Fear Is Running Your Life. Here's How To Break Free - Erwin McManus

you said you've limited your impact in the world because of a lack of self-belief tell me the story then well you know I think when I was young I had the view that some people were just naturally heroic and some people were just naturally born cowards and I fell into that category uh you know if I look back when I was young I was afraid of everything and some of it was experential uh you know my we got attacked by a dog so I was afraid by uh you know I was terrified by dogs all my life I we I had a seat belt break on a roller coaster and almost flew off the the U the roller coaster and so I was afraid of of roller coasters or anything fast and and I began realizing that I began accumulating fear and the problem with fear is that it doesn't stay in the category it it permeates throughout your your whole soul your psychological well-being and I began realizing that I was more defined by fear than I was by almost any other emotion and I and I didn't really have a strategy we didn't have what we have today so many ways of accessing insight and ways of understanding mental structures and mind shifts but so I had to make my own decision I had to decide how would I affect this how would I change this and so I developed a strategy to use fear as my um my life Compass whenever I felt fear I just moved toward it whenever I felt afraid of something I actually moved more aggressively in that direction and what I discovered by the time I'd finished my 20s is that uh there were actually like International magazines and documentaries that were flying in to see what I was doing because they felt I was fearless and I thought this is so ironic that I was being defined as someone who was fearless and in fact my my favorite superhero is Daredevil The Man Without Fear and it was because I iconically longed to become that person because I knew how my whole life was captured by fear and so I learned how to take negative material and turn it to a positive asset and I think that for me is the key is that I I've lived a pretty adventurous life traveled to nearly 100 countries gone to some most dangerous places in the world you know walked the streets of Damascus you know dropped into uh Pakistan and and uh throughout the Middle East different parts of the world that uh very few people ever go to and very few people ever survive and one of the most interesting things for me is that in those moments I I didn't feel captured by fear at all and a huge part of that was because I'd learn how to take this emotion this experience called fear turned it into a positive Fuel and used it as a way to motivate me to move forward in life how can people work out if they are being ruled by fear in their life well I don't think it's that difficult to teach I think most of us know um just intrinsically that we're when we're afraid but it's it's usually related to when we have a dream an ambition desire or goal and we're more afraid of the consequences than we are the benefit and so when we're paralyzed moving into our our our best view of ourselves or our future that's when we know we're contr controlled by fear yeah the fact that the potential pitfalls are more uh terrifying than the potential outcomes are infusing the fact that you've got this sort of running away from something that you don't want as opposed to running towards something that you do want and the balance between those two energies is really interesting yeah and one of the things we have to realize is that one of the things that's unique about human beings as a species is that we're inter connected to the Future every other species from the best that we can tell is completely existential they they live in this moment they're surviving the serengetti you know they're you know they're surviving the hunt and and the fight for survival but human beings are inseparable from a relationship to the past and the future and when we live in the past we tend to live a life of regret but when we live in the future we have two options we have an option to either live a life that would be described as as a life of Faith or a life of fear because the future is unknown and and from my perspective it's uncreated I I I'm not a fatalist I I'm not a scientific determinist that thinks everything is mathematically already predetermined I think we have choice that we have creative agency as human beings and so then we're connected to this obscure mysterious space called the future and how we engage that whether we have a sense of optimism and hope or whether we're filled with fear interpration that will shape the way we experience life in the present you see faith is the opposite of fear I do and if you know if faith is a hard word for someone I'd say optimism is is uh is I think you know every every highly spiritualized word has a very non highly spiritualized word but we all have them and you know some people go I don't I don't I don't believe in faith and I go well you you psychologically live by faith I'm getting on a plane today to go to Salt Lake City I'm putting my faith in that pilot I'm hoping he had a great day I'm hoping if he's married his his wife really loved him or his husband really her husband really loved him and that he's not depressed I every day I'm putting my faith in something that's outside of my control and I'm working from a framework that everything is going to move in my favor let's do some inversion for a second imagine that you have somebody who is they've maybe got a bit of a predisposition for fear but you want you wanted to get them to spend their life being as fearful as possible to be as terrified as trapped as par paralyzed as they could be what are the things that you would get them to do what are the ways you would get them to think what are the sort of mindsets that you would get them to embody ironically if you want someone to be paralyzed by fear you don't get them to do the thing they fear because it's the fear of the of the reality that's more powerful than the reality it itself and so my fear of roller coasters was far more powerful than the roller coaster when I finally got on it my fear of of dogs was far more powerful than the reality of dogs once I started spending time with them and so the irony is if you want to be trapped and paralyzed in your fear stay away from the thing you fear yeah there's a a lyric from a b tooth song the first song on the new album that says all my worries were a waste of time I've got that written I've got that written on a Post-It note above my desk at the moment that you know whether it's we suffer more in imagination than reality whatever TR you know version of this you want to sort of rebr up but it is wild how much worse our minds are able to make anything than even the worst that reality would be able to deliver to us it was so all of the extremes everything's maxed out at 10 the way that people are going to the way that people are going to judge us the lack of forgiveness that the world's ever going to give us the the way that they're going to know the way that it's going to Define us the way we're never never going to be able to get over it so on and so forth and then usually that thing doesn't come to pass and even