Start With A Win - Fear, who needs it?

Episode Date: November 23, 2018

On this episode of the Start with a Win podcast, our topic is fear, which Adam calls False Evidence Appearing Real. If you have an aversion to fear and you dread the feeling, you have an unhealthy and unproductive relationship with it, and you could solve a lot of your own problems by learning to handle fear differently. Many people harbor a known or unknown infatuation with fear as evidenced by their love of the scary or creepy elements of Halloween, craving for the “rush” feeling that comes from roller coasters, or dependence on the “breaking news” elements of the news industry. These are all caused by fear-mongering and maintaining an open loop version of reality that leaves too much room for imagining the worst-case scenarios. An unhealthy relationship with fear leads to unhealthy personal and business relationships and practices and puts you in a cycle with no good results.Adam’s first key to creating a healthy relationship with fear is to ignore the attempts by the media to communicate fear by keeping the right perspective and seeking out the facts. Second, you should convert your feelings of fear to the ability to move forward with confidence and look for opportunities. When you are tempted to think “fear”, you should learn to think “Go!” instead.Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/adamcontosREMAXCEO/https://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/

Atop of the 12th floor of the Remax World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. Hello everybody, Adam Kantos here with me, producer Mark. How are you, Mark? I'm wonderful. Thank you so much for asking. Wonderful, as always. I try.

Hey, no, you do. That's right. There is no try. There's no try. I try. Hey, you know, you do. That's right. There is no try. There's no try. Only do. Isn't it Yoda that said that? I believe so. Wise Yoda.

I don't know what kind of creature he was, but he was an alien. Alien. He's just a generic Jedi master alien. That's right. Yeah. I have to work on my Yoda impression here. Yeah. It's one of those things where it could go really good or really bad.

Really bad. But hey, you know, it would be fun, right? Yeah. Speaking of Yoda. Yeah. Alien. Right? But someone might be afraid of aliens.

That is a great segue. Not that we didn't intend to throw that in there, but we're talking about fear, right? Yeah. Being afraid. Today's episode is about fear. In fact, I just wrapped up a speaking tour talking to a lot of our different business owners, brokers, and some agents throughout North America. And a part of my speech was about fear because it is an intrinsic part of society right now. I mean, it always has been, but I think it's something we need to address.

Yeah. In what way? We all have a relationship with fear, but is it truly a healthy relationship with fear? Is it a productive relationship with fear or is it a non-productive relationship with fear? And that's, that's a question we have to ask ourselves when we go through all of our, you know, every day through life, through, you know, what we fill our brains with when it comes to information, are we causing ourselves problems in how we address that fear? In fact, so 80 years ago, Orson Welles is on this radio broadcast and they opened the broadcast with some, you know, this is a drama that we're doing, some music, stuff like that.

And then it gets into this episode of aliens are invading. But there was this panic that was caused because people would tune into this and they're going, oh my gosh, you know, the world's coming to an end. We're being invaded by aliens. They have ray guns. And that was fear, right? Yeah. And it was some response to fear. So when you kind of go all the way back and you look at kind of collectively what fear does to us, it's fascinating what it does to our brains. In fact, fear and the fight or flight mechanism in our brain

does some of the same things, produces some of the same chemicals as the pleasure response in our brain. Interesting. Kind of like what adrenaline and dopamine and these other things do for us because we only have so many responses. But it's interesting. Now, let's talk about Halloween. We have this fascination with fear, right?

We all get dressed up and some people dress up like superheroes. Some people dress up like their favorite characters or whatever. But ultimately a lot of Halloween is dressing up like scary creatures. Freddy Krueger. Yeah. Mike Myers. That's it. You know, some of the movie characters or, you know, the, what's that, the clown that hides in the uh

the drain and it's i don't know the name of the clown is but the movie is it pennywise or something like that is the is the clown and uh i have a drain by my house i was going to put a balloon in last night just to see what would happen but uh it's you know we we have this fascination with with scary stuff because it gives us this weird rush. That's a problem because we also have this subconscious fascination with fear. And it's this subconscious attraction to fear that I've talked to some business leaders about. And I want to kind of unpack that a little bit because you look at how society functions today and fear is used to leverage attention think about that what happens when you turn on the news mostly it's fear-based stuff

you got it yeah the war the invasion of whatever yeah in fact i mean do you remember like a year ago everybody thought we were going to go to war with north korea or something yeah oh yeah they thought that trump was going to push that nuke button yeah take everybody down it's eminent it's going to happen oh my gosh we gotta do something about it i mean now they're like turning the demilitarized zone into the peace zone building yoga studios and things like that around there i mean it's just it's gonna be it's gonna be different than what everybody thought it was gonna be but people were glued to the TV. Whether or not we like hearing those things, they attract our attention.

And they make us stop doing things that are productive for us. And it's interesting. We talk a little bit about me going to the gym in the morning, stuff like that. There are two things that cause people to stop exercising and stare at the TV. One of which is the news where there's some sort of a fear mongering. Like you can make this red chart with the stock market on it where people are going, oh, the stock market's crashing. Or you can show some sports stuff. So news or you can, so news or sports, one or the other. And there's some weird sports play,

play of the day or whatever it might be. People are wondering, they're scared. Is the person going to make it or not make it? And there's this open loop of what's going to happen.

So when we have an open loop, fear is basically an open loop in our brains. This might happen. Okay? Yeah. It might snow 27 feet tonight and you can't make it to the store tomorrow. So what happens?

