People often confuse fear with danger. Danger is very real, but fear is an emotional response to something that may or may not be real. Let’s take a look at their specific definitions.

Danger: The possibility of suffering harm or injury. A person or thing that is likely to cause harm or injury.

Fear: A strong, uncontrollable, unpleasant emotion caused by actual or perceived danger or threat.

Notice that danger is an action – something that presents a very serious potential outcome of harm. This could be an action you take, or another person takes against you, or just simply being in a situation that is dangerous.

Fear is not an action. It’s an emotion. It is a feeling about something that has yet to happen. Its intensity is so powerful that it can impair and skew our judgment when determining what is truly a threat.

So how do we learn to conquer our fears rather than let them conquer us?

The first step is to explore what you are really afraid of. Then go through the worst-case scenario and think about what you have control over and create an action plan. Your plan should only entail actions that you have complete control over.

Chris Hadfield did a great TED Talks in Vancouver about going temporarily blind while in space. You can check it out here:

Astronauts spend hours and hours practicing not only what should go right in space, but what can go wrong. In practicing different scenarios, you learn how to effectively deal with situations that happen that can be terrifying.

When I was really little, my mother was afraid that I would clandestinely wander outside and fall into our pool. I was a clever kid, even at that age with a knack for getting into places that I shouldn’t have been in. Instead of stressing about what I would do, she focused on what she could control and signed me up for swimming lessons. I spent that whole summer learning how to swim. It made her feel better and it equipped me with the skills I would need if I had found myself deep water.

Another way to conquer fear is to do what you are afraid of over and over again. As long as it’s objectively safe and can be done in increments. We tend to be afraid of what we don’t know.

As adults we can be so resistant to things we fear. But as kids, we are fearless. It’s funny how we lose that spirit as adults. By doing what we fear over and over again, we are flooding ourselves with the experience and seeing firsthand that we are okay when exposed to what we fear. For example, if you are afraid of heights, go up to the top floor of a high building. You can gradually increase the height, before say, really taking the plunge and going skydiving.

The other thing is to remember that you are not alone when it comes to fear. We have all been afraid of things. What if my partner leaves me? What if I get fired? What if my loved one becomes ill? What if my kid doesn’t get his act together and find a job? These are all very real worries and fears that all of us have. But we can’t let them run our lives because we will be completely ineffective should what we fear actually happen.

What are you living in fear of? Are you really in danger?

It’s easy for us to look at someone else and judge what they are doing. But we are merely looking at a snapshot of their actions. We aren’t seeing what may have happened before or what they are feeling, or many other variables that led them to where they are or what they did.

When we make judgments about people, it says more about who we are than who they are. Many people feel more comfortable judging people in black and white. It’s safer that way and more defined. But humans are a million shades of grey.

How do you overcome the knee-jerk response of making a snap judgment? By practicing empathy. Do you know all of person’s experiences? Do you know what they want? Do know what challenges they have or what’s keeping them up at night? You can’t possibly know everything about them, but if you think about what their experience might be like, how it must feel to deal with X or whatever it is, you can re-frame the situation and better understand their actions. Their actions become more relatable.

When you spend time judging others, you reveal a part of you that needs healing. When you really understand someone else’s motivations and mindset, their actions will make much more sense. You will start to notice that their actions are consistent with their character. Say you have a friend or relative whose behavior you simply just don’t agree is the right course of action. Ask them motivations and why they feel how they feel about it. Having this information allows you to understand them better.  It allows you to be supportive of them as a person, even if you don’t necessarily agree with their choices.

Last month I talked about how “someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. We believe that we will have “someday” to do the things we really want to do. And maybe someday will actually come for us. But what if it doesn’t?

And what we really should be asking ourselves is why are our dreams so unimportant that we put it off until some undefined date? Our dreams are what we have been called to do. And what if someone else on this planet is depending on you to do what you have been called to do?

We have no idea how many trips around the sun we have. We need to make our moments here count.

It is never too late take action. It is never too late to get healthy, improve your relationships, have the career you want or live your dreams. If you are alive, you are breathing. And there is still time to make your move.   

Jocko Willink reminds us that time is running out. And that the earlier you get in the game, the better life you are going to have.

Stop waiting for the new year, Monday or the first of the month. Start now and let it be messy. Because if you wait for the right time, or for conditions to be perfect, you will be waiting forever. And life is happening now.

Last month I talked about how people can say all the right things, but at the end of the day, how they choose to treat someone else through their actions says it all. Actions will always speak louder than words. And when you don’t back up your words with your actions, your words become meaningless.

There is a difference between knowing the path and walking it. It is easy to know the path and talk about it. You can become a guru about it and talk about what others need to do. Knowing is somewhat passive and it requires intellectually curiosity. However, walking the path involves taking action and risk. It takes you showing up and being responsible and accountable for your course of action – and whether it has a good or bad outcome. Walking the path gives you experience and credibility because you’ve taken action.

Remember, what we do has a stronger impact on others than what we say.

Here are some things to remember when we want our actions to be consistent with our words:

• Telling someone you are sorry when you have wronged them is important. But what really shows someone that you are sorry is changing your behavior going forward.

• If you respect someone, be consistent with your body language. Don’t roll your eyes when they speak if you don’t agree with them. Don’t gossip about them behind their back and say that you respect them.

