Afford Anything - The 7 Faces of Fear -- with Ruth Soukup

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

#194: Fear shows up in our lives in countless ways. Sometimes, fear takes the form of procrastination. We're afraid of botching something, or we don't like the feeling of anxiety that a project gives us, so we avoid it, dodge it, and indefinitely put it off. Other times, fear takes the form of perfectionism through endless iterating and tweaking. We want to keep tinkering with a project, to get it "just right." We applaud ourselves for our attention to detail. Fear takes the form of making excuses and rationalizations for why we can't pursue a goal or dream. We tell ourselves that some outside factor is to blame. Fear takes the form of throwing ourselves pity parties and locking ourselves into a negative self-talk spiral. We get easily discouraged. Fear takes the form of thinking others can't be trusted, and pushing people away. Fear has many faces. Today's podcast guest, Ruth Soukup, surveyed 4,000 people to find out how fear manifests in their lives. She joins us on this episode to discuss the seven fear archetypes that she discovered. Those archetypes are: The People Pleaser: This is the fear of disapproval and fear of not being liked, expressed in the form of weak boundaries and putting others needs first to a self-harming extent. The Procrastinator: This is the fear of making a mistakes. This shows up as over-planning to the point of "analysis paralysis," of spending all your time researching and none of your time taking action. Perfectionism is an overlapping quality, as well. The Rule Follower: This is a fear of authority. This person is afraid of breaking the rules or doing something in a way in which it's not 'supposed' to be done. The Outcast: This is the fear of rejection, which often -- ironically -- causes this person to reject others first so that they cannot get rejected. They're highly self-motivated and driven to succeed and feel the need to prove themselves, but they have trouble collaborating and working in groups. The Self-Doubter: This is the fear of inadequacy, of not being good enough, which causes the self-doubter to forgo opportunities, play it safe, and not take risks. They can also be highly critical of others. The Excuse Maker: This is the fear of taking responsibility or being blamed, which shows up in the form of always having a justification as to why this person can't pursue a goal, or why an outcome isn't their fault. The Pessimist: This is the fear of pain or adversity, often held by people who have been through an immense amount of pain or trauma. The pessimist gets locked into patterns of negative self-talk and self-pity, and believes that they have it worst than most. They can be sensitive to criticism, feel emotion intensely, and has trouble moving beyond the challenges from their past. In today's episode, Ruth and I discuss these seven fear archetypes and cover specific action plans that people can take if they recognize these tendencies within themselves. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode194  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that doesn't just apply to your money. It applies to your time, focus, energy, attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions are twofold. Number one, what matters most to you? Not what does society say ought to matter most, but what actually is a priority in your life, even if that thing is weird or unconventional?

What do you want? And number two, how do you act every single day in accordance? How do you show up for the thing that you want? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today Ruth Sukup, the New York Times bestselling author, joins us on this show to talk about the seven fear archetypes. Now, what do we mean by that? Well, many of us have big dreams, goals.

Maybe you want to retire early. You want to retire at the age of 40 or 45. you want to go travel the world, you want to start your own business, you want to buy some investments or buy a rental property, there are some big, crazy, audacious things that most people who are listening to this want to do. But there's a lot of fear standing in between where you are now and where you would like to be. And that fear can be the stumbling block. It can be the obstacle between what is and what could be. Oftentimes, We are our own bottlenecks.

We are our own obstacles, and we're the ones who stand in our way the most. And the reason that we do that largely is because we're afraid. And it might be that we express that fear through procrastination. We might express it through making excuses. We might express it through getting into a never-ending cycle of negative self-talk and throwing ourselves little self-pity parties. But in various ways, fear shows up in our life. and keeps us from responding to our true calling and being the best versions of ourselves.

And so Ruth spent a lot of time working with a team of researchers studying the ways in which fear manifests in people's lives, and she developed a framework around seven fear archetypes. We're going to discuss this right now. Hi, Ruth. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for coming on the show. Now, you have developed fear archetypes of different ways in which people are scared to pursue their boldest dreams.

And you did this after surveying 4,000 people. Tell me a little bit about this. I had so many people, especially women in my community, coming to me and saying things like, you know, I've spent my whole life taking care of my family. And now my kids are grown. I'm not sure what to do with myself. I feel like my whole life has passed me by. And I feel like I'm sitting on the sidelines of my own life. and yet I'm so afraid to move forward.

I'm so afraid to go after my goals and dreams. It came up enough in all of these conversations that it started to get me really, really curious about the role of fear in our lives and about what was happening and why this fear was happening and what it looked like and what it looked like for different people, but also what we can do about it because I'm such a firm believer in wanting to figure out practical solutions for these things that are standing in our way. And so I started asking, questions and those questions led to more questions and those questions led to more questions. And before I knew it, I had surveyed more than 4,000 people about these exact questions. What are some examples of times that you've been afraid and you've let that fear hold you back? How is fear manifesting itself in your life? What are examples of times that you pushed past the fear and did it scared? And we ended up with so much data that I didn't even know what to do with it at all. And I hired a whole team of researchers to help me sift through it and to make sense of it.

And what we discovered was pretty astonishing, but that was exactly what you alluded to was that not all fear is created equal in our lives. And the way that it manifests itself looks very unique for different people. And that's important because it's not until you start realizing how fear is presenting itself in your life that you can figure out how to overcome it. What we realized is that there are really seven very unique ways that fear presents itself or manifests itself in our lives. And that's what I call the seven fear archetypes. Now, before we go into those archetypes, tell me a little bit about the survey that you sent out to the 4,000 people, because at the time that you sent the survey out, you didn't have it in your head then that archetypes would be what comes out of this.

It sounds like you were trying to get a more general assessment of how does fear show up in your life. So in what ways did you ask that? We ask things like, can you give an example of a time that you were afraid to do something and you let that fear hold you back? Maybe that you had a goal. or a dream that you wanted to do, but you didn't do it. So we asked different questions related to that topic. Then we asked the alternate questions. Now talk about a time where you were afraid to do something or you wanted to pursue a goal or a dream.

And you did push past fear. What did that look like? What was the catalyst that helped you dare to do that? We asked questions about how often are you stepping outside of your comfort zone and how often are you doing things like that? What goals do you have in your life? Why do you set goals for yourself? The type of fear that I was specifically interested in finding out about was not phobias, was not the fear of spiders or the fear of flying, but specifically

related to the fear, the internal fear that holds us back from going after our goals and dreams. I wanted to know why some people push forward and some people not push forward and what's the difference and how does that work and what is it that's holding us back and how can we overcome it? So let's talk then about the seven archetypes that grew out of the survey responses. I'll just say right off the bat, I took this assessment. Did you? I took it twice, actually. So for everyone listening, Ruth has this great assessment on her website.

