Here’s the thing about fear, you can recognize you have it and work to release it, which is the goal of this month’s session, or you can keep it and try to hide from it. Let’s harness fear and understand how it functions so we can create success and move our life forward in the way we choose.
Video Transcript:
Dr. A: Well, welcome, everybody. We’ll get started in about 1 min. Just give an opportunity for everybody to come on and get settled in and we’re going to have a great session today. I think you guys are, hopefully, going to really like what we’re going to talk about. I mean, you’re not gonna really like the subject, but you’re gonna really like your increased understanding of it.
You know, fear is a huge thing in most of our lives and it’s not real. It’s actually perceived. And so we’re gonna dissect it, talk about it, get lots of great questions on it, and hopefully, we’ll leave here at the end of the forum with a better understanding of how to move forward and not allow it to in any way compromise our lives.
So, everybody put in the chat if you’re excited about today. Put a one if you are. Two, if you’re not, and then the third is, if you’re not, then why are you here? Because you know, you might be sitting here today, and I may be touching some of your stored trauma, some of your thorns in your side, so to speak, and hopefully, rather than become defensive, you’ll sense a sense of, I’m curious. I’m open, I’m curious. I wanna learn. Why do these things bother me? Why is it affecting my life? Why is it keeping me from moving forward the way we want? So with that, let’s go ahead and get started.
Today’s topic is: Harnessing Fear: No Longer Hiding from it. Okay, and that’s really the key part. Fear is in all our lives, and it’s a thing. It’s a feeling, and why we have it? Well, we’re gonna talk about it in detail. So let’s start off by basically just going over— if your first-time viewers, thank you for coming, this is designed for anybody that’s interested in learning more about themselves, going to the mental gym, and taking control of their own health, their own life. And so the forum is basically a place where we can exchange ideas and views, and one of the key parts, that as I go through this first part of the presentation is, take some notes, things that you’re not sure of, things that touch you, things that you’re curious about, things that you may disagree with. All those things are what a forum is all about.
So what I want to do is I really want to focus on the expiration of self today, because that is your mental health and mental health— as you know, if you look at statistically in the world today, emotional mismanagement is the leading cause of death. It literally affects so many people’s lives. People are suffering. They’re struggling inside. And most people, if you look at the quality of life and where they are currently in the world, they’re not doing well. So this is a really important topic. I’ve been studying health for over 20 years, and wellbeing health for over 20 years, and wellbeing, and this key area that we’re going to talk about today in the forum, in consciousness, in my opinion, is one of the most important things to really start to understand, and then start to practice, how to move beyond it, and then to become it, where you have the emotional stability, agility, and stamina, so that no matter what happens in the world, we’re gonna talk about that, you can manage it.
So if we think about it— just think about this for a minute: the expiration of self. You, not your personal mind, but you as a conscious individual, determines the quality of your life and determines the success you’ll have, and whether it’s in business or in relationships. So critical.
So if you’re thriving, you’ll experience a crystal clear vision, feel empowered to create the life you intend and see life as full of opportunities. You’ll see the glass as, you know, people say the glass is half empty or half full. You’ll work enthusiastically towards your goals and dreams, doing what you love and feeling grateful for your life and yourself. That’s what I want for you. I want you to start to understand that all that is possible and it is not that difficult. It just requires studying it, practicing it and becoming it. So with that. Many people on the other hand, if your mental health is being compromised, you may feel knocked down by life’s challenges. Lack of clarity and focus, feel scattered and uninspired and may be more volatile in your emotions. Where things just trigger you, you know, just small things that look back to the next thing you day and say, “Why did that trigger me?”
So we wanna really explore this. And it’s really what I’ve been talking about all along. It’s, how do we create internal stability and external equilibrium? Where we’re able to, whatever life throws at us, we’re able to respond in a way where we address the issues, if there are issues, if they’re real. We’re able to discard perceived issues and realize they’re not important and we’re able to have high relational health with the people around us.
This is critical for success in our lives, in our businesses and our communities, growing and raising our kids. All these things are so critical. And true freedom only comes when you decide you do not want to suffer anymore. So that’s really the question for everybody on the line today. Are you deciding that you don’t want to suffer anymore? And what I mean by suffering, I’m not talking about pain when you touch a stove. I’m talking about inside. The struggling, the mental, the cognitive emotive loops, where basically we think and then we get stressed out, and we lay down on our pillow at night, and we can’t sleep well or we have difficulties when certain people come into the room, or some people call us, or certain things happen in life, or certain world events that disturb us so much we can’t function at the high level I talked about earlier. So you have to make that decision.
So, I ask you today to really get the most out of this talk, is make that decision. Make the decision that it really matters and you don’t want to suffer anymore. You definitely need to make that as a decision, and the decision basically means to cut off. It means to cut off any other opportunity, other than that you do not want to suffer. You either do, or you don’t. Decide you want to enjoy your life and remove fear, inner pain and stress as key modulators that affect you and turn you sideways, and ruin your day, and you have this internal suffering.
So I showed the slide before but it’s so important to know where your locus of control is and this is a psychological term that’s used whether, bottom line is, I have control. The power is within me. I’m responsible, and we talk a lot about radical responsibility because being responsible for whatever happens makes the difference. When you think someone else is responsible, someone outside you, someone external, then you give away the power and when that happens you no longer have control and then you become like a chip, a piece of wood on a tumultuous sea, you get tossed around and you’re going to have lots of internal suffering. So, that’s the first part to realize.
The outside world will never change slower than right now. So I just want to make that reality so clear to everybody. I think we realize it, but technology is ramping up, our human adaptability is not kept up, psychologically that’s why emotional mismanagement and why mental health are such key issues because when we’re in fear, we can’t adapt. We don’t want the world to change, and we don’t adapt well to the world when we’re in fear because we’re in a fear state, we try to keep everything the same and that creates a massive internal struggle. So understand the world is going to continue to change. And what results do we get by focusing on trying to change the outside world? Or not changing inside and evolving our perceptions? Well, what you’ll see is most people, 95% of people stay the same, and as they stay the same, and as change occurs more, they’re going to have more and more internal suffering because the world’s going to change. It’s not going to be the way they want it, or their preferences, or the way they think it should be. Few are ready to move. When you’re basically trying to focus on changing the outside world, it does not allow you to make that decision and you are going to continue to suffer. So it becomes difficult to become the Dominant Force in your life.