if by some obscene chance it does come to pass it's nowhere near as bad as we think and we get over it more quickly and nobody else really cares that much uh so yeah I think um the fear of fear is the biggest one absolutely I I don't know if the studies still holds true but uh so many of the studies show that the number one fear people have is public speaking which I think is amazing because um when you're when you speak in public even if you're terrible usually no one shoots you you know there there there there are no physical or violent ramifications you just have a bad moment you know I mean I I've been speaking for 45 years and and early on which is so ironic I actually began speaking in the middle of government projects in the middle of drug cartels and uh the middle of gang bangers and assassins and criminals and so I actually had a a genuinely dangerous environment so the fear of speaking was way down the list it was the fear surviving those 20 30 minutes that was actually more real for me okay and and you know and I've had the opportunity to speak in front of maybe 80 100,000 people in in a moment and what's interesting to me is when I'm thinking about myself I become consumed by fear when I'm thinking about others the fear is completely gone and so there's an there an interesting relationship to fear is about self-preservation and and early on in my life I made a decision that I would not make my life goal to exist but to live when you live a life of fear you're moving toward Safety and Security you're moving toward preservation you're moving toward survival but you make every decision that will extract from you life you will not be filled with hope ory Joy or excitement or adventure and I and I do think that we have to make a decision to either exist or live and that's the difference between in a sense fear and faith who are some of your favorite people that you've either worked with or people from history or stories that have sort of embodied this desire to overcome fear in their lives um well what comes to my mind right away and this is sort of an ironic moment because I was invited years ago to the to go to the academy of Arts and Sciences and I watched the premiere of Braveheart I had no idea what this movie was uh there were this was way before there's any publicity or trailers and I'm I'm watching this movie about William Wallace and I end up uh writing about William Wallace and one of my books and ran and um and and going to Scotland and kind of like digging up some of the the history there and Robert the Bruce and all that you know era of history but what struck me is that moment when Mel Gibson uh shouts out freedom and gives up his life I had this exhilarating moment and this incredible moment of awareness it felt like the most exciting moments of my life and I had this thought I cannot let the most exciting moment of my life be when I'm sitting in a chair watching someone else's life and so when you you know when you ask me who are the people I admire the most I think ironically most of the people people who have motivated me were in stories were in film were in novels were in um in science fiction and and I think that was what really began to instigate inside of me a desire to not simply read about other people's story but to live one yeah there's this odd sense a kind of like a I don't know like inspirational Melancholy uh I've got that before when you know you're looking at a story I I used to get this when I watched uh my friends bands perform on stage so I was friends with a bunch of like quite big bands and you i' go and see them play and it would be you know thousands of people sold out and this adoring crowd I remember I'd be stood at the back of the room and I'd be looking at you know this person not only conducting their own music but conducting a room filled with 3,000 5,000 people and getting them to do this Collective effervescence getting them to dance the way that they wanted getting the if that person turned up in this way the rest of the crowd reflected that back to them and I just remember seeing it as so competent so admirable so powerful but then very quickly after that it throws into harsh light the places that you're not doing that so you have this odd sense of inspiration and Melancholy happening at the same time you oh my God that's so amazing I'm so happy for my friend and I'm so inspired by what they do and I want to be more like that but as soon as you get to that I want to be more like that you then begin to think well that's an ideal and as soon as I posit an ideal I find myself comparing myself to the ideal and by Design I find myself self lacking oh and the lack makes me feel like insufficiency and it makes me feel fear and it makes me feel inwardly turned and introspective and ruminative and um yeah it's it's odd how inspiration has it's a bit of a double-edged sword in that way it is but one of the things I think is important to um come to to grips with is that human beings experience depression because we're the species that can imagine a better version of ourselves you cannot be depressed if you cannot imagine a better version of yourself or a better life or a better world and so the dissonance is the ideal we long for and the life we have and I I find the gravitational pull of that so even with depression I I mean I've struggled with depression I struggled with from a very young age and I realized that that I moved toward depression when I accepted this fallacy that I had no power to change my life and so depression wasn't really about my state of being Depression was about my belief that I could not move toward my ideal and the moment I actually took any step in the direction of the person I wanted to become or the life I wanted to live that Depression was gone now it was replaced with exhilaration and excitement and I hadn't even achieved anything yet I was just moving in a direction and it changed my inner Dynamic yeah action is the antidote to anxiety is something that I wrote down in my 20s and um it's so true you're not scared of the future when you're moving toward it regardless of how slow it is regardless of how kind of useless or even in retrospect how completely pointless the actions were that you took there's something about that forward momentum that does help to fix it uh I remember hearing you speak last year and you talked about a factory defect the fact that every positive emotion flies through you and every negative emotion sticks to you I want to dig into that yeah you know when I look at us as a um a complex human system it is fascinating to me that all my positive emotions dissipate so quickly and all my negative emotions stick with me I mean they stay with me long term and you have to fight for those and if you look at the gravitational pole of let's say character it's it's astonishing to me that if I do nothing I become the worst version of me it would seem like I I would just naturally if I do nothing I should just naturally become the best version of me right if I if I choose nothing I should move toward hope right if I choose nothing I should move toward love if I choose nothing I should move toward compassion and generosity and integrity but when I choose nothing I become the worst