Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
I want to talk to you about a subject today that is a reoccurring theme in my life.
It's a probably a recurring theme in your life even if you don't realize it.
It's something that affects most of us.
I'd say it affects all of us in some way and some people's lives are crippled by it.
The subject is fear.
Today, I'm not going to talk about how to overcome or conquer your fears.
I've talked about this a little bit.
If you're really interested in that, you can see I've done a video on conquering your fears.
Maybe we can have a playlist.
I think probably what should be in that playlist would be the videos where I specifically showed
you conquering or—showed me conquering my fear.
Then I've got a talk I did for Xamarin called 5 Soft Skills Every Software Developer should
learn or should know.
That one is actually not about soft skills, well, I mean it technically is, but it's really
about conquering fear and about being uncomfortable and growing through that.
I highly recommend you check that out.
Today, I want to talk more about the psychology of fear itself and how you and how myself
manifest or think about fear internally and how that manifests into reality and how that
can affect us.
I think that it's really difficult to overcome fear when you think about fear in the wrong
way.
I struggled with this for a long time.
I've conquered a lot of fears in my life, a huge amount of fears.
You guys have seen me.
I mean you've seen me as I have gone and progressed from—even in my videos, I mean you can tell
when I'm out and I'm recording videos in the street and whatnot, that I've changed quite
a bit.
I've become more bold.
I mean in my life I know that a lot of—I struggled for a long time with both physical
fears and social anxiety and those type of fears.
I was a very shy person at one point and really just had difficulty.
I know a lot of you guys do as well.
This is one of those themes that I talk about a loot simply because a lot of you guys email
me and—especially you guys that you're afraid to talk to girls and stuff.
I understand that.
I can totally relate to that.
it's something that I had to conquer myself and get to the point where—for me the bar,
the standard was that I could just talk to anyone at any time and say whatever I want
to and not care.
I'm pretty damn close to that bar.
That's pretty much where I live now and it's a really wonderful place to live, I'll tell
you that, but it's hard.
It's hard.
It took a lot to get there.
That's what I really want to talk to you about today is how to get there from a psychological
standpoint which is, again, not tactical.
I told you, you can watch the video playlist on some of the tactical things.
But just about how—what you might believe a bout fear and how that can stop you.
I think once you've changed this mindset then you kind of know what you have to do and why
it's so important.
That's why this video is important for me to make.
Let's talk about this.
Let's talk about—first of all let's talk about my misconceptions about fear and how
it affected my life.
I had a couple of misconceptions, and I think a lot of us have which is the first one is
that fear will eventually go away on its own.
A lot of things that I had fear about in life I figured that I would eventually outgrow
it.
I figured that I would eventually not be afraid to fly in an airplane or to go on a rollercoaster
or that it didn't matter, or I would eventually not be afraid to go and talk to people, that
the social anxiety would disappear on its own, or that my fear of failure at one point
would disappear on its own.
That doesn't happen.
It's false.
That's the first thing.
The second misconception I had about fear was that I believed that I could grow in some
other way in order to circumvent fear.
If you think about it, if you've got fear here and you're here, if you try and go around
it by—and there's different ways, different strategies that I would come up with in order
to conquer fear without getting in conflict with it, without confronting fear.
You can't conquer fear without confronting it.
That's the second myth.
You could think about this in a few different ways.
Maybe you would think that you could conquer the fear of, let's say, a physical fear like
flying, or rollercoasters or spiders or something like that by reading a bunch of psychology
about it, by learning a lot about it.
A lot of people try to do this and really rationalizing to the point, rationalizing
away their fear.
It doesn't work.
For social anxiety, a lot of guys, and this was me at one time, thought that okay, well,
what I could do to conquer this fear is that I could go and I could build up confidence
in other areas, which may help a little bit, or I could become big, I could lift weights
and be really strong and then I wouldn't even have to talk to women.
This was one of the things, as a younger version of myself that I thought.
I thought that they would just talk to me, which doesn't happen—I mean well, okay,
so maybe it happens a little bit now.
But my point is that in general it's not going to happen and it's not going to help—you're
not even going to feel better though even if it did happen because you haven't conquered
the fear, because you know that the fear still exists, right?
