreciate that it goes much deeper than just psychology in fact psychologists scientists and philosophers do not properly understand what fear is or why fear occurs and this shows in our society because we don't teach fear by which I mean we don't explain how it really works we don't teach it's existential dimensions notice that no one through all of your years of schooling and maybe you went to university no one has ever taught you what fear is or how to deal with it and yet you've been dealing with fear through your own inadequate inefficient ways you've been trying to cope with it unconsciously for your entire life your entire life think back to your earliest memories of childhood and I bet you you'll find some your earliest memories were memories of fear you fear something and that goes all the way up through till today and yet nobody ever taught you how to deal with fear isn't that a scandal isn't that outrageous and here we are in the 21st century mankind has been alive and you know going strong for hundreds of thousands of years but you know modern civilization is maybe 5,000 years old let's say and and nobody teaches you about fear how can this be this is this is an outrage well of course this shows you that there must be something deep to fear that people are afraid to teach it and we'll get into that in a minute but really people don't teach it because they themselves don't understand it and you might wonder well how is it possible that scientists understand quantum mechanics and they understand gravity and they understand this advanced stuff how to build super computers and semiconductors and all of this and yet they don't understand fear that's right hardly anybody in our society understands what fear is because our society is extremely materialistic we don't put importance on the study of things like fear because fear is like it's almost treated like this sort of like oh it's just a little ancillary thing it's a little loot this little thing that just kind of bugs you once in a while it's almost like a phantom or a ghost that you know is it's unscientific you can't even study it what is here how do you quantify if you how do you measure it here what are the units of fear you see this is the problem with science is that in its attempt to quantify everything becomes so autistic that it doesn't really have a handle on emotions how emotions work and therefore of course this isn't actually taught to you even in fields like excuse me even in fields like psychology where you would think well surely psychologists and therapists and psychoanalysts understand what fear is and how emotions really work no they don't they don't they themselves are full of fear if you go to a therapist your therapist will be full of fear and will not understand how fear really works not at the deep level so of course the reason I'm saying this is just to sort of prepare you for the fact that know some of the things you might hear here for me are gonna be different than what you expected or it might seem incredible at first or it might seem like it contradicts what your religion taught you or what science taught you just be open to that right because we're dealing with the challenge of overcoming the limitations of current culture we're always dealing that with that limitation in my work in actualize that or videos we're always coming up against that because people always just assume that what their culture teaches them is the limits of human knowledge and is the truth and then of course it's shocking to find out that nothing could be further from the truth so the first thing you got to notice is that fear dominates your entire life and this is an insight that I want to give credit to Peter Ralston for for making me aware of this of just how much fear dominates my life and all of our lives it's not just something that happens it's something that you're in meshed in all the time it's like you're efficient water you're a human in fear living through fear wading through fear swimming through fear every single day of your life so that shows you that this is something that's a little bit more serious than just an emotional problem you're constantly afraid notice that it might seem like well if I'm constantly afraid leo then don't I already know it no you don't that's the trick with emotions and with fear and with the way that consciousness works is that the majority of your survival functions the majority of your emotional system is outside of your awareness it's like that old metaphor about the the tip of the iceberg and the majority the iceberg is submerged under water that's exactly how your emotions work because your emotions are so fundamental that they aren't even allowed to enter your consciousness because they're so central to your survival so even though you're completely dominated and run by fear you're not really aware of why or how or what it is it's controlling you like a marionette with strings you see you're at the affective fear but that does not mean you understand what fear is nor does that mean that you have control over your fear so let's start somewhere very fundamental and let's just ask a few very fundamental existential questions what is fear why is fear what is the function of fear why does it exist at all why is it so pervasive and so constant and why is it so difficult to just drop fear have you noticed that have you noticed that just a high quality argument some logic is not going to help you overcome a fear why is that well fear is a self control mechanism it's not just some emotion it's a core survival mechanism it's the thing that keeps you alive and it has saved your life literally many times since you were born but it's not only that it's not just that simple and black-and-white see fear is extremely sophisticated and elaborate all of your emotions are that's actually what makes emotions so challenging for science to study is because they're not simple you can't just run a little simple one-two-three experiment and understand emotions because emotions by their very nature they're sneaky they come in subtle gradations they're phenomenological or their first-person there are subjective they're experiential this makes it very challenging to pinpoint what an emotion is to nail it to the wall to write it in the form of an equation even if you could write an equation for what fear is or for what anger is or happiness is it wouldn't be good enough because what ultimately matters with emotions is your ability to be conscious of them and to recognize them in your own subjective personal direct experience not what some science book tells you or what some equation tells you the equation is not going to help you to get rid of your fear fear is there to help you to maintain whatever you identify with that's the key insight to maintain whatever you believe you are and here I have to refer you to my two-part series of very foundational episodes called understanding survival part 1 and part 2 where I go into a lot of depth about what survival is that I'm not going to be able to go into again here so you're gonna have to bring those insights to bear on this discussion because we're really building on top of that sea survival is not just about surviving physically as a body like I talked about in that two-part series survival is much more sophisticated subtle and elaborate than that it's much more conceptual especially when it comes to humans for humans most of our survival is social cultural highly conceptual so when I say that fear is a control mechanism a self control mechanism that helps to maintain your identity and to keep you alive I don't mean that it helps to keep your body alive in the very simplistic sense that all well I see a bear as I'm walking through the woods and then I crapped my pants with fear and I run away and that helps me to live of course of course that's clearly a function of fear but that's such a basic black and white function of fear that it's not even really worth discussing here we're interested in the more sophisticated complicated ways in which fear controls our lives in the social cultural context in which we live when you're going to work when you're in a sexual intimate relationship when you're in a family situation when you're dealing with religion with politics with government with business with finances all of these sub domains of your life are permeated by fear see and so what the fear is doing is not just keeping your ass physically alive the fear is maintaining your identity and your identity like I said in in the survival series your identity is a very specific peculiar unique thing to you it's your self-image it's what you think you are and that self-image is variable it varies greatly from person to person from country to country from era to era in human history from culture to culture don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone's identity is basically the same it's not basically the same people have enormous ly different identities so someone who identifies as being a Christian is gonna have a very different set of fears and self control mechanisms for his survival as a Christian than someone who identifies as an atheist or as a materialist scientist or as an agnostic or as a Hindu or as a Muslim see so what you're surviving is not just your physical body but you're surviving let's say in this case the specific way in which your being a Christian because when you have that identity of being a Christian that permeates your whole life it permeates it affects what you do on the weekends it affects what books you read it affects what movies you watch it affects what people you ain´t hang out with it affects your worldview it affects your moral system it affects who you're gonna marry it affects how you're gonna raise your children you see a lot of stuff but don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm just talking about some whacky religious nut cases here it doesn't matter if you're a scientific person that to completely affects how you live your life what kind of books you read what kind of people you take seriously what kind of videos you watch how you educate your your kids what kind of school you send them to what ideas you tell them about emotions versus logic for example a lot of materialists and atheists get this very silly idea in their mind of like Oh facts over feelings emotions aren't even important because all we care about is the facts which of course even just that position itself is not factual but emotional so watch out this is very tricky stuff fear is survival at its most basic fears what gets you to avoid the stuff that will kill you again not just physically you're not just gonna be avoiding fire and tall ledges and cliffs and rooftops and sharp pointy objects you're also going to be avoiding the stuff that will kill you psychologically that will kill yourself image so if you have the self-image of being a Christian guess what you're gonna fear you're gonna fear precisely those things which would destroy your Christian identity or your Muslim identity or if you're a scientist you're gonna fear those things which I can destroy your scientific materialistic atheistic identity and you better believe that's going to distort how you do your science see because what if there is something that's true about reality but which threatens your scientific identity are you gonna ever find that thing that is true or are you gonna be afraid of it because it threatens your scientific identity you see in this way fear is a is a very important component in doing accurate science you can't do accurate science when you're afraid and in fact you can't have an accurate perception of reality so long as you're afraid and so long as you're attached to any kind of identity you're of course afraid of that identity getting erased dissolved impinged upon contradicted shown to be fallacious here's a key insight for you what you are is defined by your fears and what you fear defines what you identify as it's sort of a vicious circle it goes both ways so what do I mean by this I mean that if you identify with being a mother or a father that's your identity and that comes with a certain set of fears if you identify with having children needing to protect them if you identify with your family loving your family and that becomes part of your identity like oh well I'm part of this family I've got to protect the heritage of my family that's your identity and just based on that I can tell you what you fear how about career and business if you're identified with your career if you for example you identify with being a movie director or a successful business guy or with being a great artist or a great composer or musician or deejay or a great author or writer or whatever that's your identity and a lot of your fears I can easily predict that a lot of your fears are gonna be wrapped up very tightly around that issue because that career for you plays a huge part of your life maybe a whole third of your life or maybe even half of your life is gonna be devoted to that career if you're serious about it and so of course you're gonna have so many fears unique fears related to that particular career or business that you run if you identify with your possessions like your house or your car or your boat or your private jet and you cherish them like your pet or like a child almost like you collect cars then you're gonna be you're gonna be afraid of losing that car collection if you have an identity that's based around money success Fame or status you're gonna be very touchy and fearful around losing money success Fame and status and about being perceived as a loser or a failure or losing your popularity you're gonna be very touchy about