What is fear, and why do we let it stop us from living a full life as our true selves. This episode examines fear from a body, mind, spirit perspective and examines one of the top fears which holds people back - the fear of disapproval.

Drawing on ideas from martial arts, shamanism, and psychology, John Moore takes a tour of fear and offers some practical tips for not letting it rule your life.

Announcer 0:29

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:47

Hello, everybody, wherever you happen to be in the world, and welcome. I am honored that you have chosen to join me today. Whenever it is, you're listening to this podcast. It's an interesting thing to me, I talked about this a lot. I don't know, some weird thing that I'm fascinated with. I do a weekly radio spot, right, which is, you know, fairly real time it goes, You know, I know exactly when people are listening to it. You know, locally here, but with the podcast, you could be listening to this, you know, three years after I record it, or 10 years, I don't know if podcasts will still exist in 10 years. But that would be interesting, wouldn't it? And so it's for me, it's a little bit like a time capsule. And yet I feel like I'm talking directly to you. And I also know that I have people listening to this all over the world. And that's really exciting to me to love the idea. it coincides with the shamanic concept that everything is connected Well, not just shamanic. It exists in many, many systems of belief, then many spiritual practices, the idea that everything is connected. And it helps me recognize that we are indeed connected that you and I are one. Yeah. I'm sorry, if that if it disturbs you to think that you may be one with me. But underneath it, all we are, we all are the same source, right? We all come from the same energy, the same intelligence, well, not intelligence, but the same consciousness anyway, we all have access to the same wisdom. And me talking to you like this reinforces that for me, and I think that's a beautiful thing. I think it brings humanity and spirit together in a very real way for me, and I love that and it's one of the things that has, you know, that that I've enjoyed on my shamanic path. Today, as I'm talking to you, it is morning, it is almost summer, almost at the solstice, I do have a big Solstice celebration coming up, which I'm excited about. I'm doing a ceremony an online ceremony, so that people from all over can can join me in celebrating the solstice. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it will be the the summer solstice, if you're in the southern hemisphere, it'll be the winter solstice. The So, interestingly, this is a little bit of divert if you listen to these podcasts, you know that I sometimes diverge from the topic at hand, I promise I will get to today's topic. But you know, something that is near and dear to my heart is the concept of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And how things you know, how they flow dynamically, one into the other, etc. So, Summer Solstice is, you know, the, the, it is a, an expression on a spiritual level of the Divine Masculine where Winter Solstice is an expression on the spiritual level of the Divine Feminine as it relates to seasons and that sort of thing. And, you know, if you haven't listened to me before, divine masculine and divine feminine, are spiritual concepts, their spiritual archetypes. They don't have a whole lot to do with physical sexual characteristics or or gender identity or anything like that they're just sort of like Yin and Yang, or Yin and Yang. And, you know, they're, you know, they're archetypes that do the masculine for whatever reason, we associated the masculine with times of activity expansion, evolution, where we, the the feminine is the aspects that are, you know, resting, gathering, healing, nurturing, that sort of thing, there's no,

these, these are just sort of poles of the same divine energy, there's no hierarchy, there's not to say that being active is better than being being resting. That's not the case, in the human system, for example, we have the sympathetic nervous system, and the parasympathetic nervous system. And both are incredibly, incredibly important, you know, we would not survive without them. And so we can say that the sympathetic nervous system is associated with, you know, the archetype of the masculine, because active and protective, and all of that sort of thing, where the parasympathetic is associated with aspects of the divine feminine, because it is healing and resting and nurturing. And you need both, and you need a balance of those things. And the same is true in the world and in spirit. Anyway, so the summer solstice is celebration of, you know, a recognition of definitely, you know, the, the longest day of the year, and the, you know, going into summer officially, and, you know, that sort of thing, but it's also a celebration of the Divine Masculine cycle where, even though we may go on vacation in the summer, and that sort of thing, you know, it is a more active time, when you think about, you know, there's, you know, it's a season of, of light and heat and growth, and, you know, that sort of thing. But I digress, because today, I am here to talk about the cons, the idea of fear. Particularly, I want to focus on the way fear holds us back. And this is an important topic to me, because one of the things that I am dedicated to, in my, my professional spiritual life, is helping people live more fully, and who they are helping people manifest their Divine Will. And, you know, and, and just, you know, step into their power, and that sort of thing. So I'm going to talk a little bit about fear, and specifically, go into the fears that hold us back and one in particular. And I'll tell you why this topic came up for me. So I, you know, I, I do a number of things, but that includes mentoring people. And I had a student I, you know, I am mentoring the other day, and she was talking to me about something going on in her professional life and use the phrase, but what if they laugh at me? And I said, What if they laugh at you? And I saw and I knew I expected this I want I just wanted to prompt a little thought on her behalf. You know, and what I saw was her eyes get really big in this physiological fear response, right? people's guts, small eye, you know, eyes widened out, pull the head back, hold their breath for a second. You know, all of these things that are, you know, lots of things that are physiological, the blood rushed out of her face a little bit. You know, there was a flash it took it was like a second or two seconds. And that really like stopped her tracks. Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not okay. If people laugh at me. Um, but what I want to do with her is get to the bottom of that fear and have her you know, understand that a little bit. So, so let's talk about fear and what fear is and there's all these you know, in the motivational speaker world, which I am not really Part of, but pay attention to those people because sometimes they do speak some truths and sometimes they are saying things that people want to hear things that sound great, you know, and so you know, there's there's something that comes out of this, you know, rah, rah, motivational speaker pump you up kind of thing that you know, fear f e a r stands for false evidence appearing real, right.

