How To Reframe Fear And Move Anyway: Part 2

We explore how fear gets programmed, why change triggers it, and how to move forward with clear, practical tools. Selling our house becomes a lens for reframing worry, using imagination with intention, and acting even when fear shows up.

• deciding to sell the house and face uncertainty
• reframing fear as a warning rather than a wall
• spotting inherited beliefs from family and school
• biology of fear versus learned conditioning
• social anxiety, belonging, and authenticity
• worst-case thinking as imagination in overdrive
• writing emotions down to untangle layers
• asking what else to reveal hidden feelings
• designing strategies for specific scenarios
• using gentle exposures to retrain reactions
• shifting imagination from worry to possibility
• embracing worthiness and the nature of constant change

Chapters

• 0:09 Sunrise Small Talk
• 1:28 Announcements And Listener Anonymity
• 1:41 Part Two: Choosing Big Change
• 3:19 Fear Programming And Limiting Beliefs
• 6:00 Biology Versus Conditioning
• 8:22 Reframing Worry And Worst-Case Thinking
• 12:22 Social Anxiety, Belonging, And Authenticity
• 15:18 Engaging Fear Through Questions
• 19:55 Writing To Untangle Emotions
• 23:45 Imagination As A Tool, Not A Trap
• 27:56 Acting With Fear And Embracing Change
• 31:40 Meditation, Attention, And Mental Drift
• 35:44 Audience Check-In And Closing Notes
• 36:44 New Classroom On Emotions

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

Sky's turning pink.

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

It is, it's got a peach color over there.

SPEAKER_01: 0:15

That would you call that? I'm just the guy. Things are brown or pink or red or green, not fuchsia or ivy or peach. I suppose there's value in that kind of uh color of language.

SPEAKER_00: 0:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

Language of color.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

So thanks for joining us here this morning.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

Hope you guys got caught.

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

Yes, coffee or tea. Whatever floats your boat.

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

Stiff shot of whiskey first thing in the morning.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

And just so you know, I don't call out names. I know who you are. Oh, there's another person. I don't call out names when I read the chat just for anonym anonymity, anonymity purposes, because people will be listening to this. It's live streamed. So not live streamed, but it'll be uploaded to podcast sites. So just to keep everybody anonymous. So welcome everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

It's great to have people listening and participating.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

So yeah, what are we chatting about today?

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Well, we're moving on to part two of change.

SPEAKER_00: 1:31

That's right. So yesterday's podcast, yesterday's podcast, we talked about how change can be scary. We have decided to sell the house and move. Not tomorrow, but soon. And that is a little terrifying, honestly. It's pretty scary. So I started talking about how moving can be scary, how change in general can be scary. And yeah, how life can can bring us changes and how to move through that fear. I think today we're gonna talk a bit about that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12

Well, we talked yesterday about the idea of change coming from within. There are some changes that come from within. We get motivated to make change, we seek something more, and we realize that whatever it is in our behavior or larger lifestyle, uh, it needs to shift, it needs to change. And it's really hard to do that because first of all, you know, you have your own fears. What if this doesn't work? Which is a, I think, one of those really unfortunate programs that we inherit from very young. What if this doesn't work? What if this can't happen? What if we it doesn't go the way we hoped? This is this is a really persistent subconscious program that I think is uh built into us very, very young, and an attempt to protect us, in an attempt to to prepare us. We think that it's good to think and anticipate the worst. And in fact, the more we work with people and the more we study and learn about the mind and the world and quantum physics and you know the anticipation, the methodologies for aligning your internal processes with an external outcome. That's just really not helpful. It's really not a useful program. It's just a limiting belief, and it's really uh something to be recognized. I was doing some recordings yesterday for the school, and we underestimate the the shift that takes place in us when we just recognize a mental bad habit. Just recognizing it, just spotting it, just saying, oh, wait a second, how is that serving me? Just recognizing it. We already create a shift. We already start the process of opening our mind to another way of considering this, you know, and knowing always, you know, I say it a million times a day, knowing that the mind is a habit-making machine and that our thoughts are habits, seeing a habit is the first step towards eliminating it, changing it, replacing it with something better. So I really think that whether it's internal or external, the first idea that we go towards change with fear is is not serving us and is probably the opposite of what we should be doing.