version of me and so when you look at it like going I think we actually are factory defects because when we choose nothing we move toward depression we move toward anxiety and stress we move toward uh suicidal imaginations we uh when we choose nothing we lose our integrity we lose our our uh generative nature and the longer you choose nothing you're choosing the worst version of you and and even when it comes to emotions I've had incredibly exhilarating moments yesterday I celebrated 41 years of marriage congratulations and it's amazing to the same woman and I say that somewhat hesitantly because she's not the same woman she's changed at least 30 to 40 times so and and and so I always say if you want to be with someone else just stay with her she's she's going to change on you and 41 years of marriage and in those we've had some incredibly exhilarating moments some Beautiful Moments and those moments become memories but the the experience of those emotions they pass very quickly but if you have a fight those emotions stay with you a long time and you and so we have this incredible you know beautiful memory of our honeymoon but two days ago she threw away my apple turnover and oh my God do not touch a man's apple turnover you know and and it was on our anniversary and I'm like hey I bought this apple turnover at this really great place and I bought you something too and she goes I threw it away and I realized all these negative emotions it was like the world was just absolutely being destroyed by Thanos because she threw away my turnover there's something about negative emotions they cause an instantaneous reaction they go expansively and they go deep and they stay with us which is why when you're in therapy you're not working through I don't know how to stop forgiving I I I don't know how to stop um having optimism about the future you're struggling with I don't know how to forgive I I'm holding on to this bitterness I I don't know how to let go of this past hurt negative emotions stay with us positive emotions flow through us and what we have to realize and and to me it makes perfect sense because there is nothing worth achieving in life that doesn't take hard work so why should we think the best version of us would not take hard work and so you can only become the best version of you I can only become the best version of me if I'm willing to put the work in to become that person if I don't want to put the work in I become the worst version of me yeah there's no seminars on how to be more depressed or how to have less confidence all of those things come so easily so naturally we don't need any more coaching we're already black belts yeah we're Naturals yeah yeah it's wild it's wild I wonder you know I wonder how Universal this is the different people have different constitutions and different set points but for a a pretty big cohort of people this is the thing that they're going to be battling with it's the fact that for some reason they seem to always be swimming against the tide when they're trying to get themselves toward a good State toward a hopeful State toward something that appropriates optimism or abundance or a vision for themselves that isn't based around fear or around concern or worry or anxiety and yeah that being able to somehow reprogram that being able to step in and fact check your own mind is uh I think the battle that a lot of people have got to contend with yeah and when you say this may not affect everyone what's interesting to me Chris is the people who experiences the most are the people who experience the most success you would think it'd be the other way around the people for whom a good mental state comes the easiest are the ones that end up getting to the highest point yeah and it's not it's the other way around it's because um success tends to have something that pushes you and something that pulls you and I find this Dynamic over and over again people who are highly successful have something that's pushing them a fear of poverty a fear of insignificance a fear of not being loved a fear of not having value or having worth and it's it's like a dark a darkness that that eats away at them and there it pushes them to accomplishment and and then hopefully there's something that also pulls them um a desire to make a difference in the world a vision of a better Humanity uh an opportunity to alleviate human suffering or to make life better for other people and what you what I look for when I'm coaching a lot of young entrepreneurs is has the pull become more powerful than the push because when the push is more powerful than the pull they're they're positioned for self-destruction and for things to fall apart in their life and so the irony is almost the less determined you are to become the the best version of you the highest expression of yourself the less aware you're going to be of the tension in your soul isn't it fascinating that the people that we admire the most have got the least admirable internal States you know the people that we all look up to that are the best known the most notorious the most successful richest famous whatever it might be on average are going to be the ones that you wouldn't trade places with the inside of their mind and I I think that's something we haven't really talked about enough in the world because we we keep admiring and idealizing people's outcomes rather than their Essence and what ends up happening is that we want their outcomes and so without even being aware of it we also Embrace their Essence and then we come to a place where we succeed and we hate ourselves is there a level of success that you get to where you don't deal with overthinking N I haven't found it and and in fact it's really interesting I was uh there there's a a minor league football um League called the usfl and I was working with that league and the number one question I got from the quarterbacks and the different players were completely on overthinking and that same week I was meeting with Sean McVey the head coach of the Rams and I had the the privilege to work with him and I was telling him the story I said hey Sean you know on Monday I was working with usfl and and they were asking about overthinking and I'm wondering is the difference between a a a player at your level and a player at their level that your players don't overthink he goes no the number one thing I have to deal with is overthinking and and I moved on to start talking about his life and where he was at and he goes no no go back what did you tell them about overthinking and I realized there is no level of achievement where you break through that um that that dilemma of overthinking and what's interesting about overthinking is we never overthink positive scenarios yeah I'm I'm really not overthinking oh I wonder if my wife's going to love my gift too much or you know and uh you know I'm not overthinking I hope this podcast goes better than you know oh I'm so worried this couldna be better than I thought right and we're always overthinking negative scenarios and and and so that's one of the things that I think is really important to realize is that almost the best way to counter overthinking is to begin to overthink positive scenarios and and realize oh no this is this