The School of Greatness - 163 The Healing Power of Conquering Fear (and How to Do This!) with Lissa Rankin

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

"When you're operating from the heart, courage is a side-effect." - Lissa Rankin If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/163.

This is episode number 163 with New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Lissa Rankin. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to today's episode with my dear friend, Dr. Lissa Rankin.

I've had her on before and I just love the energy that I get from her. So I wanted to bring her back on to talk about a new topic, which coincides with her previous one, which we talked about, which was mind over medicine. This one's all about fear. And we cover a number of things about fear today. And this is a topic we've covered recently. And I've asked a lot of people about fear and overcoming fear. And I thought I would dive in with Lissa, since she is an expert at this topic and has done a lot of research with this. And we talk about the extraordinary link between fear and health. Also, the difference between true fear and false fear and how stress is a part of this,

how to let go of false fears, the power of loneliness to make us sick and stressed, and how it's a cultural problem in the West, the four fearful assumptions, and many other topics surrounding fear. I think you guys will get a lot out of this, so make sure to pay attention. And if you enjoyed this, make sure to share this with a friend after you listen to the episode. I've been getting a lot of great feedback

from people lately from all these interviews we've been having on. So keep spreading the message from the School of Greatness podcast. It means a lot. And we want to keep taking this to the next level. And you guys are part of that. So thank you guys so much. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in with the one and only Dr. Lissa Rankin. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got a dear friend on today. Her name is Lisa Rankin. Dr. Lisa Rankin, how are you doing?

I'm great. I'm happy to be here, Lewis. Thank you. I'm excited. And for those that don't know who you are or if this is their first time hearing about you, make sure to check out the previous interview I did with Lisa on the podcast. I'll have that linked up here on the show notes. I'll tell you guys where to go for that. And I have some fun facts that I learned about you that I

want to read off before we get started. But some fun facts. For 12 years of medical education before practicing as an OBGYN for eight years. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And this current book that I want to dive into in this topic, which is called The Fear Cure, Cultivating Courage as Medicine for the Body, Mind, and Soul. This current book is the result of an epiphany that you had after writing your first book, Mind Over Medicine. Is that correct? Yes. And what is that epiphany you had? mind over medicine is that correct yes and what is that epiphany you had well you know what i realized lewis is that i in mind over medicine it's it's all about the scientific proof that the body can heal itself that it's not just some new age idea but that there's actual data in the scientific literature demonstrating that this is real and that there's a physiological

mechanism for it and in that that book, I taught what I called the six steps to healing yourself because I was working with patients and they were starting to have these spontaneous remissions, you know, without conventional medical treatment. When I was just talking to them, I was talking to them and they were starting to get better and I didn't understand what was happening. And so I developed this process that I teach in Mind Over Medicine that was all about what I call writing the prescription for yourself. It's sort of this intuitively guided self program about how to incorporate the principles of what I call whole health, which is not just about eating well and exercising and taking your supplements, but it's also about, you know, eating well and exercising and taking your

supplements, but it's also about how to be healthy in your relationships and healthy in your work and life purpose and healthy in your financial life and, you know, all of these various aspects of what makes us whole people. And so Mind Over Medicine was all about the scientific data, proving, you know, the link, for example, between loneliness and health, between pessimism and health, you know, between work and life purpose and whether you're in touch with your calling and how that affects your health, between your sex life and your health, your creative life and your health, all of these various aspects that in, you know, nobody taught me in medical school that those things were linked to the health of the physical body. But what I realized is that

people would write these prescriptions and it would include things like, oh, well, I need to quit my soul-sucking job and actually follow the dream in my heart, or I need to set boundaries in this toxic relationship that I'm in, or I need to find my soul tribe because I'm so lonely or whatever. And fear would get in the way, right? I mean, they would, they would have this list that they just knew when they asked their body, what does my body need in order to heal? They would get these answers from, from this higher part of themselves that would say, oh, well, I need to get out of my marriage, you know. And then another part of them would say, well, you can't do that.