It's doetscared.com slash assessment where you can see what type of fear archetype you have. I took the quiz twice just to make sure that I would get the same result both times. And I did. And I am the outcast. Ah, the outcast. that is actually pretty common for podcasters and entrepreneurs. Podcast Outcast. So there you go.

Podcast Outcast, because I'm assuming you have an online business that you've started and that you're more in the entrepreneurial space. And that is actually really common. So the Outcast tends to show up. I'm also an Outcast. So I'm speaking from personal experience there. The Outcast archetype is actually probably one of the most interesting of the fear archetypes or maybe the most ironic, not the most interesting.

but the most ironic because to the outside observer, often the outcast will appear to be fearless. The underlying fear for the outcast is a fear of rejection. And so how that often presents itself for the outcast is rejecting other people before you can be rejected in return. And so the outcast is usually the person that wants to prove themselves or is the rugged individualist or the quintessential person who's out there not caring about what anybody else thinks. but a lot of times all of that sort of bravado is a way of preventing people from getting too close because of that fear of rejection. So that's sort of the underlying fear for the outcast. And not surprisingly, that's why you find a lot of people who are really successful who have the outcast archetype

because that sort of personality and that sort of fear drives the outcast to succeed. On the not so positive side, you'll find a lot of outcasts who are criminals. So you're either going to be successful or you're going to be a criminal. but either way, you're not going to let people get to close. That drive to succeed, is that a lack of an inner sense of worthiness that drives the outcast archetype to want to prove themselves so that they can protect themselves from future rejection? A little bit. It's not the same sort of lack of worthiness as, say, the self-doubter might experience. And the self-douder is a deep fear of not being capable. For the outcast, it's really just

almost like a deep-seated feeling that people can't always be trusted or this fear of asking for help because you might be rejected. So there's that feeling that you got to do everything on your own, that you have to be self-sufficient. And that can come, you know, it can, how we're wired comes from all different areas. Sometimes it's how we're brought up. Sometimes that's just the old nature versus nurtured debate. But I really believe that as far as these fear archetypes are concerned, it has a little bit to do with both. And I think our, archetypes can change over time depending on our life circumstances, but a lot of times for the outcast. It's this feeling like you've never quite fit in. You are just so eager to go prove yourself

and go out there and make your mark in the world. I was going to ask you what archetype you are, but apparently you and I are both outcast. So we can relate and maybe not each other. It is interesting how the different archetypes play off of each other. So we each have one or two of the archetypes. And you probably saw this if you took the assessment. There's one or two that might be most prevalent for you, but then there could be another one that you also score high on it. And so those definitely will interact and play off of each other as well. Nobody is 100% all one thing at all times. And nobody can fit exactly into some tiny little box. I'm not going to sit here and say that there's only seven ways of being. And if you're one and only one and it doesn't play all together,

that's not exactly true. We all have a little bit of each. of these fear archetypes, but usually there's one or two that are most prevalent. And the really important thing about that is understanding what that underlying fear is, because sort of like when you go to the doctor and say, I don't feel good, and the doctor has to figure out what's wrong with you in order to figure out how to cure you. The same thing with your fear archetype, figuring out what that underlying fear is is the first step in figuring out how to overcome it. You mentioned that a lot of people with this archetype tend to become entrepreneurs. Why specifically something that's so self-directed and creative like entrepreneurship as compared with some other form of advancement,

like climbing the corporate ladder as an executive or as a lawyer or as a doctor? That's actually a great question. So it could show up in some of those things, an achievement and the need to prove oneself. But for the Outcast, there's also this big piece of independence and the fear of rejection. So Outcast don't like to do anything that's dependent on other people. I'm speaking in absolutes right now, but of course there's so many nuances of this. So that might not ring 100% true for you, but there might be aspects of that that rings true for you. For the Outcast, it's more of a wanting to do things on your own and independently not necessarily liking to work with the team environment, not liking to have a boss because you don't like to be dependent on other people.

It's more of a self-sufficient thing. Whereas someone such as a excuse maker or a perfectionist or even a self-douder might be more so inclined to be or a rule follower would be more inclined to be in a career where there's a corporate ladder where it's very laid out, where there's a structure that you would follow and you could, you know, fit within that box. It's less likely for an outcast. Well, let's talk about some of those other archetypes then, some of the ways in which people express their fears differently. So you mentioned an excuse maker. So let's go to that one next. The excuse maker is really the fear of taking responsibility. So the excuse maker also called the blame shifter is the person that is always afraid that other people are going to hold them

responsible and gets very uncomfortable with this idea that they might be held responsible. And so how that fear can hold you back is you never want to commit to anything because you might be as the leader of something because somebody might turn around and then point the finger at you or hold you accountable or hold you responsible or say, you made this decision, but it wasn't the right decision. That is the deep underlying fear. So it's not just the fear of making a mistake. It's a fear of being blamed for the mistake that tends to hold the excuse maker back. Other than taking the assessment, for the people who are listening here right now, how does a person know if they are an excuse maker?

Is it that they listen to this and see whether or not it resonates? Or are there other ways that they can really try to identify this in their lives? Well, for the excuse maker, ironically enough, that's actually one of the hardest ones to take ownership of or to recognize in yourself because the tendency of the excuse maker is to be a person who's constantly making excuses for your behavior, whether that's conscious or not. And a lot of times, and I think that's really important to talk about, is that a lot of times excuse makers are geniuses at finding really good, really legitimate excuses. But it's important to always remember that even a good excuse is still an excuse.

So they can come up with the best rationalizations for why they couldn't do something or why something isn't going to work or why life is the way that they say it's that it is. But at the end of the day, those excuses are still excuses. So as long as you're allowing excuses to be part of your life. And for some people, those excuses just come much more readily than others. That's always going to be the thing that holds you back. If you recognize yourself as an excuse maker, what are some things that you can do to overcome that? The number one thing is to start adopting a no excuses mentality. Because, again, once you've identified this as something in your life that you're doing, that way that fear is holding you back because you're making excuses, that's number one, right? That's the number one key.

You have to be able to see it. And as soon as you can start to see it, I know as soon as I've realized how much of an outcast I was, I started seeing all the different ways that I was rejecting people that I'd never even really consciously realized or known about. But as soon as it's like holding up the mirror and then you can start to see it. So that's the first step is acknowledging that this is a fear that's playing out in your life. This is a way that fear is manifesting itself in your life. But then the second thing is to really adopt a no excuses mentality to no matter what, realize I cannot make excuses for myself. I can't make excuses for my behavior. Even a good excuse is still an excuse. And from there, I really always recommend, especially for excuse makers,

but accountability is so important. Finding people who will speak truth into your life and who will call you out when you are making excuses. And having accountability partners, especially when you understand your fear archetypes, who also know your fear archetype and will help you hold up that mirror. It's important because we always slip back into our same patterns.