is not my brain trying to solve a problem this this is my brain trying to control an outcome and I do not have control of the outcomes yeah it's strange to think that you don't get paralyzed by overthinking about positive outcomes you only overthink about terrible ones and uh yeah again if you were to say well it's the people that are the most positive that end up with the best the best outcomes in life so what why are so many high Achievers plagued by overthinking they're not overthinking how well things could go they're overthinking all of the different errors and potential vectors for weakness and that thing over there you know they're Vigilant they're permanently Vigilant to all of the different ways that these things could go wrong yeah overthinking can also be a superpower again it's about taking negative material and turning it to positive energy or positive force and so if when you find yourself in overthinking go all right I'm GNA over I'm going to give myself you know 20 minutes to overthink and I'm going to write down every potential scenario and I'm going to create a solution for every one of them because all I need is one more solution than I have a problem I mean success is really just about having one more solution than you have a problem you you can't outthink your problems but you can wonderfully um create have a creative process of finding Solutions I I think most of the solutions that I find in my life I've already found way before the problem because I've thought about the problem before I ever faced it and so a lot of people think oh you're so good at making decisions in the last minute I go N I had this minute five years ago in the shower when I was overthinking the possibility of the scenario what uh what is it that you're saying to the people that you work with the athletes Etc when they come to you they say I I just cannot stop overthinking I feel Paralyzed by it it it consumes me uh it's stopping me from enjoying the things that I want to do it's stopping my performance from the very thing I'm supposed to be overthinking about now I have a relationship with my overthinking I'm not even thinking about the thing I'm thinking about my overthinking how do you interject the how do you patent break it action say well the best way to overcome overthinking is immediate action and what you find I would say 90% of the time when you're working through a scenario your first solution is the solution you come to after overthinking and thinking through another hundred Solutions and then you come back to that first solution that first solution is usually so clear and then it's the consequences and so what you have to ask ask yourself is am I trying to mitigate the consequence or am I trying to find a solution and if you go I I have a it's just like when you're playing quarterback it's it's amazing to me how when you're watching like a Joe burrow or a Josh Allen um you know or Patrick Mahomes what you're finding is someone who can make decisions really quickly I mean that that's the thing to me about like watching Tom Brady it's it's how fast he makes his reads and he makes a pass and he may throw to the his second option and his fourth opt option ends up being wide open he doesn't worry about that he finds the first option that's open what you find with quarterbacks who have incredible athletic ability but they don't seem to have that decisiveness is that they end up rolling out of the pocket to create more time for themselves because they missed an earlier opportunity that was actually there you know isn't it it's kind of amazing when you're watching something like pro football and and some quarterbacks seem to never have a receiver open and and other quarterbacks seem to be able to throw the receivers open and it's a it to me this is the thing with overthinking action is what destroys overthinking move forward make a choice make it fast and because your brain only listens to one language and that's action and it's it's even true when it comes to personal life change you know it it's that you know we've moved into 2025 and you know you can have all these different resolutions and all these different goals and I can tell myself this is the year at 66 that I'm going to get in the shape of my life you know and this is the year I'm going to make these decisions these choices but the people in my life if I've made those resolutions before they know I'm lying even if I don't know I'm lying they know I'm lying because they've heard it before but you know who really knows I'm lying my brain my brain knows I'm lying because it's heard me say this over and over and over again the only way my brain is ever convinced I'm not lying is action the moment I act differently my brain is now hearing a language that that has integrity and it's the same way with overthinking I say look trust your instincts if you've achieve the level of Excellence or of greatness or competency your first instinct is probably the right one and then if it doesn't work out you have a better chance of succeeding the next time than you do with overthinking it's interesting sort of bringing it back to the fear thing that fear doesn't keep you safe it's keeping you trapped it feels like it's keeping you safe but what it's actually doing it's keeping you trapped and being trapped the paralysis is precisely the thing that's going to keep you fearful yeah that's why I I I I love describing it this way that your freedom is on the other side of your fear because if you're afraid of heights you stay low if you're afraid of people you stay alone if you're afraid of the dark you stay in the light your fear establishes the boundaries of your freedom and so when you're defining your fears you're actually defining your personal boundaries and I'm absolutely convinced that the freedom we all long for is on the other side of our fears and and our fears becomes a psychological boundary that holds us captive and tells us that it's too dangerous to go there but the moment we go there we realize oh my goodness you know this is what I've been dreaming for of all my life you I I grew up incredibly uh shy and reclusive and introverted um I was in a I was in a psychiatric Chair by the time I was 10 years old Chris and um you know being tested for for um mental you know disabilities and uh I was a straight D Student First to 12th grade my English teacher the last day of high school asked me if I thought about going to college I said maybe she said you will never make it I didn't go to school right away I just I worked construction I worked I was a carpenter I worked as a lumberjack you know I I made pizzas flip Burgers I you know I had no Direction no future in my life and in a huge part of that was this fear that I could never accomplish anything meaningful and so what I end up doing is I I did nothing so that there was no proof that I was not good at anything and and what I had to really begin to realize is that fear was the debilitating element in my soul and and I had this very odd kind of experience years later as an adult my son was around 15 years old he wanted to meet my stepdad that he' never Matt um that's where I have my name MC Manis and we flew across the country I tracked him down I hadn't seen him in um