Fear: #1 Success Blocker and How To Remove It with Dr. Shannon Irvine

Ep.114 Fear: #1 Success Blocker and How To Remove It with Dr. Shannon Irvine

Announcer [00:00:04] This is the Epic Success Podcast with your host, Dr. Shannon Irvine. Veteran entrepreneur, Doctor of Neuropsychology, and business and personal development ninja. Dr. Shannon is obsessed with giving you the systems and steps you need to slay your goals and crush productivity so that you can go for your dreams, honor God and create the EPIC life and business you love. And now, here is Dr. Shannon.

Dr Shannon Irvine [00:00:33] I want to talk to you today about fear and what fear does in the brain and how it absolutely blocks the very things that you are wanting to go after and go get in your life and in your business and what you can do about it. Things like, I just got off a training and these amazing human beings who have big callings and big dreams were talking about fear, being too old, too young, not pretty enough, all the things. Just not being enough and putting our stuff out there on the interwebs and feeling like it's very difficult to combat that. That is your brain's automatic safety valve and we're going to talk about how fear is the thing that you need to be going after so much more than any strategy or any system that you think is going to be the thing that makes the biggest difference in your business. It's not. It's eliminating that fear, reprogramming the subconscious automatic stories that are holding you back and priming your way in your vision.

 [00:01:29] If we do not know each other, my name is Dr. Shannon Irvine and I help entrepreneurs like you tap in to the power of their brain, rewire any programming that's holding you back and finally prime into your brain the vision that you know that you are meant to have, the calling, and the impact that you know is there. I would love to know what fear is standing in your way? What is the thing that you're saying to yourself that is stopping you from showing up as big as you know you want to like? What is the thing that you start to do something and you think I don't know if... fill in the blank?

 [00:02:08] So fear is the biggest thing. It is what our brain uses to bring us back to safe and familiar. And if you've heard me speak about this before, I will keep beating this drum because I am so passionate to see you as an entrepreneur really get the fact that you have complete control over your thoughts. That you are the creator of your thoughts and you can create the thoughts that create your success and that the only thing standing in the way, the foot on the brake that is keeping you spinning in circles, are your fears. How to get past those fears is going to be key - more than any funnel, more than any strategy, more than any webinar, more than any video series and all the things that are keeping you busy right now on the hamster wheel of to-dos. If you don't remove that fear, then you will always play smaller than you are. You will always limit yourself. You will always keep that foot on the brake and wonder "why am I not getting where I want to go?"

 [00:03:07] You cannot outperform your subconscious, automatic, pre-programmed stories that, honestly, are not your fault. You were programmed that way as a child to keep you safe. Again, our brains evolved to keep us from getting eaten by tigers or getting bit by black mombas when we were surviving in caveman time. That primitive brain is still there, still running the show and we wonder why we're trying so hard, we have this big vision, we have this big calling, we have this desire within us, yet, we still don't show up the way we want to. We still aren't consistent with why we show up. We still feel like we're not enough. We still feel like we're too old, too young, all the things.

 [00:03:50] That fear: you've heard it said before False Evidence Appearing Real. I love acronyms but man that acronym is true! Fear is your brain's system hardwired into your automatic nervous system. You've heard of fight or flight, right? That's a fear based system to keep you alive. The challenge for us as entrepreneurs is our brains see this idea of entrepreneurship as not safe. Nothing is familiar. Everything is new. You're creating out of thin air and you're doing things that have never been done before. Your brain is saying "oh my goodness I should be afraid. This is very dangerous. It's a big tiger," even though it's just a social media post. It's just a live video. It's just a whatever. But to our brain it is no different than a tiger. To our brain, it is no different at all. At all costs, do not do that because it doesn't align with the story that you've told yourself over and over again which is "I don't have what it takes. I don't know if I have enough value. I'm not sure if I'm enough. I would like to survive today, thank you very much." Oh thank you brain, I appreciate that fear. That fear made me play small therefore I don't feel threatened anymore. Said no entrepreneur ever in your conscious thinking brain, but that's what's going on on autopilot. And we wonder why we're not getting where we want to go.

 [00:05:12] Fear of not being good enough or being unqualified. Can you say imposter syndrome? Anybody ever feel that way? Anybody feel like they show up and they're afraid to be found out, afraid somebody is gonna say something and then they're gonna think you're not enough and that you don't have what it takes and you're not good enough. Not expert enough and therefore you don't put yourself out there. Therefore you feel more unqualified, but yet it isn't safe in your brain's mind to do those things.