But that's not always the case. I mean, we have, we certainly have legitimate fear we there are lots of legitimate fears, that sort of thing. But let's talk about where fear comes from. On a, you know, physical human psychological level. Fear is a protective mechanism, right? It's a survival mechanism. We have fear to keep us safe. If we were, you know, not afraid of falling off a cliff, we might do things that were that are dangerous for us. So fear. You know, fear gets this bad name in some circles. Right? It's bad, shouldn't feel fear, should be fearless. And I think the word fearless is ridiculous. Everybody feels fear at some level. Some people who have quote unquote mastered fear are those who are actually really good at managing fear. You know, an example of that might be if you think about like Navy SEALs or some elite military units that have to rush into battle when people are, you know, shooting at them or, or what have you, or firefighters, first, other first responders, that sort of thing. To say that these people do not experience fear, because they're doing something that we might be stopped by, is just not true. It's, you know, they have conditioned themselves, to be able to, you know, bypass to be able to work with to be able to experience fear, and still do what they need to do. So that the idea that these people don't feel any fear is, is pretty silly. It's just not true. And they don't believe it. What I do think is that so, you know, on a, on a physical psychological level, what's happening with fear? And there's a, there's a couple kinds of fear, right? There's the kind of fear where that is more of a flinch response where something happens suddenly and it causes you to have an immediate reflex physiological reaction where you jump right or you know, you're watching a scary movie and the killer jumps out and you know, you you jump or you scream, or you you know, your heart races or what have you. That's a reflex response. And it's a little bit hard to overcome that flinch response you can with some amount of training, I've experienced this with martial arts training that I've done. And that is a pure reflex physiological response. The other you know, the other kind of, you know, and that is usually like that's over in, you know, less than the flinch part is over in less than a second. And it's designed to, you know, keep you safe in an immediate situation. If I put my hand on a hot stove, accidently, I'm gonna yank it's gonna yank my hands gonna yank off the stove faster than I can think of that hurts, right? way faster. It's, it's, you know, my nervous system is geared up to respond that way. So then there's the and then there's the other kind of fear where I feel and we have lots of words for this, like apprehension. Right? Where I feel an ongoing sense of fear. There's an ongoing threat I'm in a I'm in a bad unfamiliar neighborhood or I'm, you know, another word might be worried. I'm worried about you know, health. diagnosis or something along those lines. And, you know, long term that, you know, long term that's, we might call that stress, right? body's having a stress response. So there's a few things that's happening that are happening inside you. When that's going on longer term fear, you know, and it can be relatively short term from a few minutes to like something that's ongoing. Right. And, and some of us have,

