How to Take Back Control of Your Life

What if the only thing separating your potential from your reality is what you choose to believe about the future? We dig into the sharp edge between faith and fear and lay out how your brain’s ancient wiring can either protect you from danger or quietly keep you small. From the amygdala’s alarm bells to the Reticular Activating System’s filtering of your attention, we break down how thoughts become habits and how habits become a life.

I share the hard-earned lessons from years of letting fear drive, followed by the shift to faith-built action. You’ll hear how tiny, daily decisions train your identity, why imagined judgment isn’t a valid compass, and how to use goal writing, visualization, and uncomfortable reps to reprogram your focus. We talk practical mindset training: catching avoidance in real time, labeling fear as a feeling rather than a fact, and taking the next step even when the outcome is uncertain. Along the way, we explore how your environment and self-talk shape your perception, and why changing either one begins to change what you notice, who you meet, and which doors you try.

There’s also a sober reminder that time is finite. Everyone you’re scared to disappoint will be gone within a century, and so will you. That truth isn’t morbid; it’s clarifying. If valuable things require effort, then effort is how you earn both results and self-respect. By the hundredth attempt, you won’t just be better—you’ll be someone who trusts yourself. If you’re ready to replace avoidance with action and let faith lead your focus, press play, take notes, and choose one courageous step today.

If this conversation sparked something, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find it. Your next brave rep starts now.

Chapters

• 0:00 Faith And Fear Defined
• 0:30 Realizing Fear Is Imagined
• 2:28 Regret From Playing Small
• 3:44 Why The Brain Defaults To Fear
• 5:01 Training Daily Decisions
• 6:21 Reprogramming Beliefs With Action
• 8:00 Mortality, Courage, And Commitment

