EP NC 19 – Living Fearless with Rhonda Britten

NC 019 | Living Fearless

What is fear and what are you afraid of? Rhonda Britten, life coach and living fearless expert, delves into the question of what’s keeping you from taking that leap and living into your purpose? Rhonda reveals that fear is a trickster, and it is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, as spiritual as you are, and has all the knowledge you have. Fear is the cause and effect of the feelings, thoughts, and actions that prohibit you from accepting yourself and realizing your full potential. It has only one job and that is to keep you safe and to keep you in survival. Rhonda’s life purpose is to help people to live fearless and overcome fears to do amazing things.

Listen to the podcast here:

Living Fearless with Rhonda Britten

We’re so excited and so blessed to have our amazing, award-winning, beautiful, smart, intelligent, Rhonda Britten joining us. You may not know her, but if you don’t, you need to. She’s a daytime Emmy award-winner actress. She’s friends with Oprah. She had her own show on TV for a while. If I remember correctly, she was also the counselor for the Biggest Loser at one point in time.

I was the first life coach on television in the world. I’ve done 600 episodes of television. I was on Celebrity Fit Club, which is what you’re talking about. I had three seasons on Starting Over, which I was named America’s favorite life coach. Then I had a show all over the world called Help Me Rhonda. I was actually the first life coach member to do changing lives on TV.

You just changed some lives on Note CAMP for those that are fearful of failure or success.

Well, thank you Scott. I am so excited to be here. The first thing that I want to say right off the bat is feel free to ask me questions as we go. I have a material that I have to share with you. If we get to it, great. If we don’t get to it because your questions are more important, that’s great, too. I love the questions and I love interaction. Don’t hesitate because I’m on a roll. I know that Scott already told you to get paper and pen out, but just make sure if you do not have it handy that you have some paper and pen. What we’re going to do together is I’m going to start talking you through how fear works. I don’t know about you, but fear’s it, right? You can do all the self-help you want, but if you don’t have that real understanding about how fear works and how to use it to change your life, the other things will be good skills and tools when you’re not in fear. When you’re in fear, you will be stopped. That’s what we’re going to be talking about

What are you afraid of? I want you to think even beyond your business, because I’m going to say something crazy. I know this is going to sound crazy to you, but what I recognize is so many of our business fears are tied to our relationship fears. I want you to be open about how your fears come into being as we go through this. What are you afraid of? I want you to sit back and think about what are you afraid of. Physical fears? Feeling rejected? Time ticking tick-tock. I’m too old. I’m not old enough. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m going to fail. Having enough? Taking that jump? Dentist? Public speaking? The number one fear, the external fear in America. Let’s talk about fear and some of the physical symptoms of fear. I just want to talk a little bit about physical fears versus emotional fears. Falling down. Jumping out of a plane. In a physical fear, we all know that our heart races, we have sweaty palms, our throat clenches, blood pressure, rapid breathing. You might feel physical fear differently. You might get a gut punch in the stomach. Your knee might hurt. Your back might hurt. You might start sweating. I want to talk to you about the differences between emotional fears and physical fears.

NC 019 | Living Fearless

Living Fearless: So many of our business fears are tied to our relationship fears.

Hopefully as I was mentioning those examples, are these what you’re afraid of? Do you have any of these fears? As I was mentioning those, what fears came up for you? Emotional fears and physical fears actually cause the same reaction in our body. That’s really important to note. If you have an emotional fear, like fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of loss, all those lovely fears we have, those fears actually work on our neurobiology the same way as physical fears. You going out with a fear of rejection is the same as you diving out of a plane. I want you to understand because that is a trickster of fear. Fear is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, a spiritual as you are, and has all the knowledge you have. Fear is a trickster. The thing about fear is that you start having that sweaty palms, your back hurts, you start getting tingles in your stomach, and most people take that as a sign that they should stop because that goes along with the physical fear. If you have a physical fear, your physical fear is about survival, “I don’t want to fall off the bridge. I don’t want to jump out of the plane.” It actually will cause your emotional life to go, “This is dangerous and I should stop.” I want you to know that physical fears and emotional fears are very similar. That’s important to know. What is fear? Your body’s reaction to fear is the same whether you’re faced with a physical threat or an emotional one.

Again, an emotional threat is rejection, failure, success, somebody giving you a dirty look, literally walking into a room and not knowing anybody. Somebody blowing you off and not giving you a big smile increases our ability to be stopped. It triggers our fear response. We’re not talking about these big giant fears. We’re talking about these little tiny fears that wreak havoc on our life. This is the definition of fear. Fear is what the cause and effect of the feelings, thoughts, actions that prohibits you from accepting yourself and realizing your full potential. It’s the cause of it and it’s the effect of it. I want you to write this down. Fear has only one job. Fear’s job is to keep you safe. Again, we talked about physical fears. It wants to keep you in survival. It wants you to survive physically. Your emotions want to do the exact same thing. They want to keep you safe. This is where it goes wrong. Remember what I said about fear is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, spiritual as you, as knowledgeable as you are, so the more educated you get, the more fear gets tricky, insidious, and invisible. Fear, in order to keep you safe, has to repeat the past because the past is the only place fear knows that you are going to be safe because you’re still alive. You’re still breathing. You’re still alive. Fear goes, “Maybe it didn’t go the way she wanted, but at least she’s safe.”

Fear has a tendency to bring your past into the present, and so you’re using that pastas a filter to see your world. You don’t know this necessarily. You may not be attentive to this, but that’s what we want to talk about. We want to talk about when you go for a goal, when you go for an intention, when you have a big dream that you want to fulfill, I’m going to give you an exercise that’s going to help you. I start identifying where fear may have you tripped. Fear is invisible, insidious, silent, and deadly. It wants you to stay on the couch eating a box of potato chips because it knows you’re safe there. I was on a podcast and the host asked me, “Rhonda, is there any good use to fear? Is there a positive to fear?” I’m like, “Yes, there are a lot of positives to fear.” He said, “I know that sometimes I’m motivated by fear. Like if I feel desperate, I got to make some money in the bank. I got to make it happen. The kids are going to starve.” I said, “Yeah, isn’t that awesome?” Fear is a great motivator to challenges, but it will never let you be satisfied. You can never enjoy your abundance. You can never enjoy that relationship fully. You can never relax. Once you start getting addicted to the adrenaline rush of that fear motivating you, it becomes a habit. It puts your neurological pathways a certain way. Then it becomes more difficult and challenging. It makes you because you have to become aware in order to change your life.

I just want to review just a little bit before we go to the next section. Fear is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, as knowledgeable as you, as spiritual as you are. Fear wants to keep you safe, but as you get smarter, it gets smarter.

Fear is a tricky devil.