what we might consider irrational fears or phobias that are that are ongoing, or ongoing worries or ongoing stress, really bad for health over time. So you know, a few mechanisms are having there's this area in your brain called the amygdala, that becomes activated. It is an older part of your brain. And it you know, what I mean older is it evolved before your prefrontal cortex. So when your amygdala gets activated, sometimes your prefrontal cortex shuts down, because it will, it will take priority, okay? And then you get physiological responses your body releases adrenaline, your your heart rate increases your breathing increases your blood, you know, your blood flow changes, all kinds of physiological things happen to you. In this is your body readying itself to fight, flight, flee fighter flight, I guess that would be the flight or freeze, so fight, flight or freeze, right, the three F's under extreme extreme extreme fear, the body will freeze up. This is, you know, this is a safety mechanism, it doesn't seem safe. But if you think about people, when we were, you know, not in modern society and living among dangerous animals, and you know, that sort of thing, freezing might save you up, if, you know, we were facing a saber toothed tiger, stopping all movement might keep you safe from Tiger seeing you or knowing you're there. And being able to, you know, eat you as a snack. Okay, so and, you know, same thing sort of fight or flight, right? how we respond to those things. And those are sympathetic nervous system responses. And they're all, you know, you know, they're not just sympathetic nervous system, but there's all kinds of neurotransmitters and hormones and all kinds of things going on, that make these physiological changes in our body, when we feel fear, and we run away or we fight or we freeze up. freezing up is a really extreme, you know, when you see if you've ever seen somebody be so freaked out that they go into a fetal position. That's about as extreme as it gets, you know, some people faint or pass out because they have a, like a super overactive fear mechanism. So that's sort of the physiological body side of fear. Right. And obviously, there's a psychological aspect as well. And I'll dive more into that. But that, you know, on the mental, psychological, emotional side, human beings in general, not everyone, so I can't speak to each individual in the universe, but human beings have a strong bias towards the negative. And what that means is that experiences that we place a negative value on, we tend to weigh more heavily. So there's a bias, right? We, we overestimate how often the negative things happen, and underestimate how often the positive things happen. And there is again, there's an evolutionary reason for this, right? So if I go down to the watering hole, you know, you know back in the saber toothed Tiger days, we get another watering hole every day for two years. And then one day we go down to the watering hole and a saber toothed Tiger eats my friend. I'm going to have a real fear about going down to that watering hole again. And I'm going to remember Number, not the, you know, two years that I've gone down there, I'm going to remember that one really negative incident. And that is designed to keep me safe. Because that watering hole may not mean no longer be safe. I might go well, you know, you know, if I didn't have that I might go, Well, you know, I've gone two years in a row, it's probably going to be okay today. And it might not, it may not be safe any longer.

That's the thing that's going to stick out in my brain. And in, in general, studies have shown that that's how human beings are. And it makes perfect sense, from evolutionary psychology, why that wouldn't be why that'd be negative. So an example of that is, you know, a lot of human beings report being afraid of sharks, for example. Sharks are big and scary. And you know, some of them do. Some of them do kill human beings. Right. And then, and you know, the movie Jaws back in the 70s really changed, changed things. For a lot of people, a lot of people were afraid to go in the water after that movie, it was so dramatic, dramatic things stand out. It's you know, the cognitive bias here is called the availability heuristic, really dramatic events stand out for us, we remember them. And so we overestimate their frequency. The truth is that more people are killed by cows globally than are killed by sharks every year. It's just less dramatic. When a plane crashes, you know, we see plane crashes or something dramatic, like 911. And a lot of people are afraid to fly. And yet, they'll get in their car every day. But statistically, that doesn't make sense. Because, you know, you're much you know, the, you know, car travel is much less safe than air travel. Statistically speaking, but our, you know, our, our brains, our minds, our bodies that are not about analyzing statistics, it's not about analyzing what is real or what is genuine. And that's, that's an important thing to remember. A lot of people think they are rational and logical, like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Um, human beings just don't operate that that way. And, and I think most of the time, that's okay. I mean, most of the time, that's fine. I think instinct. Personally, I think instinct is a combination of spiritual connection, emotion and logic, right? emotion and knowledge. And spiritual connection leads to instinct. And sometimes things that are completely illogical. Makes sense. You know, that person that gets a bad feeling and misses a flight, and then it turns out the flight crashes later. So you know, intuition works. And sometimes it works in illogical ways. But I think it's important to do a little self reflection sometimes. And understand when you're catastrophizing, right, we're making, we're thinking about potential catastrophes all the time. You know, in our life, when we think about when, you know, when all the times we're thinking about the worst things that can happen to us. And we think about all the things that could go wrong. Instead of what could go right, what could go right. And working through some of the fears that hold us back that all they do is hold us back, right? They're not actually keeping us safe. And, you know, what I found with human beings is that a lot of that a lot of those fears are social fears. Right? Again, human beings we we evolved in tribal and tribes right in tribal cultures, and being ostracized or outcast. From a tribe meant that you did not survive, probably, it was a threat, it was an existential threat, it was a threat to your very life to be cast out from the tribe.