SPEAKER_00: 5:04

Yeah, well, I was speaking yesterday, or I think maybe I just thought it. Sometimes I think things and think I spoke it. But I I think that fear makes it feel like it's true. Like if I'm having fear about something, I should be running away from it. Right? It's that, it's that old, old, what do they call it? Reptilian or mammalian brain, both maybe reptilian brain for sure. I know I've heard that. But just this old, old biological part of us that says, There's something scary, run away from it, don't do it, you know. And fear, yeah, brings up those those deep feelings like, well, maybe because I'm feeling this fear, I shouldn't be doing this, right? It's almost like it's screaming, this is the truth, but it's not the truth, right? Yeah, however many years ago, if you saw a lion, you'd run away and that would be good and you would survive. But nowadays it's, you know, feeling fear of well, what are what are all those things that we avoid even looking at because we feel fear of? Money's a big thing, you know. We avoid sometimes looking at our accounts because it makes us fearful. Just so many things in life that we avoid because of fear.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

Well, I think we underestimate the amount of programming that comes to us from our parents, comes to us from our schooling. You know, those early, early years, we are really taught to fear. We are taught to be cautious, you know, don't cross the street, don't talk to strangers. These kinds of deep-seated programs make everything, everything in our world appears to be scary. I'm not sure how much of that is sort of base body biology, because yeah, we have the our brain centers, the reptilian brain, uh, that sort of keeps us alive, and we've got the you know, the central processing units in the brain, the amygdala, which is really filled with emotion and controls that sympathetic nervous system. But I also believe that there's an element, a big element of programming. And I use that phrase because for two reasons. First reason is because programming can change. We can change that. It means it wasn't there originally. It wasn't, you know, part of who we are, it's part of who we've become. And I also use that because I think it's important to acknowledge that it didn't come from us. It was somebody else's view of the world that came to us, that they gave us out of love, out of a desire to take care of us, out of a belief that their fears were really grounded in important ideas. So I think of an example. The example I come up with is my son and a friend of mine's granddaughter. Now, for me, there's not a whole lot that's going to make me jump and it's gonna make me recoil, but snakes do that to me. Snakes, just the movement in the grass is enough to make me shout and jump and move away quickly. Now, my son loves snakes. He sees a snake, he comes running at it, and he has to hold it, he has to play with it, and he has to talk to it, and he wants to keep it. And from the time he was little, little, little, he just had this love of snakes. And the same thing with my buddy's granddaughter. She loves snakes. She's little, she's like two, three years old, and she just can't, she can't stay away if it's a snake. She wants to see it. And he's the same way as me. You know, just a hint that there might be a snake nearby puts us on full caution. So I'm not sure how much is actually human programming, base human uh nature. I think anything, no matter what, there's there's two steps. There's always a perception and an interpretation. In fact, that happens so fast that it's hard not to see them as one process. It's hard not to be, it's hard to be able to break them down into steps and try to engage a change of that. Now, we've done it in hypnosis. We've made people go from being absolutely terrified of something to completely indifferent to it, right? And then we we realize a lot of these fears that we have are very much programmed into us. Now, to go after the heart of the matter to me starts with understanding first the programmed fears we have, and second, our resistance to change them, our resistance to think that they might not be true. So when change comes along, change really triggers our fears, our worries. I think worrying is a habit that gets developed very young. I know of people, clients, that worry has become almost an operating mode, and that operating mode really interferes, of course, with their ability to enjoy the moment that they're in. And we do a lot of reframing about the past, present, and future, and we do a lot of reframing about possibilities, and we try to move away from the idea of avoidance to the idea of moving through fear. So the primary refrain really becomes fear is a warning, not a wall. It's good to be, it's good to be careful, I think. I think it's good to manage the various factors that could result in less than optimal outcomes. But fear creates fear. The vibration of fear creates a system of fear. And I think that it's important to see the systems of fear that we create around ourselves. You know, I think that it's a system of fear that that we live through when it comes to things like school and work. But the primary yearning is acceptance, but the principal fear is rejection, and that this won't be a place where I feel appreciated, sometimes even safe. I think you know that's a big step for people. I experienced it a lot with students coming to college, and their what they called their social anxiety was really an incredible cautiousness that was built into them very young to be almost unable to trust strangers.