almost two years and almost 20 years and and he said to my son um I don't know why he said this he goes I don't know what your dad told you but he was just average he goes I don't know if he you know he's talking about athleticism and sports different things he goes you know I I don't know what he told you now his brother was exceptional but he was just average and I remember um saying to him dad I don't know what you think I would tell him I I I I was just average and as I was leaving what really hit me was he was absolutely right I hid in the average the one way to remain invisible in life is to be average and I I was trying to to cover all my insecurities and All My My self-doubt by just being being average because if you become extraordinary you now become the target of other people's critique or criticism or you know evaluation and one of the choices I had to make in my own life is realizing I I I want to make a difference in the world I want to do something that matters and and I remember I had an uncle who drove me to uh College about 15 hour drive and he saw me years later goes hey do you talk now and he didn't mean for a living He meant do I actually talk he goes I drove you 15 hours you never said a word I was so introverted no one would have ever guessed I would end up speaking to millions of people around the world and what I can tell you Chris is that what shifted for me wasn't that I wasn't afraid to walk up on a platform what shifted for me was I didn't walk in that platform for my ego and I didn't walk in that platform for my for my need or search for selfworth but I wanted to actually help people find Freedom From The Fears that had had held me back and I and and I looked at myself and I thought if I've been Trapped In Fear at such a profound level and have found my way out I'm convinced most of humanity is trapped In Fear And if I can just help people find just enough self-belief to break out of that prison that they've created themselves by believing these things about themselves then for me my life has been well spent where does that self-belief come from or that c for for me it came really deeply rooted in what later I found as a faith you know I grew up irreligious I didn't have any any spiritual context I didn't know there was a God or believe in God um you know and and when I was in my when I was 20 years old and I was in college I was studying philosophy and and was just trying to find meaning in life and I was on a des search to figure out whether my life had any significance I I I I was drowning in in a personal nalism that life had no meaning that existence was just arbitrary that human um action was you know was empty and uh Hollow and and and then to consider this narrative that we're created by God and that we're created in His image and that what gives God pleasure meure is for us to express goodness and to um live a life of love and to elevate the value of other human beings and uh and for me I found that in the person of Jesus and what helped my self-belief was this possibility and and you know I I know you can have a lot of scientists and philosophers and you know and I I'm just for me it's just very very personal um the possibility that my life actually mattered was overwhelming to me and um and I wish I could say I made this incredibly scientific academic you know mathematical decision it wasn't it was for me more of a um God you know if you're out there and my life matters I I um I'm in you know I just want to make a difference in the world I want to serve Humanity I want to help people live a life that's Fully Alive and um and my self-belief came in this conviction that my life wasn't about me that my life had to be bigger than me and that I could actually shift the course of human history by living a life that uh expands Love and Hope and Faith what happened over time with your relationship to Phil well it it it was really um kind of interesting because I was driving in through a city that was at that time the highest murder rate highest crime rate in the United States and I was considering going down there and working on a project but I was scared I mean out of my mind and I'm borrowing my girlfriend who is now my wife Kim's yellow Pinto so I'm in the Hood in a yellow Pinto I'm begging to be killed and and my heart is pounding against my chest I'm 24 years old and I'm terrified and I sto the car in the middle the street and I'm kind of new in this whole Faith thing and I just started reading the Bible and I kind of stopped and prayed and said God I can't come down here if I'm scared to death to get out of the car and all these people of Faith were giving me these great verses that were so encouraging you know and um but not none of those came to my mind there's a particular statement in uh in the scriptures where it says uh to live as Christ and to die as gain and I and I had this deep sense in this moment that said irn if you'll just die right now I'll take you on a life Journey that only dead men can walk and in that moment I just I I had a personal funeral and I told myself I am dead to all my fear to my existence and to my doubts and uh I spent the next 10 years working in the middle of drug cartels walking into houses or projects owned by cartels uzi machine guns everywhere cocaine stack back the ceilings and and I can tell you Chris and um I never I never felt fear because they couldn't I sat across from a guy who sent me a letter in prison telling me he would kill me the moment he got out of prison and when he got out of prison I went and found him and walked into the room he was in and it it it changed the way I could approach life because you couldn't take anything from me and then 40 years later I had stage four cancer and had prostate bladder and lift node cancer that had been undetected and had metastasized and had six and a half hour surgery not knowing if I would live and the craziest thing in that season Chris I never felt fear one time and my my family will tell you this that um and the reason is because fear became my Ally they could take nothing from me I had given it everything and and I'm 66 now and every time I move into a new decade I find myself strangely more Fearless in fact my family they asked me if I would just slow down or be a little more cautious or you know and and I'm like why the older I get the less life you can steal from me you know and uh you know and and and I've been in the most dangerous violent fragile environments in the world and I walked out of those there used to be students who would put money on every day what day I would be assassinated you had your own Deadpool I did and and you know I look at it now I go what kept me safe was my lack of fear of death my this conviction that uh you couldn't take anything from me and even this killer who told me he was going to kill me when he came out of prison looked at me and he was so confused by me and he said you and me are the same and which we nothing alike but uh he said I'm radical for evil and you're radical for God and uh and I found ironically safety on the streets because this guy sent the word out that if somebody touched me he would kill them and just for respect for the lack of fear and I think every human being is desperately