And so we have an implicit bias towards a belonging to tribes, you can look around and see, to what is, to me a crazy level of tribalism in the world. And that shows up as all sorts of, you know, isms like racism, nationalism. You know, I'm better than you because I follow this sports team, I'm better than you, because I was born in this country, I'm better than you, because my skin is a different shade, a different tone, a different level of darkness than you, you know, and none of that really makes any sense. None of that is, you know, we're, we're all we should all be part of the human tribe, right? And that's, you know, it should go without saying that it's incredibly silly to put people in these boxes. But we do that. We absolutely do that. I'm better than you, because I'm a man, I'm better than you. Because I'm one I'm better than you because I practice this religion or spirituality, or my parents have more money than your parents or what have you. So there's this tribalism that goes on. And along with that, there's this sort of othering, you don't want to be, you know, if you're part of this group, you don't want to be considered and other we want to be included. And there is a structure in the brain. That is, that is triggered with both physical pain and being socially excluded. And so social exclusion registers as almost like physical pain, the same way, same way in some areas of the brain.

And I'm, I'm blanking a little bit on the name, but I think it's the intake, anterior cingulate cortex. And if you're a brain, you know, if you're a brain expert, you might correct me. But I think it's the anterior cingulate cortex is part of the brain that registers things like social exclusion, and physical pain. Isn't that interesting? How much our survival instinct so when I asked my student, what if they laugh at you, and I saw a, you know, a small but measured physiological fear response. I knew what was going on inside of her that part of her brain was triggered, like she was imagining, Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna be outcast. From this group, they're gonna think less of me. And there's not a you know, there's not a logical like, Oh my gosh, there will be these x, y, z repercussions. It will have no effect on my have no effect on my life. I remember. I remember taking, taking my daughter shopping one time, and we were going to, we're going to this town where nobody would know us. And my daughter spilled something on her shirt. Oh, my gosh, I can't go in here with a stain on my shirt, you know? And I said, Well, you know, don't worry about it. Nobody in there, knows who you are. But she couldn't, she just couldn't do it. And I had to I just stop somewhere and go in and buy her a nice shirt. And then she could go you know, go somewhere into a restroom and change. And then we could go shopping in this town where nobody knew her nobody recognized her would have no effect on her life whatsoever. If if somebody saw her with a stain on her shirt. But I understand again, these you know, these things are not necessarily the sphere is not necessarily logical. It is not an end. To an extent it can't be you know, it can't be reasoned with either because reason and logic and those things live in a different part of your brain. They live in your prefrontal cortex. And this fear stuff is going on in your amygdala and you're into anterior cingulate, anterior cingulate gyrate, probably gyrus, no, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. Most likely, I'm pronouncing that wrong, but that's okay. Regardless, you know, having some understanding of what's going on, there is actually a step towards overcoming, overcoming that fear, right? You know, something, something that, you know, something that has helped me. You know, when I enter situations where I feel fear, let's say, I've got, you know, being interviewed or something along those something's going on, and the first time and I'm a little nervous about it, you know, it helps me a little bit to remind myself that there's no Tiger in the forest, right, there's no Tiger ready to jump out and eat me in the forest. And so at least I understand what's going on, I understand why the physiological fear response is happening. It's the same thing that would be happening to me, if I were, you know, living in an age where I were taught, you know, potentially threatened by a tiger in the forest. And, you know, everything's happening to me, physiologically. So let's talk about, you know, one of the biggest fears that holds people back. And I've touched on this a little bit already. And that is the fear of disapproval. Right. We so badly want approval, and in fact, in