these things and you're gonna treat them very seriously almost like life and death you see for someone who's addicted to success and fame and money and status and power for them the threat of losing that is worse than losing a child see so what I want you to understand here is that I don't want you to fall into this mistake of thinking that well you know if I fine with being a physical human being and a mother to father that's like real that's tangible that's physical whereas if some other dude identifies with his car collection or with his private yacht or with his fame and his status on Instagram or whatever then oh well that's just frivolous stuff and that's not a real identity so his fears aren't legitimate no there's no such thing as legitimate versus illegitimate fear in a sense all fear is illegitimate and it's all relative to whatever you identify with if you identify with being attractive or having hair you're gonna be afraid of losing your hair you're gonna be afraid of losing your attractiveness if you identify with being a good person a kind loving person who's nice and friendly all the time you're gonna be afraid of losing that of being perceived as a bad evil person of being hated by others or criticized by others and that's gonna be a constant force in your life you're gonna be battling that all the time and that's basically what we're talking about here with these fears is that whatever you fear you're gonna be battling with that demon it's like an inner demon that you have you gonna be battling with it your whole life it's not just gonna be a thing that you know pops up once and or twice and then goes away no which is why we need to go so deep on this topic because I could just shoot a 20-minute video on how to you know the one two three step solutions or how to imagine to get rid of all your fear and you would watch it you would eat it up but then that's that solution would not solve anything really because your fears sit so much deeper than that they're tied in with your identity so as long as you're clean to your identity whatever it is and you're not making any identity level changes then you're never really going to solve the problem of fear so understand how deep this goes this is a matter of life and death this is a matter of survival this is not a thing that you just use a little simple technique on and then that's it you're done and then you go about your life all happy and peaceful and fearless no doesn't work that way especially religious identities come with a lot of fear how much fear is the Christian identity filled with or the Muslim identity or even the Buddhist identity or the Hindu or the Jew identity yeah and scientists aren't immune to it either the scientific identity comes with fear the rational identity comes with fear even the skeptic identity comes with fear in fact what is skepticism but fear if you're a skeptic the reason you're a skeptic is because you're afraid what are you afraid of you're afraid of being wrong you're afraid of becoming deluded why are you afraid of that have you ever wondered have you ever applied skepticism to your own skepticism you see most skeptics of course never do they're acting out skepticism unconsciously as an ideology they're not actually questioning everything because if they were actually questioning everything they would of course have to question their own questioning question themselves question whether skepticism is is really maybe it's driven by fear why do you trust skepticism why do you trust something that's driven by fear you're afraid of being deluded you're afraid of believing the wrong thing you're afraid of some new-age woowoo pseudoscience notice that you're afraid of that you see scientists like to say all will we're rational we just we just don't want to believe nonsense we just we just don't like falsehood no that's not what's really going on what's really going on is you have a certain identity and you actually are afraid of being wrong afraid of making mistakes afraid of being deluded but see the problem with fear is that it tends to be self-fulfilling so when you're afraid of being deluded when you're afraid of believing the wrong thing and therefore because of that you become a skeptic or hardcore scientist sort of a Richard Dawkins type of types of person I'm thinking of if you're like that you see what happens there is that actually you're fear fulfills itself so you're very fear of being deluded ends up making you deluded you're very fear of dogma and religion and mysticism turns your own science and your own rationality and your own skepticism into a dogma and a religion of its own see if you identify with being a man or a woman you're gonna be very threatened by the opposite sex very threatened by the possibility of these categories of man versus woman not being just a binary black and white grounded in nature or biology or physics as some people believe but it's being more of a fluid thing where who really knows what a man or what a woman is maybe it's more relative than we previously believed see and then this of course freaks people out which is why we have this whole controversy versus the LGBTQ and the transgender stuff in all this you know people are so freaked out by this understandably so because for humans especially for straight kind of normal we would say normal especially conservative you know traditional type of people they just you know they either adopt the man role or the woman role and they think that that's just all it is you know I've just born a man I was just born a woman that's all there is to it but then of course the truth is that that's not all there is to it and when the issue of transgender people comes up and this that becomes very threatening but then of course these traditional folks they have to deny it they have to deny it which is why you have this problem with with many conservatives especially Christians and evangelicals where they have latent homosexual urges and tendencies but then they have to deny it and then they have to project out onto the world they have to go attack crusade against homosexuals and gays and transgender people but that's actually because deep down inside you know they have a shadow they made a shadow out of this they are not willing to admit that they fear the possibility that these category could be fluid and therefore they have to go to denial they have to go into attack and they have to build up an ideology which then you know spirals out of control creates all sorts of problems for them and for others you know research has been done on this and they find that people who like to rant and criticize homosexuals especially like men for example men who are homophobic and who have a problem with homosexuality that these people when they are shown images naked images of men or erotic images of men in a sort of like clinical you know psychological test type setting they're shown just various images and in some of those images include naked images of men or whatever you know sort of erotic stuff probably not porn but just erotic stuff they get turned on more than the average man who is not homophobic why is that you see of course projection that's why fear because if you're a Christian you're afraid you've been told homosexuality is so wrong that you're afraid that you might possibly be one of those evil homosexuals you know and even the idea that maybe you're not even a homosexual but even just the idea that you might once in a while have you know once a month maybe you'll have a a thought about some attractive guy you saw at the gym just that idea alone is already such a dangerous slippery slope that you have to reject it within your own mind and deny it and then project it outwards onto others and then of course there's the identity of just being a human just even thinking of yourself as a human presents many problems and fears and just even the identity of you being real or you being a physical creature just that identity which you would think like well leo that's the most obvious thing it that's common across all humans first of all no it's not second of all you're begging the question the question here is are you really a human what is a human see so you're saying all it's common across all humans no it's not you've never really bothered to to wonder what a human even is what a real being what a being even is what physical a physical creature even is you see and by being attached to being those things by being attached to being physical for example that comes with a certain set of fears and then of course people just assume that well yeah sure of course leo I have all these fears but these fears are totally natural and normal because I'm a physical being that's just what I am that's exactly my point see when you insist that you just are something because that's just what you are and that's real and that can't be otherwise that's precisely your identity that's the thing you're most attached to as your identity now of course when it comes to your identity there's it's sort of like almost like you can think of it like the Sun you know the Sun has various layers to it that's like there's the outer layer of the Sun which is kind of nebulous and loose it's like the corona you know the flames shooting out words it's it's sparse it's not very dense but then as you go deeper into the Sun there's like further layers and cores of depth and density and it gets denser and denser and denser and denser and who even knows what's on the very inside probably some super dense ball of whatever you see so when you insist that you really are something and that it can't be any other way that's like we're talking about that core the ball at the middle of the Sun and then when we're talking about something like your identity your attachment to your cat or to your car that's the very edges of the Sun of your identity right so there's there's like degrees of subtlety here certain things are easier to detach from than others it's much easier from you for you to detach for example from your car or from your business than it is to detach from your family and it's much easier for you to detach from your family than for you to detach from for example being a man or a woman and it's even harder for you to detach from being a human than it is for a man or a woman or from a physical being or from being real at all that's the hardest thing to detach from period so what I want you to see here is that whatever you're attached to doesn't matter what it is and the reason you're attached to stuff and the reason you've built up this identity is because that's how you were born that's how you came into this world you could not be born without an identity of some kind you have to construct an identity so that's what you did as a kid as a teenager you were busy you thought you were just having fun playing video games playing with dolls and toys and you were just going to school chatting with your friends and talking [ __ ] and making jokes and all this and you thought this was just fun this wasn't fun this was you creating an identity for 20 [ __ ] years without knowing what you were doing see and then of course now you say well that's just how it that's just me that's who I am that's not who you are that's who you made up yourself to be and of course a key component of making yourself up is that you have to lie to yourself that you made yourself up because otherwise the game is up nobody wants to admit that they just made themselves up out of [ __ ] thin air that their whole identity is just arbitrary and it's just you know we could just replace parts of you you know who wants to admit that well like yeah I'm a scientist but I don't really care I could just throw that away tomorrow I'll be a Christian no it doesn't work this way or if you're a Christian it's like no I don't really care about not really attached to being Christians like tomorrow I'll just be a Buddhist and then the next day I'll just be a Muslim and the next day I'll just be a Hindu no it's completely wedded to your identity to who you think you are so when you're a scientist or you're a Christian you're a man or a woman it's like leo what are you even talking about this is just me it can't be otherwise so see this is what we're dealing with so what you fear is you fear losing all of your attachments that's what you call death ultimately so what is it that you ultimately fear you fear a total loss of self all fear boils down to a loss of self fear is protecting you from losing yourself so why are you afraid to stick your hand on a hot stove because you're afraid it's gonna hurt yourself you're gonna lose a part of yourself you're afraid you might lose your hand why are you afraid of changing your career because you're afraid of losing that part of yourself that's attached to that career that's spent 10 20 years building up that career why are you afraid of switching from being a man to a woman or from being straight to being gay because you're gonna lose that and you've had that with you since you were like three years old that's how early to these identities form so you don't even know what life would be like otherwise and of course you're afraid of what other people will think of you and of course you have this giant social identity that you've built up where people now think of you as a man or a woman or as a lawyer or as a doctor or as a upstanding citizen or as a Christian or as a Muslim how are they gonna react and how are you gonna react to their reaction when tomorrow you tell them that hey you know guys I just decided to become gay today or I just decided to become a woman I just decided to become a Muslim out of the blue I just decided to become a scientist out of the