Rewiring Fear: How to Identify Fear and Step Into Courage

When was the last time you did something you were afraid of, even if it was something small?

Most people think that a courageous act has to be big, when in fact it is the complete opposite. Courage shows up in the small moments that require us to step into our fears. In this episode, we break down what courage really looks like in daily life. It’s not always a grand act or a massive leap, often, it’s the subtle moments where your body tenses, your mind resists, and something inside you whispers, “Do it anyway.”

Through stories of confronting uncomfortable conversations, setting boundaries with friends, and even walking up to a stranger at a party, you’ll discover how recognizing the feeling of fear is your cue to act, not retreat. These aren’t just stories; they’re invitations. Because when you learn to respond to those moments with boldness, everything begins to change: your confidence, your opportunities, your relationships.

You’ll walk away with a simple but powerful tool, the 3-second rule, that helps bypass overthinking and shift into motion.

Ask yourself:

• Where in your day do you feel hesitation or resistance?
• What would change if you met that moment with courageous action?
• Could one brave move today shift the course of your week?

This episode will help you start hearing those inner calls and finally answer them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Most people spend their entire life stress without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want and what's important to them. See, let me hear to copy all the noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to live away the cover job and I hated it. But I broke through the social noise because too much happy. As a result, I own my own coffee company. I'm the first company. And I get this crap a little bit. You too can live a life that you want. But it starts within clearly what you want. It starts within this. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse. You're listening to the podcast. One life. But said differently, I want to talk about how do you how do you know when those moments are where you have to act courageous? It's uh I know I in the past I'd fallen in the trap, and it's easy to fall in the trap to think that courageous moments are these these ginormous moments that you have to take this massive action and like break through the wall. When the truth is, is that the biggest moments are the smallest ones where you have to take courageous action. But if you if you don't fine-tune, I guess, the uh the definition of what a courageous moment is, you can miss out on these moments that are constantly calling you every single day. So let's start first with how do you how do you identify these courageous moments? The easiest thing is like you'll you'll notice the feel that first and foremost, you're gonna notice it in your body, right? For example, um, I was doing a call yesterday, I was talking with a um uh a packaging company that does a a process for uh for bottled for bottled beverages. And in my relationship with this company, they had uh I guess behaved some ways that in my opinion were either negligent or intentionally there to uh cause harm to me. So as a result of it, I needed to confront this company. And I had to say, hey, listen, this is not okay. This is how I want to proceed, I want to proceed, or this is what you did wrong. But the thought of doing that all of a sudden stirred this emotion inside of me. I'm like, oh, well, what if what if they get mad at me? What if they, you know, uh, what if they argue back? And I knew what the what my fears were, right? Like the fears were apparent, like it was what was making me hesitant to want to go on the call. But I I've trained myself now is that when I notice these moments, when I when I feel like, oh boy, here we go. Like, wow, I'm getting a little nervous. I know that that nervousness is a call to action. And I've trained myself now to to step into that action rather than to avoid it. Because action only takes three seconds. Three, two, one, and you go. And then once you once you take the movement, right, you're already in motion, so there's no other way to go but forward. So it was this this stirring of emotion, this feeling of anxiousness that will, you know, like I'm gonna say this, what if I make the wrong decision? When the truth is, when I checked into my heart, I knew that how this company and I were interacting, and just the I mean, I'll I'll go in a little bit of detail on negligence insane. You know, we were talking about formulation, and um, you know, I had shared some details with them, and they wanted to take the next step, but there was no contract in in um no contract to take the next step. So for those of you who are looking into the the food or beverage or any kind of space, right, you have your NDA that that protects you against the disclosure of your information, but then anything after that, you need an agreement, right? Because all of a sudden, if I were to move forward with this company, right, without the agreement, as they were suggesting, then any formulation work done on my behalf would not own, be owned by me. It would be own property of the formulator. So having the awareness to and and the and the wherewithal to understand this, thank God, right? Because if I would have proceeded with that and we would have done all this work, all of a sudden now they have my then they could consult with other people and then they're like, okay, this is what we do for this drink, and now all of a sudden my secrets everywhere. So um, so it uh going back, it was this this emotion that I knew I needed to move forward and take the action. So that was a a fairly big example, but let's go with a smaller example. Like, how do you know if when it shows up in your dead day? Sometimes the courageous action is having that difficult decision, sometimes it is expressing a boundary that needs to be put in place. Another example of that is um, you know, I was talking with a friend and he wanted to um he wanted to have um an espresso consult with me, right? He's like, hey, just come over, uh, you know, I'll take you out for lunch and you know, let's do the espresso. I'm like, well, in my I didn't say it this way, I was like, yeah, sure at first, right? But in my mind, I'm like, well, no, not really. I mean, well, one of all, if when I'm doing espresso consults, like those take like three hours. And I really delve into like the details of extraction, how to taste, how to understand it. It's not like, you know, it's not like a a five-minute introduction or even an hour. So there was a boundary there because like I felt like I needed to express my boundary because this is what I do for work, right? This is what I've spent my entire life devoted to. And so I'm gonna express that boundary to him. Like, I'm more than happy to help out my friends, without a doubt, right? And that's the kind of the that's kind of like the the uh the line that I was um going across was all right, well, how much do I help my friends versus what is right, what is wrong? Like only you know what feels good for you, right? And that's really what it comes down to. You have to feel it in your body and know what feels good. Like I'm gonna help him out. I'm gonna am I gonna do the three hours? Well, I mean, he's a friend, but we're kind of in the beginning phases, and so I want to be respectful to myself as well as respectful to the friendship, so but that having that conversation is a courageous act, and so