Conditioning Yourself to Face Fear | Dr. Julie Wilkes

Dr. Julie Wilkes is an author, coach, motivational speaker and global leader in organizational psychology, employee experience, and well-being strategy. Dr. Wilkes joins the Hunting Bravery podcast to explore the science behind courage, fear and resilience. In this episode, she explains how the brain responds to perceived threats, why fear can keep people stuck, and how intentional daily practices can help rewire negative thought patterns. From understanding the amygdala’s role in survival instincts to developing practical strategies for overcoming fear in real time, Dr. Wilkes offers actionable insights on building bravery through consistent mental and emotional training.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Quick question: What would you do if fear wasn't allowed to vote? Today, we're gonna find out. Bravery isn't the absence of fear, it's the decision to move anyway. Welcome to Hunting Bravery. I'm Amy Sewee, and this show is about the moments that change us, the quiet decisions, the uncomfortable truth, and the courage it takes to step into a life that actually feels like yours. Here, we talk to people who've taken the leap, sometimes boldly, sometimes trembling, but always honestly. Because bravery doesn't always look heroic. Sometimes it looks like saying yes. Sometimes it looks like walking away. Today, we're hunting a different kind of predator. The thoughts of fears and beliefs that keep us small. Today's guest is Dr. Julie Wilkes, a thoughtful voice on what it really means to live bravely. Not in the highlight real sense, but in the quiet daily choices that shape who we become. Dr. Wilkes brings a deep understanding of the inner stories we carry, the fears that keep us stuck, and the moments when we're called to choose courage anyway. Her work centers on helping people recognize that bravery isn't about being fearless. It's about being honest, intentional, and willing to step forward even when the outcome isn't guaranteed. In this conversation, we explore how bravery shows up in real life, in personal growth, in difficult decisions, and in work of confronting beliefs and behaviors that quietly hold us back. Dr. Wilkes reminds us that sometimes the bravest thing we can do is pause, reflect, and choose a different path. We are so excited to welcome Dr. Julie Wilkes to Hunting Bravery. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I am so glad to be here. What an honor. And honestly, when uh I first got the opportunity to um be a part of this show, I thought I can think of really very few humans I've ever met who have less bravery than you. Um, because uh it you just amplify just what bravery means. So I'm so excited to talk with you about it today, and I can't wait to get into it.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Well, thank you. I I'm so excited to have you here. I have so many questions for you. Um, and there are so many things about this, but I'm just gonna jump right into this, okay? So, Dr. Julie, what role does bravery play in helping us find the good in our lives?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So let's step back for a minute and talk about what I define as bravery or courage. This is when we choose to take action, even when we're afraid. Now, when we're not afraid, when life is good and everything is working out and we take action, I wouldn't necessarily call that courage. That's something we're excited about, something we're using some different elements of our body and our brain in order to make those choices. But when we are afraid, and oftentimes fear will cripple us, paralyze us, keep us back, talk us out of it, cause us to do all sorts of different things, except for take the action, or take an action that is uh more of a reaction. And so true courage and bravery is when you're afraid and you've been able to condition your brain and your body to work together in coherence to take great action, anyways. And so I want to take some time for us to really get into it and what happens in the body and the brain. But that's really the way I look at what courage and bravery is. And and when we are courageous, our brain is receiving this signal from whatever is going on in our lives, whether it's from our own internal thoughts or something out, uh a potential python, or whether it's that we got a bad feedback at work and now we're feeling threatened at work, whatever the stimuli may be. And the first thing that happens in our body is we have this thing called the amygdala. The amygdala sits right behind our eyes and it is constantly scanning to protect us. And when we are not courageous, what happens is the amygdala will say, Is there a threat? Is there a threat? Yes, there's a threat right here. Shut it all down. Stop the processing that takes about six to seven seconds to go through all of our brain processes to make a logical decision through the prefrontal cortex. And let's just react because we may not have time. And that's when the fight or flight kicks in. And sometimes there is courage that is seen in a fight or flight because our adrenaline gets gets lifted and our cortisol is lifted and we're in a stressful place and we react. But oftentimes, unless it's in a really difficult, you know, um, near-death place or a very dramatic place in day-to-day life, we don't need to be that reactive. What we really need to do is regulate our brain and be able to tell our prefrontal cortex, don't shut down. Yes, I do have a uh something that is causing me to feel threatened, but I'm going to regulate and say, I need to work through it and make a good decision for me. And that is when courage happens. And so instead of the brain shutting down and going in reactive mode and that fight or flight response, it is the brain, the brain says, I'm here for you. You've conditioned me to be able to think through this. You've prepared yourself, maybe not for this particular situation, but you trust yourself enough and you know that you can do this. And that is when we jump into something, make a courageous decision, and find true bravery.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

