Les Talks Fear To Clarity: Using Your Mind To Choose What You Want

We explore how fear hijacks imagination and how to redirect that same power toward clarity, safety and action. We move from “I am” to “there is,” test catastrophic thoughts, and use repetition, writing and daydreaming to build better habits.

• naming fear as a thought habit
• shifting from I am to there is
• testing likelihood and letting go of defense
• asking what do I want instead
• turning workplace fear into alignment
• using repetition and daydreaming as tools
• supporting the body while training the mind
• choosing help or being heard before fixing
• creating micro-practices to pivot attention

Chapters

• 0:07 Cloudy Morning, Setting The Mood
• 0:33 Naming Fear And Thought Habits
• 3:43 Imagination As Catastrophe Engine
• 5:43 Shifting From I Am To There Is
• 9:12 Testing Likelihoods And Letting Go
• 11:34 What Do I Want Instead
• 15:05 A Workplace Fear Turned Alliance
• 18:24 Sleeplessness, Biology, And Mind
• 21:15 Experiments, Hypnosis, And Repetition
• 24:33 Daydreaming As A Tool
• 27:05 Resistance, Ranting, And Help
• 31:41 Self-Led Shifts And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

We are on the line.

SPEAKER_02: 0:09

Sun's coming up on a cloudy day.

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

Yep. Thanks got our bone. Chomping, chomping away. It's pretty overcast today, so I think that's why it feels feels a little darker than normal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 0:25

Ready for the days to get long.

SPEAKER_00: 0:27

I am absolutely ready for the days to get long. Come on, long days.

SPEAKER_02: 0:33

Yeah, we've been talking about choice. And we've been talking about sort of moving towards big ideas, moving towards changes. And every once in a while, as we charge ahead to changes, little bits of doubt, fear pop up that turn into big bouts of doubt and fear, which start to become emotionally burdensome and heavy. And so it brings me to the fundamental reason that we're here, which is how to use your mind in a way that serves you instead of the habitual way we use it, which tends to be to embrace ideas of fear. We have this predisposition of fear, this well-trained and well-practiced ability to take the smallest thing and catastrophize it. We are really able to take our slightest doubt and turn it into impossibilities. We are really well trained to find the problems with everything. And we're really good at that. And the mind, because it's a habitual thing, will do it on its own. And yeah, that's where I find myself from time to time, like this morning, where it's really easy to see the problem, and it's really hard to remember the goal or the desire that leads us to move forward. There's a real natural ability when we start to get afraid to imagine how far our fears can go. And I think it's important to remember that that is imagination. That is my imagination. That is me using my imagination and thinking about just how bad things might get.

SPEAKER_00: 2:50

And it's interesting too because I'm just making this up. I think it's real. I think it's true. But things that we imagine, our body and mind tends to go, oh, that that m because I thought it, it must be something that's going to happen. Right. It's and so you get yourself all wrapped up, but in this thing that that you subconsciously think is going to happen.

SPEAKER_02: 3:26

I think there's a subconscious awareness of our ability to think into creation.