trying to figure out how to be alive we're all trying to figure out how to break out of the malaise of existence and to be able to to just drink deeply of this experience called life and and and I want my life to be proof that that's possible and I think that's what all of us long for can you tell me more about the relationship with this guy this criminal well his name was William Westfall so he's a real human being and he had gone to prison for slitting his girlfriend's brother's throat but the guy did not die but it had cut off his vocal cords and when he was in prison his family had had um come to to Faith and he felt that I had infringed on his territory so he sent me a few notes while he was in prison letting me know that when he got out of prison he was going to end my life and it's always nice to know someone's thinking of it right and but um and so I like a I like a letter as much as the next guy yeah yeah you know back then people did right you know and and when he got out of prison I decided I didn't want to be walking down the street and fear this guy's going to come out of a corner so I just decided to go find him and I knocked on the project door where he was staying and there was probably 20 people in there and the moment I walked in everyone ran out and it was just me and him and he pulled out the switchblade because he was known for um he was a white guy who was really good with a knife which was which made him very unique and um he sat across from me he goes this is the same knife I slid his throat with and he goes police never got it he just laughed and and um and you know I just began to have a conversation with them I said you know you're out of prison but you're not free behind every corner of somebody waiting to kill you you're living a life of fear and and I talked to him about how his life could change he wasn't interested you know and uh um he wasn't interested in God he wasn't interested in faith but he was fascinated by someone who wasn't afraid of him and and I and I actually think he was fascinated by someone who was fully Alive while he was living a life of fear and violence um and then um not much after that he was trying to choke choke his girlfriend to death and she took a pair of scissors and killed him and um not every story ends up with a good ending you know so that's the story of of my friend Bill wow yeah just going through more of that sort of fear setting you're about to go and speak on stage as somebody that was an introvert as a kid and wouldn't speak on a 15-hour car ride just sat opposite somebody that's got a switchblade out who sent you multiple letters saying that they're going to kill you what's happening inside of you what's the reframe what's the body feel like what's the Mind feel like what is it that you're saying to yourself because you know a lot of people will like the idea of this like the idea of fearing less and being fearless and yet they step into a situation like that and they're just you know overcome with this wave this tidal wave that they can't stop yeah I I'm not recommending my life to anyone in in that regard and and I'm not saying that even my choices are always the wisest and but what I would say is that whenever you look back on your life and you know your life has been informed and filled by fear you you you never feel that you've lived your life to the fullest so what I I I would say to someone is um adrenaline is natural fear when people say you shouldn't fear I'm like you if a lion is hungry and it's running at you fear is the most reasonable emotion in life and so I I don't think you should be quote Fearless in terms of the experience of that emotion you just have to have Mastery over your inner world and you have to have intention in your life that's bigger than consequences and and that for me has been the big question is because it's also in business right you know and you know I've started a lot of businesses in my life I've been an entrepreneur for 40 years and I've lost millions and millions of dollars which puts me in a very small group of people you know anyone can make millions but you know losing them that that takes a real art and and you know and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had let fear paralyze me and so what I have always asked myself is would I do this even if it fails and when I can say this is worth doing even if it fails I can move forward with so much intention and fear doesn't have Mastery over my life and I think the problem sometimes is we want to do things that succeed rather than things that are actually significant and meaningful for our lives I don't I I I don't really have like goals the way other people have you I don't have like financial goals I'm not trying to make millions and millions of dollars I'm not trying to buy you know Mansions or airplanes um my life is really measured by is this worth my life and if I fail will I still find a deep sense of satisfaction that I tried this yeah what's the line draw this line between self-love self-belief and overcoming fear do these things fit together are they exactly the same or is there something different going on well there's definitely a difference between loving yourself and being in love with yourself right and one is very healthy and one is narcissistic and I I think when you're in love with yourself you refuse to look at yourself honestly and you lack self-awareness but when you love yourself you see your flaws you see your faults you see your shortcomings you see you know where um they're deficient but you do not let that be the basis of your worth and I and I do think one of the significant shifts that has to happen in our lives is a lot of people are are fighting for their worth and they they're trying to succeed to prove their worth it's so much better to accept your worth and to move from your worth rather than trying to move toward your worth and what I would say to most people with about when it comes to self-love is really loving yourself is about understanding your worth and value without having to accomplish anything else in life this has been for me an incredibly liberating thing and and again my faith is deeply rooted to that you know they I idea Chris that you know there there is a God and he that he sees me values me and loves me without condition then I go okay if I'm love without condition nothing I do expands that love elevates that love or makes it more real it's just there and and so now I can live my life from that worth from that value and it's incredibly liberating and and I think I understand in the small sense as a parent you know I I have a son Aaron and daughter Mariah and um 36 and 33 and um nothing they do changes or elevates or increases how much I love them now I've been proud of them at different times at different levels for different things but it but love is a different thing I I I love Aaron and Mariah and that's the Baseline and and I and if I'm capable of that as a really flawed broken human being I I I'm actually convinced that that is the driving principle of the universe and that that is really the essence of who God is and and so that's that's how I began wouldn't it be lovely if we could love ourselves in the way that we quite easily love the