Ep124_Courage
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So lately I've been making a lot of changes with my business and I've been anxious about doing sales and marketing activities. I get anxious about potentially being rejected, tell myself that if I go and reach out to somebody, tell them what I'm doing, the changes, I just make excuses in my own mind.

Like I'll say, they're going to be too [00:01:00] busy or they're not going to want to hear another. presentation on how another business can help their business, but that's negativity. I'll even tell myself they're going to reject me. I'm going to be embarrassed. I'll be a bother to them. And that leads me to being perfectionistic, to procrastinating, to doing numbing, mind numbing, time waster type things, justification of why it's not going to work, whatever.

But it's not me. I'm not facing my fears. And I want to talk to you today about the importance of facing your fears because that concept has changed my life. My life, when I do it, when I consistently face things in my life. This is episode number 124 of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. Step into courage, seven unexpected benefits of facing your fears.

When I realize the benefit that I get after I do step towards something that is scary, and it's usually not these major, terrifying things like facing some kind of trauma or facing something that happened in my life that is, you know, absolutely a [00:02:00] phobia or it's these minor things. I'm going to do some uncomfortable stuff that leads me to wanting to face and building momentum to face the biggest stuff and the most challenging stuff in my life.

So I'm your host Adam Gragg. I am a coach and I'm a content creator. I'm a speaker and my passion is to help people find the clarity that propels them forward to face their biggest fears so they can live their legacy today, right now, in this moment. ~So ~I talk about stuff. I struggle with myself. I'm a fellow traveler.

I don't have it all figured out. I also talk about stuff that you can talk to your six year old, your seven year old, your eight year old, young kids about, and they're going to relate to it as well. And they're going to understand what you're talking about. Every episode, I try to share something that I've done recently that's uncomfortable, and the reason I do this is because I don't find much more important to your mental health than facing the stuff that's scary in your life, hence the topic of this podcast, Facing Your Fears, ~and ~I don't find much more damaging than playing it safe and just being consumed by safety and how to not get embarrassed or hurt.

So, [00:03:00] a risk I took recently is I just got back from Montreal, went on a really cool trip with Emerson, we went to New York City and went to Washington, DC, and then we drove actually with my sister and her uncle, Francesco, up from north of New York City and Hudson, New York, all the way to Montreal, hung out in Montreal.

And I had a situation where we're going to go to this cool place. ~I'm going to talk about this more in the episode later, actually, but ~I got into a cab and I felt like it was a sketchy situation from the beginning. And then I was quoted a price for him to take us to this. Place called Royal Mount in the middle of Montreal.

You get a really cool view. And he quoted me a price and I realized that was way too high and we get there and I'm going to pay the cab, the guy to, you know, the cab driver and he's wanting to charge me twice as much. So basically from an Uber, it was probably seven to eight times higher than I would have been paying on Uber and it was super sketchy and I didn't.

end up paying for it. You know, I'd said, this isn't okay. Everyone was wondering why I was being, I was [00:04:00] stuck in the cab after he dropped us off for so long, but that was my risky, scary thing. ~And I wasn't, but I'll tell you more about this. ~So this is the podcast that you do. You don't just listen to it. He takes some kind of action.

So that means you do something that is uncomfortable. So what I want you to do right now is to pull out your phone or to write it, speak it into your phone, but I want you to think about what you believe the benefit could be to you for you doing some of the stuff that you're not real comfortable with.

So maybe ~it would, ~it would mean volunteering at church or it would mean speaking at a work event or, you know, Remembering somebody's birthday, or you just know you have this situation where you want to apologize, you're not doing it. So what's the benefit of actually doing that stuff? What is it? I mean, there's a benefit to it.

And that's what motivates me to face the stuff, even with the sales in marketing, which I like to do sales because I like to close deals, and I want to help people, and I want to spread the word, yet it's the emotional, the embarrassment, rejection stuff that I have inside of [00:05:00] me that kind of raises up, but when I remember the benefit of facing it, that really inspires me.

So today we're going to talk about these benefits. One of the core values of Decide Your Legacy is we are fear facing. It's so important to me because it's changed my life. I mean, I read this book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway when I was a senior in college, and it was really inspiring.

It's a book I've recommended to a lot of people. I'm the kind of guy that I read a really passionate, really good book, and then I tell everyone, they got to read it. They got to read it. So my friends even tease me about it.

So anyway, the book's a good book. I've read it a few times. ~I, ~The concept though, was that if we do these things that we're putting off, then we're going to build momentum and be energized by it. It's getting out of that comfort zone and most people resonate with that concept. And the reason is, is because they know that there is some value stepping outside of it to doing new things.

And I think there's a tremendous cost to doing nothing. One question I love to ask clients is, what happens here if you don't do anything? What happens here if you no longer have a, if fear no longer has its [00:06:00] way, you no longer listen to fear? Or what happens here if you have 10 times more confidence? And they think about what they could do differently when they don't.

When they face that thing in their life. So these are seven unexpected benefits to facing your fears. And as you think about these are this little thing, if you face little fears, you're going to face bigger fears as it goes on. So you're going to face other scary things because you're going to realize that I can do it.

So number one is that first benefit is that your anxiety overall is going to decrease. You're going to discover that much of what you worry about isn't going to come to fruition when you face it. You'll gain evidence that you do this thing that you're afraid of and then you can handle it. Even if it doesn't go well, you still survive.

It works out. Courage means that you're doing something that you're afraid of. It's not courageous if there isn't a level of fear with it. You crowd out the worry and you build momentum as you face things and you realize that you can handle it. And it almost becomes a type of addiction where you see that I can do this.

So I can do something else. I can make this one sales call so I can make another sales [00:07:00] call. I got one no, and I can handle another no. I can handle another no. And then I'm going to eventually get to another yes. You start to see that it is worth doing these things that are difficult in your life. That's the first big benefit.

You're going to realize that the anxiety increases initially upfront, but then you do it and it decreases. So that initial feeling is strong. ~It's, ~it's easy now, hard later. versus hard now, easy later. The initial feeling is going to be more anxiety up front because you're going to be facing this thing.

You put it into your schedule that you're making in your time block. You're making these calls at this time, ~you're going to, ~you're going to spend some time addressing a concern with a coworker. You're putting in, as one of my clients yesterday, he put in his calendar that he was going to have a difficult, crucial conversation with one of his leaders.

~He's going to, and I'm going to text him later to ask him how it went. Because that's good accountability. ~So he made a commitment, realizing and remembering that you don't have to listen to that voice in your head saying, it's going to go bad. Your life's going to fall apart. Everything's going to get worse.

As you face it, it's actually going to get better. You're starting to turn the ship around. So the second benefit is that your ego shrinks [00:08:00] when you start facing scary stuff in your life. Your ego is fed and it grows. Through safety. It wants to keep ~your safe, ~you safe. Your ego is that rational part of you that sees what can go wrong, tries to prevent you from getting hurt again.

So when you play it safe, of course it's gonna grow. That's why arrogance comes across to people. It's people don't like it, but I look at arrogance as fear. It's fear in disguise. 'cause I don't want to get hurt. I'm gonna act like I have all the answers and have everything figured out. But it's ego. Each time you do something that is a bit emotionally scary, you are telling your ego that it doesn't have a place here and you're putting it in its place.

You're not allowing it to grow. You're not killing it because that part of you is necessary. It's okay to have something in your life that sees what could go wrong and that sees what potentially you should be aware of. It's that rational part of you, but your ego needs to be put in its place. So yourself overpowers your ego.

[00:09:00] Just today I was talking to Lloyd, my operations manager, and he was sharing a situation where over the weekend he went to an event at this sports club that has some kind of a surfing facility, wave pool type thing nearby. And he ended up, I don't know if it was because of his son, but he has a son who's, ~who's younger.~

~He's, he's ~seven years old. And because there was this opportunity to practice surfing and he saw people that were athletic and they were, they were eating it. They were falling and he in his mind was telling me that, well, I don't want to do that. I'm going to be embarrassed. It's not going to go well, but he ended up trying it, you know, and his son saw him try it.

And that's him putting his ego aside because he, To put your ego aside, you have to let go of the potential embarrassment. That's ego. That's worried about embarrassment. Ego's worried about status. Ego's worried about what other people think about you. Ego's worried about falling and then laughing, people laughing at you, being rejected by and judged by people.

He put that aside, he put his ego in its place, and he put his son's desire to see him surf, practice surfing [00:10:00] He put that relationship and the experience ahead, and he probably made some great memories. His son may remember that for the next five years. His son may remember it when he's 35.

Trusting your intuition, you're gonna let go of the ego, and you're gonna trust that this is the next right thing to do. So your ego is gonna shrink as you do scary stuff in your life. Third benefit is you're gonna have increased creativity. So when we're driven by fear, and we're driven by ego, of course our attention is gonna go towards what will keep us safe in this situation.

When creativity is not about safety, creativity is about doing new things, exploration, new opportunities, new ideas, new products, new projects, new relationships, it's expansion. Safety is not about expansion. Safety is about staying safe. I've seen this in people's lives so many times. frequently that when they make a certain amount of money in their business or in their life or a certain salary or a certain level of comfort, they stop having ambition.

They stop having this drive to [00:11:00] do more and bigger and better. And I think it's very sad. That's why I don't like retirement and the term retirement, because that means to me, you're not producing anymore. If you are producing a lot in your life and creating a lot in your life, You're never going to retire because you're always going to want to give back.

You're always going to want to create and do more and help more people. But when we get to this point and I see this, it's where somebody has a certain amount of success in their life and they start playing it safe and guarding their assets guarding, guarding their life. And it's very sad to me because they're not growing and they're not prospering and they're not creative, which we're We are creative beings.

We're made to be creative in our own unique way, with our own unique abilities, and our mind wants to live there. The mind gets in the creative zone when you realize you can face things that are uncomfortable and get to the other side, and you're more creative in the process. So that's the third benefit.

You're going to increase ~creativ ~creativity, which is going to motivate you to go ahead and identify things you could be doing, Small things at first and then you're going to grow from there. So if you found [00:12:00] this content helpful so far, I have four more, four more benefits of not playing it safe, of actually facing your fears.

But I want you to download, Shatterproof Yourself. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. I've been a mental health professional for 25 years. I. have an understanding of what helps people ~and wasn't ~and what does not. And I think there's a lot of trash and garbage in the mental health profession.

There's a lot of playing it safe kind of crap out there. People that are therapists should not be encouraging others to play it safe. They should be challenging people and stretching people. And that's the way I work. And that's the way I roll. So don't download this and subscribe if you don't want to actually face things in your life.

But if you do, you're going to find some excellent resources from Shatterproof Yourself Light. This is a 40 minute worksheet and video and it's great content. You're going to find it extraordinarily valuable. ~And so it's about doing those things that are going to help you get to that next level in your life.~

It's all about facing your past and knowing your value and shifting your perspective and owning your emotions. ~It's ~And caring for yourself, building great friendships, clarifying your vision in your life. So hit the link so you can watch [00:13:00] and go through the worksheet for Shatter Proof Yourself Light.

So number four, fourth benefit to facing your fears is that your relationships are going to improve. You know, that anxiety we feel when we play it safe, that's the ego, and that's that arrogance that people have, and then we're pushing anything that could potentially challenge us to the side, and we're disguising it, basically acting as if we know, but it's all about the same kind of safety.

Just like for me, it's safety when I get and feel like I'm going to be embarrassed when I try to tell people more about the cool things that Decide Your Legacy is doing, then I may disguise it saying, well, they're not really going to want to be bothered, but ultimately it's an act of selfishness.

I'm more consumed about how I don't want to feel uncomfortable than actually helping this business because I don't want to help a business that I can't legitimately help, but I need to be able to reach out to them to see if there's a fit. And I feel really great about the services that we provide. So I want to tell people about it.

So anxiety pushes people away. It. [00:14:00] Creates a wall around us. Ego does the same thing and it's all the same. It's all connected. It's all fear. The primary emotion of the ego is fear. Negativity towards others, but we let go of that and we're willing to be embarrassed. We're willing to be silly, you know, you're willing to go and do a prank on somebody ~dressed up like an old man.~

Not that I would ever do that, but you let go of ego because you can be tremendously embarrassed. It might not go well. You might have people that are upset with you, but you're doing it out of love. You're doing it out of fun. So you laugh more, you become more enjoyable, and that's going to attract people to you.

Good people. Cause people that have great senses of humor are generally people that are very creative and they're healthy and they are ones that add life to other people's lives. ~They don't make. Fun of people. ~They have a great sense of humor because they're seeing the lighter side of life. They can be serious.

I love to balance seriousness with a sense of humor. It's great. It means I'm in a good spot when I have my sense of humor. Keeps life light. It keeps it from being boring. That's the benefit of facing things. It's not going to be boring anymore. You know that We had this [00:15:00] really cool experience where on an Uber drive, I got some information about a part of town from the driver that I wouldn't have been exposed to.

~It was a, ~it was a Jewish community in Montreal, a Siddic Jewish community, and there's 80, 000 ~people.~ people in that area and they had some really cool bagel shops that people love and come to from out of town but it's an area where you wouldn't necessarily know if you didn't talk to somebody that knew about it.

So we went and got dropped off in this area where there was this really great restaurant as well and then went to this bagel shop that was making bagels 24 7 and we got to watch them and eat like these super fresh bagels and my family is joking with me about how Ranting and raving I am about this even now, but I would have brought back, you know, a hundred of these things ~if I, ~if I could, it was really cool.

And it was also just neat to see the culture in this part of town. I would never have had that experience, but we had to actually get in the cab, get in the Huber and go there and experience it. And let go of any [00:16:00] fear that we might have being in a part area that's not touristy where we know nobody. And then we had this great experience and it was fun and we laughed about it because in that area and part of town ~there were,~ there were some really funny things that happened that would never have happened if we hadn't let go.

~I mean, so we're just joking about it now. I won't, Share everything, but it was just a great experience. ~So number five, and this again plays on the same situation as new opportunities arise when you do things that are uncomfortable and scary. So you miss opportunities when you're negative and you're self-protective.

When you criticize that new game or the new food or the new family activity or doing something that's different than you're keeping people at a distance, they're not asking you to do new things and you're not exposed to new things that are fun. Like eating bagels in the Jewish part of town in Montreal, you're just not gonna do it 'cause it's not safe.

And it's scary. Or we also went to Little Italy and there was a little Portugal and Montreal and it was cool stuff. ~And we got to go, ~even in New York City, I went to some places I wouldn't have gone had I not talked to some other people that told me where some cool coffee shops are and cool restaurants are that are in parts of town that aren't touristy that [00:17:00] we wouldn't have been exposed to.

So you never know, but you're actually open, which. Hope and faith keep you open to new opportunities and people and situations. So once you get this momentum of I can face things and trust my gut and do that next right thing, it's going to show you opportunities that you cannot possibly imagine. ~I mean, ~like minded people will come into your life and people that aren't competitive necessarily with you, but they're going to try and enhance your life in a great way.

The world opens up when you have hope and you're willing to take a risk to reach out. So a lot of times for me, ~I don't, ~my initial gut reaction is that it's not going to be fun, you know, so we went in Montreal to the most amazing art museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal, which I had never seen in one museum, so many cool masterpiece paintings from some of my favorite artists.

I was blown away, and I also went to the Museum of Modern Art on the same trip with Emerson as well, but I thought the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal was, ~you know,~ absolutely one of the best I've ever seen in the world. And I've been even to the Louvre and I've been to [00:18:00] ones in London, Paris, I mean all over to different museums, but it was really cool.

But I know that initially some of the people in the group I was with were negative about going to this museum because they did not know what I knew about the museum. I had to convince them and they wouldn't have had this opportunity. ~And you know who you are. You're probably not listening to the podcast, but some people in my family, but ~I had to take a risk by not getting sucked into that negativity and saying, you know, this is something that I really feel like you're going to enjoy, and I want to do this.

If there's anything we want to do on this trip, if I get my decision to do it, you know, this is the one thing I want to make sure we do. And then we ended up going and everybody was very thankful and grateful, but it was a new opportunity that wouldn't have gone and arisen had I not been willing to have people upset with me at first to go do this new thing.

I didn't control them or force them, but I just had to push through it. So the sixth benefit. of going ahead and actually facing some of the stuff that's uncomfortable in your life, doing those uncomfortable things that your central nervous system is going to calm down. So you're going to have improved health, improved sleep, improved digestion.

You're going to actually relax more in difficult situations. ~It's a much better situation. I mean, ~[00:19:00] after you do something that is uncomfortable, your central nervous system has this thing tense up. I'm going to face this thing. And then you get to relax and let go. So that's where that I've had a really productive day.

I face things in my day. I did the stuff that was scary and then you're able to fall asleep and rest. It's incredible how that works. You're going to want to even take better care of yourself because you are emotionally healthier. So why wouldn't you want to take better care of yourself? Because you have so much to live for.

And there's so much hope in your life. Of course, you're going to feed yourself better. You're going to drink more water. You're going to hang around the right people. You're not going to get toxic people. ~Just, you know, ~consume your energy, you're going to be able to say no and have boundaries. So your entire, your health is going to improve.

And it all started because you decided that it was worth it to do some things that you know you want to do that are uncomfortable that you're putting off, which as you've gone through this podcast, I know that you've identified stuff that you're putting off. You haven't had that conversation. You haven't ~done, ~gone to the doctor and dealt with that issue.

You haven't called that family member that you've been neglecting, engaging Recently, you haven't remembered, you know, [00:20:00] other people in situations where you could, and now you can because you're being challenged to do so. I had a client just yesterday who, she had some situation with a leader that she was working with where she wanted to address an issue that was very difficult for her.

And she felt very passionately that it wasn't handled right by this leader, big company, well, medium sized company, but really good key employee and was really hesitant to actually address it. One reason she was hesitant is because she felt like she was going to get very angry and frustrated with this employee if they had the conversation.

So as we talked about it, we discussed ways she could approach the issue in a conversation by asking questions, by trying to not be defensive, by not making assumptions, and really truly being curious about the other person's perspective and how that would address the issue. It wasn't going to be confrontational.

It was going to be a crucial conversation ~where they got, ~where she got more information from this employee. I truly believe that if she applied what she had come up with as good questions and did ask those in a confident, calm way, it was going to go really well. And [00:21:00] at least success In a situation like that, is there some level of understanding?

It's not that everyone's happy about having the conversation and excited about the result necessarily, but it's some understanding has been made, which that means there's been some success. And that's going to improve your health. When you face things, it actually improves your health. So number seven benefit to facing the junk in your life that you're putting off, the scary stuff that you don't want to do, is you're going to see that you can do it and that you no longer have a problem.

You're no longer terrified afterwards. Like you can see that you can do it and something good is going to come out of it, even if it doesn't have the result that you want. And so you're going to gain confidence after you do it because you saw that you can handle that situation. Crucial. Confidence comes after you do something you're afraid of, not before, ~because you have no, you have little, You have some anxiety beforehand.~

It means you don't have enough confidence about it yet. So you're learning something new, you know, maybe you haven't played on a softball team, adult softball team before you're playing for the first time. Of course, you're going to feel some level of insecurity about that, unless you're just a superstar athlete or you played when you were younger and just haven't played in a while, [00:22:00] and you know that it's going to be an easy thing to do, but you're going to be some.

Kind of level of anxiety, but then you're going to do it and see, you can, your confidence is going to grow. You're talking to somebody that you don't know very well. You're going and addressing a conflictual issue with an employee and you have it in the past in the same kind of way. You're being curious about somebody else.

Again, after you do it, your confidence is going to grow. Even Lloyd, you know, I would imagine that he may not be ~really ~extremely confident about surfing now that he's done it. ~the second time, ~but he'll have a little more confidence than he had the last time because he gained ~some stuff, ~some information.

~And he realized, ~and that may be transformed into, I can do other things that are scary. Maybe he'll go skydiving in an air tunnel potentially now because he did that. And it can be a transferable level of confidence in other areas because you grew it in one specific area. Amazing stuff. And there's a big difference too between the ego and self confidence.

This is really important because the ego is about self. It's about being, it's about protecting what you have. And the ego is about not [00:23:00] being exposed to embarrassment or any vulnerability. It's about self preservation. ~It's, ~it's controlling. ~It's just, it's fear. ~It's Primarily driven by fear and you need some fear in your life to be safe.