blue I just decided to change my career out of the blue people will react negatively and of course that's gonna affect your own attachment to you being perceived positively because you will also of course built up on identity around that because you want to be perceived as a good guy not a bad guy as someone that people look up to not look down upon that's what we're dealing with here and the epitome of all fear is ultimately or this example this I want this principal that I said that all fear is basically a total loss of self fear of a total loss of self the epitome of that is death of course and that's what all fear ultimately boils down to fear of death but not just physical death even more so it boils down to psychological death death of your self-image so for example for for radical Muslim Islamist suicide bombers the thing they fear most is not death the thing they fear most is being bad Muslims losing their Muslim identity so actually in that twisted worldview they would rather kill themselves physically so long as they maintain in their mind the identity of being a good Muslim that's how powerful identity is see and don't just think that this is just like I'm talking about some crazy wacko radical people no no no no this is happening across everybody it's just you know there's degrees of it some people go to great extremes especially when they build up a very radical ideology but but this is fully alive and functioning within you for example many parents would rather sacrifice themselves they like if their child was drowning they would jump in to save their child and drown themselves so in this case they are more identified with being a good parent and with their child surviving than they are with their own life see so there's nothing radical about it really most people fall under this so this notion of a loss of sense of self is a very sophisticated one I hope you can see right we're not just talking about physical stuff we're talking about what you identify as and what you identify as is totally relative and it's whatever you want it to be now of course that doesn't mean it's easy to change yourself now after after you've been alive for 20 30 40 50 years now you know you've gotten so calcified your mind has become so permeated in your identity now it's extremely difficult to change that of course but that doesn't mean that this is a physical tangible objective fact it just means you're extremely attached to it you're very habituated conditioned to it now here's a key misconception about fear and it goes like this well leo fear is just something natural and reasonable that we all fear feel sorry that we all feel and some things are just inherently scary I mean of course it's natural to be afraid of death only natural because we don't really know what happens after death and it's only natural if you're a Christian to be afraid of of sinning and it's only natural if you're a scientist to be afraid of believing in some false new agey nonsense slowly natural wrong there's nothing natural about it all of this has been constructed by your mind this is what you got to admit to yourself here you're in denial about it fear is never an objective fact fear is never found out there in the world as if some object is there that is inherently fearful and it will cause fear to you like you see a snake and if the fear is in the snake no the fear is not in the snake nor is the fear in like the homosexuality you might say well Leo have a Christian and you know the homosexual act itself that's that's an evil and the evil is in the act and that's where the fear comes from no it doesn't your mind is constructing the fear it's projecting the fear out out of you through the lens of your identity you see outwards it's being projected out or if you fear something more mundane like you fear running out of money very calm and fear you might think it's totally natural fear in a certain sense it is but what is natural really is the condition of not having money is that what fear is no it's how your mind is interpreting that situation that creates the fear in fact there are people who have millions of dollars billionaires there are billionaires who still fear going broke how can that be obviously it's not the condition of being poor that's causing that because these people they will probably die with still billions of dollars in their bank account so they're never gonna even experience poverty but they're still afraid of it so where's that coming from is it coming from all the billions of dollars they have is that where the fear is located of course not it's their own mind constructing it and of course this is very easy to prove because different people react differently to different objects so one person loves snakes to handle snakes no problem another person terrified of snakes so what does that mean that means it's in the person it's not in the snake and likewise about money you know there are some billionaires and millionaires who are more afraid of going broke than there are people who are like hippies and maybe only have a hundred bucks in their pocket or a thousand dollars in their savings account and you know their cheerful they're happy they don't really care about money very much money's not a big deal to them the way they were raised you know but they're kind of carefree they kind of go with the flow they're more spontaneous they're not worried about how to pay the bills and all that stuff so you see the hippie has less fear in this case than the billionaire how can that be because the mind is constructing it all fear is imaginary do you understand how significant this is I'm telling you that all fear is imaginary think of how powerful that is if it's true now from your point of view you don't know if that's true the only way you can know if that's true if you go very deep in this work and then you discover that it's true I'm telling you that it's true but I don't want you to just believe me on blind faith I want you to question it I want you to try to validate it for yourself but what I'm telling you is that if you if you go study this deeply you will discover that all fear is imaginary including the fear of death that's the amazing thing about fear that's the most shocking us one of the most shocking in fact come to think of it that's one of the most shocking insights one of the deepest mind [ __ ] I've ever had and I've had plenty of I've had plenty of him one of the most shocking insights I've ever had is the is the day that I discovered and I remember the moment my jaw dropped that all fear is completely imaginary but there's no substance to fear whatsoever fear is literally nothing there's nothing there at all now that's powerful think about what that might do for your life if that wasn't just a belief that you held but that was a living reality that you actually became conscious of how all fear is imaginary you think that might change your relationships you think that might change your attitude towards work and towards health and death and war and politics and everything else yeah you bet it would now you might wonder but Leo isn't it just healthy and normal to have fear isn't it just like a normal response well it is normal in the sense that 99.9% of people are completely lost in fear but you know what normality is not a sign of truth so just because everyone around you is scared shitless all the time just like you are that doesn't mean that it's true in fact that's the kicker that's the that's the linchpin of this whole thing is that all fear is falsehood all fear is false that all fear is delusion all fear is lack of consciousness if you were totally conscious I'm telling you that you would not fear anything now I know this is uh tough to believe because it seems so unlike your living experience of life you couldn't even imagine what it would be like to live life without fear and how could fear possibly be a falsehood I mean Leo if there's like a bear in the woods and I stumbled across it and I'm feeling fear that's not falsehood what's false about that is a dangerous situation this is an objectively dangerous situation that's false there's no such thing as an objectively dangerous situation danger is relative relative to what relative to what you identify with if you identify with being a human meat bag yeah bears are dangerous the trick is that society conditions us that fear is inevitable and that fear is totally natural and normal and there's nothing we can do about it because society isn't interested in truth it turns out that one of the remarkable things about truth with a capital T is that it transcends all fear because it transcends your viola so one of the reasons you might want to pursue truth is because if you want to transcend fear that would be one reason in fact that's the only way you can do it if you want to totally do it now of course there's degrees you can you can certainly work on improving your fear responses without ever fully realizing true the capital T but there's a very deep connection that I want you to understand here between fear and falsehood fear and illusion when you're afraid you're crap inside of an illusion but the illusion feels so real that you don't know that it's an illusion and therefore that just heightens your fear even more and you start to believe that the fear is real and it becomes this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where something that isn't real actually seems like it's the most real thing that there is that's the trick that the mind plays on you see mostly what society is about is about survival that's what our culture and our society is built upon that's what all social institutions are built upon they're not built upon truth they're not built upon understanding fear at an existential level and then transcending it no nobody cares about this society is built upon using your fears against you to help you to survive turn on the TV look at the commercials how do businesses sell you things bite by going right for your fear pushing your fear button you know are you worried about how fat you are and how your husband's gonna leave you are you worried about your erectile disfunction and how your your you know your hot girlfriend she's gonna leave you and cheat on you for with another man who who's you know more who can get it up better than you can will you buy our viagra see are you worried about those illegals and Mexicans coming over the border vote for Trump are you worried about science and seculars of taking over the world donate and support radical Wahhabist Islam who are gonna fight that are you worried about gays join some you know Christian organization that's gonna do conversion therapy on the gays to convert them to good upstanding citizens this is this is how you're control through fear through fear and even quote-unquote sort of like good policies also control you with fear for example if you're kind of a spiral dynamic stage green person you're like a hippie type and you care about the environment well you're afraid of the environment going bad you're afraid of global warming but that too is a fear it's a higher quality fear again there's there's different levels and gradations of fear so you know some fears are more delusional than others so for example people who fear other races racists in other words ethnocentric people traditional people people who fear other religions this is a pretty kind of a crude low level highly delusional fear people who fear homosexuality this is a highly delusional fear of course they won't agree with anything I'm saying here they'll feel violent via merely deny it but but yeah it's it's a very crude form of fear and there's there's higher qualities of fear like if you're afraid for global warming there's something to that fear it's not completely irrational but but there's also problems with fear which we'll we'll talk about as we keep going here see the trick the trick here is that mostly humans are operating under the materialist paradigm that's what most cultures teach us is that we're living in a material world as physical biological beings who were born into this material world is an objective world that exists out there independent of our perceptions science studies and so forth this whole paradigm this plays a big role in maintaining the reality of fear so under this paradigm when people believe that death is real then that fear seems legitimate and totally natural under this paradigm people believe that problems are real like if you're out of money people believe that's a real problem it's a physical tangible material rational problem it's not but it certainly seems that way under that paradigm or under this paradigm people believe that it's scientific or it's rational to fear dangerous things and as some things are just dangerous like fire is Dain electricity high-voltage electricity is dangerous wild animals are dangerous but that's also not true and in fact there's nothing scientific or rational about fear like I was saying earlier danger is relative to how you define yourself seen to a Muslim suicide bomber I should say yeah a radical Wahhabist one not regular Muslims but to a very radical radicalized Wahhabist Muslim to him the greatest danger is not death it's not a bear or a snake or running out of money to him the greatest danger is disappointing Allah or allowing the infidel heathens to dominate the world allowing Islam to be eradicated to an encroaching secularism or to some other religion like Christianity or Buddhism that's the greater danger to that person why because it's all relative danger is relative to how you think you are so if you identify with being you know a devout servant of Allah there you go and then of course if you're