SPEAKER_00: 12:51

And that translates to other students.

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

Well, translates to other students, it translates to teachers, it translates to new places to live, it it translates to the social environment. I mean, the college itself is such a social experience.

SPEAKER_00: 13:10

Yeah, and you want to fit in. Yeah, and if you have the if you have the thoughts of, well, uh I know, I know I used to go through this thought pattern years ago. I know I've had clients that go through it just feeling like, oh, well, once they know who I am, they're not gonna like me anymore, right? Once they see me for me, I'm gonna lose them as a friend or something. And I think that can that can even stop people from experiencing friendships or delving into new friendships or even showing themselves for who they are. Being, I know we throw this word authentic around, but yeah, you want to be who you are. But sometimes you feel scared to be who you are. You know, even me is sometimes scared to talk about aliens and aliens, aliens and past lives and life between and all the woo-woo stuff. But that's what I love, that's what I gravitate towards. I shouldn't be scared to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01: 14:21

We like to think that reframes are useful because they are logical and they're accurate. I think sometimes, though, dealing with somebody's fear by simply telling them that there's nothing to be afraid of is a really useless thing. And something I've done in the past that has worked out well, and I don't know if it's unique to that client or whether it's a really great reframe, is to simply say, well, what's the worst that can happen? And then follow that thinking. Well, what would that mean? Yeah, why would that be bad? You know, recently had a friend who wanted to be part of a a trip, I'll use it as that, and felt like the the introduction and application process wasn't fair and biased against people who don't, you know, look and act a certain way. And of course, you know, the rejection was really hard. But one of the thoughts that I offered her in our in our conversation, because I just really think, I really think she dodged a bullet. From my point of view, being rejected by these absolute jerks, right? Was the best thing that could have happened to her. The worst thing that could have happened to her was that they they take her on the on the trip, they they take her money, and then they treat her badly while she's there. Yeah, that would be horrible, right? That would take this thing that you dream about and turn it into a nightmare. Sometimes being open to the idea that not getting what I want can be good for me, right? Can be a useful idea when facing these automatic reactions to difficult circumstances. Reframing around fear, I think, really requires just engaging the fear a little bit. You know, the the Tao Ta Qing, one of my favorite books of all time, the Tao Ta Qing says if you want to get rid of something, first you must let it be. And I really like that idea. I like the idea, you know, what does it mean to sit with this emotion? What does it mean to spend time? And I think when it comes to fear, it's about spending time understanding what it is you fear and whether or not that fear is real.

SPEAKER_00: 17:06

I really liked how, you know, over the course of a week since making this decision, I've gone up and down with emotions. And I really liked how you had me like write out. We sat in the living room and you had me write out my emotions, and then we just went through them like one by one and look unpacked, you know, what what are you fearful of this or what are you feeling? And uh, you know, just going through each one one by one and saying it out loud, too. I have clients that will come to me and say, Now that I'm saying this out loud, it it's actually dissipating the fear because I think when we keep it locked inside, it it becomes so real, it becomes our our world, right? So talking about it really helps.

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

Well, you know, uh consider it like, you know, I I remember a technique you used once, and I really liked it. I had someone who was afraid of frogs. And so you brought them images of cartoon frogs.