That all makes absolute sense. My question here is how do we start that? How do you start to condition yourself to do that? Because I know, you know, that fight or flight is there. And it's easier, I think, for people to just stop to shut down and go away. I mean, that's the easiest thing to do, typically. So, how do we condition ourselves? How do we start that process?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yes, so 80 uh scientists will argue this number, 80 to 90 percent of all of our decisions every day are just patterns. They're patterns of what we've already taught ourselves over time. And sometimes those patterns are really beneficial. They can be the easiest way to get to work every day, they can be the easiest process for us to take to get ourselves ready in an efficient manner. They can be the way that we process something so that it helps us. But oftentimes we've also created negative patterns that, and especially if we've been hurt, if we have had failure where we felt shame, felt rejected, any of those feelings that we don't we don't like to feel. And this is the cool thing, and I'm probably gonna say this five more times throughout this show today. Your brain and your body, they love you so much. They their whole job is to keep you alive and to remind you what an amazing being you are. And so they they'll get confused sometimes, especially when the head and the heart are out of coherence, when they're not working together. And so maybe our heart wants to have the courage, but our head is saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, how could you ever do that? And so we're we're we're not working together with ourselves. So what we have to do is create patterns and train ourselves to anticipate that when things come up, we don't shut down. And so, you know, I'm a big fan of you can't, unlike the Olympics, where you can train for your sport and you get out there and you run. But what happens, you know, take Lindsay Vaughn, for example, who um, you know, in a in a training um uh run, she fell and and and did some damage to her ACL. So she may have not been able to um plan for that, but she's been through something in the past that has taught her how to not say, oh gosh, this is it. I just spent my whole life to get here and now it's over. She trained herself to say, and I'm getting back up again. And even though this is a big bummer, I'm gonna have the courage to get back on that slope again. And so it is a training, just as much as someone will train their body for an athletic competition or train for a business process that you know how to do, we have to train our brain to know how to recover when things don't go our way or when we're scared, or even just to prepare ourselves for the education and knowledge of an area that we are in. And so I think one of the things I think about with this in training is, you know, it's it's a pretty big answer. It's it's doing daily practices around working with head and heart coherence, um, allowing ourselves to fine-tune ourselves and to connect in with our head and our heart and to speak words of affirmations and to believe in ourselves and to say, I don't want to shut down when life gets scary. I want to think through it. I know I have the ability and the power to do that. So, so this is one side of it. The other side of it is just knowledge. The other side of it is if you're wanting to do something, but you're afraid of it, you have to kind of peel back the layers and understand why. Uh, is it that you don't have enough information? Is that you don't have those skills? Is that, you know, whatever it is that you can do to continue to help you to continue to become more aware and know that you're more developed so that when you do get into that place where you have a challenge or you're being confronted or you've never been there before, even if you haven't been there, your body and your brain are working together to say, oh, I have been here. I've learned some of this before. I, you know, and I think about you and and your story of having the courage to drive, you know, all the way down uh to start this new thing that you didn't know how it was going to go, and it wasn't really a huge guarantee, but you knew in your heart that this was a passion you had and you wanted to make a difference. And even though perhaps you didn't know all the outcomes if it was really gonna work out, and here you're facing some deadly snakes that nobody really had done what you were doing, you had already conditioned yourself to say, but I know enough to know I'd like to do this, and I don't have all the answers, and I'm gonna work really hard to learn and grow and become the very best I can be so that I can do this. And I wouldn't say you probably do it without fear, but you do it despite the fear because you know you're doing it to benefit both people and uh our wildlife, and you've got that purpose connecting you to learning that. So I truly feel that anytime we try to overcome, you know, our worries, our fears, and they come up, we have to recognize that they're just patterns and we have to rewrite them. We have to work every day to train ourselves to have a new narrative and a new voice and to identify that. We have to create new repetitions for how we respond to things and arm ourselves with the knowledge and the curiosity to build up over time so that we know we do have this and we can do hard things.