identified with being a scientist then to you the greatest danger is religion the delusion of religion which threatens to data endanger science and you know to teach creationism to the children and to teach Noah's Ark and to teach children that the world is 5,000 years old to you that's the great danger now of course the way you rationalize it to yourself as you say yeah leo but that is that's objective that's like yeah that's clearly delusional and we should not be teaching creationism in school and that's just scientific fact well it is for you because you say that whatever you say is the fact is the fact for you because your mind is constructing everything including all facts and all objectivity what you call objectivity is just your subjectivity denied projected hours that's all it is there's nothing objective about your reality it's all purely subjective which is precisely why you deny the subjectivity you see you have to deny that is subjective because otherwise it wouldn't feel real it would feel like a game it would feel like an illusion and who wants to admit that they're living in an illusion who wants to admit that they made up their whole life that it's all just a lie there's just a story nobody does because of course that threatens your survival it's scary to admit that it's scary to admit that everything you ever believed in is just a story you invented very scary nobody wants to go there hardly so what I'm telling you is that all fear is predicated on falsehood and misperception of reality you must miss perceive reality in order to experience fear because if you like I said experience it in full consciousness you can't be afraid of anything that's a rather bold claim but nevertheless it's true and you can become directly conscious of that although it will take work you certainly won't realize that by the end of this video or even by the next one it'll take a lot more work than that but you can I've done it you can do it my claim here is that if you were fully conscious of what death is you wouldn't fear it and if you don't fear death then you've basically conquered all fear now of course the materialist paradigm tells us that well nobody knows what death is it's impossible you're just speculating it's just fear easily oh you don't really know keep your mind open maybe it is possible to become conscious of what death is maybe since like I told you all fear is ultimately misperception of reality maybe death is just a misperception of reality maybe death is not a physical thing maybe you think death is a physical but that Ashley death is just an illusion how about that think about it but anyways we're not really gonna we're not gonna solve the problem of death in this episode that'll be for another time let's focus more on fear so fear is a very practical thing fear cannot be understood in the abstract via a classroom lecture or a video or a book fear requires serious mindfulness work you must get personally acquainted with your own fears so when we ask the question what is fear ultimately what you have to do bring up a fear and feel it there it is there it is so let's do this right now think of a time where you were afraid of something try to find a poignant moment in your memory banks of where you were afraid of something doesn't matter what could have been a bear a snake or losing money or whatever somebody cheating on you and just now now really vividly imagine it reimagine it bring it back up to the point where you you don't just imagine it in the abstract but it actually starts to get you a little tinge of it you get a little bit it starts to affect you almost as though you're back in that situation now it's a little hard to do this because usually you know once you get over a fear its kind of defeated but still try to bring it up find something or maybe find something that you're currently afraid of is currently something is bothering you bring it up and just feel that feel what that feels like how does it feel in your body where is it located in your body is it in your head in your jaw and your chest and your shoulders and your arms and your fingertips and your knees and your legs are your muscles clenched maybe it's in your stomach what does that really feel like you see if you're doing this for the first time it's gonna be very challenging for you to to pinpoint what fear is or where it resides in your body because it's so loosey-goosey and abstract and the reason that is because your mindfulness ability is so poor you haven't practiced and developed that mindfulness muscle which is the ability to objectively observe and be aware of various sensations in your body this is why we do meditations why we do mindfulness practices is why people do for posture retreats this all develops your mindfulness ability this is one of most important abilities you can develop in life it's mindfulness si and it's only when you've been practicing mindfulness for a few years at least every single day that you start to develop that ability to be able to feel your fear and your emotions for the first time to identify these emotions most people can't do this but you better start developing this ability if you want to get anywhere in this work you will get nowhere in understanding the things I talked about without developing this ability so begin today I have videos on it there are tons of other people who have videos on it on YouTube and elsewhere there are books that have been written about it courses have been made retreats have been made go look it up go start practicing I have a old video called mindfulness meditation where I teach you this technique go look at that so this this feeling of fear is as close as you can get to fear don't come asking me what fear is don't go looking in a textbook don't go ask your psychology professor to tell you what fear is because fear is what is inside of you what you're feeling when you're afraid that's fear now of course there's a lot more to it than that that's just the tip of the iceberg of fear what we're interested in is is understanding why is that fear there what brings it up and that's a little bit more tricky you don't often just find that directly in your experience you have to do some sort of deduction work to figure that out lots of observation but see the problem with observing fear is that fear doesn't want to be observed it's not like you can just be terrified of a who's running towards unit I was about to maul your face off and then you can just stand there and you can just say wait a minute let me let me just let me feel this fear let me think about where does this fear come from what is fear after all and the bear is just like charging at you and you're just standing there coolly thinking about fear like oh you see and the reason that is is because fear is designed to save your [ __ ] ass which means that it can't give you enough time to really inspect it carefully or to think about it or to rationalize about it to say like well you know what it's just a bear yeah sure this bear is hurling towards me it's gonna maul my face off but is that really gonna be so bad you know oh well if I die you know what if what if death isn't actually so bad like no this doesn't happen because you don't have time for it you gotta live survival takes precedence over all of that and this makes understanding for your very difficult because what this means is that the key problem of fear is that it's a knee-jerk unconscious reaction you're constantly reacting to fear without knowing why or what it is see and so to really get far in this work what you need to do is to start to notice those moments where you are in fear and instead of reacting unconsciously the way that you usually do the way you have been for 20 30 40 years of your life now you've got the pause you've got to feel the fear mindfully consciously and now you have to wonder okay what is this thing where is it located in my body why is it here where it come from what function is it serving yada yada yada that's hard to do when you're in a bind because usually the fear only comes up when you're in a bind you don't have fear when you're sitting there enjoying yourself watching TV eating a good meal you're happier you only have fear when you're in a dangerous situation like rent is due tomorrow and your landlord is to kick you out and you're terrified cuz you don't have enough money to make this month's rent the fear seizes you it grips you like a Python see you starts to strangle you and at that situation you're gonna argue with me you say well Leo but sure you want me to just kind of sit there and analyze my fear and practice this mindfulness horseshit and act like this hippy new-age person but I gotta pay my bills how am I gonna pay my bills I need to pay my bills it's a matter of life and death exactly exactly that doesn't contradict what I'm saying that is exactly what I'm saying but nevertheless if you want to transcend fear and outgrow your fear and start to live a life beyond fear you're gonna have to change how you react to fear you're gonna have to create a sort of a gap a little breathing room between your fear and your reaction and you're gonna have to start to feel the fear before you react to it and that's a very counterintuitive move because when you're a dangerous situation yeah every cell in your body is going to want to react to get you out of the danger and to minimize the fear that's how fear works fear is like this thing that spikes up in you this unpleasant feeling this sort of jittery unpleasant nervousness and then you act in some way to get a harm's way and then it subsides and then you're cool and then you're glad that it's over you know what you want to think about it again but see once you're out of the fear you can't be mindful of it anymore that's the problem see when you're trying to be mindful of old fears it doesn't work quite well you can do it but it doesn't really work quite well because the whole key here is to teach yourself to be mindful of fear as it's happening to you that's the real power the real power is precisely the power of there being a bear hurling towards you and you're able to stand there calmly and not let that nervousness totally dominate you and get you acting in a completely unconscious ways it's the ability to be conscious to act consciously to respond consciously even when you're in grave danger that's the real power that we're trying to develop here now fortunately you don't need to actually go and you know put yourself into serious danger by confronting a bear or a shark or a snake or something like that most of the fears that you experience on a daily basis are relatively minor and you can you can create some space you don't need to just be constantly reacting to them you can create some space for yourself and you can analyze them a bit you can practice mindfulness on them all right so don't don't don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm advocating some sort of really hyper dangerous thing here obviously you don't want to be practicing what I'm saying like when you're confronted with a bear start with small stuff that's not going to injure you and then you can move to bigger stuff and then eventually you can actually get to the point where you can practice it with a bear but you know that's that's advanced stuff that you shouldn't practice right now here's another key insight for you about fear ready for this fear is resistance to a future experience let me repeat this is critical fear is resistance to a future experience that's very powerful this tells you how to overcome fear if you understand this key insight that's all that fear really is your mind is imagining a future scenario that seems to contradict your identity and how you want to feel and who you think you are like for example if you're a Christian and I tell you that tomorrow you're gonna have to abandon Christianity burn the Bible and become a Muslim and pray to all up five times a day by facing Mecca and that your kids are also gonna have to convert and they're gonna be converted by force you don't have a choice in the they will be converted you will convert altogether or you will be killed if I tell you this what's gonna happen of course your mind is gonna imagine this scenario and then because given your identity and you want your family and your children to all be Christians and all this given that that that is true for you based on a lifetime of being programmed with Christian beliefs and based on a lifetime of believing that Muslims are bad and evil and wrong and unchristian and all this and that they're going to hell based on that of course now you have a deep resistance to experiencing that you don't want to experience being converted into a Muslim and that's what you really fear so fear is about refusing to experience things now if you wanted to make a really bold and counterintuitive move here you could Aikido this problem and you could say okay [ __ ] it so I'll become a Muslim I'll enjoy it what's wrong with being converted to being a Muslim I'll pray to Allah it'll be good it'll be fun my kids will do it we'll get on it it'll be great I don't want to resist it let me experience what it's like to be a Muslim then maybe I'll turn back to a Christian later on maybe next year I'll be a Christian maybe I'll try being a Buddhist if you took that attitude the fear would be gone you would eliminate the fear but see the problem is is that's precisely the attitude that you don't want to take you see how counterintuitive it is every fiber of your identity is gonna be telling you no no no I can't be a Muslim it's gonna be terrible it's gonna be awful this is gonna be the end I'm going to hell it's gonna be like my family's gonna