We slip into the patterns of what's familiar in our lives. So if making excuses is your familiar pattern, having somebody who sees it and calls you on it and says, hey, I get that that is a very legitimate excuse, but I think you're still making an excuse right now. That is sometimes the most powerful thing that you can have in your life. What is the difference between an excuse and a justification? Or is there no difference? There's no difference. There's always justifications. I mean, there will always be an excuse for anything. There will always be a reason not to take action. There will always be a reason not to

do something, especially when it comes to creating change in your life or, going after goals and dreams. There will always be very good reasons for everything. You can have all the justification in the world that nobody on the planet would ever look at you and go, oh, you're just making an excuse. And yet that excuse is still an excuse. At the end of the day, anytime you give any reason for why you can't do something, you are making an excuse, justified or not, legitimate or not. Every excuse is still an excuse. Let's talk about the archetype of the procrastinator. Yes. I'll admit right here, this was in my top three. Well, that one's in a lot of people's top three. I think, in fact, I think 60% of people have that in their top three, 60 or 70%

I'm blanking on that exact statistic not at the top of my head, but it is the most common pure archetype. And the procrastinator is another word for perfectionist, which surprises a lot of people, especially people who consider themselves perfectionists when they take the assessment and they find out that they're actually a procrastinator and not a perfectionist. I get a lot of people who go, wait a minute, I don't think that's right. But those two words are used almost interchangeably because a lot of times the procrastinator, it's not procrastinating in the traditional sense of just putting things off until the last minute.

It's trying to be overly prepared or a lot of times the procrastinator will keep tweaking until the very last minute. But what the underlying fear for the procrastinator really is is the fear of making a mistake. You get so scared of getting it wrong, of doing it wrong, of not having it be perfect, that it becomes almost paralyzing. For a lot of people, they'll have the analysis paralysis and never take action at all because of that fear of making a mistake. And I know anecdotally, I've talked to a lot of people in my audience who suffer from analysis paralysis. this, they endlessly research and think and run spreadsheets and never actually make a move. They never actually buy that investment or buy that rental property or start that side hustle.

The endless planning and research is a really good sign that you might be a procrastinator. You think you're doing your due diligence, but really it comes to a point where you're so overplanned that you don't take the action. And then that's when it's holding you back. What's insidious about this is that this is fear disguised as prudence. Yes. I'm sure there are plenty of people listening to this who are nodding their heads right now and they're able to relate. What do you do if this is how your fear shows up? That's a great question. So there's a couple of things I recommend if you're a procrastinator and if this is something you really struggle with. The first is to practice making mistakes. And I know that sounds simple and maybe a little bit trite, but you have to practice making low risk mistakes. So maybe it's not buying that property the first mistake that you want to make because that feels like. like it would be too big. Maybe it's little things. Maybe it's just purposely taking smaller risks that don't feel like it's going to be the end of the world if it goes wrong and practice seeing how it's not the end of the world when something like that goes wrong or when you do make a mistake or when you screw it up.

If you can practice that with low risk activities, courage is like a muscle. And so overcoming fear and building up that courage muscle means that you have to do little things in order to get it. stronger. And the more you practice it, the more you exercise that muscle, the stronger it's going to get. And so as you practice making smaller mistakes and building up an immunity, I guess, reminds me of, do you ever watch the princess bride where Wesley is going against the inconceivable guy? And he says, I built up this immunity to Iocaine powder. That's exactly what you have to do with mistakes, is that you can build up the immunity to making mistakes, the more that you practice making them in your life. And it sounds kind of weird and silly and yet at the same time it's so important to do because, you know, and I talk about this in the

book too, one of my principles of courage is there are no mistakes, only lessons. The more mistakes you can make, the more lessons you can learn. And those lessons are going to make you stronger and better, but they're also going to give you the courage to make other mistakes in your life, knowing that those mistakes aren't going to be the end of you and they're not going to break you because you've overcome them in the past. And that's really important. Then, And then, of course, accountability is, again, always important, having people who understand, who can spot that procrastination in you, the perfectionism in you, and call you out on it and encourage you to make those mistakes a little bit more is a big thing.

And then finally, giving yourself a deadline for the procrastinator. Sometimes you just need a hard deadline. And so even putting people in your life or putting safeguards in your life to give yourself a hard deadline for making decisions and taking action. What would be some examples of some type of small mistake that people can intentionally give themselves permission to make? It could be things like the big mistake that you don't want to make is purchasing a giant property. Well, maybe the small mistake that you can make is making some other kind of investment that's a little bit smaller, buying some stocks or buying some investing a smaller amount of money into something that's maybe a whole lot

riskier and maybe that you know is going to either have a great payout and could be great or could be a complete loss and you're going to have to just deal with it. Maybe doing something from that aspect, but not making it be $200,000, but maybe $200, where it's lower risk because it's not more than you can afford to lose. And yet it's giving you that opportunity to say, okay, this wasn't the end of the world. That's a really good example. You talked also about the importance of deadlines when it comes to overcoming procrastination, but how do you hold to those deadlines when you know that such deadlines are self-imposed?

That's a really good question, too. But that's where the accountability comes in. And so that's where you have to say, okay, I'm not going to let this deadline be self-imposed. Maybe, you know, and some people, again, this is all in a spectrum, right? So for some people, a self-imposed deadline because their high follow-through will actually follow through on that deadline, even if it's their own deadline. And that is not going to bother them at all. There are other people who will say, this is just an arbitrary deadline that I made up for myself and I'm going to ignore it. And if that's the case, then you have to figure out how you're going to make a deadline that's not an arbitrary thing. And maybe for somebody, say you're a procrastinator, but you also have a little bit of a rule follower tendency to you. So maybe for somebody who's a procrastinator, procrastinator slash rule follower, if you set a deadline, you would tend to be more rigid and you will follow through. But if you are a procrastinator slash people pleaser, maybe it's more important to you that you are not letting other people down. So maybe you can attach your deadline to having somebody else be dependent on that deadline.

And so because you also have a little bit of people pleaser and you, you won't want to let somebody else down. And that will then push you to actually stick to that deadline because you know somebody else is counting on you. So it's a little bit of self-reflection and just knowing yourself and figuring out how you can make those solutions work and so that you will actually stick to them. So you use some of the corresponding archetypes. Yes. To work with your own nature. Yes, exactly. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors.

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Freshbooks.com slash Paula. You mentioned the people pleaser. Let's talk about that archetype. On the surface, this seems to be the opposite of the outcast, although I suspect they have some similarities. The people pleaser, the underlying fear is the fear of being judged. And so that is not the same issue that the outcast has. The outcast has a fear of being rejected and yet doesn't really care that much about what other people think of them, which again, feels a little bit ironic.

But for the people pleaser, there is a deep fear. And you probably, I don't know if you have people pleaser in you or if you know some people pleasers. I know a few of my really good friends are people pleases. And I see this in them so much, but we'll be at a restaurant and me as an outcast, I don't care if I'm talking too loud or having an animated conversation. But my people pleaser friends will always be very aware of, oh my gosh, people are looking at us. We're being too loud.