I’ve been saying this for two decades. Becoming the Dominant Force in your life starts with personal responsibility and it moves out from there. We’ll talk about how fear interacts with that. So, how do we move forward? Most aren’t going to move forward, they’re going to stay right where they are and they’re actually going to be sliding backwards and having more mental health issues and that’s why, you know, that’s unfortunate, but opioid overdose and mental health issues are now the leading cause of death in the country. Even more than obesity, which I didn’t see coming 20 years ago, but now I’ve shifted my focus. Where this is the work I’m doing because this is the work that’s the most important for us to help ourselves, our families, our community, and help the world understand there is a better way, and that is basically making the decision, I’m going to move. I’m going to work on it. I’m going to become the Dominant Force in my life.
So, you know, I’ve showed this slide before but, awareness is putting on your lab jacket. You really need to put on your lab jacket, put your goggles on, and start looking at the consciousness inside your world. The world inside of you is the world we have full control over. The outside world we have very little control over. The inside world we have complete control over. And that’s what we’re talking about today. Our thoughts and our emotions, they are not us. They are things that are happening that we’re aware of, but they don’t define us, and they are not us unless we allow them to be us. Your psyche is your personal mind. It’s called many different things, it’s your ego, and it’s basically from your experiences from life. You found you want the world a certain way, you found preferences. Things you want, things you don’t want, and you put your psyche in charge. We’ll talk more about this a little bit, about making sure we keep everything right. It is the non-physical world inside of you. It is the part that causes all of your suffering. It’s what blocks your energy. It’s what makes you be happy one moment, and something can happen and trigger it and totally take away all your fun, make you weak inside, and feel just dysfunctional.
[00:09:54] We’ve all had that happen and it’s totally preventable if we learn how to manage our psyche, and what our psyche’s role is, and what it’s not. So think of your psyche, or your personal mind, the way you think the world should be, the preferences you have, and basically, it’s our ego. Fear is a thing. It’s a feeling and it’s caused by your blockages. We have things inside of us that we stored that we didn’t fully process since we’ve been little kids, and all that stuff is inside of there, and when it gets touched, it creates feelings. It creates feelings that try to come up and we try to push them down and it creates that dysfunction. Now here’s the thing about fear, you can recognize you have it and work to release it, which is the goal today, to set you up, and hopefully, we’ll get some great questions on that. Or you can keep it and try to hide from it. You can’t hide from it and that’s why I said stop trying to hide from your fear. Let’s harness it and understand how it functions, what it’s doing, and how we can actually take its power off of us and put us in control with, as I always talk about, this incredible brain we have that no other species has. Our prefrontal cortex, which allows us to decide, create success, and move our life forward in the way we choose.
We choose to decide how we want our future to be. We could have a desired future, based on what we want. Or we can have our default future, which is based on all of your personal mind stuff. All the feelings you have inside. All the stored trauma which guides you to tippy-toe through life making sure these things don’t happen, so you don’t get put back in fear. When we do that we don’t adapt well to change. We don’t face change. We don’t do the things that are necessary to change and we get caught in our way, and we become paralyzed. We become anxious and paralyzed. So basically, our goal is to recognize you have it and to work through it and release it.
An attempt to protect yourself makes it worse. When you try to avoid doing these things, when you try to avoid feeling these feelings, what it does is it makes it worse. Notice— make sure certain things happen. This is what your personal mind tries to do, your psyche, makes sure certain things happen, and keeps certain things from happening. It’s an endless loop of thoughts and feelings to avoid disturbance inside. We don’t want to feel things inside so we suppress them or we try to change the outside world. Hopefully, this is clear to you, but if you just observe and know, it’s okay to feel these inner disturbances. We’re human beings. We’re going to feel things. We’re going to feel threats, but rather— it’s just like when you’re going down the road if you go by a whole bunch of stripes, right? On the road, of the dividers in a second where you’re the passing and then the solid lines, you don’t keep those inside. You can’t remember if you rode your car today, you don’t remember those, but if you have a disturbance that you put down and someone today touches that stored trauma, that thorn, bottom line is, it ignites you and you focus on it.
Our consciousness focuses on whatever distracts it the most. If you bang your toe, your full focus goes to that toe, and it hurts, and you feel that. Same thing with our stored trauma, see someone can say something to one person and it’s like water on the duck’s back, they don’t even notice it. The other person you may say tippy-toe, and just say something and it triggers, and all of a sudden they are fully out of control, down the rabbit hole, and fully basically, dysfunctional. And what we want to do is start with the small stuff, we’re going to talk about that in a minute, but realize it’s not you. It’s your psyche, the stored trauma, everything changes when you let it go and just observe it and no longer try to resist it.
So stop fighting with life. Live it, by removing your blockages. And we’ll talk a moment about that. So blockages, like I mentioned, the thorn in your side, remove them. You know, rather than sit there and keep focusing on them, allow them to be removed. So get these things out and don’t put any more in. So the two parts are when you notice something that’s bothering you, process it. Feel it. That keeps you from having more thorns down inside, more coiled springs that are stored trauma. You allow it to release right there. You allow it to feel the feeling. If a snake goes by, you get scared for that moment, it’s a defence mechanism. Look at the snake. Fully absorb it, and say, “Wow, well I’m glad my body worked well. Thank you,” and then forget about it, because now it’s done its job. Don’t sit and think, Oh my God I’m scared of snakes now, and then it becomes built into you and then every time you see a rope, you’re now scared of it. That’s burying it inside. You want to experience those things.
