The Art of Manliness - #651： How to Turn Fear Into Fuel

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. We typically

00:00:11.420 think of fear as a negative emotion, something that feels terrible and not only keeps us

00:00:15.300 away from true danger, but also inhibits us from going after our life's goals and passions.

00:00:19.980 Fear can indeed be an unwelcome hindrance, but my guest today argues it can also be a

00:00:23.340 powerful propellant and sighing post towards success. His name is Patrick Sweeney. He's

00:00:27.140 a tech entrepreneur, a university lecturer, a coach, a consultant to CEOs, professional

00:00:31.140 athletes, and Navy SEALs, and the author of Fear is Fuel, the surprising power to help you

00:00:35.320 find purpose, passion, and performance. We begin our conversation with how a diagnosis of

00:00:39.200 leukemia forced Patrick to confront the fact that he had led a life dominated and shrunken

00:00:43.140 by fear and inspired him to face those fears and to spend six years talking to leading

00:00:47.260 neuroscientists about how to live more courageously. He explains how fear should be thought of

00:00:51.120 not only as an early warning system for danger, but as an early warning system for opportunity.

00:00:55.220 We then unpack the three kinds of fears which exist and how you can be fearful in one area,

00:00:58.940 but courageous in another. Patrick then explains how it's possible to train the brain's courage

00:01:02.700 center to control and reprogram its fear center so you can get the best from fear rather than

00:01:06.760 letting it get the best of you. We discuss how uncertainty creates something called free

00:01:10.040 energy, how free energy creates fear, and how to reduce both forces by exposing yourself to a

00:01:14.440 wide range of experiences. And we enter a conversation with how to find the motivation to take the first

00:01:18.240 step into fear and three things you can do to gain the confidence to take action in the face of

00:01:22.020 uncertainty. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash fearsfuel.

00:01:35.080 All right, Patrick Sweeney, welcome to the show.

00:01:37.820 Brett, it is such an honor to be here. I've been a big fan of you guys and AOM for years,

00:01:43.360 and I am just delighted to be on this show. Super, super, super stoked.

00:01:47.700 Well, thank you so much. So you got a book, Fear is Fuel, The Surprising Power to Help You Find

00:01:53.080 Purpose, Passion, and Performance. Before we get to the book, let's talk a bit about your background

00:01:57.380 because I think your background led to the book. Did you have an experience in your life that

00:02:02.320 kick-started you exploring this intersection between fear and how it can be used to, I don't

00:02:08.220 know, used to motivate you and do better things? You know, Brett, it was funny. It was like this

00:02:15.300 snowball experience that I didn't really see coming. I mean, my whole existence leading up to

00:02:22.500 an incredibly, what sounded on the surface as a tragic event, but it became an absolutely

00:02:32.520 transformative event. And so my entire life, I was trying to figure out how to be a man, right?

00:02:38.820 I was searching for manliness and really searching for self-esteem and self-respect and

00:02:45.480 did everything I could to try and find it without finding my authentic self. And when I was 35 years

00:02:54.140 old, I had been running my second startup, had raised about $30 million by that point, should have been

00:03:00.860 as happy as anyone in the world with this, you know, one of the hottest high-tech companies in the U.S.

00:03:07.300 in a great space, incredible employees, wonderful clients. And instead, I was terrified of everything.

00:03:14.820 I was afraid, you know, of board meetings, that I wasn't going to look good as the CEO and I wasn't

00:03:19.720 going to be presenting myself as the perfect CEO. I was afraid of employees leaving, of my clients

00:03:25.800 jumping ship. So I was constantly living in the state of fear. And the way that I dealt with it,

00:03:31.440 because when you're in this fear state, your body releases all these enzymes and hormones.

00:03:35.740 And I had cortisol, the stress hormone, just constantly flooding my body. So the only way

00:03:41.960 I knew how to deal with it then is drinking. And I was having seven or eight beers every day and

00:03:47.800 probably twice that on weekends and getting about four hours of teeth grinding sleep and waking up,

00:03:54.060 you know, feeling guilty, the whole Irish Catholic guilt thing. So I had to go to the gym to sweat it

00:03:58.540 out. And not surprisingly, that led to a lifestyle that almost ended in disaster. I woke up one

00:04:05.780 morning and couldn't move my arm and was too afraid to go to the doctor. So it took two or three days

00:04:11.260 before I finally got to the doctor and he told me I had no immune system. And it was at that point when

00:04:16.960 into that sort of single phone call was what changed my entire life.

00:04:20.380 And what did you do in response to that? Like, what was your, I mean, cause I mean,

00:04:23.620 that's like, I mean, you, you were living your life in fear because of all these things that

00:04:26.940 your business could fall apart, whatever, but like this, yeah, this is, this is real. This is life

00:04:31.660 or death here.

00:04:32.640 Well, and I had no idea what it meant. Right. And, and I was afraid, I was terrified to find out

00:04:37.860 what it meant and to face the fear. But in this instance, I had no choice. So I was in living in

00:04:43.380 Northern Virginia and the doctors there said, we have no idea why, but your white blood cells are

00:04:49.540 cannibalizing themselves and you have no white blood cells left. And we're going to send you

00:04:54.300 to Johns Hopkins. Then I went up to Hopkins. My, my daughter was one year old and she went to her

00:04:59.800 grandparents and my wife and I went up to Hopkins and we, we went through this battery of tests and

00:05:05.980 evaluations. And the whole thing culminated in this nightmare scenario of Dr. McDavid coming in and

00:05:12.400 saying, you know, we don't know what it is, but it's a very rare form of leukemia.