I think people might think that we're weird. That's just a constant sort of background sound or background thought that is happening for the people pleaser. They're very, very aware of how they're being perceived by other people and how they're being judged. And so again, like if the procrastinator is afraid of making a mistake and the fear of making a mistake, for the people pleaser, they're not so much afraid of making the mistake as they are afraid of what people would say if they made a mistake. And so that's a very key distinction to make. So all of the fear is tied to how things are perceived by other people. In what ways does being a people

pleaser affect your life at work, at home. How does it show up in the form of fear? Well, for people pleasers, it's very difficult to stand up to other people or to do things that might be counter to other people. So there's a fear of letting people down. There's a fear of what other people would say. So there's the part where it can hold you back from trying something new because you don't know what other people would say about it. But there's also, for people pleasers, you can become easily overcommitted because you're afraid to say no to other people. You do things that you maybe don't necessarily want to do. And yet people pleasers are generally great people to have as friends.

They're so fun to be around. They're always concerned about everybody else. They're always looking out for everybody else. They're just really, they want to please the people they're around. And so they care what you think. People pleasers can also be somewhat concerned with outward appearances, with wearing more labels, keeping up with the Joneses, that can definitely be a people pleaser tendency as well. Sometimes you just get stuck as a people

pleaser in not daring to go after your goals or dreams because you're afraid of the perception of other people. And if you identify this way, what are some steps that you can take to come out of it or to overcome that fear-based way of interacting with the world? For the people pleaser, it's really about, again, accountability and having that self-talk in your mind and being able to change that self-talk that's happening. So if that self-talk is saying, I don't know what those people are going to think of me, maybe the self-talk that you need to change is people that are my friends are going to like me no matter what or people that are not my friends or not worth getting rid of my dreams for it. So there is a lot of that self-talk that needs to happen. But then again, just like the

procrastinator, it's a good thing to practice making mistakes. For the people pleaser, it's a good thing to practice setting boundaries and saying no and speaking up when you normally wouldn't. You have to practice that. Do it in small ways where it feels less risky and see what happens. And then use that to leverage your courage in order to be able to do it in bigger ways and to show up in bigger ways in your own life. Are there any particular types of jobs or roles or careers that people pleasers tend to tend towards? People pleasers tend to be great at a lot of things, but especially any sort of support or assistance role. They're great in just ways where they can show up and be the go-to person for whoever. They like that.

They excel in those kind of areas, but that leaves the field wide open. People-pleasers really tend to be like the most easy to get along with, the most congenial. Everybody loves the people-placer because they're just generally great. people often the life of the party can tend to be really extroverted a lot of times. So people pleasers are great people to have as friends. But I think the danger there and the thing you have to be careful of if you recognize this quality in some of your friends is, hey, don't take advantage of a people pleaser. Encourage them if you're the friend of a people pleaser, encourage them to set boundaries and to stick up for themselves because they will tend to bend over backwards

to help other people sometimes to the detriment of themselves. Let's talk about the pessimist. Yes, the pessimist. The underlying fear for the pessimist is a fear of pain or a fear of adversity. And for the pessimist, it's usually someone who has had a lot of pain and adversity in their life and feels stuck in that. It's very much a victim mindset and a victim mentality of I've had these horrible things happen to me or I've been treated unfairly. and the pessimist tends to feel like nothing they do is ever going to help. Things aren't going to change. Life is the way that it is. And there's not a lot of reason to even try because they don't want to experience more pain.

Everything I've done has never worked to this point. Why should I even bother? Almost like an E.R. mentality, if you remember E.R., the character of E.R. from Winnie the Pooh, poor me, this is not going to help me. Nothing's going to help me. Like the excuse maker, the pessimist is a very hard one to, own and accept and to see through and to break free out of in your life. It takes a lot of inner work

actually and a lot of mindset work to break through of this archetype because as we were talking with the excuse maker, generally there's been legitimate hardships that the pessimist has experienced in their life, you know, whether it's major illness or death in the family, abuse, poverty, any of those things. And to push past things that could be. can be seen and can be counted on as legitimate reasons to not try legitimate excuses to keep yourself stuck. As long as you're allowing those things to keep your stuck, you're always going to be stuck. And so you have to really work on the mindset piece of saying, you know what, again, I'm going to adopt a no excuses mentality. I'm not going to play the victim card. I'm not going to go there

in my life because that's not going to help me. The thing that I tell my kids all the time, I have a nine-year-old and a 12-year-old and two girls. And of course, they fight like sisters. And almost every day, one of them is mad at the other one for something that they did. And most of the time, whatever they did was kind of a jerk move. And every single day I have this conversation. You know what? You can't change the way people treat you.

You can't change what happens to you. There are things that are going to happen to you in life that are unfair and that are terrible and people are going to treat you badly. But you still get to have a choice. of how you respond and how you move past it. Every day you have a choice and every day you have a choice of whether you're going to let your sister ruin your day or whether you're not going to let your sister ruin your day. It's on you.

At the end of the day, it's on you. What she did, she has to take responsibility for. But how you respond to it, that is all you. And it's a conversation that I've been having with them daily for years now. But it's amazing because I think it's finally starting to sink in. Even last night, there was a little incident at the dinner table and all of a sudden my nine-year-old said to my 12-year-old, well, Maggie, you know you always have a choice of how you respond. And I realized I might think they're not listening, but they really are listening. But it takes a long time to let that sink in.

How do you balance that message with the need to also emotionally validate either yourself or others and to really feel your feelings, particularly when you encounter. a triggering situation. I think that you still have to accept the idea that you have a choice, that you have a choice of how you respond, you know, in my own life. And I think I come from this from a perspective, having experienced trauma in my early 20s, I went through a terrible depression that was related to being sexually abused as a child. I ran the gamut. I spent two and a half years in and out of psychiatric hospitals. I have done some of that hard, hard work. And I've also seen what happens when people who have experienced trauma continue to dwell in that trauma. I saw what happened when I continue to dwell in that trauma. I'm not anti-psychology. I'm not anti-therapy of any of those things.

I think it's really important to talk about issues, to deal with them. But there is a point in your life where you have to say, nobody else is responsible for what's happened to me up into this point. Yes, there may have been bad things. There may have been unfair things. There may have been people that traded me badly, but at the end of the day, I am responsible for every choice I make from now on, and I'm not going to let that define me. And when you can make that choice in your life, it might sound like I'm being uncompassionate to somebody who has experienced legitimate trauma, but I'm really not, because letting anyone sit in their victimness is not being compassion to them. It's not letting them move forward. And when you can own your life wholly and completely, it is actually the kindest thing that

you could ever do for yourself because it is only then when you are 100% free. You are free. And there's nothing better than that in your life. There is nothing better than realizing that you have complete ownership and responsibility for yourself, which means that you don't have to worry about how other people treat you. You don't have to worry about the things that bad that have happened to you in your life because you get to choose how you move forward from now on. And it seems scary. And I think there's a part of it that seems like it's not being compassionate, but it actually is the most freeing and amazing thing that you will ever do for yourself. Let's say that you agree with this idea in principle, but you don't feel it or you haven't truly internalized it. How do you get from

A to B? There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. Something that we talked about when I was going through my depression, something that my therapist and doctors in the hospital all those years ago used to say all the time and maybe you've heard this before. It's the fake it till you make it mentality. This idea that you act the way and you start repeating the things that you want to believe, that you start creating affirmations for yourself. You start acting how you want to show up in your life. You just fake it. And you fake it enough in a way until it starts to become real to you. I know that you recently had Todd Herman on your podcast. And I actually recently interviewed him for my podcast as And he talks about this alter ego effect that is kind of amazing.

But it's kind of that idea of creating this alter ego where you show up the way that you want to show up in your life and fake that until it becomes you. Because in the end, the alter ego is your truest self. And I think that's such a cool concept. And he explains it in such a brilliant way that it's something I really, really think that people should definitely think about applying in your own life. Well, let's talk about the self-douder. Yes, the self-douder. Oh, the self-douder to me is probably the saddest of the archetypes, although the pessimist is sad, too. But for the self-doubter, I think what's so sinister about the self-douder and the way that fear manifests in the self-douder's life is that it's this underlying fear of not being capable, of this self-talk that happens for the self-douder in the back of your mind that says, you're not pretty enough.

not smart enough, you're not good enough, you're not capable enough. And whatever you are, you are not enough. That just crippling fear of not being adequate and not being enough is what holds them back from trying things or from taking risks or from going after big goals and dreams in their life. I'm just afraid that I don't have what it takes. The way that that often shows up or presents itself in the self-doubter's life is, I think, what makes it the saddestest and most sinister of the fear archetypes. A lot of times this crippling insecurity will show up as being hypercritical of both themselves and other people.

And you probably, as I'm talking about this, you can probably think of somebody in your life who is just super critical, super critical of everybody and everything. Anytime they see, you know, someone out there doing something, they never have a kind word to say. It's always, oh my gosh, did you see so and so? Can you believe that they decided to do this? who do they think they are. And that sort of hypercriticalness is really what it's doing is it's overcompensating for

that internal feeling of insecurity. So it comes out in a way that becomes very critical to others. The sad part is that it really can become destructive to the relationships that a self-douder has in their lives. Because if you're constantly criticizing everyone around you, if you become hypercritical of yourself and everyone around you, and if you become hypercritical of yourself and everyone around you, you're not a great person to be around. And so that can really start to damage your relationships. And not everyone can recognize that in your life as, oh my gosh, like I can have

compassion for this person because clearly they're struggling with insecurity because it doesn't really present that. You know, people don't know what's happening inside your head. They only know what's happening from the actions. If the self-douder archetype is one that you're really struggling with, that is one that I do highly recommend you seek out the help of a life coach or a counselor or or somebody who can help you really work through that and provide that insight and do some of the deep work that needs to happen in order to overcome that insecurity. If you're struggling with self-doubt and your way of dealing with it is taking classes and sharpening your skills and learning how to improve your skill set or your knowledge base,

how do you know if you're doing it to an extent that is productive versus if you've crossed the line and now you're overdoing it, basically the equivalent of being a procrastinator caught in analysis parameters. That's a great question. And I think that the difference is whether or not those classes are always leading to nothing but another class and you're never taking action or if you're actually taking action and making changes in your life. If those classes are then encouraging you to take the next step and to take an action, if they're

leading you towards the next goal, then I think they can be super helpful. if it's a way of avoiding taking that next step and actually taking action and actually creating real change in your life, that's when you know that you're maybe stuck in the analysis paralysis part that happens for the procrastinator. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, you probably have some momentos that you really cherish, right? Like maybe you have movie ticket stubs or concert ticket stubs from the first date that you went on with the person who is now your spouse.

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For the self-doubter, the most important thing I think is also action, taking action. So having a coach in your life who's actually giving you assignments or having some saying, okay, now why don't you try this? Because for the self-douder, the only way to start overcoming that self-doubt is to actually prove to yourself through action that you are capable and showing up in your own life and starting to do those things that you're thinking about doing, but that you've let self-doubt in this negative self-doubt. in this negative self-talk talk, talk you down from the ledge so often and so many times. So it's not until you start taking those little steps. And again, just like with the procrastinator and the people-pleaser, sometimes it's taking a little step in the right direction, doing one little thing that you've maybe been holding yourself back from doing. Because for the self-douder, it's not just big things that you're holding yourself back on. It's all sorts of different

things in your life. That negative self-talk shows up in any number of different ways. What would be an example of a small thing you could do? One of the examples I gave in the book is a story of Sandra, who played sports in high school but felt very inadequate and always felt like there was a lot of pressure even though she was really good. And so even though she could have gone to play college volleyball, didn't because of the pressure, and has always regretted that. And so as she was working to overcome the self-doubt, one of the things that she did was join a local volleyball league and start playing. volleyball again, even on just a normal recreational level to start building up that confidence and to start realizing that I can do this. It doesn't have to be on a giant level. I can do this on just a friendly level and actually change my life that way.

So so far we have discussed the outcast, the excuse maker, the procrastinator, the pessimist, the people pleaser, and the self-douder. Let's talk about the one that we're missing, the rule follower. The rule follower, yes. So the rule follower is, has the underlying fear, which is almost an unhealthy fear of authority. And for the rule follower, things tend to be very black and white. They're either the right way or the wrong way. And rule followers can be a little judgy. They like to have a clear path laid out for them. And they really like things to fit within the box. One thing that I have found really interesting, because I have done, this course for bloggers called Elite Blog Academy.

I coach online business owners to create their online businesses. And one thing I always see are the rule followers who are very, very afraid of getting all of the things wrong. You know, there's, oh, my gosh, there's all these rules on the internet and you have to do everything right. And all of this, what is the GDP stuff that happened last year with the emails? Oh, yeah. Europe's regulations, the GD.

I'm not a rule follower. And from one offcast to another, you're like, I know that was some sort of rule that I didn't really listen to. But for the rule followers, those sort of things, when you find out there's big regulations that become almost crippling to the point where they will hold you back from actually taking action on your goals because you're so afraid of getting the rules wrong. Whereas for you and I, as outcast, we're like, yeah, I'm sure it'll all work out. It's better to ask forgiveness and permission. If it's really a problem, somebody will tell me I did something wrong. then I'll fix it. Rule followers cannot even fathom that sort of an attitude. And so that is the fear that holds them back often is this fear of getting it wrong, stepping outside the lines, breaking the rules.

But on the flip side, rule followers can be super diligent. They're really good at following step-by-step instructions. They're the ones who read the instructions and do things the right way a lot of times. So, you know, none of these archetypes are all good or all bad. Each one has positive and negative qualities. And you need people of all types in your life. That's why I say they're not all good or they're not all bad. And so it's sometimes a matter of learning how to leverage the positive qualities of your particular fear archetype while working to mitigate the ones that are maybe not so positive or the ways that the fear is holding you back. So for the people who are listening to this, if you are a rule follower and if you're somebody who gets so caught up in worrying about whether or not you're breaking the rules, that prohibiting. hibits you from taking action, the type of action that could lead you to a better life,

what do you do? Do you practice breaking the rules? Yes, sometimes. But again, in a low-risk way, practice coloring outside the lines a little bit, doing every time you have a moment where you feel like, oh my gosh, what if I get this wrong? Like, say, what if I do get this wrong? What is the worst-case scenario here? What happens if I ask for permission or ask for forgiveness instead of permission in this one case. And I think that the other thing that's really important for a rule follower, especially when it comes to going after a big goal or dream, and this is one thing that I have found through my course as well,

is that no one completes my course, like every single step in every single assignment, like a rule follower. So if there is something that you want to do in your life, find a course for it, a really good course, or find a really good instructor or somebody who is going to give you the guidelines that you can follow because use that strength, use the high follow-through strength and aspect of being a rule follower knowing that you will follow every single instruction to the T and actually get the results. Just make sure that the instructions that you're following are going to get you

the results that you want to get. I have found that. I don't know if you have a course or anything, but I have found that the rule followers are the ones who are my biggest success. stories because they are the ones who follow every single step and every single assignment to the T. You mentioned make sure that the rules that you're following are rules that will get you to success. How do you develop that critical thinking and that critical judgment, given that it seems like this is a personality type or an archetype that doesn't think critically or question what is told by authority?

That's actually a really great question. I think when it comes to something like that where you're finding a course or you're taking a course of action, that's where doing your research comes in, doing your due diligence to say, okay, what are the results that other people are getting from this? What's the track record? What are the statistics here? And maybe asking questions that way. But you're right. As far as critical thinking from a questioning authority standpoint goes, that can be difficult for a rule follower because they are used to staying within the lines and really following what an authority figure has to say. And so I think if,

If there's a cautionary tale for rule followers, it is to make sure that you are asking questions, even if that's hard for you. You mentioned in your book that you encourage your own children to break the rules and to not blindly accept what you tell them. I do. I actually, we have a little mantra. It's one of my principles of courage. So it's one of the chapters of the book.

It's called Rules Are for Suckers. And it's pretty funny because I get a lot of horrified people who cannot believe that I teach my kids that rules are for suckers. But what I'm actually teaching them is not that all rules are bad. And my kids, before you get the wrong impression, my kids are actually very, very good, sweet girls. And they are such rule followers that my husband and I sometimes look at each other and go, how did this even happen? Because he is also an outcast.

Neither of us are rule followers. They're the kids that will leave them home for the afternoon while we go on a date or something like that. And they'll text us and ask if it's okay if they have some popcorn. Like, girl, we're not home right now. You could make popcorn. We literally could do anything and eat anything you wanted. But if you don't want to do that, then that's fine. But yeah, they will ask permission for everything.

And it's so funny because then we just have to mess with them. That probably makes us bad parents. But we give them all these hoops that they have to jump through. Well, first you have to do the dishes and then you have to take out the garbage. And then we'll come home and they've done it all. It's so mean. It's so mean. And we laugh. But the thing that I teach them and that I'm trying to instill in them, which clearly I

need to work a little harder, is not that all rules are bad and not that they shouldn't listen to authority. There are good rules out there. There are, you know, authority is there for a reason. There are. And it's important in society. But what I don't want them to do is just follow blindly. I want them to learn how to think for themselves. I want them to learn how to ask questions. I want them to learn how to be critical thinkers because so often in our, culture and society. There are just things that are being spewed out there, especially on the internet. I mean, anyone at any time can write anything and put it on the internet and claim it to be a fact. And that's not always true, but if kids aren't learning that, you know, not everything that you read on

the internet is true. And my kids, I mean, they're like, mommy, this was on YouTube. It must be true. And if they're not learning that at a young age to be discerning with the information that's coming in, then they could be in trouble. I just want them to know that you got to question things and you got to think about things. One of the points that you make towards the end of your book, and I thought this is very powerful, was that regardless of what fear archetype you have, the universal of getting past that fear is to make your why bigger than your fear. Can you talk a little bit about that? And specifically, how do you put that into action? Yes. Well, you know, it's really, really, really important to make sure that you are very much in touch and that you're creating a why that's bigger than

your fear because that's going to be the thing that carries you through. I think so often we get discouraged when things get hard and when obstacles pop up. But the thing about going after anything that's worth pursuing after any big goal or any big dream is that there's always going to be something that gets in our way. There's always going to be obstacles that come up. That is the nature of doing anything worthwhile in life. And so you've got to have a few safeguards in place. And what we found through this study that we did is that for so many people, when they were

able to overcome fear in their life, it was because they were able to have things in their life that helped them push through. They had these catalysts in their life that actually made a difference. And what we realized were that these catalysts ranged from anything from just deciding that this was a goal that they were going to go after, you know, which, was a very self-directed catalyst versus major life events, like a major tragedy or, you know, getting divorced or something like that happening in their life, which was completely outside of their control, something that happened that changed them forever, but that they would not have

necessarily chosen for themselves. And then within that, on the spectrum of catalysts, there were a lot of different things that were in between. So there were things like, an outside opportunity that came up that was maybe not so much in their control, but a little more in control than, say, a horrible trauma or tragedy, than there was putting accountability in their life or encouragement in their life or being more intentional about getting inspired or taking a class or something like that. So there were all these different catalysts. And so things recommend that people do is you can't manufacture a tragedy happening in your life, and nor would you want to. But you can, if you are not strong enough or don't have the willpower to just decide that you're going to make the change, which most people don't, maybe it's this idea of manufacturing a catalyst.

So maybe it's taking a class. Maybe it's putting more accountability in your life. Maybe it's putting more encouragement in your life that's going to help you then stay strong as you work to develop that why. That's, I think, really, really important because, again, obstacles are going to come up. so that why has to be stronger than your fear. What should you do if you feel the why start to fade? Do you put these practices in place to double down on it or do you search for a new why? I think that you remind yourself.

And if the why starts to fade, if you do identify a why and it doesn't, it's not resonating for you, then I think that you need to dig deeper. So why did you pick that as your why? Is this the why that you think is your why? You have to be honest with yourself. And it does require some self-reflection because. a lot of times we'll say, oh, well, my family is the most important thing and I'm doing this for my family, but really, it's not the most important thing. That's not the thing that's driving you.

Maybe it's this desire to be famous that's driving you, and you don't want to admit that to anybody else. You know, for me, losing weight last year, and I talked a little bit about this in the book, I needed to lose weight. And I had tried and failed to lose 25 pounds for the last few years. But the thing that finally did it for me, when I finally got in touch with my real why, which was that I want my business to succeed. And in order for my business to succeed, I need to do more video. And in order for me to be comfortable on video, I needed to lose the weight because I was avoiding video because I didn't feel comfortable on video. And so once I finally admitted to myself, that was the reason why I needed to lose weight.

It didn't make it easier to not eat Doritos. But it did in some ways make it easier to not eat Doritos because I could keep reminding myself to that why. that why was stronger than my desire to eat Doritos. That makes sense. Right. Absolutely. Back to your question of when you start to get discouraged and frustrated, that is one thing that I do, I talk about in the book, too, is it's one of my final points, is this need

to always stay encouraged and to put safeguards in your life that will help you stay encouraged because human nature is to constantly get discouraged. Things come up. We stumble, we fall, we get off track, we screw up, whatever happens. Other people are mean to us. All of those things happen, that's when it's really hard to keep going towards our goals. And that's when it's really hard to stay motivated and stay encouraged. And so if you can start to put safeguards in place, the thing I recommend, because it's so

easy and it's completely free is podcasts. Find a few really good podcasts that you find. very encouraging and very motivating and put them on your rotation and listen to them all the time. Make sure you're listening to at least one every single day so that you are constantly getting those positive messages pouring in every single day because the next day something will happen and you'll forget and you'll need that message again and again and again. Well, I can totally get behind that. Exactly.

Well, thank you so much, Ruth, for coming on this show. You also host a podcast, so tell the listeners more of where they can hear more of you. Yes, I host a podcast called Do It Scared with Ruth Zucup, which is the same name as my book, Do It Scared. So it's all easy to find at doetscared.com. You can also find the assessment there. And anything else you need to know about Do It Scared, you can find all of it at doetscared.com. Thank you, Ruth. What are some of the key takeaways from this interview?

What I would like to do is review all seven of the fear archetypes, briefly describe each one, and then discuss an action item that you can take to overcome these obstacles if this is how fear is showing up in your life. So, in no particular order, number one. The procrastinator. The procrastinator archetype struggles most with the fear of making a mistake, And that manifests as not getting started on a project, pushing things off to the last minute. It can also sometimes show up as starting really early on something and endlessly tweaking and iterating and over-perfecting it. Perfectionist and procrastinator are interchangeable.

The endless planning and research is a really good sign that you might be a procrastinator. You think you're doing your due diligence, but really it comes to a point where you're so overplanned that you don't take the action and then that's when it's holding you back. The majority of survey respondents, somewhere between 60 to 70 percent, have the procrastinator archetype as one of their top three. Myself included, my top three are the outcast, the procrastinator, and the pessimist, which kind of surprised me. But we'll talk more about those two in a minute. For now, we're still on the procrastinator. And the procrastinator, at their core, they're people who are terrified of messing up or making a big mistake. And that type of fear can prevent them from moving forward and pursuing their goals and dreams.

The procrastinator is the person who wants to be a freelance writer but doesn't pitch article ideas to magazine editors or to publishers of websites. The procrastinator is somebody who wants to develop a side hustle as a freelance web designer or graphic designer, but who doesn't go out there looking for clients or who maybe meets a lead but never sends that important follow-up email. You know, the fortune is in the follow-up. So if you are a procrastinator, what do you do? Well, in order to move past your need for perfection, set a timer for completing certain tasks so that you only, only give yourself a limited amount of time to work on something. You cannot endlessly tweak it. Set a deadline for when something needs to be done and create some type of consequence for

missing the deadline, whether it's that you have an accountability partner and you would be embarrassed if you miss that deadline and had to account for that with your accountability buddy. That could be the type of consequence. Or I have a friend who, in order for him to reach his goals, he started setting deadlines and then he challenged himself that if he missed the deadline, he would have to make a donation to the political party that had the opposite views of the ones that he held. And that for him was a sufficient motivator to make sure that he hit the deadline that he imposed on himself. So all of those action steps, all of those tactics are good ways to overcome a natural tendency to procrastination, which is one of seven ways under the

this archetypal framework that fear can show up. Number two, another way that fear can show up in your life is if you have the fear archetype of a rule follower. A rule follower is somebody who's nervous about breaking the rules or nervous about not doing something the way that it's quote unquote supposed to be done. They like it when somebody gives them step-by-step instructions or a step-by-step plan. They find comfort in knowing that they're in compliance with all of the rules. rules and regulations around them. And they feel anxiety if they don't have a specific path or a specific

plan of action or set of instructions to follow. So if this resonates with you, then practice breaking the rules. That's your action plan. Practice stepping outside of your comfort zone. But for the rule follower, those sort of things, when you find out there's big regulations that become almost crippling to the point where they will hold you back from actually taking action on your goals because you're so afraid of getting the rules wrong. Try assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA without reading the directions. Try pulling up a recipe online, skimming over it to get a broad, big picture overview of how this meal is supposed to come together and then put the recipe to the side and based on what you've read, kind of intuitively create that meal that you

we're going to create. In other words, don't follow the recipe step by step. Skim through the recipe to get a feel for it and then make the meal on your own. That's a way that you can practice not being a rule follower. And you know what? Maybe that meal isn't going to come out exactly as well as it otherwise would have. But you get to practice flexing some of your creative muscles. You get to practice charting your own path rather than just obeying instructions. So that is the fear archetype of the rule follower. Now let's talk about the excuse maker. The excuse maker is someone whose fear shows up in the form of them always having a reason why they can't do X. There's always a reason why they haven't been able to pursue that goal or achieve that dream.

They are masters at justification and rationalizations and avoiding responsibility. The excuse maker also called the blame shifter is the person that is always afraid that other people are going to hold them responsible and gets very uncomfortable with this idea that they might be held responsible. And so how that fear can hold you back is you never want to commit to anything because you might be as the leader of something because somebody might turn around and then point the finger at you or hold you accountable or hold you responsible or say, you made this decision, but it wasn't the right decision. That is the deep underlying fear. So it's not just the fear of making a mistake. It's a fear of being blamed for the mistake. They don't want to be blamed if something goes wrong. And they might be hesitant to take the lead or to take charge. So if that resonates with you, if you think that that's a way in which you are bottlenecking yourself, if you find yourself saying things like, I've always wanted to do X, I've always wanted to start my own business, I've always wanted to travel the world. But

I don't have time, I don't have money, I don't know how to do it. Like, if you always have excuses, then there are practices that you can take to get over the excuse-making tendency. I personally would recommend, and this is just me saying this, I would recommend reading the first chapter in the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, because that's where he talks about the difference between your circle of concern versus your circle of influence. he talks about your internal versus external locus of control. For me, that chapter in that book changed my life. And at your core, if you find that fear is showing up for you in the form of excuses, then the muscle that you need to build is your internal locus of control muscle. So practice speaking up, practice standing by your decisions.

Practice saying, oops, I'm sorry, I goofed. That's my fault or that's my responsibility. Like practice doing that so that it's not, you realize that when it is your responsibility, it's not that bad. If you own up to it, you own it. If something goes wrong and you're like, oh, that's on me. Then, hey, people accept that. Because as Ruth says, there are no mistakes, just lessons. So that is the third archetype, the excuse maker.

Again, in no particular order. Let's talk about number four, the people pleaser. people pleasers tend to be super popular because they are people who are drawn to seek the approval of others. They're afraid of letting other people down. They're afraid of what other people might say. And so they bend over backwards to serve and meet the needs of others before they satisfy the needs of themselves. And while on the surface that might sound like a wonderful or selfless thing to do, it's also true that when taken to an extreme or when done in excess, it results in them

letting other people walk all over their boundaries because they have very weak boundaries. And that, over a long term, can lead to bitterness, resentment, getting walked all over, and ultimately not showing up as their full selves or leading their best life. For people pleasers, you can become easily overcommitted because you're a to say no to other people, you do things that you maybe don't necessarily want to do. And so if that is the way that you find that fear is showing up in your life, then the action that you need to take at a high level, it's to stop putting everybody else's needs before your own. It's to give yourself permission to make time for your own priorities. So block out time

in your schedule, go to your calendar, and literally block out a section of time every day or every week that is purely yours. And defend that. Don't let other people encroach upon it. If somebody asks if you can do something at that time, the answer is, no, I have a scheduling conflict. Even if what you have blocked that time out for is to go on a run or take a bubble bath or go to a yoga class.

Or just lay around in your pajamas watching cartoons. Because you know what? Sometimes you want that too, and that's okay. So that is the people-pleasing tendency. Number five, the outcast. So this is what Ruth and I both are. And this is the fear that shows up in the form of a fear of trusting other people, a fear that other people will always let you down. And so you become this rugged individualist who is constantly trying to take care of yourself.

You know, you become this person who becomes really into radical self-reliance because you have this fear that other people can't be counted on or can't be trusted. And oftentimes an outcast tends to push other people away before they can push him or her away. The underlying fear for the outcast is a fear of rejection. And so how that often presents itself for the outcast is really. rejecting other people before you can be rejected in return. And so the outcast is usually the person that wants to prove themselves or is the rugged individualist or the quintessential person who's out there not caring about what anybody else thinks. But a lot of times all of that sort of bravado is a way

of preventing people from getting too close. So on a positive note, outcasts tend to be nonconformists. They are okay with rejecting rules and limitations. They can be creative and unconventional. They tend to be driven, self-motivated, highly determined to succeed, highly determined to prove themselves. But at their worst, they can also be a little self-destructive. And so if this is the fear archetype that resonates with you, then some actions that you can take to help overcome this include collaborating with people more, working with people. more, work with teammates, work with mentors, resist the urge to live in self-imposed isolation, and spend more time working on projects with other people.

So that is the outcast archetype. Number six, the self-douder. People who struggle with self-doubt fear not being good enough, not being capable. If they're presented with a new project, they might think, well, I don't even know how I would do that. or what makes you think that you could do that. They're plagued by insecurity and self-doubt and can be very critical of themselves and others, both. What's so sinister about the self-douder and the way that fear manifests in the self-douder's

life is that it's this underlying fear of not being capable of this self-talk that happens for the self-douder in the back of your mind that says, you're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough, you're not capable enough. And whatever you are, you are not enough. If that resonates with you, then a couple of action steps that you can take. Number one, just don't be sarcastic. Don't be negative. Don't be cynical.

Don't criticize others. Make a practice of praising others for the good, the silver lining that you see in them. Also, take small steps, make small achievements, regardless of what they are. Celebrate your daily wins. So, for example, if you wanted to start a side hustle, but you're worried because deep down inside your secret goal is to start a company on the side and build it until it makes $100,000 a year. But that just seems insurmountable. Y'all build it until it makes a dollar. And then make your first dollar and celebrate that.

That's how you practice overcoming that self-doubt. And finally, number seven, the pessimist. pessimists are people who have experienced a lot of hardship and a lot of tragedy, and they often have very real reasons to think, wow, if anybody knew how much I've had to go through, it would shock them. They often have a hard time getting enough perspective to see beyond their own pain or their own hardship or their own often very tragic circumstances that they have been through, the traumas that they've been through.

But the reason that this is a fear archetype is because that loop of endless negative self-talk can sometimes become the thing that keeps them stuck, the thing that keeps them wallowing in their pain, wallowing in where they are. And they can become very easily discouraged or get trapped in cycles of self-pity. The underlying fear for the pessimist is a fear of pain or a fear of adversity. And for the pessimist, it's usually someone who has had a lot of pain and adversity in their life and feels stuck in that. It's very much a victim mindset and a victim mentality of I've had these horrible things happen to me or I've been treated unfairly. And the pessimist tends to feel like nothing they do is ever going to help.

things aren't going to change. Life is the way that it is. And there's not a lot of reason to even try. And so if you have that as your fear archetype, then some ways that you can take action include have a gratitude practice where you journal every morning about what you're grateful for. Join a support group of people who can help you with issues

like grief or depression. Or see a therapist, see a counselor, fix what's inside. and your outside world will naturally start to reflect that. So those are the seven fear archetypes, along with action plans for how to get out of your own way and not be your own bottleneck if you find that you are holding yourself back due to any of these expressions or forms of fear.

I would love to know what you think. Which fear archetype do you resonate with? Which of these rings true for you? Two places where you can leave comments. One is on the show notes, which is afford anything.com slash episode 194. That's afford anything.com slash episode 194. The other is on Instagram where I will be participating in the conversation about which of these fear archetypes is you. Who are you?

And how does fear show up in your life? And how do you see it expressed? And what are you going to do today? what small action are you going to take in order to begin overcoming the ways in which fear, anxiety, hypervigilance show up in your way in excess, in a way that is holding you back. Well, that is our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant.

You can find me on Instagram at Paula P-A-P-A-P-A-N-T. If you enjoyed today's episode, will you do me a favor? leave a review of this podcast in whatever app you're using to listen to podcasts. Or you could also go to Afford Anything.com slash iTunes and leave a review there. Those reviews are incredibly helpful in allowing us to book more awesome guests on this show. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button so that you won't miss any upcoming episodes. And as always, one of the single biggest things that you can do to help support this show is to share this episode with a family member or a friend. anybody who you think would enjoy or resonate with what we talked about today,

who do you know who is procrastinating too much or who's making a few too many excuses? Who do you know well enough that you could say, hey, I think that you might gain some value from this. I think you might benefit from this. Share this episode with that person. Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast.

I'll catch you next week.