be ruined I'm gonna be an outcast and oh my god and I'm gonna be the worst sinner I'm gonna let myself be possessed by no no no Leo no see that's attachment attachment creates fear if you let go of your Christian identity you'll stop fearing it in this case this situation so the solution is to actually surrender yourself to the thing that you are afraid of experiencing in the future so in this example let's say your rent is due tomorrow but you don't have the money and in your mind of course you're imagining what's gonna happen the landlord's gonna come knocking down your door of course your mind is very vivid at this you know your mind paints really good pictures he's knocking down the door and yelling at you and he's posting eviction notices and tell you that the police are coming there to kick you out and your kids and then you're imagining in your mind that you and your children gonna be kicked out of the street you're gonna lose all your possessions they're not gonna give you enough time to take all your stuff out you you can't go live anywhere else you don't have anywhere else to be you're gonna be living on the street you're gonna be panhandling for quarters out in the hot Sun and your your you know your daughter is gonna become some [ __ ] that you know that sucks guys dicks for for a little bag of crack cocaine or something on the street that's your that's the image you have in your mind and of course this terrifies you because you don't want to experience that so what's the solution the mistake people make is they try to run away from this the solution is very radical and it's very counterintuitive this is why this is advanced work this is why this is not this is not something that newbies are gonna appreciate the solution is to accept that the solution is to imagine yourself on the street begging for quarters in the Sun and to imagine your daughter sucking dicks in the back of some parking lot for for crack and to be okay with that that's the solution and if you do that your fear will be relieved but of course you're not going to do that because you're too weak and you're not wise enough to do it that's right you're not lies enough to do it you're also not conscious enough to do it you don't have enough self-control to do it because you're too afraid you're paralyzed by your fear because you've built up an identity about how your daughter should be how you should be how much money you should have and so on radical stuff right radical stuff I agree with you it's radical stuff this is why it's not taught and you wonder why they don't teach this in school this is why the other reason it'll teach you in school by the way is because if they taught it to you you would become invincible see if school taught children how fear really works from the age of six or even like from the age of four let's say when you start preschool all the way till eighteen when you graduate from from high school by that time in those twelve or fourteen years if the curriculum was strong enough children would be taught so well and they would master their fear so well that they would become [ __ ] invincible which means of course that you couldn't control them and of course society is based upon controlling you business marketing politics it's all about control religion is all about control ego is all about control collective ego is all about control it's all about survival so of course they won't teach you this and of course it's not because they're nefarious and evil it's mostly because they themselves are scared shitless and they don't know in fact they're scared shitless of even the idea of teaching this to you because then the fear comes up like well leo but what do you if everyone in society is fearless what happens then what's gonna happen to business what's gonna happen to government what's gonna happen to religion does that mean Christianity dies out does that mean there's no more Islam does that does that mean there's no more wage slavery what does that mean yeah it means there it means radical changes for society that's for sure it means radical changes for culture and of course everyone's attached to their culture they don't want to change their culture they don't change their language so the ultimate solution to fear is to be willing to live through the thing you fear most and if you can do that you'll become invincible of course is difficult to do in practice which is why you have to practice it a lot it goes against all of your biological urges everything that you've been programmed with in the way that you can start doing this is just by practicing it in your mind imagine that scenario and then just sort of take a deep breath and then just say well would it really be so bad is it really gonna be as bad as I imagined and of course your mind is probably gonna say yes it is it's gonna be so bad if I poured hungry on the street it's gonna be awful and the truth is that it probably will be awful and the reason it's gonna be awful is because you've built your entire life and all of your happiness upon conditional material possessions so of course when you lose all your material possessions and all you remain with is just your consciousness and your spirituality in practice your spiritual development is so low and your consciousness so low that you're literally left with nothing less than nothing not the spiritual nothing you're left with a terribly addicted materialistic mind monkey mind which is going to be going through withdrawal symptoms from all these material luxuries that you had and that now you lost so of course it's not going to be pleasant if you're kicked out of your cushy apartment and then you have to beg for corners on the street it's gonna be extremely painful traumatic you're gonna suffer you're probably gonna want to kill yourself yeah it's gonna be terrible that shows you the extent to which your life is built upon the wrong thing your life is built upon conditional happiness but rest' by material possessions and circumstances rather than the only thing that can generate true happiness and the only thing that can't be taken away from you which is your consciousness which is your spiritual development but most people are so poorly spiritually developed that they can't practice what I'm saying here which is why again this is not appropriate for newbies even if you wanted to your ability to practice this will be very poor because your level of spiritual development unconsciousness is so poor so you're gonna have to spend some years developing that developing your mindfulness skills you know shedding certain materialistic drives and cravings that you have having some awakening experience some mystical experiences some enlightenment experiences you know and then and then you'll be able to practice this much better but still you can practice it I mean don't let me don't let me limit you by all means try it see how far you can get it'll work for you in small quantities like you can you can live through stuff in your own mind and just surrender to the experience of it so maybe for example you're afraid of what let's say you're afraid of of homosexual urges that you have let's say you're afraid of that because you want to be this masculine macho Arnold Schwarzenegger man type of guy that you know women adore and guys look up to and that's kind of the image of a man that you've created your identity around that's your ideal well but you also notice that well once in a while I get some homosexual tendencies so in this case what you can do is you can actually surrender to that and you can say okay well [ __ ] it [ __ ] it let me just bite this bullet and let me just accept the idea that I would have gay sex let me just accept it let me accept the idea that even even if I don't go that far let me just accept the idea that I can look at a naked image of a man and be aroused let me accept that it'll be difficult but you can accept I mean it's not gonna kill you to accept that right you can imagine it in your mind surrender to it accept it and then you'll notice the fear goes away and you'll have relief now of course this is probably not gonna be enough doing it just one time it's not gonna be enough cuz your fear is so deeply grounded its dick grounded in your identity so unless you change your identity the fear is gonna keep coming back up even if you let it go once or twice so in practice you're gonna have to be returning to it and really what's going to be required if you want to ultimately solve this problem is you're gonna have to change your identity how you identify your sexuality of being gay straight or whatever and this doesn't mean Sylvie I'm not saying some ridiculous thing don't get me wrong I'm not saying that now you have to become gay I'm not trying to turn you to a gay person all right I'm all I'm saying is all I'm saying is acknowledge your cravings acknowledge your desires a lot more people have homosexual cravings than they would admit because Society has told you that it's it's wrong to admit it told you that it's a sin told you that you're wrong or deviant in some way for having these and I'm not judging I'm not saying it's right or wrong or good or bad it's neither of any of this it just is what it is the problem is when you're in denial about it the problem is when you're afraid of it that's the problem now again just because you surrender to this idea does not mean you actually have to go and do it I'm not saying you have to go have a sex or that you even have to go look at naked images of men I'm not saying that I'm just saying surrender to the idea of it stop resisting that experience you see do you see how powerful this makes you it's the opposite of what you think most people would say Oh Leo this is this makes me weak this makes me feminine no this makes you a real [ __ ] man this is real strength this is spiritual strength the strength to accept and surrender to any experience whatsoever this is the this is the most powerful thing you can do not just as a man but also as a woman your inability to tolerate experience is the thing that makes you weak to have the most power in the world all you need to do is develop the ability to experience absolutely anything without resisting it but see that's that's a very tall order to feel it's easy to say it's so much harder to do in fact most people think it's impossible to do not because it actually is impossible simply because that's how much spiritual growth would be required you see this is the essence of spirituality it's not about believing in God and bla bla bla it's about this it's about being so conscious that you can experience absolutely anything without flinching and without even resisting it in your mind's eye like if I tell you that tomorrow someone's gonna cut your hand off you're gonna be like I don't that sound terrible sounds terrible and you're gonna be afraid but if you become so strong that you'll be like well okay if they're gonna take my hand I'm gonna take my hand and it doesn't matter because I'll still be conscious and I can weather anything if you take that attitude then you won't fear it now of course again this is very difficult to do for most people and the reason it's difficult for most people to do is because you think that what I'm telling you here is some ideology you think that what I'm telling you here is just like some some way they have to like psych yourself up it's like I'm saying okay like I'm going to the dentist tomorrow and they're gonna be drilling my tooth yeah and let's say I'm gonna tell them not to use any novocaine I'm just gonna be like psyching myself up like come on come on like come on I like beating in my chest yeah I can do it I could say I'm a man I can take it and then like he's drilling my tooth and I'm like ah yeah yeah the pain oh my god hurt her so bad but I'll take it and I'm like I'm clenching like this like this is not what I'm telling you what I'm telling you is that you become so conscious that you realize that there's no pain there in the first place you become so conscious that you realize that when your hand is cut off that no harm was actually done to you this is not a belief see you think I'm telling you that all well it's a way that I have to brainwash myself and [ __ ] myself into believing that no harm was actually done to me because Leo physically the harm was done but you see that's precisely the problem is that you have that belief that physically harm was done to you so you would need to surrender that belief that's a very radical thing you need to change your entire paradigm of reality materialism could no longer apply here you'd have to stop identifying with being a physical body that's again that's not something you can will yourself to do this is something that requires consciousness so it's the opposite of what you think you think what I'm telling you here is some sort of fantasies some sort of new-age wishful thinking actually no what I'm telling you is that the only way you'll be able to accomplish what I'm saying here in these very extreme examples is if you're totally aligned with truth totally aligned with truth so it's not falsehood and delusion that allows you to do this it's truth that allows you to do this but for this of course you need to be conscious of what truth with a capital T is and most of you aren't anywhere close to that that requires a lot of work so all of this requires a lot of work and this is why this is so advanced fear is so challenging to work with precisely because it's irrational and it's relentless and it's directly attached to your survival fear doesn't care about your logic fear doesn't care about your ideals fear doesn't care about your beliefs brute survival trumps everything else in