Ep.3 | Paralyzed by Fear

My name is Timothy Eldred. I'm a writer speaker, coffee snob, Bourbon drinker, blah, blah, blah. I tell you that every time because I want to impress you, and I'm afraid you won't like me. That's what we're talking about today. This is a square peg round hole welcome, I am glad you're here today because we're gonna be dealing with an issue that affects your life. It affects everyone's life. I'm not sure if the topic we're talking about is more prevalent today than it's been in previous generations. But in some way, I guarantee it's impacting your world, or the world of someone you know, that world of someone you love. I'm talking about fear. Just think about it, you open your computer, turn on the TV flip on the news. There's a story about like, some major issue that's going to like, screw everything up world markets are falling apart, whatever. And then that's followed by a commercial, your you got your thinking like, oh, no, what am I do well buy gold. If you buy gold, you know, you'll be able to survive stockpile food, whatever. You know, then you got to think about like COVID, because there's gonna be a headline about COVID tonight. So get your booster, make sure you get your booster because if you don't get your booster You are the cause of the end of civilization. That's a pro Vaxxer point of view. Don't get the booster fight to the very end. I don't know. That's the other side. I don't care if you get the booster have the vaccine, whatever. We just keep feeding each other fear. But fear doesn't even have to be a headline to paralyze us and divide us. Everywhere we turn. People want us to be afraid of something. And we are. We're afraid of everything. And I'm not talking about phobias. There's a whole list of phobias if you google them from spiders to clowns. And so I mean, we're gonna deal with phobias eventually. No, I'm not discounting phobias, but I mean of the top 10. Right now social phobia is in the increase with everything we're dealing with. It's a social anxiety disorder, to real, and we'll talk about it. But fear in general fears natural. We all have fears, phobias, phobias are excessive fears, they're out of control, they're out of proportion. But today, I just want to talk about fear. Fear in general, not phobias. Because fear is the greatest factor preventing authenticity in our lives. The bottom line is that we have all kinds of fears. And I'm not picking on your fears. You know, I've got my own fears. I've got a couple I've dealt with hell, I still deal with them. Like the fear of being left out. That's one of mine. Because I want to be wanted, I want to be noticed, I want to be liked. I want to be respected. Maybe that sounds familiar to you. So just remember, you're not alone. And I try to say that every episode, you are not alone. If you listened last week, and you remember, I talked about the power of words, and words is how we instill fear in people. And I laid that groundwork with you, because words have the ability to create these thoughts. And the thoughts create the reality in our mind. Think about this when you when you use words, to influence someone else's behavior. Maybe you intentionally, like threatened somebody, I don't mean like threatened with a machete, but like you use your words to sway their thinking. Like, if you don't get the newest vaccine or the booster, you know, kids won't be able to get drunk and naked on the beach and a half Spring Break that's going to be on you. Something like that. Now, maybe with your words, you weren't trying to be a complete asshole. But you did attempt to manipulate somebody. Nonetheless, what we do is we use words to leverage people and change their opinion, or their behavior or move them to our way of thinking. I mean, just think back to like, election commercials. You know, we'd like this person, and we're like that person, everything's gonna fall apart. That's what we do with words. And that's how we instill fear. So whether it be conscious or unconsciously, we use words to play on people's emotions, more than we like to admit it. We start young, that's how we get kids to clean their plates. That's how we get kids to clean their rooms. That's how we get them to do their homework. We do it all the time. We use words and to trigger certain emotions or behaviors in somebody which then trigger thoughts in their head like we we talked about last time. Here's one of my favorites. And this one hits close to home. If you died today, where would you spend eternity? That's fear. We're really good at it. I mean, not to mention shame, which is a whole nother series of episodes. Now, I have got no problem telling you about my fears. Because if I would pretend that I don't have fears that would be like, inauthentic, which would shoot the purpose of this podcast to hell, I have fears. My biggest fear probably isn't being left out. Actually, my biggest fear, I know what it is it's failure. I have a fear of failure, failure in my career, failure in relationships, I feel like I, you know, failure and making enough money to provide failure in general, I deal with the idea of failure all the time, it's followed me most of my life, actually, I'm afraid to fail. So much so that I will stop or quit doing a project or whatever, when I'm 90%. There, because it's just easier to do something else, then perhaps not complete the project not focused, not finish, all based on my fear of failure. But I wonder, and I'm not sure. I think my fear of failure could be linked to another fear that I have. And in general, it's, I want you to like me, I want people to see me as important because I fear that I'm not. And that's followed me most of my life, too. Now, there are people who would say, I don't have that fear, some of you might say that don't have that fear. Listen, in my 30 years of working with people and traveled in the world. I've met very few people who aren't fooling themselves if they say that maybe they buried it deep. But I could be wrong, I'll concede there can be some exceptions. So the reason I'm diving into fear, especially the fear of failure today is because it lies at the heart of our greatest struggles. Fear, like drives us. The where's it come from? Well, it's natural. First of all, it's programmed into our nervous system. Fear is natural, it's an instinct. So without getting all scientific, the bottom line is that we're born with a couple fears. We are equipped to respond when we see or feel a sense of danger or a sense of insecurity, we may feel unsafe. So fears, good fear protects us. It protects us until it gets out of control. And then fear doesn't protect us anymore. Because of all our emotions fears, the most challenging the one that we face. And we sometimes we face it moment by moment, while it can be necessary, and it can change your life or save your life. Living in fear is different. living in fear, which many people do is a choice. So we can choose to live in the invisible force of fear, or we can choose a different storyline. They're both choices. I can choose hope I can choose possibility I can choose connection. So I don't hear me saying that fear is bad. It can protect you. And like I said, life threatening situations. But we only have two innate fears. I don't care where you're born and how you're raised you are, you are afraid when you're born of loud noises