you know, in a, I guess, spiritual psychological method that I really, really like, and really resonate with called the Sedona Method, they see a lot of these, a lot of your emotional energy, all the stuff, culminating what they call these three wants, right? And want in this case, is synonymous with lack, right? So I lack this, I lack that, it's a feeling of I lack this. And the three big ones are wanting safety, right, wanting to feel safe. Or, you know, another, again, a synonym for that is lacking, I lack the feeling of safety. Because when I say when I want safety, another one is control, I lack control, control over situation control over myself control over somebody else, I want to be in control of something. And the third one is wanting approval. So, you know, I lack approval, I lacked the feeling of being approved of. So the fear of disapproval is a big one. And that's one that I see. That's one that I see people that I work with, and just people that I know, I see that hold so many people back from truly expressing who they are. And, you know, on a level on some level I do under you know, I understand how that can be a reasonable fear. So, for example, as I record this, we are in the middle of Pride Month, and I think that's a global thing. And you know, it's big in the United States, where it is a you know, celebration of an a respect for people in the LGBTQ plus community. Um, and I do you know, I remember it wasn't that long ago, definitely during my during my life. And I can talk about well, I can talk about you know, some personal personal connection with this, I guess. But, you know, I can remember in there's happening in, you know, it still happens today in play, you know, different places in the world, but people are being killed for being gay. People are being killed because they love somebody who is the same same physical sex that they are Can you imagine anything more horrific, I'm going to kill you because of who you are. So there are some very real aspects of fearing disapproval. Right, of being ostracized, there could be some some definite downplaying points to that. And, you know, I do remember, I do remember some famous cases. And one happening, I live in the state of Maine, which is in the northeast, the far northeast of the United States. And growing up, there was a young man killed, because he was gay by being thrown off a bridge in a town called Bangor, Maine. And Bangor is where the author Steve, Stephen King, lives if you've, you know, read his books, or watched movies based on his books. And there are some allusions to that incident, I think he was shaken up by that incident. There are some allusions to that incident in his book and movie, it, which is about this demon clown that lives in a town called dairy and dairy is based on the town of Bangor. So anyway, it's a little bit of a personal connection, I remember being utterly shocked by that. Growing up, and there have been, there have been others, there have been probably many others. And it's shocking and horrible. And, you know, I understand you know, only as an outsider, I can understand why that is. Why that fear of disapproval, you know, and certainly certainly being gay or being transgender or what, what have you, historically, you could be outcast from your family, you could be

you know, pushed, you know, pushed out of jobs discriminated against. So, in that case, there is a lot, you know, some logic to fear of disapproval. And as I've talked before being pushed out of a tribe being acquired by the tribe is an existential threat. So if it doesn't make sense, though, I mean, some of it, you know, my, my daughter, you know, I understood her feeling, and I respected that and I helped work, you know, work through that by buying her new shirt. But when we, when we looked at that, you know, if we, if we examined that, it had no, you know, her fear her abject physiological fear to walking into a store with a stain on her shirt, she would not have been treated differently, it would not have had any effect on her life. So it, it was a bit illogical. And it was, you know, it's a minor incident, but it just points to something greater. Right. And so, um, you know, I have had clients, and I've known people and, you know, just friends and that sort of thing, who have held off on dreams or doing something that they really wanted to do. Because they were afraid of people's disapproval. You know, I know somebody wanted to dance and her, you know, take a dance class and her husband said something very rude and about her being uncoordinated. And you're just going to be a laughingstock, and whenever I held her back, and I'll tell you that there are no, you know, they're no longer married these this couple, I mean, it's just just a terrible, hurtful, horrible thing. very insensitive. You know, and I know artists who have held back, because really being vulnerable, really putting it out there is tough. It's tough when I want to express who I really am and that might, there's the risk of that being rejected by people. I care about people I don't care about. I get it. I do. It's unfair. It's unfortunate to me, and it's one of the things that I you know, I work with on a professional level, to work with my clients on things having to do with Stepping out, stepping into who they are being okay. And really living their lives and and experiencing a sense of fullness with that. On a personal level, I want people who are around me, and everyone is important. I want people to feel free to be who they are. You know, embrace your, you know, you're somebody who likes this kind of music. And I may not like it, but I don't care if you're passionate about it. That's fantastic. I will not think less of you because we have different tastes in music, or do you like to play video games that I don't, or you? You know, you aspire to be a flamenco dancer and I know nothing about it. I will be fascinated by what you are fascinated by. I'll be fascinated by your passions. And what a better world we would live in if people were just felt free to pursue their passions, how full would the world be of art and beautiful things and people doing charity work and people pursuing businesses and dreams and writing and poets and healers? people practicing their spirituality in their own personal way. Without fear of repercussion. People being free to live out their life in the way of their choosing, regardless of gender, or biological sex or you know, race or religion or national origin or, or what have you.