SPEAKER_00: 18:09

Oh, yeah. That's right, right?

SPEAKER_01: 18:11

Not pictures of actual frogs, but cartoon images of frogs and and storybook pictures of frogs. I think that that change hits us right in the middle of all of our fears. And those fears are automatically responded to by this really strong, smart, habitual, subconscious mind that wants to protect you. I think it's so important to always remember your subconscious mind is always trying to protect you. But most of the time, it protects you from what you want. It protects you from the life of your dreams because you have been really strongly programmed to be afraid. And so to sit with those fears, and I think you know, the process that we went through, I'd forgotten about that, was really about examining each emotion and breaking it down as to why. Because when you when you spend time, I do this a lot with clients who have strong emotions, you know, they come in, they sit in a chair, and the emotions are right there. I say, Well, what are you feeling? And they usually say something like, I'm angry or I'm afraid. And I say, Well, what else? And they look at me funny. And I say, Well, what else are you feeling? What's what else is in there? And then they pause and they go, Well, I guess there's a little bit of hurt there. Good hurts like sadness. Sadness means you've lost something. Tell me more. What have you lost? Oh, geez, I never thought of it that way. What else are you feeling? And I keep probing. And emotions are seldom singular, yeah, they're stopped. And fear. Fears are seldom singular because what we fear is often, you know, six fears down the lane from the fear that's triggered us. Yeah. Right? You know, they're changing my role at work, right? Well, okay, well, what does that mean? Well, I might not know how to do it. Well, what does that mean? Well, you know, I'll have to go to a new department and meet new people. Well, what does that mean? Well, that people might not like me. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that my mother told me to be really careful of people so many years ago. And so now I really resist meeting new people because I want them to like me, but I don't know how to manage that. Right. And now all of a sudden, this fear has multiple components to it, and it's a number of different events that could happen that builds into the fear. You know, we did a podcast on sitting with your emotions, and I really believe that sitting with your emotions is not allowing them to be, but it's understanding what you're really upset about. And I believe that, you know, the short-term memory, the the conscious mind is a very limited thing, right? When we're being logical, it's a very useful, but the conscious mind is very limited. And so when the conscious mind is limited, it's really a great idea to have pen and paper in hand. And what I've found are the people who have learned how to think and write at the same time and keep track of their thoughts, even if it's just a word and a followed by a word, followed by a word, they're able to track their thinking. It also moves it into a different place in the brain, right? You know, there are, you know, theoretically five senses, maybe more. Each contributes to your perceptions, each can trigger a particular program inside you, using writing and tracking and recording all of the component parts of this emotional crisis you're going through. Break it down to all the pieces. Just keep asking yourself, is there anything else? Is there anything else? Is there anything more? Are there more emotions here? You know, asking yourself, you know, and I think one of the most, yeah, one of the most complex emotions is anger and resentment. It triggers a lot of different things, often making its way back to fear. All of this builds your own sense of competence in dealing with change, right? Your ability to sit with the emotions of change, to break it down into pieces. And then when it's down into pieces, you can get into specific situations. And then when you're into specific potential situations, you're actually able to come up with strategies. And this is the value of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is very limited, but it's very logical. It's very smart, much, much, you're much smarter than you think you are. And it gives you the chance to break it down and say, what is the problem here, really? And more importantly, what will I do to dodge the problem, to avoid the problem, to solve the problem, to engage the problem. Sometimes the answer is you gotta look somebody in the eye and you have to engage a hard conversation. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

Yeah. And you know, my my beef with the word sitting, just sit with your emotions, you know, is is most of us when we sit with our emotions, when we're left to our own devices, I suppose, we get sucked into it because we don't, we don't know what that next step is. So I remember in that podcast, we sort of explained, you know, start the questioning process. Start asking your emotion. What what do you represent? What message do you have for me? Just as we do in hypnosis sessions, we're always asking the body, asking the emotion, asking the mind, what message is there in this for me? But when we're told, just just sit with your emotions, just sit with it. Oftentimes it can be just overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01: 24:47