You can identify what it is you do. Scott, we call it fear response. For instance, one of my fear responses is I’m impatient. When I’m in freedom and I’m good to go and I’m in my power and I’m living large and I’m truly in my power, I have all the patience in the world. I’m like Mother Teresa. When I am in my fears, “You’re not moving fast enough. Why are you being so stupid? Don’t you know that?” I become impatient. Impatience is a fear response for me to let me know that I have some fear of coming out. I am in a scenario, I am in a situation, something’s going on in my life where fear is trying to come up to the surface and run it. I have to be awake in order to know that I’m not going to get tricked by that. I see I’m getting impatient. I’m not going to act on my impatience. Instead I’m going to slow it down so that I can get into my freedom, get into my true nature, get into my power in order to move forward because that’s the only place satisfaction lies. That’s the only place contentment lies.

I want everybody to go ahead and shut your eyes. I want you to nod your head with your eyes shut. Just nod it all the way down to your neck. I’m going to read a list of fear responses and I want you to nod your head if you do any of these things or feel any of these things. These are some of the fear responses that you have that keeps you stuck. Do you ever isolate yourself? Do you ever pretend everything’s okay when it’s not? Do you ever condemn yourself, compare yourself? Do you ever settle? Do you ever whine? How about judge? Do you ever get defensive? Do you secretly try to manipulate? Do you complain? How about suffer? What about wait, do you just call it patience but really you’re just waiting? What about procrastinating, worry, struggle? Do you blame? What about deflect or try to control? Do you ever feel bitter, powerless, dissatisfied, resentful, entitled, guilty? Do you ever feel irritated, like perhaps now? Do you ever feel overwhelmed, ignored, annoyed? Do you ever get into pity? Do you ever feel victimized? Do you ever feel like a victim? One of the things about the trick about being a victim is that there has to be a savior and there has to be a victim. Scott, what percentage did you have? Over 50%?

Everybody has over 50%, even my good days. You’re going to get something like there. 

Most people have over 70% to 80%. When I’m in an audience of 1,000 people, I say, “How many people have 90%?” most people raise their hand. With judgment, comparing, competing, procrastinating, perfectionism, overwhelmed, all of those things move through us on a daily basis when fear is in control. We want to know that when we’re judging, we have fear running our life. When we are procrastinating, we have fear running our life. I want you to think about it this way. This is how fear works. We procrastinate. We’re perfectionist. We get anxious, overwhelmed. Fear of failing. We have all these problems. Then we go to procrastination school and we’re going to be like, “I’m going to knock this problem out so I’m going to go to procrastination school.” You go to procrastination school, you learn a lot of skills and tools, and you go boom to procrastination, “I beat you.” The problem is that just because you got rid of procrastination, if fear’s running the show and creating these fear responses, it’ll just make another fear response. It doesn’t care what the fear responses are. It just wants to stop you because it loves you and it wants to keep you safe.

Let’s talk about those neural pathways that I was talking about. Let’s talk about the brain. When we want to change our life, what we’re actually doing is we’re neuroscientists in that moment because we’re changing our neural pathways. You don’t have to think about changing your neural pathways and you don’t have to know anything about neuroscience to change your neural pathways. Whenever you make a new decision, you are changing your neural pathways. When you practice that decision, you are creating those new neural connections. This is how the brain works and this is how fear works in neuroscience in the brain. The hippocampus, which is right next to the amygdala, stores real or perceived threat signals in long-term memory. What does that mean for you? You walk into a room filled with strangers. You’re going to go network. You’re going to go make some sales. You’re going to meet people. You’re going to be awesome. But you have had a story in your past that says, “People don’t like me. I’m shy. It’s really hard for me to get to know people,” all these stories you tell yourself. That story actually has your amygdala and hippocampus alerted and you now see through the filter. It becomes real basically. Anything you perceive becomes real. It’s not necessarily real like all those people might be waving at you, but you actually don’t see it. We see like 10,000, 20,000 things every minute, and so we’re constantly choosing and deciding unconsciously what to pay attention to. When you have that filter up of “it’s hard for me to meet people” or “people don’t like me right away” or “I’m shy,” all of those things create a reality in your body, so when you walk into a room, those are the things you see. That’s absolutely fascinating. We have so much more control over ourselves than we know. The hippocampus stores real or perceived. You make up a story, it believes it’s real and it acts like it’s real.

The second thing I’m going to tell you about the brain is it responds potentially to dangerous stimuli before it has all the facts. Your brain, that hippocampus and amygdala, the way our neural pathways work, the way that safety comes in, is that you can see. I want to say sensor because you’re actually not seeing it. Imagine for a moment that you have a certain space around you that actually picks up consciousness, energy, different things around you. If you feel that there’s like a threat from your past, if it has a memory, because you remember. Your best friend in second grade kicked you in the shins because you drew a better picture and they’re jealous and they kicked you in the shins. Now you want to go make some money and you want to make it happen. Your amygdala and hippocampus are like, “If you do that, you’re getting a kick in the shins again.” You go out and it basically tests it like, “Is anybody going to be kicking me in the shins? Is there a danger here?”Again, remember the first part, it’s perceived or real threats. Based on our past history, we’re making things up all of the time and we don’t even know we’re making it up because it feels real.

The third thing I want to say is the brain is programmed to detect dangers routinely experienced by our ancestors and those learned by us individually. This is going to blow your mind. They’ve been doing research. Maybe it was last year that a study came out and they’ve been doing fear research. They noticed that the fear was activated, the amygdala and hippocampus was activated, even though the person, I, live right now, didn’t experience it but my great, great, great grandmother did. If you ever said to yourself, “Why am I like this?” you may never have had that situation happen to you. It’s handed down through your DNA. Some of your fears are through your DNA. You did not experience it. When people come to me and go, “I need to figure out why I have this fear of failure, why I have this fear of rejection,” I go, “That’s nice, but spending time trying to figure out why, thinking that’s going to unlock the door and give you the key to freedom, is a waste of time.” There is no one why. You are not afraid of competing and comparing because your friend Bob kicked in the shins when you do a better picture. You’re not afraid of intimacy only because your girlfriend broke up with you in college. Those things don’t form with one event. Not that one event can’t be traumatic and can’t impact us. It absolutely does, but most of our fears, most of the way that we operate in the world aren’t based on one situation. They’re based on situations over and over again, as well as to our DNA. Our fear is formed through our family experiences, through our teachers, through our friends, through the way we were raised, through our caretakers, through our environment.

By the time we’re five years old, what I call your wheel of fear has been formed. It is locked and loaded. If you have a fear of rejection, it didn’t just happen last week. It’s happened probably by the time you were five, you had that fear of rejection. Your fear of failure has probably been around for a while. I want you to quit looking back and trying to figure out what caused your fear to come up and why you’re afraid to go network or why you’re scared to make $1 million dollars. Again, you think, “I’m going to make $1 million dollars,” but then you find yourself sabotaging yourself. You find yourself not doing the things you know you want to do. Just know that you’re not crazy. It’s not your fault. You’re not stupid. You’re not weak. These things are in your neurobiology. It’s the way you were made. The way fear works is in our system. It’s not something that you made up. It’s something that actually is how we work. I want you to hear that because I want that shame to walk away. I want that guilt to walk away. I want that worry to walk away. I want that blamed to walk away. You don’t need to shame yourself about like, “Why am I doing this to myself?” No, you’re not doing it to yourself. Fear is doing it to you because it wants to keep you safe. Our ability to erase the memories of fear, that little boy kicking you in the shins, is highly unlikely. I remember the first time I read that in a book about fear research. I’m like, “Are you kidding me? I can’t erase these things?” What I really got is it may not be erased, but you can transform it, transmute it, and transcend it. You can heal it. It might still be there, but it doesn’t have the ouch as it did before.

