The Ryan Hanley Show - Scared? Good. Here's what you do next.

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

As we stand on the brink of 2025, many of us feel a mix of excitement and trepidation. Fear often comes disguised as doubt, anxiety, or hesitation—but what if it’s actually a signal that we’re on the verge of something meaningful? Join 11,000+ leaders: https://go.ryanhanley.com Civilized Savage Book: https://civilizedsavagebook.com In this episode, we explore how fear can be a catalyst for growth rather than a roadblock. Drawing on personal experiences, thought leader insights, Stoic philosophy, and Biblical wisdom, we’ll unpack actionable strategies to help you face your fears and make 2025 your most courageous year yet. What You’ll Learn in This Episode Why fear is not a stop sign but a “vector for action” that signals personal growth. The three roots of fear: fear of failure, fear of judgment, and fear of success. How thought leaders like David Goggins, Brene Brown, and Jordan Peterson approach overcoming fear. Powerful perspectives from Stoicism and the Bible on managing fear and finding courage. Practical, actionable strategies to name, confront, and channel your fears into transformative action. Key Takeaways Fear Means Growth: If you’re feeling scared, it’s because you’re pushing yourself into new and challenging territory. Quote: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain The Three Roots of Fear: Fear of failure: Many avoid big goals because they’re afraid to fail, but as Jordan Peterson reminds us, “You’re going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don’t do. You don’t get to choose not to pay a price.” Fear of judgment: Eric Weinstein notes, “The problem isn’t taking risks, it’s the fear of people pointing out when you fail.” Fear of success: Success often brings responsibility, status changes, and challenges, which can create resistance. Powerful Strategies: Name your fear and make it tangible. Write down both the consequences of overcoming it and the cost of not acting. Take small, incremental actions to face what scares you most. Use gratitude to combat fear by focusing on what you have instead of what you lack. Seek accountability and encouragement from trusted peers. Quotes from the Episode “What you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” – Winston Churchill “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” – 2 Timothy 1:7 “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius Action Steps Identify one fear you’ve been avoiding and commit to taking a small action to confront it this week. Share your fear with an accountability partner and discuss the steps you’ll take to move forward. Reflect on what your life could look like if you overcome your fear—and what it will look like if you don’t. Let’s Connect If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend who might need encouragement to face their fears. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes packed with actionable insights and inspiration. Final Thought Fear will always be a part of life—but it doesn’t have to be your master. Use it as a signal, a guide, and a motivator to push beyond your limits and into a year of growth, courage, and purpose. Go deeper down the rabbit hole: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanley

She said, I'm nervous. I said, me too. And then I got this look like, you nervous? And I said, I'm scared. I have big goals for this year. I'm scared that I won't hit them. But you know what? That's good.

Fear means I'm alive. Fear means I care. Fear means I'm alive. Fear means I care. Fear means I'm standing on the edge of something important. And then I paused for a second and I looked at her and I said, what is it that you want out of life? What is up, my friends, and welcome back to the show. Guys, we are on the precipice of 2025. This episode is coming out on New Year's Eve 2024. And this is a time of both excitement, energy for sure. But it also comes with an incredible amount of anxiety, fear,

nervousness, tension, because what is 2025 going to bring? We all set these big goals, things we want to achieve, accomplishments we want to have, and that's natural and normal. And if we're really shooting for something that stretches who we are, it's impossible for there not to be fear, for us not to be scared about what's going to happen. Will I actually make good on the promises that I made? Will I be able to commit to the things I said I was going to commit to? And I wanted to take an episode, a few minutes, this conversation with you to normalize fear. You are not alone in being scared. You are not alone in being nervous and feeling anxiety and feeling fear, doubt.

Those are normal. Frankly, if you are not feeling those emotions, if the actions you're taking are not causing you tension, fear, nervousness, then you're probably not pushing hard enough. You're probably set in a place of comfort in a kind of doldrums, monotonous type lifestyle and have succumb to whatever it is that life now gives you. Because if you're pushing, you're scared. And I don't want you to feel like you're alone in feeling scared. I'm incredibly scared. I wake up scared and fearful every single day.