and you're afraid of falling. That's it. Nothing else. All other fears, including my fear of failure, are illusions. They are illusions, which means they're self created. Now, don't dismiss me. I promise that you can accept this fact you will be one step closer to living with a new sense of freedom that will let you be your true authentic self without worrying about what other people think. Which is ironic, because I'm encouraging you to do that. I just admitted to you that I still struggle with all that. So, you know, it's kind of powerful. Hold on You fear. If you happen to be driving right now, I want you to maybe ignore this little exercise. But if you're not driving, do me a favor. Just close your eyes. Close your eyes and ask yourself this question. What's my biggest fear? What do I fear the most? I'll let you on a secret because I know that right now statistically over 30% of you 1/3 of you just said failure. That's that's, that's common. Like me. Now, keep your eyes closed. I'm going to assume as well that you're sitting down as you're listening. What you're sitting on right now chair, couch, whatever it might be, is a substance which means gets real, it's holding you up. How do you know that? Well, because you haven't fallen because you like not laying on the floor. But everything that you see everything that you touch, everything you taste and smell is created in your mind. And it's created from perception. Your perception allows you to create anything and literally, it makes the impossible, possible. That's the power of the mind. That's the power of perception, the mind is powerful. So keep your eyes closed. Remember that you have a power and to simply by your thoughts, create the same thing your words do your thoughts do if you're afraid of failure, that is a perception by words or thoughts that you've used to create that fear. And it's only true in your mind, which means it's impossible for you to move forward. You can't move forward in life, you can't move forward in love, you can't move forward in relationships, in anything based upon this fear that is in your head, that is an illusion that you have created. So like most fears, failure, is just a matter of perception. My fear of failure, and the idea of failure is just a perception. It's not a substance, like the one that your buddy is sitting on right now. Failure is an illusion, and it's built upon an illusion of insecurities, and allow those insecurities have been more hardwired into you. To put it bluntly, 90% of what you experiences in life is because of the programs that are playing and like a loop in the background of your mind. It is not who you are. It's what you choose to believe. You choose to believe it every fear every worry, every doubt you have can be traced back to someone or to some experience that lodged itself into your subconscious a long time ago. I mean, 99.9% of your worries, and your doubts and your fears are not true, nor will they ever come true. worry and fear are all just a waste of time to cripple you in suck the joy out of your life. I have this conversation with my wife a lot. She's a worrier. And I just constantly kindly reminder that yesterday can't change and what you worry about tomorrow, you know, you can't impact that either you got power over the moment. So at this moment, what are you going to choose to believe you can break free and if you want to break free from living an artificial life, a fake life where you're trying to fit in or you're faking it to avoid failure like I do. You can. But it's up to you. It's completely up to you. If you realize that you just dragging around a suitcase full of fears, somebody else placed on you at some time in your life, probably your early life is sad, but it's true. We not just you we we have been conditioned people have used words to influence our thoughts that we have created this worry and this fear and this doubt about all kinds of crap. So what I want you to do, sorry, open your eyes. If you haven't opened your eyes yet. I want you to pay attention to your deepest fears today. Write them down, get out a notebook, get out a journal, you know, scrap paper, whatever, write them down, because with some work, if you think about it, you can trace them back to a time in your life. Maybe sometimes it's beyond your thinking. But more than likely, it's a time you can remember when something was sad or something was done, you can trace them back. And when you do, you'll laugh. I hope you'll laugh. You'll either laugh or kick yourself or a combination of both. But when you do you'll be able to let them go overnight? Probably not. I haven't let him go overnight. I've been trying to remind myself every day, it's work. But in time, absolutely. You can let them go. I've let a lot of mine go I still have a few that I stick on to to stick on to me. But in time you can change the way you think and you feel in the fears that you carry. So as I wrap up the episode, I just want you to remember an important lesson you can apply this to anything. Life is about choices. It's about the choices you make. And the choices you make carry consequences with them. And sometimes those consequences are positive but most of the time those consequences produce some kind of chaos. And that's what fear is it's it's it's chaos. But you can let go of your fears. Anytime. It's a choice. You choose. I can't do it for No one can do it for you actually, all I can do today on this episode is share some truth and hope that you'll listen and hope that you'll trust me on it. By the way, trust, which is connected to fear is a topic we're carrying covering soon with a guest of mine named money hip, you don't want to miss that. My friend, you can do it. You can if you don't believe you can. That's just another belief that you've chosen to accept based upon some bullshit fear that's in your head, you're choosing to hold on to that. Don't talk yourself out of letting go of lies that somebody else sold you either recently or a long time ago. My goal on this podcast is to help you and to help you be your true self. And that can't happen. You're listening because you want to live with authenticity. But that can't happen unless you will learn to let go of the fears in your mind. There's just much more to your life than struggle, and strife and suffering and all the stuff we've been conditioned to believe. Fear is based on the belief that you've created in your mind, but when you let go, you will finally be able to create healthier beliefs and fill your mind with other ideas that will help you become your true authentic self. I'd love to help you with that. So if you're ready to be free from fear, I've got a path for you to follow. Just become a subscriber to square peg round hole and you'll be able to access a 10 step guide for covering or overcoming fear that will help you get past the illusions. You believe you can subscribe for free and read all kinds or listen to all kinds of content. You can pay and download real steps and pathways to solutions. Just go to Timothy eldred.com Click on the blog podcast link in the menu put in your email, follow the steps and download what you need. And please take a moment follow me on social media at Timothy eldred.com. But for today, thank you for listening noodle on these thoughts for a while would you please and join me for the next episode.