Sit & Talk: Your Fears Manifest the Weeds that Grow

We talk about why the dark makes fear feel bigger and how the unknown triggers our brains to invent worst case stories. We connect “manifesting” to what we choose to notice, then challenge ourselves to act with courage and start pulling mental weeds before they take over.
• fear of the dark as fear of the unknown 
• how imagination turns noise into danger 
• “manifesting” as selective attention and pattern seeking 
• parasailing shark panic as a real time fear spiral 
• courage as action with fear present 
• why focusing on “don’t” pulls you off course 
• fears as weeds that spread when ignored 
• small daily maintenance to strengthen mindset 
I look forward to seeing you right here next time on Sit and Talk.

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Live Call Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Sit and Talk. Thank you for joining us. If this is your first time each week, we join our live call for Sit and Talk where we just discuss a different mental conditioning topic that helps us make us stronger mentally to handle life's daily challenges. So let's join our live call. Is anybody scared of the dark?

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Were you scared of the dark when you were little? When you're a little kid.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

No. I mean, yeah, I remember when it started.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Chances are there might and you may not remember it. Or what about when your kids were little and you'd wake up in the middle of the night and there'd be two eyeballs looking at you?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Oh yeah, that's freaky.

Why We Manifest What We Notice

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yes. And they usually say, I'm scared, or there's a monster in my room, something that they came running in there because they were scared. Now, chances are when you were taking a nap, if you had that luxury when you had kids, maybe they're a little bit older, but chances are during the day they probably wouldn't come running in there to tell you they're scared of the dark or if there's something in there. And some of us may be scared of the dark now. Some of us may have been. But if we are scared of the dark, why are we usually scared of the dark? Because of the unknown. The unknown. Typically, if you've ever watched things on TikTok about the and the Appalachian Mountains, there's some weird stuff that goes on there. And it happens when it's dark. Like, you know, if you hear a whistle, don't whistle back. If you hear your name called, don't go after it. You know, all the different things. Because why? Because we're not always sure what's in the dark. So something, you know, if you may be trying to go down a trail in the dark with no headlight, no lamp, no flashlight, nothing, every little noise you hear, you think it's it's Bigfoot coming to get you. You have all these things, ideas in your head that is probably gonna get you. But if you go down that same trail in the daylight, do you have those same fears probably? And the answer would probably be no. Why? Because you can see everything, you can see pretty clear. If you know, if you hear a noise, you go, that's that's not an animal. I don't see one, that's not a person. But in the dark, you have all these different thoughts that go through your eye, through your head, from an animal that's gonna eat you to a person that's gonna kidnap you, all the things that go through your mind, simply because in the dark we don't know what's out there, it's the unknown. And so when we hear a noise in the dark, what do we do? We do come up with all those things that it could be, and then if it was light, we see it was just a cute little chipmunk that was just scurrying around. But in our mind, we had this big animal, grizzly thing that was gonna attack us, and so a lot of times we manifest our fears, and we've talked about manifest. Manifest is sometimes we think of it as kind of a weird kind of out of this world term, but really all manifesting is is attract, it's not even really attracting, but when you think about something, you get more of that. Why is that? It's not magic, it's because you recognize it more, you see it more. I've put it simple. If I, you know, if if you looked around your room right now and I said, name all the things that are brown, you you'd tell me all the brown things. And then if I said, Well, name name the black thing you saw, and you'll say, Well, I didn't see any black things. It's because you weren't looking for those, all you were doing is looking for the brown. So when we're looking for all those things that noise could be in the dark, we start to manifest all of the bad things that could happen. Think of something that you feared. Anything maybe in your life that you feared, and then start to think about all the things that you thought would happen or could happen or what it was. Did any of those come to pass? Or did all of them, none of them, one of them?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Well, I try to stay away from the things that I fear so that those things won't come to pass.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Because all of those things like being in the ocean.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Like being in the ocean. I'll just stay away from it so all the bad things don't happen.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

So when it comes to ocean, Kim's really scared of the ocean. I'm not, except for we were parasailing one time. Me and I think it was Gracie, because of course you had to take the littlest one, the biggest one, which was me and her, to offset the the parachute. So coming off the boat, my I scraped my foot. My foot's bleeding. The water's clear below. We're parasailing. Blood is dripping from my heel into the ocean. And so before we we took off, they said, we'll dip you into the ocean. So my thought is because what do you see when you see blood in the ocean? Sharks. So all I could think about is, oh my gosh, they're gonna dip me in the water. There'll be sharks that have that have started circling the blood that I've lost, maybe five drops, maybe. And they're gonna bite my leg off. That's all the I could think about when until they dipped me in the ocean. I think here it comes, here it comes. And they dipped us in. We came out, I had both legs, everything was fine.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