I have enormous projects that I want to get off the ground in 2025 and deliver to this audience and to my insurance community. I have Linkora, which I'm the chief marketing officer of, goes live full market in January of 2025. I'm launching the Master of the Clothes program, the most dynamic, intensive, and effective inbound sales coaching program and course that has ever been created. I just got accepted to do a TED Talk in February, and I am publishing a book with one of my best

friends, Chris Paradiso, which comes out end of Q1, early Q2. And we haven't even gotten to June yet. And I want to make sure all those things hit because I've been working on all of them for more than a year. And I'm nervous that they're not going to work. I'm nervous that I have too many things going on. I'm nervous that I'm not going to be able to make the time. I'm nervous that by having all these things coming to a head at the same time, which I didn't plan, by the way, that I'm not going to be able to give 100% to any single one of them and make it as big as it could possibly be. I'm nervous that I'm going to put all this effort into a book and no one's going

to read it. I'm nervous that I'm going to put all this work into a course and that people won't buy it. I'm nervous that I'm going to be part of this team that has trusted me to market their product, to deliver their message, to drive new opportunities, new business into that company, to bring AI to the insurance space, and I'm not going to be able to make it happen. I wake up every day with that fear.

But I also read a lot. And the best part about reading is you get to tap into the brain, to the mindset, to the thought process of some of the most dynamic, intelligent, deep-thinking individuals, successful individuals who've ever existed. And what I'm going to do is walk you through my argument for why you should be scared, but that it shouldn't stop you from doing what you want to do in 2025.

There's this quote from Mark Twain, courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not the absence of fear. And I want us to hold that idea in our brain. You will never not be fearful. You will never not be fearful. Whether you do or do not do, you will be fearful for one reason or another. And our goal in becoming the best versions of ourselves and finding the peak us is accepting that that fear comes with trying to do great things and mastering it, not letting it become our master. In the Bible, there's a verse, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. That's Timothy 1.7. You can be a Christian, not be a Christian. You can believe in God, not believe

in God. I don't care. The Bible is one of the best handbooks for becoming the best versions of ourselves and leading a productive, happy, and love-filled life, a satisfied and fulfilled life that has ever been written, which is why it is still the most widely read book more than 2,000 years after it was created. So you don't have to believe. Personally, my belief is, whether you believe or you don't believe, the good part is God believes in you. But I'm not putting that on you. People buck at biblical verses sometimes when I share them on the show because they feel like I'm trying to push Christianity on. That's not the case. I believe in God. That's me.

I don't care if you do or you don't. That's your thing. And being an American and believing in kind of the pure American values that were created back in 70, 76, one of those core values, not explicitly said, but implied, was you get to live the life you want to live as long as you don't put your shit on someone else. Now, that hasn't always been the case. We haven't always practiced that. But it's one of the implicit core values of this country,

and it's one of the things that I love about this country. So I'm going to share biblical verses with you. If you don't like that or it offends you, you can stop listening or stop watching right now. That's fine. But to me, whether you believe or don't believe, doesn't matter. The book itself is a guidebook. It is the ultimate book on personal development that has ever been written. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, meaning we are not naturally

fearful. We're filled with power and with love and with a sound mind and while fear may exist and we may experience fear it is not who we are it is not intrinsic to us it is an external force placed upon us which gives us the choice to not give into it to not listen to it to not abide by it and i think that's incredibly powerful. The Stoics also address fear. Fear arises when we focus on external events rather than our own mindset. And we go to the master Stoic, Marcus Aurelius, you have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find your strength. Meaning no matter what happens out in the world, no matter what that item is, no matter what that action is, that event is, that thing that hangs out there that causes you fear,

you have in your mind the ability to move past it, to accept it, to take it in, and to keep going. You have that ability in your mind. All right, so what is it that holds us back? What is it that, why does fear hold us back? What is it that makes it so that fear just becomes so debilitating to us? And really, there's three kind of roots of fear. If you dive into the research and not a professional psychologist, so those of you that are professional psychologists or professional armchair psychologists, I would love for you to jump in the comments on YouTube or hit me up on DMs, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever, and push back on me. But there are three core roots of fear. A fear of failure,

fear of judgment, and a fear of success. When it comes to a fear of failure, fear of judgment, and a fear of success. When it comes to a fear of failure, 31% of people avoid big goals because they fear failing. That comes from a career builder study from 2019. 31% of people, basically one out of every three people, don't try for the thing because they're worried they may not hit the thing. So they do nothing. Think about that. They don't even set the goal because of the created fear, the anticipated fear of not actually hitting that goal.

Jordan Peterson has a great quote on this. You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose not to pay a price. Meaning those individuals who allow anticipated fear to keep them from taking on that big thing, they then have a different price placed upon them, which is they don't get to dictate their future, right? They don't get to decide the rules. The rules get pressed upon them. Because if we don't push forward and do great work that separates us and allows us to choose

and direct our destiny, our destiny is put upon us by someone else. And I cannot think of something that I would wish even upon my enemy than to have their destiny dictated to them, that sense of being stuck, that sense of being enclosed and captured, tethered down, anchored. It's devastating. It's depressing.