These are some of the things that we do to try and not have to confront fear, because
confronting fear is really difficult.
You've heard the quote, I've said it before, that whole quote of courage is not the lack
of fear, it's action in spite of fear.
It's taking action in spite of fear.
I think that's Nelson Mandela who first said that.
I'm sure that throughout history other people have said similar things, but it's such a
true statement.
I think most people don't really understand this, and I didn't understand this.
I'm a person who has conquered a lot of fear in my life, I'll be honest with you.
I was a very—however scared you are of things, I was probably worse.
I had just about every fear.
The reason why my fear became so great in my life was because it started out very small,
but I believed those to fallacies that I told you about.
Because of those things what ends up happening is if you don't conquer fear, fear grows,
it takes more and more of your life.
I actually reached a point where it almost took my life to some degree as I started to
get panic attacks and major anxiety attacks.
It was a bad time in my life.
I had to do something about it, and I figured out the strategy for it and I have been systematically
going through my life.
I've got a video playlist on freedom.
You can check out that and I talk about freedom, true freedom is not caring what other people
think and being able to do, essentially, whatever that you intend to do with your life.
There are lots of ways to achieve that, but one of the most important ways is to conquer
fear so that you can actually actualize your life, you can be self-actualized and actually
do what you intend to do.
This is key.
Anyway, what ended up happening with me was that I did systematically start eliminating
these fears and I did it by confronting them.
The fallacy that I think a lot of you have and that I had, like I said, is that you don't
have to confront fear, that there's some other way, like I said, that either you can ignore
it or—and it will go away on its own, or that you can sidestep it in some way by building
up some other attribute or something else so that you don't have to actually conquer
the fear itself.
What I found and I've been doing this even more every time that I find fear is that what
I actually have to do is just go out and confront the fear.
There's no substitute.
There's just no substitute in life.
It is going to be uncomfortable.
I do a lot of coaching for guys and stuff and I see this, especially when I'm doing
coaching and showing guys how to go and talk to girls that are really afraid of this.
A lot of guys come to me specifically for that coaching.
When I go out there in the field and show them how to do it and encourage them to do
it, they have huge amounts of fear and what they really want for me is what I can't give
them, which is a solution that doesn't involve just going and doing it.
I'm using that in this video.
I don't want you to think that that's the only thing that I'm talking about here, but
it's such a concrete one that I think that a lot of you can relate to.
It was something that I could relate to for a long time.
it was always a mystery to me how people could possibly conquer this fear.
What it turns out to be is that you just have to go and be uncomfortable and allow yourself
to be uncomfortable and just do it anyway.
Your heart will pump.
You will feel like dying.
You will feel like it's the worst thing in the world, but then it will over.
When you do that enough times, once you've had enough repeated exposure then the fear
will disappear.
Now, there are some other things behind this.
Again, I told you I wasn't going to give you the exact steps on conquering fear on
this video, because I don't want to make it sound like there's no system, that there's
no way they can help you to do this more so, but at the heart of it, whatever system anyone
ever sells you on conquering fear or tells you about, it's going to come down to the
fact that you're going to have to directly confront fear.
If you cannot accept this psychology, if you cannot accept this viewpoint into your head
you're never going to conquer fear and you're never going to eliminate the fears in your
life.
You may be able to circumvent fear and be able to avoid the fears that you fear in your
life by using various strategies or techniques, but they'll always exist.
You will always feel a little bit less complete of a person and a little bit less capable,
and as a man, I can say from experience, less of a man.
That's one thing that you won't be able to get beyond unless you can actually go and
confront fear.
Again, I don't want to prescribe here the steps, but I want to talk really about that
mindset and I want you to understand that if you cannot accept this, you have to accept
this truth because if you don't accept this truth then you're never going to get further,
you're never going to take another step.
Once you accept this truth, it's kind of beautiful, it's kind of freeing in your life because
you realize that you just—like you have to do this.