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Wow. So let me back up here for a minute, Dr. Julie. So when you mentioned, you know, me going down and you know, not knowing if this was gonna work, having, you know, trusting myself. For me, that I I don't feel like that was being brave with it. I was just doing it. I was gonna go down there. I I was like, I'm just gonna figure this out. This is just gonna happen. You know, so it didn't, it didn't take a lot of this, you know, talking myself into this or consciously overcoming some things, right? It was just a natural thing for me. Now that's not, you know, other things take, you know, more than that for me. But how if somebody is is stuck in their pattern, say, let's say somebody's stuck in their pattern and they're like, oh, well, I can't do this because I just never have and I'm never gonna try. What is that first? I mean, it has to be awareness, has to be the first piece of this, right? But then from there, where what is a I don't know, maybe like a tip or something like that can help people just take that first recognition step or just that first little nudge in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah. Well, first of all, I would say that you did not see it as an act of bravery because you had prepared yourself and you had known yourself enough to know that even if you weren't exactly sure what you were jumping into, it sounded really cool to you and you were passionate and excited about it, and you knew it had a purpose and it just connected to your soul. So the desire and the excitement behind it was far greater than the fear that could have been connected to it. Whereas someone else, someone like me, who the leaving my job, driving, you know, a couple states, starting my life over again, living in someone's father's house for a while, um, you know, all of the things I know your story did that, you know, you had a lot of, you know, twists and turns along the journey and going after and chasing deadly snakes to try to help um, you know, not only improve their lives and the wildlife, but people's lives. And, you know, someone like me, that would sound pretty scary. And I would probably say to myself, what am I even doing? But I wouldn't have prepared myself. That wouldn't have been something that I had thought about, conditioned myself, worked on. And so really I think that that I almost think we have two different kinds of fear. There's a fear of I'm passionate about it, but I'm afraid, what if I fail? And then there's a fear of I'm in something and I don't know anything about it. Maybe I got put this way. Um, you know, I'm I'm my and I've I didn't ask to be here and I didn't want to be here and now I'm scared of where I am. So let's just break down yours first. Um, yours, somebody else might have been fearful and would have had to go through steps of really trying to connect their head and their heart. Is this something really that I've prepared myself and I'm ready to do and I can do it and I believe in myself, or is it not? Because oftentimes courage and and moments of bravery teach us what we really want and how much we really want it. Because if we can make the excuses and back off and not do it, it either means we weren't ready, not now, or we really didn't want it. But if we still find that ability to go after it, we do want it. And it's really understanding that there's always going to be this little voice in the back of our head questioning ourselves. And that little voice is actually your protector trying to help you. It doesn't realize it's sometimes deregulating you because it's confusing you and saying, Why are you trying to talk me out of this? I really like to do this. And then we start to have all these questions. Well, maybe I shouldn't be here. And and I'm sure along your journey, when you hit a couple of difficult roads or something wasn't gonna work out or something, you know, that's when you question, like, should I really do this? You know, should I continue moving forward? And it takes courage to take a step when you don't know how that's gonna turn out. Now, on the other side of it, there's um, you know, the courage of, I'm in a place I've never been, it's uncomfortable, and I'm gonna have to figure out how to get out. I don't know if I can do this. I think of a friend of mine who's experiencing a really difficult time with her dog right now, and she doesn't know if she's making the right choices, and she's afraid. She's afraid of the different outcomes. She's overimagining the terrible things that can happen and underimagining the miracles and the things that can happen. And she's um fearful and paralyzing herself from being able to just love on her dog right now and make great decisions. And so, you know, it's in those moments whether, you know, that we've we have the awareness and we've conditioned ourselves to say, this is something I want, and I want to continue to work and manifest and think about it and condition myself to go in that direction, or if it's something that we never asked for, never wanted to be in, and now we're in this place and we've got to be able to find the courage and strength. You know, I think