00:05:18.660 And it's progressed quite a ways already. So we suggest you get your affairs in order and say

00:05:26.000 your goodbyes. And I was, you know, my, my wife was six months pregnant as well. So we had a one

00:05:33.840 year old, my wife was six months pregnant. She went into shock. And it was at that point when I just,

00:05:39.480 you know, I, I had such, I was just so overwhelmed with this sense of regret and failure that I had

00:05:46.420 missed out on my entire life because I was, I was afraid to, you know, afraid to do things,

00:05:52.260 afraid to be the authentic self. And I was most of all terrified of flying. So I always made excuses

00:05:57.740 not to do things. And I'm lying there in a bed in Hopkins. And I realized this is, you know,

00:06:03.220 this is going to happen. It's going to happen now, or maybe it'll happen six months from now,

00:06:08.560 or maybe it'll happen six years from now, but I'm going to die at some point. And that realization

00:06:13.620 dramatically changed the way that I looked at the world.

00:06:18.160 And when you said you're terrified of flying, you mean like literally flying, not like flying

00:06:21.460 in life, but like flying on an airplane.

00:06:23.760 Yeah. Flying on an airplane. I saw a plane crash on TV when I was seven years old and that planted this,

00:06:29.400 this seed of fear that, that grew into an entire tree in my body. And, and the main,

00:06:34.600 the main trunk of that tree was getting it on an airplane and flying. So I, I made up every excuse

00:06:41.600 I possibly could to avoid exchange programs, avoid spring break, avoid family reunions. You know,

00:06:49.360 I, I missed out on a huge part of what could have been a very rich life because I was afraid to get

00:06:55.920 it on an airplane. So how long ago was this? So this is 15 years ago. So I was 35 and I had,

00:07:02.260 you know, and I had been, I had an amazing life up until then that I never really appreciated or had

00:07:09.980 gratitude for, or, or even took advantage of. I was second in the Olympic trials in rowing and I'll

00:07:16.220 never forget the day my coach called me and told me that I could race in the world cup and very few

00:07:22.560 Americans who had ever gotten to, to race the single skull, the one man boat in the world cup. 0.82

00:07:26.820 It should have been one of the happiest days of my life, Brett, but instead I had a panic attack

00:07:32.080 because it meant I had to get on a plane and go to Europe. And, and I was, I was just petrified

00:07:39.020 to actually go and do the world cup, even though it's, it's what I had been working,

00:07:44.100 you know, five years of full-time training to get the opportunity to, to do that. And so

00:07:50.900 fear just, just locked me in this prison or, or probably more appropriately because of our,

00:07:57.220 our caveman brain, it locked me away in, uh, in a cave.

00:08:01.960 So your whole life you grappled with fear. You had this basically a moment where you thought you

00:08:07.400 were going to die. You, you faced the ultimate fear. Obviously you're still here. So there was

00:08:11.080 a happy ending to that story.

00:08:13.440 Don't do it. It's a spoiler alert.

00:08:14.920 Right. That's the spoiler. Right. Yeah.

00:08:16.180 But I mean, so like what changed, like how kind of big idea of your picture? I mean, let's do this.

00:08:21.640 I think you, you start off your book, fear is fuel talking about the story of the race for man

00:08:27.340 flight. And you use it as a metaphor to sort of explain your ideas of fear and courage. Now we all

00:08:32.480 know the Wright brothers. They, they're the winners of that race, Kitty Hawk, and they've gone down

00:08:37.060 in history. The other guy who was really close was this guy named Samuel Langley. Why don't we,

00:08:42.840 like what happened to Samuel, Samuel Langley? Why wasn't he the guy that, that beat, that won the

00:08:47.120 race to man flight?

00:08:48.940 So the big thing and, and the, the point that I was hinting at as, as that as an introduction,

00:08:54.860 Brad is there's two ways we can make decisions in life. We either make decisions out of fear

00:09:00.380 or we make decisions out of opportunity. And at the end of the day, you can distill every decision

00:09:05.280 you've made down to that. And Langley was making these decisions out of fear. He was, he was

00:09:12.240 getting funding from the government. He had funding from Thomas Edison. He had, he had the,

00:09:17.100 you know, great marquee names. He was getting all the publicity. And so he started, he, he originally

00:09:23.340 got into this 15 years before the Wright brothers. And he was doing these amazing, these amazing

00:09:29.540 experiences. He was, he was getting condors, having a taxidermist stuff them. And he put them

00:09:35.080 on basically what came up to a giant record player that he spun around at 60 to 70 revolutions

00:09:41.780 a minute. So he could watch what happened to their wings as they flew. And, and he used that to

00:09:47.240 design his own wing. So he, I mean, the guy was brilliant and he should have been the first one to

00:09:53.340 man flight, but he got so overcome by fear-based decisions. One, because of funding, two, because of

00:10:00.080 publicity, three, because he was afraid to change. He had an unmanned aircraft that did incredibly

00:10:06.120 well. It was the longest flying. It flew for about a mile without a person on it. He didn't want to

00:10:10.740 change the design to put in, to, to make up for the weight and balance of adding a man to the aircraft.

00:10:18.280 So he ended up sticking with it and, and nearly killed the pilot two or three times who tried it.