Thankfully— just like in your car, we have airbags and things now, but you know, you’ve had it happen; you’ve been close to getting in an accident and you feel the adrenaline going through you. That’s good. That’s how the body’s decided, that’s where the limbic part of the brain works, it creates emotions which are instant motion, energy, that allows you to slam on the brakes. I mean now our cars are doing that for us, pretty soon we won’t have any real threats, it’ll all be perceived threats, but for right now basically, let it go. Let it flow out. Don’t put any more in and than the ones you have— understand that people and situations stimulate growth. They’re there to help you. If you have a person that when you get around them, they basically drive you crazy, use that for growth. Don’t get mad at them. Don’t tell them off. Don’t try to change the way they are, basically use it and say, “Okay, this is triggering me. Let me put my lab jacket on and see,” and realize that if you have the locus of control inside of you, nobody can upset you, except for yourself. So, so, critical to remember this. And once the blockage does get stimulated, let it flow. Let it come up and flow out of you. Don’t try to repress it and say, “Oh, I’m going to be stronger.” No. You need to let it go. You need to let it flow through.
[00:15:45] So, I have to tell you before we go into the Q&A, you have assigned your psyche a responsibility that is impossible. You’ve assigned your personal mind to create reality and expectation that it will make everyone like you, and make my life just as I want it, and everything will happen in my life the way I want it to. That’s what our psyche does. That’s what our ego does, and it’s impossible. So what I would love you to do right now, or sometimes when you have a moment by yourself today, write yourself a letter and thank your psyche for trying to make your life perfect and protect you. It’s trying to do a job that’s impossible for it to do and then fire it. Become fully present and take control of your healthy life. So hopefully that was helpful. Let’s come out now and we’ll get to the questions.
Rachel: All right. First up we have Jessica. Can you come on camera? There you are.
Dr. A: Hi, Jessica. How are you?
Jessica: I’m doing awesome, Dr. A. How are you?
Dr. A: I’m great, thank you.
Jessica: Good. Thank you for coming and pouring into us today. I have to admit, I’ve been trying to ask this question for three months and I’m so excited today is the day! So my question for you is, in the process of setting goals, whether it’s in a client journey or a coaching journey, it often comes with an energy of, I’m not doing enough, I’m not far enough ahead, like that scarcity, not-enoughness, fear energy, can come in and that’s very, very common in the way that we’ve been taught in the past to set goals.
Dr. A: Right.
Jessica: And then that sort of paradigm, and learning to shift into the paradigm of, “Commitment 12” in the Conscious Commitments, of having the experience of sufficiency. Having the experience of enoughness, and what I would love help with is, how do we reconcile setting big goals? Staying in the process of pursuit, but from that essence of enoughness, because sometimes that it almost seems like I could steal my motivation, right? If I’m not hustling. Do you see my conflict?
Dr. A: Yeah, no I see it, and actually several years ago I wrote a book with Robert Fritz called, Identity, and in that book, we talk about the creator and the creation, and it’s interesting because recently, in my exploration of consciousness, this keeps coming up. So I’m going to show you something, which kind of puts it in perspective. So, if we look [Dr. A is drawing something], so what you’re talking about in your business, working with your clients, working with your coaches, working in anything, it could be anything. Here’s you as the creator [refers to a diagram shown on screen] and here’s what you’re creating, right? That, basically, is very different. This is an amazing thing you’re helping clients with, you’re helping your coaches with, you’re helping your business with, and it’s not about you, it’s about the creation and the more you focus on this, realizing that, yes, do I need to increase my, well, capacities? My capability? Yes, we do, but what you do is, you work on this, the need to get to here [points to “creation” on a diagram], and what this requires informs you of how you need to increase your capacity, but when our focus is on— and I’m going to show you because I’m going to do it right here— when our focus is on ourself, and that’s exactly what you’re talking about, what ends up happening is, you can see, you can never fully create. It becomes about you. The center of focus is here, and what ends up happening is that feedback loop— as you do something, I’m not talking to enough clients, I’m not converting enough clients, I’m not converting enough coaches, and what it’s doing is it’s going back and it’s making it about your personal mind, does that make sense?
Jessica: It does. So what I’m hearing you say, is when you’re feeling that conflict of like it’s not enough, I haven’t done enough, I need to hustle more. Stop., Challenge the mind, and realize that the creator and the creation are separate beings and we might have it confused as [crosstalk 00:20:09]
Dr. A: Well, you do. If your business isn’t growing, you’re confused, you’re making it about you as the creator. Not about what you’re creating. Success is when you focus on your desired outcome. It is a structural tension chart and in a structural tension chart you have your desired outcome, you have your current reality, you have your secondary choices, and you have your dates. So, if you have— this is your current reality, and it may be correct you need to define— current reality is a learned process. It’s learning to be okay with reality. Reality isn’t filtered by the way through your personal life, it’s filtered through the facts, it’s if you took a video of it and looked at it. So, if you look at your current self and you have a picture of you or have someone else that you trust, talk to you and say, well when you talk to people you are trying to get them versus awaken them. I’m just using that as an example. Then that would be the current reality and in order for you to get to your desired outcome one of your tactics, or your secondary choices, was let me get better at basically awakening people, autonomy supporting people, and putting them in positions so they make a decision to move forward. Those would be secondary choices. This is actually factual information, here I’m talking about your perception of your personal mind. You want everybody to think that you know, I’m just saying, if you’re here, if it’s about you, then you want everybody to think you’re great. If you don’t look great and you don’t think you look great, your focus is here, your attention is here. Your attention is not on your desired outcome of your creation, does that make sense?
Jessica: So, it becomes judgment and comparison.
Dr. A: Yeah.
Jessica: Rather than creation.
Dr. A: Remember, fire your personal mind. Fire your psyche. It’s lying to you. It’s the voice in your head that’s wrong 99.9% of the time. It’s what takes us and puts us in a quandary because now we’re trying— you know, what you were told, we were all told when we were little, I don’t know, we’re not worthy, you’re not responsible, you’re stupid. It doesn’t matter what it was, but it’s now 20, 30, 40 years later and it’s time for us to realize that that stuff inside, that stored trauma, those thorns that are in there, that when we get when we get touched. They hurt and they’ll take all our focus, and it’s putting it right in there to thinking about it, and feeling, which takes us totally out of the creative spot. When you’re in the creative spot, this — current reality and desired outcome — this is the creative process. This is what moves you forward from where you are to where you want, and there is no place in here where it says, how am I feeling about myself? How am I thinking about myself? These are the secondary choices that move you forward to what you want. If you look at current reality, it will tell you. If you look at it, and not through your psyche, your psyche is going to give you a bunch of crap, it’s going to make stuff up. It’s gonna, again, its job is to make you feel good and it can never get that job done, because it’s inside of you, and it’s not the trigger. Whether you feel good or feel bad. Whether you like someone or don’t like someone. Every one of those are lessons for you to continue to grow and become more and not be disturbed when you have— when you suffer mentally because you’re thinking bad about yourself, or you’re fearful, or you’re feeling judgmental. Those things are not you. Those are disturbances based on your stored trauma which then ignite this and pretty soon you got a big ball of cognitive emotive loops and disturbances, and how can you? Of course, your business, or your life, or your relationship, is not doing well because you’re making it all about you.