Fear has one job, as I said before. It is to keep you safe because it loves you. Fear is triggered by the unknown. That’s an unknown thought, some thought that you’ve never had before. If you haven’t dated in twenty years and you start dating, that’s fear. Fear is triggered by the unknown. Write this down. I love this. Freedom equals your capacity to live in the unknown. As you’re on your way to make your dreams happen, as a business owner, entrepreneur, you’re making it happen. It’s you. You have to make it happen with your team but you are the driver. You’re the engine. You’re the passion. You’re the purpose. You have to keep everyone motivated and supported and inspired. You are it because it’s your business. That can feel like a lot of pressure and you can feel bogged down. I want you to remember that that passion and that purpose, that drive, that dream, is a seed of your destiny, a seed of your future. Let’s say you have a dream of making $1 million $5 million, $10 million. Pick your money amount. On your way to make $1 million, you and I both know it’s not going this way. Zero to a million isn’t a straight line. Zero to a million is up, it’s down, it’s backwards, it’s forward, it’s all different ways. The way and how we keep moving forward is knowing that this up and down is actually refining us, giving us more discernment, and helping us build our skills and tools so that when we do reach that goal of $1 million dollars, when we reach that goal of $5 million, when we reach that goal of $10 million, we can have the skills, the tools, the capacity, and the consciousness to not only hang on to it, but to have it move through us in a powerful way. If you get discouraged because you’re zero to $1 million doesn’t it look like this, that is what I call an expectation. You are having a false expectation. What’s an expectation? It is you and I agree to something except I forgot to tell you about it.

I want you to get that so much of our disappointment or heartbreak and where we fall down is that we actually believe that this is how we should be living our life, this is how we should be actualizing our dream. When you actually understand how fear works, you have all your little steps all “known,” maybe have a mentor which is important, and take classes which is important, all these things are super important, but that’s not how it works. It works up, down, sideways, backwards, and that is the unknown. The better you are at increasing your capacity to live in the unknown is your capacity to live in freedom. When I’m freedom, I’m talking the ability to make the money you want, the ability to be in a relationship you want ability, the ability to be that person that is in that intimate relationship and not afraid to be intimate and vulnerable and available, that person who is willing to build a team and have all these different conflicting personalities all over each other as a team. It took me a long time to build a team because I didn’t have the skills or the tools. This person would have some fear and this person would have some fear, and I had to learn how to support people in their fear while they were helping and supporting this business to grow. If you’re an entrepreneur, you must know how your fear operates or it will decide things for you. It will choose team members for you. It will choose deals for you. There will be things that you will regret, and I don’t want you. I have a motto of no regret and I want you to have the same.

Eric asked, “Do you have any recommendations for overcoming those fears, books or do you just face it head on, punch it in the face?” He’s interested in your personal opinion.

NC 019 | Living Fearless

Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regret

I want you to do fearless living with me. I want you to understand your wheel of fear and wheel of freedom. My book, Fearless Living, the one that I was just reading from, there’s three ways to do this. It’s either through the book, Fearless Living, and you do it by yourself, but I encourage you to do it with somebody else. I do something called the wheel of fear and the wheel of freedom. It’s Fearless Living Training Program and that’s on my website and I put it on special for you. If you go to FearlessLiving.org/FLTP, you can get that. The other thing is coming to a weekend and I take you through it in a live event. Some of us like to do self-study at home than the online programs. If you’d like to be with me and hang out and have coaches that support you and help you kick that fear’s butt, then that’s the way to do it.

I have a certain way that I think about fear. I believe that we each have a core fear, and that fear was developed by the time we were five. Everyone else talks about the cliché of fear, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t feel the fear and do it anyway. I don’t know about you, but I had a crappy childhood. I’m going to share with you a quick little story about my crappy childhood. When people hear my story, they think, “That’s how you got fear, Rhonda.” No. My fear was formed by the time I was five. This didn’t happen until I was fourteen years old. When I was fourteen, I had the horrific experience of watching my father on Father’s Day came over to take us out to brunch. My parents were separated. My Dad’s was coming over to take us to brunch. We’re going to go to a fancy Douglas House Buffet Hotel restaurant. There are only two restaurants in my little town, Big Boy and Douglas House. We had no fast food. I lived in a little tiny town. I’m in the bedroom helping my mom, fluff up her beehive and my dad comes in, “Come on.” He says to me, “I’m going to go get my coat from the car.”

As me and my mom walked out, my dad’s in his trunk getting his coat. I have two sisters there in the bathroom. We have one bathroom growing up, and they’re in the bathroom fighting it out. As my father grabbed his coat, I noticed it’s not a coat. It’s a gun and he starts screaming at my mother, “You made me do this,” and he fires. I start screaming, “Dad, what are you doing? Dad, what are you doing? Stop.” He cocks the gun and he pointed at me, and I absolutely believe I’m next. My mother, literally with her last breath, sees that gun in my face and screams out, “No, don’t.” My dad realized that my mom’s alive takes that bullet intended for me and pointed at my mother and shoots her a second time. The second bullet goes through my mother’s abdomen, out her back, and lands in the car horn. For the next twenty minutes all I heard was the car horn. Then my father comes right next to me, literally two feet away from me, puts the gun to his head and fires.

At fourteen years old, I’m the sole witness of watching and witnessing my father murder my mother and committed suicide in front of me. I don’t know how you’d respond to that, but this is how I responded. I became an alcoholic. I got three DUIs. I tried to kill myself three times. I blamed myself because I didn’t do anything heroic, I didn’t stop my father, I didn’t save my mother, I didn’t jump in front of her and now she’s dead and my father’s dead. I’m the only one there that could have physically stopped it. For the next twenty years, I had a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. I had a lot of regret, a lot of pain. I believed that I was damaged. It’s like that’s the way it is, I’m damaged now. I took workshops and read books and did all this stuff and they’d all tell me what to do, but they never made me feel better. It would inspire me for moment, and I bet you’ve experienced this, too. You read a book and you’re like, “This is so good. I’m so inspired,” and then you shut the book and you don’t know what to do. It doesn’t last.

As I started healing myself, and it took time, when I realized that this wasn’t just meant for me and that it was meant for other people, I created everything so that you could do it, too. I want you to be able to set yourself free any time that fear has its way with you. When people say, “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” I couldn’t have done it anyway. Fear’s too tricky for that for most people. That’s where they increased shame, increase beating yourself up, increase putting yourself down, increase something’s wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with you. It’s just fear is having its way with you and you don’t know it, just like I didn’t know it doesn’t. We don’t learn this stuff in high school and college and junior high. What I’m talking about is not based on a book I read. Nothing I’m teaching you is from a book I read. Everything I tell you about fear is from personal experience. I, too, read those books that were like, “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” and just like you said, “Smash it in the face.” It’s like, “Yeah, but okay, maybe.”