00:10:24.480 So it boils down to the fact that we need to be able to recognize when our fear centers activated

00:10:31.780 and trying to influence our thinking. And that's obviously the definition of courage is, and you've

00:10:39.020 had a bunch of podcasts that have talked about this, that I've heard over the years. And when you can

00:10:43.700 act rationally and thoughtfully in the face of fear, that means you've got control over your fear

00:10:50.060 center, that area called the amygdala, which is running a piece of 2 million year old software that,

00:10:55.860 that we have to reprogram. Because if we don't reprogram it, then what happened to me for the

00:11:02.240 first 35 years of my life will happen to everyone else. All your decisions will be based on fear

00:11:07.400 instead of based on opportunity. So when you say, you know, the title of the book is Fear is Fuel,

00:11:12.400 we don't want to make decisions based in fear, but you make this case that your fears can actually

00:11:16.840 tell you something and actually be used to, to propel you in your goals. Like what does that look like?

00:11:22.780 I mean, big picture, we might get into some specifics here later on the show.

00:11:25.860 Sure. Two, two big pictures with that, Brett. Number one, that, that amygdala, that center of

00:11:32.160 our brain, the lizard brain, it's often called, that's running that 2 million year old piece of

00:11:36.680 software used to be an early warning system for danger. And we don't have the danger anymore of

00:11:43.080 something rustling in the leaves or moving in the grass. So we can reprogram that number one,

00:11:49.260 to be an early warning system for opportunity. So when we know that amygdala is activating,

00:11:55.240 we can say, Hey, there's a chance to get out of our comfort zone. There's a chance to,

00:11:58.940 to do something and grow. So number one, we can reprogram the fear center to be an opportunity

00:12:04.260 center. And then number two, when the fear center activates, when the amygdala activates,

00:12:11.140 we produce these physiological changes that we basically produce a fear cocktail. So it's,

00:12:17.980 it's DHEA, it's cortisol, it's adrenaline, all these things that make us literally make us stronger

00:12:23.920 and make us smarter. We get more oxygen to the brain, anything unnecessary like digestion stops.

00:12:31.140 And so when we're stronger and when we're smarter and we're thinking better, we can use that

00:12:37.040 opportunity to make better decisions. And so that's, that's how you can use fear as fuel.

00:12:43.140 All right. So to understand how we can turn, use fear and turn it into fuel, you have to be,

00:12:46.820 become fluent in fear. And you've talked a little bit about what goes on whenever we feel fearful,

00:12:50.880 but you also, in the book, you argue that all fears can be categorized basically into three

00:12:55.600 groups. What are those three groups? Yeah, you can distill everything down to

00:13:00.120 what I basically call the terror triangle. And if you imagine a triangle with three sides,

00:13:05.900 on one side is going to be physical fears, on the other side is going to be emotional fears,

00:13:11.200 and then at the bottom is instinctual fears. And if you really want to be a well-balanced,

00:13:17.720 complete, courageous person, then you've got to do the deep work on all three fronts.

00:13:23.600 And a lot of times I've worked with a lot of Navy SEALs and special operations forces. And one thing

00:13:29.720 you found is these guys are the absolute pinnacle of physical courage. So they can, you know, a halo,

00:13:37.440 a high altitude, low opening jump, 30,000 feet in the air, over a raging sea in the dead of the night,

00:13:44.120 their heartbeat isn't even up over a hundred beats per minute, and they're jumping out of the plane.

00:13:48.440 That's a physical courage that's unparalleled in the world. But so many of those guys have been

00:13:54.600 married two or three times. They come home from deployment and they can't face the identity crisis

00:14:00.740 of not being in the teams or not being a commander anymore, not having guys under them, or they don't

00:14:06.980 know how to tell their wife issues about parenting or about wanting to have kids. And so they have 0.87

00:14:13.140 emotional fears because they haven't worked on that component. And it's exactly the same as the

00:14:19.460 physical stuff. They train for years on end and the government puts millions of dollars into them

00:14:25.680 to make them amazing at the physical courage. You have to do the same thing with the emotional

00:14:31.880 and instinctual courage as well. You've got to do the work on all three because every fear we've got

00:14:37.300 from fear of flying to fear of speaking to fear of being judged comes down to some combination of

00:14:44.260 those three components. I think that's a good point because people often think if you're fearful in

00:14:49.860 one area, it means you're just sort of a frightful, anxious person. There are people who have general

00:14:53.100 anxiety about everything. But for the most part, we have fears in certain parts of our life,

00:14:58.820 but in other parts of our life, we're just fine. Fear is a very individualized thing.

00:15:03.280 But what's not individualized is the physiological reactions that we have to them and the fact that

00:15:10.640 if we let that 2 million-year-old software run our life, you got to understand that, Brett, our fear

00:15:17.660 center, the amygdala, that little almond-shaped gland at the base of our brain, that was designed so we

00:15:23.680 could survive and procreate. That's all it cared about was passing our genes on to the next generation.

00:15:29.140 It doesn't care about our happiness. It doesn't care about success. It doesn't care about fulfillment.

00:15:34.520 It doesn't care about going on vacation in Fiji. So it is an archaic element to run your life by, 0.62

00:15:44.420 this 2 million-year-old programming in our brain. So everybody should be doing the work to reprogram it

00:15:50.400 and to find courage. That's why I love the art of manliness. That's exactly for men. That's exactly

00:15:57.420 what you're promoting, what we used to do in terms of coming-of-age rights, in terms of testing

00:16:04.300 ourselves, in terms of learning courage while we still can. Because the courage center is much newer

00:16:10.800 and much more difficult to program than our fear center. And I'm happy to talk about that as well.

00:16:17.540 Yeah, let's talk about that. Walk us through that idea.

