Using Fear To Live at Your Edge and Transform Your Life and Your Plan B
Let’s talk about living our best life.
1. Have you heard that expression? Living Your Best Life.
I sent someone a Marco Polo video message from Thailand, and he told me I was living my best life. What is your best life?
Yesterday, Jet Lag, etc. Did not feel like my best life. It comes and goes in waves.
According to David Thoreau – Most Men Lead Lives of Quiet Desperation.
I would have to agree based on doing over 25,000 rides, and on coaching over 5,000 individuals. Most people settle for far less than they are capable.
The question I keep asking myself is: Am I living My Best Life.
2. What stop us from living our best life, Fear and the Flinch.
The flinch is why the lazy actor never gets discovered—because she never really sweats to make it happen. It’s why the monolithic company gets wiped out by a lean startup—because the big company culture avoids the hard questions. It’s the reason you make the wrong decision, even though you may know what the right one is. Behind every act you’re unable to do, fear of the flinch is there, like a puppet master, steering you off course. Facing the flinch is hard. It means seeing the lies you tell yourself, facing the fear behind them, and handling the pain that your journey demands—all without hesitation. The flinch is the moment when every doubt you’ve ever had comes back and hits you, hard. It’s when your whole body feels tense. It’s an instinct that tells you to run. It’s a moment of tension that happens in the body and the brain, and it stops everything cold. When coming across something they know will make them flinch, most people have been trained to refuse the challenge and turn back. It’s a reaction that brings up old memories and haunts you with them. It tightens your chest and makes you want to run. It does whatever it must do to prevent you from moving forward. If the flinch works, you can’t do the work that matters because the fear it creates is too strong.
Smith, Julien. The Flinch .
What is the work that matters? Is it just driving for Uber and Lyft? Or is there something else you know you should be doing, but you have talked yourself out of it in response to the flinch?
3. One thing I learned from Werner Erhard, is that my fear is not of what is right in front of me, but I fear what “right in front of me” reminds me of.
For example, I am starting a new business. I have invested 5 figures in this new business. But I am afraid. Afraid I won’t start it. Afraid I may look foolish. Afraid I might fail. Afraid of a new routine. Afraid of the unknown. These are all things I have felt in the past. This new venture brings up all these old memories.
But I move forward anyway.
4. Living right at your edge.
“As an experiment, describe your edge with respect to your career out loud to yourself. Say something like, “I know I could be earning more money, but I am too lazy to put in the extra hours it would take. I know that I could give more of my true gift, but I am afraid that I may not succeed, and then I will be a penniless failure. I’ve spent fifteen years developing my career, and I’m afraid to let go of it and start fresh, even though I know that I spend most of my life doing things I have no real interest in doing. I could be making money in more creative ways, but I spend too much time watching TV rather than being creative.” Honor your edge. Honor your choices. Be honest with yourself about them. Be honest with your friends about them. A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his fear. And a fearful man who still leans into his fear, living at his edge and putting his gift out from there, is more trustworthy and more inspirational than a fearful man who hangs back in the comfort zone, unwilling to even experience his fear on a day to day level. A free man is free to acknowledge his fears, without hiding them, or hiding from them. Live with your lips pressed against your fears, kissing your fears, neither pulling back nor aggressively violating them.”
Deida, David. The Way of the Superior Man
On this podcast, I encourage you to get to work on your passion project, your plan b. The only thing that will stop you is you. You in response to your fears, to the flinch you feel, that tightening of your abdomen. In that moment, anything feels safer and better. But it is not. Nothing gets done unless you take action.
5. That is the moment that makes all the difference. You feel the flinch
I feel it everyday when I wake up
I feel it every time I start to record a podcast
I feel it every time I make a video
I feel it every time I write an article
I feel it every time I tell someone I love them
I feel it every time I got to work out
I feel it every time I look at my vision statement.
Nothing gets done until you take action. Nothing gets done unless you push forward against the flinch. Nothing gets done until you are living at your edge, challenged and confronted, surrendered and vulnerable. Once you take action in spite of the flinch, you then move into transformation. Life feels different, more uncomfortable for sure, but better. It becomes satisfying and precious and rare.
6. 6 Things you can do.
1. Get clear on your vision, so that you can fall back on what you really want and use it as a fuel.
2. Write down your goals with deadlines. Share those goals so someone.
3. Set up an accountability group.
4. Get a coach
5. When you feel the flinch, breathe.
6. Step Into It rather than away from it