fact your beliefs your ideals and your logic are survival work but fear is a much stronger survival force than logic it's more primary it's more fundamental when it comes to survival fear is like the base of the pyramid the foundation on top of which everything else sits and the pyramid gets smaller and smaller and less important as it goes up and so at the top er at the higher rungs you have stuff like logic ideals and other things but at the very base of it is fear okay so don't be surprised when your logic doesn't touch fear because logic is just a tip of the iceberg all right we're gonna do an exercise right now I want you to pause this recording in a moment and to write down all of your biggest fears just make a list of all of your biggest fears try to be as really realistic and accurate as you can make a concise list don't write out long paragraphs just a concise list as many biggest fears as you have personally in your life go okay now I trust that you did that come on back and look at that list that's a very helpful list and let's talk about some of these examples so there's a bit of a trick with fear and that a lot of times when people think about fear they they they don't think very deeply about it and very realistically about it and they come up with various superficial stereotypical fears like maybe you wrote down fear of spiders a fear of snakes a fear of bears and sharks or I fear clowns or scary movies or I fear a world war 3 or global warming or the collapse of the economy or government taking my guns or I fear cancer or I fear speaking in public these are common fears or maybe you fear being buried alive or poisoned or maybe you fear having an ugly child that's actually a fear that I get it's it's so weird but when I think about like having kids I always get this terrible fear of like but what will happen like if I have a kid and then he comes out or even worse like she comes out and she's got like nine fingers and like three limbs and like three eyes and crooked teeth and all of this and then like you have to love that thing has a father here's a mother you have to love that thing that's like a terrible situation and see notice the reason that that's scary is because it puts so much demand on your love to be able to love that thing even despite all of that like Wow yeah your love has to be very deep yeah a superficial love won't be enough is this easy to love your daughter when she's beautiful it's a lot harder when she's an ugly troll hunchback or something but what I want you to see here is that all these spheres are our stereotypical and superficial there's a much realer deeper set of fears that we need to be talking about which we will be in a moment but one interesting little tangent that I want to point out to you you know speaking of the fear of being poisoned this is a very interesting fear and I was contemplating this I don't have this fear but Donald Trump has this fear and I was contemplating it for a while and you know I like to study Donald Trump because there's so much interesting psychological [ __ ] going on that with that basket case but uh but I figured it out I figured it out why he fears being poisoned and you know he talks about fear of being poisoned that that's why he he actually prefers to eat fast food at McDonald's and Burger King in places is because his his rationale and he says this on record is that well you know I can trust the fast food people that that they won't poison me whereas if somebody prepares my meal how can I trust them and it got me thinking like that's a very odd fear to have why would Donald Trump fear being poisoned because you know sure he's a rich person he's a billionaire supposedly he's not really a billionaire but that's it that's his that's his schtick so supposedly he's this rich guy who you know yeah maybe somebody want to poison him no that's not it they our guess what you know there's there's a lot of millionaires and billionaires in the United States Bill Gates and Warren Buffett all these you know tech giant CEOs a lot musk and stuff they don't talk about fear of being poisoned why would Donald Trump at the fear of being poisoned who is the master at poisoning people the Russian czar of course that's their trademark that's how the Russian KGB operates there are notorious for poisoning people with radioactive chemicals and things like that people who go against them people cross them what does that tell you that Donald Trump see he's definitely got connections with Russians these are deep connections with high-level officials in Russia it's quite obvious because that's the only way he was able to get financing for his businesses because his businesses were so bankrupt and terrible that nobody in the United States or probably even in Europe in Western Europe what would back him so of course of course he's terrified of being poisoned because of the stories that he's heard about how Russians poison people very interesting it's a little haha that I hadn't seen when you do this work you have these little aha moments and then everything clicks for you and just become so crystal clear this is the kind of insight that you know like people than in the news media you know they haven't had this inside matter thought they haven't quite connected the dots too deeply anyway so let's keep going so all these spheres are not that important the more important features are the ones that actually run your daily life let me give you a list of very common real active fears that run a lot of people's lives the fear of not being good enough the fear of failure at your career the fear of going broke or your business collapsing the fear of competition in your business the fear of your spouse leaving you or your girlfriend and boyfriend breaking up with you the fear of being alone like not having anyone there with you at the end of your life dying all alone the fear of aging and losing your youth and losing your attractiveness fear of health problems like you have some pain in your back or you have some lump on under your arm and and then you have a fear of what that might mean fear of never having sex a lot of in cells deal with this these days or so I'm told fear of being embarrassed in public fear of wasting money fear of looking stupid fear of other people's opinion of you their judgment of you fear of other people thinking that you're a bad or evil person fear of criticism fear of making the wrong decision like you're trying to buy a house and you can't decide should I buy that one or this one and I'd that one or this one Alan or this one fear of being wrong fear of being a fear of disappointing your spouse children or family that's a very big one for people especially for a lot of men but also for women of course women women have a whole thing about pleasing their man but a lot of times you know the man gets caught in this kind of traditional role of being the breadwinner the one who provides for his family and then he gets really really hung up on that I remember I once had a client who worked two jobs it was killing himself he works two jobs working 80 hours a week for 10 years straight and then he hired me to coach him this was some years ago when I did coaching and we were trying to get to the bottom of what was really going on and he was a successful guy he wasn't working some lame job he was like working can't his own business he had multiple businesses he was trying to like do both him at the same time he was working his ass off he was so stressed like he had health problems because all these problems and then when it got right down to it his fear was that if he stops working both these jobs that he's not going to be making enough money to pay for his fancy house in New York somewhere in New Jersey or New York at some fancy house for his children and for his and for his wife and that the children were not be able to go to those super nice expensive schools and his wife wouldn't have that nice luxury house and then when I told them the idea of like well why don't you just move to like a smaller house and then work less but then spend more time with your children and your wife they'll actually like you more they'll appreciate it more because what they want is not a fancy house what they really want is they want more time with with their husband and with their father and in theory he agreed with all this and he said yeah that that sounds right sounds right in theory but in practice he was too afraid to do it he was so afraid to do it that we didn't even complete the coaching because he was too busy for our coaching calls in other words he paid me money to coach him a lot of money I was charging him like $200 an hour to coach him and in the end he didn't even show up to our coaching calls because he was too busy working to maintain that luxurious house why is that because his identity was attached to that house and to being that that provider guy who you know who provides everything to his children to his spouse and I don't know what happened to him he's probably been like three or four years now and if I had to guess if I was a betting man I would bet my money that he's still doing that or maybe he had some terrible health problem which would not be unreasonable or that would be not be out of the realm of possibility see that's how it works and I empathize you know I empathize with that that's difficult when you have a fear and it's up it's a fear that's deeply attached to your identity it's very difficult to give that up see you might be sitting there thinking like oh well what an idiot this guy you know he's so stewed how could he be so stupidly oh why didn't he just like listen to you why didn't you just do it I mean it's so obvious this would have improved his life yeah it's obvious to you it's obvious to me because we're not attached to his life you see when it's your own ass on the line when it's your own identity that's connected to something it becomes a lot harder continuing on with lists fear of losing your faith or your religion that's a big one for religious people fear of sin and fear of going to hell that's another big one for them fear of being seen naked fear of losing your freedom fear of being stuck in wage slavery forever fear of gaining weight fear of giving in to your cravings these are practical serious fears that run many people's lives now these I call macro fears these are relatively big fears that show up repeatedly throughout your life and affect a lot of your behaviors and decisions but even more important than these macro fears are micro fears because these micro fears what are we talking about these are so subtle and so sneaky and they happen so consistently and so often that you don't even notice them these macro fears probably if you've been alive for 10 20 years you probably are aware of some of your macro fears like you might realize that you're afraid of running out of money that may be a consistent fear you've had for a long time or maybe you're afraid of something like being embarrassed in public or looking stupid in public or Lose losing your attractive looks you probably aware that but how about your micro fears now what are micro fears micro fears I define as fears that you feel dozens of times every day these micro fears you you experience over a hundred micro fears per day without being aware of it and these micro fears they dominate your day-to-day life like on a minute-to-minute basis and then many of your thoughts are dominated by these micro fears and then many of your habits and survival strategies are based on them so what are some examples I'll give you a long list now watch out because these micro fears can seem very innocent almost trivial and superficial and yet nevertheless they dominate your life so for example fear that you've run out of toilet paper and I don't even mean like when you're sitting on the toilet and you've taken a dump and now you don't see any more toilet paper left that's a rare fear um you know that rarely happens to you hopefully if you're good about my until but I just mean the fear of like um you know you might be like in the kitchen cooking a meal and then the thought comes to you like oh [ __ ] I'm out of toilet paper and I forgot to buy it at the grocery store and and that you're afraid I mean it's not a giant fear it's not gonna [ __ ] you it's something so small that it just completely slides on the radar you don't even call it a fear but nevertheless it is a fear and if you're good at developing your mindfulness muscle you'll notice it as a fear it's a micro fear or the fear of getting caught in a lie you know we tell lies all the time at work and white lies here and they're not to hurt somebody's feelings but you know sometimes you're telling a lie but then you're you're afraid that all well what if what if my lie doesn't what if my lie isn't believed fear that fear of offending some co-worker by saying something again it's a little minor fear it's not like you're terrified of it you're not having some panic attack over it but it's just like you're sitting there in a meeting at work there's 10 of you guys together and you know that you have to maintain like social cohesion there you have to be kind of a team player and you want to say something but you're afraid and it might offend somebody and you know how in the past maybe you've said something and that got you into trouble and you're you don't want to be in a situation again so that image pops into your mind by the way one thing I want you to notice with fear is that for you to fear almost always there needs to be an image in your mind that's the other thing you should notice with your mindfulness muscle as you develop it it's not just that you fear running out of toilet