SPEAKER_01: 3:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:33

I think we are aware that thoughts are habits, thoughts are patterns, thoughts that are repeated start to become embedded, they start to become part of how we function. And we just have an internal awareness that it is that frequency of thought, that vibration of thought, that pattern of thought that has the ability to drag us into the things that we fear. And then we begin to fear ourselves and our own ability to think. You know, when when you're feeling fear and someone challenges it, it's amazing how we immediately go to explaining our fear. We go to the logical and rational sequence of thoughts that make it really understandable to others why we would be afraid. You know, if if you start your phrase with you don't understand, and then you start to explain your fear, it's important to see what that is. It's another thought habit, and it is the actual defending of the fear, it's the claiming of the fear. I think we are all, I know I am, really good at being logical and explaining why our fear, our anticipation of something negative makes sense. This is no, no, I'm not being irrational here. I'm being very rational. And I think it's a discovery that rationality isn't always helpful. So I think, you know, I think about how do I best address my fears, my anxieties as they come up. And I think the first thing I need to do is see the ways in which I embrace them, see the ways in which I strengthen them, see the ways in which I claim them. So, first one, I was just doing a meditation for this on school. Make a shift from I am to there is. So I've been sitting here, having my notebook in front of me, up early, trying to get my thought patterns well established, being positive enough and helpful, and realizing that you know, I was struggling with I am. I am anxious, I am concerned. You know, these are nice words for afraid. That's a nice way to say, I am afraid. I think it's really good to be honest with ourselves about our emotions, but not cling them. I am not my emotions. I am the one who is feeling that emotion in response to something that is going on. So the emotion being a very transient thing, it comes and it goes. I want it to be transient. I want it to come, I want to learn what I can from it. Oh, I guess I I have concern about this. Oh, I guess there's there's things I can do about that. We can take the moment and instead of saying, I am afraid, uh, just observe there is fear. Now that seems really weird, but that's because it flies in the face of a mental habit of saying, I am afraid. The mental habit is claiming it. The mental habit that you've established well, that I've established well, that we establish really well as human beings in this world, is to say, I am this or I am that. And we've been doing that since we were little kids. And so it's going to take a while to break that habit. It's going to take a while to replace that habit, but with conscious effort, you can begin to find yourself saying, there is fear. There is fear in me. And I allow myself to examine it. I think that's important. I think it's important that when our emotions come, we acknowledge them. And when we acknowledge them, we take a look at them. What is it that is causing this fear? What is it that's that is pushing me towards this fear? And then, you know, what am I actually afraid of? What's the outcome that causes this fear to arise in me? And often you can start with, you know, just a rational examination of that, because most of us, certainly me, what I'm afraid of is very unlikely to ever happen. You know, we can we can say I'm afraid that I'm going to end up destitute living on the street. And that's just so unlikely to happen. In fact, the fact that you're having fear about that means that your mind is preparing to keep that from happening. I am going to lose my job. I remember one day I woke up and I the previous day I had spoken out against my boss. And my boss was uh very unhappy with me. And I woke up that day with the fear that I am going to lose my job. And that fear was there, but it wasn't even really possible. I mean, uh, I I had things to actually be concerned about. You know, I was now going to find myself on a long journey of being at odds with the person who had a lot of control over my work life, but my fear was unrealistic. My anticipated fear was unrealistic. It's not likely to happen. And just knowing that, you know, calms us down. Just being aware that the thing that we fear the most is unlikely to happen. And that's okay. Again, fear is a well-practiced thought pattern. So, you know, shift from I am to there is, shift to what is this fear trying to tell me? What is the message of this fear? Examine the real likelihood of what's often our our own catastrophic thinking, which isn't really very likely, and step back from the whole thing as a lesson. Well, what am I here to learn? Now, I believe that that's the process to start with, because it takes a bit of the energy out of the fear. And I think that opposing the