Jessica: That’s beautiful.
Dr. A: It isn’t so. It just doesn’t— it’s not true. It’s not so, and if someone shot you in the head right now, it wouldn’t be about you! It would be about them. It would hurt. It would hurt, but I just want to, you know, we’re letting people touch our stuff, and trigger us, and disturb us, and that’s what this is all about. You know, I’m pouring the rest of my life into helping people take back control and control is not external. It’s not trying to get the world to be a certain way. It is about understanding in here, stuff is going to happen, you need to recognize it, realize it, but not be triggered by it and move on and focus on creating the life you want for yourself and I guarantee, if I asked anybody on the line right now, are you wanting more suffering? Does anybody want more suffering? Then choose not to do it and actually listen to what I’m talking about because that knowledge put into practice can create a different state of being where now your personal mind is off to the sideline.
[00:25:09] Yeah, it’s important if you need to know something or if you know that you’re highly allergic right now to seafood, then yeah having your personal mind give you that knowledge and that memory is important, but the rest of the stuff, how your daddy talked to you when you’re five, has no bearing and stop trying to give ourselves a better past, and let’s focus, because the world when you grew up is not even close to how it is now and it’s changing rapidly. Unless we become adaptable, versatile, agile, you will— trying to keep the world the way the world was, that’s why people— and it’s fine to be nostalgic and listen to you know old music, I love it, I have great memories that Ingram back when a certain song comes out from 20 years ago, right? That’s awesome, but that same thing, when it’s hitting your stored trauma does nothing but cause suffering and the question I asked everybody is, do you want to stop suffering? Because if you do, it’s important to recognize and realize that you don’t have to anymore.
Jessica: Gotcha. So this knowledge, in practice, in the moment, when we’re catching ourselves in that feeling of not-enoughness, I don’t have enough time, I didn’t— all the things, the practical application is, take a breath. What do you want? Refocus on the creation [crosstalk 00:26:37]
Dr. A: Yeah.
Jessica: And what are you willing to do together?
Dr. A: The desired outcome. Even problem solving [crosstalk 00:26:42] Yeah. I just, Jesse, these are great questions that I know everybody, hopefully, is learning from this. The bottom line is problem-solving isn’t creating anything, it’s getting rid of something you don’t want— what we want to do is reframe our life so that our desired future is based on what we do want. What do we want? What do we want? Not what we don’t want. What do we want? And moving forward. If you’re using your personal psyche, your psyche, your personal mind, you are basing it on the past and unless you’re— listen, I believe, and that’s also part of just my attitude because I always love to create. I’ve loved every moment. I mean there are some bad things that have happened, but the bottom line, as a whole, I love my life but I can say, I love my life more now than I ever have because I’m becoming more and more conscious and as you get beyond your personal— listen my personal mind, I graduated first in my class from Medical School, basically was the top of what I did, picked as the intern of the year, and that was driven by my personal mind. That was driven by my ego, to be really good. What I didn’t know back then was the people skills, the high relational skills. The ability to stop suffering and when, and being bothered by that stuff, and focus on knowing— it’s kind of like the Serenity Prayer, right? Know what you can do, do those things. Know what you can’t do and not let those things that you have no control over— because most of them, I have to give you the message— most of them are just, be grateful for being on this planet, circling in the middle of nowhere.
Where we can have the most amazing lives in the world. I mean it’s incredulous. So anyway, and so it really comes down to stop resisting when you feel something coming up like, I’m not enough. Stop resisting it. Say, “Okay, I feel like I’m not enough.” So what. What does that have to do with reality? If you do the next call, if you listen to someone talk about how to be more autonomy supportive, you learn those three skill sets, the current reality is whether you thought that or not doesn’t matter. The reality is, you’ve done those things. You are doing those things and you’re moving toward your goal. What you think about yourself. Your belief system has nothing to do with reality. It’s what you’ve made up and if you have belief systems that are not helping you and that are negative, bottom line is, get rid of them. Stop letting them have influence. Don’t pay attention to them and something comes up, let it flow through. I hope— I hope that makes sense.
Jessica: It did. I really appreciate your conversation. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Rachel: All right, next up we have Tudor. Tudor, can you come on camera?
Dr. A: Hey, Tudor! What’s going on? Great name by the way.
Tudor: I’m looking forward to seeing you next month by the way.
Dr. A: Awesome.
Tudor: It’ll be fun. It’d be fun in Dallas, but you know, one of the biggest fears that most coaches have is picking up the phone and talking with people. It’s so easy in today’s society to text them and say, “Hey, how are you doing? Hope you’re feeling good.” That’s it. So, one of the challenges that we have this month is to have a hundred conversations. Have a hundred conversations with people. It could be friends, it could be family, it could be new acquaintances. How important is it to pick up the phone and actually have a conversation with somebody, and why is that so important?
Dr. A: Ah. Okay, well I’m going to go back to these [Dr. A shows the diagram again], bottom line, if your desired outcome, and in this case, I imagine you’re talking about business. If the desired outcome is to reach a certain level, or a certain rank, or a certain success in your business, and you look where you are now, and you’re saying my current reality is I’m making three calls a week and I need to make a hundred calls a week to get to here, then you put it to your secondary choice and you do it because it supports what your desired outcome is. Your desired outcome is your primary choice. It is the thing that you that you want. It’s the thing that’s more important to you and so that trumps how you feel when you pick up the phone. So if that happens to be one of the success factors, this works for everything by the way, is the secondary— just I’ll give you an example, I heli-ski and bottom line is you’ve got to be in pretty darn good shape to heli-ski and I’m not an exercise enthusiast. I mean I don’t mind walking the beach, riding my bike, going out and playing sports, but I do not like to just go down to the gym.
