It’s often said that fear is simply “the unknown.” But the unknown is a void – it hasn’t happened yet, therefore, we can’t fear what doesn’t exist. Instead, fear is us projecting past experiences or other people’s stories of what we think might go wrong into the future.

Today, I’m going to share a different way to approach the “the unknown” in a way that creates excitement and intrigue instead of fear and anxiety. This episode includes a series of questions that will help prevent you from carrying those stories and experiences into the unknown, and instead carry much more awareness and self trust. With this simple reframe, you can stop acting out of fear, and begin acting from the place of ‘what if it actually all works out?’

In this episode, wer’e talking about:

• Learning to trust yourself
• Overcoming fear
• Eliminating self judgement
• Feeling the judgement of others
• Questions to ask yourself to help overcome fear

My new book “You Grow Me: The Next Level Human Philosophy of Love, Sex and Romantic Connection” co-written by Dr. Jade Teta (Next Level Human podcast) is available now! It’s a big “f**k you” to unrealistic Hollywood love stories, and instead offers a fresh perspective on how personal growth is intertwined with romance. You can buy your copy of You Grow Me on Amazon here. Please read and let me know your takeaways! Email me or DM me on Instagram.

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REFERENCES

Four Liberating Questions by Byron Katie

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TRANSCRIPT

Speaker: Hey there, welcome back to the room to grow podcast. Emily here. And I wanted to do a super quick one today, but there’s this idea that I’ve been playing with. And then I, I was reminded of it the other day that it’s not the unknown that you’re fearing. It’s actually your own projections about the future that based on past experiences that you are fearing because the unknown, the unknown is a void.

The unknown is, is unknown. We can’t fear what we don’t even know you. Is there to fear, right? Like when you think of it that way, it, it really changes the, the situation. I myself have many times said, you know, like I, I fear the unknown. We don’t actually fear the unknown though. Instead, we are projecting all of our past life experiences, or maybe even, uh, things that we’ve picked up from other people’s stories of, of things that have, Maybe gone poorly in their life and then taking that on as our own, we are creating story after story, after story, after story of what we think might go wrong, what we think could happen, but it tends to shift towards the negative.

So if you’re experiencing fear about what’s to come in the present when you can’t see it and you don’t really know what it is that I want you to take a moment and stop and breathe into that and just recognize. Start to cultivate this awareness of what story is this coming from? What am I actually fearing?

What am I actually fearing? And those fears can be based on incredibly valid experiences, but something that I’ve been noticing more and more the last year or so. Especially the last few months is as I move deeper into this whole new life that I am creating for myself. There’s so many stories that are coming up from past versions of me and past experiences that are very much framed towards the negative that is creating, like I have had moments of it creating a lot of fear about what’s to come.

And then in some ways paralyzing me to take steps forward. I’ve seen that in various areas of my life where that’s been coming up. And as I am creating more and more awareness around these stories, I’m kind of stunned at the number of stories that I carry. And, and I, I have even, even outside opinions share with me, a relatively like quite self aware person.

And there’s, you know, we only know what we know, right? There’s always so much more self awareness to cultivate always. But this is really important because When we can start to recognize the stories for what they are, that gives us the opportunity to make a different choice and to relax into the unknown.

That requires a lot of self trust. That’s that’s a theme that you’re going to hear me talking about more often. I’ve always talked about part of the like versions of that, but I’m really deepening into that and really pulling this apart. Like how do we better learn to trust ourselves? Because if you trust yourself, you’re not going to fear these past experiences of yours happening again because you will begin to recognize that you moved through those and that you’re a different human than the one who moved through those past experiences where you were hurt.

You’re not the same person anymore. And if you are different, that means that everything else gets to be different too. And you are different. You are different, you have evolved, you have grown, you are not the same human that you were 10 minutes ago. You’re always changing, you’re in a constant state of change.

We all are, right? So if we can actually accept that and start to catch ourselves in the old stories and instead frame it as, you know, to use kind of a, I hear this a lot sometimes, but what if it all works out? What if it all works out? And what if, what if your, your fears around recreating the same experiences are the very things that you want to do?

that are going to are going to recreate that in your present as you continue to move forward. Because there’s a self sabotage element here, right? When, when we are acting from old stories, I’ll give you a super simple example. This is like definition of of projection. I was procrastinating on some work.

This was, this was a couple months ago. I was procrastinating on getting some work done and I was talking to my partner about it and you know, we came up with a little, a little mini plan for me to, uh, for me to, to get some work done. He, he asked if I wanted some help coming up with a plan. I was like, yeah, I’d love that.

So we came up with a little mini plan, agreed to it. Awesome. And he goes to, uh, make dinner, and I go into our room, which happens to be off the kitchen, and I’m making the bed, because I washed all the sheets, I’m like, just making the bed. And, Then I catch him at the stove, just turning and staring at me and just kind of looking at me.

And I thought, Oh fuck it. He’s, he’s going like, Hey, you just said you were going to go get, you know, all this like work done right now. And now I have distracted myself with making the bed and I called out to him. I’m like, I know, I know. I’m, I’m just, I’m just making this. And then I’m going to go, go get some work done.

And he starts laughing. He’s like, I was just turned around looking at you thinking how amazing it is that I get to do life with you and just really appreciating you in the moment. And he’s like, but good to see where your head’s at. And that was complete and total projection. I was operating off of the story that he was judging me because what was actually happening was that I was judging me.

I was judging me because I was like, fuck, like internally, there was a little small part of me that was still not practicing trusting myself because I wasn’t following through on exactly what I said I was going to do when I said I was going to do it. And our brains are always watching us. Right? So guys, I wasn’t following through.

Then I assumed that he thought the same thing about me and was immediately almost defensive. with him about the fact that I was not doing the work that I said I was going to go and do. And this is what I want you to start noticing in your own life. Where are you fearing the unknown? Where are you fearing other people’s judgments or making assumptions about other people’s judgments about you?

All of these things are coming from stories and you get to unpack the stories. If you’ve listened to this podcast, um, before you, you may, I’m sure there’ve been episodes where I’ve, I’ve talked about the four questions by Byron Katie. And number one is, is it true? Is the thought that you’re having true? Second question, are you 100 percent sure that it’s true? And really we can never be 100 percent sure about much of anything truly. Right. So are you 100 percent sure that that’s true? The third one is who are you with that thought? So in that example, I was someone who was projecting that my partner was judging me and immediately being defensive.

But the fourth question is who are you without that thought? Without that thought, I would have seen my partner looking lovingly at me from across the room and just melted into a puddle and been like, Oh my God, like this, this, you know, amazing man, this amazing relationship that I am co creating. What a gift, completely different, right?

So when you are having these stories come up, ask yourself these questions. Ask yourself if you would still fear the unknown if you weren’t projecting that the past is going to repeat itself. And then can you start acting even just a little bit at a time from the place of what if it actually all works out?

Let me know how it goes. Talk to you

soon.