You know, what is everybody going to think? How are you going to pay the bills? What about commitment? All of these various arguments that start to come up. And so I realized, you know, wow, people can have great insight into what might need to change in their body to create an optimal lifestyle that facilitates, but not just preventive medicine, but, you know, cure when people are sick. And as long as fear is getting in the way, then, you know, it's not going to happen. And so I had this theory that, you know, I wonder if fear is, I wonder what the relationship between fear and health is. And most of my work is driven by my wild curiosity. I'm just a very curious person. And so I had a theory that fear

and health probably were linked in ways that we weren't necessarily aware of. So I kind of went down the rabbit hole once again into the scientific literature to try to see if there was a link. And what I found really shocked me that there is an extraordinarily clear link between fear and heart disease, which is the number one killer in this country, and a very strong link between fear and cancer. And it goes all the way down to fear and the common cold. So that was the epiphany that kind of led me into writing the book. But once I realized that, I was like, uh-oh, now I've just scared people more. And I have to actually give them...

Tools. Yeah, something, tools, in order to, how do we deal with this? And how do we make sure that we can let fear protect us the way it's meant to without limiting us or making us sick? That's fascinating. unhealthy, that it's actually scientific backing and proof that fearful people are creating more possibilities to be sick and create cancer in themselves. Is that right? Yes. And the mechanism is really simple. I mean, it's essentially the fight or flight stress response that gets triggered by any fearful thought. I mean, even a small fearful thought like, oh no, I'm going to get red wine on my white carpet. I mean, it can be the most trivial thing that can trigger a simple thought like that can trigger a stress response in the body. And what I wrote about-

That's the stress that creates the sickness is what you're saying. Well, you know, the word stress is another, you know, that sort of- Because there's good stress and bad stress, right? Well, you know, the word stress I I think, is very confusing in our culture. Sure, sure. Because I would say there's, I call it true fear and false fear. I think when you start including the word stress, we have a whole bunch of associations with the word stress that aren't physiologically accurate. Like, in our culture, we've sort of normalized stress.

We just assume it's part of being in modern culture. You know, I'm stressed. Therefore, I'm a busy, productive, valuable person, you know. But in reality, like what that means, because in our culture, if you look at the data, we are in stress response more than 50 times per day. But the stress response is there for a survival mechanism. And it's only supposed to go off when your physical body is in danger. So you're only supposed to have a stress response when a tiger is chasing you, or you're standing on the edge of a cliff about to fall off, or somebody's about to hit you in your car. Then the stress response is meant to protect you in that situation.

It creates what I would call true fear in that situation. True fear meaning that thought that says run away from that tiger is a good thought, that fear is your friend in that situation. But most of the quote unquote stress that we experience falls under the category of what I would call false fear, meaning it exists only in your imagination. It's just an imagined threat, but the likelihood that those imagined threats ever come true is small. And even if those imagined threats do come true, they don't usually threaten the physical safety of the body. So even then they're not necessarily protective or helpful thoughts. And there's a whole other category, but there, you know And there's a whole other category, but there's a whole other category of true fear that often gets neglected when people talk about fear.

And that's a category that I would put under the category of intuition. So there's a great book that I love and I quote a lot in The Fear Cure by Gavin DeBecker called The Gift of Fear. And he is a threat assess. He is a threat assessment specialist. He's worked for the White House and, you know, they get death threats all the time and they call people like Gavin DeBecker to come in and determine, is this something we should really be afraid of or should we just ignore it? Is this, you know, is worrying about this going to protect the president or is it just going to get us all worked up and put us in stress response? And so he's actually interviewed thousands of people who were victims of violent crimes.

And what he found is that almost everybody who was the victim of a violent crime actually had an intuition about the criminal, and they ignored their intuition because it wasn't logical. Really? So they had a thought, for example, don't trust the babysitter. Right. And then they thought, oh, I'm being paranoid. This babysitter came highly recommended. She has good credentials. She looks perfectly nice. So they ignored, you know, or somebody goes on a date and they get a they get a feeling that says this guy isn't safe and they ignore it

because he's cute and he has a good job and whatever, you know, and then they get date raped. So, you know, what he teaches is that when we can learn to interpret intuition, then we can allow that part of us to protect us so that we can let go of all of the mind threats, all of the false fears that actually aren't protecting us. And not only are they not protecting us, they're making us can't, you know, they're causing heart disease and cancer. Gosh, it's crazy. Yeah. The reason I love talking with you, this is because you are, you know, a traditional doctor, uh, the sense of the word, and you've experienced so much of the medical world, at least here in the U S you've experienced so much of the medical world, at least here in the

US, you've experienced all this medicine and treating people. And you all you also took a lot of medicine yourself that never properly cured you until you started looking into these other areas of emotional practice and overcoming fear and understanding how to heal yourself with your mind as opposed to with physical substances. And that's what fascinates me because, you know, as you know, I grew up understanding and learning these things at a young age about healing myself without anything physical at all, but all through the power of my mind and my emotions and things like that.