You had Gracie. And I had Gracie.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

They didn't get her either. So all the things I thought about, like literally, with I mean, and we're talking about from the time I went off the boat to the time they dipped us, maybe a minute. And my whole thought was they're gonna circle, they're gonna bite, this is it, I'm done for. And so I manifested all these things, came out of the water, landed, was just fine. So that is one time I had thank goodness. Because, you know, that that, you know, it didn't come true. But Kim's, like she said, all those things, I mean, even it makes us her nervous when all us are in the ocean, the kids and I, because what if something gets us? What if we drowned? All the things meant you'll plan a funeral and how you're gonna rescue and all the things. So, does anybody else have a fear that maybe they had all these things come up like I did with a shark? And then, and it doesn't have to be major, it can be something goofy like that. And those things didn't happen. Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Well, y'all are always afraid that I will drown on water slides. So I try not to get on them unless I have to, especially the enclosed ones.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

No, and and and have you ever drowned it on the water slide?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

No, I have not.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

No. You maybe, maybe, maybe got some water up your nose.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Not yet, anyway.

Courage Means Acting With Fear

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Well, yeah, not yet. And and see, we think of those things, we think, well, that's kind of goofy. But yet we manifest these things like I'm sure in the water slide, if it's enclosed, what if I get stuck? What if the water starts gushing out and it blows over me and I drown? And I mean, we make this whole thing up. What what is what is courage? Is is courage the absence of fear? No, no, no, no. Courage is having fear but moving forward anyhow. It's having fear but taking action. So when we think of somebody as being courageous, it's not because they're fearless, it's because they had fear and they went forward anyhow. That is being that is having courage. You know, sometimes we have you ever not really wanted to do something, or you were kind of nervous about doing something, and you did it, and then you said these words. Well, I knew that was gonna happen. It didn't turn out the way you wanted, and you had all these thoughts, and you said, Well, that's how I knew it was gonna turn out. Maybe it was a fear of talking to somebody, maybe it was a fear of doing something, maybe it was a fear of trying something, and it went kind of bad, or kind of one of the things might have happened, and you said, Well, I knew that was gonna happen. And did you ever think, if you ever had that, that you were the cause of that? Because if a skier is skiing downhill and there's trees on either side, and they keep telling themselves, don't hit the tree, don't hit the tree, don't hit the tree, what do you think's gonna happen?

SPEAKER_02 9:22

They're gonna hit the tree.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

They're gonna hit the tree because they directed themselves to the tree. If they said stay on the path, stay on the path, chances are real high they're never gonna hit a tree because they're focused on the path. So, does everybody know Lindsay Vaughn or heard of her or saw her at the Olympics getting airlifted off? Yes, not once, yes, but twice. What my opinion, why do you think that happened? Why do you think it happened the second time? She was fearful. Is my belief that after the first time that it she kind of messed up her knee on the on the run, it made her nervous. And so in her mind was as she was going down that, I hope I don't get injured. I hope I don't get injured. I hope my foot doesn't turn wrong. I hope this doesn't happen. And so that is what she's constantly thinking, and I could be totally wrong, but chances are real high when we already have that planted in our mind that we start looking for that. It's kind of like if something negative has happened to you in the past and you're trying to do that same thing again, what would you do? You'd start thinking, well, this is probably gonna happen again. This is probably gonna happen again. I don't know if any of you watch much about expeditions to Antarctica, not Antarctica, Mount Everest.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

The thing about normally on my watch list.