about people who've lost their jobs, people who are in a financial turmoil, who never expected to get there, in a difficult relationship that they had to leave, and they're in a place where they think very humbly, I don't know how I got here and I don't know what to do about it. It's in those moments that yes, the awareness is true. It's the awareness that I know that I'm feeling this way, but this is not my truth. This is an old record that has been playing in my head. Somewhere, somehow, I was taught, not I, but the general I. We were taught, maybe as kids or an experience that happened as teenagers, that whatever the situation that's at hand that's threatening us happened, but potentially in a different way when we are younger, and it caused us shame, it caused us rejection, it caused us misfortune, it caused us whatever it was. Our body remembers. There's the saying the body does keep score, and it certainly does. It will remember 50 years of something that happened, and it can sit dormant for 50 years, and then you get into a space where you're not feeling courageous, and it can light up like a Christmas tree, it can light up every time and say, uh, and you may think, I don't know why I'm so fearful of this. I don't know why all of a sudden I don't have the courage I thought I would have. And it's just because we've got this dysregulation of head and heart. So what we have to work on, and I think of this as daily practices and in the moment strategies, our daily practices is continuing to work on knowing ourselves, um, knowing what we're passionate about, knowing ourselves so truly that when something comes up and puts us in a tough situation, we know who we are authentically. And if we make decisions powerfully with ourselves authentically, we can't go wrong. We also have to be able to speak the voice of I can do hard things and not keep speaking the voice of what if I make bad decisions. We have to flip that script. And I think that's what I think there is an epidemic, if you will, of people saying, What if I make bad decisions? What if I make bad decisions and keeping ourselves back?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

You're absolutely right. You know, it's it's funny because when I did make the decision to come to Florida, I said, What is the worst? Let's say I go to Florida and it doesn't work out. I go to catch these pythons and it doesn't work out. What is my worst case scenario? So I said, All right, I if it if I can't make enough money, I can always be a bartender and catch pythons. Okay, that's cool. Um, if it doesn't work out, let's say it doesn't work out at all, I can get my real estate license in Florida. I mean, that's not such a bad gig, right? Very worst case, I come back to Indiana, tail between my legs a little bit, eh, pick up where I left off, no harm, no foul. I can say I did it and it didn't work out, and I'm just back to where I was before. So I looked at that and I thought, none of that really is a bad thing. And so I think that that's, you know, to your point, that's what you know, if you can look at that and say, okay, so what is the outcome? What are the possible realities of this? And by talking through that with yourself, you can kind of say, okay, is it really that bad?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

100%. What you did was you had a plan. You know, and again, I'm gonna use two two different examples in life. One is something where I want to do it, but I'm afraid of it, which is potentially what yours could have been, you know, or you know, but you made a plan and you said, you know, even in the worst outcome, I can still handle it. And so that's a great technique. That's a great thing, you know. Um if it's even in a in a weird comparison, people say if if somebody's having credit card debt issues and they're really fearful and worried and they're not answering their phone because they know their credit card company is calling them, there's this interesting study that shows that once they've talked to that credit card company and made a payment plan, so they're not gonna pay it off, they're still gonna probably have some dings or something not great at first. But once they have a plan, their whole nervous system starts to re-regulate because they can trust themselves that even if they're not where they wanted to be, it's gonna be okay. They have a plan. And what you just in a different sense, you just gave the same example of I'm going down and I'm taking a chance, and there's a chance I really want. I'm excited about it, something cool, want to try. And but if it doesn't work out, I've got a backup plan. So I'm not gonna be, you know, your mind didn't go to a place of scarcity where so many times we have trained our brain to do that of lack of, well, if I don't do this, and I'm gonna wind up, you know, penniless and and not able to do anything and a complete failure in life. And the truth is we over-imagine failure. We oh, we we keep ourselves back so often because we overimagine that it's not gonna work out. We say to ourselves, who do who does it work out for? It works out for you. It works out for anyone who has the courage to go after their dreams. And I will tell you, their dreams don't always look like the picture that they thought when they began, but their dreams will unfold right before them when they find that courage to allow their amygdala to say, this is a threat. There, this may not go the way you planned, and still be able to regulate yourself enough to keep your prefrontal cortex connected and say, but I'm going to use all the parts