The Truth About Fear & Why You’ve Got It All Wrong with Akshay Nanavati

In this episode, we show you how to turn your fear into health, wealth, and happiness. If you want something you’ve never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before. That means suffering and taking risks. Building a positive relationship with suffering is one of the most important life skills you can master. Suffering is the true training ground of self-transcendence. With our guest Akshay Nanavati we show you how to choose your struggle and build meaningful suffering into your life. Akshay Nanavati is a Marine Corps Veteran, speaker, adventurer, entrepreneur and author of "Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth and Happiness." He is also the founder of the nonprofit, the Fearvana Foundation. His work has been featured in Forbes, Psychology Today, entrepreneur.com, CNN, Huffington Post, Military Times, FOX 5 NY, ABC, NBC and other media outlets around the globe. 

From drug addiction to marine corps Bootcamp - to hunting for bombs in Iraq - how Akshay learned to deal with fear 

The toughest battle Akshay had to fight was coming home - dealing with PTSD and suicidal thoughts 

We live in a world that demonizes stress, anxiety, fear, pain and suffering - and yet in the psychology and neuroscience research shows us that our emotions are normal and inevitable

We don’t live in a world of life-threatening risks anymore, and so our brain creates these risks

No emotions are good or bad - we assign and create the meaning via our beliefs Humans are meaning-making machines - we naturally create meaning out of everything

What you are labeling yourself can powerfully shape your experiences.

Typical behaviors like “depression” “PTSD” etc are just brain patterns, and they can be re-written using “Top-Down Neuroplasticity”

Don’t wait for the fear to go away, act despite the fear.. or once you learn to train yourself.. BECAUSE of the fear 

Building a positive relationship to suffering is the single most important skill to master.

 “Hebbs Law” - neurons that fire together, wire together

There is a war in your brain for neuronal real estate - use it or lose it. 

Should you try to SEEK Suffering instead of AVOID suffering?

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” - Dr. Carl Jung

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Dr. Carl Jung V

isualize yourself in the process of going through the struggle, the suffering, the tough part of your goals - not the easy parts at the end. 

There is tremendous beauty in pushing through and into your fears.

 Everything worthwhile is hard, and you have to train yourself to fall in love with suffering. Fall in love with the process. Y

ou cannot get better at something without doing it. 

Exercise is a “miracle grow for your brain.”

If you could put all the benefits of exercise into a pill, it would be the best selling pill of all time. 

If you want something you’ve never had before, you have to do something you’ve never done before. That means suffering and taking a risk. If you don’t proactively search out a proactive worthy challenge - something to struggle and suffer for in your life - then suffering will find you anyway. 

Don’t follow your passion, find your "worthy struggle." 

You don’t discover a passion you develop a passion. You have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations to develop your passion. You only evolve when you suffer.

That’s why lottery winners typically lose their winnings. When you struggle for it, you become a different person.

Homework: Find one little thing to test yourself. Do a little thing to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Don’t just do it, come back and reflect on it. Journal about it.

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