I think it's also good when you're sitting with the emotion to recognize how you're using your imagination, right? That all of these fears are coming from your ability to create, to create scenarios, to be able to create images, to be able to create problems. You know, I recognize that in myself. You know, I anticipate something wonderful happening, and then I immediately think of all the things that could go wrong. Like that's just a program. That's a program that I don't have to engage. That's the one when I say, well, you know, I'm not my thoughts, I'm the thinker. I can choose what I think, and I choose to think differently. Like all these things I say, I use. That's that's that's why I say them. And they do, they create shifts in in what we think and how we think. And so start with the idea of reframing that worrying is an act of imagination. Anticipating negative outcomes is an act of imagination. And although you have been trained to use your imagination, heck, I was a lawyer, right? I had to think about all the things that could go wrong, right? Somebody says, Oh, look at me, I just bought a house. And I have to think of all the potential legal issues and protect my client from them. I was getting paid to be a professional worrier, right? To be a professional problem anticipator, right? So my childhood anticipation of problems became a profession. And it I became really good at it. And today I struggle with it. And so being aware that worry is an act of imagination. It's not real. And the odds are, when you think of your life in truth, although you've had problems, right? Your life hasn't been one problem after another, unless you're interpreting it that way. Your life has been a series of events where there are lots of positive results from changes. Just imagine buying new clothes. Like, how many times have you bought new clothes? That's a change. That's a change. I am going to dress differently. I'm going to dress in new ways. I'm going to try something new. That's an act of imagination. That that I think that's part of the reason why people can become so addicted to shopping. It's such a positive act of imagination. Oh, I would look good in this. Oh, I really like this. I wonder if it'll fit me. These are all positive, you know, anticipation, imaginations. The difference using your imagination here is you're not resistant to the change. You're actually open to the change and you're excited about the change and you're engaging the change in a positive way. So that alone might be a good example for you to remind yourself that you can use your imagination in a positive way. You can positively anticipate change. There's going to be fear there. And I've got this thing in my book that I've been putting these stickies around my life to remind myself. It's a simple phrase. I acknowledge the fear and I act anyway. I acknowledge the fear and I act anyway. It's just a nice little phrase that I use a lot lately to remind myself that fear is a warning, not a wall, and change is okay. So think of the fear that arises that's trying to take care of you, it's trying to protect you when you're facing change. See that as resistance. Even when it's a change we want, even when it's a change we've been yearning for, even when we've been using our imagination, and this is part of what I find kind of fun and all that. Hillary laugh at me or laugh at herself, maybe, you know, for literally years we've been anticipating, looking at, wouldn't it be great to live out on the West Coast in this kind of place and this? Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. Wouldn't it be great? You know, we got introduced to PEI again, and wouldn't it be great to go to PEI and live? And we got all this positive anticipation. And then when we say, hey, let's put the house up for sale, right? It's like, oh my god, no, no, no, no, right. The imagination we were using to create the desire for the change is now being shifted into the imagination of all the things that could go wrong and all the reasons it won't work, and all the reasons it's gonna fail, and all the potential outcomes that could be horrific.

SPEAKER_00: 29:51

Not fitting in. Horrific. It's so funny how we just yeah. I mean, I I can't say I'm not a guru over here, definitely not. But yeah, I just take this feeling of, well, what if we get there and we don't fit in? Or what if they don't like us? Or what if wherever we go we don't have a community, or you know, what if what if I don't like the pickleball players out there? You know, what if they don't like me? What if I'm not good enough at playing pickleball? Anyway, all this stuff. And man.