• When you are in a heated argument and you don’t want to scare your partner, don’t be scary. I’ve been around people who say they are insecure or scared themselves in the moment, but then they’ve acted scary towards me. If you don’t want to scare your partner, learn how to manage your emotions effectively so that your actions reflect how you say you feel.

Remember, people may not tell you how they feel about you, but they will always show you. Pay attention. How they treat you is how they feel about you.

Our brains process millions of bits of data every day. To keep our brain from becoming overwhelmed and overloaded, we have a filter located in our reticular activating system (RAS). Think of this filter as place where information comes into the brain, and then is neatly filed into different boxes, so we can actually make sense of it all.

How is this filter created? Well, we actually create the guidelines for it ourselves. We do this by telling our brains what is important to us, how we feel about ourselves, what we believe in, how we process past experiences, what our fears are, etc. Think of it as a personalized lens we use in how we view the world. 

Here’s how our RAS works. When you buy a new car, all of a sudden when you’re driving down the road, you notice just how many people have the same kind of car, right? Those cars were always there. The information is just being filtered through to you now because it is relevant. Before your RAS didn’t deem it relevant because well…it wasn’t yet. 

The RAS is incredibly powerful because it determines what information filters into your mind consciously, and how you perceive that information.

What we believe, both consciously and subconsciously, deeply influences our RAS. Say something happened to you where you felt like you weren’t good enough and that really impacted how you see yourself. Now the RAS will filter new experiences through the same lens and seek out information or “evidence” to push through the filter that validates and confirms what you believe about yourself – that you aren’t good enough. This is both fascinating and scary. It is based on belief and not fact.

But here’s the flipside. If our beliefs can create our filter in which we see the world, then we can determine the parameters of that filter. We can decide what we focus on and what we believe. This idea is basically the science behind the Law of Attraction.

It works like this. If you have a negative outlook on life and believe people are going to screw you over, your RAS has been programmed to look for the data that supports that belief and filter it through, so it can validate and confirm those beliefs. It is confirmation bias.

Likewise, if you look at the world with optimism and that there are plenty of opportunities, your RAS has been programmed to seek out information and data that supports those beliefs. So, you will actually have more opportunities because you see them.   

Tony Robbins has often said, “Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life.” What you focus on consistently, you create. What you believe consistently, you create.  

Mindset truly is everything. That is why once you believe anything, signs are everywhere. Our brains seek out that data and information to support the belief.

What lens do you see the world through? How can you start programming your filter to work for you, rather than against you? 

When we are in our darkest times, it’s easy for us to forget all the times we have risen, healed and overcame situations. But we overcame these obstacles by sheer perseverance. What creates a true champion in anything is consistently showing up and being willing to fail to win. It’s knowing that success happens through facing your fears, through falling down and getting back up again.

What trips us up is fear. But fear, is an emotion and we create it. It isn’t based in reality like danger is. And if we can create it, we can destroy it. Because if we allow fear to take over, it will grow roots and destroy the person that we can be.

We also have to remember that in every transformation we have in our life, things are going to get worse before they get better. Nothing worth having comes easy. You cannot grow without struggle or develop strength without resistance.  And there will be days where your resolve is tested.

But here’s the thing…There are many times you have overcome adversity when it has hit you – and you can overcome anything. I truly believe that if you are still here and still breathing, you still have some fight left in you.

And if you find yourself questioning that, here’s something to think about:

Insecurity is really uncertainty about yourself. It’s not feeling good enough as you are, or feeling uncertain about where you fit in, in this world. And we all experience it some point in our lives. I consider myself fairly confident with myself, but I had periods of extreme insecurity. I really struggled with feeling good enough and needing external validation. And once it took root in my life, it became a very ugly thing. And it took a long time to undo it all and fix myself. I wrote about some of those struggles here.

When you feel insecure, you develop a lot of presumptions about yourself and the world. You are presuming that you aren’t good enough or liked. You are presuming things about other people, which may or may not be true. There’s a lot of speculation happening. And it’s born out of fear and uncertainty – which are not exactly reliable narrators.  

These beliefs, whether true or not, can easily become facts in our minds. If we truly believe we are not good enough, our brains are actually wired to seek out information that will support that belief. It’s confirmation bias.

There are many causes to insecurity, and it’s totally normal and okay to have it every now and again. But when there are deep rooted causes, like past traumas, having a critical parent or partner, experiences of rejection or failure that really affected you, social anxiety or perfectionism, it can take some time to undo that kind of thinking.

In my worst struggles with insecurity, I completely lost sight of my value and chose relationships and situations that confirmed what I believed about myself – that I simply wasn’t good enough and probably never would never be. And I stayed in those situations trying to prove my worth. And in the process, I lost myself.

It wasn’t until I went to a therapist and really started to challenge the beliefs I had about myself that I began to undo some of my flawed thinking. I realized that I was surrounded by negative reinforcers and completely lacked the ability or fortitude to set healthy boundaries with others. I also learned that by needing external validation so badly that I was giving up a lot of personal power that I had.

I had always thought that I was a person who was super accountable and responsible for myself, but when it came to my own happiness and quality of life, I quickly learned that I was really not living up to it. I was allowing other people’s moods to affect me, and I had a hard time holding onto myself. I was taking on too much responsibility for others, and not taking enough responsibility for my own wellness.

Are you struggling with insecurity? How can you start challenging faulty beliefs that you have about yourself?