fear is not helpful. So if we start to say, oh, that's not real, that's not true, that can't happen, our internal self says, oh yes, it can. And then we find ourselves in an internal argument that's going to have no conclusion. It's can this happen? Can't this happen? Might this happen? Might this not happen? And then we start to think about the conditions under which it will happen. And then we start to think about the conditions under which we would find ourselves in that end position of whatever it is that we consider dire and dear. And so I step back, and I and as the as the thinker here, I want to say, you know, I am not my thoughts. I am the thinker. These thoughts are habits, these thoughts arise, these thoughts have their reasons, and I don't want to examine the reasons. I don't want to spend time there. Now, this still doesn't feel like a solution, does it? No. It still feels like we are in the fear. And these are all useful things to do with your mind that help to deal with fear. But what is the what is the actual answer to this? Well, if you have the awareness that you are your thoughts, if you can get there, if you can get to the place where you say, I can choose what I think, then the actual answer to the fear is what do I want instead? What do I want instead of this fear? You know, it's often a physical event, a physical happening outside us that triggers that fear. Start there. What do I want instead? What do I want physically? What do I want? Do I want, you know, a secure job, a safe place to work, a place to work that builds me up using that example. Go to the thing that you want instead of the thing that you're afraid of. What do I want? What do I want instead of this? And then go deeper. And what are the feelings? What are the emotions that I would have if I had what I wanted? Because that's really what you want. What you really want inside you is to shift from an emotion of fear to some different emotion, which is usually the emotion of security and safety. It's usually the emotion of joy and engagement. But the circumstances are the things that you want. The events, new events, different events are the things that you want because they generate those emotions inside you. So to take the time today to think about something that causes you fear, that causes you anxiety, that grabs your mind away from what you might prefer to be using your mind for. And instead of defending it, instead of reinforcing it, instead of spending time owning it with I am, asking yourself, what am I really afraid of? And what do I want instead? And then allowing your mind to be creative in the what do I want instead. Now that that's hard because the fear's heavy and it's got a hold of you, and and it's trying to keep you safe. But most of all of that is habit. Most of all of that is the idea that if I'm aware of what I fear, I can prevent it. And the best way to prevent it, though, is to go after what you want instead. The best way for me, as I turned out, you know, it was a long time ago, but having gone through the, oh my God, I'm going to lose my job, and then having the meeting with the boss and the union and everybody there, HR there, calling me out. It was, how do I turn this around? If what I want is to be on good terms with my boss and doing good things at work, how do I turn that around? And luckily, at that wonderfully intense meeting, I was able to articulate that. I was able to recognize that. I was able to say, wait, I'm not here to make your life difficult or cause problems. I'm here because I care very much about this place. I care very much about the work I do. I care very much about the direction we're headed. And I want to, and I think I can contribute to that. And that began the process of accomplishing something that I, you know, it's the most subtle thing, but I take real, real joy in knowing that somehow I was able to pull it off. In the end, I became good friends with that boss. Uh, it took years. But in the end, by sticking to what I wanted, sticking to the things that mattered to me, and making the contributions that I could, I was able to see how my desires started to really reflect the desires of my boss. That we were really on the same page trying to accomplish the same things. He had a different role to play. And as we embraced those things we had in common and ignored the differences, we became allies and we became friends on a, at least on a work basis. He learned to trust me and I learned to trust him. So there was a day that I remember where I woke up and fear had the better of me. It had me from head to toe. I was feeling nauseous and confused and lost. So I'm babbling here a lot because I'm trying to work with myself while I explain to you, you know, how to deal with fear. And then the magic starts, the good stuff really starts with what do I want? So as we were sitting here getting ready to do this podcast, I started making a list of what do I want to see how that affected my fears and my anxieties. And between that and talking all this out, I'm feeling a lot better.