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Faith and fear both require you to believe in something that hasn't happened. Both paths are requiring you to believe in something that hasn't yet existed, that you can't see, that hasn't come into fruition. You are going to die one day. Don't be the person on your deathbed begging God for a second chance. Welcome back to another episode of the Unstoppable Mindset Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Crane. Check this out. I want to share something profound with you, and I want you to really think about this for a second. Faith and fear both require you to believe in something that hasn't happened yet. Think about that. Having faith that things are going to be okay, having faith that you're going to be successful, having faith that you're going to find the right partner in life, whatever it is, that requires you to believe in something that has not happened yet. It's what we pray for, it's what we work hard towards, but it hasn't happened yet. Now, fear, which most people allow to dictate the way they live their lives, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of judgment, those fears are also things that you fabricated in your thinking, in your brain, that have not yet happened yet. And what if I told you that the success or lack of in your life largely can be traced back to what you're believing in or focusing on? Are you the type of person that leans into faith in hard times? Are you the type of person that believes in the outcomes you want and has faith that if you work hard, make the change, make the commitment, make the sacrifice, that it's gonna work out in your favor? Or are you the type of person that has a meaningful goal or a change you want to make, but you allow fear to stop you from ever taking action? You see, that's most people in life. Most people never go after what they really want because of fear. And the fear is not even real. It's not something you could touch or see. It's a feeling inside of you. It's a figment of your imagination. It's a way of thinking that triggers an emotion that then leads to a lack of action. Now I've lived in in both ways, meaning I was the person that operated from fear for years, and then I became a man of faith. I'll tell you this: the man of faith, that's the path that has allowed me to achieve at a high level. That's the path that has allowed me to bring my visions to reality. The guy that listened to fear wasted his potential, wasted opportunities, and let his life pass him by. I remember as a young kid, I wanted to be a professional athlete, and I had all the faith in the world that I could do it. And then I was met with adversity, and life circumstances really changed my attitude, my mindset, and I started operating from fear. And I started worrying about not being good enough, not being as big as the other kids. What if I really tried and I failed? Right? All these hidden fears started really holding me back in life and keeping me stuck. And in high school, I never even played sports. I'm an athlete, man. I love sports. I'm gifted, I'm talented. And I didn't play baseball, I didn't play basketball, I didn't play football. And it was one of my greatest regrets to date. Now I want to tell you this: if you listen to fear, if you can get hyper-focused on the way you think and the way you make decisions, and you recognize that you're letting fear hold you back, you will never get what you want in life. If you listen to fear and let that dictate the way you live your life, you will never get what you want. And you have to just get in the habit of recognizing that and telling that to yourself. Making change is scary. Going after your dreams is scary, it's hard. There's a lot of pressure. It's the unknown. There's no guarantees. But guess what? Would you rather go for it and find out what you're capable of and at least go for something that's meaningful in your life, or let fear hold you back forever and never do anything and then die? Like, how crazy is that? You know? And what you have to recognize the way the brain operates, right? Like neuroscience is really interesting. When you can study the brain and understand what all these different features in the brain do and all these functions are made for over time, it kind of helps to start makes of things. You know, so I want to talk to you about fear because at one point, fear was actually a really good thing for human beings. Like, fear is what prevented you from going out in the jungle and wandering too far away from your tribe and getting eaten by a tiger. Fear is what prevented you from going up and wrestling a bear for that honey that it was eaten, right? Of that fish. Like fear is what prevented you from looking too far over a cliff and falling over the cliff and dying, or climbing into a fire and getting burned alive. You know, fear is an ancient survival mechanism developed in the brain to preserve you. There's an area in the brain called the amygdala. You can look it up and study it, and that's where your fear is processed, and the emotion that you experience is then created. And so, what you have to recognize is the fear that we all have, it's probably the most uh prevalent human emotion and like thinking pattern that we have in the world. Because at one time it served us, and it's what allowed humans to survive and get to this point over thousands and thousands of years. But nowadays, in 2025, in a world of abundance where resources aren't scarce, where opportunities are everywhere, fear is what's holding you back. Because if you can train yourself to have faith and be an open-minded free thinker and believe in yourself, you can do anything you set your mind to. Okay. But if you're letting fear dictate the way you make decisions, you're gonna continuously do that because we're creatures of habit. So if you find yourself going up throughout the day and you're like putting things off and you're letting fear or doubt or these inner insecurities that you possess stop you from doing what you want to do, you're training yourself to be a fear-based thinker. You're training yourself to be a lesser version of who you want to be. Just recognize that. So you gotta start going throughout your day and you gotta have hyper awareness and focus around how you make decisions. Even the smallest, most minute decisions are gonna shape and mold who you become and how you continue to make decisions in the future. Listening to fear and operating from a place of fear will never get you what you want in life. That's a fact. Now, if you find yourself listening to fear and giving in, you just got to tell yourself this course of action is gonna lead to regret. This course of action is gonna lead to me being a lesser version of myself. This course of action is gonna lead to me being a poor example for my children or the people I care about. You have to train yourself to recognize the importance of every decision so you can do it different and you can find a new path in life. You know, and and so the next thing I want to share with you that coincides with that thought is programming. You're programming yourself constantly based on the way you make decisions. Your self-talk is constantly creating a program that is gonna dictate the way you live your life. Now, there's another part of the brain called the RAS. Look this up, write it down. Reticulator activating system. I share this all the time because that's the filter and lens in which you see the world. So if you're constantly thinking about why you can't do stuff, why you're not good enough, or that you're gonna be judged, or that you might fail, or da da da da da, all this negativity, you're going to see that reflected in the world around you. You're gonna constantly see signs and hear things that people say or notice a commercial or a TV show or a movie that you're watching where someone tried and they failed. It's crazy how this programming works. And you'll really understand what I'm talking about when you change your programming. If you can start to believe in yourself and operate from faith, and you get up every day and you write down your goals and you envision what you want, and you start to change those inner beliefs and you're taking action, you're facing fears, and you're doing things that make you uncomfortable, but you're going after it anyways because you know you only got one life and this life is short and you want more for yourself, and you start actively changing, you will start to see the world around you differently. That programming, that filter known as the RAS, right? A bundle of neurons in the brainstem that really dictates what you see and how you recognize the world around you, it'll start to alter and change over time. And now you'll start to see quite the opposite. You'll watch movies and you'll see that that individual was going through adversity and they faced tests, but they kept going and they kept trying. Like, damn, like that person believed in themselves. They're operating from faith, right? You'll start to notice like people, like you'll be walking by a bar on the street and you'll notice a playoff football game, and you'll see, you know, the underdog winning the national championship or something. You'll you'll start to see all these signs and all these things in your environment that coincide with that new belief that you can do it, that you are capable, that despite being scared or not sure of yourself, you're going after it anyways. Like it's crazy how that programming works. You'll start to pick up different books, you'll start to get around and acquaint with new people and different types of social settings, your whole world will change because now your programming has changed. Okay. You the way you see the world is everything. Now, what affects the way you see the world? It's your beliefs, the way you were brought up, and your self-talk. Now, if you're brought up in an environment with poor people or hardships or violence or drugs and addiction, things that I went through, guess what you have to do? You have to reprogram yourself because you're a byproduct of your environment. So if you don't want to be poor, if you don't want to be broke, if you don't want to be a drug addict, if you don't want to go to prison like your family members, you have to change. How do you change? You have to have faith that you can change. You have to have faith that it is possible. Okay? Then you have to do the work to prove that sentiment, those inner beliefs, that desire. You have to prove it true through action. That's how you reprogram yourself. That's what I did in prison. How many books did I read? How many words did I look up in the dictionary? How many freaking push-ups did I do? How many early mornings in the dark doing the work on myself when no one was around? No one cared what I was doing, no life coaches. Like nobody saying, Sean, keep going. I had to have faith. If I operated from fear, I would have been doing drugs, I would have been with the knuckleheads, I would have become another loser, another statistic. I didn't want to be that man. So I had a choice, right? There's two paths in life: fear or faith. You both are both paths are requiring you to believe in something that hasn't yet existed, that you can't see, that hasn't come into fruition. And wherever your focus goes, energy flows. So if you're believing that you can't, if you're scared to take chances, if you don't go after what you want in life, you're gonna hyper focus on the negatives and the reasons why you can't. And that's gonna become the default program that you live your life. But if you train yourself to believe in the limitless possibilities that God has bestowed upon us and the infinite potential that you possess, and the fact that you have a purpose or a vision or ideas or goals or these things that you want to change and do, and recognize that God put those things on your heart for a reason. Have faith that if you do the work, you take action, you face your fears, you take the risks, you go for what you want in this life, it's all gonna work out the way it's supposed to. And check this out. This is something I want to share with you that I always share on stage. And I hope this hits home for you the way it really is hit home for me when I think about it. You're going to die one day. And everyone around you right now that you're worried about disappointing or being judged by or not fitting in with, they're all gonna be dead in a hundred years. We're all gonna be dead. And you're worried about what people are thinking or what they're saying, or that you might fail and you might not be good the first time you try. Guess what? You probably won't. But by the hundredth time of being relentless and getting better and showing up every day, you'll start to improve. You will build that inner strength, you will develop confidence, and you will prove to yourself that you are capable. But it's not gonna come easy because guess what? Anything valuable in life, you gotta work hard for it. And that's the way it should be because when you get that result, when you become that person, when you create that life, you will appreciate it so much more. You are going to die one day. Don't be the person on your deathbed begging God for a second chance. Be the person with tears of gratitude streaming down your face because you finally made the decision to go all in and you proved yourself how capable you were, and you created a life that you absolutely love and cherish.