Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Train for a Great Life. I heard this line a while back and it's just stuck with me. Fear is an ocean that's a mile wide but only an inch deep. It hasn't really left my mind, since it's such a good one. I'm sure you can think of ways that it applies to you. It's one of those things that hits hard because it's true, in a way that you already know, but you needed someone to put it into words like that. So let's break it down.

Speaker 1: 0:30

When fear shows up, when it hits, you feel surrounded. It's in your thoughts, your body, your breathing, your perspective. That's the mile-wide part. Your field of vision gets completely swallowed by the fear narrative. You start spinning scenarios. You know what if this goes wrong? What if they don't like it? What if I fail? What if I lose it all? What if I'm not good enough? And when you do that enough, you stop seeing opportunities and you only see threat. We over leverage that part of our brain that's wired to protect us and we let it run wild. It leads to scarcity, thinking hesitation, second guessing ourselves, downplaying what we are actually capable of. But most of that fear, it's surface level. The idea of the thing is more terrifying than the thing itself, and that's the only an inch deep part, right?

Speaker 1: 1:22

How many times have you finally stepped into something that scared the hell out of you, only to realize it wasn't that bad when I think of this? The first one, when I was a young kid, public speaking used to wreck me Growing up, the fear around it was so strong that I could barely focus on anything else. My school year I've said this before, my school year had two parts before speeches and after speeches. And after speeches I felt like I could relax, because it was the only time that I was asked to do that. Funny enough, I do a lot of that now in one way or another, and eventually found myself teaching, which is literally getting up in front of people, right? Here's the thing, though. With all of it, I still even when I have to, you know give out awards at the gym.

Speaker 1: 2:15

I'm constantly running through what I'm going to say and I'm worried that I'm going to. There's not a fear the same way, but I may be worried I'm not going to quite get it right, but the thing is, once I'm doing it, that fear is kind of not there anymore. Right, it's not the same kind of fear that's living in my head for days or weeks ahead of time, that the imaginary fear of all the lead up, that's the real monster, right? So like this applies to so many moments in adult life because, you know, especially like business decisions or financial decisions, I've had those times where I'm stressing hard about like, what if I get it wrong? And fear grows because I'm trying to solve every step of the problem in my head before I've even taken the first one right. I'm thinking about step 10 instead of just seeing step one.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Clearly, truth is, once you break it down, most things are just problems to be solved, not monsters under the bed. Right, you know what helps more than anything? Reps. Like anything else in life, if you want to overcome fear, you need to get reps in, right, you need to get up and speak, you need to make the phone call, you need to make the chance, you need to write the post, open the door, have the conversation. Every rep builds confidence and over time you start to stack up a track record that says, hey, I've done this before, I've done the scary thing before, I've survived and I've even grown from it. Eventually it becomes unreasonable to lead with a fear response because your track record starts to tell a different story. So, whatever you're facing right now, remember that fear is an ocean that is a mile wide but only an inch deep. Right, get your feet wet, wade through it. It's not as deep as it looks. See you in the gym.