00:16:20.220 So the interesting thing, and for most people, this is really what f***s up your whole life,

00:16:26.180 is we have a subconscious database that is about the equivalent of 500 MacBook Pros. So it's a

00:16:34.380 tremendous amount of information. We make at least 80% of our decisions every single day

00:16:40.420 subconsciously without any conscious thought. And the way we do that is based on something

00:16:46.360 neuroscientists call prior beliefs or priors. So all the experiences we have are put into this

00:16:53.820 subconscious database so we can make these very rapid snap decisions. And the reason that we're

00:17:00.560 designed that way was for survival. We might have to decide very quickly between a friend or a foe.

00:17:05.900 But the part that's messed up, Brett, is all of this population is happening in the database for the

00:17:12.140 most part before we hit puberty. And in that instance, we have no control over it. We don't

00:17:18.200 choose where we're born. We don't choose the color of our skin. We don't choose the language we speak.

00:17:22.780 We don't choose the size of the house we grow up in. Yet all of those things go into making up

00:17:28.080 what we identify as subconsciously as our tribe, as something safe or something that we want to mate with.

00:17:35.180 So we're populating this. Now, when we come out of our mother at birth,

00:17:40.480 we have a nearly fully developed fear center, the amygdala. We come out mean, angry, and ready to

00:17:47.600 do anything to survive. In fact, we're most aggressive as human beings between the ages of

00:17:52.540 four and six years old. So this notion of, you know, you see in paintings and books and everything

00:17:58.600 else, these beautiful angelic children is way off. So the truth of the matter is we come out ready to

00:18:05.160 survive. And because of that, for the first 20 years of our life, our default is to that fear

00:18:13.040 center. So we have three choices basically in the first, you know, 15 to 20 years of our life, fight,

00:18:19.000 flight, or freeze. And that's because the amygdala responds to everything and that's all we've got.

00:18:24.820 So we default to a defense. And all of that information, that defaulting to the defense

00:18:31.900 is all going into our subconscious database that we're going to rely on for the rest of our life.

00:18:37.600 The prefrontal cortex is the newest part of the brain. And it's basically the adult supervision.

00:18:43.980 It's called the executive function. It's where we do rational thoughts, where we do strategic

00:18:48.240 planning. It's where we do relationship and those type of high-end intellectual processing.

00:18:54.820 That doesn't fully develop until we're in our early 20s. And that's where the courage center lies.

00:19:01.200 So the courage center is this thing called the SGACC, the subgenial anterior cingulate cortex.

00:19:07.620 And that is a newer part of our brain and it's much weaker. But the key thing is we can reprogram

00:19:14.460 that. So we can reprogram that part of our brain to access at the time when our fear center starts to

00:19:23.240 activate. And we have what's called an amygdala hijacking. And that's the whole point of the fear

00:19:28.840 is fuel process and learning how to be able to recognize when the fear center is activated and

00:19:34.740 then consciously activate the courage center. Because you can activate that courage center

00:19:39.320 by choice. It just takes a lot of work initially until you get those neurons firing together. And once

00:19:46.160 those neurons start to fire together repeatedly, they'll wire together and it gets easier and easier to

00:19:51.220 be courageous. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:19:56.420 And now back to the show. So fear can give you a performance boosting energy. It can be an early

00:20:01.800 warning system that points you to opportunities. But it sounds like in order to harness it for good,

00:20:07.160 the first step in turning fear into fuel is to recognize the signs that you're feeling fear.

00:20:12.160 So you can use your courage center to control it and I guess direct it.

00:20:15.520 So in the book, I refer to these things as our fear tells. And one of the reasons that the key

00:20:22.120 ask in the book or action item is to scare yourself every day. And the reason you want to scare yourself

00:20:28.980 and do something that you know is going to get you out of your comfort zone is so you start to recognize

00:20:34.680 what that feels like in your body. When you recognize what fear feels like in your body, what's an amygdala

00:20:40.680 activation? It's unique to each one of us, but it's always the same. So you might have a tight jaw,

00:20:46.460 you might get butterflies in your stomach, some people feel a lead balloon in their stomach,

00:20:50.780 people get a shaking leg, whatever it is. If you start to become aware of that and those feelings,

00:20:57.420 this is why with the group Young Presidents Organization, YPO, I've done about 25 chapters

00:21:03.640 around the world. So this is, you know, the world's top CEOs are in this organization.

00:21:08.440 And oftentimes, I just did one out in Los Angeles, and we rappelled off the top of the Marriott.

00:21:15.240 And what I do is I get them out over the edge of the building at the point when it's most scary,

00:21:20.660 and I make them stop and inventory what's going on in their body. And then their assignment is the

00:21:26.920 next week at work or with their partner to try and feel those same feelings again and recognize it.

00:21:33.980 Because then they know that they're about to make a decision based on fear.

00:21:37.760 So the first thing is figuring out when the amygdala is hijacking you, because it takes over

00:21:43.120 our brain. It takes over a part of our brain called the working memory. And it says you either

00:21:48.040 fight, you flee, or just freeze. And that's the response that it puts in there. And that's all

00:21:54.460 we can do and all we can think about. We can't think rationally unless we know we're having an

00:22:00.160 amygdala hijacking. Then we can stop and we can get control of ourselves. The easiest way to do

00:22:05.500 that is breathing. I teach something called a four by four.