paper there's actually an image in your mind of you running out of toilet paper there's something that how it looks and it looks bad it looks negative it looks painful it looks scary it's not just a fear of getting caught in some lie it's like the consequences of that your mind plays that out and that's very subtle it's not necessarily a super vivid you know sit a color movie in your mind it's it's very subtle it's almost like this faint phantom of a movie running through your mind that you need to develop enough awareness ability to spot how about the example of being being afraid of being late to work how much you get that it's so common fear of saying the wrong thing fear of reading an email fear of your client not liking the work that you submit to him fear of checking your phone maybe there's a text message on there that you you expect and you're just afraid to check it fear that the grocery store will run out of whatever item you want to go by like you want to go buy some steaks and then as you get in your car the image comes in your mind oh no what if they don't have steaks today like last week they were out of steaks now is this gonna like [ __ ] you know but it's still a fear it still runs you and the problem is that these fears are so numerous once you start to notice them you'll notice hundreds of them and then of course it's hard to stop them because there's so many how do you stop them all well we'll discuss that in the future fear that's some restaurant you're gonna go to is gonna have a law line on Friday night and you have to wait for an hour to get your food fear that your parents will catch you jerking off about fear of looking someone in the eyes fear of that pimple that you've got on your face and that you fear it's gonna look even worse tomorrow and it's gonna ruin some meeting that you're gonna go to fear of losing your car keys or fear that you have lost them already fear that you might have caught a cold you get that one I get that one quite a bit sometimes I feel like some cold is coming on but I'm not even sure if it really is a cold or water if I'm just kind of feeling a little bit bad maybe I'm getting a little bit of sore throat but I don't even know if that's because I was just talking too much or just because I actually I'm getting a cold and I'm kind of like afraid of like oh no I got a called that's gonna take a whole week it's gonna ruin my videos blah blah blah right so and then that's the image that are not in my mind fear of talking to your boss feel that your breath smells fear that you have something stuck in your teeth fear of being pregnant after sex fear of the store closing before you get there how often do we get that one fear of cleaning your garage fear of doing your taxes fear over paying your rent fear of confronting a person fear of telling your parents the truth about something fear of giving your honest opinion fear of skipping the gym you gym rats I know you have that one I used to have that one a lot when I went to the gym a lot fear of going to the doctor maybe you're feeling some ache in your tooth or in your back or somewhere and you know you should go get check it out get it checked out but uh but you're afraid of like what if it's something serious cancer what if it's this what if it's that fear of making a mistake at work fear that this meeting that you're going to won't turn out well fear that you forgot something like your homework or some important task you were supposed to do or a fear that you went to the grocery store but then you forgot the thing you need most fear that someone hasn't texted you back you know sometimes you text someone like maybe you're a parent texting your kids but your kids don't text you back and you're like afraid what happened to them did they get kidnapped are they okay are they drinking are they doing drugs what are they doing fear that you'll never find your life purpose fear that you'll have to work overtime this week when you don't want to fear that someone is judging you fear that your co-worker is talking and plotting against you behind your back fear that your company might fire you fear that you're you'll incur some credit card fee fear over starting a new project fear of calling someone on the phone fear of checking your bank account fear that you missed a great opportunity fear that you'll break a good habit like you've been meditating consistently all year but then even though you are meditating consistently notice that yes it's good that you've been meditating consistent you haven't missed a single day but also notice that you're afraid every single day that you will miss the next day notice that fear of someone yelling at you and then creative anxiety creative anxiety is a whole category whole can of worms we can't get into here but it's very very common if you do any kind of creative work whether you're a writer musician mm-hmm a director a designer an engineer creative anxiety is a [ __ ] and I get it quite a bit because I'm very creative but also I get it so these are micro fears these are fears you usually get on a kind of a daily basis that fly under the radar that you've never you thought about before until I mentioned it to you again this is just the tip of the iceberg of this list you're gonna have to figure out what this looks like actually in your life I want you to become much more attuned to wing you are in fear so here are some action steps from this episode number one start to notice micro fears number two start to observe how fear shapes your behavior number three start to observe how fear affects your thinking these micro fears are not just in your actions they're in your thoughts and start to feel them rather than just reacting from them another important point about fear is that fear isn't just held in the mind fear is held as tension in your body your body stores decades of fear in it and fear leads to not only psychological problems but two physiological problems such as panic attacks anxiety sweaty palms sweaty armpits sweaty clothes heart attacks strokes nervous breakdowns sexual problems erectile dysfunctional problems libido problems addictions like overeating drinking substance abuses of various kinds we eat and so forth mental illnesses obesity insomnia certain kinds of cancer of course not all cancer nor am i saying that all heart attacks are caused by fear per se of course there are many factors your nutrition is important and so forth but I'm saying that these are these can be caused by fear reduced lifespan overall headaches chronic fatigue exhaustion burnout stress hormone imbalances which are very common cortisol hormone problems thyroid problems and and so forth these can be fear related stress-related high blood pressure back pain neck pain muscle twitching sometimes you know some muscles pushing in your eye or whatever stomach aches irritable bowel syndrome diarrhea constipation ulcers nail biting fidgeting pacing back and forth these sorts of nervous tics a weak immune system overall frequent colds and flus PTSD trauma depression menstrual problems skin rashes psoriasis eczema acne personality disorders even suicide and various kinds of violent radical ideologies are all often caused by fear and then there's a host of softer problems more nebulous problems caused by fear such as racism closed-mindedness defensive 'no sition making bad science even irrational laws which are passed based on fear you know after a terrorist attack a lot of bad laws get passed why precisely because it's a knee-jerk reaction not a proper conscious response to the situation we can attack the wrong country we can bomb somebody we can pass some sort of racist law some Islamophobic law or whatever all because we're afraid collectively see fear of course doesn't just happen at an individual level fear in humans happens at a collective level entire societies or corporations or organizations or governments can be caught in fear now I've told you before that the whole point of life is to well one way to think about what life is all about is that life is a love simulator I've told you that in my episodes about love and another way to frame that is that life is about learning how not to fear these are just the universe's of each other fear and love our inverse so to say that life is a love simulator what that means is that life is going to present you with fear over and over and over again so that you can learn how to love it and therefore transcendent see and life is such a big thing that it presents you with some very scary things to love which is precisely what grows your love how is fear overcome you might wonder ultimately through consciousness that's the key not by necessarily avoiding the fear but by realizing that the fear is an illusion that's the key to a permanent root solution to fear most the times when people solve fear in their life they don't do it through consciousness they don't do it by realizing that it's an illusion what they do instead is they react against the fear and they avoid it through denial or manipulation or usually a combination of both and then they treat that as success because you know if the fear is out of your mind it seems like you've solved it if the fear is denied it seems like you've solved it or if the fear is something that you manipulate your way out of it seems like you've solved it so for example you might fear paying your rent but then in the last minute you earn some money somehow and you've paid your rent and like you okay I thought it the fear is gone but what you've done there is you haven't actually conquered or transcended that fear what you've done is you've manipulated your way out of it and yes it worked but then what this means is that the next time it comes up you'll be in the exact same place you haven't actually grown yourself to be a bigger person to not fear that situation anymore that would be real growth real growth that situation would be like you've faced it so deeply that when it happens to you again you won't react the same way that you usually do but if all you did is just paid off with some money that didn't actually grow you and so it seems like you've solved your fear but actually you haven't because you haven't seen that it's an illusion now of course you might wonder well leo but how is not paying my rent in illusion they're gonna kick me out of my house that's true they will kick you out of your house eventually but but the illusion is that this is a terrible thing and you might say well but it is a terrible thing well again the illusion is that you think it's an objectively terrible thing whereas really it's something your mind is constructing to be a terrible thing see that's something you have to work through on your own the thing that I understand about fear is that when you're stuck on a fear is gonna be very difficult for you to to understand how the fear is an illusion precisely because if you could easily see how it's an illusion you wouldn't be afraid of it so if you're really afraid of something you're gonna be deeply in denial that it's an illusion you're gonna feel like it's real and you're not gonna understand how it's unreal that's gonna take some work it might take two years of work to finally crack that nut and just see like oh yeah I see now how it was an illusion so don't don't let that throw you off you're not necessarily gonna understand how all of it is an illusion right now so if you really want a permanent fix for our fear and you really want to use fear to grow yourself and you want to play up this whole idea that life is a love simulator then what you got to do is you got to do the counterintuitive move here and to confront your fear avoidance of fear brings stagnation and a victim mentality that's one of the worst things about running away from your fears is that the more you do it the more you feel stuck depressed and the more it hurts your self-esteem because everything terrifies you now you can get to the point where you're so terrified you don't even want to leave your house there actually are people like this or too scared to leave their house see and they become total victims and the reason it's so tricky is because it's not like you're just fight you just are that way one day it's like you you gradually build up to it over years and years and years and years of avoiding fear of denying fear until you become such a victim that you're completely stuck in hopeless be careful about that there's a condition known as learned helplessness where this can happen to you but if you confront your fear then it grows you and it also brings instant relief it's not even necessary that you fully solve the actual physical problem like let's say you you owe somebody some money and you might think well if I just give them the money that's what's gonna solve the problem and that's what will bring relief actually the relief will be brought even sooner if you just surrender yourself to to that experience like we talking about earlier and you stop resisting it and you actually confront the fear head-on that will bring immediate relief to the point that you don't even need to wait to pay the money off the relief will come to you now as soon as you confront the problem like for example if you're stuck in a bad abusive relationship as a woman and you have a lot of fear about leaving this relationship because you know you like this guy he's almost perfect you know he's so nice and so he's so good most of the time but you know occasionally when he drinks he gets abusive with me but you know if not for that then he would be perfect you have this kind of fantasy in your mind common fantasy and so really you know that you need to relieve this relationship but you're in denial about