Weeds As A Model For Worry

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Well, the thing about Mount Everest is if if expedit people on expedition, if they die on Mount Everest, many times they'll leave them on the mountain because they can't get them down. So can you imagine going past one of those bodies and seeing that? And that's, I mean, as I watch those things, I see them cross these little ladders. I think that would be all I would think about was falling off the ladder, dying, running out of oxygen, slipping off the side. That would be all I could think about. So for that reason, I can't do Mount Everest. I mean, it has nothing to do with my skill or level, but just because the sheer fear of all that stuff. But that's what I would focus on. And I know that. And that's and I don't have the courage to overcome that, to move forward with that because I'm scared of heights. I mean, there's a whole list of reasons. But but if we if we think about those, those are we're gonna be attracted more to them. That's simply what manifesting is, is you see it and you're attracted more to it because that's what you're thinking of. So, you know, when probably nobody has weeds in their yard. No, probably nobody. But does it take much for a weed to pop up in your yard? It it maybe takes a little bit of moisture, if that, it might take a little bit of sunshine, if that. It doesn't take much at all. So over the last probably four, maybe five years, we've been having our yard treated. Whatever they do, I don't know what all they do, but they do stuff. And because my goal for fertilize, pre-emerge, fertilize, pre-emerge, and pre-emerge, and pre-emerge, yeah, weed control. They do all that stuff. I don't know. They come out, spray it, sprinkle it. I don't know what all they do. But my goal a number of years ago was to have a in-town yard out in the country. Because out in the country, at our house, our yard just kind of migrates into pasture. So you really couldn't tell the difference between what was our yard and what was pasture grass. It all looked the same. And in town, they always looked nice and manicured and plush, and something you could walk barefooted. There was no way you could walk barefoot in our our yard. They get stickers, you bring stickers in the house. Used to be one of Kim's biggest pet peeves, all those things. So now, pretty much in the wintertime, as it becomes spring, our whole yard where they treat is all brown because all grass. And every now and then you'll see a few weeds. So the weeds are really bright green and they stand out. So we can go out and get those weeds because everything else is all brown or it's all grass. You can tell the weed from the grass, and so much so that like there's a definite line between our yard and our pasture where the weeds are. It's a very visible difference of what's being fertilized and all that and taken care of versus what's not being taken care of. If I was going to go out across that line, there'd be so many weeds I wouldn't know where to start. But in the in our yard, I can see them right away. And the interesting thing is, fears are kind of like the weeds. Does it take much for a fear to start to grow or a worry? Think about like this. If today a hundred people told you how amazing and beautiful you looked, and I mean you're feeling pretty good about yourself. It's getting close to the end of the day. Somebody would say, How was your day? You would be like, it was so phenomenal. I can't even believe I had this kind of day. And then one person tells you, Wow, you really left the house like that this morning? What would that do to you? That would probably be exactly that'd be thumbs down. That probably would be the thought that stuck with you the rest of the day. Even though you did all the people said all the good things. So that's no different than me going out, look at my yard, it looks like you know, it's all plush and green, and I see one weed, and I go, man, that is the crappiest yard I've ever seen. That is so awful. I can't believe anything would look that awful because of one weed, and that's where we let things happen. That's how, and what happens if we don't take care of that weed? So our flower beds, you know, try to keep them up, but what happens sometimes is there's a couple weeds, and we go, okay, we'll get to that. And then it rains, and then the sun comes out, and then those weeds overnight seem to multiply like rabbits. I mean, they take over. And so initially, what was just a few weeds, you go, okay, I can get those out. It's not a big deal, is now a whole big project because now you don't have one weeds, now you have a covering of weeds. And it didn't just happen in one flower bed, it happened in all four of them. And so now what once seemed like a pretty easy task task to do, now seems what? Super overwhelming. And so when things get and things get super overwhelming, what do we have a tendency to do?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

We're not doing it.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

We're not doing it, and especially if it's something that scares us. So now this this one little thing scared us, and now it has seemed to multiply. And so now we go, well, why even start? And if I do start, where am I gonna start? Because you think by the time I get done this flower bed and get over to this one, when I get back to that one, that one's gonna already be grown again. So why even bother? And and so that's what we have to be careful of is the weeds that we're growing. Because in my yard, who's responsible for the weeds? You the beautiful uh yeah, the the the sticks and stones comes and does their thing. So do I call them up and say, hey, I have one weed? And they'd probably go, okay, go pluck it or go pull it or whatever you're gonna do, go take care of it. I mean, what do you want us to do about it? But what do we typically do? When we have that one weed, we go, it's usually is we not usually, but sometimes we like to pass that on. It's somebody else's fault. And we're real quick to do that. When all we needed to do was go out and take care of it right away. And because if we don't, if we don't have the courage to, when there's just one weed, to move forward and get it, then that fear that whatever that is is gonna multiply. And before we know it, we have a whole yard, which is we could say, what is our yard as a human? It's our mind. So what do we do with that mind? How you know what does what do we do to fertilize our mind? What do we do to water our mind? What do we do to do weed control? What do we do to pull weeds out of our mind? And if you think about like that, are you doing those things? So, what types of things fertilize it? Maybe it's something you watch, listen, or read to spiritually, maybe it's something you read, watch spiritually to grow mentally. Maybe it is just sitting with your thoughts. Maybe it's being a thinker. And thinker doesn't mean I think sometimes we think a thinker needs means you're smart. But really, a thinker is sitting in the quiet sometimes, you might even call it meditating, and think, what do I think about this? How does this apply? Do I agree? Do I disagree? Does it work? Does it not work? What do I think about it? And and you think about and you process all of those things. And how do we how do we pluck weeds? It's kind of like one at a time. So maybe it's a thought we have and go, you know what, that's really not serving me. I need to get rid of that out of my mind. Or maybe you think about something, someone that is not serving you, and you go, I'm gonna get rid of that. Because if we don't mow the grass, what happens? What is it? It grows it grows over tall, yeah, tall. And then it looks like it's out of control, right? So isn't that funny that grass, even my yard, if I let it go and don't keep it mowed, it looks really bad. It looks overgrown, it looks unkept, it's awful. So just because there's some good things doesn't mean we still we still don't have to maintain it. We still have to maintain those things. Maintain it by maybe there's some some thoughts or things we think about, go, how can I refine that? How can I make it a little bit better? Because sometimes we think if a little's good, a lot's even better. Well, a nice short grass looks really good. But a tall, especially if you're in town, tall grass will get you a citation, will get you in trouble if you don't keep it. It's the same grass, we just might let it grow too tall, let it get out of hand, and then things again begin to get a problem. So I think sometimes that's how we become really radical. A thought we maybe had not being kept in containment, in control, in thought and thinking and taken care of can get out of hand. It can get out of control. So we have to be really mindful that those weeds, those fears, don't take over our whole yard, don't take over our whole flower bed, don't take over our whole mind. Because then what do we do? We live a life in fear. And and does fear does fear serve us in any way? No. Typically, no. Now, when we use it as in courage, when we when we apply it with courage, when we apply it with action, it can't Motivate us, it can drive us, it can cause us to do really great things because we move past that fear. Because again, if it's the dark that we're scared of, what are we scared of? We're scared of the unknown. What is out there? If I keep walking, you know, if you get up in the middle of the night and you have to go to the bathroom and you're in a new place and you really got to go back and you're in a new place, you've never maybe you're at a hotel and Airbnb. Do you get up really fast and run to the bathroom? It's pitch black dark. Why not?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Because you don't know the terrain.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