It's devastating. It's depressing. It's overwhelming. Yet, because we may not hit our big mark, we refuse to even try. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this. There's lots of videos that you can go check out, Instagram or YouTube, whatever. But there's videos of elephants that are in captivity. And I saw a video of an elephant in captivity in Thailand. And what they'll do is when the elephant is a baby, they'll tie the elephant to a stake with a chain. And the elephant creates a radius upon which it will walk.

And it knows how far the chain will go. And when they reach a certain age, they take the chain off. And the elephant still will not leave that space. Because in its brain, it has been tethered so long to that point that it no longer even believes it's possible to move past that point. And this is what we do to ourselves when we allow fear to anchor us to a single point. The second root fear is judgment. What others think paralyzes us. Eric Weinstein has a great quote on this. The problem isn't taking risks.

It's the fear of people pointing out when we fail. And I'm going to make an argument in a second that kind of doubles into this one. And last, and this is one that people often don't think about or when they're thinking about the idea of fear, is a fear of success. Many of us have a subconscious resistance to the increased responsibilities that come with success. From the stoic perspective, fear is misplaced, focused on the uncontrollable outcomes. Guys, now, I want to dive into the fear of judgment

because my TED Talk is actually on this particular point. It's all around the fear of status and my belief that we get stuck because of all these different fears and we put labels on them, fear of failure, fear of success, of success whatever but ultimately it all comes back to status we are fearful of the status change

that accompanies a potential outcome because and i've said this before in the show i do not believe there a such thing there's such a thing as a fear of failure. I don't think that that's a real thing. I think failure is a word that we put onto an item. It's a label. It's a construct, but it's not real. And here's why. How many founder stories, how many success stories, be it an athlete, an artist, an entrepreneur. Have you heard where it's like failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, huge, enormous success. And then all of a sudden we go back in the record books and we don't call those failures anymore. What do we call them? We call them lessons. So they're all failures, missed business opportunity, went bankrupt, bad business deal, horrible litigation, huge, enormous success.

Everyone knows their name and they're worth millions, if not billions of dollars. Now, failure, failure, failure, failure, huge win. And if we go backwards, it's now less and less and less and less and less, and they're no longer failures. They're lessons. If we can do that, if it's possible to go back and change those things from failures to lessons, then failure isn't a real thing. What we are really worried about is not being successful. It's not a fear of failure. It's not a fear of going bankrupt. It's not a fear of any of those things. We're scared of the status change that will happen associated with the action we are considering taking.

If I quit my job and join this startup, what will my golf buddies think? My drinking buddies think? My mom, my dad think? My kids think? My spouse thinks? What will my colleagues think in the industry? Will they think I'm crazy?

Will they think I've lost it? I couldn't handle the pressure of a corporate job or I couldn't hack it, whatever. I'm having a midlife crisis. If you take on a new hobby or you get sober or you want to get fit, and this is a big one with fitness, a big, big reason that people do not

take on and keep with fitness and wellness journeys is because the status change associated with them going from being you know dad bod to fit dad over 40 is because they don't want the status change now you have to tell all your drinking buddies that hey i'm not coming out on friday guys seven beers on a friday night doesn't get me to where I want to be for my fitness goals. And now your status change is in that group. You know, out on the golf course, everyone else is having a couple beers or a Bloody Mary, and you've said, can't do it. I'll play with you, but I'm not going to drink. And now they stop inviting you, And at least you think they'll stop inviting you. That status change keeps us from doing it, right?

Frankly, if you're fit in general, but certainly fit over the age of 40, you are the exception. And people do look at you differently. A year ago, I was probably in some of the best shape I've ever been in my life. And I kind of took a little break from that for a while. And I'm now back on that train. I've been on it for about a month and things are starting to go well. I kind of getting my numbers

back up and whatever. It's all good. But about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I was probably in the best shape of my life. It's about 195 pounds, like a deadlift 465. I could bench press 275. I was ruck walking every day. I had just done 75 hard. I was kind of lean and mean and in real good shape. And people look at you differently. They do. And not always in a positive way. Now, granted, my brain is broken and I can literally give a rat's ass what people think about me in general.