people around us it would it would I think it's harder to love ourselves be when we're really honest about who we are you know and uh and but if you cannot love yourself you you cannot really fully love another human being because that human being is flawed too that human being is imperfect too and and if you're always trying to in a sense earn your own love you're going to treat other people the the same way and I think one of the most liberating things in the world is to realize that love is not conditional that if love exists at all love is unconditional and and for me that is like that is a basis of everything I do in my life I don't wake up in the morning going I need to find a way to be loved I don't wake up in the morning going I got to go earn my value I do not wake up in the morning going I got to go prove my worth I wake up in the morning go I'm free and I'm alive and I get to choose and create and this is going to be fun one of my friends took a medium dose of mushrooms in Australia and sat on a rock and this question came to him which was do people love you for who you are or for what you do and it's a difficult question to answer because what we want is for people to love us for who we are because if people love us for what we do it feels contingent and dependent and fragile and volatile and like if people love us for what we do not for who we are and we stopped doing what we do the love would go away with it but a even deeper question is well do you love you for what you do or for who you are because a lot of the time I think we ask the world to show up for us in a way that we're not prepared to to show up for ourselves saying Hey I want you to love me for who I am not for what I do Meanwhile my self- Lov will be contingent based on my performance today not my character over time yeah and I think that maybe there's a a slight third option between loving you for who you are and for what you do they love you for who you are to them and and that's why we end up putting on so many different personas and have so many different masks and life can be so exhausting when you think that person loves you for who you are to them and if that changes in any way then that love changes as well and yeah I I actually think one of the greatest achievements in life Chris is to come to a place where um you accept your own imperfection and you love yourself um not based on your own evaluation of yourself but on um the fact that you have been created with value you know I mean what is value anyway I remember working with all these Wall Street investors and we're talking about economics one guy said you know um oh I only believe in economics you know and uh and I said well I would agree as long as you believe that economics are just simply an assessment of value that we human beings decide what something is worth and he goes yeah no I I agree with that and I mean it's so Random we decide gold has value we decide diamonds have value right we decide avocados have value whatever whatever it is right and and and and those things change based on our own preferences or our own opinions or perspectives but it's the same with human beings you know when a human being has value to us because they contribute something to us then we consider them to have value and if our personal value is based on what other people project our value is we're slaves we we become absolutely captured by the opinion of other people and that's why you can't let someone else decide whether you're gold or diamonds or avocado you have to decide your own value in life and go I I I have value because I exist and I have value because I am a unique human being and and I can work from that value and I can work from that love um and and I don't actually know how you find that and I admit my limitation I don't know how you find that without a relationship with God and I think it's a very difficult thing because it's ethereal like what is the outside determiner that tells you your value and uh and I and and that for me is like been so life transforming to go I know I have intrinsic value I believe I've been created in God's image and likeness but I also believe every human being is created in God's image and likeness and that every human being has intrinsic value and so it's my responsibility and my privilege to treat every human being with that kind of value and that unconditional love just going back to that difference between our expectations and our performance how do you come to think about how people can balance that high expectations with the things with things that they need to be grateful for with things that they do well this sort of balance of pursuing perfectionism also giving yourself Grace when you fall short I think this is kind of one of the curses of competent or high performing people yeah yesterday we we have this space we call the arena where we do some uh coaching it's a mastermind that connects around the world and we talked about the tensions between gratitude and ambition and and and so each one of these core-like virtues like humility and the tension with confidence and then faithfulness with the the tension of proactivity because there's some basic virtues that we want to have we want to be people who are humble we want to be individuals who are grateful but we also have these attributes we must have which are ambition and confidence and and sometimes we confuse humility and confidence as in opposition with each other when actually they they work in a in a in a very harmonic way that when you're when you're truly humble you have great confidence because you have a clear picture of yourself and humility is not the same thing as a lack of of self-confidence it's not a sense of insignificance you can only truly be humble if you know your power only a truly powerful person can express real humility otherwise it's just weakness it's just timidity it's mildness and when you know your strength that's when you can actually be truly humble and so I tell people no there's not attention here this is actually Synergy truly humble people are powerful people truly grateful people are ambitious people they're not in conflict with each other ambition is not is not an anti- virtue you know people will say to me well be ambitious but don't be too ambitious like wait wait wait a wait a minute would you say to me have integrity but don't have too much Integrity or would you say you know um you know be loving but don't be too loving it's like whenever we think something's a virtue you cannot have too much of it but we actually don't think ambition is a virtue but ambition is actually a virtue it's just that selfish ambition is corruptive and so when we look at ambition it is not an opposition with gratitude grateful people are more ambitious because they become more generative by the way I don't think it's incidental that the word generosity comes from the same atmology as the word generative you cannot be truly generous if you are not fully generative and so a grateful person takes full responsibility for all their talent all of their intelligence all of their potential all their capacity and optimizes that for the good of others I I think people who live only for themselves are the greediest people in the world