What a world we would be if we did everything that we could to make people feel comfortable. Just being who they are more fully. Even if it didn't jive with who we are. You know, we're living in an era that is so divided politically, economically, even, you know, even our sense of reality tends to be divvied up. I watched this new station, you watch that news station, they said this, this one said that, underneath at all, we are all a divine spark, we were all a part of the creator of the universe, if you want to call that God or the universe or goddess or what have you, underneath all of that. We are divine. And wouldn't this be a greater world if we just allowed if we helped people find their divine spark, and just allowed it to shine? If we didn't hold off if we didn't, if we didn't judge if we helped people feel less judged, made people more comfortable. So I do like to give at least you know, a couple pieces of hopefully practical advice and you know, these will come. You know, I don't know if this is specifically spiritual advice, or, you know, body, mind, and spirit are all one. And we're all emanations of spirit. So I guess it doesn't matter much. Again, you know, drawing, drawing false divisions, sometimes helps us think about things but in the end, it gets confusing because they are false divisions. So, I'm gonna, you know, leave you maybe with a couple of practical tips about what you might do to overcome some of the fears in your life. The first one comes from you know, when, you know, I've taught haven't been doing it for a while since the pandemic started, but, you know, I taught martial arts for a really, really long time. And I teach martial arts not just as a physical Rule of self defense and fitness but as a spiritual develop a tool for spiritual development, and I teach the mind body spirits at aspects, the energetic aspect, you know, very internal styles of teaching. And one of the things I would sort of not necessarily give us an assignment, but tell my students that it would be a good idea as a practice is to do something that you suck at, do something that you're absolutely terrible at, and do it just for the enjoyment and enjoy it fully. I'll give you an example. I am a terrible bowler, I'm not good at bowling. But if somebody were to ask me to go bowling, I would enthusiastically say yes, I would enjoy the entire experience. And I would enjoy even losing to someone who is a much better bowler than I am. One time I played table tennis with somebody who was an amazing competitive player from India. And I don't know, if he enjoyed it, he enjoyed the game, because I was absolutely no match for him. But participating and watching and like, he was kind of an artist, you know, it was, it was just beautiful. And I think he enjoyed, like he couldn't get anybody to agree to play with him, right. And it'd be, you know, a little bit like, me trying to box a professional boxer or something like he, you know, he could, there was no game for him, but at least I stood at the table with him. And let him serve to me in ways that I can return the ball. And it was enjoyable. And so find something that you're not good at. And enjoy it just for the sake of doing it.

Right. So the being good at it, the accomplishment aspect of it is not the major point, beating somebody else or gaining praise for doing it or, or what have you step outside your comfort zone. And the only way to enjoy it is to really let go of any of the you know, recognize feelings that come up, I have to be better, I have to do good at this, I have to appear this way to somebody really let go of that, as best you can recognize that when it comes up. Which leads me to my hopefully second piece of practical advice. And that is to sit with and welcome your feelings as they come up as best you can. And again, this, this is something that comes from the Sedona Method, I highly suggest reading the book can be had on Amazon or anywhere. And I think it's really inexpensive. And you can find us copies, it's been out for a long time. I've given away a ton of copies of the Sedona Method. And it really teaches you a bunch of methods for releasing emotional energy, amongst other things. So you know, let me, I'll tell you a short story. To give you an example of how I have used this. So was a number of years ago, I was less used to being in the public eye. I you know, hadn't done a lot of radio or TV or anything like that. And I got a call that they wanted me to go on live TV. And it was going to happen in an interview setting in a studio in a TV studio. And I had, I think under an hour to get to the studio go through makeup and they were going on the air. So no prep time whatsoever. And it was nerve wracking to say the least. Nowadays I'm much more used to being in the public eye. I enjoy public speaking I do you know podcasts and radio shows and regularly do stuff over zoom and I've been on TV and so it's it's not as big a deal because i've i've got experience with it. But I just remember this was you know, this was like oh my god nerve wracking, you know, sweating and trembling a little bit. And so I just, you know, I sat in, you know what they call the green room, which is the room you wait in before they bring you into the studio. And having gone through makeup, and trying not to sweat off. And, and so I just sat and I closed my eyes. And I just welcomed whatever I was feeling. feeling fear, I welcome it, and just experience that just go into it mentally go into it and into the body, feel what you're feeling. And what I found is that it would dissipate. And over the years, what I've learned is that emotions come in waves, right? And we, when we try to push them away, what happens is we hold the peak of emotional experience in place, we don't allow that wave to crash. physiologically, there's, you know, this, our nervous system is ramping up, and then it might ramp down and then, you know, hormones released, and then they, you know, they stopped the release for a short period of time, and then they get cleared out of the system, particularly adrenalin. Um, but if you push against that, if you push against that feeling, and try to push it away, your body's like, No, no, you need to feel this, you need to pay attention to this. This is important, don't push this away, I'm going to ramp it up. it persists and it gets worse. And it was Carl Jung who actually said what we resist persists. And that is so true. When we push that away, it holds on and that's true for anything. Anger, you know, grief,