There's no other alternative, that you're not making a mistake, that when you go out
and you do that thing, you get on that airplane, you force yourself, you force yourself to
strap yourself into that rollercoaster, you see that girl and you get up and you just
walk up and you say something, even if you look like an idiot, when you realize that
that's what you're going to have to do and you know that that is the only way, it's sort
of freeing, It's sort of freeing because you have a clear path.
It's better to know that a path is hard and that it's going to have a lot of obstacles
in it, but you have to go down that path.
That's the only way to get to where you're going.
It's better to know that than to be looking at multiple paths and some of them are scarier
than others and not know which way to go.
I'm telling you right now that that's the first step.
How can you accept a psychology?
How can you deal with this?
How can you really internalize this?
Because maybe you believe what I'm saying and you're like, "Yeah, okay.
I understand that John, but I can't do it.
I can't have the courage in order to—that's required in order for me to do this."
What I can say about that every moment that you don't conquer fear is wasted time.
I've wasted plenty of years of my life.
When I say wasted it's not like they're a total waste, but what I mean is that I didn't
get the highest opportunity out of those years that I could've and I missed a lot of opportunities
because I thought that someday—in fact, that was the name of the video, it was called
Someday.
I figured that someday my life would change, someday something would just happen by itself.
That's as big fallacy that we have just in life in general, we think that something is
going to happen without us taking action.
When you realize that, you realize your life is ticking down and everyday that you're living
with this fear and that it's controlling your life and what you do that you're missing opportunities.
Some of these are opportunities that are once in a lifetime opportunities.
I mean some of these things are going to be things that you're never going to get that
opportunity again and your life could change in such a drastic way if you didn't miss this
opportunity.
You don't want to let any of those moments go by.
It's not worth that.
Whatever price you'd have to pay to not lose those opportunities isn't worth paying that
price.
That's what I came to eventually was I realized in my life that I needed to pay that price.
It was a heavy burden, it was a heavy price, but it was one that I needed to pay.
The second thing about that that I would say to convince you of this that you need to actually
do this is that not only are you missing opportunities, but your own feelings about yourself will
change drastically.
When you are able to conquer your fears you're confident, your self-esteem really—see,
because you have confidence when you know that you can do things, but your self-esteem—your
self-esteem is always damaged by you not living up to your potential.
Any time that you are not operating at the maximum that you can, and you know that there
are deficiencies that you are avoiding, painful spots in your life that you're not dealing
with, your self-esteem is going to take a hit, because it knows, it knows the truth
about yourself.
This is another thing.
The third thing I'll tell you about this and I'm probably going to wrap up this video because
my arm is getting tired, but—and the third thing I'll say is that most of the time, not
all the time, but almost all the time, most of the time, whatever it is that you're fearing
that it's usually—it usually has an unbounded upside of good and a very small down side.
Most of the fears that we have are completely harmless to us and they never—they can't
actually harm us, but we just have these fears.
I'm not saying that there's not fears that could harm you, there are definitely fears
that could harm you, of what you're afraid of, but most of them and these are things
like flying on an airplane, I'll keep on using the same examples, but, a rollercoaster, talking
to a girl.
Those things they're not going to—what bad could happen?
In most cases there's so little bad that can happen.
When you understand that and you realize that the thing that you're conquering is not—because
sometimes I think when you're trying to conquer fear and you're trying to confront a fear,
what you feel like you're going up against is that worst consequence that you imagined
in your head, but what you're not—that's not what you're fighting.
What you're fighting is just the action of just doing it, of just being able to be uncomfortable.
The worst thing that you're going to experience in 90% of the fears that you're facing is
feeling uncomfortable for some short amount of time.
I'll give you 1/4 b onus thing here which is this.
The more that you do this, the actually—the easier it becomes, because what you'll build,
again, remember, I said you can't circumvent fear.
You can't go around it and you can't ignore it.
it's not going to go away on its own, but you can build courage.
You can actually build courage.
When you build courage, this is the interesting thing, because if you haven't built courage
I'll tell you how it works.
When you build courage, what ends up happening is you still feel the fear when you confront
a new fear.
You do conquer fears, I'll give you some good news here, is that once you really, really
conquer fear, once you really lay them to the ground it is gone.
It is gone.
There is hope there.