of my brain and body together and make a great choice. And so um I I absolutely think that that that is a golden ticket for something. And I think it could compare on both sides, the things that we're passionate about, and then the things that we never thought that we'd ever be in. Um, I have so many friends who are in there, you know, um in a state of their life where they've had significant change midlife they weren't expecting. And they're fearful. Hey, I didn't build my life this way. I thought that I'd put work hard the first 10, 20 years of my adulthood, and then I'd have the money in the bank and be able to ride a little coast a little bit better and be living into this white picket fence sort of life. And sometimes it's not gone that way. And now they're paralyzed because they're afraid of this isn't what I pictured, this isn't what I wanted. And how did I get here? And what why did I make such bad decisions? I arrived in a place that I would never have chosen. And maybe somebody arrived there because that was a lesson they were supposed to learn, but also to find the courage to believe in themselves, to make a plan, to regulate their head and heart, and to show up every day moving themselves forward because they can. So I love, I love that example that you gave.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Well, I'm gonna actually give another one because when you mentioned the credit card thing, it totally took me back. So now I'm thinking that yeah, maybe I have conditioned myself to be like, you know what? I can survive. I will be fine no matter what, because I cannot, I've literally never told this to anyone. So hey, why don't I just put it on the podcast for the first time ever? Um I feel so honored. So when um it was back a long time ago, I was in a place financially that I was. Gonna have to um file bankruptcy. And that was one of the worst, like I was overcome with credit card debt. I had just gotten divorced. You know, it was just this awful place. And bankruptcy was like, you know, just taboo. You don't file bankruptcy, you're a loser. You've failed at life, you've failed at everything if you have to do that. And but my anxiety about my credit card bills every month. And I mean, I remember I went, I took a bunch of clothes out of my closet to go sell so I could pay my credit card bills. Like I look back on that, I'm like, oh my gosh. But you know, I was doing anything and everything that I could to not have to do that because that would just be just the absolute peak of failure. And so then, so when I finally talked to, I think it was a lawyer or something, and they said, Hey, you, you know, like you should do this. And your credit card companies, he said, just tell them you're filing bankruptcy and they'll leave you alone. Okay. And so I rem and I've been a person who has always paid every single bill on time and never late. And I remember that first time that that credit card bill came due and I didn't pay it, and I I thought my world was gonna collapse on me. Well, I woke up the next day, just a normal day, and it was fine. And I was like, okay, well, I survived that. Okay, that's not the end of the world. And then I got my first credit card call from the company, and they said, uh, you haven't made your payment. I said, I know. And it was so hard to say out loud. And I said, I'm finally in bankruptcy. And they said, Oh, okay, thank you. Have a good day. And I was like, wait, what? What just happened? And they were so nice about it. And they didn't, I don't know, curse me down to hell or something. I didn't know what I thought was gonna happen, but not that. And so it turns out that it was the be the beginning of a new chapter. And yeah, I didn't want to have to file bankruptcy. I didn't really have a choice, and it was fine. Nobody cared, everything worked out, and I got to again start again. So I feel like I took that, you know, experience when I thought the world was ending. And along with a few others, of course, when I was moving to Florida and said, you know what, I survived. I survived not paying my credit card bill. I woke up the next day. So what is the worst that's gonna happen, you know?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

A hundred percent, you know, and I feel like those are the real, you know, we are very inspired by what you do and how you, you know, what you've done with with helping wildlife and and the things that you do are things that I would say 99% of us wouldn't would be so fearful, we would get stuck in in uh in paralysis, even attempting something like this. But if you relate the same courage that you used to move your life, change your life, start a new job, go somewhere different, and try something exciting, it's the same courage and boxed up in a different way. It's about us understanding that truly there's, you know, no matter how tough today is, no matter what where you got, where you thought, how did I get here? This is embarrassing, this is not me. You know, it's it's funny. I've been in places that I never thought I would be. And sometimes I want people to know, but I want you to know I I I've lived, you know, life wasn't always like this for me. I was this or this or this or whatever the label was that was so important to me that now this new circumstance has caused me not to be able to have that label anymore. And I was shameful or embarrassed. And I realized, you know, we create our own emotional dysregulation, which then can take all. And if anybody's ever been there, it's just you just feel like you can't get it together. You can't get your thoughts together, you've got cognitive fog, you're not making good decisions, you're not feeling courageous because your head and your heart are so disconnected. But what you found is I did something hard, and it was, you know, something that I had labeled as maybe embarrassing or whatever that word might be. But once I did it, I was shown that really the outcome was I just had the courage to do it and just to say, yeah, not happy about this, but this is what I have to do, this is where I'm at. And then the world started to lift and help you, and the next day didn't fall apart, but it probably started to come together. And and so I think that's so important for somebody listening now who's just in that tough place, who's somewhere who they know where they never thought, and they need that courage right now to just say, you know, I just need to be able to have the courage to move myself forward in my life. So yes, I think that's that's completely true. And and I think that every single one of us goes through moments of that, especially as adults. It's almost like once we hit a per certain place where we, you know, have learned and maybe we're enjoying life, and and it's not that, you know, we get hit broadside and we think, why did what did I do to deserve this? It's because, at least in my opinion, our soul has gotten to a place where it's able to learn more. And we're able to learn that we're stronger than we ever thought we were, and that we are more capable. And these things that come into our lives that may sometimes feel like punishments, like that may have felt like, they're really just us redirecting our thoughts to this is me just being responsible, courageous, and believing that tomorrow's gonna be a great day. And if I get another day to live, I get another day to breathe, I get another day to do this thing called life, then I'm just gonna do it the best I can. So I I love you sharing that.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

I think that is so well said. Well, thank you. And thank you for uh actually your words made me remember that because sometimes you don't remember all those things that led you to a point. You know, I just say, yeah, I moved to Florida because it was that's what I wanted to do. But yeah, would I have had the courage to just do that if I wouldn't have survived, you know, my bankruptcy? You know, I I I don't know. I would like to hope so, but who knows? All of the the everything that happens in your life leads you to each moment, I feel like. And it is, it's the decisions. How can I make better decisions? How can I do this better? You know, asking yourself all of these questions, but awareness is really the first step of all of this, is being aware of it. So any any last words for us, Julie?

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, so I feel like you know, I talked about in the moment strategy, well, um, daily uh routines and in-the-moment strategies. And I would just would love to cover that off and give the listeners a few tools that they can use if they're wanting to try to re-regulate if your nervous system has been thrown off. Because first of all, anybody whose nervous system is dysregulated, and what you know, I've described what that feels like already, but it's just like you don't feel yourself. You feel like you're not connecting with yourself, you're having a hard time making decisions. Um, and it's probably coming from a place where you've had some challenges, maybe some trauma, maybe something, um, some fears, some threats come up, maybe that's connected or triggered you back to something in the past that's didn't work out as well, that your body is labeled as we'll never do that again, and you are your body and brain are at all costs trying to protect you and keeping you back, but really they don't understand that in protecting you and keeping you back, they're keeping you back from living into your greatest, greatest um dreams. And so for anybody who's kind of in that space, I think that the daily or or anybody who's just wanting to maintain a healthy emotional regulation and not get into a dysregulated space by being triggered by people or things or activities. Because we never know when they're gonna come, you know, we never know when we get that phone call that we weren't expecting that changed everything, you know. But I would say it's daily and it's not doing this when life is bad, it's doing this when life is good and everything in between because we want to create these new patterns. But it is connecting your head and your heart, and everybody's different in what's gonna make sense for you. Some people journal, some people do meditation practices. That's one of my favorite things. Some people will go to a yoga class and really focus on the mindful part of that physical practice. Um, other people will work on just really being very specific, writing down affirmations, rewriting scripts saying I am safe, I am calm, I make good decisions, whatever it is that's the reverse of what that brain is doing that sometimes takes us offline. But it's creating those new patterns and laying them down because here's what's happened. So if I'm I'm 50 years young, and so if I laid down a pattern back when I was 10, I've got 40 years of patterns to rewrite. So it doesn't happen overnight, but it doesn't take 40 years either. It will rewrite itself quickly when you are repetitive and you're teaching yourself your new way of thinking. In fact, um, I know some studies uh can show even seven to ten days of that consistent practice can you you at first you may even feel like a um like an imposter, you know, or or inauthentic. And I don't really believe this because your old patterns are still active. And so we're just laying the foundations for the new patterns. And after, you know, seven to ten days you start to feel a little different, and people actually start telling you that you're acting different and behaving different, it happens all the time. But really, 30, 60 days of practicing, you shift, you shift your patterns, and by 90 days, those patterns have rewritten any old scripts typically. Now, just know though that any old trauma can sit dormant forever. It can always reactivate if you don't get in the habit of continuing to practice rewriting that script. So that is something true. It's interesting, is everything else you can write over, but things that are connected to addictions, trauma, things that were really deep, deeply rooted, they will always have this place that can get reactivated randomly if we don't, you know. So we have to be careful about what we talk about, what we think about, and and how we take care of ourselves every day. So those are the daily strategies that we can practice and picking something. And some people they hike, they listen to music, but it's making sure that we're being affirmative and noticing the things that we say to ourselves that just don't help. They don't serve us. They're the old narratives, the self-sabotage, the keeping ourselves back, the playing small that we have to get rid of. And in place, we find those words that help us to stand in our own power and to serve us and to go after those things because you were not given this life to simply go through it, to check a box and get things done, and then one day that's it. You are given this life because there is a passion in your heart and there are skills within your body, and there's knowledge within your brain, and all of them are supposed to connect and to be able to allow you to achieve something. And it doesn't have to be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and it doesn't have to be rescuing a python, um uh, you know, and from the what, you know, um taking care of the python population. It can be whatever that meaningful thing is in each one of our own lives, and it can be just the fact that you were a great parent or a great partner or that you took care of a pet with all of your love, but whatever it is that is your purpose and passion, if you let all those other things get in the way, your courage is going to take a backseat, it's gonna forget about it, and over time that's your new normal, and you're not courageous at all. So the daily practices are super important. And then the in-the-moment strategies. This is something that when you are faced with something fearful, and you first of all, it's that awareness that you've been speaking about, but and you know, oh, here it is, I'm shutting down. In fact, I will tell you, this week I had one of these moments where something sort of resurfaced that that I thought that I had been working on really well, and something triggered it, and I immediately recognized it. I almost, you know, I almost talked to it like a friend. Oh, there you are again, showing up just what I thought I'd gotten rid of you. There you are again. And uh I had to work through it almost like I was working through an issue with a friend, and I had to start really being intentional about so why did this come up for me? What was it? What was it that's getting my way? What is that truth that's not really the truth that I'm saying to myself? And then what is that narrative that just got relaunched that is not true? And what is the narrative I need to say? And now what are the few sentences that I can keep saying to myself? And you know, there's a lot of studies done. Mel Robbins has been real um popular with launching this concept, and I know there's lots of studies that validate this as well. When we are wanting to do something courageous, there is, you know, there'll be an argument about how long that window is, but let's say five seconds, ten seconds that we'll talk ourselves out of it. Because we'll say, uh, I'm not good enough, or I messed up last time, or who am I to really do this? Uh, and if you've ever seen the movie, We Bought a Zoo, Benju, the lead character, I love this guy. He he bought a zoo, made a lot of courageous decisions after um you know going through a hard thing. And he always quoted, uh, when you're afraid, find 20 seconds of uh in insane courage. It's in that moment that you'll either go for it because you've conditioned yourself to have a voice and to find those words that you've told yourself that you're gonna say when you're in that moment, or you're gonna walk away from it and you're gonna miss maybe the greatest opportunity of your life. And so having those words readily available and recognizing, oh, this is me playing small. Oh, this is me being getting triggered to back to when, you know, something else was bad in my life. But that's not my truth. And I am going to power through this and I'm gonna do it because I am smart and I'm capable and I am strong, and I, you know, if I fail, I will fail, fail greatly and daringly. Uh, and if I succeed, wow, what could that do? So I think that the daily strategies, just to the daily routines, and then that in the moment strategy, that voice that you connect with, that you talk yourself into, I recognize you, I know that you're there, and I'm going to move past you because I know you don't speak my truth anymore. And that's, I think, when real power is achieved.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

