The Difference Between "Good Fear" and "Bad Fear" {B'Day Fun D4 Ep 211}

Your heart races, your stomach tightens, your thoughts get loud. So is that the thrill of growth or a red flag asking you to pause? I dig into the real difference between good fear and bad fear and walk through practical ways to read your body before your mind writes a story. Instead of treating fear as the enemy, I treat it as information. An early signal from the reptilian brain that kept our ancestors safe and still helps us navigate modern choices in business and life.

I explore how good fear often feels stretchy rather than shrinking. A nervous buzz with a steady undertow that quietly pulls you forward. That’s the discomfort of visibility, pricing leaps, and creative risk where breathing creates space and the signal softens. On the other side, I identify markers of bad fear like contraction, urgency, pressure to decide right now, and a lingering sense that something is off even after logic tries to smooth it over. You’ll hear a vivid street‑crossing story showing how the body can save you in a split second and why honoring that signal builds trust.

From there, I tackle the most common confusion points. How culture teaches us to override discomfort and call it bravery, or to avoid risk and call it alignment. I offer a simple, repeatable process to slow decisions, ask “expansion or contraction,” and check for steadiness under nerves. You’ll learn to notice whether your body subtly leans in or pulls back, how breath changes the volume of each signal, and how to journal patterns so your intuition gets clearer with practice.

By the end, you’ll have a grounded way to navigate launches, hard conversations, price changes, creative leaps, and everyday choices without bulldozing yourself. The aim isn’t to be fearless. It’s to be fluent in your own signals. If you’re standing at the edge of something and your body is talking, this conversation gives you language, structure, and confidence to move with real self‑trust.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s on the brink of a big move, and leave a quick review to tell us what “good fear” feels like for you.