I’m not a gym rat. Just never have been, I mean I’ll use my Peloton, and I do it because bottom line is I know my primary choice is in, actually in January, when I go up in a helicopter and they drop me out, if I’m not in good shape I am dramatically going to suffer. So the secondary choice is I put my shoes by my bed and I put them on and I go down and I’m gonna get on my Peloton because it supports that. So the bottom line is, if your primary choice, your desired outcome, is to be successful in whatever your enterprise is, then bottom line, one of your secondary choices is to do those things that support that, which are priority. Not things you prefer to do because this is what you really want. You want this. So for that, you need to do the secondary choices that support that. It’s as simple as that.
Tudor: Well, I appreciate that, and one of the things that I have to remind myself all the time is faith over fear and in fact, I even have a little sticker on my car because it reminds me so many times. It’s so easy to get fearful with today’s world if you don’t focus on faith. So I am really focusing on faith because if I know if I got my faith, I know that fear will be much less.
Dr. A: Yeah, well and also remember, fear is a thing, fear is afraid of fear by the way. Fear is afraid of fear. The only way fear gets in the equation is if it’s about your personal mind. If you’re focusing on you know, like you said, the trauma of getting— by the way it’s much more than it used to be, kids would rather die than use a phone. I mean they text everything, and the problem with it, you don’t get the same level. You don’t get tonality. You don’t get inflection. You don’t get, you know, the posturing or any of the things you might see if we’re doing like a Zoom, like this, and so basically, texting becomes a very poor way of communication. So, if your desired outcome is to really inspire people, to awaken and to become healthy and successful, then the phone or the Zoom is a much more powerful tool and the way you can overcome the fear is you recognize that you have it.
So, here’s the thing, so if that snake down there was there, that was real fear, and that’s your body doing its job, right? Boom, avoid the snake. If you’d spent the time mentally and you didn’t have that part of your brain in your mind then what would happen is you’d say, let’s say it was a rattlesnake or a coral snake, we have coral snakes here in Florida. Beautiful snakes, all kinds of colors, my mind, I mean, I’m sorry, my physical, my sight is using my mind and would be curious about that, “wow, look at all those colors on that reptile!” And you get close to it, and you get bit, and you die, okay? So that fear in the instant is what you want. After that, after it’s gone, and you’ve gone through it, and you let that flow out and you say, “Okay. Boy, that was interesting and that protected me,” but you don’t then internalize and say, “Man, I couldn’t deal with that, so now I’m going to repress that, and I’m not going to ever get around. In fact, I’m going to be.”— that feeling was actually euphoric if you really want to look at it the right way. It’s chilling. It’s the release of dopamine. It’s the release of epinephrine. It’s kind of that adrenaline rush and you can either process that, and that’s what happens by the way, with people in business or in life with fighting and dramas and stuff, is that they lack the adrenaline rush from that.
[00:34:53] It’s the same thing but they turned it around and it’s killing them. It’s ruining their bodies, but the bottom line is if you sense and say, “Okay, I recognize it. If I see an orange snake like that again, you know, then I know what it is. I Identify it, but it doesn’t bother me,” because the body did its job. The mind did its job. I’m moving on. The phone, picking up the phone, that is—and I love it because my whole talk is around these two things [shows a diagram on screen]— that is making it about you, not about what you’re creating and that’s going to be your business. If you don’t focus on that and you focus on what you want, and the secondary choice is doing those calls, this is what your business will be and you’ll get yourself out of the way. Make sense?
Tudor: Perfect. Thank you so much, Dr. A.
Dr. A: You’re so welcome. Okay, who’s next?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Terri. Terri, can you come off mute? There you are.
Dr. A: Hey, Terri.
Terri: Excuse me. Good morning. Good morning, Dr. A. Thank you.
Dr. A: Smile for me! Smile! Okay. I like that a lot better.
Terri: Sorry.
Dr. A: Did you see how you felt? I mean, anyway, do you have a cough or something going on?
Terri: Yeah. I’m getting over a cold [crosstalk 00:36:08]
Dr. A: When you smile, feel how your energy just changed.
Terri: Yeah.
Dr. A: See the difference?
Terri: Yeah. My shoulders just went down too.
Dr. A: Yeah. Yeah, you were like scrunched up. [Terri laughs] and I just want to talk about putting on your lab coat. I just want to be— this is not hard stuff and hopefully the way I’m presenting it, it’s becoming so it’s palatable, and you can eat it, because your personal mind— by the way all of you, your personal mind is over there saying, I don’t know about that crazy doctor. I don’t know if he knows what he’s talking about. That’s your personal mind. Anything that I’m touching that basically irritates you or gets you like, “I don’t know’” that’s your personal mind! Okay? I just want to make sure [Terri laughs again]. All right.
Terri: That’s funny you say that because just quickly I’m on a March Madness training right now which was just an hour or so before the forum here and our leader, who was speaking this morning, said, “Have I triggered? Have I triggered anybody? Has anybody been triggered by what I said the last couple of days?” And I thought about it. This is my fourth March Madness and in the past, I’ve always been like, oh I’m listening. This wisdom that he’s bringing, I can, I have to write it down. I have to do my actions. Today, I was sitting there with my arms folded like, yeah, you did trigger me, Jermel. You did. Sorry, I said his name, You did trigger me. I didn’t come out and say it, but my point is, the word trigger has come up quite a bit this morning and it’s fairly early. You brought it up too, but anyway. My question is, and I have a feeling you might be bringing out your sheet again, that you just showed to the last of us. When you’re really in the muck of personal life, I’m on the cusp right now, of closing a new chapter and opening a new start, beginning a new chapter in my life. In a lot of ways, but it’s not easy. I’ve done a lot of work on myself so I’m getting through, but when you are in that headspace and that muck, how do you stay focused or refocused, on your coaches and your clients? How do you make that switch?