Most of the time fear is trickier, more seductive, and more silent than that. It is way faster and better and quicker than you are. If you don’t see it, you can’t change it. I want you to be able to change it. I want you to be able to change it in an instant. I want you to be able to walk into that room where there’s a whole bunch of strangers and your normal story is shy and this and that. I want you to know how to immediately shift your state of mind, shift your mindset, so that you can move into a fearless state, in a state of freedom, so that you walk into that room with a different filter, with a different way of being. You can do that. You can totally do that. I totally have learned how to do it the long way. You don’t have to learn the long way. I’m going to show you the shorter way. I learned a long way. Was it hard? Yeah, it sucked. It was really hard.

In that third suicide attempt, I realized something. I’m not going to kill myself. I’m not good at it. I got to figure out another way. That was the beginning of me changing, realizing that death wasn’t an option for me. There was a reason I was alive. There’s a reason you’re alive. There’s a destiny calling you. There’s a dream calling you. There are goals calling you. I want to focus on your destiny. There’s a destiny calling you. That’s why you’re here right now. There is a destiny calling you, and fear with all its trickery can get in your way so easily. That’s not okay with me because I want you to be able to choose your destiny in the sense of “I can move forward. I can decide.” Use your frontal lobe up here. Use this. Amygdala and hippocampus is back here. We want to use our frontal lobe and make decisions to move forward. I want you to be able to decide. When fear has a way with us, sometimes we can’t decide. We get frozen, we flee, we get resistant, we “self-sabotage,” all those things that everybody talks about. To be honest, I don’t believe in self-sabotage. I don’t believe that you’re resistant. I believe that fear is having its way with you. You have a choice to listen or to be in your body and free. It’s a choice. You’ve got to know you have the choice in order to take the choice.

I have to tell you, Stephanie, after hearing you speak at a couple years ago at Secret Knock with our buddy, Greg, took your online coaching. She actually went through your program, stuff like that, and came out the other end much more positive. Fear still tricks her up a little bit, but she overcame a lot of great things that used to limit her. It would stop her from taking action on things. We all deal with this those days, but she’s a much stronger and better individual for going through your program and overcoming some of those fears. She had a rough childhood as well and got programmed into that, “You can’t do that. You’re not good enough to do,” and that aspect of things, and realized that’s not the case.

What’s cool, Scott, is that you don’t have to have a bad childhood to have fear. Fear is part of our neurobiology. Everybody has it. You bring up a good point with Stephanie. You’re never getting rid of fear. That’s not how it works. When I read a landing page or sales page with like “defeat fear for life,” the next question you should ask that teacher or that marketing expert is going, “Really? Are you going to give me a lobotomy because my amygdala and hippocampus and my whole nervous system is intertwined in my body. I don’t think I’m getting rid of it.” You can master it, you can transcend it, you can transform it, but you can’t get rid of it. It’s about learning the skills.

NC 019 | Living Fearless

Living Fearless: There is a destiny calling you, and fear with all its trickery can get in your way so easily.

I’m going to teach an exercise to everybody called Stretch, Risk or Die. This is going to help your business and this is going to help your life. It’s an exercise I created for one of my private clients who had a sales team. She said to me, “Rhonda, I want my sales team to be motivated and get more sales and be amazing.” We’re sitting at a restaurant somewhere having our session and she’s like, “I can’t get my sales team to do it. Make it happen.” I created this exercise called Stretch, Risk or Die, and her sales team blew it out of the water because they knew what to do. Let’s go quickly through this exercise, Stretch, Risk or Die. There’s your comfort zone. We’re all familiar with the comfort zone and everybody knows it. For the sake of this conversation, the comfort zone is what you know. If you know how to sit on the TV and watch five shows in a row, that’s your comfort zone. If having somebody slap in the face is your comfort zone, that’s your comfort zone. The comfort zone could be you’re married, not married, kids, no kids, wealthy, poor, broke, middle class, whatever it is, that’s your comfort zone. Whatever your life is right now, that’s what we’re going to define as your comfort zone.

The second circle is the stretch zone. The stretch zone is things you know you can do but you don’t do. You know you can do it, but you don’t do it. You know you can go to that networking meeting, but you don’t do it. You know you can drink another glass of water to get healthier, but you don’t do it. You know you could eat more vegetables to feel more empowered, take vitamin D, but you don’t do it. You know you could call your mentor and ask a question, but you don’t do it right. The stretch zone is not only the stretch zone, it’s also called the beat up zone. This is where you beat yourself up ruthlessly because you know you can do it and you don’t do it. The risk zone are things you don’t know if you could do. You don’t know if you’d be successful if you did it. You’re not sure about your success. The die zone is outside the risk zone.

We have comfort zone, it’s what you know. The stretch zone is “I know I can do it, but I just don’t do it.” The risk zone is “I don’t know if I’ll be successful.” The die zone is “I will die doing that. I do not want to do that. There is no way I’m doing that.” This is the model that I want to share with you. This is how you use this model. You pick a goal, you pick an intention, whatever you want to do, a goal, “I want to double my income this month. I want to get my million-dollar goal this year.” Whatever your goal is, you put it up on top of the board of Stretch, Risk or Die. I bet you have a to-do list of ten things like “I got to do this and I got to do that,” if you’re anything like I used to be, I used to write my ten things on my to do list and number one, check it off, number two, check it off. Skip three, skip forward to five to six, seven. I would be skipping certain steps right on my to-do list of certain tasks. This is why we skip tasks. Keep your ears open and keep your heart open because this is a big deal. The reason that we don’t take action that we know we want to take is that when we’re moving forward in a dream, that activates emotional risks, emotional fear. It takes emotional risk, emotional fears, to move from your comfort zone to your stretch zone to your risk zone to your die zone.

For instance, let’s say you have a goal this year, “I’m going to make $1 million.” You go, “I’m all for it. I’m going to do it. I’ve got a plan. I’ll make it happen,” but you find yourself stalling. You find yourself tripping out. You find yourself not really going for it the way that you hoped you would. Maybe you have a fear that your family is going to judge you if you have money. Maybe you have a hidden fear that your wife is going to leave you. Maybe you have a hidden fear that money is for evil. It’s like you’re going to become a different person and you’re not going to stay spiritual and grounded and you’re going to become all about money and you’re going to become obsessed with money. All of these little tiny strings of fear are the cause of you not moving from your comfort zone to your stretch zone, stretch zone to your risk zone, risk zone to your die zone. It is not about motivation. It is not about willpower. It is not about discipline. It is about choice based on desire. You’ve got to have desire to make the choice to do the work to shift your neural pathways.