it because you're afraid you don't want to leave you don't want to be alone and all that and so by not leaving you start to get more and more stuck you see by building up that fear of leaving this relationship like you sort of imagine how bad it's gonna get how alone you're gonna be how much you're gonna regret leaving him and bla bla bla bla bla and how Maddie's gonna be how sad is gonna be in all this stuff and with all those images you get yourself stuck more and more and more and your self-esteem drops lower and lower and lower whereas if you confront the worst of it and you bite the bullet and you say [ __ ] it you know what I'm gonna leave yes it's gonna be painful for a while yes I'm gonna be alone yes he's gonna be sad too and yes it's gonna be bad for a few weeks but [ __ ] it let me just go through this whole experience I surrender to the experience let me just go through it immediately you'll get relief you don't even need to walk out the door yet you will get relief before you've even walked out the door that will build confidence for you and then that will actually help you to deal with the situation in the best way possible avoidance of fear can become extremely pathological resulting in all sorts of twisted addictions lying criminal schemes dirty politics abuse various kinds of parasitic behavior ideologies and devilry of all sorts come from avoiding fear fear of ultimately facing yourself facing your own weaknesses see that's often what we're afraid of really we're afraid of of stepping up to the ball we're afraid of going big we're afraid of being bold we're afraid of being decisive we're afraid of putting ourselves in a situation where we have to work hard when we have to be creative where we have to be innovative where we have to be courageous where we have to be our best selves that's what we're really afraid of and a lot of people rather than doing that what they do is they take a shortcut and instead they resort to addiction lying criminal schemes abuse parasitic behavior ideology and devilry because they don't really want to face their own greatness how twisted is that it's amazing how twisted consciousness can get the problem with always manipulating your way out of fear is that you're still limited by your manipulation skills and even if your manipulation skills are very good it still not gonna be a root solution because ultimately you cannot manipulate your way out of death so for example Donald Trump is an excellent manipulator he's really good at lying and cheating and stealing and swindling and scheming and various kinds of con artists tree and all this he's great at it a master he could teach a master class in it and on the surface it might seem like Leo what's wrong I mean he's got lots of money he's got a beautiful wife he's got nice kids he's got a you know he became president he's got all this prestige - what's wrong with it well what's wrong with it number one is that he's still constantly in fear no matter how good of a manipulator he is it's never gonna be enough number two is that his manipulations oftentimes fail they don't always work and when they don't work that causes a lot of suffering and problems and then number three is that in the end the most important things you can't manipulate your way out of you can't manipulate your way into love and into truth and you certainly can't manipulate your way out of death you're gonna have to face it see so that's gonna be very painful in the long run and the short term it works and then even in the short term it could fail see fear tends to be a poor survival strategy for anything that isn't like immediate and physical so if you're facing a bear in the woods in that scenario fear is fine it's a healthy response to that situation and it's actually very effective you see the bear and you just haul ass because you're full of cortisol or whatever hormone you know you're going through that flight-or-fight response and you just flee great it works but human society and human life is much more complicated than just bears in the woods that worked for our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago but we're way more evolved than that today we're dealing with much more complicated systems today in which fear tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy this is a whole lot of Attraction deal you know if you are constantly afraid you're gonna tend to attract the thing you're afraid of how does this work well let me give you a few examples for example fear of your girlfriend or boyfriend cheating on you this is a common fear that people have but what they don't realize is that that fear itself tends to fulfill itself so if you're afraid that your boyfriend is gonna cheat on you because you've gained some weight let's say you're a woman then that fear makes you clingy and makes you constantly kind of like begging your boyfriend to be with you more and more and it makes you paranoid so you start to check his phone and that he catches you checking his phone and he's like why are you checking my phone like what's going on and then you have to lie to him and all that and see all of this ultimately gets him to lose his attraction for you because he looks at you is like what why is she so needy she's so needy all the time she's she doesn't trust me to go out with my friends she doesn't let me go out at night she doesn't like she's too controlling and all this and then and then he doesn't leave you or for example fear of your business failing you're so terrified of losing your business that you've spent so much time worrying about losing your business that you don't focus enough on your business and being creative and being innovative and doing good work and you know the best way to be creative is not from fear it's hard to be creative when you're fearful the most creative you can be is when you're relaxed and fear is the opposite of relaxation so when you're when you're preoccupied with anxiety and fear you can't be very creative and therefore you can't create good business solutions and then therefore your business fails how about the one of fear of immigrants foreigners and Muslims this is a common one in the news today learn a lot of people traditional folk are fearful of the Browning of America and all this yeah that's a legitimate fear that people have but that fear becomes self-fulfilling because when you fear for example black people or brown people then when you see brown people black people your mind you know through confirmation bias tends to only look at news where brown people and black people did something wrong and so of course every time you check the newspaper you see all if that black person kills somebody oh look this brown person robbed a store oh look these immigrants here and drug dealers oh look at this and then you get this idea in your mind that all immigrants and brown people and black people are bad and then of course that tends to make the problem worse because when you're afraid of Muslims you don't understand Muslims properly you don't have proper relations with Muslim countries and in those Muslim countries might attack you in the future or there might be some rogue elements in those countries you know there's a culture war between the Christians and the radical Muslims or whatever the evangelicals in them and the Wahhabist and then from that could come terrorist attacks and violence and all sorts of things and then each side will use that as justification for like oh yeah see we knew that those people were were dangerous now of course sometimes people just are dangerous too that's also okay I'm not saying that danger is always in your head like sometimes relatively speaking something is dangerous like a knife relatively speaking as a dangerous object compared to a teddy bear see so you know some things are just more dangerous so do take that into account don't don't assume that what I'm giving you here some naive pollyannaish view of the world there are real dangers in the world relative to you wanting to survive as a human being understand that so fear is good when you're just looking out for your bare physical survival but this is sort of a short-term survival strategy fear is a terrible long survival strategy because it keeps you running in a loop fear is a negative emotion and so therefore by acting on your fear you never fully resolve the fear you're always gonna be coming back to it over and over and over and over and over again and it creates a yo-yo effect because negative motivation they never get you out of the problem they just solve the problem for a short term until the fear goes away then you fall right back into it so for example if you're afraid of being fat what happens is you get a gym membership you go to the gym you work out for a few weeks you lose a few pounds now you look a little better now your fear goes away now you're not afraid of being fat anymore now you go pee out on a bunch of ice cream at the at the restaurant and now a few weeks later you find yourself fat again and now you're afraid again and now you go back to the gym and then you work out for a few weeks lose all that weight that you gained and then of course you look better again you look your normal self you stand on the scale you're at your normal weight the way you think you should be the weight you're attached to the weight your identity is attached to and then of course you go out with your friends the next weekend and then you pig out on some BBQ ribs and then of course the proper repeat stuff is your sense yo-yo cycle all the time and you never resolve anything that's what fear does that's what negative motivation does so fear is not good if you're interested in happiness and thriving in life fear is good for just like basic subsistence you're just scraping by it's not a very pleasant way to live there's gonna be a lot of suffering with that fear also tends to be unhealthy in the long term fear is good for maintaining the status quo but fear is bad for growing to new higher levels and reaching great achievements a lot of government status quo is maintained due to fear but if we want to really build uh an amazing new government a much better government that works much better we need to be able to let go beyond the fear and to dream big and to make significant changes to our government you know like when Martin Luther King said I have a dream that one day you know white children and black children will go together into school whatever he said I don't remember what he said exactly something along those lines we'll be able to like live together in happiness and peace that was that was a radical thing that was he was challenging the status quo see he wasn't saying that from fear but the people who were opposing that the people who wanted segregation in the south and so forth back in the 1960s in America they were afraid they were afraid if I go my god what happens if we desegregate schools and black children and white children drinking out of the same fountains what did the drinking fountains are gonna be you know corrupted by the black people oh my god oh my god it's terrible fear you see you can't build a Great Society on fear it has to be built on vision and on love and on higher things all right that's enough for part one but don't go anywhere hold on I have a big homework assignment for you there's a lot of homework here this week that I want you to do so that you can really get the full benefit of part two which is coming next week so first your assignment is this observe your micro fears every single day for the next seven days as much as you can at the end of each day so you'll do this seven times you will write out as many of your micro fears as you can so during the day you'll just observe them but then at the very end of the day before you go to bed you're gonna write out a list of them for that day whatever they were just so that you're clear on what they are and you're gonna do that every single day for seven days and then you compare all the lists and see you know what are the common overlaps then you're going to contemplate the following question how are these micro fears related to my identity how are these micro fears related to my identity I want you to draw that connection these micro fears not just random things that accost you they are stemming from your identity how is my mind projecting these things into the world how am i creating these micro fears this is where you have to take radical responsibility of your emotions and your fear it's not something that just happens to you it's something you're doing but you don't know how or why you're doing it that's the key when you're working with emotions is to take that attitude of responsibility next I want you to observe how your thoughts are shaped by fear next I want you to flesh out your list of biggest fears that I had you start earlier in this episode so these are the macro fears start to flush out that list you want to become very acquainted with your biggest macro fears what are they and how do they shape your thoughts and your actions and how do they stem from your identity and then I want you to contemplate the following question what am i unwilling to experience what am i unwilling to experience because that question is the key question that unearths all your fears alright that's it for part 1 make sure you stay tuned for part 2 in part 2 here's what you're going to get you're going to get a lot of answers to frequently asked questions and objections which we didn't have time to really get into here I'm gonna give you my top 10 tools for overcoming fear and I'm gonna answer the question what is the most important quality you need to succeed at life so make sure you stick around you