lust, you know, fear all of these, you know, all of these emotions, the more we push them away, the stronger they grow. And so I sat there, and I welcome the feeling. And I just was completely open to it, and I just experienced it. From an observer standpoint. I didn't judge it. I didn't name it. label, it was like, Okay, I'm going to feel what I'm feeling. And go into it with a little bit of a quizzical Hmm, I wonder what this is. without feeling the need to define it, label it or push against it. And what I found was that the emotions, Pete, and they dropped off. And I walked into the studio, and I had a great interview. And friends of mine saw it and called me, Oh, my gosh, I saw you on TV. How did you do so? Well. I was like, I don't know. So, you know, it's a little tough to do that in immediate threat situations in your life, right? If you are walking across the street, and you are about to get hit by a bus, you don't want to close your eyes and go into meditation, that is an appropriate time to feel a fear response and run out of the streets so you don't get hit by a bus. This was not a survival incident. This was not a an incident where I had to react immediately. Or it didn't involve my survival. So I was able to, you know, calm myself down, allow the emotions to subside. Go into my hypnosis voice. And, you know, it did really well. And I was, you know, I felt a sense of accomplishment from having gone through it. You know, it's not to say there wasn't some nervousness during the interview. But from everybody talking to me, it doesn't sound like anybody picked up on it. It doesn't sound like it was visible on the camera. I never got to see it. It was live TV. Unfortunately, I don't think anybody recorded it for me. But, but it was a good experience from from that perspective, and maybe a third piece of advice I was only expected to give you too but as I as I referred to earlier, like I've done a whole bunch of things now in my life on you know, TV, radio, podcasts, video, you know, online streaming video, all kinds of stuff like that, and I just don't, I don't get nervous about that anymore. You know, maybe a little flutter before I teach a class or before I meet with a client for the first time or something along those lines. But I just, you know, just doesn't, doesn't really give me the same reaction that it did you know, when, when the story happened many years ago. And so part of that is, you know, there's a psychological psychological method of treating fears and phobias, which is called extinction. And so what happens is you gradually expose yourself to more and more of the stimulus that causes you to have this reaction. And over time you train yourself not to have this reaction. So the more, the more you and that's part of the you know, find something that you stink at, and go do it and do it just for the enjoyment is that you're going to get used to doing things without the net without social approval, honestly, so it's like a little bit, it's like a little trick for training yourself to do that. And, you know, pushing, pushing your limits a little bit is about that is about slowly, you know, you know, if you're, if you're, if you have a phobia of snakes, for example, you're not going to dive into a pit of Cobras, right? That would not do wonderful things for your fear of snakes. But you might start by looking at a picture of a snake everyday for a week, and then watching a video of a you know, not non venomous, non threatening snake everyday for a week and then looking at, you know, going to a zoo and looking at snakes behind glass

from a distance, you know, and over time, as you slowly increased your exposure, you know, the idea is that there would be an extinction to this phobia. So, I hope that in some small way, I've helped you helped you understand why why we have fears and why it's important for me, personally, and spiritually, and why it's one of my goals, to help people push through, deal with overcome their fears. So they can more fully be, you know, live in their, you know, live from their true self, live from their Divine Self. Not the small self, but the big self, the big s self. Um, I want a world that is full of poetry and dance and art and spiritual healing and love. And not a word that's full of division and playing it safe and smallness, and nobody ever stepping out and being vulnerable. I do highly recommend the works of Bernie Brown. She's got books and videos, and you can catch her talks online. And she talks a whole lot about vulnerability in ways way more articulate than I. So check her out if you get a chance. And will that I will say that I love you. I want you to live your best life. It's important to me it is my mission in this incarnation. And I will talk to you next time.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, john more. For more info or to contact john go to MaineShaman.com that's ma i n e s h a m a n.com