I was gonna say that is so powerful, so powerful. Dr. Julie, thank you so much. You we have so much more to talk about and another podcast, another time for either one of us. It's so much fun to talk with you. Where can people find you to get your books? You have a website, social media.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Yeah, well, I'd love to hang out with folks. Um, any place that you want to find me, Dr. Julie Wilkes on Instagram, post tips and tricks. Um, I've got a website, drjuliewilkes.com. Um, I'm always launching new uh training courses and new areas of focus for positive and powerful living. And I also own a yoga plates and fitness studio concept. And you can find us at sevenstudioslive.com. We have a variety of different classes, but also online tools and online workouts as well. So I truly believe um, you know, in the pathway, I started off as a focus in business. I ended up achieving a master's in exercise physiology and starting a fitness studio. And then I moved into my PhD in psychology because I really wanted to connect the brain to it. And so what I've come out of all of that in my career, and it it's so it brings me so much joy to see really, I've focused on the coherence of the heart and the mind and the gut. And when we are living in that way, we are truly unstoppable. And so those are the things I hope you'll find within uh the different ways that I try to reach the different audiences, and I would be so honored and excited to come back and chat with you more. Thanks for all you've done and for sharing all your messages with the viewers.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Thank you, Dr. Julie. We will talk very soon. Tales from the Field presented by Ken DeTire. This is one of the weirdest catches that I've ever had. And the problem with these awesome, crazy catches is that nobody ever gets it on video because it's it's all hands on deck, and you have to, you know, you forget to hit play or you forget to put your GoPro on or whatever it is, because you really need to get these pythons. So this day we actually had clients out, Dave and I had clients out with us, and it was a father and his two sons that were about freshmen in high school. We're going island to island during the winter looking for these pythons that are breeding and basking. And it's the last island of the day, and uh, and we're all spread out, gridding out this island, and this kid yells, Python. So we all go running. Dave gets there first, and he was like, Amy, hurry up, it's a big one. So I was like, okay, well, when I get there, it's like all sawgrass and all dead sawgrass, and that is it's so hard. You can't see through it, you can't move through it. It's it's the worst. And Dave's at the edge of like the rocks, and I know that he's got his hand on probably the tail. And so, but the the dad was standing behind me and he was filming at this point, and he said, Amy, it's right there by your feet. And I'm looking down through the sawgrass and I'm like, What? And you know, there was kind of like a shelf, so he could see underneath, but I couldn't. So I said, Well, whatever. So I just stuck my hands in to feel around for it, and I found it. And so Dave's like, I've got the tail. And I said, Well, I guess I'm going towards the head. So I'm feeling up. I mean, this head could be anywhere, I have no idea. So I'm feeling up, and then all of a sudden I come to the end of another tail. So we have two. So I was like, oh my gosh. And so I hand this tail to the dad, and I said, Hey, listen, pull as hard as you can, because what they'll do, they'll wrap around that sawgrass, and it's just impossible to pull them out. I said, pull as hard as you can. I need to get up and go help Dave with this big one down here. She's like, Okay, okay. So he pulls, all of a sudden, I like I'm literally on my stomach, kind of in the sawgrass. My legs go flying up. And what happened was the python bit my leg. And when the guy pulled the python out, it pulled me out. It was the weirdest thing. And so I was, I finally realized what happened. So I stood up and I'm unhooking this silly python from my leg. And I told one of the kids to go down to help Dave. And so as I'm standing up, this python comes flying around. And I have to like move my leg out of the way so it won't bite me. And it sits right in front of me, about three feet off the ground, its mouth open, it kind of looked like a cobra. This has never happened to me ever. It was super cool. And I was like, oh my gosh, what do I do now? And so I just kind of went up underneath the jaw and I grabbed it under the chin. But I was like, oh my gosh, did anyone get that on video? Of course, nobody got it on video. That's the story of the Python life. But that was a really cool catch. And here's a spoiler alert: all of the shows are fake. They set every single catch up with snakes that they bring in. And if any of those shows would have tried to recreate that, they would have said, nope, that's fake. No way, no way that happened. But it did. Bravery doesn't end when the episode does. If something you heard today stirred you, sit with it. Ask yourself where you've been choosing comfort over courage, and where one small brave step might change everything. Remember, bravery isn't about being fearless, it's about being honest and moving anyway. If this episode resonated, share it with someone who might need it. And if you're ready to keep hunting your best life of purpose, I'll meet you right back here next time. This is hunting bravery. Stay curious, stay great.