Which has been a superpower I didn't realize was a superpower because it hasn't always been a positive. But my point being, people don't always look at you and aren't always happy for you. It's not always a positive experience when you're the fit person and you're surrounded by five or six other people who are all 20, 30 pounds overweight. And people don't want that change. They don't want to have to explain to everyone what their fitness regimen is or what they're doing or how they get up at 5am to get their workout in or how they're counting calories. And then people are all that stupid. And I can't do that. I don't want to take that time and blah, blah, blah. And you know, there's

all these stupid conversations that happen when you're getting fit. And it's all a status change. So we don't change. We fear the status change. And my friends, if I can push you past this in the next year, this is so much of the work that I do on this podcast. And I hope you're going to be around for this journey. I hope you'll dial in. If you're not subscribed, please do. It's going to be about pushing this idea of breaking through these status barriers, of breaking down the idea that you need to care what other people think.

And I've explained this before on the show. If you listen to the show on a regular basis, you've heard me talk about this concept. It is not that I don't want you guys to like me. I do. I do want you to like me. But if you don't, it will not change how I feel about myself, how I feel about my relationship with the people in my inner circle, and how I go about my business. It will not change it. Won't change my mood, won't change my emotions. Trust me, I've had plenty of people take full-on

hater runs at me, and I just don't care. And those are legit hater runs. Not like, you know, I have some receipts. I'm not going to share them because I'm not going to do that. But like, not like one of these things, oh, there's haters out there. No, I've had people take real runs at me before and whatever, right? I am who I am. Now, I have plenty of other freaking issues, don't get me wrong. But this fear of status, with the people that I've consulted with over the last year, with people that I've mentored in my various businesses and throughout the course of my career, with people that have been on my team or in the companies that I've owned, this piece is so vitally important to getting unstuck and becoming the best versions of ourselves.

We cannot care what other people think. so vitally important to getting unstuck and becoming the best versions of ourselves. We cannot care what other people think. We can want them to like us. We obviously create to add value to others, whether that's the work we do, creation, or actual creative projects, but we cannot allow their opinions. I just shared a LinkedIn post with like a meme on it. It was a dollar bill. And what had written on it is your opinion. Don't cut me checks or something like that. And like handwriting and black marker, because that's the way that I feel. And in my career, the biggest mistakes that I've made are when I have considered the status associated with a move or

an action and played for the status. Those are the biggest mistakes that I've ever made in my career were those moments where, well, geez, I can get a country club membership if I take this job because of how much money I'm making and think of the job title. And those were the biggest mistakes that I have made in my life were those moments. And looking back on those moments, I'm able to share with you today that if you can remove the fear of status from your life, you will watch doors in your mind open and energy come flooding back into you.

It is fucking incredible, I promise. Okay, I went way longer on that particular section than I had wanted to. But let's talk. I want to now move into a section real quick, some myths about fear that we run into because these myths do hold us back. The first myth is that fear means weakness that we kind of We should get past that just logically. If everyone everywhere has fear, regardless of where they are in their life or what status they're in or how much success they've had,

they all have fear in some regard. And many of them we would consider both publicly and socially strong people, then fear is not weakness. It's just not. You can't logically put those two things together. Fear is a part of life. Fear and weakness are mutually exclusive items.

You should feel fear. Fear is a vector to action. It's not weakness. Bernie Brown has a great quote here. Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. Think about Jesus Christ. He experienced fear at the highest level and then acted with the ultimate courage. Myth number two, fear can be eliminated. Again, cannot. Fear cannot be eliminated. You can only accept and move past fear. You cannot eliminate fear. Eliminating fear should not be the goal.

That is wasted time, wasted energy, wasted brain cycles. Every action you take to try to eliminate fear is a waste. It is not moving you forward. Understand that fear will absolutely be present, that it does not make you weak. Accept that fear and move past it. I try to tell my children when they're feeling fear, particularly in the sports arena around various things,

use your fear as positive energy. It's just energy. That fear comes in and you feel it and you tense up and you get a little twitchy and you get tense and everything gets a little tense and you get a little twitchy and you get tense and everything gets a little tense and you get a little slow and you're butt puckers and you're nervous. And if you can learn to accept the fear, you can channel it back as positive energy

and it becomes a catalyst to moving even faster. Very tough to do. Certainly not going to solve that particular problem on this podcast, but it's out there, right? He who has overcome his fears will be truly free. Not he who has removed his fears. He who has overcome. That's Epictetus, great Stoic philosopher. The third myth. Courage is the absence of fear. We've already discussed this. It's not going to happen. You will always have fear in your life.

It will always be there. You're always going to be a little scared. You're always going to be a little anxious. You're always going to be a little tense. Grow the fuck up and deal with it. Don't pop a pill. Don't drink yourself into oblivion. Don't smoke yourself silly.