 [00:05:41] So here, in my opinion, is one of the biggest misconceptions of entrepreneurism. Like, it bugs me so much, I might do a whole podcast episode about this. This idea that failure is bad. Here's the thing, for your brains automatic programmed survival mechanism, failure is bad because it feels like a threat. And that's what happens, right? You put yourself out there. We all want to be known. We all want to be loved. We all want to be trusted. We all want to be enough. That is at the core of every person. I don't care how successful you are or how just getting started you are. We all have that same core motivating factor. We want to have enough value. We want to have enough internal confidence. We want to know we're enough. And think about being an entrepreneur, it's literally the opposite of that. You have to put yourself constantly out there, your opinions out there, what you're believing. Yet somehow, we think failure is not a part of this.

 [00:06:52]  I teach my clients my brain based approach to coaching yourself. In fact, I am launching into coaching coaches on my brain based methodology and I am going to be talking about that a lot coming up because I'm going to be doing a one day intensive event where I'm taking a small, select group of people who are coaches and really want to get next level results with their coaching practice to learn these brain based methods so they can finally get the results on a very consistent basis because they're doing it from a brain based science based process that creates those kind of results.

 [00:07:31] Failure is not the evidence of it not going well. This is where I think it's a big lie that's put out there that only the successful people go from success to success to success to success. Now the reality is you hear them saying that that's not the case but we still believe that that's the case and then measure ourselves in a reflection against that. And the reality is that is so not true.

 [00:07:58] Failure is your first attempt in learning. F.A.I.L. our First Attempt In Learning. To get to the successful place where you have a level of belief in your value, in what you're going to do and a level of confidence, you must be in 100 percent believing and burning the bridge back to hope. Being completely committed, no matter, what that it's going to happen, that requires failure. So here we are in this interesting place of not wanting to fail because it feels unsafe but failure is the way to get to the success that you want. So do you see the dissonance there? Do you see the disconnect. We have made failure at the tiger. When in reality failure is the thing that's going to get you to where you want to be. I want you to reframe failure. I want you to embrace failure. Again the difference between somebody who isn't successful is they want to be in somebody who is multiple 7-, 8- figure businesses, online entrepreneur wise, is the fact that they've failed often. They've failed hard. They've taken big risks and they've failed a lot more than you have. So here we're saying we want what they have but we don't want to follow the process that each one of them have taken. It doesn't make sense, right? Yet it still feels like a threat.

 [00:09:22] There's this misbelief that success should always incrementally feel great. And the reality is, failure and learning from that failure (that first attempt and learning) is that ability to learn something, try something you've never tried before, not do as well as you wanted to. Learn from it. Learn what worked and what didn't work and do it again. Then fail again and then do it again. Then see how each time you fail, you're failing forward? You're failing higher. You're failing next level. Then you turn around and look.

 [00:09:53] I'm going to just speak to my own last couple years of bringing my business online. I launched and it and it did OK, but not what I wanted. Then I launched again and I tweaked it. I launched again and I tweaked it. I launched it again until I figured out how to speak to you in a way that makes sense that you would connect. That didn't happen by me playing safe. And it won't happen for you playing safe. . We try to straddle this bridge of safety and success.

 [00:10:24] I want to encourage you to do something different. I want you to decide today is the day that you don't rely on safety anymore but that you rely completely on belief. That you rely on making a decision. And a lot of you, if some of your my students and you know my brain based process of the way that we think that starts with a thought always. We see it in neuroscience scans - the prefrontal cortex where thought is. It fires first with an electric impulse which thought is - electricity. It fires first and then the emotion centers of the brain kick in. Not the other way around. Yet we feel first because we come at it from a reverse engineered standpoint. We always have a thought before the emotion. This has a point to what I want you to decide but you got to know that the thought always comes before the emotion. Those two things combined over time do become a belief.

 [00:11:26] All a belief is is a thought repeated and repeated and repeated and then it gets automated in our subconscious brain because your subconscious' job is just to automate what you repeat. So now it says "oh okay. She really believes that she is not enough to do this so I'm going to automate that and make that a lot easier for her." So thought combines with the emotion. Think about the thought of, "I'm not sure I have what it takes." The emotion comes behind that of, "gosh, I really don't want to show up live because I'm not sure I'd have what it takes. I'm scared." That thought repeated over time becomes a belief. The belief becomes "I'm scared to go live because I don't think I have what it takes" and now that gets automated and that runs 80 to 90 percent of your decisions and your actions. They come from that subconscious part of your brain. We've got to rewire that subconscious part of your brain.