because they have so much more capacity to do good for other people there's also a pressure that comes along L with that though the fact that if you realize just how much you could contribute that set an even higher ideal right and then there's a pain when you realize oh even though I think I've been working hard I've been working hard in a very particular kind of way in a way that's very selfish and in a way that was serving me and my shallow need for recognition validation and to fill this internal void and so that people think that I'm cool and so I can fix the wounds from my past without fixing the wounds from my past by filling them in with the Adoration of those around me no absolutely I had this student who graduated from UCLA and he was from El Salvador which is the same place I'm from I'm from El Salvador and uh as an immigrant but his parents were immigrants so he's now the son of an immigrant and his parents became incredibly successful in the US and now he gets to go to UCLA they pay the tuition so they've paid an immense amount of money for him to go to school he graduates you know near the top of his class and after he graduates he says to me I'm not sure what I'm going to do next and I and I said well what do you want to do with your life he goes you mean to pay the bills like your parents just put hundreds of thousands of dollars to send you to one of those prestigious universities in the world not so you could just pay the bills but so you could start a company that that employs a thousand people and provides food for 5,000 families and and how could you ever graduate from UCLA and think your your optimal goal is to pay the bills and and I do think it does put responsibility on us and I'm okay with that I I'm okay saying that when you have more opportunity you have more responsibility I I'm I I I'm okay putting that pressure on people saying if you have been given a a higher IQ you have more responsibility to make the world better if you've been given extraordinary Talent OR capacity you know some unique skill or ability you have a high responsibility to make a difference in the world and I do take that stewardship really really important and seriously in my own life going um if I have any ability if I have any intelligence if I have any Talent or any capacity that has been given to me so that I could Revel in it and just you know enjoy myself because I'm so awesome if I've been given any unique capacity it's because I have a higher responsibility to do good in the world and to help other people live lives that they could not live without my help the responsibility of capacity is very interesting but painful right because again with that oh god I've got I've got this thing that I need to deal with and I need to Grapple with it and it's more complex and it's going to cause me to turmoil and you're overthinking and now you're saying that I need to pay it forward that makes absolutely yep and and your life will feel meaningless if you don't pay it forward I think that's sort of like the interesting Catch 22 in this is that uh how many people you met who have accomplished so much and have accumulated so many things and they're just Hollow and empty inside I I remember years ago I was working um a bit more in the film industry and I was trying to get some scripts you know um produced and things and I got a phone call that this billionaire up in Beverly Hills wanted to meet with me and and and and by the way he didn't know much about me so that was great because I could just come in as a writer and and so I I I drive up to his house and I get to a gate and I have to you know send them my name and they open the gate and I drive up another road to go up into the hills I didn't even know someone could have that much land in Beverly Hills and and and I'm sitting in his house and he shows up late and he sits down he goes you get 45 minutes I mean there was no warmth there was no hey it's great to meet you you know so glad to have you here it was very cut and dry and about um 30 or 45 minutes and he asked me a question and he said um can we meet tomorrow and I said yeah yeah we we can we can meet tomorrow goes uh how about two o'clock or something and I said yeah I'll be here two o'clock and I left so excited going this guy's going to fund my movies this is going to be awesome and the next day I show up and we're walking on his property he's like this is where I think like Ben Affleck and all the boys come play volleyball and he's just you know talking it up and everything like that and I said so why did you ask me to come back up and he goes when you walked into the room you have this inner peace and I've been searching for inner peace all my life and I have all this wealth that I have all this stuff and I have no peace and so I just hoping maybe you could help me figure out how to find peace in my life and you know I know I'm always supposed to be a person who has higher ideals and I'm always trying to you know help people at the deepest spiritual level but I was slightly disappointed you know that he did not want to fund one of my films but he was actually looking for the inner peace that I brought into the room and and I think this is the reality Chris is that when we spend our lives consuming we becomes we become emotional psychological and spiritual black holes we just consume and consume consum and consume and it brings no joy it brings no meaning it brings no no lasting happiness and but when we live our lives to serve other people I don't think you can you C you cannot get too rich you can become too greedy you cannot have too much wealth you can have but you can be possessed by your wealth and so it really isn't about how much you have it's about how much has you and when you live a life of gener it and live a life where you're determined to do good in the world I don't think it ruins you I think what ruins you is when it owns you rather when you own it I love it dude I'm so glad that we got to speak today I've wanted to sit down with you ever since I saw you talk last year Owen mcmanis ladies and gentlemen where should people go they want to keep up to date with everything that you've got going on oh man thank you one Chris I have to tell you I'm I've become such a huge fan I I love your work I love your interviews um you you have an incredibly brilliant mind and your your ability to cut through all the chaos and lack of clarity is a real gift to the world and so I just want to let you know that I I consider it a privilege to come on because I um I I'm a fan and I just love your work uh you can go to Irwin mmis.ga.gov I have a few books that I've written my newest book is the seven frequencies of communication the book that you're actually um were speaking to me about today was is called Mind shift and about internal mental structures um but if you just want to know more go to Iran mcm.com but mostly I'm just really glad to get to be here with You Chris heck yeah I appreciate you man until next time all right take care do you think that your algorithm on YouTube is a bit of a God is able to know things about you that you don't know about yourself well the YouTube gods have selected this episode specifically for you bespoke so go and go and check it out