What are you afraid of‪?‬ Student Of Life Podcast

Fear keeps many people from being everything they created to be, from achieving their potential, from realizing their vision for themselves, and being able to spend more time working in their purpose. For many, fear is the biggest impediment to fulfilment in their lives.   What’s the definition of fear? Fear is an unpleasant emotion cause by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.   The key part of that definition is two words: the belief.   Some fears do have to do with something really causing pain or being a threat, but many of our fears are simply the belief that there will be pain or a threat. It’s not real, but we allow those beliefs to get in the way of us being able to do the things that we want to do.   So, if this belief can stop us from achieving our goals, why we were created with fear as one of our emotions?   If you’re walking through the woods and all of a sudden you see a mama grizzly bear and two cubs, if you’re smart you’re probably fearful and wanting to get away from that. Likewise, if you come across of burning forest fire, you probably will be at least a little scared of that.   When it’s not just the belief, but there really is something that’s a threat to you, fear is a good emotion to have because it will keep you alive. It’s a healthy emotion. It’s helpful in that case. That’s good fear.   But the bad kind of fear is when there’s not actually any danger and the fear keeps us from realizing our potential. Those kind of fears—the ones about things that won’t really harm us—they’re a barrier to us reaching our goals. It’s the belief that there is danger that keeps us from moving forward. Those are the fears that we generally need to overcome to be able to have fulfilment in our lives and achieve the things we want.   Where does fear come from? Danger. As we just discussed, these are the real situations where it’s justified to be fearful. For example, if the captain of your airplane announces that the plane is going down. That’s a situation of real danger.   Facing uncertainty or the unknown. When you don’t know what’s coming, your mind can play games that make it seem worse. That’s a belief that makes you fearful rather than reality, because the reality is unknown.   A prior bad experience. This can be your bad experience or someone else’s bad experience that you’ve witnessed. For example, a person who has been through a horrible divorce is so scarred (and scared) by it that they won’t date again.   Ignorance and lack of understanding. This is where your belief is built on a lack of understanding and causes fear, like when the people in Columbus’s crew believed the earth was flat so they were afraid of sailing off the edge of the world.   Allowing fear—or indeed any negative emotions—to stop us from doing things we want to do in our lives is being a slave to that emotion. When you allow fear to grow up like a weed, that fear is really your master. A slave is completely submissive to the master and has no free will. Fears make you a slave because they diminish your freedom.   Fear and The Four Freedoms Dan Sullivan talks about four freedoms: freedom of money, freedom of time, freedom of relationship and freedom of purpose.   Joe worked in Real Estate and one of the biggest problems agents have is the fear of making prospecting calls. This is called, "call reluctance". How does this fear impact the four freedoms for an agent?   Freedom of money: if you’re afraid to get on the phone and make your prospecting calls, you’re not going to do as many deals and you’re not going to have as much money. That’s going to stop you from having the freedom of having the money to do what you want to do.   Freedom of time: often people have a big plan but because of the fear they spend two hours on Facebook instead of prospecting. Fear leads to procrastination and if you’re procrastinating