SPEAKER_00: 17:12

Sounds good. Yeah. Not as bad as yesterday, but yeah, today's a little better. And I think this fear talk came around because the last three nights I've had I've regressed back to not sleeping well. And it and it terrified me. And I don't want to get too emotional about it, but um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 17:48

Fear can be overwhelming. And now we, you know, in a very real sense, I mean, yeah, I can I like you hear me say it almost every day. You know, we're just a couple of human beings who have had the blessing of learning that the way you use your mind is going to affect the way you live, it's going to affect the joy you have in life, it's going to affect what you can accomplish and what you do accomplish when it comes time to do the things you dream of. And we, like every other human being walking the planet, are going to have our moments where we're filled with fear that what we, you know, it can be as simple as what we want isn't going to happen, or we're not safe anymore, or there's too many changes, and there's too much going on. And, you know, it's really hard to live in the world today when when, you know, politically and economically, the world really feels like it's in chaos. The world really feels unsafe. The people that we normally count on as leaders and yeah, the ones that will lead a system that takes care of us and protects us, when they become unpredictable and they become unreliable, it causes great fear in us subconsciously. And I think it's important to understand that that's where fear starts. It's a subconscious reaction to conditions. It is a well-homed response to uncertainty. And that uncertainty is hard for us to hold. It's one of those things the mind, the brain, it's one of those things the brain doesn't like. The brain reacts to that. Brain chemistry, brain patterns shift dramatically. The sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and now our body doesn't feel like our own, and we feel really off base. So if you if this is stuff you're experiencing, this is stuff some of us experience often. If this is what you're experiencing, then it's about knowing that I think, first of all, the This is a habit. It's a habit meant to protect you, but it's not serving you anymore. And so, what other habits can we engage? What new habits can we create? What new ways of thinking can we implement? And this is amazing stuff, right? Like I consider this experiments with my mind, right? And an experiment needs to be committed to. An experiment requires specific conditions, and it requires a commitment to following through with the experiment. And especially when it comes to experiments with my mind, right? These are new. These are me trying to take on some idea that somebody suggested. And everything within me that is subconscious, and everything within me that is that physical sympathetic nervous system is resisting in. So you got to stay committed to it. You got to stay with it. And the great thing about hypnosis is the lowest level, most significant level of hypnosis is repetition. And when we notice that we are repeating ideas that aren't serving us, we can notice that we're hypnotizing ourselves into fear, into anxiety. And knowing that that's the way your brain and your mind works, you can embrace the idea that repetition, different form of repetition, will have an impact. So instead of fighting with your fear and telling yourself you shouldn't be afraid or you've got nothing to be afraid of, shift the discussion, shift it quickly to what do I want instead? What do I want to be feeling right now? What emotional state do I want to be in? What physical state do I want to be in? And start pushing that thought pattern, start creating that thought habit. And for me, it always involves a pen and a piece of paper. For me, the best way for me to get a hold of my thoughts and my emotions is to sit down with a pen and a piece of paper. But you can use just about anything you want, right? You can use a fidget spinner, you can use a tarot deck. For many of us, what we've come to use is our phone, right? We'll pick up our phone and we'll start scrolling. I think that's why people call it doom scrolling. I think they call it that, because they started from a state of unhappiness. They started from a state often of fear. So when we're trying to make choices, when we're trying to act deliberately with our lives, when we're trying to push ourselves to a new direction and fears come up, it's important to develop new thought habits that are going to serve you. So before we started this podcast, I filled two pages in my notebook of I Wants, reminders of what I have, you know, what I what I want. Now, when you get to that place where you can identify what it is you want physically, what it is you want emotionally, then stay there for a while and try to generate that emotional state within you. Stay there for a while and imagine what if you had created the physical state. Imagine it. Use your imagination because it is your imagination that you're using to create the catastrophic thinking. It is your ability to create in your mind the possibilities. It's the thing that makes you so incredibly different than many of the other beings on the planet. It's the thing that makes you a higher being, is that you have an imagination, you have an ability to think of things that you would prefer. You have the ability to spend time creating them in your mind. And as much as you might have been raised thinking daydreaming is bad, heck no. Daydreaming is a great survival technique. Daydreaming is a fantastic emotional adjustment technique. Daydreaming is a powerful way to shift yourself. And you know, all you have to do is go back to the beginning of this podcast and listen to the difference in my voice. And you'll see what this exercise can create. Because I've been coaching myself through that, through the whole of this podcast. What do I want? What do I want instead? How do I want to feel? What's the emotional state I want? Confidence? What does that feel like? Safety? What does that feel like? Security? What does that feel like? Free? What does that feel like? Calm. What does that feel like? Easy. What does that feel like? Opportunity. What does that feel like? Freedom. What does that feel like? Excitement? What does that feel like? Joy? What does that feel like? What are the conditions I'd like to have to create joy? What are the things that would shift for me to feel joy? What are the thought patterns I would let go of to create a thought pattern of joy? Hope. What does that feel like? Intention, what does that feel like? Confidence. What does that feel like? Peace. What does that feel like? And that's just hypnosis. That's having an internal state of focus, passing new ideas through your mind, reframing the way you look at things. My emotions come and my emotions go, and my emotions bring messages for me, but I release my emotions. When necessary, I act on my emotions, and I act in response to the questions my emotions bring to me. Am I safe? Am I being treated fairly? Have I lost something? What's not going well? And in understanding the answer to those questions, I can engage my incredible abilities, my faculties, my mind, my body, my skills and abilities. And I can move in response to feeling the other way, feeling confident, feeling safe, feeling secure, feeling clear, feeling intentional, feeling joy. And now you're finding yourself spiraling upwards instead of downward. And you can see how you are not those emotions. And I am is not the appropriate way to say it. Because those emotions come and go, and you can feel free of them. You can feel other things. You can use your imagination to create for yourself a feeling of peace and joy. That's how powerful your mind is. And it's just a matter of learning how to use it instead of letting it use you. Anyway, I hope that was somewhat helpful. Help me.

SPEAKER_00: 27:18

Yep. It it helped me along the way. I I listened to uh what you're saying, and I of course there's those little voices in my mind that are like, yeah, well, you don't understand. This is so different. Like this is this is what I'm feeling. And the mine is external and uh I can't get away from it. And you know, like uh all the resistances that can come up against that. And uh yeah, I think I think that that's normal to have resistance.

SPEAKER_02: 27:49

Oh, it's so normal. There's nothing wrong with you if that comes up. Then the question is, what do you want to do instead? Instead of defending and explaining why you should or could feel this way, right? Fighting with it is not doing you any good.

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:06

And so shift, take a left turn and say, Well, what do I want?