00:22:08.420 So the four by four, that's breathing in for four seconds, holding your breath for four seconds,

00:22:12.600 and then breathing out for four seconds. And that's a technique you can use to get control of

00:22:17.220 that visceral fear response. And then to understand the next step in the fear is fuel process, you have

00:22:22.640 to understand something called free energy, which is something really interesting you talk about in

00:22:26.300 the book. Never heard of this concept before. What is free energy and where are you borrowing this idea

00:22:30.720 from? I think it's so first of all, it comes from literally one of the smartest men in the world.

00:22:36.340 And you know, this guy is most likely going to be one of the next people we hear who wins a Nobel

00:22:42.020 Prize. His name's Carl Friston. And he's at University College London. He does these Monday lunches with

00:22:49.860 Carl. And he's had literally everyone from the top executives at Google and Apple come over to people who

00:22:57.180 run Airbus and Boeing, because he's got a model that explains how the human brain works. So from a

00:23:05.320 perspective, a lot of people love him because they're basing new artificial intelligence systems.

00:23:10.900 So everything from Siri to Alexa is based on his notion of the brain. And basically what it boils down

00:23:17.940 to, it's super complex. So free energy, I try to explain as best I can in the book, is basically the

00:23:26.260 measurement of what happens when your prior beliefs. So your prior beliefs are all of that information,

00:23:32.080 all your past experiences stored in a database. And basically what he's saying is your brain's a

00:23:37.860 prediction engine. So we're trying to predict the outcome of every single moment. So if we walk into

00:23:44.740 a room and it's dark and we flip a light switch, our brain is going to predict that there's a 95% chance

00:23:51.460 the light will come on and a 5% chance the light won't come on. If it doesn't come on,

00:23:56.340 then our brain further predicts there's an 88% chance the bulbs burnt out and there's a 12% chance

00:24:03.520 that the circuit breaker's blown. And so we're doing all of this prediction based on our past experience.

00:24:09.900 Now, if all of a sudden we go to unscrew the light bulb and all these baby snakes come slithering

00:24:16.040 out and landing up on top of us, we would freak out because that's not in one of our prior beliefs.

00:24:23.700 And if something, if there's a level of uncertainty or surprise in your prediction, that produces free

00:24:30.680 energy. And free energy, basically you can think of as the catalyst for fear. So the more free energy,

00:24:37.380 the more fear you're going to feel. And so he's got this very extensive equation to measure uncertainty

00:24:43.980 and measure the free energy. One of the reasons I think it's so important to understand that

00:24:48.780 your prior beliefs and your expected outcomes, so the priors we talked about, all your past experiences,

00:24:55.980 the expected outcomes, what your diversity in thinking, what your past history has helped you gain

00:25:02.760 can allow you a range of outcomes. And the more prior beliefs you have, the more diverse your expected

00:25:12.000 outcomes, the greater your range of predictions and the less likely you are to have prior belief.

00:25:18.220 So what that means, particularly for parents, is raising kids, if you want to raise courageous kids

00:25:24.440 who are independent and who are confident, then you've got to give them a broad array of experiences

00:25:30.500 and get them to be questioning and curious and experiencing everything, because that's going to

00:25:37.000 increase their priors and that's going to increase their choice of expected outcomes. And so just

00:25:44.040 knowing those levers to pull helps you not only be more courageous yourself, but raise courageous kids

00:25:49.740 as well. All right. So free energy, basically unexpected things happening causes free energy,

00:25:54.040 which causes fear. But also it sounds like too, that you can have something wrong with your

00:25:59.880 calculations in your database, right? For you, like a kid who saw the plane crash, you see a plane crash,

00:26:04.480 and you think, well, I'm never getting on a plane because all planes will crash. Well, that's

00:26:09.400 erroneous thinking. You have to fix that thinking.

00:26:12.940 It's exactly right. And so when we form a memory, Brett, two things happen. First, we form an episodic

00:26:20.300 memory. And for me, that was in a 19, whatever it was, 1977, 1978, a Delta DC-9 flew into the seawall

00:26:29.920 at Logan Airport, 100 people on board died. It was a foggy day. It was a Wednesday. So that episodic

00:26:36.120 memory is just the facts. And that's stored in one part of our brain. At the same time, we create an

00:26:43.000 emotional memory. And that emotional memory is actually stored in the amygdala. And that for me

00:26:48.400 was anything that had to do with an airplane, was terror, was death, was dismemberment, a horrible

00:26:55.140 outcome, no matter what. So we can never change the episodic memory or the semantic memory, the facts.

00:27:02.420 We can change the emotional memory. And this is what everybody needs to know, because at any point

00:27:08.160 in your life, we've got something called neuroplasticity. We have the ability to change

00:27:12.440 our brain at any age. If you want to get more creative, you can. If you want to get more courageous,

00:27:18.340 you can. If you want to get more empathetic, you can, because our brain structure can change at any

00:27:24.540 age because of neuroplasticity. So what's really key and what a big part of my mission is, is helping

00:27:31.240 people realize that if they want to change their brain at any age, they can. And it's all about

00:27:37.020 changing the emotions associated with different events. And that does exactly what you're talking

00:27:42.700 about. So if I had one expected outcome of airplanes, that was death and that was dying.

00:27:49.580 Now, if I got on an airplane or if I sat and watched videos of an airplane after that crash,

00:27:56.300 that would very quickly change my expected outcomes. So that would change what I'd predict

00:28:02.520 outcome of a lot of things. And that's pretty much what happened. So after I got out of Johns Hopkins,

00:28:07.980 I made a commitment and it was more to my daughter who was a year old at the time. I said,

00:28:14.760 you know, the last thing I want to be as a father is have the memory my daughter has. If I die in a

00:28:20.620 year or a couple of years, I don't want her memory being a guy who is too much of a coward to get on a 0.93

00:28:25.920 plane and go to Disney. And so when I got out of Hopkins, I made a commitment. I was going to learn

00:28:32.180 how to fly. So I went to Leesburg airport and I started taking flying lessons.