Dr. A: Yeah. You’re right. You’re right, but it’s right here. No, I mean seriously. It’s right here [crosstalk 00:38:58]. Yeah. I don’t mean to simplify it, but it’s right here. Your stuff, okay? So you’re making changes in your life. You’re making big changes in your life. Okay. So the changes in your life, hopefully, are moving you in your life, to your desired outcome, right? [crosstalk 00:39:23] So, recognize that. Recognize that, and recognize that that stuff that’s in there comes up. I had a— I did a training last week for a team and I had a woman who got divorced a couple years ago and they share a child and when the— so she has to see the ex-husband, when they switched the child, and every time it brings out all the stuff in her and so what I said to her was, well you didn’t divorce. You didn’t even divorced your husband yet. You’ve legally divorced him, but if he’s still having an effect on you, you haven’t divorced them. Yeah, and using that is a very easy example that everybody understands and I’m using it because what it does is it shows that, as you’re working on your stuff, right? Which is your stuff, changing and you create the life you want for yourself. That is different. That is within here. Within here [shows diagram]. That’s you working in your business. You’re working on this, your stuff has nothing to do with this. It has nothing to do with this.
Now it can be affected because it’s taking me more time. If it’s creating periods where you’re getting upset about, you know, in a decision-making thing, but here’s the thing to understand, that’s what I was talking about, about the divorce. The divorce, once it’s separate, once you decide and that’s where you’re not going to suffer anymore, you make that decision. That’s a decision. When you make that decision that person no longer has any effect on, the word you’re using was triggered. They have no effect of going— it’s like, you think of your stored trauma as being thorns and you’re allowing that situation or that person as you go underneath this metamorphosis to push that thorn, and so you do everything to grid up and not let them push the thorn. Where what you should be doing with the pain from that thorn, is when you feel it, let it bubble up. Let it release. Don’t— it’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to be in fear. Stop trying to change it. You’re doing something for a reason. Sense it. Feel it, and let it come up.
It goes away. It’ll start minimizing and you’ll find, just like this lady that got divorced, she’ll find, and I said when you know you’re divorced is when he can come and look you in the face, you know, take out a baseball bat and threaten you and other than the fear of physical injury, that doesn’t bother you anymore. That’s what I’m talking about, about having control of what you’re doing and how you’re responding. So stop resisting. Except. Surrender to the feelings you’re having and let those feelings flow through you and they will start losing your effect. Use every one of these situations now in your stuff to help you grow. They’re learning. Thank them. Be thankful to them when they say something to you and it projects on you.
“Oh, I’m judgmental about it.” Thank them. They’re showing a little bit more about yourself and how you can grow. That’s how you handle that. You keep— [crosstalk 00:42:48] and then when you’re working with them you make sure, if you had a difficult call, and you’re getting better, you’re not gonna— this is not something you get over tonight. It takes time and effort, but as you’re changing your life for the better and they’re organizing the underlying structure for the better, bottom line is, when you’re sensing something, let that release. Let them come up and in about 90 seconds those emotions are gone, then get on a call with your new person or your new whoever it is, don’t allow the times when you are just disturbed to be the times you’re communicating with others and that’s how you separate those two.
Terri: Okay. Thank you [crosstalk 00:43:32]
Dr. A: No. No. It’s not okay. We’re not going anywhere yet. You’re not okay yet. What did I say that you don’t fully absorb or understand?
Terri: No. I, well it’s funny because I, that you used this example because just a few nights ago, I asked my husband for a divorce. So that’s the big thing. It’s weird that you use that analogy [crosstalk 00:44:07]
Dr. A: You’re very close to the fire right now. Just, so you understand, you’re very close to the fire. I obviously didn’t know that and it’s kind of serendipity, but learn from that, okay?
Terri: Right.
Dr. A: And you have to remember, I mean obviously I’m not saying that you’re not going to get thrown off course, you are, and you’re going to get thrown of course a lot because your whole life is changing and change is difficult, and if you’re fearful about changing— and so what I’m saying to you is, start using these to build your emotional agility. Your emotional literacy. Get to know, be friends with yourself. Understand that you can just witness the feelings, the fear, the thoughts, all that stuff. The most important thing you can do for yourself is just let those things happen. Don’t try to be strong and resist them and— have a good cry [Terry is crying], listen I cry all the time, you know, it’s okay. It’s okay, and when you’re really close to it, I’m not saying that you’re going to be able to take what I’ve been talking about and just, boom, overnight change, but the one thing you do for yourself— be grateful that you’re at a point where you’re making— you’re deciding, you’re changing the course of your life and you’re moving forward to things that will lead to you having less suffering and more joy.
[00:45:36] So, those are awesome! And in the middle of it, you’re going to have all kinds of stored trauma in there that’s going to get inflicted. Like you said, triggered or stimulated, and it’s going to start bubbling up. The only thing I ask, give yourself grace. Let it bubble up, and just watch it, and understand. Give yourself this one knowledge, it’s not you. These are feelings. We all have feelings. We all have thoughts. We all have fears, and these are things that are not you. You are the witness of these things and you’re undergoing a lot of changes in your life and it’s really important that you get yourself, just to stand back, and look at them and you can get a good cry, or something may, because you made a decision, you can smile and say, wow. I can see, you know, you had a huge storm. Like we had a big hurricane and I saw towards the end where— well, first of all, I saw when it was the I eye, which isn’t a good thing, but then I saw like the blue sky, got little pieces, and you knew the storm was over.
So have joy in that, and be kind to yourself, and basically just recognize you’re a human being going through some things that are flicking disturbances inside of you. You have control over those. You don’t have control over the outside. You can control some of those factors, obviously what you’re doing, but the most important thing is to be kind to yourself, be accepting. Don’t resist and allow these things to flow out, each time they flow out— it’s interesting that we started this discussion before you said a word, where I said, “Hey you, smile.” I mean, I can sense and feel all that in you, okay? And your battle, don’t battle it. Don’t battle it. Let it come. Just say, you know, let it come and let me just flow through this. I’m going to have times— remember it hurt going down. That’s what creates the suffering. There’s going to be pain as it comes up, but it’s you removing the thorns. Think about that. You’re— with this stuff, you’re removing the thorns, and then they won’t bother you anymore. Eventually. Cool?