I’m going to give you a quick little example. You’ve probably heard it before because it’s a very famous example, but I love it. You’re driving down a dirt road in an old jalopy truck. You know when you’re in the back roads how the gut, the tires, have made troughs, so to speak. You’re driving down through these troughs. That’s you in the life you are now in your comfort zone. Then you create a goal and you want to make $1 million dollars. You want to have a team of three, a team of eight, whatever it is. In order to shift, to become the person you need to be in order to make that $1 million, in order to build that team, you have to have a relationship with fear so it doesn’t trick you. You have to take the steering wheel and choose, make a decision, choose to shift your path and go off on the side of the road and make a new road. I want you to remember this. Probably you’ve done this. I know I’ve done it. I’ve been on the back roads from a little town. The minute you go up, the minute you take that wheel riding that truck and you get off those troughs, those gutters, and you lift up, what happens? The truck immediately wants to go back in the trough. The truck immediately wants to go back to what it knows. That’s the way your brain works, too. That is exactly how your brain works.

In order to move from your comfort zone to your destiny, instead of writing a to-do list, I want you to write down all the things that you think you must do, all your tasks, all your things that you want to do in order to make $1 million, and I want you to put them inside the stretch, risk, or die circle. For instance, is it a stretch for you? You know you can do it, but you just haven’t done it. You know that you can go to a networking meeting. Or is that a die for you? Making $500,000, is that a stretch, risk or die? Again, it’s not about desire. It’s not about like, “I want to make $500,000, that’s why. I totally want to do that.” No, it is an energetic. Do you have the energy capacity to make $500,000? Again, you can. Don’t, don’t get me wrong, you can totally, but have you done it before? It’s the unknown, making $500,000, if you’re used to making it $100,000 is a different energy level, a different capacity, a different consciousness. You must move from stretch, risk, or die.

To answer a question on everyone’s mind, can you skip? Sure. You can go to dies, you can go to stretches, you can go to risks. You don’t have to do it in order. You don’t have to do stretches, risks, and then dies. You can do die and then you can do a stretch. Let’s not fool ourselves. I have a lot of people that come up to me and go, “Rhonda, I live in the die zone all the time.” I go, “That’s actually not good. You’re blowing out your adrenals and your dies are probably not dies. They’re probably, for you, stretches.” For some person, going to a networking meeting and bonding with ten people is a stretch. They know they can do it, they just haven’t done it. For some people, they’re shaking in their boots, it’s a die. That’s why you can never compare your goals or your dreams with anybody else’s because you have different things to move through. When you have something that’s easy for you, I guarantee you it’s in your comfort and stretch zone. If it’s harder for you, it’s going to be in your risk and die zone.

As you start going from your comfort zone to your stretch, to your risk, to the die, as you start becoming masterful and expanding, what happens is that comfort zone encompasses the stretch zone, and that risk zone now becomes your stretch zone, and that dies zone now becomes your risk zone. Now you have a new die. As you keep on doing those Stretch, Risk or Dies, taking action, your risk zone is in the comfort zone, and what used to be your die zone is now your stretch zone. This is how we incrementally start moving masterfully through our fears. Using the Stretch, Risk or Die method is a good first step in order to start understanding how fear works.

I’m going to have a class I’m going to give you as a gift. Just as the Stretch, Risk or Die, it has the model, it has the worksheets. If you want, please take this as my gift and get your phone out. If you want to take the Stretch, Risk or Die mini-course, it is my gift to you. What you want to do is you want to actually text the word “note” to 310-895-9743. When you get to your instamessage, go to your SMS, go to your text message, put the phone number in, and then where you’d write the note, put the “note.” You’ll immediately be asked for your first name and email, and then you’ll be sent the link for access to this mini-course that has all the worksheets for this exercise called Stretch, Risk or Die. I cannot say enough how this exercise will blow your mind, because now you’re not using your willpower or discipline or “got it together” to move yourself forward. You’re accessing your freedom, more of who you really are, and actually learning the skills and increasing your capacity to make decisions that are in alignment with where you want to go and who you want to be, who you were born to be, to live out your destiny.

That’s your opportunity. Where you are now to wherever that destiny is, that’s your opportunity because all from here to here, that’s what they are, stretch, risk, and dies. Instead of beating yourself up, putting yourself down that you’re not doing what you think you should be doing, instead you go, “Got them. I’m not doing this because fear has got better of me. How much of an emotional risk is this for me? A risk is actually stretch, it’s actually risk, it’s actually a dye.” Then give yourself that permission to honor that space. Do you need more support? Again, in Stretch, Risk or Die, I’m going to talk a little bit more about this. It’s a live event that I did similar to this. They’re 45 minutes of three 15-minute videos. What you want out of this workshop is the worksheets. You want to grab the worksheets and watch it again.

It’s more expansive about Stretch, Risk or Die, and this is going to guide you because in between the comfort zone and the stretch is the wheel of fear, in between your stretch and your risk is your wheel of fear, and in between your risks and your die is your wheel of fear. We want to nail that wheel of fear. We want you to know what it is. I want you to see it for what it is. I don’t want you to know how to get away from it. I don’t want you to know how to escape it. I want you to know how to transcend it. That is my desire for you. I know for me that until I understood how fear really worked for me, I was not able to get traction. I could only get so far and then something would happen. I could only get so much traction. I could only get so much success. I could only feel so good about myself. I could only feel so much freedom. I could only have so much peace of mind. It was like it was kept right. It wasn’t until I understood how fear really worked that I could uncap it and all could be available to me. I know that’s true for me. I believe it’s true for you. What I’m doing is I’m taking neuroscience and bringing it down to the lay person, meaning you, and putting it and actualizing it in our life. Instead of it being a theory, we’re actually going to do it.

Christina asked me, “Is Change Your Life in 30 Days on Audible?” Yes it is. Change Your Life is on Audible. The other audio books, you can get Fearless Living on audio. When you get FearlessLiving.org/FLTP when you go and grabbed the FTP program, that has the Audible audio of Fearless Living in it so you will also be able to download Fearless Living. Inside that program, you also get Stretch, Risk or Die. You have so many other bonuses. It’s a ton of bonuses I put in there for you. I created that page for you and it’s half off for you. You can go grab it and that’s going to take you through the whole entire program. If you want to grab the mini-course, you have that number as well, 310-895-9743, and put the word “note” in it. You will get automatic access to my Stretch, Risk or Die class to give yourself a little taste and get the worksheets on how to do Stretch, Risk or Die.

We have a question, “Some people naturally have more fear than others. If some people naturally have more, why is it more so?” We all started off with fear, like you said before. We all have fear. Those that stretch ourselves a little bit more, it looks like we don’t have fear, we just got more experienced. 

Some of us could be “more vulnerable to fear.” They’re more vulnerable to their fear responses. When their fear response comes up, like impatience, they beat themselves up and put themselves down, they torture themselves, where other people can go like, “Oh, my God, I got to quit doing that. I got to stop it.” A lot of that has to do with trauma. It also has to do with your DNA. It has to do with the skills that you already have. Most of us in our lives have experienced trauma. Fear has its way with trauma. Trauma will activate our body. Our body becomes more sensitive when we’ve had trauma. Also, we become more sensitive to our fear responses. Like I said, you walk into a meeting. Before you were like, “I am really nervous to meet people. I’m supposed to speak tonight, I’m really nervous.” After a traumatic event, it might become paralyzing. That’s okay but you need to know that it’s not that you’ve gone down, it’s that you’ve had an event that has created a level of sensitivity to your wheel of fear and your wheel of freedom. You’re like a pinprick. You’re like a porcupine. You can learn to soothe yourself and you can calm yourself down. I can give you an exercise to help you. I do this with people that are afraid of flying or afraid of a network meeting where they’re starting to hyperventilate or starting to panic to go into a network meeting. You can do a very quick trauma exercise in the middle of a room with people around you. If anybody wants to learn that, just let me know.