00:28:36.760 And that in itself could have been an entire book, but I was doing exactly what you're talking

00:28:42.540 about. I had a fear and I was trying to change my catalog of expected outcomes of experiencing

00:28:49.880 that situation. And that seems like it's, that's the idea behind, I mean, a lot of therapists use

00:28:54.320 this with patients who have phobias or anxiety, like exposure therapy. You just expose yourself to

00:29:00.160 the fear over and over and over again so that you change that emotional memory. And that's one of

00:29:05.540 the things you encourage, one of the first things you encourage people to do. If they have a fear

00:29:09.640 based on like some sort of emotional memory, just start doing things that, doing that thing that

00:29:14.560 makes you afraid in a safe way so you can change that. That's exactly right. It's populating the

00:29:20.760 database. So what we do, Brett, when we, if we want to consciously change our life, if we want to

00:29:27.160 break these barriers, so if you have a, if you have a roadblock with the amount of wealth you're

00:29:32.060 making, if you have a roadblock with the quality of your relationship, if you have a roadblock with

00:29:37.040 your parenting journey for your kids, it's all because of what was put into your database,

00:29:43.880 into your subconscious mind when you were a kid. So everything you're doing falls back to that

00:29:49.520 because we weren't responsible for populating our, our subconscious. So if we want to change things,

00:29:56.320 we have to change our future past. So I know that sounds, it sounds a little bit like an acid trip,

00:30:04.480 but if you think about it, if we're making 80% of our decisions subconsciously, we're making them

00:30:10.720 based on what happened in the past. So if we want to change our life, then we have to, we have to start

00:30:17.080 experiencing things now in the way that we want to experience it very consciously and with a lot of

00:30:22.540 effort so that in the future, all of our past experiences are going to include these things

00:30:28.160 that we want. So the whole structure of changing your life, of making more wealth, of having better

00:30:34.100 relationships, of being happier, of living wherever you want to live, all has to do with how you populate

00:30:40.740 your past experiences, your prior beliefs, before you get to the point where you're making these key

00:30:46.580 decisions. And that's the thing that people have to understand is we have to start experiencing the

00:30:51.400 world the way we want to, even if it's manufactured, even if it's visualization, because your brain

00:30:57.400 can't tell the difference between a lived memory emotionally and a visualized memory emotionally.

00:31:04.740 You're, you're still firing the same parts of the brain. You're still using the same neurons and

00:31:08.840 synapses, but there's less sensory feedback. So the memory doesn't tend to be quite as strong

00:31:14.840 as if it happens in reality, unless you're really good at visualization. But that's, that's a key

00:31:20.060 component. You have to imagine your future. So you put it in your past memory.

00:31:25.800 So to turn fear into fuel, you're going to take control of that mental database instead of letting

00:31:29.320 it be filled with defaults. So you're going to intentionally populate it with new contexts.

00:31:33.620 You're going to intentionally expose yourself to a fear. So you have experiences and memories

00:31:38.600 where you did something that scared you, but nothing bad happens. And you're also going to visualize

00:31:43.840 doing things that scare you, but visualize good outcomes. And so from there, you're going to start

00:31:48.700 seeing more options. You're going to start seeing that there are opportunities in your fears.

00:31:53.080 And when you do, Brett, when you start living a life of courage, my first act of courage when I got

00:31:59.480 out of Hopkins was to go and get my private pilot's license. And the amazing, this is why I wrote the

00:32:07.200 book. So the first lesson, I mean, I peed probably four times before we even got out to the plane and I

00:32:13.320 was terrified. Everything was in super technicolor. You know, things were moving in slow motion because

00:32:18.640 I was taking in so much more information in fear. Like, you know, if you've ever been in a car

00:32:23.280 accident where things seem to move in slow motion, same thing. The second one was even worse because

00:32:28.680 we went out over the mountains and hit some turbulence and I actually pooped myself just a

00:32:35.060 little bit. And then the third or fourth lesson, something incredible happened. I absolutely fell in

00:32:42.100 love with flying. And it became, I got my private license, my instrument rating, my commercial

00:32:48.060 rating. I got a seaplane license. And now I compete in competitive aerobatics, something that just the

00:32:54.920 thought and talking about would have absolutely scared the hell out of me just 15 years ago. Now is

00:33:02.440 one of my life's, my source of greatest passion and fulfillment and happiness. And it was hidden away

00:33:09.780 from me for 35 years because of fear. And so that, that finding out that my dreams were on the other

00:33:18.500 side of fear made me think I've got to let other people know that just because they're afraid to do

00:33:24.320 something doesn't mean it's not going to end up being their passion. It doesn't mean it's not going

00:33:28.860 to end up making them super successful. So we're trying to turn fear into fuel. And one thing that

00:33:35.460 you can do the breathing, assessing, start reinterpreting things instead of saying like,

00:33:40.800 I got to be afraid of this. Now you're thinking this can be an opportunity. Another sort of tactic

00:33:45.840 you can use to help with that is self-talk. So I mean, what role does self-talk play in this turning

00:33:51.080 fear into fuel? You know, self-talk, I first really became aware of it as a phenomenon when I was at the

00:33:57.600 Olympic Training Center. And we were doing a lot of visualization and they were walking me through it.