 [00:12:14] The reality is, your decisions and then, therefore, your actions create your results, right? They create the results that you're wanting. So if you're looking around in your business and you're looking at your bank account your health and all the different areas and you're saying "I don't have what I want yet" that is evidence for you that you have automatic, pre-programmed, subconscious stories running 80 to 90 percent of your current reality. Your current reality is evidence. So you probably have some great evidence, but you probably have some things that aren't right where you want to be yet. That is actually good news because training your thinking, removing those negative limiting beliefs, making sure that foot is off the brake because if that is still going on your day is going to be motivated by 80 percent automatic programming. So that's what's going to run the show.

 [00:13:09] If my thoughts really do create my emotions, and we've seen this in neuroscience scans and that's how it works, and then all I do is repeat that over and over again and that becomes the belief and that gets automated and from that automation comes my decisions and my actions which gives me my results. Well, if I want different results I need to have a different thought. So we need to remove old programming that's holding us back because you can't outperform that. But at the same time, if you really make a decision today, whatever your goal is for your business "I am 100 percent committed, no matter what, to the result that I want" and you burn the bridge back to hope that allows that safety valve to be their.

 [00:13:55] Safety valves - your brain has them. They show up as procrastination. It shows up as perfectionism. It shows up as not playing big because you're afraid. You're afraid that you can't so you have a story around where I can go. "I can play big up to about one hundred thousand." That was a story that one of my clients had. They were kickin booty all the way up to a hundred thousand, then BOOM, there's that subconscious programmed story and they would lose a client. They would keep creating that reality because that was what's automatically programmed. Start really giving your brain what it is you want it to completely believe and never ever allow it to go back to that old way. So you work on a process. I have a proprietary, mind based matrix. It's a scientific base removal of your negative processing, reprogramming and rewiring. It's really in that decision to build a network in your brain toward what it is that you want and not allowing the opportunity for it to go back.

 [00:15:00] A great question I get a lot is "what about my motivation? I feel unmotivated so therefore I procrastinate." Motivation is a limited resource. It's something you run out of in about two hours. It's based on glucose. I can tell you there are days I don't feel like doing a lot of things but I'm 100 percent committed, no matter what, and my belief is it's done and I'm just walking to it. So everything that aligns with that I walk toward and everything that doesn't align with that I do my mind matrix work around because it's a story that's going to hold me back. That's where people don't want to slow down. That's where it is. It's in this idea that "I'm not enough" and then we stay stuck on that hamster wheel and we let that run the show instead of actually, really stepping into the full belief in the calling that you know that you are meant to have, right?

 [00:15:54] That's one thing I know about entrepreneurs that I work with - you know you are meant for more, right? You know you have that calling, you have that burning desire. Part of the reason why you're so stinking frustrated that it's not going as fast as you wanted to is because you have that big desire. Yet this programming that you can't outperform has got you in what we scientifically like to call 'cognitive dissonance.' Your belief of what you want isn't programmed yet and what is programmed is holding you back and that's where that disconnect or that dissonance is coming in. That is what we want to go after, more than any funnels, strategy, messaging, anything. In the process of being 100 percent committed, no matter what, the reality is, you set goals and say I'm 100 percent committed. Okay I'll tell you mine. I'm 100 percent committed to reach a million entrepreneurs and have them train their brain and transform their business this year. That is what I am 100 percent committed to, no matter what. Now every action I take is in pursuit of serving in that way. It's in pursuit of making that happen for entrepreneurs. At least a million. Of course I've got a bigger five and ten year goal down the road but the goals aren't the point.

 [00:17:11] So if I hit a million this year - amazing. But if I don't, how much further do you think I'm going to be by being committed to that one million, no matter what? Even if I fall short, than to keep this place of hope there. To just say "maybe it will maybe it won't. I'll be OK if I don't." Do you see what I'm telling my brain? What I'm telling my brain is "be ok with either one." What happens when you become 100 percent committed to the end result, no matter what, you stop holding on so desperately to the "how". You stop obsessing about knowing every detail of how it's gonna work itself out. You plan, you strategize, you do the things but you aren't focused on the how.