SPEAKER_00: 28:11

Yeah, I think for me, you know, I'm feeling like I can talk about it for a minute here. Like for me, it it it feels I have to keep remembering that this has happened before. I've had little bouts of this before, and it's temporary, you know. Just keep saying to myself, it's temporary, this is temporary, and and yeah, shifting into like what do I want? What kind of thought patterns do I want? What am I, what is my what is my ability to sleep reacting to right now? You know, what's going on in my life? And and noticing what that is, and then maybe working on that a little bit. It's hard when it hits because it feels like you're back at square one and that's terrifying because you're thinking, is this really the rest of my life? And so that just takes you down into a hole of madness. And but it is, you know, there's so many long bouts without it that that to start to think, well, this is it, this is the rest of my life, I'm done. Uh, you know, all this all the stuff that I end up thinking, the fear, the fear of that comes raging back. And I mean, it doesn't help that your mind is sort of what would you say, subdued with with medication, you know? Yeah, it just makes it just too much. It it makes you feel like helpless, you know? And so the fear, yeah, the fear I listen to you and I there's that pushback. Well, this is different, this is different kind of fear because my body is doing this to me, like I'm not, you know. So how do I get around that? But it is, I I I know from the past that it is largely my mind. It's taking care of my body and eating properly. I haven't really been eating properly. And I think, you know, that I do think there's a there's a component of eating properly that goes along with this. But it does all start in the mind. And I think it's important for me as I'm listening to you to just relax into that idea that it's it's with the mind.

SPEAKER_02: 30:32

Yeah. I think dwelling too much on the fear is I think the dangerous part, right? Like you do, you do defend it. I don't mean you, I mean we, I mean everybody. One does defend their fear, especially especially when somebody wants to help. It's one of the incredible things. We go for help, and then it turns into a debate about whether or not this is justified. And I found working with clients that that's just not the way to go. Like being in any way oppositional to what they're going through causes, in fact, them to dig in, causes them to justify, causes them to explain over and over and over. And if you would just understand what I'm telling you, then you would feel the same way. And that just builds the fear, that just builds the negative emotion, right? And it's it's hard not to do that when somebody's coming forward saying, all right, snap out of it. Somebody says, Oh, don't well, don't think that way. Your automatic reaction is to say, no, I'm totally justified to think this way. And let me explain to you why I'm justified, which is a thought pattern of reinforcing itself. And so, yeah, it's that, no, I'm gonna just take a left turn here. I'm just gonna take a left turn here. I'm not gonna go in the direction I was going, and I'm not gonna try to turn around and go the opposite direction. Yeah, what I'm gonna do is just take a left turn here. And my left turn here is, you know, what do I want? What do I want to feel?

SPEAKER_00: 32:09

I heard something interesting in class last night. Someone said that herself and her husband and her friend group. I know I'm gonna, I'm not gonna say it exactly the way she did, but she said that when they're going through things uh and and they come to each other for to talk about it, the other one will automatically ask, is this something you want help with? Or is this something you just want to rant about? You just want to get off a chest. And so that sort of sets the stage for the response and and how the uh how how the other one feels, you know, how the the person going through it feels. And sometimes we just want to rant about it. Many times we just want to rant about it because we want to feel heard. We don't want solutions right off the bat. But sometimes when we rant about it moments later, it's like, well, maybe I want help with this.

SPEAKER_02: 33:08

You know, I think often it isn't even that they want help with it, it's they just they just can't seem to get off the carousel. Yeah, they just can't seem to stop thinking about it. And they think that, well, if I talk about it, then at least I'll get it off my chest. I'm not sure that that's a mental technique that works well, but I think we can all know for ourselves, and this is where the shift has to happen. It isn't somebody telling you, it isn't somebody saying you need to do this. It is looking inside yourself and recognizing how you can embrace an emotion, you can explain that emotion to yourself, and then you can hang on to it. And by doing that, you're not helping yourself, you're not doing things that help yourself. And I think that's that's the magic I'm trying to drive towards is that if we can see what we are doing in our own mind and recognize its unhelpfulness, and then have a repertoire of other techniques we can turn to that will help us, that will be helpful in moving us in a different direction. That's where the magic is. And nobody can do it for you, and nobody, yeah, absolutely, nobody should do it for you. It's not gonna work. But we can sit here and using our own, our own life sometimes, explain how I can explain how I woke up this morning in a kind of a difficult place and spent most of the last few hours working my way through it. And part of that was talking with you guys, and that forces me to think about the things I know, and that forces me to use those things for myself, and that gets me and my mood up and my energy up and my hopefulness up and my resolve up and my focus better and things like that. So these are just ways of thinking that can help us move out of old ways of thinking that aren't helpful, and I just want to help.

SPEAKER_00: 35:21

Well, thanks for joining us today. I know I didn't talk a lot, but that's just how it goes sometimes. All right, so have a wonderful day, and hopefully today was helpful in some way, shape, or form. And we will see you later.