00:34:03.240 It is the secret every elite athlete in the world knows. And what you're doing basically is you're

00:34:11.740 framing and some people call it priming. If you're, if you're talking to yourself beforehand, you're

00:34:16.920 either priming the outcome you want, or you're framing a situation to be optimal for what you're

00:34:23.360 trying to accomplish. And the easy way to do it is just be the narrator of your own movie. And one of the

00:34:30.620 things that's so easy to do is, you know, my kids have this, uh, this formula one game on the Xbox and

00:34:38.220 you have two positions. You can either be sitting behind the steering wheel and just see what's in

00:34:43.240 front of you and maybe the car on the side, or you can take the view from the helicopter and see the

00:34:49.420 entire track and all the cars and where the accidents are. And then if you can take that mindset and

00:34:56.720 remove yourself and become a commentator for what you're doing and congratulate yourself,

00:35:02.900 then that's exactly what your brain needs for its reward center to activate. So you've got to get

00:35:09.920 cues for the brain's reward center, which produces this stuff called dopamine. You've got to get cues

00:35:15.300 for that. So as you sit there and talk to yourself, when you do something really good, you, you know,

00:35:20.540 you're saying, Hey, Brett, yeah, good, good job, man. I'm, I'm really proud of you. You nailed that

00:35:24.840 one. Or when I'm on a rock climb and I make a great move, I'm like, Oh man, that was, I was awesome.

00:35:29.760 I can't believe I just pulled that off. And, and the idea of self-talk is you've got to be your own

00:35:35.120 coach. You've got to be the person who looking at the whole scene, narrating it in the outcome that

00:35:42.020 you want, because then your brain and your neurons start to shift to the outcome, to find the outcome

00:35:49.000 that you want. So it's almost like a neurological connecting the dots. When you, when you do self

00:35:54.860 talk, you start to create these dots to form this picture you want. And then your subconscious brain,

00:36:01.040 which again, remember is making 80% of our decisions and taking in 99% of the information

00:36:07.280 we take in from a sensory perspective, it's going to start looking for those dots to connect. So you

00:36:12.880 can literally, but by self-talk, you can start to lay the groundwork and put together the pieces of the

00:36:18.340 puzzle and then let your subconscious fill in the rest. And that's incredibly powerful.

00:36:23.460 So we've been talking about the idea of exposing ourselves to the things we fear in order to become

00:36:27.180 more courageous, but there's almost like a catch 22 here because to overcome a fear, you have to be

00:36:32.560 able to do the thing you're scared of. But if you're scared to do it, I mean, how do you will yourself to

00:36:36.600 take that first step? So the easiest way that I found from a, you know, at least in the neuroscience

00:36:43.140 research. And, and again, I took six years to interview three dozen of the world's top

00:36:49.000 neuroscientists. So all of this information is, is from them. You know, I'm just the guy who put it

00:36:54.780 together and translated it to plain English. So the research is fascinating. It's just, it's some of the

00:37:02.080 most dry, you know, boring, incomprehensible stuff, but it has these nuggets of, of incredible

00:37:07.860 information, obviously. One of the ones is your motivation. So there's a neuroscientist at

00:37:15.160 Georgetown university named Abigail Marsh and Abby did this incredible work on the motivation of mice.

00:37:21.580 And it turns out that the altruistic motivation, so doing something for someone you love.

00:37:29.060 And this, this holds perfectly true for me taking flying lessons because of my daughter, Shannon,

00:37:34.320 right? The, the only thing that got me to the airport was the thought of her. And if you talk to

00:37:40.780 athletes or firemen or first responders, you hear this time and time again, that they're not motivated

00:37:47.880 for personal glory. They're not motivated for money. They're motivated for the love of somebody else.

00:37:53.880 So the key thing, if you really want to change your life and you want to have lasting change,

00:37:58.920 all of these steps you can take in the book, all the neuroscience will help you get the change.

00:38:03.520 But just like you said, taking that first step, Brett is the toughest thing to do. So if you,

00:38:09.320 if you want to be a great dad, if you want to be a great partner, if you want to be a great son,

00:38:15.160 then what you've got to do is use that as your motivation for change. And I've seen this,

00:38:21.120 you know, with everything from alcoholics to special forces warriors, you know, people who

00:38:26.820 wanted to be a great dad and they knew they had to become a man to do it. And they use the idea that

00:38:32.680 their girlfriend was pregnant and now it was time for them to, to step up and do some difficult 0.86

00:38:38.360 things. And so when you have an altruistic motivation, you actually get these squirts of

00:38:44.660 almost enzymatic ecstasy. Like your body produces a substance very much like cocaine that when you do

00:38:52.240 something altruistically, you get more of that. So it may seem like you're doing good, but it's

00:38:57.260 actually good for you as well. And it encourages you to do more of that.

00:39:01.000 Well, let's, let's, let's, let's apply this stuff we've been talking about to a scenario.

00:39:04.460 And the one that came up to mind, let's say someone is thinking about quitting their job

00:39:09.080 because they've been moonlighting with something and it's big enough where they can make a living on

00:39:13.300 it, but they haven't been able to pull the trigger on quitting because it just freaks them out.

00:39:17.600 They just, they just, they're too scared. So like, how can we apply this, these things we've been

00:39:21.280 talking about to help them turn that fear into fuel? So that's a great question, Brett, because

00:39:26.920 particularly in this time of COVID, what they're dealing with is uncertainty. And when we're faced

00:39:34.780 with uncertainty, we're going to produce that free energy, right? Cause we don't know the outcome.