Do I have an opinion about neuro-linguistic programming? I’ve taken a lot of classes in NLP. I have a book called NLP Copywriting or something. Neuro-linguistic programming is a skill and it’s a tool that you can use. Sadly, most people use neuro-linguistic programming to short stick, like to bypass their growth and transformation. They just want to do the quick-fix of creating money or creating wealth or building their business. They actually aren’t learning the skills and tools to actually maintain it or to live inside of it and to know how to make better decisions. They’re using manipulation to get what they want. There are some cool techniques in there. If you’re an NLP person totally, again, great skills and tools in there but make sure you’re doing it for good and not evil.

We’ve got a question here, “Don’t experiences really shape outlook and confidence? If so, isn’t the first step to steer clear of those who are negative and drive those fears?” 

That would be nice and easy if that were true, but I don’t know anybody that can get away from negative experiences. When you start transcending your fear, there’s no such thing as a “negative experience.” Negative and positive go away in the sense. Let me just give you a quick little answer that’s more thorough for that one. I was talking to a neuroscience professor and they were talking about how to master your fear, how do you do this thing. I’ve already been writing my books. I’ve been doing this for a long time. She said to me, “Rhonda, it’s not about what we think it’s about. It’s shifting the filter that you see out of. It’s all about shifting the filter.” When somebody negative comes up and starts going rah-rah-rah, shift your filter about that person. See them as somebody in fear. See their innocence. See how much they’re dying for attention. See that they’re just hungry, that they don’t know how to take care of themselves and nurture themselves. That person needs attention and love if they’re going rah-rah-rah every minute. All these protocols, these meetings on social media that talk about getting rid of that negative energy, what if it’s your mom? What if it’s your business partner? What if you’re going through a hard time? I’m not going to say that you have to hang around with naysayers, but I do have to say that if you think that negativity is a reason to stop relationships, you won’t have many left. You won’t be able to get intimate with them because they have to stay shallow, and/or they have amazing skills and you have amazing skills, which is awesome. If you have amazing skills and they have amazing skills, you’re not going to move through that negativity in the same way. It just won’t happen. I’d watch black and white thinking. There is no negative and positive.

Every feeling you have can be filtered through fear or freedom, and every belief you have can be filtered through fear or freedom. I’m going to do two quick ones. Feeling of anger. We’ve all heard, if you’re spiritual at all, anger is bad. Anger can be bad if it’s driven through fear. It causes us to do a lot of things that we’re not proud of. It gives us permission to act out in ways that eventually when we wake up aren’t proud of. Anger filtered through freedom is what move Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights movement. It moved Bobby Kennedy. It moved some of our great leaders. Anger, when it’s filtered through fear, creates action that is sustainable and is motivating and inspiring. It’s the same thing with our beliefs. I’ll use a value that’s easier, so value of integrity. Scott, if I called you have integrity, wouldn’t you just love that? “I got Integrity? I’m amazing.” If integrity goes through freedom, that’s awesome. When you have integrity, you’re able to negotiate. When you negotiate, you’d be able to change your mind, you’d be able to stand in your power. Let’s think of integrity through fear. If you have integrity through fear, you’re rigid, closed-minded, can’t renegotiate, and all you say is, ‘I’m having integrity.” That is integrity moved through fear. We can’t just say negative and positive, it’s way bigger than that. We can’t just say, “I have integrity.” Where’s it coming from? You can’t just have feelings of anger and just call them bad. They’re not bad. It’s how you filter them through. Do you filter them through freedom or do you filter them through fear? Here’s my two cents.

It’s a very good two cents.

It’s what I believe. People talk about fear and it’s just too cliché. It’s so much more subtle and more discerning and smarter. It just doesn’t work long-term, hitting it in the face or feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It just doesn’t work long-term. It’s not going to sustain you.

You eventually run out of energy if you’re bashing your head against the wall. You’ve got to take the time, like you said, break it down, figure out what’s causing those things. It will definitely help you. 

Get your fear responses. Find out your trigger. Find out your core fear. Find those things out. Once you start seeing your fear responses and what your core fear is, basically the world changes. Instead of you going, “What’s my problem?” you go, “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just that fear was acting out. Got it.” Then when that person’s like this to you, you go, “They’re just furious. I see they just need attention. They’re lacking in love or they don’t feel belonging.” You see it through other filters and so you become more compassionate, you become more heart centered, and you become more focused and engaged in an action. It doesn’t mean you have to take everybody with you. It just means that you are centered in who you are and centered in yourself. That’s where true satisfaction, true contentment, and true success come from.

Marlene asked the question, “What does it feel like to be fearless?”

I’m in relationship with myself every day because I do my work every day. You don’t just get fearless. I remember the first time that I didn’t have negative thoughts anymore. I remember so clearly I was walking through my living room and going, “I’m going to do this.” Normally, my negative myself, beating myself up, would come in and go, “You can’t do that. Who do you think you are?” I remember walking through my living room having the same conversation and there was no “you can’t do that.” I remember turning around and looking, going, “What just happened?” I remember walking like this going, “I’m going to go do it then. I’m going to do it,” and the voice never came. When you understand freedom, the gift it gives you is peace of mind. When you have peace of mind, you trust yourself and you trust your decisions. You know where to put boundaries and where not to. You don’t get confused all the time. You don’t get convoluted all the time, you don’t get swayed. You’re in your body, in your skin and your bones. You fill yourself up. That’s what I want for you and that’s what I work on every day for myself as I move through life.

NC 019 | Living Fearless

Living Fearless: When you understand freedom, the gift it gives you is peace of mind.

Clark asked, “Who are your mentors or people that listen to you?” 

I have somebody that has been my spiritual mentor for the last thirteen years. She’s just totally interesting because she’s just starting to do online courses, which is so interesting. Her name is Angela Montana. That’s a spiritual guide. I use her on regular basis, every week actually, for the last fifteen years or something like that. I’ve been mentored with people like Paul Roth. He was one of my first mentors. I don’t know if he takes clients anymore. I don’t think so. He was one of my first teachers. Reverend Michael Beckwith was one of my mentors. I studied with him. He taught me. Marianne Williamson was one of my teachers. I have half spiritual half business. That’s how I like it because I like to stay centered in who I am. If I get so focused on business without holding myself spiritually aligned, then I move into fear totally. I got to stay self-centered, keep that spiritual work every week, and then do the business work as well.

Bill asked, “Do you recommend people get angry to overcome fear? It works for me.” 

I’ve done a lot of exercises with people because my show’s Starting Over. One of the things I did is I created unique personalized exercises for each client that came through the house. There definitely have been clients where I have made them hit a pillow with a baseball bat because that’s just energy. Think of it that way, feelings are just energy. When you’re seeping with anger, a lot of energy is moving through you. You want to be able to direct that energy. Good cries are helpful after anger because you’re literally moving that energy. Instead of thinking of feelings as these things that are just floating, I want you to think of them as energy. I get angry and I’ll go hit the bed or I’ll go stomp around. One of the things I do is stomp around.

