Fear is the Mindkiller

About a year ago  I had an episode (which I’ll link to on my website) where I’d talked about the idea trying to raise fearless girls.   One many things  had reinforced for me in the past year is the positive and negative impacts that fear can have on you… and what you can learn from it.  both yourself and your kids.  
Special Feature:   a post election rant 
With Shout outs and Worth Mentioning.  

https://linktr.ee/striveseekfind

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In life, we have two choices, to experience or to exist. Every week, each of us makes that choice to either seek a better way to live or to get by. walk alongside me each week on the strife seek find podcast as we continue to seek our own brilliant future. I must not fear fear is the mind killer. fears the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear, I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it is gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path where the fear has gone, there will be nothing, only I will remain polities, Frank Herbert's dune. If only it were as simple as this phrase. Welcome to the strive seek fine Podcast. I'm chance Whitmore. About a year ago, I had an episode, which I'll link to on my website, where I talked about the idea of trying to raise fearless girls. One of the many things that we've had to look at in the last couple years is the positive and negative impacts that fear can have on you, and what you can learn from it. Now let's get started. Unlike Paula tradies, most of us and I'm actually assuming all of us don't have a secret breeding program, and an all powerful mind controlling mother to teach us how to work through fear. Or do we. And as a side note, if you haven't read this book, or watched the movie, the first book is most definitely worth the read. What we're constantly having to do, hopefully, is learning to deal with fear, how to put it aside how to grow from it. And then to take those lessons and teach those who follow how to do the same. So let's think for a second about fear. In its simplest sense, fear is our emotional response designed to recognize danger, and give us a chance to fight or avoid. To avoid what well, going back in time. It was traditionally, injury or horrible death seems simple, straightforward, feel scared, react to the stimuli hopefully survive what it feels like, well, that varies by person and situation, acid in the back of your mouth. Heart racing mouth dry, adrenaline kicks in higher level thinking skills go to crap. Generally, your body gets ready to fight or flee. We all heard this term fight or flight historically, this should mean first people who make the right decisions, a better opportunity to pass on your genes than someone who didn't feel fear and make the appropriate decision. Let's say our prehistoric ancestors who had armed up against saber toothed Tigers versus their cousins, who thought it was a good idea to pet the kitty. And then of course ended up a bloody smear on the cat's face. So a healthy understanding and respect to fear and an appropriate response to fear have helped humans survive and thrive across centuries. But fear has other impacts. Stress and anxiety, for example, are obvious when we generalize our fear beyond specific situations, which can damage us and impair our ability to be successful. Or in the worst case scenarios. Even live, our fears can be built into barriers that prevent us from reaching our potential. So instead of a survival tool that become a barrier for you. A self created one in some cases, our fears can become comfortable excuses, a sort of warm blanket that you reach for to prevent yourself from putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation or to face the threat of failure or via either paralysis by analysis or just putting things off. Fear can push you into inaction. And when you come down to it, at times failure to make a decision is a decision in its own right. For example, our pandemic precautions over the last few years in granting grace to people and using precautions they feel necessary to protect themselves and their families. We have also unwitting He created the ultimate warm blanket, when we do not want to insert ourselves into uncomfortable situations, such as crowds in general, but specifically Black Friday crowds, or dinner parties with strangers, or concerts, or 100, other social situations. Now, those precautions, they serve a purpose. But what we have also created is a generalized fear among a lot of people, not necessarily fear of COVID. But fear of being in groups. And it could be virus spread, or it could be just not liking being jostled, or on the opposite end of the scale, you have people that are just angry, and reacting to all of it. For the same reasons, generalized anxiety, a little bit of fear. In either way, perhaps as a society, we're masking more than a little bit of social anxiety, that's community wide. And since we're not really acknowledging it, it's only going to get worse. And to generalize this a bit more, as parents, we're seeing this daily, we balance out the fear for our kids safety. And the words and actions we choose to teach, in order to protect or so we think, and those words and ways of teaching help determine how our kids respond to these stimuli. One of the lessons that in our house that has been paused for a while, was the idea that you got to know how to go out and go to a restaurant and order for yourself. It's part of those social niceties, just in case as you get older, you have the opportunity to go out with friends or go out with another family, you don't embarrass yourself. So since that has been basically paused for a few years, this week, we set up a scaffolded learning opportunity for our two oldest, we sat down and after they went for a jog, we told them, they could go out to lunch together. There's a pizza place about a half mile from our house down the hill by one of the local schools. And it's not someplace the girls have ever really been. We've ordered from there along the way. But they don't know the setup. They don't know the people. So we sat down with them after telling them they got to go, went through the menu with him, reviewed how to order, gave them the money and sent them for a walk. We set up boundaries, not just what to order, and how much to tip, because that's an important part of that lesson in this country. But also, when you get there, inform your folks, when you're getting ready to leave, inform your folks. So we have a timeframe to when to expect him back. Now, it's may seem like a little lesson. But for them, it was freedom. And if they sent us a couple of pictures about halfway through, and the looks on their face of pride was something that I can't match in a lot of ways. They were proud that they had done it themselves. Even though it seems like a small thing. It was a new challenge that they had meant. But the temptation as adults is to over protect children. Don't give them those moments. Our temptation is to run to their rescue, because we don't want them to feel bad. We don't want them to experience pain, because it hurts us as much as it hurts them. But by running to the rescue, we create adults who have never had to overcome their fear or their challenges. And we end up dooming them to struggle without the scaffolding to learn what they should have learned as children. And in the process, I really feel you created a lifetime of angst and stress. You create older kids who are so used to connection, that their tendency is to run to someone