looking at all I uh to go back into that, so that was just how you identify is that that emotion that was going into it. And um to give you just um going back to the my own life example, when I was looking at my day, I realized that I taken all of these steps and took action to move my business forward. And like there are some of the actions were making a call to a different formulator, having a conversation with someone who is been in the natural foods industry, you know, for they're a veteran in the industry and they have a lot of knowledge, right? But it having that, just having the conversation, even though there was there was no, you know, nothing was really gonna come out of it, just having the conversation and being in the same room, I thought was intimidating. But I did it anyways. And as a result, I've got some new connections from it. Now I have some different ways of moving forward. So how the reason I tell you this is because I want you to identify those courageous acts in your day, not just to bypass them and think like these are small insignificant moments because they are not. These small moments are actually the the moments that are a calling you to step into that courageous that courageous state, to break through the fear. You may not think of it as fear, right? Let's not use fear, apprehension, nervousness, whatever you want to call it. It's still a call to act courageously. So let's look in your day. Like, where do you normally feel these these these little nudges for courageous action? Maybe you notice it when you have to have an interaction with somebody at work where you have to express a boundary. Maybe it is taking a step with your business, moving in the direction you want to go that you know you want to go, but you just haven't done it because you're afraid of how you might be perceived, you're afraid of doing it wrong. Those are all actions or those are all examples of courageous action needing to be taken. So my assignment for you is one, just it, you know, at the very least, just bring some awareness to where you are being called to act. And then when you know that, once you know, like you have to decide, decide to act courageously, that you're gonna be courageous, right? And part of it is like uh one of the things I love um is that you can create a rule for yourself. Like when you notice that it's three, two, one. I I haven't done this in a while, actually. I actually get back to this. So if there was a a girl that I found attractive, right, I'd be at the gym or somewhere, and I would be like three, two, one, and like, all right, on on one, I go. Like, I I I go in that direction. I'll give you one example. I was in uh, I was in Miami Beach, I was with my good friend Fatih, and we were at this party at the Fayana Hotel during Art Basel. And we were you were sitting there, we're talking, and I'm looking up, and there's this beautiful blonde girl dressed in white, beautiful smile, short hair, about shoulder length, and she's staring at me and smiling. I'm like, is she staring at me? And I'm looking at my friend, I'm like, yo, I think she's staring at me. Every time I look there, she's looking at me. So I'm looking, you know, look back, I'm like, I caught her again. All right, look, she's all right, she's still staring at me. And um, so my friend Fatih he was like, Oh, well, let's go over there. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't don't go over there. So he sneaks up and um he sneaks around, like next, almost like right behind her. And in my mind, I'm like, I am gonna kill you. I am gonna murder you right here in front of everybody. And but I end up knowing that I was afraid. I I followed him, and we were standing behind her, and we're talking and we're talking, we're talking, and then the three two-one idea came into my mind. I was like, all right, God, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. And so my friend Fatih is talking to me and he's like, he's talking, talking, talking, looks off, and then when he looks back, I'm not there anymore. He's like, because he's he's telling me this afterward, I'm not there anymore. And he's um, and he's saying to my he's saying to me, he's like, Where the hell did you go? And then he looked over and I was talking to this girl because I did that, and it was like uh, I just said to myself, I was like, I was there, I was like, I gotta deal with this, right? I I'm afraid of this. I have to go up to her and approach her. And it's not that I say that I have to approach every person that I um that that I I find attractive, right? Because I know that there's certain people that like I really feel a pull to, and this was one of them. And um so again, I said three, two, one, whoop. Hi, how are you? What's your name? Where are you from? You know, because nobody would nobody was from Miami Beach. And um, so just to kind of make the the uh the the story add a little humor to it, so she ended up being a very close talker, and which I didn't mind because I found her very attractive, and like literally, like she was like inches away from my face as she was talking to manups, and that was kind of like off not off-putting, but it was just kind of like I'm like, wow, she's really close. Like, I've never had someone this close into my personal space, and um, but that that was it. And so the the point of the story, the the point I wanted to make is that when you notice those, there's two things you could either fall back in fear or you can move forward in courageous action. You get to decide, and the victory is stepping into that courageous action, right? You don't things aren't gonna always go as planned. But again, what we're doing here is we are uh we're celebrating the action that you're taking, not not the not the effect. We're celebrating action because as you do that, you are gonna reshape your entire life. You start taking courageous action and moving forward, taking these courageous steps when they arise, you're gonna notice you're gonna be in a completely different place one week, one month from now. If anything, you are gonna feel good because you are taking these actions and you know that you're gonna feel good because of the the discomfort or like that you would have felt. And you when you move through it, you realize it all just dissipates, it all disappears. So that is that's all I go for you guys today. Again, three things for you. One, notice where those courageous moments are happening, right? Notice where you are being called, right? So the feeling, anxious, nervousness, that is a courageous action calling for your attention. Two, all it takes is three seconds. Three, two, one. The last thing is just freaking go do it, right? And celebrate your win. Celebrate the fact that you took that courageous action because it will transform your life. I hope you guys enjoyed the story. Hope you uh it hope it just inspires you to take some courageous action. And I hope you got a good laugh out of my uh Miami, my Miami uh courageous act of approaching that girl. I thought it was funny, especially afterward, because I've never had someone speak that close to me. And uh I liked it. I'll be honest with you. She's beautiful. Um, but that is it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And uh, if you did, please leave a comment, subscribe, and uh share it with someone whom you feel could benefit from listening to this. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. Remember, you only get one life live fully, live passionately, and most of all, live now. God bless you guys, and I will see you again soon.