You need some, but self confidence is driven by the self. Like the capital S, capital E, capital L, capital F. ~It's, ~it's where you're being yourself. You're being more of yourself. You're believing in yourself. You're believing in who you were created to be. Your unique abilities, your skills, the things you have to offer the world.

It's not arrogant. It's pretty much. Primary emotion is love. That's what real self confidence is. It's about giving back. And you're growing in that belief in yourself because you know you have something to offer. You can show up and you can give back and you can contribute in whatever environment you're in.

It may not go perfectly well, but you know you got the ability to handle it and to move through it. That's the general self confidence that I see people growing as they face things in their life and they realize they can get through it to the other side. So it's really super exciting. ~So ~ego decreases, self confidence increases in this whole process.

So I was so excited to talk to you about this because this is a topic that has inspired my career [00:24:00] facing things. It's what I get up and do and strive to do every day is to help my clients face things. When I see those kinds of breakthroughs, when clients identify what they need to face, it just lights up my whole world.

~It lights up everything. It's the purpose. It's the drive, it's the purpose to decide your legacy. ~It makes everything better when you face stuff and you see on the other side there's great, great things for you. There's freedom on the other side, freedom in relationships, freedom to be yourself, freedom of financial freedom.

Honestly, there's freedom to spend your time on the right things as you face stuff and you get that clarity. ~beforehand and in the process. ~It's amazing and inspiring. So there's seven reasons why you want to face your fears in your life. ~And this, ~the next podcast I'm going to do, I'm going to actually talk to you about three reasons.

That'll be episode number 125, but three practical things to do to face your fears that you want to do to make it so you can start doing and taking the steps to facing your fears. ~But ~even with today, you can identify some stuff that you know you want to actually address and deal with. And I'm going to help you start with this.

So ~the. ~The challenge for you ~is, ~is to check out the article that was just published. It's a brand new article that I wrote. I [00:25:00] don't write nearly as much as I used to, but I'm starting to write more now. And this is on, Facing Your Fears. So this is an article that goes along with these two podcasts, 124 and 125.

And there's a list of 27 small actions you can take that could be scary for you. And you're going to go through that list of 27 actions and identify which ones ~are, they, they ~trigger some moderate to mild anxiety, and then create a list of those that you're going to look at and say, I'm going to execute.

I'm going to execute, I'm going to do some of this stuff on this list. That's the challenge for you today, because that'll start you addressing some of the small things that are going to move you to facing some of the bigger things in your life. And it's not necessarily going to be exciting to go over this list, but I think it'll be extremely inspiring, okay?

Inspiring does not necessarily mean you're excited to do it. It means you're inspired. ~I mean, ~it means you have inside of you this desire to say like, that's true for me and it's going to have a big impact in my life. It's going to be inspiring. to you to go over this list and identify and rank them from ~the scariest of the ones that are triggering that do trigger some anxiety from the scariest and ~the least ~scariest to the most ~scary to the [00:26:00] scariest, ~basically, ~and then to start doing the least scary items on there and even reach out to me if you want to share your list with me of those things that you're gonna face.

I love to hear it. I love to see it. It would be so encouraging, inspiring to me. ~I don't care when you listen to this podcast months from now, whatever. ~Share those with me. 'cause I love seeing how people are gonna face some things in their life. And I'm gonna do some stuff here and share those with you as well.

If you check out the reels on the TikTok channel, on the YouTube channel that you're gonna see me and Lloyd and the team facing some fears and sending some videos on how we're doing this stuff in our life. So, I want to challenge you to go ahead and get started doing some stuff that's scary. So, insight doesn't mean squat.

All talk, that's often a strategy for avoiding stuff. So, it's insight. It's a part of it. You get insight. I got some insight, but you gotta take some action. Insight is 20% or less. Action is 80% or more. I'd say 90%. ~An okay plan that you do nothing with is well, ~an okay plan that you act on is a hundred times better than a plan you do nothing with.

~So ~you want to create that plan of scary actions you can [00:27:00] take. I want you to identify what resonates with you the most today. ~and ~Teach it to somebody and apply it to your life. ~What is it? Come on, do something. ~If you want it to stick, apply it swiftly and teach it to somebody else. I want to sign off today the way I always do.

Make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.