A technique that one of my teachers taught me is this. It’s a really good exercise. What he would do is he would get angry, with all anger, you get really angry, allow yourself to be angry, but the words that come out of your mouth are actually the words towards your destiny, toward your intention, towards your vision. When you’re angry, “I can’t believe that guy just cut me off,” instead you say, “I love that guy who cut me off. This is amazing. I’m so happy this happened to me.” What you’re doing there is you’re actually retraining your neural pathways. You’re allowing the energy to move through you, but you’re deciding what to say. The energy is moving through you. You don’t want to stuff that energy, by the way, that’s bad. You want to move that through but you decide what words to use. That’s what I do when I’m really upset with somebody. I just let my energy move through but I say positive things or impactful things where I want to go.

Somebody asked a question, “How do you communicate with the people that you have to relate with that act out towards you in fear?” 

Besides the FLTP, the most important class I teach is called Fearless Conversations. You can find that on Fearless Living, too. I actually take you through the eight coaching steps and I teach you the skills on how to communicate with those people that are in fear. The first thing to do is just recognize, first of all, that they’re in fear. That is really important because it’s going to keep your heart centered because it’s not going to be about you. You won’t take it personally. You’ll really be able to stay heart-centered. Let’s say that somebody complains to you. I’m going to give you a little tip. I’ll give you one little tool. Let’s say somebody complains to you. It’s your person and they’re close to you, and they’re always complaining to you. You’re trying to be fearless and you don’t want to listen that complaining, but you don’t want to shut them down, so this is what you do.

You look at them and go, “Frank, I hear you’ve told me this story a few times. I’m not really sure what you need from me. Do you want to figure out a solution? Do you just need to get your feelings out? Are you looking for a friend, a coach? What do you need from me? I just want to really support you best.” The first time you do that with somebody who complains all the time, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy and they’ll be like, “What are you talking about? Why are you talking weird?” You go, “Because you’ve told me this more than once, I’m clearly not doing a good job. I’m clearly not giving you what you need. What is it that you need? Do you need me to agree with you? Do you need me to go slash their tires? Do you need me to figure out a solution? What do you need from me?” What you’re doing is you’re taking that responsibility for their problem and putting it back on them. You’re not taking it on. You’re putting it right back on them. They have to decide what they need from you, and that’s not going to be necessarily easy in the beginning.

The next one for your Feelings Conversations is June 19th to the 21st in Scottsdale, Arizona. 

Three days. I will push your button and take you home in a really good way.

I don’t doubt that for a second. Marlene asked, “To clarify, so no more panic attacks out of fear because you have peace of mind, trying to figure out what permanent success looks like.”

It’s really interesting because I’m not a doctor. I’m not going to say I cure panic attacks. I’ve had many clients with anxiety issues that no longer take the medication. I don’t want you to stop taking your medication. No, I do not. You are not in that place. I am not a doctor. Once you start understanding how fear works, your anxiety will go down and your panic attacks will decrease, absolutely. Let me give the panic attack person that exercise for trauma because it’s when you’re feeling anxious that this exercise is going to be powerful. If you’re in a place that you’re able to, I want you to go ahead and sit down somewhere with your feet on the ground. I want you to squeeze your thighs together. It’s like your knees are together and you’re squeezing your thighs together. I’m doing it right now and you don’t have to know that I’m doing it at all because I’m talking. I could be at a dinner party and doing this and nobody knows I’m doing it under the table. I’m squeezing my thighs really hard, and now release. Do it again. Squeeze them really hard.

Again, I don’t have to be saying, I can just be squeezing them hard and talking. People do this at the airport, at a dinner party. You squeeze it and you do it three times. What happens is your muscles wrap around your nervous system. It actually relaxes your nervous system and you decrease your anxiety. Another way to do that is to wrap yourself, to hug your arms. Basically, what you’re doing is you’re putting tension on your muscles so it relaxes your nervous system so that it feels safe and relaxed. It’s the same theory of a weighted blanket. If you have anxiety or any of those things, sleep with a weighted blanket or take a nap with a weighted blanket, you are going to feel refreshed.

I have a blanket for my dog. A vest, a fear blanket. 

That’s exactly right. We can do it ourselves at a dinner party or at the airport. I’ve worked with people that were afraid to fly and they’ve done that in the airport. They called me the next week and they’re like, “I could fly it. I’ve no problem.” It’s about being proactive, understanding what your fear responses are, understanding it’s not you, you’re not weak, you’re not bad, you’re not wrong, you’re not lazy, you’re not stupid. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just fear. Now I’m going to give you solutions, i.e. use Stretchers Can Die. I’ve got this one and another one that I’ve said already. You start doing that and this outweighs this. You see this. You see it for who it is and you do one of these. You see it, “I’m going to do fear responses. I’m going to do proactive behaviors.” Fear response, proactive behavior. You can actually stay in tune and stay true to yourself.

Someone asked, “Do you recommend breathing exercises along with that?

Absolutely. Breathing exercises are awesome. What they’ve discovered about breathing, which of course eastern spirituality has known for centuries, is that breathing is critical to our well-being. Research is showing that deep breathing every day actually loosens your organs in the sense of it gives it space, it helps you digest better. Deep breathing is awesome. I recommend it. When you deep breathe, I want you to breathe all the way up. I want you to think of it as this way, you’re going to breathe up from your stomach all the way up through your heart, you’re going to breathe on those lungs and you’re going to take it all the way your lungs. I want you to imagine your lungs all the way up here, and then I want you to take it and push it back down your back. You’re going to breathe all the way and let it float up your back. What that does is it puts your shoulder in the proper place so that you have your neck in the proper place, so that your neck doesn’t hurt anymore. You’re shoulders are pushed back and relaxed. You’re in a proper position, in a proper posture. It’s all through breathing, like deep breath all the way up to your lungs and just let it flow up. Whenever I do that, my neck gets readjusted. It’s in the proper place in my body. I’m not a Pilates instructor or a yoga instructor. I just know that.

Your next class is in June. You’ve got the other class, too. Tell people about it. 

It’s the Fearless Foundation Workshop. It’s going to be September in DC. The very next time to see me live and to work with me is Fearless Conversations in Scottsdale in June. It is on early bird right now. It’s half off right now so grab it if you like. That is going to be all about communication. If you’re a coach, if you do sales, if you’re a consultant, this will blow your mind. I have people that are experienced salespeople, experienced coaches, experienced consultants come to my program. I just had one a little while ago and a woman came up to me. She goes, “I’ve been coaching successfully for years and I feel like I know nothing. You just taught me more in three days than I have learned in eight years being a coach.” That’s pretty much what most experienced coaches tell me. They come to Fearless Conversations and you’re learning new communication techniques and you’re seeing people differently and you’re seeing yourself differently. Fearless Conversations is all about how to be a masterful communicator and a masterful coach. Fearless Foundation Workshop is where you get your life, wheel of fear, and will have freedom. That’s three days, too, with me.