 [00:17:57] I'm always amazed at how things come up that I had no influence in other than the fact that my mind and brain are trained to be committed, no matter what.  Things come into my space that I could have never necessarily gone out and strived and controlled to make happen. But because I believe it and I'm fully invested in that belief that I am just walking to that million, it's happening this year, no matter what, then I start to see more. Then things are allowed to come in. There's a part of our brain that literally filters things out that don't align with what you believe. Let that settle in for a second. There's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, RAS for short, that only allows into your conscious awareness what aligns with what you believe. So if you're continuing to allow those stories of not enough, of fear, to drive or to stay there, they're keeping your foot on the brake and then you're gonna be doing the striving and this pushing and you're going to get caught up in the energy of, "okay how do I do it? Okay, what system do I follow. Okay. How? How? How? How?"

 [00:19:06] My business coach, James Wedmore, says you've got to let go and how. You have to let go and how. There's so much truth to that because, the reality is, when you're 100 percent committed, no matter what, you actually don't get obsessed with how. You know it's going to show up in ways that you could never imagine. The miraculous happens. It gets more exciting because the goal is of service. If I get nine hundred and ninety thousand then, it's not about the goal - it's about who I become in the process of being committed to that goal. And when I hit that million, you better believe I already have the next rock, the next vantage point down the road, the next thing that I'm going to be working on in terms of a book and getting on Oprah stage and really helping people finally grasp that birthright. I feel strongly that this is a birthright. You were given by your Creator the ability to take your thoughts captive; the ability to make your mind new. Now in neuropsychology we now know neuroplasticity you can make your own mind new. Science is now catching up with that and making us realize, oh my gosh, I really can have and create in my mind whatever it is that I want. Now in the last three years the research has just been mindblowing, no pun intended, about how our brains really cannot tell the difference between what is really going on around us and what we vividly visualize. I call it brain priming - it's a neural-psychology process that I have for my clients, where you're really putting your brain in the state of being that you're already there and you're just walking to it. It is a decision, right? There's a moment where you make a decision and you no longer allow things that don't align with that decision to take place.

 [00:21:02] Here's the thing. Ninety seven percent of people will never make that decision. Ninety seven percent of people will always stay on autopilot, let their emotions drive their thinking, even though it's the other way around, because there's an automatic programmed story saying "I'm not enough, I don't have what it takes, I'm not valuable enough," and therefore, they never fully step into what they were called to be.

 [00:21:26] I don't want that to be you. I want you to remove those wet blankets of doubt and fear (False Evidence Appearing Real). All these stories that you program. It's not your fault. You programmed them from when you were a child or when you were young adult to keep yourself safe and to keep yourself okay. You reasoned as a child or a young adult and now as an adult you have full capacity to renew that, to change that, to step into the version of yourself that you know you have that burning desire to do and to have and to play really really really big.

 [00:22:02] Go after those stories that have any limiting capacity because all they're doing is keeping you playing small. They're keeping you from being exactly who it is that you are meant to be in this world. And I love it. I want you to catch some of the indicator words that you have a story going. Listen, if you haven't done this work before you've got stories about success. You have stories about failure. You have stories about money: what it means to have it, what it means to not have it, what it means to make it. Anybody? "Money doesn't grow on trees." "Got to work hard for your money." "Gotta work a lot of hours, gotta hustle, gotta grind." I used to say "I'll sleep when I'm dead. I can outhustled you." I used to say all those things, which are just so stinking embarrassing now. I used to say because that's the story that was automatically programmed for me from childhood.

 [00:22:56] You can go in and rewire those stories. You've got stories about who you are able to be and who you're not able to be. What's acceptable and what's not acceptable. The great news is, as an adult you get to decide what your money story will be. You'll get to decide what your success story will be, your failure story will be. Look, we started this whole live by talking about failure and what failure means to me. I'm wondering, is it something different for you? For me every failure is an attempt at learning. Every failure gets me closer to my goal. I want to fail often and hard and big because I want to get closer to my goal.

 [00:23:37] Has failure stopped you? Has failure kept you from playing to that next level because it's scary, because it might just give you the evidence that collaborates that story that you have going on in your mind that says I don't have what it takes. That's a lie. You do have what it takes. You do have worth. You have what it takes within you. You are valuable. I want you to think about it. Would you ever go up to a newborn baby, look them straight in the eyes and say, "You know what? You'll be valuable enough when you've hit a certain income level."