Accept the fear and channel it into something highly productive. That could be spending time with loved ones, showing them love, being present. That could be doing a hundred pushups. It could be running 20 miles. It could be coming back down after everyone's in bed and doing another hour's worth of work to get ahead on your side hustle that you're really interested in. The fear is always going to be there. It's what you choose to do with it. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For the Lord, your God, will be with you wherever you go. So how do some of the most well-respected leaders and thought leaders that we come across social media, people out there doing things, thinking about these topics daily. How do they handle this idea

of fear? Well, we got Goggins, right? Callous your mind, right? Be resilient, right? Stay hard. You can mean David Goggins all you want, but want but he's right right the stoic tie-in here is a more fatigue fatty a more fatty i'm gonna mispronounce that embrace the challenges life throws at you marcus aurelius a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything thrown into it. Get after it. Fear is a vector for action. That fear is an indicator of where you need to go to become your best self. Brene Brown, vulnerability has a power, right?

She addresses leaders and their fear through vulnerability. Recognize that fear of failure is often the fear of being seen. Back to the idea of a fear of status. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. That's Corinthians. Jordan Peterson, face what frightens you incrementally. Break it into smaller, manageable parts. How long are you going to wait before you demand the best of yourself?

Epictetus. So here are a few practical strategies for mastering your fear. I want to leave you with this. We're going to end on this idea of a few practical strategies for how we address our fear if you're still struggling with it right if this

episode hasn't completely rewired your brain i'm assuming it would hopefully however you got a little juice going you're feeling a little fire you're not alone right fuck fear fear is a vector for action let's go after it right hopefully you're feeling good if you have one particular fear that just eats at you write write it down and name it. Name the fear. Make it tangible. We can overcome tangible things. Sometimes emotions, they're ethereal.

They're shifty. They're tough to grab onto. Make that fear tangible. Give it a name. Then write down everything that would happen if you overcame that fear. Everything. What would your life look like if you overcame that fear? That thing, that tangible item, that named emotion.

And then write down everything that would happen if you don't. And then weigh the two. What does your life look like if you overcome this fear? What does your life look like if you don't? And you acquiesce to it. Which would you rather have? The choice is yours, my friends. And then take action. Take action.

David ran towards Goliath. He didn't run away from him. I find sharing your fears helps a lot with an accountability partner, someone you truly trust. Oftentimes, it's good to share your fears with your spouse, but depending on the nature of your relationship, they may not be the best one for you to get advice back from. Oftentimes, they know you too deep and they know you too deep as the person that you are today. And it is very helpful, in addition to your spouse or your partner, that you find a true accountability

partner, someone who accepts you for all the crazy shit that makes you who you are, someone that accepts you from all that and still wants to spend time with you, share your feels with that person and take feedback from them. Get advice from them. How would they approach this problem? How would they attack it? What actions would they take? What do they believe the positive outcomes of overcoming this fear are? What do they believe the negative outcomes of overcoming this, of acquiescing to this fear? What do they believe the outcomes of acquiescing to this fear are? Which would they prefer? Are better than one because they have a good return for their label. Ecclesiastes. Hopefully I always mispronounce that one. You guys are probably crushing me in the comments today for all my mispronunciations of these

biblical references I love them I read them but I have no idea how to say them all right and last I'm going to leave you with this right as far as actions I've always struggled with the idea of gratitude and gratitude journals it sounds very like hippy-dippy-ish and nonsensical. However, I read a really great book. It's called Claim Your Power. And in there, there's a large section on gratitude. And one of the things that I took from that, it is very, when you are grateful for what you have, it is very difficult to be scared about what you don't. When you're grateful for what you have, it is incredibly difficult to be fearful

about the things that you don't have. Gratitude is very powerful. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself, Matthew 6, 34. So here's our kind of closing call to action, right? We're going to identify that fear. We're going to commit to accepting it and facing it. We're going to write a list of the outcomes.

If we do overcome that fear, we're going to write a list of things. If we do not overcome that fear, we're going to pick which one of those equations we would rather have and make a choice and push forward. Fear is a vector for action. I'll leave you with this final thought. Fear is not a stop sign. Walter Emerson, one of my absolute favorites. What are you afraid? Ralph Walter Emerson, one of my absolute favorites. What are you afraid? Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of my absolute favorites. What you are afraid to do is a clear indication of the next thing you need to do. Fear is a vector

for action. My friends, 2025 is going to be an incredible year. We are not going to let fear keep us from the things that we need to do, from becoming the best version of ourselves, not just for us, but for those we love and love us back. This is the way. Thank you.