Transcript

Fear Speaks Through The Body

Reptilian Brain And Real-World Safety

Thriving Versus Surviving In Business

Sensing Good Fear: Signs Of Expansion

Sensing Bad Fear: Signs Of Contraction

Intuition, Red Flags, And Overriding

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode. Today I want to talk about the difference between good fear and bad fear. And yes, I'm using the word bad because you know a lot of people use that word, so I thought I'd use it. And I want you to think about when you're about to make a big move, your body does react, your heart speeds up, your stomach might tighten, and your thoughts might get louder. Here's the question though is that the nervous excitement of growth, or is it your body telling you that something isn't right? Not all fear is the same. Some fear means that you're expanding, and some fear means you're overriding yourself. Today I want to talk about the difference and how to tell what the difference is. How to stop, sorry, I thought there was a bird there, I seen something move. And how to stop confusing intuition with self-sabotage. Let's have a look at how fear speaks through the body. Fear is physical before it's logical. Your body reacts before your mind creates a story. And the reason for that is something called the reptilian brain. It is the thing that kept us alive when we were, you know, in the caves and even up to you know fairly recently. Think about the people that were in the wars, you know, even people at home, they had the fear of being bombed. They didn't know if it was going to happen or not. So their reptilian brain did that, and that's why it's physical, and it's you know, before it's logical, because of that. And they would have had reactions like I know my parents blacked out the windows so that the planes couldn't see the town. Now, how scary is that? And that is fear, that's you know, that's fear that for them was good, it kept them safe. Thankfully, as far as I know, we don't have to worry about that anymore. And that's why we need to look at what fear is and how to actually work with it. Because when you activate yourself in business, in life, whatever, it doesn't automatically mean danger. A racing heart can actually mean growth, not threat. Think about when you're excited about something, what happens physically, and that's where learning to understand the difference is really important. Because if we give in to fear, we're not going to do anything, we're gonna stay in survival mode. And business isn't about surviving, it's about thriving, and that is what I love about business. We thrive, the body is information, it's not an enemy. Now, the goal isn't to eliminate sensation, but understand it. And if you've been following me for a while, you will know that I talk about how trusting your body and learning to listen to it is the first step to anything, it's the first step to knowing your intuition, it's the first step to learning to how to um develop your psychic abilities. And I want you to understand before you can label fear as good or bad, you have to notice how it actually feels, and that's where learning to tune into your body is so important because you'll feel things. Now, good fear, it's going to be different for everybody. So I'm just going to give you some ideas. Okay, these are just ideas, that's why learning to understand your body is important. Now, good fear could actually feel stretchy, not shrinking. There could be nervousness, yet there's also the possibility there's expansion underneath what is being activated. You feel pulled forward, even if it feels uncomfortable. You want to move forward. You actually sometimes physically your body will move forward. There's fear around visibility or growth. And is it actually about that? And not safety. Let me say that again. The good fear, it's about visibility and growth. It's not about safety, it's the discomfort of being seen, raising your prices and making that leap, the leap that you really want to make. Yet, not all activation carries the sense, carries the sense of expansion. When we look at bad fear, it feels like contracting. Again, this is just things that I've come across. Your body tightens inward instead of opening outward. There's urgency or pressure attached to it. You feel like there's movement, but it's like you kind of want to run away from things, and it feels like you have to decide now or you're going to lose something. And so the bad fear, we need it. We actually need that fear because it is life-saving. I have had it quite a few times when I go to cross roads as a pedestrian. There's something happens within my body, and instead of moving forward, I actually move back, and then something happens like a car might come streaming through, or suddenly a car will stop because I'll realize there's someone wanting to cross. That fear has saved my life, and some people you know might say, Oh, it's you know, it's bad, it's not. That's that's helpful. The fear also lingers as a warning and not a stretch. Even after you try to rationalize it, something feels off. And this is a tricky part because both can feel intense in the moment. Again, this is why you need to learn how to trust what your body's saying, learn how to listen to your body and then trust it, because it will tell you that fear that I was talking about with pedestrians, that's my intuition as well. It is both together because the reptilian brain comes in and it's like, no, no, no, pedestrian crossing, careful. Then the intuition comes in, okay, it's safe to cross. No, it's not. So I've got both happening at the same time because I've done so much work with all of it, and it's really powerful. And this is where we can actually confuse the two because we've been taught to override discomfort. So we push through the red flags and call it bravery. We've also been taught to avoid risk. Risk is scary, risk is not good, we shouldn't risk. So we label growth as not aligned because it's scary. And the mind can distort the body's message, it can turn expansion into panic or panic into ambition. I'm just looking out the window because I think there's a storm here. And this is where the real skill comes into it. It's not about eliminating fear, it's about learning how to read it. Let's build up your physical intuition, slow the decision down. And you hear my voice got softer, didn't it? The other beat, I was firm with you. And now the softness. Because good fear settles when you breathe into it, and bad fear often gets louder. Like that voice that says, Don't cross that road. That's the fear coming in. It's getting loud and loud and loud. And I want you to ask your body, not just your mind. Because as I said, we've got the reptilian brain, the mind is coming in. And ask, does this feel like expansion or contraction? What does it feel like to you? I want you to look for the steadiness under the nerves. We all get nerves. When I first started doing videos, I think probably over seven, seven years now. This is being over five years, but I started doing videos well before then. I was nervous. And I did have fear. Yeah, I went with that nervousness. And so the videos out there, some of them people might think, oh, pretty crap. Do I care? No. What matters is I got up and I did it. I went with that fear. I was steady under those nerves. Because that growth fear still has a quiet knowing beneath it. And the red flag doesn't. The red flags, have a look at what they are. Have a look at your red flags. Because if you're standing on the edge of something right now and your body is reacting, don't rush to label it. Fear isn't the enemy that we're taught it is. Sometimes it's a feeling of your comfort zone expanding, and sometimes it's your intuition asking you to pause. The work isn't to be fearless, it's to become fluent with your own signals. Because when you learn the difference between a stretch and a red flag, you stop abandoning yourself. And that is what you're doing by not listening to your body. You are abandoning yourself. And you actually start moving with real self-trust. And I can tell you from experience that self-trust, I can tears, that self-trust is so beautiful and so amazing. Thank you so much, everyone, for watching or listening. And I'm wishing you a beautiful day wherever you are in this world.