 [00:24:12] No! You look right at them and you go, "oh my gosh! You can do anything you want in this world. You are so amazing!" Right? Well, so are you. That's what I really am passionate about you getting. I really want you to understand the capacity is within you, but you have to learn the framework around removing those stories that have been stored up as wet blankets over this big vision and calling that you have in your life so that you can step into serving more people and having more impact and having those breakthroughs for the clients that are waiting for you to step into this next level that they won't hear from anybody else but you.

 [00:24:54] Just knowing that you really can train your brain. Your brain is like a computer. It very much operates in these stories and limiting beliefs. All of this. They're like malware or a virus that gets in and you're not even aware you have it but it's slowing things down, it's making things seem hard, it's making things say things. Here are some of your indicator words that I was about to tell you a second ago. "I'm stuck." "This is hard." "I don't have enough hours." "I need to work harder." All of those things. "I'm overwhelmed." "I'm just a perfectionist." "I procrastinate. I'm going to get to it." Anybody? Does this sound familiar? These are all gateway words of your brain saying I need some relief because you're trying to put yourself out there and that feels unsafe, that feels like a threat. We've got to flip that for you. We've got to flip it so that what feels safe and what feels familiar to your brain is your success. The only way to do that, in my humble brain-based opinion, is by removing those stories that have held you back and by giving your brain the exact thing it needs to see to believe that that is what is safest and most familiar is your biggest and best version of yourself.

 [00:26:14] I really want you to make a decision.I want you to draw your line in the sand today and say you know what "I am deciding today that I am committed to... whatever it is... no matter what." And if that is you, if you're finally like I am so tired of being on this hamster wheel of getting close and then feeling like you're starting all over again. Or getting close and then two steps forward one step back. All that is your brain's programming. It's completely and totally within your control to remove what is holding you back and to prime in and to build a neural network to where you want to go. But the first step is in deciding.

 [00:26:55] My million entrepreneurs is by the end of this year, no matter what. And that will continue until I hit the million and then it will go for the next one, right? So every decision, every thought, taking your thoughts captive using this filter of "wow, does that thought get me to what I believe or not?" And if it doesn't you need to do some of the removal work around getting rid of that.

 [00:27:18] I hope this was valuable for you today. I hope this is something that you would want others to hear about because we rise together, right? As you learn more about how to train your thinking, how to use a brain based approach to coach yourself. And then if you're a coach, to be able to use that same methodology to be able to help get massive transformations for your clients. If that's something you're interested in you've got a DM me. This event that I'm going to have, this intensive, I'm going to actually certify twenty five coaches with my brain based methodology so that you can actually have the certification to go out and now use this within your coaching practice to get massive transformative results, massively increase the lifetime value of that client because they're not leaving you once you get those transformations, and then make getting more clients and more growth in your business so much easier because you have these amazing testimonials of breakthroughs because you're not just relying on instinct you're relying on science and a brain based method to help those transformations become permanent. So if that's something you're interested in, definitely DM me because it's going to be an application only process and I am I'm definitely going to be very picky about who I allow to come to this intensive day here in San Diego. But we will have an ocean view, that I guarantee you. So if that's something that sounds exciting to you, definitely hit me up. I am looking forward to you guys really making that decision. I'm looking forward to you coaches really learning how to apply this with your own coaching practice because, wow, the breakthrough results are pretty fantastic.

 [00:28:56] It's interesting we're always trying to do things outside of ourselves but it really transforms people. When you transform your brain, your mind, the way you think it's transformed people that transforms other people. Right? It's in your transformation and knowing that pathway and then learning the methodology that you're able to transform other people and really make that impact and have that big platform that you're really wanting to have. Not because you, I mean, yeah, money's great, but it's really about that legacy and that impact that you're making and others lives. The only things standing in your way are those programmed, automatic stories that we need to get rid of. And it starts with deciding.

 [00:29:35] So I hope that you're a little less fearful now. That you understand that that fear is just a release valve to keep you safe in a place that you actually really don't want to stay and that everything is on the other side of failure as you're attempting at learning your way to success. I really love you so much and I am standing in the gap for your biggest vision. Bye for now.

Announcer [00:30:03] You have been listening to the Epic Success Podcast with Dr. Shannon Irvine. Subscribe and tune in next week to learn more on how to build your epic life and business. Only you have your God given talents, gifts, and story to give to the world. Now go out and build the epic life and business that you love.