Terri: It’s cool. Yeah, it’s very cool. Thank you for that. And then, in between removing the thorns, kind of regroup to be there for clients, and coaches, and my team, and all of that.
Dr. A: That’s a different thing. That’s your job. Your job is not you, okay? This is your job. Your job is to create. Focus on those things and if you’re having [crosstalk 00:48:17], you’ve just undergone where your limbic system and your emotional brain has been very highly stimulated. Just like right now. Right, when you get off this call today is not a good time to talk to people. It’s a time to reflect. It’s a time to surrender. It’s a time to let go and maybe you’ll even take a nap and be kind to your body physiologically because your physiology, your feelings, your emotions, and your cognitive are connected through coherence and right now we’re kind of ruffling the feathers and stuff and giving you some more knowledge. Now’s not the time to talk to your clients, your coaches. Now is the time to take care of yourself and to do some self-healing, but you’re going to feel better, and you’re gonna feel— by the way, just after this, you’ll feel like a weight is being lifted off you because you’re letting this stuff bubble up. You feel yourself— see it takes a lot of energy to repress all this stuff and to resist and to keep the fear down, and the anxiety, and the work. Let it come up. Be kind to yourself. Yeah. Does it make sense?
Terri: It does make sense.
Dr. A: Okay, good.
Terri: Thank you, Dr. A.
Dr. A: So great question. Thank you for sharing and having the courage, the vulnerability to share. Thank you.
Terri: Well, thank you.
Dr. A: Welcome. Okay, and by the way, just the way I say, I’m not a psychotherapist. I’m a person working on our consciousness. If you’re in a place in your life where you need help, go get help, I mean we have great, brilliant professionals that can help and that’s not where I’m at. I mean this— you’re undergoing some situational things that are very strong, and they’re gonna affect you, and if you need help, I’m not saying you don’t, but, I just want to make sure that for anybody, if you’re at a place where you need help, go get help. Cool? Alright. Thank you. Okay. Who else we got, Rach?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have, Stacy. Can you come on camera? There you are.
Stacy: Good morning!
Dr. A: Good morning, Stacy. How are you?
Stacy: I’m well. How are you, Dr. A?
Dr. A: Awesome.
Stacy: Good. I have my beanie on because I got two feet of snow in my front yard, so it’s cold here.
Dr. A: Wow.
Stacy: I’m in Nevada, right down at the bottom of Lake Tahoe, where skiing happens all around the mountain, but I’ve never seen heli-skiing, so.
Dr. A: Yeah. No, I love that area. I used to go up on the back side of the national park there and stay in an A-frame, and one of the lakes up there. It’s a gorgeous area.
Stacy: Totally. Totally. But boy is the snow here! So my question that I put in the chat is, you know, can you read what I said there?
Dr. A: Ummm. I don’t know, because I got like this [crosstalk 00:00:00]
Stacy: Okay. I have a client [crosstalk 00:51:08]
Dr. A: I’m focusing on you.
Stacy: Okay, thanks. I have a client that lost her husband several months ago and the relationship was rocky at best but then he died suddenly and all of a sudden she’s just in, oh my gosh, turmoil. You know what I’m saying? And you know, she’s just like living in it. She’s wallowing in it, and she’s just rolling around in it, and I can see that and as her coach, I so want to offer her the coaching opportunity, because what’s happened in my own head, so much weight and so much clay has been gone because I chose to throw in with you. I’ve been hanging out with you for almost three years now and what I’ve learned about myself is amazing, but I’m still, I still have a little bit of trouble when it comes to sharing that with others. I just don’t feel like I get in it deep enough with them and I think maybe I’m scared to, or I don’t know how to, or I mean, I’ve done wonders here for myself but I want to pay that forward for other people, but if they’re not— God my hands are shaking— if they’re not ready, I mean, I just feel, I feel scared. I feel.
Dr. A: So that is— and that’s natural— and I highly suggest that you don’t try to make her become a coach. Right now she’s undergoing, whether there was a great co-dependent or co-committed relationship, she just lost her significant other, she’s undergoing all the trauma of that. She’s going through the grieving process. If anything, she— this is a great example where she should get some professional help. That’s not your job. Your job as a coach is to guide people. It’s not to teach them the stuff that I’m talking about here. Your role is to guide them to the resources. Just like, you know, in the Habits of Health System, our job as coaches isn’t to teach the Habits of Health, it is to guide them to The Habit of Health, so they can learn from the professionals. I’m a physician, a professional that wrote those, and in this case, you know, I’m a thought leader in consciousness. So this is a forum where if at a point you could have her come listen— but she’s right now, deep in the womb of something dramatic that’s happened to her life. So that’s the last person you should start with. If you have somebody— we have parts in the— there’s Element Four in the LifeBook, which [crosstalk 00:53:53]
Stacy: My favorite.
Dr. A: Yeah, you can have your client read. And here’s the thing, in a case like that, it’s just like if you have somebody that’s 250 pounds overweight when you can help them, but if they’re not ready and you go to them, try to help them, you’re going to push them away. It further convinced them, and actually, probably take them farther away than being awakened to a solution. So that is not your role. I just want to be really clear on that. Does that make sense?
Stacy: Thank you. Thank you for relieving me because [crosstalk 00:00:00]
Dr. A: Yeah, you shouldn’t be anxious on that. You should never touch that with a 20-foot poll. That’s not your role [crosstalk 00:54:29].
Stacy: Thank you
Dr. A: Your role is to give them the basic resources and have them start to understand and that’s one of the reasons why I do this forum, is basically a place where people can come and if they’re not ready to ask questions themselves, people that are ready and they can learn from that and hopefully, there’s some little nuggets they can pick up, but when someone is traumatically, had a traumatic event like that happen, that requires that— some people you can get over it quickly. Some people it takes a long time, and that’s the place where a professional should intervene. Okay?
Stacy: Thank you for that. That helps me tremendously.
Dr. A: You’re welcome
Stacy: And I love you.
Dr. A: Thank you, I appreciate that. Have room for like one more. One more question.
Rachel: All right, next up we have Andrew [crosstalk 00:55:19].
Dr. A: There he is! Hey, Andrew.
Andrew: What a great way to spend the day with you!