for help with these decisions. That before widespread communication. You just knew how to make on your own or also as parents in our attempts to make our children understand and live within the boundaries we expect for them. We tell stories that can create the impact that we don't want. Using hypotheticals and creating. We move our fear into them. We do this wrong, creating terrified kids. For example, we've seen the social Media News warnings about vans, falling kids or approaching kids. We've listened to heartbreaking stories of kids stolen from camping trips, swiped in department stores, and checked on our phones for Amber Alerts. Our kids had taken this into the point where they're hesitant to ride bikes in the neighborhood are playing the front yard, to the point where we're reluctant to let them walk on their own shop on their own ride to school, or to arrange freely the way we did growing up. Now, is where we live really that unsafe? In some cases, yes. But for the great majority of us, the answer really is no. But to look around us now, you would think it was drive by a local bus stop and see cars lined up with parents to pick up or drop off kids when the bus arrives. Kids don't even walk home from their bus stop. In other words, in neither case, are we providing opportunities to scaffold and support kids living to overcome their challenges, learning slowly how to become healthy, functioning adults. But that takes awareness, hard work, and a willingness to see our kids struggle. And admittedly, that's damn hard. And possibly, it's even harder not to take our own fears and project them through our kids. Sometimes, the best we can do is be transparent and let them know how we worked through our own fears. For instance, conversation, my oldest a few weeks ago, when she was talking about her fears and dislikes and not wanting to go do something. And I shared with her the fact that at one point of my life, I was so afraid of public speaking that if you put me in front of a group, I would stutter. And so to get past that, I found my way into speech and debate, which admittedly, I was not very good at. But it gave me the confidence to overcome what scared me. And the same thing worked with my fear of heights, which I still hate. But I took up rock climbing in college, because the idea of not being able to do something, because I was too scared to do it really intensely bothered me. Now, it didn't solve her problem, but gave her food for thought on how she can work through her own things. Because all of us have something we were a little bit nervous about, and need to work through somewhere along the way. Right now, we can't let fear be the controlling factor for ourselves and for our kids, we got to give ourselves the chance to be the people we can be, and our kids the chance that people be the people they can be. Because otherwise, for all of us, things are not going to get better. And it has to because that warm and fuzzy blanket of avoidance will only protect you for so long. So tonight, I thought I'd also follow up on an episode from a couple of weeks ago where I was talking about the election. And my election experience this time was unique to my life. So I thought I would share it. I have relatively strong opinions about voting. It's one of the most important responsibilities we have in a society such as ours, to be educated and vote to make sure you're taking care of your society so that it can be you can be a part of it. So that you have a society that's worth being a part of. And so I took my daughter with me to vote my middle daughter, my 10 year old and it started out normal with her asking questions and we went in and we use the electronic ballot which I was impressed how slick it was. But then we came to the exit and the sticker moment where gentlemen hand you or or Lady hand you a sticker and ask your name and then they announce that so and so has voted. Well. That's awesome. I love getting my I Voted sticker before I wander out. Now, the person who was there offered my daughter, two things. One was a sticker, which she asked for. And then another was just a little printed dollar bill. And I didn't think about it. I just figured they were doing something for kids and we walked out The door a little while down the road. She starts reading to me, it's on the back. And I quickly say, let me see that. Now don't do this at home, but I glanced at it as I drove. I know, distracted driving extremely dangerous. But what she had been handed was in the polling place, mind you, was religious information. On the surface, that doesn't seem like a big deal. We were voting in a church. But the church was set up as a polling place. And so in my mind, that's fairly sacred. You don't politic and you don't proselytize? anywhere near where people are voting. I didn't turn around and go back. I was too close to home. I pulled into the house, I called the elections clerk i and had a conversation immediately about exactly how inappropriate was. And I followed up with pictures and an email to the clerk's office as well. Let me stress, I don't think there was ill intent here. And that does not change in my mind how it is inappropriate for any sort of literature to be handed out at the place where someone is voting that should be treated as just about sacred. That being said, it's taken care of just my mini rant for the day. Shout outs, I'd like to say thank you to Zach again for coming on last week's episode. Appreciate your time and support. Looking forward to many more lessons on camping from you. Also, strive seek find hit a milestone last week by going over 4000 Total downloads. I'm raising a glass to you all. Thank you for joining me on this journey. worth mentioning. This week, my love of all things space related. Got a workout from Blue origins, legal issues to the fact that NASA will not make its moon due date into 2024. But none of that was interesting. The article I found today, on all places Gizmodo by Andrew Lewinsky company wants to launch satellites into orbit using a giant centrifugal slingshot. The title itself doesn't leave a lot to the imagination. But conceptually, this is incredibly cool. Spaceflight without explosives. Keep in mind, this is not for people, and not for delicate satellites. But this hints at the possibility of a cheap way to get material and orbit, which in my mind, is one of those things that really keeps us from moving forward into deep space. And for full honesty. The scale version on this just looks awesome. I've attached the article over at chance Whitmore calm. And the reason this feels cool is the fact that it's totally old schools journey Jules Verne from the Earth, the Moon waves to the space that were long ago rejected is inefficient or impossible. And if that's too geeky reference for you. That's a book where they launch a group of people to the Moon using a immense gun and gun cotton. This is a cool use of science, and that alone makes it worth mentioning. And that concludes this edition of stripe seek find. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, or would just like to support the podcast. Here are a few ways you can do it. You can leave a review on Apple podcasts or pod chaser. They will help bring more listeners to the podcast. If that isn't your style, you can buy me a coffee or purchase some merch. Links are in the podcast description. Finally, if you have ideas or feedback, please reach out to the Strive Seek Find page on Facebook or to @chancewhitmore5 on Twitter. Until next time, keep seeking your own brilliant future. Have a great day.