Good stuff. I’m looking forward to that. I’m actually going to get signed up for that and head on out there and see you there in June.

You are going to love it. You are going to be like, “Oh my God.” I just taught at a huge mastermind, seven to eight-figure businesses. It was about maybe 50, 60 people in the room. I gave this same similar talk about fear and talked about fear. Every single person in that room that came up to me at some time in that weekend was like, “I have to hire you.” Like I said, it’s not money-based. If you reach $1 million dollar or $10 million, it doesn’t mean your fear goes away. Fear is with you the rest of your life. That’s why I want you to get masterful with it so it doesn’t trick you anymore, so it doesn’t put you beating yourself up anymore. I want you to have high self-esteem, high self-confidence, not from a fake place but from a real authentic place.

No matter what we deal with, whether it’s my first deal or where I’m at today, and there are a lot of people getting their first deal, we all have fears. You have to evolve your skills as you get better at what you do to take things to the next level. Right, Rhonda?

That’s the whole point. I know when I first made my first $50,000, it was like, “Oh, my God. I have $50,000.” Then the next level, I made $75,000 maybe. Then I hit $100,000, and then $125,000. I have to tell you, $125,000 to $50,000 is a huge energetic jump. The problems you have are completely different. You better have skills otherwise that $125,000 is going to go back down to $50,000. When I made $125,000, I jumped up to $250,000 really quick. From $250,000 to $500,000 was actually so much easier because I did so much heavy lifting and learning those skills, and now I’m refining or discerning. I have the foundation. Going from $500,000 to $1 million, again, different skill level but I already had the foundation and had already seen my success. This is another thing that happens when you become fearless. When you understand how fear works, any problem doesn’t faze you, like there’s no problem. It’s like this is my next thing I’ve got to deal with or solve, but it’s not a problem. It doesn’t take you off course. It doesn’t screw you up. It doesn’t make you beat yourself up. It doesn’t tell you, “You’re a loser now.” It’s literally like, “I’ve got a raise $500,000 in four days. Okay, get to it.’ That’s literally what it becomes. That’s mastery. I remember the moment when I really got that you can do anything you want. It’s not fantasy. It really is. If you don’t have the skills, it’s always going to be a fantasy, it’s going to be something that you hope for. You’ll succeed, fail, succeed, fail, and you’ll always have a reason why it’s not working for you. Once you understand it and build that foundation, you’ll be able to do anything you want. Right, Scott?

I totally 100% agree with that. I look back over the last ten years and we’ve had ups and downs. We from here and back down here, like, what the hell did I do wrong? I got to develop the skills. I wasn’t ready to keep that aspect. Building those skills up and do the right coaching to do things, it blew me past where I used to be. Everybody’s got different numbers. My numbers are different from everybody else out there, but no matter what you’re struggling with, if you work on it and you get that type of stuff that Rhonda’s talking about, she’s an expert of fear, that’s why we have her here to help you guys out there that are struggling with overcoming fears, whether it’s talking to asset managers or talking to people about raising capital. It’s always a very uncomfortable thing a lot of times. Taking the time to understand what those fears are, it becomes not so scary anymore. You expand it out of your stretch zone into your risk zone, and you don’t have the fear of death. 

You totally get it. I’m not afraid to die anymore. I remember that moment, too. Once you start understanding that it’s just a skill to acquire and that you have the capacity to acquire that skill, that you don’t have it because you’re a bad person, you don’t have it because you are flawed, you don’t have it because you’re weak or you’re stupid, you don’t have it because nobody taught it to you, you have to take the action and decide. I keep pointing to this because you actually have to decide. Once you decide, your decisions become so much more impactful. Like Scott said, that stretch zone, that comfort zone, becomes bigger and bigger. One of the best compliments I think anybody can give anybody is, “You’re so comfortable in your skin.” Why are they comfortable in their skin? Because their comfort zone is huge. That’s what I want for you.

Take advantage what she’s offering at 50% off for us. You will not be disappointed. I can tell you first-hand experience. Steph would vouch for it as well. We run into similar circles and things like that, and I can tell you that you’re in good hands with Rhonda. You can only say, “Help me, Rhonda.”

I have something for my classes called Ask Rhonda Anything or Help Me, Rhonda.

Once again, go to a FearlessLiving.org/FLTP. You get everything half off for you. Thank you so much for your generosity, Rhonda.

My pleasure. I want to do it because the more people that are fearless, the more the world becomes a better place to live, the more we become skilled, and the more that we welcome and enjoy each other. We’re just happy to see each other instead of scared, too.

Rhonda, we’re going to let you get going. Thank you so much for taking time off your busy day. We love you. Big hugs. Let’s schedule a call and spend some time online with you as well to expand your comfort zone to the online stuff, how does that sound?

Perfect. Thank you. Be fearless. You can do with this.

Great stuff, Rhonda. 

That’s going to wrap it up for Note CAMP Day Two. What a great way to a rock it out. We are going to call it a day so that you guys can go out and enjoy your day. Once again, take advantage of what Rhonda is offering. I’d been to her training before. It’s absolutely phenomenal. A lot of people say, “Scott, you’re fearless.” I’m not fearless. There are still things that scare me. There are still things that shock me. It’s just that, like Rhonda said, I’ve expanded my comfort zone. I maybe have been either smart enough or dumb enough to do it mostly online where you can see what’s going on, but part of the biggest things that has helped me not be afraid of failure and not be afraid of reaching to asset managers, not be afraid of raising capital or not afraid to make mistakes because I make mistakes every day, is the fact that I expanded my comfort zone. Rhonda is one of the people who helped me out to do that. I hope you have absolutely enjoyed it. Share it online. Everybody’s in there running still for the big prize at the end. Bye.

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About Rhonda Britten

NC 019 | Living FearlessAn Emmy-Award winner and repeat Oprah guest, Rhonda was the first Life Coach on reality television in the world on the first-show of its kind, Life Doctor (Second Season the series name was changed to Help Me Rhonda). Next, Rhonda changed lives on the hit NBC reality show Starting Over and named its “most valuable player” by The New York Times and heralded as “America’s Favorite Life Coach” by TV Guide. To date, Rhonda has altered lives in over 600 episodes of reality television that aired in more than 25 countries and impacted millions worldwide.

Rhonda is a recipient of the “Smart Women of the Year” Award, “Coach of the Year,” a blog favorite at HuffingtonPost.com, speaks at TedX and for numerous corporations and organizations such as; Southwest Airlines, Blue Shield of California, Northrup Grumman and many more.

To create a support network, Fearless Living Institute was born which hosts free public introductory classes, online courses, in-person weekend workshops, seven-day Starting Over Intensives and certifies Fearless Living Life Coaches plus Train-the-Trainer Programs.

Rhonda’s four books include her bestselling Fearless Living, which shares her groundbreaking work called the Wheel of Fear, Change Your Life in 30 Days, Fearless Loving and Do I Look Fat in This.

Rhonda is a world class keynote speaker, television personality and master life coach.

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