Dr. A: Thanks. How are you?
Andrew: I’m doing great. I’m really doing great. I’m 13 years of training and mentoring with you has been a blessing.
Dr. A: Thank you. Appreciate that.
Andrew: It seems for me, the deeper my relationships are with my family members, my sons, my brothers, we have a certain history together. We have a certain— we built a certain emotional mismanagement together. So I’ve been learning, obviously, in the times you remember the first time you told me what my emotional intelligence score was. So I’ve been learning and growing in that area, but boy they can— the deeper my relationship, the deeper the trigger. So it seems like everything I know goes out the window. When one of my brothers or one of my sons push that button, I pick up the bottle of water, I take the deep breaths, and then they’ll come back again with another trigger and it’s like they can set me off and I’m really working on that. I’m good with coaches, and clients, and I’m good with people that maybe I don’t have those deep relationships with, but the ones that I have the deep relationships with, oh boy, that challenges everything I know about emotional intelligence, emotional management, everything that I’ve read. And I just don’t do very well.
Dr. A: So, do I have permission to coach you?
Andrew: Always. Always.
Dr. A: So, you played professional baseball, right?
Andrew: My father did. I played Semi-Pro, yeah.
Dr. A: Yeah, and you never made it to pro because your skill sets weren’t great enough to handle the pros [crosstalk 00:57:14].
Andrew: They were not. Yeah.
Dr. A: Yeah, I mean some people play— I played baseball in high school. I never played in college and if I tried to play in college it would be uncovered that I didn’t make the grade. Okay. So you have a lot of work to do on what you think you have mastered, except with your family, because what you’re doing is, you’re playing in the pros with them. You’re playing with this [00:57:37]
Andrew: Great analogy.
Dr. A: You’re playing with the stored trauma, relationships, and you’ve mastered these things on a facade as long as you’re playing high school ball, but when you’re playing with the pros, which is your family, which is your whole life because they’re intertwined in your experiences all the way through your childhood up through today. And the other piece of that is that you love them by the relationship, and the familiarity, and the frustration is that you’re learning something and you have no influence, and it goes right out the window because you become frustrated and it triggers you and you go right back into the stored trauma.
Andrew: One thousand percent on the money.
Dr. A: And so that’s it. So what that tells you, Andrew is that it’s really important that you start playing the deep end of the pool with this and that means becoming it, and that means where— the bottom line is again, and I use the analogy of someone shooting you in the head, not that I would ever want any of that to happen to anybody, but it’s not about you. It’s about them and you’re projecting your frustrations because you’ve spent a lifetime studying for personal growth and they haven’t. Let me just give you an analogy, my mom and I— she’s Italian, I’m half Italian— we fought a lot of cats and dogs. She would come for three or four days and that’s about as long as we could be together because we used to get on each other’s nerves and about 10 years ago when I started— and she’s an older woman, she’s in great shape, she drives her car, she’s fully functional— but about 10 years ago I started working on this and over the last 10 years because we used to do this [Dr. A. bumps his fists together] and I stopped that and she could do this, but I’m not doing it, I have an incredible relationship with her.
[00:59:30] We just talked the other day and she told me how much she loved me. I’m helping her find a place relatively close to me so she can be close and be down here with her family, and that relationship has totally changed. Not because she’s changed, because I’ve totally changed. You’re in your relationship with them. You have expectations of how they could be if they play by these new set of rules and it ain’t about rules. It’s about removing your personal mind so you’re experiencing them for who they are, for better or worse, and you’re learning and growing, and they’ve become your most important lesson. To actually grow and become a conscious leader and move your personal mind out of the way so you reduce or eliminate the suffering that is still there.
Andrew: I’m taking notes. Obviously, I’ll go back and look at this recording. Yeah. It’s so, so true. I want, I guess when you discover something, right? You know, we had the privilege of discovering you 13 years ago and all the great things and tools that you gave us. I just want to share some of them with them, and I care about them the most, but yet they have absolutely no interest, and I’m okay with that. I’m not trying to get them to do anything. Just [01:00:52]
Dr. A: It’s your list. This is not about— I’ll be really clear on it. This is a wake-up call for you, as you haven’t got it yet. You’ve got a lot of work to do and that work, they’re your biggest gift. They are your gift. They are the opportunity for you to become everything you want to be, and you should thank them, hug them, and use that information to help guide you in your training and in your growth, and it’s about letting go. It’s about acceptance. Who they are, not to somehow make it all right from the past, it’s never going to happen and moving to a place when you can be around them and there’s nothing they can do other than you look at them with love. That’s the end goal. Not to make that safe— because in a way, what you’re saying to me is that I love to change them so then we can have a great relationship. No. You have to take them how they are. You know I would— listen, I would love to have Putin go for a long vacation and stop messing with the Ukraine, and I got about as much chance of that as hell freezing over. If you have about less chance of having them change until you’ve basically fully removed the ability for them to touch you and trigger you.
Andrew: Great. Yeah.
Dr. A: So stay on that. Learn from that, and become— you’ve always— everything you’ve done, you have tremendous knowledge. It’s the practice that becomes the being, and the being is where when you can— you’ll become when you can walk in and they can be at their worst and it has no effect on you.
Andrew: You know it’s amazing because Covey said the same thing to me 25 years ago, “become the seven habits.” Yeah. Good stuff. Great stuff.
Dr.A: Give my love to your woman.
Andrew: I will. I will.
Dr. A: Hope all is well in your life and thank you. That’s really great, thank you for bringing that up. I think that really helped everybody on the call as well.
Andrew: Well, thank you Dr. A. It’s always great to see you.
Dr. A: All right. See you. So, guys, that’s it. We’re over time. A little bit over, a couple minutes over. Go practice. Listen to this again. Go to drwayneandersen.com, look at the ones that make sense to you. Start practicing this. Put on your lab coat every day and just for today, I would love you guys as you leave here, think today and when something bothers you today, you’ll feel it. That icky sauce will come up. Sense what it is. Identify. Let it come up, and then thank the situation or the person that stimulated you, and look how everything changes, and you let that trauma come up. That stored energy will come up and you’ll feel better. So, God bless you guys. Thanks. Bye.