00:39:39.080 And more importantly, what happens with that free energy is we start to feel disempowered.

00:39:46.320 And when we're disempowered, we become paralyzed by analysis. So we, we fall into this analysis,

00:39:54.440 paralysis trap. And when you're looking at, at starting something new, you can't possibly know

00:40:01.080 the outcome. So the best thing you can do then is really three things. So if we're looking at doing

00:40:06.980 this, number one, what's your motivation? So if your motivation is, you know, is for your family,

00:40:13.080 is to take care of your mom and dad, is to be able to pay cash for your kids' schools,

00:40:18.420 whatever your motivation is, you got to write down your motivation. You got to understand it.

00:40:23.680 And you've got to use that as the catalyst to take the first step. The second thing you have to look

00:40:30.580 for is all your past successes. So go into your prior beliefs and look at everything you did really

00:40:37.680 well. And then the third point is the most counterintuitive and that is to contemplate

00:40:44.340 the absolute worst case scenario. So if you think about the worst thing that could possibly happen

00:40:50.760 and you think I'm going to spend my savings on this, I'm going to lose my house. And then another

00:40:56.160 round of COVID hits, my wife leaves me, my partner takes off with all our investment. And you look at

00:41:03.780 where you'd be then. You say, okay, well, you know, I've had this great career for 10 years in

00:41:08.700 the same industry. I'm really well-respected. There are five companies I can go work for.

00:41:13.900 Or, you know, I was a carpenter in college. I know how to swing a hammer. So I can always go

00:41:18.240 try and find some houses to work on. And you look at the worst case scenario, it takes away

00:41:24.500 a lot of the uncertainty. It might be terrible and it might be really bad. You might lose your,

00:41:29.620 you know, your, your BMW and, and your kids at private school, but it's not as bad as the

00:41:36.980 disempowerment that you feel from uncertainty. So from a neuroscience perspective, you're creating

00:41:43.640 an expected outcome at the very far range of what it's going to be. And your brain is going to form

00:41:50.380 basically a bell curve. And you know, that's way out at six sigma, one end of the bell curve.

00:41:55.760 And, but in the middle and the most likely area, you're seeing a good outcome. And then you start

00:42:02.360 to justify, then you start connecting those dots again, because you're thinking, well, you know,

00:42:07.280 I'm working by myself. So a $250,000 contract that my company wouldn't even put the resources

00:42:13.160 into responding to hell. If we win that, I've got my first year made. And then if we get a million

00:42:18.520 dollar contract after that, then we're, you know, we're hiring people and we're taking off. And all of a

00:42:23.680 sudden you start to think to yourself, you get back to that self-talk, you start to think, all right,

00:42:27.620 this wouldn't be that tough. And the downside, really the risk isn't really commensurate with

00:42:33.420 the reward. The reward is going to be much better because I'm, I'm really handled. I'm really capable

00:42:39.380 of handling all these challenges. So I think those three things, if you can, you know, if you can look

00:42:45.440 at those, it's a, it's a great way to build enough confidence. The other thing is, and I tell this

00:42:50.520 that I've done, said this at Harvard business school at UVA at MIT's business school, if anybody

00:42:55.940 out there wants to start a company, so I've started three tech companies, I've invested in 35 different

00:43:01.940 startups. And if anyone out there wants to start a company, here's what you do. Write your resignation

00:43:08.800 letter right now and date it six months from now, because there's never a good time to start a company

00:43:15.420 and there's never a bad time to start a company. So take the next six months and plan, get ready,

00:43:21.780 write your resignation letter, put a stamp on it, write your boss's address on it and make two copies.

00:43:29.540 You keep one and you give a copy to me because I'll mail it. So that's the, that's the ultimate

00:43:37.700 motivation and that's burning the ship. Right. Yeah. That's, you're making a commitment there.

00:43:41.600 Well, Patrick, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:43:45.720 and your work? So the book Fear is Fuel and it's available anywhere, Amazon, Barnes and Noble,

00:43:52.900 all the usual places. And the audio version is coming out at the end of the year, which I'm

00:43:57.360 super excited about. We've got some great cast members in that. You can go to pjsweeney.com.

00:44:04.100 That's my website. Got the blog there, a lot of information on there. Facebook, Patrick Sweeney,

00:44:09.800 fear guru. Instagram is the fear guru and Twitter is PJ Sweeney. And if you go to pjsweeney.com,

00:44:18.540 there's a five minute fear test you can take and it rates you on those different elements. We were

00:44:24.880 talking about that combination of those three fears. You can take the test in about five minutes and

00:44:29.620 it'll give you a little insight into areas that you need to work on. So that's kind of a fun thing

00:44:35.120 that people should jump over to. Fantastic. Well, Patrick Sweeney, thanks for your time. It's been a

00:44:39.060 pleasure. Brett McKay, thank you so much. I'm a huge fan of Art of Manliness. I love what you guys

00:44:43.700 are doing and I hope the audience got some value out of this and I appreciate everyone taking the

00:44:48.120 time to listen in. Thank you so much. My guest today was Patrick Sweeney. He's the author of the

00:44:52.420 book Fear is Fuel. Check it out on amazon.com. You can also find out more information about his work

00:44:56.440 at his website, pjsweeney.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash fears fuel where you can find

00:45:02.040 links to resources. We're going to delve deeper into this topic.

00:45:11.280 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com

00:45:15.260 where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written over the years.

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00:45:42.480 Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Reminding you not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what

00:45:46.200 you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 12, 2020

#651： How to Turn Fear Into Fuel

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