You don't know the terrain. Because what if you hit the corner of an end table? What's that gonna do to your pinky toe? What kind of words are gonna come out of your mouth?

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Not good ones.

Start Small With Ten Minutes

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Not good ones. And and you're gonna be black and blue, you're gonna be limping around, you're gonna wake up the whole house. So you go real slow, you're feeling around because you're not sure what's out there. But yet you still have the courage to move forward because you got to really go to the bathroom bad. But again, you don't do it fast, you go slow because you don't know what's on the other side. And probably if you didn't have to go to the bathroom, you probably wouldn't get up and go because again, it's dark, you don't know where you're at. But it we're fearful of what is out there, what is the unknown, and so it keep it tends to keep us in the comfortable spot. It keeps us, and and then we in the the unknown, we let those weeds grow because what if I pluck this weed and it's the wrong one? What if it's attached to something bad and then it gets another another weed and another weed? What if it's attached to a mole or a gopher and it comes out and attacks me and eats my face off? Goofy stuff. But that's that's the type of things that we we weeds do, and and weeds and fears are no different. It doesn't take much to grow a lot of weeds really quick. It takes just a little bit of a couple thoughts, a few words that somebody else says, a few actions somebody else's does, a few things we do, and before we know it, we have stinky thinking. Our whole mind is full of weeds. And then what happens is so full of weeds we go, oh my gosh, I have so far to go. I don't think I can do it. Because where do I start? We have a four flower beds. Where do we start? It's too many weeds. But guess what? What if we took 10 minutes and spent on one little section of a flower bed? And then the next day, 10 more minutes, then the next day, 10. We're no different than ourselves. What if we find one place to start and start there? So if there's some weeds that you have, some fears that you have, my challenge is simply this. Can you start somewhere and just focus on can I do a little bit right here? And you might go out and go look, oh, I didn't even make a dent in that flower bed. But you got a little more done than you did yesterday. If you're better today than you were yesterday, that's all we're looking for when we go to weed our garden, weed our flower bed, which is weed our mind. How do we get it better? And it's just maybe it's 30 minutes here, maybe it's 10 minutes talking to a friend, maybe it's 10 minutes sitting thinking, and how can I change my perspective? What can I do? So that's that's really the challenge is what weeds can you start to pull to make a better looking yard or flower bed? What can you do to water it, fertilize it, mow it, and manicure it your mind? Any thoughts, comments, or questions?

SPEAKER_02 26:01

I'll start pulling some weeds, but I'm not getting our water solved. And then I'm not getting in the ocean.

Final Challenge And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Well, I'm not I'm not climbing Mount Everest, so we all have we we all have our Everest, it just looks different. So I'm not saying it solves all the problems, but but maybe just something that you go, I can be courageous on this. Because it's not gonna change my life if I climb Everest. It's probably not gonna change your life if you go down a water slide. So just maybe some area that you think could make an impact. But but if you have any questions, thoughts, or comments, just let me know. Otherwise, everybody have a great evening. I'll see everybody later tonight or tomorrow. Thank y'all, and thank you to each of you for joining us on sit and talk. I look forward to seeing you right here next time on sit and talk.