When you start conquering fears and you relentlessly conquer your fears what ends up happening
is you actually build that courage muscle and you still feel the fear and its full effect
and intensity, but you know from experience, you're confident in your courage.
You know from experience that this feeling, these butterflies in your stomach, this sick
feeling that it's natural, it's normal and that there's something good on the other side
of it.
So, you'll actually be able to go and do this more.
Once you develop that, that strength, that courage, it's going to benefit you in multiple
ways in your life.
This is something that I've personally experienced and it's really, really helped me because
the first fears to conquer were the hardest.
As I started to conquer those fears and I started to realize that, you know what, I've
been here before, I've felt this sick feeling in my stomach, and I felt like the world was
going to end and everything is so bad and I've pushed through it before so I know I
can do it again.
It's like I just went for a run today and I pushed myself really hard, I know some of
you are going to laugh, but I was running under 9-minute miles for 10 miles which is
a hard run for me.
I'm, 230 lbs. when I'm running, at mile 4 and it hurts.
It hurts, but I know I can do this.
I know I've done this before.
The more times that I go and I run and I run through that pain and I feel that pain for
an hour and a half, a good hour and a half of that run the more times that—it's not
that it gets easier, it doesn't get easier.
It never gets easier.
Pain never gets easier, fear never gets easier, but I have the knowledge and the experience
of knowing that I can make it through this uncomfortable feeling, I can make it through
this and so I do it.
It doesn't become easier, but as many wise men before me have said, you become stronger.
That's what I want for you.
This is why I made this channel.
This is why I make these videos, it's because I want you to become stronger, because I want
you to experience what life is like on the other side.
Once you start to become stronger and once you start to do this and change your life
in that way, so many opportunities open to you.
Your self esteem changes to such a high degree.
It's almost that no one can knock you down.
It's almost that nothing else that's happening ni the external world can hurt you because
you have this real joy in your life of knowing of how strong that you've become, because
you haven't let these things control your life.
You are in more control of your life.
I want that for you.
I want that for everyone here.
It's really important to me.
Like I said, this was something that I wish I knew.
I wish someone was—the videos I'm making for you guys, some of you don't understand
them, that's fine, but I wish someone was making them for me, honestly, a long time
ago in my life, because I could have lived in a much better place.
My life wasn't bad, it wasn't horrible, but I could've lived in a much better place.
I mean I do now, but every moment is precious, you don't know how much time you have.
Life is short so why let more of that disappear.
Why not live to your maximum potential as quickly as you can so that you can do powerful
things with your life?
You can feel that joy of knowing.
It's so good to—I can't even tell you the feeling of waking up in the morning and knowing
that wow, I conquered my fears.
I'm not afraid to do things and I'm really living my life to very close to the highest
potential.
I know that I can get there and I know that I have a clear path there.
It's such a powerful experience.
All right, that's all I've got for you today.
This video was a lot longer than I expected, but if you have—I have a request for you.
If you are struggling with fears, I want you to tell—I want you to honestly tell me here,
and then this may be your fear itself is just leaving comments.
I know a lot of you watch videos and don't leave comments.
it's fine.
It's cool, but I want you to at least get over this fear by confronting it and I want
you to tell me in t eh comments honestly, I mean what is your fear?
I wouldn't say that no one is going to make fun of you, I'm going to say that I'm not
going to make fun of you, but maybe some people will in the comments.
I hope that they don't, but you know, people are dicks, but so what?
Don't let that stop you.
Let's overcome one fear right now.
Tell me what your fears are in the comments, honestly.
As embarrassing as they are, it's fine, mine are more embarrassing than yours, I promise
you, at one point in my life.
But that's how you get over them.
First you have to acknowledge them.
Leave a comment below and tell me.
Let me know also when you tell me about your fear and if you're interested in learning
more about—should I do more on this subject, because I think this is a really important
subject, but I want to get a temperature gauge from you guys.
That's all I've got.
I'm going to go ahead and wrap up this video.
Go ahead and click the subscribe button if you haven't already and click the bell to
make sure that you don't miss any videos, especially my upcoming fear videos which I'm
sure that I'll be doing.
I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét