Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Redefine Your Relationship with Fear | Tony Blauer

Episode Date: April 7, 2021

This week’s conversation is with Tony Blauer, a coach in the martial art, self-defense, defensive tactics, and combatives industry for over four decades.He founded Blauer Tactical Systems (BTS) in 1985 and it has grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of performance psychology, personal safety, and close quarter tactics & scenario-based training for law enforcement, military, and professional self-defense instructors.After decades of interviewing victims of violent encounters and studying violence, he also created the KNOW FEAR® program which focuses on managing fear through self-awareness, resiliency, and a 'movement' mindset. This program has also been integrated by psychologists helping Vets to deal with PTSD.You may be familiar with Tony’s work from his first time on Finding Mastery in early 2020 (episode #208).The world has changed quite a bit since then so I wanted to have Tony back on to further discuss his approach to combatting fear. _________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. Our fear loop is red. Our duress path is yellow and then flow state switched on leaning in is green. And so I've got these three colors there. If I say to you, Mike, I want you to do this right away. And you stop and you go, I wonder if that'll work out. Tony wants me to do that right away. While you're deliberating, you're in what I call the fear loop, meaning there's no action. You're not doing anything. You're in your mind right now. The moment you start to move, but you're still wondering, is this going

to work out? I hope I prepared properly. It's the duress path. And so we never want to be in the red. We always want to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais, and by trade and training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind these conversations is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery, to better understand what they're searching for, their psychological framework, of how they understand the world and see themselves in it, how they explain events in their life. We also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. And if you want to learn more about how you can train your mind, just like some of the world-class thinkers and doers in this podcast,

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I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals on a demanding day, certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them. One a day, one a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell.

Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple. They're effective. 28 grams of protein, just 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. It's rare to find something that fits so conveniently into a performance-based lifestyle and actually tastes good. Dr. Peter Attia, someone who's been on the show, it's a great episode, by the way, is also their chief science officer. So I know they've done their due diligence in that category. My favorite flavor right now is the chocolate chip cookie dough. And a few of our teammates here at Finding Mastery have been loving the fudge brownie and peanut butter. I know, Stuart, you're still listening here. So getting enough protein matters. And that

can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. Now this week's conversation is with Tony Blower, a coach in the martial arts, self-defense, defensive tactics, and he's been doing this for over four decades. He founded Blower Tactical Systems, BTS, in 1985, and it's grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of performance psychology, personal safety, and close quarter

tactics and scenario-based training for law enforcement, military, and professional self-defense instructors. So he's using the martial arts, his understanding of tactics, as well as the understanding that he has about how the mind works under fear, to be able to help people perform better, both in high-stress, high-consequential environments, as in the martial arts, as well as consulting on tactics for larger organizations. So after decades of interviewing victims of violent encounters and studying violence. He also created the No Fear program, and that's spelled K-N-O-W as in knowledge, No Fear, which focuses on managing fear through self-awareness, resiliency, and a movement mindset. And his program's also been integrated by psychologists helping vets to deal with post-traumatic stress as well. And you may be familiar with Tony's work from the first time he was on Finding Mastery in

early 2020. And the world has changed so much since then. I wanted to have Tony back on to further discuss his approach to combating fear because we have been dealing with high stress, high fear. And I wanted to take a double click and understand how he's personally managing fear in his own life. So we definitely cover a lot of ground in this conversation. So stay with us here. And my hope is that you'll use this time to reflect on your triggers for fear and the fear loops that you find yourself in. And maybe consider how you, based on the way that we're talking about it,

how you might be able to better respond to those triggers and those fear loops in thought and in words and obviously in action as well. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Tony Blauer. Tony, so good to see you, brother. Mike, it's so good to see you. This pandemic has, we're so close, but it's kept us so far away. And now here we are talking via Zoom. You don't know this, Tony, but you were one of the most downloaded episodes last year. Dude, I got so much positive feedback from our episode uh it it really uh and i and i i i'm going to tip my hat to you when i first heard you interviewing people i actually said i want to be interviewed by michael

because you draw things out of people you're such such a good listener, but you're, you have this capacity to listen, but also hold without interfering with the conversation, like capture an idea and know that that's what you got to talk about. A lot of, it's an intuitive skill that you have. And I remember listening to you, binging on, on finding mastery going, I want this guy to interview me because I think he'll draw things out of me that other people won't. And I don't even know what I'm going to say, but I just almost want to be an observer in that conversation. That's, that's how much you inspired me the first time. That's really cool. And I'll tell you, like, I'll tell you how I work, but I'll also tell you what I think is happening for you is that, and I'll start

in reverse order. One is that you are willing and eager to go explore and to try to figure something out net new. So that really is a lean in, progressive, open, curious, relentless approach to figuring out what the truth is for you and for what you've been practicing for a long time. So that relationship between the two of us is like, that's how it works. But what I'm doing on the other side is I'm listening not to just the words that you're choosing, but I find those to be fascinating because of all the words you could choose, you're choosing the ones that you're sharing and the ones that I'm sharing right now. But I'm listening to the words. But then I'm listening underneath for the emotions. Like, where is it coming from? And I'm also fascinated with the highest regard about what are you trying to solve and why this now? And so I'm interested in the choice that you're making, the micro choices and the emotions that it's coming from. But then I'm mapping it,

Tony, up against psychological theory. And so in the background, I'm like, okay, oh, that's interesting. So he just kind of linked A, B, and C. And this is not, like if somebody were to think like oh that's how diagnoses work maybe but that's not what i'm doing i'm just like oh that theory is alive for him that theory is alive oh okay how about this theory oh he's got like four of those segments you know like what type of attentional processing do you do is it external is it internal do you get too stuck and narrow you You know, are you more positive or self-critical? Like I'm listening for all these different variables against a framework.

And so I'm not really holding what you're saying. I'm actually mapping it in behind the scenes, if you will. But what I love about our relationship and our conversations is you go places. And that being said is you've been doing it your whole life, but where do you want to go today? It's funny. I just want to, I just want to piggyback on a couple of things that you just, you just said, because I got messaged today from another podcast I was on where the host said, hey, did you dig the podcast? And I said, look, man, I got to tell you, I've never listened to a single podcast I've done because I just want the next one to be better.

And it made me think of that with like literally a half an hour ago, I wrote this to this guy when you talked about leaning into a conversation. And I'm always, I read a quote in the eighties and I paraphrase it and I share it all the time that I am constantly willing to give up who I am today for who I could become tomorrow. So I'm always on my, you know, in, in, at a detrimental level, like if you worked with me professionally, you'd probably go a little too hard on yourself. I get it. But I'm like, why did I do that? I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I said that I can't, I'm so critical. And to the point where in, in some cases i recognize what it's built in in terms of my my my coaching and my

skill sets and all of that i'm old enough now to kind of look back and go you know you probably still would have got here if you were less a little less severe you know with you know with your with your uh with yourself okay let's map that a little bit, if you will, or like understand. So does that mean, because I have one, in one way I hear this deep Zen approach, which is like, I'm not holding on to anything, including my identity. And what I'm working on is exploring to get to the truth. And I'm willing to let go of everything to be better, to be more whole, to be more true to the alignment of my thoughts, my words, and my actions. And that's the mission I'm on. That's kind of how I hear that. And then you add in there, yeah, but there's a self-critical nature to it. Why did I say that? That wasn't right. I

know that that's not pure. I know that I chose the safe route rather than the true route, or I chose to hold back when I could have gone a little bit further, or I wasn't precise with my words. I could have been a bit more aligned with, you know, I wanted to use the word parsimonious, like stingy with the fluff, but that's not going to come out right. So which one is it? Or is it a combination of both of those? It's more of the first one. I think the, the, the, the critical nature, you know, I like to joke around that, you know, that the school of life is taught to you by your experience, but you also grade yourself.

It's not like somebody else giving you, saying, I'm giving you an A plus on yesterday's confrontation. And, oh, I'm giving you a C today in how you negotiate it. It's, while that happens, and that's our perception, it was interesting in a class that I was teaching today, somebody asked the question, and I said, at the end of the day, beside it being the end of the day, it's all our responsibility that in the art and science and psychology of any confrontation management, right? Like we don't need confrontation management skills, fear management, mindset awareness, all this stuff when things are going well. It's not like, oh my God, I won a lottery. I don't know what I'm going to do with all the stress. Oh my God,

my health is perfect. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have so much energy today. It's when that rollercoaster dips and then we start feeling sorry for ourselves. And typically what we do, I say we, me and most humans is initially we point a finger, right? I have had some catastrophic things happen in business and they were done by people who have very, very low moral, ethical, legal standards, right? But at the end of the day, when I reflect back, I go, you know, I kind of let that happen. I saw that. I saw these pre-contact cues.

I saw this stuff. But my own cognitive dissonance said, you don't want that confrontation. That can't be happening. Wait, wait, wait. I got to fully interrupt you here because you just dropped some really serious clues about how you work. All right. And so do you mind if I totally interrupt the flow here? No, good.

Should I lie down? No, no, no. But this is really important because, listen, you've spent your whole life about confrontation and what happens in the moments before something heavy is about to happen and what the typical responses are when it's really heavy and you just and then you added you know the cognitive dissonance which i want to undo that a little bit because you were saying i was picking up the context clues the perceptive pre-observational. Yeah, the indicators.

Thank you. So you're picking those up, but you're denying a general brush, when people are in a really heavy, violent conversation, situation that they'll often say, you know, I actually thought it was about to happen, but I, I didn't want to be socially awkward. So I didn't scream or I didn't say something or I didn't, I didn't run because I didn't want to look weird. Well, you know what? Now you got, you put yourself in a bad situation because you didn't listen to look weird. Well, you know what? Now you got, you put yourself in a bad situation because you didn't listen. And I'm saying that happens in business. It also happens in hostile moments, you know, of real threat. So can you pull on that a little bit, how you work

there? Yeah. So, man, there's so many things and I'm going to and I need you to remember all this stuff because I won't. I got you. The system that I believe in for dealing with adversity, how to make decisions under duress is organic. and I almost narrate it's it's design because I can look at life and go like for example I deal with a lot of fear and I'm known as a fear management expert that's counterintuitive to a lot of people going I get asked questions like what's it like to have no fear Mr. Blower and I'm like I look around and go are you talking to my father or me like what's it like to have no fear, Mr. Blower? And I'm like, I look around and go, are you talking to my father or me? Like, what do you like, what do you mean no fear? Like, and people think that you get to that, you get to that point. I, I don't remember if I told you about this in my, in my first talk about the home invasion, my family experienced in 2010.

And does that ring a bell or no? It does, but I don't know if we talked about online or offline. Yeah. So, so the, so the story that's relevant here is in today's, in my self-defense class that I was teaching online this morning, I got asked a question, how do I know what the right thing to do is at the right time if I'm about to be attacked very much what we're talking about which is maybe why it it came out in conversation because it's fresh in my mind is that's like hey I'm being held up in an ATM how do I know if I'm going to do the right thing if I'm going to read the right thing if I if I should move preemptively you know what should I do and I said to the person listen in in my business, I know people that have been in gunfights

because I do a lot of work with tier one operators and very experienced cops. And I know people who've been in gunfights and successfully navigated that. And then I know high-end martial artists that have been in hundreds of street fights and have successfully navigated that. If I ask somebody who's been in a gunfight, what would you do if a guy had a gun or a knife? Their answer is immediate. I'll do this. Well, how do you know?

Because I've done it. I know how that works. And why I brought up the home invasion is there was a moment in the home invasion where my wife, I wasn't home. My wife and my three kids had been moved into a closet to be controlled. And then one of the guys came out and he had the gun at hip level and grabbed my wife's arm to pull her out of the closet. And I debriefed my kids after, you know, the cops came and the guys fled and they ended up catching them. Wait, wait, wait. Where were you?

Where were you? I had left. These guys watched me leave and then hit the house after I left. Did they know you? Did they know who you were? We still don't ultimately know, you know, what the background. They knew enough to not come in when I wasn't there. So it was a very weird, weird experience.

And what was their motive? Allegedly money, which they didn't get it. They'd been told there was like thousands of dollars in my house. And so it looked like it was a setup and some other stuff. And we probably have to talk about that a little bit offline because it got really creepy. But they were all caught. They're all in jail. But the most significant thing here, the most important thing here is my 16-year-old son

was standing in the closet beside his 12 year old sister and his seven year old sister and my wife, Jesse. And the guy comes in, he's got the gun at his hip, right? Grabs my wife's arm and says, you know, come show me where the money and the jewelry is. And afterwards, I'm debriefing my son. I want you to, first of all, as a dad visualize this, I'm sitting there talking to my son hours later, tell me what happened, how you feeling? Just trying to connect, tell him how proud I am because he's the one that called 911 immediately. And he said, dad, when they came and grabbed mom with the gun, I got really scared. I mean, I was scared already, but I was really scared.

And he says, and I remember that gun disarm that you had taught me at that seminar. But I remember what you said, that expect a round to go off right away. And because he was holding the gun at his hip, I knew that I didn't want them to take mom. And these, these guys didn't have masks on, which is a really bad sign, right? They're not trying to conceal their head. They're not trying to conceal their identity, right? This is, this is 2009.

And he says, you know, I didn't want them to take mom. And I thought maybe I grabbed the gun and do the gun disarm. But then I remembered what you said that expect one round to go off at least before the gun jams if you're wrestling over it. And I realized that my sisters were standing right where that round would go off. And I had to let them take mom and I had to let them take mom. I had to let them take mom, dad. And I'm there trying not to tear up, dude. This is 10 years, 12 years ago.

And as you're telling it now, what's it like for you? I've analyzed it and told the story so many times. It doesn't have the same emotion. When I used to tell the story i would have to stop because i would i'd start to cry uh i i i have so analyzed the whole situation that for me now it's more about sharing a thought to empower inspire somebody maybe listening to this and like so proud of my son, but the context was this, and it came up again this morning,

where somebody's worrying about if they're going to make the right decision in life, in whatever their confrontations in business, interpersonal relationship, family, or maybe a violent encounter. Am I doing the right thing? How do I know I'm doing the right thing? And I said to the group today, Michael, I said, imagine if I was the type of person that was dogmatic, right? We all know people that go like, like, this is the answer. This is how you do stuff. Imagine if I was the type of martial artist, self-defense instructor who said, this

is the gun disarm you do whenever the gun was here. What I would have eliminated from that was all the, what I call the three I's, instincts, intuition, and intelligence. Before I teach anybody anything, I ask them just to get in touch with their instincts, their intuition, intelligence, and then based on who they are at that moment in their life, what feels right? Because right or wrong isn't illegal, illegal. It's right or wrong for you. And how amazing is it that the 16-year-old kid in a closet with his sisters and his mom and kids crying and a guy with a gun would think this is not the time to do this. There's too much danger and too much risk. And actually says to me, I had to let mom go. And I'm like, like, try not to cry when he's telling me this,

because I just want him to, I want, I want him to feel and connect to the courage that, that it took. I'm talking a bunch of, a bunch of things things here but I had this epiphany last week where I said you know I said this on your show you can't be brave if you're not afraid but it didn't occur to me at how much courage it takes to manage fear people don't think about that that's such a cool concept that we're scared we We're scared. We see somebody do something courageous and we go, man, I wonder if I could do that. Not realizing that that courageous act, whatever it was right before it was wicked fear in that person, because if they didn't have fear, there would be no courage. There'd be nothing. Anyways, the, I bring that up because you were asking me about the pre-contact indicators in business and my cognitive dissonance and all of that. For me, I can remember clearly

when everything was going on for me with that business thing back then, I had this capacity through, and we've talked about how important self-awareness is. There is no critical thinking without self-awareness. And what every human should always be trying to do is understand themselves even better, right? All the time. And so when I started to see these flags that something was wrong in business. I explored it. This is interesting. I don't know. I don't know that anyone else would ever describe it. I explored it until I got the answer

that helped me choose cognitive dissonance as opposed to going deeper and recognizing I was getting screwed. I went, holy shit, I can feel my physiology changing. Okay, I just went from parasympathetic to sympathetic. I'm vertically breathing. I'm avoiding my partner and this guy. Okay, dude, face your fear. You're a fear management expert. Hey, I go into my COO.

Dude, what's the deal with this? It's very bizarre that they're changing the holding company. This is actually true. What I'm telling you, they're changing the holding company again from where it was and what was in our operating agreement. Well, let me look into that, Tony. Well, thanks. Get back to me on that. Phew. Okay. I'm confronted that that was weird. Nothing felt good about that. And we always say, you know, one of the tenets in personal safety, I always tell people, every victim of violence who lived to tell the tale said they had a bad feeling before the attack. Every single one of them. That's 100% of every victim. But they didn't have the courage to manage their fear.

So I feel good. Okay, I managed my fear. I went in there next day. I get called back in his office. Yeah. I checked it out. It's nothing. It's a tax benefit for them. Doesn't, doesn't affect us. You sure? Yeah. Okay. Now to be fair to me, the guy who was part of the deal was my COO. One of the guys that fucked me was my COO with my partner. So I went to him because I hired him. He was my guy. I trusted him. He's my COO at Vested Equity.

But here's the truth, is his answer didn't clear my suspicion, but it supported the cognitive dissonance to let it go. Meaning that you really wanted him to say it's good. Yeah. And when your intuition was like, something's not quite right, you said, but I got the verbal language that I was looking for. Right.

But no other language, body language, the intuition, all of that other stuff was, you know, spotty sense was spotty senses were high, but it's easier to not be in that, um, state of dissonance. So you minimize the other bits of information to, um, relieve yourself of that anxiousness. and and it was i liken it to going to get a test from the doctor you're freaking out and you're waiting for three days and the doctor says test came back you're good and all of a sudden it's like oh and he ignores or and you ignore he goes but listen you really got to lose 30 pounds and change your diet but you're okay you don't have this in other words there's like a everything's good but and you ignore the but

right um and that's and that's how it was and the reason is like i it's interesting because i'm a confrontation management specialist but i abhor violence i abhor confrontations i i hate fear and it's why i study all this stuff and i apply it and i use it you know i and i surprise people all the time i they i like i made the joke earlier on, and I make this joke like fear management needs new management because there's this stigma around the world about fear. Nobody wants to talk about fear because it just makes you feel like maybe you're not fully developed or developed properly, or there's just something, there's something about it. And, you know, at the end of the day, if you learn how to manage fear, you literally change your

relationship with fear, you change your life. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for life.

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Just good design, great science. And if you're ready to feel the difference for yourself, Felix Gray is offering all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code FindingMastery20 at FelixGray.com for 20% off. So let's put some definitions in place. How do you define fear? So the goofy definition, I say goofy, is like just the Merriam-Webster, you know, it's an emotion that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I look at fear as, and it was amazing, the feedback sharing the acronym on our original our original show false expectations appearing real false expectations appearing real it's when i'm visualizing an event in my mind that's happening in the future that's now actually immobilizing me in the present and and uh so in this fear factory in your mind you're the producer you're the director you're the screenwriter

and you're the star of the movie of your own making where you've cast yourself as victim number one in this documentary that you're producing. And it might be goofy to have this like fear factory, you know, movie metaphor, but I've used that and shared that with so many people. It's so simple that people go, oh my God. Yeah. Cause we've sat there all of us for five minutes, for five hours or five days worrying about shit that isn't even happening or hasn't even happened. And this, this connection that I want all, all of your,

your, your listeners. And I say it as much for me, cause I want to hear it as I do for you and other people listening to remind myself that, you know, time is the only thing that we can't regenerate in our lives. We can't get back time. We can spend time. We can waste time as the memes and all the quotes go. But the reality is this, when you get a fear spike over anything, and when you ask me to define it, my true answer is it's defined by the group that I'm coaching or consulting. So in other words, if I'm doing something for a bunch of women and it's a sexual assault self-defense seminar, their fears are very different than if I'm doing something for a YPO event and I'm talking to a bunch of successful entrepreneurs. And what I'm talking about is the shit they're worrying about that's robbing themselves of their opportunities right now. And I make this connection and opportunities,

of course, is just a generic word for things they need to be thinking of right now. So if I say to you in self-defense situation, you know, speed is the most important thing. And then someone goes, yeah, but I'm not a very fast athlete. I don't have fast twitch muscle fibers. And I go, no, no, no, not that type of speed. Speed to recognize there's a problem. Speed to trust and read your intuition, speed to manage the fear spike, speed to then choose the safest thing you can do.

These are all, and you, I know you love this shit. This is all metacognitive. Like all of that happens while you're sitting there like this. Holy shit. My company's being stolen from me. How quickly am I going to get off the X? Oh my God, I'm being from me how quickly am i going to get off the x oh my god i'm being followed how quickly am i going to get off the x right what's the what's the x is a is a military metaphor like left a bang get off the x x is the kill zone x is like you step on that and and and you stepped on an ied like everything just blows to shit so getting off the axis yeah you know what i love that you're doing is that you're in a very available way you're describing a very um personal and relatable experience that all humans have and you're not caught up in the mumbo jumbo psychobabble about, you know, technical terms. You're like,

listen, what you're describing is actually anxiety. You know, this false expectations, meaning that, you know, things could go wrong. And I'm kind of expecting that things could go wrong, but they appear real to me right now. And it's a really clever play on fear. More importantly, it's the rumination of that movie that robs the expression that is available to you in the present moment. And so I love where you're going with this. It's technically sound. You're on point. I know you're talking about parasympathetic, you know and just to be super clear sympathetic is when all the mechanisms in your body go right i think we need to fight right now or we need to run away i gotta interrupt you because you just reminded me of this and i'm gonna play it right now

um hold on a second um one of the things i saw, I just saw you post not even a week ago. And where are you talking about that? And maybe you could dig in a little bit here on this. Freeze. Sometimes submitting. But that flight, fright, freeze submitting protocol is designed by your brain scanning and saying that's a threat that's a threat that's a threat i'm gonna let it run a little or or so that's the bottom i don't know yeah yeah so if you like dig into that a little bit because it's it's super interesting yeah i mean this is our body's dictum is to figure out our brain's dictum is to figure out survival and things happen in nanoseconds and um we call it mind speed you know you call it like how fast or how quickly you can respond to something it's mind speed because if you're all gummed up and

you don't have good frames of reference and you don't have any kind of training or abilities, it makes it harder because you're trying to sort it out on the spot. But if you've got some frames of reference, you've seen these pictures before, you've trained in some kind of way, then you get to relieve yourself from the loop of what if, what if, what if, and you can get to action. And I don't know if what you would say, but likely a reaction is better than no reaction. Most of the time, you know, sometimes freezing, we don't talk about freeze and submit very much. But sometimes that is the right response. But if you're caught up in your head and you can't take an action, some environments that are consequential, it's really a problem. So yeah. Sorry, I cut you off.

No, no, no, no, no. I find it interesting because I, what I've tried to do and I loved how you described me as non-psycho babble because the fear management system that I created is almost like a strip map for, it's like, it's like fear management for idiots. That's the book, right? And a lot of times what you have is somebody who has the psychobabble gets pedantic in their explanation, deliberate use of the word pedantic, because most people don't know what it means, right? And so now they're using words where you almost feel helpless. I remember reading in the mid 80s, and I cannot remember who said it, it might have been anonymous, I'll blame it on anonymous, who said, if you say you're always trying to help people, why must you also keep them helpless? And that's what a lot of people who don't understand their own insecurity do to manipulate and create this power struggle or relationship. And I've always

said to everyone that I work with, like, I'm going to pretend this is the only time we are going to spend together. So I need to equip you with self-coaching skills. And so when I talk about the fear acronym of false expectations appearing real, I remind people like doubt creates hesitation. Hesitation creates procrastination. Procrastination unchecked creates fixation. Fixation then can turn into non-clinical or clinical anxiety. And like, if somebody says to me, you're in an anxious state right now, well, like fear, the word anxiety has pejorative connotation. Nobody, you know, nobody goes, it is like I do. It's funny when I, when I had to pivot and rebuild my business,

the first morning I started my online courses, I'm walking around the house and I'm going, and my wife says, you okay? I go, man, I have so much anxiety. In my house, it's like, it's self-awareness, acknowledging where you're at. So I'm zen, in the moment why do you have anxiety i go because i'm about to teach my first class in this new thing that i've done yeah but you're the best spear system instructor in the world why do and i said i and what i tell everyone is i go when you peel your onion and you know why, then it's okay. It doesn't mean you like the sensation,

but when I, if I don't know why I'm anxious, Michael, then that makes me even more anxious. I don't know what's wrong, but I feel like something's really wrong. But if I go, what I looked at her, I said, I haven't taught a group class in 25 years like this. I do seminars all over the world, but I don't have like 100 people in a group class on Zoom. I haven't taught like this since the 80s. And it wasn't on Zoom. It was in person. She goes, yeah, but you're so good. I go, no, no, no. My anxiety is I want this to be amazing because I want it to work. And I want them to get as much out of it as I'm going to get out of it. And I just want it to work. But the moment I could articulate that,

it didn't all go away, but I knew what it was. How much of that was that the reason the system activated for you and you had some anxiousness. So you had both the movie that you were running and then you had the physiological experience, right? The, the on, if you will, the, the, but it's a bit too much for maybe walking to eat breakfast, you know? And so, so you had both physiological and psychological things taking place in the psychology. How much of that was like this not true statement, but if I don't get this right, I'm going to look stupid. If I don't get this right, I'm going to lose my home. If I don't get this right, my future is cooked. If I don't get this right, which is like going from A to Z, you know, like without passing through the rest

of the alphabet. For me, that's the way it works. And I've got to back it down, you know, and I've got to go, whoa, I just got to the end of the alphabet. Hold up. Right. And then, you know, I, I don't know if that, if you go to those places, but when I feel anxious, it like that, that type of thing pops for me. Yeah. And, and, and I think, I think it's really refreshing first of all, for, you know, you, you're one of those guys that I listened to and I go, wow, I, I want to understand what Michael's talking about. You're like, I'll listen to you. And for you to say that you get anxious and can decode where it's from and go, wait a minute, you're at A to Z. in in my in my language in

my system i go okay you started this movie in your mind and not only are you sucking in this movie but here you just fell into an eternal pit and you're being eaten by the big boss at the bottom and everything's done right and you're like that that would be z and you know um i don't do that a lot like that but one of the things that you mentioned like mine won't go mine won't cascade into a bunch of things mine will be one but my self-awareness like i catch it like very often i'll sit there and all of a sudden i'll go whoa like i'm exaggerating like i'll i'll like turn the channel on that right and i literally say that i tell people that you're i love the term mind speed and i'll be adopting that but the mind speed but mine i come back to mind speed only matters if you have self-awareness

because if you if you get the vortex of the shitty movie like you wake up in the morning and and uh your tooth is hurting you you don't speed dial your dentist and go hey i haven't had root canal i really want that experience in my life it'll add to the tapestry of my my my uh my human consciousness when can you operate? You don't call your dentist right away. In fact, you wait days as it gets worse. And then he gives you shit for saying he or she gives you shit. You should have come in right away, right?

Because if we fear something's bad, it's natural to want it not to be happening. So, and this is where i was going with when we get any fear spike and you started to say you know like like the the dictum of you know uh fight flight freeze you know uh submit our our body's hardwired to want to survive right that's maslow's hierarchy the bottom one survival and then we have our cognitive brain or executive function going wouldn't it be cool to not even have to think about this today and not have that happen so I realized that I've created a way to look at fear that I wish somebody had taught me when I was 10, it was easy to understand where I wish somebody had said to me

as an athlete, like I was good at every single sport, but I was never great or I never fulfilled my potential because I hated the competition because I would do not A to Z, but maybe A to L in the competition. It wasn't like, oh, in this thing, you get tackled and both your legs are broken and they're amputated. And you never, it was, I'm going to let down my team. I'm going to let down my parents. I'm going to drop the winning pass. I'm going to be embarrassed. I would entertain all that. And so the weight of all of those movies in my mind, impaired me achieving what you would define as a flow state, just being one Zen with the action. And so as I put together the system where I was selfishly trying to figure out something for me,

I didn't realize it at the time. I was earnestly trying to help the people I was teaching, recognizing that when I found my path and passion and obsession, which was self-defense, I recognized that the people who survived violence were the ones who managed their fear, not the ones who did a move. It was never like, oh, look at this. Arm bars seem to be the answer. Oh, no. Rear strangle. No. Sidekicks. It wasn't like a technique that ever did it and i think that that if you look at all the people you've worked with what what separates like this extreme athlete this surfer this person from all the other pros that are really good this guy manages his fear differently and that to me like, like changes everything in that

individual. And it may be semantics for some people who, when people get really good, they never use the word fear anymore. Like, Oh, this is my, my prevent ritual. Don't mess with that. Don't, you know, whatever it is. But, but what I recognized was the people who managed their fear managed to fight, didn't guarantee victory, but it meant they were in the fight and therefore they had the experience. And that experience meant you use the, use the word before in mind speed, it became a frame of reference. And now you have abstraction. If you've done A and you've done B and then D happens, your brain very quickly goes, we're skipping C, we're going to right here, or we're going, it just, that abstraction just fills in the blank. It's not like, I was talking about what's the

difference between choking and freezing, or is it just semantics? Well, an untrained person freezes and a trained person chokes under pressure. And choking is the result of poor fear management. So your skillset doesn't change on game day. Your mindset does. You're not a better or worse athlete or business person or lover or, or whatever. If something goes wrong, you know, in, in business, in a speech, in a meeting, in bed, in a fight, it's, it's all, it's all that, it's all that mindset. Thank you, Siri. It's all, it's, it's all mindset, but, but, uh, real quick, that's what choking is. It's choking off access to your skillset. Yeah. Nice. Because you're thinking, because you're thinking differently about, um,

what could go wrong and this perception that I need to do or think or solve faster than I think I can. And so that's what choking and micro choking are really about. When you talk about the fear loop and you talk about fear spikes, can you walk through the basic frames of your model and just kind of talk us through that? Because right now, Tony, 2021 and 2020 were radical years, radical months about, did you properly invest in understanding how to work with fear? You know, and so if you got through 2020 and 2021 to date right now in a way that you're like, okay, you probably front loaded your abilities, your psychological skills to manage high stress. You know, and I think what we were learning is that we were not

equipped for chronic stress and acute stress. And so we've had incredible amounts of acute stress built on top of this chronic stress that we were ignoring because we had the luxury of ignoring, but so much change in 2020 and 2021 that it spun us for a loop. So can you talk about like the loop and the spikes and your framework referencing, you know, the experience that we've had over the last 18 months? Yeah. So like for me, I'll tell a little bit for me personally, most of my training is live and in person. And so at the beginning when things happen, it's like, hey, you know, flatten the curve two weeks.

It was like, okay, cool. And then when that went on, we started getting calls from different agencies and organizations that had booked us. Hey, we got to cancel. No travel, no training, no this. And literally in about three weeks, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of training contracts postponed, which is the same as canceled. It just sounds better when you say it's postponed. And I was sitting there and one day, like, I'm sitting there going, this is cool. This is fun. It's a beautiful day here. You know, I'll hang out with the family. I got my dogs. There's a trail over here. And then all of a

sudden, like a freight train, the numbers caught up to me. And I was sitting, I remember sitting in my office 20 feet away from where we are right now. And it was like someone had stuck a vacuum cleaner in my ass and started to suck my insides out. Right. And, and I was like, Oh my God, I realized, and I looked around at my house and it was funny because I went I could lose everything I built over 30 years and for 24 hours I was a basket case loss of appetite couldn't sleep heavy anxiety because all I had running was the movie like Like, if you don't fix this, you lose all of it. And you're out of control of the choices that people are making to not include you in their business cycle because they can't afford it or they don't want to right now. Or they just, out of legal obligation, they can't. Right, exactly.

And most of my clients were first responders. So it, it, it wasn't like, like if you had, you know, booked me for something and I was going, Mike, come on, we'll do it on zoom. Like back then, like right now, everyone's kind of cool training on zoom, but back then it was like, no, no, no. Zoom's not good. You know, maybe for a meeting, but we're not going to do training but these are first responders so they were like they were activated or deployed or fully occupied you know occupied and and so not only everything you said was true but i couldn't even try to psychologically manipulate them into come on we'll do it like here's the deal. It was like, no, we're like, we're busy and you can't fly here and no, you can't come. And so it was like, somebody just said, uh, your, your cashflow is stopped indefinitely. And I was looking at my house and I was looking at all the materialistic bullshit. I knew I had my family, but I also knew that I was the leader. I was, you know,

this is how we took care of things. Even though my wife and I are partners in the company, she took care of the stuff that I created. That was our dance, right? She's logistics and management, but I need to produce stuff for her to logistically manage. And I'm like, I didn't say anything to her for 24 hours. I was like, holy shit. And then I said to myself, too bad. You don't know, like a fear management expert, like, you know, and it was like, it was like, literally if you hired you right now, what would you say to you? Is the system you created so adaptive that you could, because I always tell people, it needs to be an algorithm.

Your fear management system needs to be an algorithm. It can't be specific. It needs to be, I drop it in here. So now to answer your question, to run you through my cycle behavior, how to make decisions under duress, I want to preface this by all I did is I took what for many people was a super scary moment, loss of security, which would represent losing your company, losing your house, total like, oh my God. And I called my team up of

trainers around me, which is about 11 people. And without going, hey guys, it's Tony, the management guy. It was like, okay, game face on, right? It'd be like the team that has hired you, Mike, is down a bazillion points at halftime. And you're like freaking out going, these guys are doing everything. And they go, Mike, give us something at halftime. And you go, guys, I'm scared for you. Like, no, that's not what we paid you to do. And it's not, again, the fake facade.

But, you know, I think I said this in our first episode that fear is contagious, but so is courage. Fear is contagious, but so is courage. Fear is contagious, but so is courage. And there's no downside to practicing courage. There's big downside to practice fear, right? And so I said, okay, I don't know what the answer is, but we're going to figure out how to get out of this. What became the big word, the pivot, right? And I sat down, I said to everybody on a Zoom call, guys, this is not sustainable, right? What are we going to do? What are your ideas? Let's just start kicking around some ideas.

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adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash finding mastery and use the code finding mastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. You're making me anxious. i and yeah because i relate to you know like a big pivot in business and feeling the responsibility uh for the wellness of others you know um like i relate to what you're talking about you You know what I really appreciate, Tony? You're an alpha in so

many rooms that you're in and you're true to your word saying, yeah, but you know what? Fear is real and I feel it too. And I'm going to also demonstrate another level here of being a true alpha, which is to talk about vulnerability and then to say, yeah, I'm not immune. And you know, there's something on the line for me too. And I just want to say, I appreciate it because I need to hear it. And I bet there's plenty of humans that are like, yeah, you know, when I'm real, when I get quiet and I'm honest, I know what I'm afraid of. And if we keep busy, yeah, if we keep getting busy and we keep checking Instagram and whatever, whatever, and we keep listening to stimulation outside of ourselves without getting quiet and

listening, like that, that you said, I was a day of reflection. If we don't listen, we never get to that clarity. And then we can actually take steps with conviction to do something about it. So from clarity to conviction really requires the middle part of that is mental skills. Right? So get clarity means I got to go. I got to listen. I got to feel what is going on. And then I've got to have some sort of mental skills to step in boldly,

to be vulnerable, to have courage. There's the same coin opposite sides. And then I've got to be able to talk myself through ledges, you know, through crevasses. Like I've got to work myself through these fear spikes and these loops that I can catch myself in. And I appreciate. Thank you, man. catch myself in and um i appreciate thank you man because yeah people look at you and go i want to be that dude because he can he's he knows how to have command of himself and you're saying yep i do and i'm also intimately connected to what fear does and none of us are getting through this life without fear but but i i think that's the thing. I, I, and first of all, I appreciate you acknowledging that in your, in your, in yourself, when you stopped me and you said,

you're making me anxious. I actually started to get defensive, not defensive, but like, oh my God, what did I do wrong? Like, I felt like I was seven years old. I felt like a seven year old for a second. I was about to get in trouble from the school teacher. Oh God, no, no, yeah, no. That's an interesting choice to go to, right, for you? Yeah. But this is the whole thing.

Hold on, if I was a shrink, I'd say, oh, seven. Yeah, yeah. But this is the fun part. Wait, hold on, you didn't bite. You didn't bite at all. Because, because this, this is what, this is the, the biggest, the biggest strength that I, that I wish upon everybody is to cultivate that level of self-awareness where, so I can,

I can be seven years old and then 60 years old like this. I go, wow, that was interesting that I felt that way. I can talk seven years old and then 60 years old like this. I go, wow, that was interesting that I felt that way. I can talk about it. And if someone walked in my garage now and I had to punch them in the throat and protect my family, I would do that and then go, sorry, Mike, I had to defend my family for a second. Where were we? And I have no trouble. I would rather not feel vulnerable because if your connotation for vulnerability is weakness, then you don't want that. But if, if, if suddenly you recognize that vulnerability is awareness and then you take

that moment and that experience and you build on it, then, then that was actually mind speed, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, listen, you can't get to the extraordinary without passing through that hallway. You know, you can't get there. And so this is what I love about people who are going for it, is that they don't know how it's going to go. By definition, the outcomes are uncertain, whether it's in, you know, tier one operators or for sure, or it is, you know, an athletic adventure.

You don't know, but you bring it. And in that not knowing experience is where you really are testing your head and your feet and your connection to truth and your connection to others. Because nobody does the extraordinary alone. You know, somebody is in there with you at some point. And you can say, well, hold on. Mono a mono, cage door closes in that sport. You're in there alone.

I go and, you know, both of us have done some work in the UFC and I go, no, I don't see it that way. I actually see that that person is in there, but there's a whole community that's supporting that person. The lone wolf is actually the dog that's been kicked out of the tribe. Right. Right. And so if you're going to so if you're truly alone, we got some problems for survivability. And so nobody does the extraordinary alone. All that being said is I got this other thought in my head before we go back to your story is that the fighters that I would work with, we would prepare them to go into that cage alone.

Right. So that was our entire focus was this, when the cage door closes and there's 20,000 people that are screaming for blood and there's a million people that are watching and you're walking up those five steps with no shoes on bare feet, bare hands practically. And you're walking in and staring down a highly skilled human equally if not maybe better at some capabilities than you are and uh violence is about to ensue you're in there alone right but nobody does it alone and i know i don't want to speak out of my

both sides of my mouth and so um yeah anyways i'm sharing that with you because i didn't want you to think that i didn't understand um the intimacy of aggression and the intimacy of of violence no no for sure listen the the uh moments of great survival um when somebody's asked what kept you in the fight, they rarely say, well, you know, I, I, you know, I was really hungry and I wanted to have lunch, but I knew I had to go through this death match to it. It's usually something significant like about family or a partner or, and so the whole,

like for some people that might disagree with what you say are misconnecting something in their own semantics that fighter who's he's in the cage alone that surfers on the wave alone uh someone jumping from outer space they're alone but their why they're doing it is way bigger than yeah it felt like jumping you know from outer space into the planet today like no this is months and months and months of preparation training and to the point where the you know it comes back to to my max and those the people who manage their fear manage to fight, right? It's very easy for us to look at just that game night like that and go,

wow, that guy's so tough. He did this by himself and blah, blah, blah, not recognizing that it's not even just the team around them. There's so many other factors. You said something earlier that made me think of uh of an incident that happened with one of my daughters in in europe and um it it's this thing where i got a t-shirt coming out and the t-shirt just says fear manager on it sorry it's our new t-shirt and hopefully everyone in the world will buy one because at the end of the day i jokingly go if you substitute

fear for whatever freaking god replacement word you want but if i say mike i'm coming into town pick pick a place to take me uh dinner. If I'm a VIP guest and you want it to be a good dinner and you go, should I take him for steak or should I take him for fish? I think he likes sushi. You're not in a fearful state because you know, a few good restaurants, but the doubt and the hesitation is a, and this is just my, my philosophy. It's a fear of making the wrong choice because you want the right thing to happen, the best event to happen. So even in a non-noxious event, like where should we go eat? What movie should we go to? What movie should we put on Netflix tonight? If I peel the onion, it's, I don't want to waste my time and make the wrong choice. I want

to have a good time. So it's not fear folks listening to this. It's not like fear, like survival fear. It's, it's, I, it's really simple. And this is why I say like the cycle behavior, the fear loop that I created, it's an algorithm that spits out answers for you that create movement so that you're not sitting like there's nothing like there's what's the difference between the word inaction and inaction one word has a hyphen one word doesn't where do you put the hyphen i n hyphen action is i'm doing stuff and you said something like a half an hour ago about creating movement. Even if it's not the right movement, it's better than not doing anything. And this is true. There's nothing worse. And I'm sure I've told people, if you're lying in bed and you start to get anxious, do something. Get up, do some pushups, go for a walk, read a book, put on a movie, do some meditation, do some breathing, but don't do nothing. That'll just get worse. That movie will get worse. And so, so what was, what was interesting and, you know, what I, what I recognize that I've done over, over a course of decades is created a system

that I would have understood when I was 10. And I understand now it's 60, the same system that, that I use to pivot my whole company and get everything and start moving and not knowing what we were going to do. It wasn't like that afternoon, we had a meeting and I went, Oh, these are the four new websites we're going to do. And these are the four new online programs that we didn't know what it was going to be when we started moving and just the movement. And this is probably the most important thing that I can show people is when you manage fear, it doesn't mean the fear goes away. Sometimes it does, but usually what happens is you're moving and you have little moments. I call it the duress path where you're in a bit of a flow state.

You're going, okay, great. We're going to start moving. We'll do this. I'll do that. You do this, you do this. And then as you start to move your brain, the movie in your mind that was put on pause for a moment, the horror movie goes, I hope this works, but it wasn't the, uh, the giant monsters eating me. It was like, I hope this works. And then you get a little bit more traction and you get a little bit more momentum. And I just want to share this. So I've been obsessed with understanding fear and the psychology of fear and differentiating. I'm not a big fan of fight or flight and submit and freeze. I recognize its place, but I see those definitions as at a forensics level that we look at post event and we go, oh, that was fight. That was freeze.

That was submit. I'm more interested in how do we self-coach ourselves through a high stress situation? And I remember, I'm not sure if I shared the story, but I got to share it now just in case. In one of my gyms, I had an elevated boxing ring and my son was about five, six years old. He was there. He had climbed up on the ropes and he was sitting on the turnbuckle and it's loose. And he's sitting around there bouncing. And I come out of my office and I see him up there. I'm not a big fan of heights. I see him bouncing up there. And I look at him, I go, Nick, and like, cause he scares me. Cause he's like wobbling along there. And when I yelled Nick to tell him don't bounce on the turnbuckle,

he flinched. Imagine that startle flinch, right? He flinches. And when you flinch, you lock up. And when you lock up, your proprioception changes, your kinesthetic perception changes. And when he locked up, he was less stable than when he was relaxed having fun and he almost fell. And I immediately in slow motion. And he almost fell. And I immediately in slow motion. So if he fell off that elevated ring, he could break his neck. He could fall down. Right. And like I gesture, I go, he's like, and he almost falls. And I go, don't move. And I run

over and I grab him. I go, dude, you can't just climb up on anything. You got to be careful. And I was so scared. But what I had done is I created a fear of heights in my son that I will never ever forget and so years later and I know I know you got so many things to say about this but years later I'm in Europe with my daughter my son's hanging out with my wife and my daughter I got two daughters now but we just said one at the time Madison's up on some uh uh' play bars. And this is like an old playground in the country in England. This wasn't one of the new playgrounds that you see,

like padded grounds or padded everything. This is like the paint's coming off shit. And she's on this teenage on the monkey bars. And she's doing like bear crawl on the top. And the monkey bars, you's doing like bear crawl on the top and the monkey bars you can picture this everyone listening is i'm watching there and she's doing like a bear crawl across the top and i can't reach her and all i'm thinking is don't scare the shit out of her like you scared nick and give her this fear of heights but holy shit if she slips on this old like all the paint was off. So it was

all like metal slippery. And I'm visualizing as I do everything that can go wrong. And I'm trying not to energetically infuse her play spirit with that. So I'm like smiling, going, wow, looks good. Let me know when you're ready to come down. Cause I'm freaking out. Like, I'm like smiling going wow looks good let me know when you're ready to come down because I'm freaking out like I'm not saying that but I'm thinking this and literally like if you can imagine this I couldn't reach it was one of these things that if I wanted to jump on the on the bars I'd have to I'd have to jump up that's how high up it was she gets around the middle Mike and she pauses and she's in that pipe position, like the, you know, the bear crawl. And she's I can see white knuckles.

And I go, hey, what's up? She goes, dad. And her voice changes. I go, yeah. And I'm saying to myself, like my inner coach is going, do not project any fear. Be totally cool. She goes, dad, I go, what's up, sweetie. She goes, I'm scared. And I go, it's okay. Listen, all I want you to do is lower your stomach down, lower yourself down. Like you're going to lie down like, like, like you're

floating in the water and then we'll, your legs will come through and daddy I'll grab you from there. You're fine. Just lower yourself down, honey. And I just seeing if she slips now, like one of the bars is going to hit her in the throat. One of the bars is going to hit her and knock at her teeth, knock her, visualize the angle, right? And she's up there like this. She's up there, Mike. And I go, just lower yourself and she goes why i go i want you to lower yourself and then i can because i can't reach you she goes oh i don't want to stop i just wanted to tell you i was scared and then she continues moving and i'm like literally i hear like angels i'm like holy shit dude i got goosebumps right now. When the student is ready, meaning you, the master appears.

Right. And I was like, oh, my God, my teacher. How did she do that? What she did is she paused like a moment of intuitive mindfulness. She was seven years old. Intuitive mindfulness. I'm scared. If I continue to move scared, I might make a mistake. Acknowledge it. Breathe through it. And then she continued. And this is what I want to share with your audience is there's lots of things in life that we do scared, like get married, like have kids, like start a new business, like defend ourselves, like quit a job and pivot during a pandemic, whatever.

But we need to do them scared. And if we just acknowledge it, that fear can be cathartic if you embrace it and turn fear into a fuel. In this metaphor, I say, you know, anything that creates a fear spike is something that's way outside your comfort zone, right? So I jokingly go, we got our comfort zone. We got our discomfort zone. Those are like, I'll put my, I'll put my foot in there. Oh, that's cold. Okay. I'll go slowly into that. But then there's our holy shit zone and the holy shit zone triggers the fear, the fear spike,

where we, we go into this, what I, what I call a a rant we stop moving stop the duress path is yellow we're going slow we're we're not driving as fast as normal because we know you know we're we're really close to this we better stop and think and so this this this whole idea of this changing our relationship and this metaphor is our body. Our body is the car. Our mind is our map where we want to go. And in this metaphor, and don't be a contrarian and talk about green car energy and electricity right now. Just go with this old school. Anyone listening going,

what about a battery operated car? No, in this metaphor, your fuel is fear. And you only need, and imagine this, if you recognize you went, I am going to need a lot of fear to do something I've never done before that represents risk to me. So should I be afraid of the fear or should I embrace the fear in that case? Well, embrace it. And instead of like, because typically fear is, we talked about, you mentioned intuition earlier, intuition whispers in our ear. We've all had events where afterward, everyone listening to this has had things happen to them where afterwards it went, I knew that was going to happen.

Well, if you knew it was going to happen, why'd you do it? So you didn't know, you didn't listen to your intuition or your cognitive dissonance or your unconscious bias or whatever shut down your body's most reliable gps your intuition says i wouldn't do a deal with that person i wouldn't turn down this street i wouldn't walk this way right i wouldn't take this fight whatever it it is, but your ego, your pride or whatever does it. And then afterwards you go, you know, I knew this was going to happen. So I always talk about trust your intuition, trust your instincts, use your intelligence, choose safety. And remember this in that metaphor, your body is your car, your mind is your nav system, your map.

And if you're expanding your comfort zone, there will be fear. So let the fear be the fuel. Our typical reaction to fear is like fear whispering in your ear. You suck. You're going to miss your turn. You're driving too slow. You're not ready. You need to shut that up and just say, the fear is supposed to be here.

I need it. And then you may get to the point, like, you know, you know, some of the most amazing athletes in the world, most of them don't describe their fear as fear anymore because they've forgotten all the reps they did that, that created this, this world-class skillset. They're fr they're freaking they're they're unicorns now for most of us they they talk about being switched on or they talk about getting hyped up or activated you know they talk about yeah i had a little buzz early you know but i managed that right you know so they know that it's part of it and um at some level you look forward to it

because it is uh you're right on the razor's edge of like this amazing moment which we didn't talk about which is potentially fear i'm sorry no no no no no 100 but that's that's what i wanted like you know you've got such a diverse eclectic audience that consumes your show and i know this because i've been hit up by so many people that heard our first show and i'm like they're not all like like coaches and sports psychologists it's so diverse your audience and and i i want them to recognize that the person who's chosen their path in life to do these things that's also part of their like they lean into that i need to do this if you took this away from me that would be that would suck right so so they won't use words like you know

yeah i was really anxious before you know when i saw the weather and I saw that wave was going to be the biggest ever. It was like, yeah, I was activated. And they'll use cooler words when we can learn and glean stuff. But for the rest of us mortals, I go, yeah, I was scared chillest, you know. And it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing. Yeah. And you're just to be clear is like, it doesn't mean that the extraordinaries, the humans that are doing the extraordinary and whatever that they don't have this, they have it,

they have a different relationship with it because they've had more reps with it. And those reps have, um, right. Sometimes worked out and sometimes not worked out, but their purpose was much bigger than the experience and the scratchiness of the transient state of fear. So anxiety is a pervasive loop, fear, but there's cognitive and somatic responses. And so cognitive is the looping, the mental looping about, well, what if, what if, what if, what if, and then that, and then that's the movie that you're talking about. And then there's somatic, which is the internal combustion. And I think you're saying you need both.

You need that kind of switching on of your alertness of your mind and the switching on of your physiology to step into a risk situation and if i have your if i have your loop right it is that you there's real or perceived um threat or challenge like there's something real or perceived that's taking place and then um you know you can go straight to execution mode, but as soon as for most people, as soon as that thing is, you perceive that it's real or not, you know, that there's a, a loop that takes place. There's that spike. And the loop is that you can go through the duress pass straight to action, which is a little bit, I think you said slower, right? There's a, it's a little bit more congested. But if you don't get out of the fear loop,

what happens? You go back up to analyzing, right? You go like, okay, hold on. I'm not in the right frame and this isn't going to work out. These false expectations are going to take place. And then you start to see it and you start to believe it. And then you start to kind of actually feel as though it is 100% real because your body's absorbed in those states. And then you have to apply psychological skills. You have to manage yourself. And that's one loop.

Do I have that right? Yes, that's exactly right. And so on my graph, and I'll share it with you again to share our latest one, but our fear loop is red, our duress path is yellow, and then flow state switched on leaning in is green. And so I've got these three colors there. And I tell people, if I say to you, Mike, I want you to do this right away. And you stop and you go, I wonder if that'll work out. Tony wants me to do that right away.

While you're deliberating, you're in what I call the fear loop, meaning there's no action. You're not doing anything. You're in your mind right now. The moment you start to move, but you're still wondering, is this going to work out? I hope I prepared properly. It's the duress path.

And I can give examples of this for a fighter, for an adrenaline sport athlete, for a business person. And so we want to immediately, we never want to be in the red. We always want to be in yellow or green and the yellow and green is ultimately if I could, if I could select, I'd just be in flow state all the time. Right. And so, and so what happens is because the mind loves to do, and you're a big meditator and you know, like we, we do our best to control what we're thinking, but we get unsolicited thoughts all the time. And the ones that really capture our imagination and our attention, if it's a negative thought that we invest in, that can trigger the fear spike. So I could be moving, I could be moving towards you. Like I've worked with a lot of fighters. I go, you know, this is the counter to this guy's best move. And we work on it in training and then they get into the fight and they don't do it. And I'll say, you're not doing the thing we did. And they're looking at me like deer in the headlight. And I'm going, what's going on here? Why aren't you executing

this? And if they can articulate it, it's because they're visualizing the counter to the counter. In other words, they suddenly, I had one guy who had this amazing jump back kick. And I told him before the fight, I said, Dan, I've never seen you do this in a fight. I've seen you drop guys in sparring, but I've never seen you do it in a fight. Why? And he said, because I always see my opponent countering me. So I said to him before his next fight, I said, Dan, in this fight, what would you do if you didn't fear fear?

And he goes, what? I said, if you didn't fear fear, what would you do if you didn't fear fear? And he goes, what? I said, if you didn't fear fear, what would you do? First minute, first kick, jump back, kick the face, knock the guy out. It's really interesting. You could be actually moving. And if you're not doing the thing you need to do, there's a part of your brain that's in the fear loop. To everyone else, it looked like you're just sparring, you're moving around, but you're not accessing, you know, the skill set or the strategy that you wanted, that you needed to do. Well, that's that scratchiness that I talk about. That's that friction, that internal friction where it's the the grooves are not greased that's flow state and it's just you're sliding and it's amazing and it's like whoa but let's the sub

optimal from that is what you're talking about this yellow path and so i'm right there with you how do you get out of it the yellow is the duress path and all it means is you haven't done enough reps if i say for example i'm trying to give a metaphor i had a really bad neck injury did some stuff to my body that i couldn't walk 100 yards without stopping and squatting to release the pressure on my nerves. And sometimes, Mike, I'd be in tears. And I'd be in tears because as a lifelong athlete, I was wondering if I was going to get out of this. I couldn't believe that I couldn't work out anymore, that I couldn't even go for a walk. If I tried to run, my fingertips would go numb. It was one of the scariest times of my life. And I did some work with, you know, Eric Goodman Foundation. And Eric gave me some exercises that released some pressure in my spine

that allowed me to walk a little bit more, a little bit more. But I need to tell you this, like I said to him, he says to me, if this works works and I don't know if it will, if it works, you'll have to do these exercises the rest of your life. Well, as soon as he said that I went in the fear loop. How am I going to do this the rest of my life? I'm in pain, but I can't even walk. I'm giving an example for me that I now walk twice a day and I can run again. light runs. Three years ago, two years ago, a year ago, I could not run and I couldn't walk. I couldn't keep up with my wife on a walk. And so the example I'm giving you is every day that I would go to walk, I would be in the fear loop for a moment where I'd go, is this going to hurt? Am I going to cry? Am I going to have to

stop? And then I said, no, you're going to walk. And when it really hurts, you this going to hurt? Am I going to cry? Am I going to have to stop? And then I said, no, you're going to walk. And when it really hurts, you're going to stop, you're going to resolve the pain, and then you're going to walk again. And so even though I knew how to walk, and I knew I wanted to walk, I walked in the duress path. And then every so often, I don't know if this is a fair example for people, but I wanted to share something very, again, intimate that I knew how to walk. I knew what walking was supposed to do. I knew that it would be good for me. I, I, uh, but I was so afraid of the pain I was going to feel that I would sometimes not want to walk. That'd be fear loop. I would walk very carefully. Is this going to hurt? If I tried to extend my stride or swing my arms, that would cause more pain in the nerves

because I was flossing nerves accidentally. And here I am three years later, I can go for a brisk walk now, almost no pain. But there's always a part of my brain going, always a part of my brain, but a little bit of cortisol going, is this going to hurt today? Are you okay? And then I go, I feel okay. And so I go from, you need to get up and walk, but you don't want to read, get up and walk. You need it for your health. You need it for your mind. Moving meditation. Walk. Okay, tight flow was 60 dealing with all this pain. And I saw a landmark. I saw a street sign. And I remember just like a non-conscious voice in my head saying, try to run to that sign. And then another voice said, what if it hurts? And another voice said, run to the sign. And if it hurts and another voice said run to the sign and if it hurts you can stop and

walk and i ran and i got there and and i gotta be careful how i explain it right now because literally my eyes will tear up and i ran it was like 70 yards man but i was like it was like when rocky ran up the steps oh my god i ran i hadn't run in three years, but that was chronic pain. That was for me. That was for me, man, going from fear loop. You can't move to, I got to move which was duress path for, for two and a half years to now it's like after the podcast, I'm going to go for a walk and it'll be saunter green flow. And, and for everyone listening, like, that's what stuff is you, until you are looking forward to it and wanting to do it,

it'll be duress path, but you don't get to the flow state. You don't get to the reps without going through the duress path. And I think some of it is semantics that if I was talking to one of your athletes and I go, like, talk to me about the duress path. They go, I don't know what you mean. It's just different language. In the beginning, when it was your first fight, were you nervous? Like you always wanted to be a world champion. Were you nervous in your first fight?

No, listen. And there are, I always say this, there are some athletes or business people or musicians that are just truly fricking the Mozart's, the Wayne Gretzky's, the whatever, that are like, we learn from them and we're amazed by them, but they're the unicorn they're like they're like you know can we get some of your dna and try to replicate this like what did you do uh the rest of the people

if you give them the right language their first fight they were scared shitless their 10th fight they were worried their 20th fight they were like yeah yeah i i felt a little off this morning but then i remembered why i'm here and then like you know 30 40 fights in how do you feel great let's get this done let's go right uh and unless you remind them that you know their first their first day outside the boxing gym or the MMA gym or the, the ski hill or the, the, that they didn't actually go into the water that they stood there for a long time, watching ways going, you know, uh, I don't know, maybe I'm talking out of my butt here, but I think people who are, have that type of self-awareness go, yeah, yeah,

I was scared shitless at one point. And now this is what I do though. So I need, I need to manage my fear or I don't, I don't, I don't take this trip. So where can people follow what you're doing and take your course? How do we get some activation here? Yeah. So recently I spent, I put together a book called Making Friends With Fear. It's an ebook. It's nine pages long. And I want to share this really quick reason why is- Did you say nine pages? Nine pages. Nine pages. pages nine pages there's so many jokes in here but you know if i and then i hear you know the the epic kind of if i had more time i'd write a shorter note right you know like so yeah so you got it yeah you got it listen it took me 40 years to write the nine pages right took me 40 years

uh i have people that ask me to write a book and they tell me that it needs to be this long, this many chapters, this many characters. So I created a, I'll be transparent with everybody. I created some funnels online so that I could save my company. And one of the companies that I hired, they said, Hey, we'll get everyone to buy your no fear program. And by the way, if you don't remember from the first show, if you didn't, if you're just discovering our stuff, it's spelled K N O W no fear, not N-O fear, the great adrenaline company with a great slogan, but getting to no fear changes your relationship with fear. You change your relationship with fear, you change your life. So I got asked, Hey, we need like, like, what are the three things you need to remember about fear? We'll use it as, as clickbait to get emails. And then we'll sell your funnel.

I go, I don't do that shit. I'm just going to tell people right away. No, no, no, no. It can't be too long. People don't want long. I go, I can't do three, the three things you need to know about fear. They said, we'll do like 10 then. I go, no, no, you don't get it. I'm going to just start writing some stuff. And it was like, but it can't be more than page Tony. Well, one page became two pages. We can't email the guy back, dude, I'm on two pages. We can't email the guy back. Dude, I'm on page five. I can't stop writing.

I'm not, I'm not trying to suck people in. I want to give them actionable stuff that if they read it, they go, I don't even need this guy. I got this stuff. So I ended up not hiring this guy, hiring somebody else. Cause I wrote these nine pages and it took me, but I need you to know, it took me 40 plus years to write these nine pages. And you may read them.

You said earlier, like when my daughter's story, hey, when the student is ready, the master appears. You may read this and you may hear something in it that is like a light switch in your mind. And it just changes things for you. Boom. If you need more, and I'll get you the link to it. If you need more, I put together for people who can't, in the same way you have your books, compete to create your online programs. There are people who can't afford because of geography or because of finances, they can't afford to bring Mike into their home and go, hey, coach me. I put together, as if you were in my live No Fear seminar, I put together a course

called No Fear. It's a digital course online. There's that. And of course, we do Zoom coaching. And in some parts of the world, we fly and do courses and stuff. So those are the best ways. But if you go to nofearnow.com, K-N-O-W-F-E-A-R, now N-O-W, nofearnow or coachblower. You'll see the stuff there. And of course I'll give you the link to share. Okay, good. Yeah, no, that's good. That's a good direction. And then in the no fear online course, is it self-defense or is it the psychology? Yeah. Great, great question. All mindset. Listen, if you said to me, Hey, Tony, I saved up all my, my money. I I'm going to do a one hour course with you. Teach me some cool move like Sean Connery and the Presidio. So, or, or Spock and Star Trek, show me one cool move. I tell you, if we only have an hour to spend together,

I'm going to teach you everything I can about fear management, because if you don't manage your fear, you will not manage the fight. You cannot be brave if you're not afraid that courageous people had a fear spike before being courageous. And so there are a lot of people that have a lot of technique and they've learned a lot of stuff. They're the amazing musician, but they can't get on stage in front of play and play. They're amazing in practice, but they can't get on stage in front of play and play. They're amazing in practice, but they can't get on the court, right? They choke, they get their, their, their, their micro chokes and their major chokes. And it just changes their life. That was me as an athlete, my whole life, right? Just like, like I was there and nobody could tell, but inside I was dreading every moment

so i will tell you this this course is all about how to change a relationship with fear how to manage fear whether it's in business or personal relationship or uh self-defense but there is no physical self-defense in this course coach blower.com nofearnow.com. I love it, dude. All right. Tony, you're a legend. Thank you for your courage to share openly your body of work over the 40 years to be able to articulate, you know, how fear works and from an applied standpoint, and then your commitment to put it down on paper and put it online. So I got great respect for people that actually take those steps. So I want to say thank you. Thank you, man, for I learned so much listening to you. I wrote down some things. I got to go study some things. And

I love the work you're doing. And it's always an honor and more of an opportunity to actually be on your show with you. Thank you. Tony, appreciate you, brother. Be well. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe

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