Everybody runs out and they buy milk and bread here in Colorado. And because of the fear, how do you get the milk and bread off the shelves? You get on the news and say it's going to snow, and boom, it's gone. You know, ultimately, it's an open loop. And what happens in that open loop is people fill in the gaps themselves. They fill in the gaps by telling themselves the worst case scenario story. That is fear. Fear, F-E-A-R, false evidence appearing real.

Okay? It's the future. future hasn't happened right you're just making judgments on it so how do we deal with that well there's there's a good way to deal with it yeah what is that ignore it oh that's hard though it is hard it is hard it's like when you're driving on the highway and there's a crash you get get all these rubberneckers that are like, oh, I want to see it. I want to see what happened. Because the traffic jam, open loop, you're driving by. You're going, all right, is it somebody I know? I wonder if it's somebody I know.

There might be some dead bodies on the road. Might be something on fire. Who knows what? They're like worst case scenario, this whole thing. And you want to close that loop. It's like getting on a roller coaster, going through a haunted house. Have you ever taken your kids to those professional haunted houses? You know, I haven't yet.

My kids aren't old enough. I don't like getting scared, though. You do. I'm a softie. Oh, you do, Mark. You know, what you don't like is that they're like $32 to get in one of them. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. You are going and paying for that fear rush.

You're paying for it. Same thing when you go to the amusement park. You're paying for the fear rush of getting on the roller coaster, right? Yeah. It's the same thing in society. We've conditioned ourselves to want this fear rush and to close the loop. Now, that feeling you get right before you get on loop. Now, that feeling you get right before you get on a roller coaster, the feeling you get right before you walk into the haunted house,

it's the culmination of that buildup of fear and you're going, oh, what's going to happen? And you hear screaming. So let's talk about business. Let's talk about fear in business. Yeah. So that is one of the biggest leverage points of selling is fear of loss fear of missing out fear of missing out FOMO yeah FOMO my friend so yeah I mean you you want to lose something you lose an opportunity miss out on it whatever it might be um that's one of the the key things because when people buy something they're like I did it and then there's a little bit of a letdown of, was that the right thing to do? And, you know, they need to have some sort of validation. It might've been the right thing to do. Quite probably was the right thing to do when it comes to purchasing something. But there are people who buy simply because they don't want

to miss out. That's not the best reason to buy something, right? But, you know, if it's beneficial to you, then great. You know, solves a challenge, great. You know, has an opportunity, great. But not missing out. And what, you know, you take that out of it, though. Let's say you're already in business. Like, we're in the housing industry. You know, housing market, things like that. There's some weird, funky stuff going on in the housing market.

People are going, people are stopping buying and selling houses. And everybody stands around the sidelines and does nothing. Fight, flight, or freeze. Fear response. How do you get over that? You know what you do? You move forward with confidence and look for the opportunities. I look at it and I say, all right, all those people standing there watching,

they're going to stand there and watch while I'm taking ground. You've got to go after it. When fear is happening, fear in the mind of somebody who's in it for the win is the same as saying go okay when fear shows its face that that person's like i'm in let's go right now everybody else can stand there i'll see them at the finish line maybe if they show up that's what it boils down to. It's the go button. Turn fear into go, right? You can turn fear into a win. I look at it and I go, it's snowing.

There's a lot of snow on the ground. I'm going to the gym. I'm not afraid of driving in the snow. I'm not afraid of getting up early, walking out. It's dark. I'm going to walk through the dark. Parking lot to the gym, the front door. Oh, it's scary.

No, it's not. Stop giving yourself excuses based upon some sort of a fear response. You have a business opportunity. I'm afraid to call this person because they're going to tell me no. Yep. They're likely to tell you no. Just get it over, call them and go, huh, it's another no. I'm good. Yeah. We won. Go after another we won go after another one go after another one and it's just it's just switching your brain yeah fear to opportunity yeah just just kind of in wrapping this up i i saw this awesome example of fear and it had to do with the the hurricanes that hit us this hurricane season or hit uh hit the carolinas hurricane florence this, um, all the scandal about the guy from the weather channel and he was out there and the wind was blowing and he was going, all right, we've got one of the worst bands coming through. And he's standing there kind of wobbling back and forth

in the grass. And he's going, I don't know, you know, this is really tough. It's dangerous out here. And then these two guys wearing shorts just kind of go strolling past him right behind him and everybody's going dude what are you doing you making it up it was funny because the you know the response to the whole thing was well he's been up for a long time and he's kind of uneasy in the wet grass and you're going but wait a second here he's trying to instill fear in people for the purposes of getting viewers for the purposes of people being glued to the TV going, oh, my gosh, look how bad that is. Reality is fear is opportunity, and it means go. So then, Adam, how do you remove yourself from fearful thinking?

That's a great question, Mark. So when you look at everything that's going on, there's a key to facing fear, to getting through it. First of all, don't pay attention to it. I mean, if it's happening, you know, the news, I don't watch the news. If I turn on the radio, whatever, okay, great. I'm there for music or I'm there for podcasts or I'm there for books, but I'm not looking for news. Why? Because in all reality, the news, if you know, I can go look at five or six bullet points and understand what's going on in the world. Just flip through and read a few headlines. If you want to read something, go for it. But most of that is fear mongering anyway, is just trying to get you in there. But also I look

at the opportunity. You know, when you, when you look at fear and what it does to people, it slows them down. I look at it as the opportunity to speed me up. And when I see fear, when I hear fear, I look for opportunity. And fear to me, it means go. So go after the win and ignore the fear. Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure to head over to startwithawin.com to get more great content. Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes

or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Adam on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. And remember, start with a win.