SPEAKER_01: 30:28

So change, and we're still dealing with sort of internal changes, not necessarily changes imposed upon us. But I think the processes are really powerful. That idea of sitting with your emotions is really about understanding their depth and their breadth, understanding where they come from. I think that there's a lot of value in just seeing the way we think as a program that was meant to protect us, but is protecting us from our own happiness. I think that understanding each emotion for what it is and what it means is probably one of the most enlightening things you can do. Examining your emotions. And I'm actually working on that for the school right now. It's just come to me. Did a couple of recordings yesterday. We'll try to get some stuff up on the school in the next couple of days. Just understanding emotions, they can be the absolute worst thing because we will grab onto them and we will dwell on them and we will hold on to them, and an emotion will become a mood, and a mood will become an attitude, and an attitude will become a personality, and all these things will happen because of an emotion that we haven't processed and let go. And they can be these wonderful things because you know, emotions of love and joy and excitement, right? These are the the these are the spice in life, these are the the absolute epitome of living well, you know, having a happiness, having joy, having a sense of laughter and ease, right? These are all really worthwhile emotions. We seek them, we yearn for them, you know. We we watch cat videos to have them, right? So I think that emotions are really, really good, but they should be short term. And if they're not short term, it means you're not resolving them.

SPEAKER_00: 32:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:36

And if you're not resolving them, then you need to sit with them. You need to see what they're trying to tell you. I think pen and paper is a technique that helps a lot, break them down into their pieces because nothing is ever one thing. It's never one thing, it's never one emotion. And I do believe that when it comes to change, one of the hardest things to overcome is the sense of deserving, the sense of worthiness.

SPEAKER_00: 33:04

Like, do I deserve this change? Is there worthy of this change?

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

Do I deserve excitement in my life? Do I deserve a shift in a change? Yeah, I'll offer this. I know we're running out of time. I'll offer this as a refrain. No, when you watch nature, when you watch the world around you, it is in constant change. There is nothing in this world that isn't constantly changing. The changes might be so subtle that you don't see them, but when you think about it, you know, that's that's changing. Nature is constantly shifting and adjusting. Everything is in constant movement. Everything. So why not you too? Why not me? Why can't I be a process instead of a thing? Why can't I see my life as a hundred years of adventure rather than clinging and holding and trying to resist? We come by it naturally, but our imagination is an incredible tool and it's underutilized.

SPEAKER_00: 34:14

Well, and I think if we don't utilize it with intention, it will it will utilize us, right? It will it will just run off in so many directions. It's like that that 10-day silent retreat that I went on. It's like I remember you know, we had to focus on our nose hairs or something for hours, not really, just ingest, but we had to focus on just specific parts of our body just to take our mind away from everything else, just to become really focused. And I remember focusing and suddenly recognizing like, oh my god, my my my thoughts are creating insanity, crazy things, right? And I thought, how long is this, how long has this been going on for? Right? When did this start in that meditation? You know, and I I sort of I think I chalked it up to about 20 minutes of just my thoughts had run off. And here I'm thinking, I'm thinking I'm focusing, but I just was not. And I thought, who's in control here? Who's who's actually running this mind? The imagination. And so in noticing that we can get a better grasp on using the imagination for good.

SPEAKER_01: 35:44

Any thoughts or questions in the chat?

SPEAKER_00: 35:46

No, no, not yet. Does anyone have any questions before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01: 35:51

Comments, thoughts?

SPEAKER_00: 35:53

Comments, thoughts, what you'd name the podcast? Nothing yet. We've got in the chat. So excited for you both. Thank you. We're excited. It's like one day terror, one day excitement, one day terror. For me at least. No other questions or anything. Well, thank you everyone for hanging out today. We're gonna get to work here. In the chat says Using your imagination for good change as a podcast title. Thank you. And also in the chat helps me really get excited about moving forward myself. Beautiful. And have a great day. Thank you so much, everyone. This has been great. And oh I know everyone here is in the school. And if you want to it should be later today, uh we'll have a new classroom in the school called Emotion. Emotions, emotion, and and there'll be content in there to get started. Lots of stuff going to be in there over the next little while. But you can check that out. All right. Thank you again. Have a good day, everybody.