So I always love talking. I'm excited to dive into more about this. I want to go over a couple of the facts that I found out about you. You've given three TEDx talks, isn't that right? That's right. And they're all on the medicine and these topics? Or are they the same topic or different topics? They're all related to this topic.

I haven't done any in the past few years just because I realized I don't love the 18-minute format. Yeah, not enough meat. It's really hard to boil things down. But, yeah, the one that's gotten over a million views is called The Shocking Truth About Your Health. And I basically started it out with kind of a provocative statement. I said, what if I told you that caring for your body is the least important part of your health? Oh. You know. That is good. Oh, that is good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, because when I started looking into this data, I was like, wow, you know, when people ask me, what do you think is the most important part of your health? And honestly, I think the effect of relationships and community on health is probably more, and this is a is probably more, and this is a shocking statement too, probably affects the body more than what we eat, whether or not you smoke or whether you exercise.

And there's data around that. And it's in Mind Over Medicine. If you're a nerdy like me and you like to get all the data, but there's data that suggests that. But when was the last time your doctor wrote a prescription that said, go cure your loneliness, go find your soul tribe, go, you know, pick out people that allow you to express your true authentic nature. And yet when you look at the indigenous tribes, for example, or these blue zones, these parts of the world where people are routinely living to be over 100, you find that one of the common threads that connects them is that they have deep, deep community and a lot of support. So they don't experience the overwhelm of just getting through

the day the way, for example, take a single mom who wakes up in the morning and she's got her three kids and she's got to get them off to school, but she's also got to get to her job where her job is at risk because the school is calling her. One of the kids is sick. She's got to find child care. What about her self-care? How is she going to eat well and exercise? What about her love life? Like you think about all the stress responses that she's having just getting through the day.

the stress responses that she's having just getting through the day. Whereas if she lived in Icaria in Greece, she'd have three generations of family that were living with her that would help with the kids. If she lost her job, they'd help her with her finances, that she'd be getting together with everybody for dinner so she wasn't lonely. And when I talk about that in this culture, it touches on a really deep wound for people. I've recognized it as I've traveled around the world talking about this, where people are like, oh, my God, I don't have that. And it's a deep cultural wound that is limiting our longevity. I love this. our longevity. I love this. In the book, The Fear Cure, you talk about most people think that courage is the opposite of fear, but you say it's joy. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, you could define it in many ways, but yeah. I mean, I think when you start, you could also say love. Yeah. I mean,

if you look at The Course in Miracles, that's kind of the premise of A Course in Miracles. It's like, what's making your decision? Are you asking what would fear do or are you asking what would love do here? And joy, I think, is sort of a side effect of making love-based decisions, like allowing love. And when I'm talking about love, I'm not talking about romantic love. love. And when I'm talking about love, I'm not talking about romantic love. I'm talking about that deep sense of participation in an animate universe where everything has consciousness and we're all connected. And, you know, we love each other as humans, but we also love the trees and we love the sun and we love the stars. And you're living in this place where you're operating not so

much from the mind as from the heart. And I think when you're operating from the heart, courage is a side effect. Yeah, I think it's also kind of it's hard to be joyful and happy and fearful at the same time. It's true, although it's possible. But it's hard to express 100% pure joy and have fear at the same time. I would think so. Maybe I'm wrong, but. You know what I've experienced? Because I've been on this intense spiritual journey and what I've really experienced, I've started to think of my self, whatever this self is, this human self. I've started to think of it kind of like a car and there's different, there's different parts of me living in the car. So, you know,

it's like, it used to be the part of me that was really afraid was at the wheel. So that part of me was making all the decisions about turn right, turn left. And now that part of me is strapped into the car seat in the back seat. I call it my small self. You might call it the ego. I call it the gremlin sometimes. But it's a small part of me. It's a part that's probably seven or eight. And it operates from childhood patterns and it has its old wounds that are still in the process of healing. And so it's always trying to protect me because it never feels safe.

And I don't want that part of me making decisions because it doesn't make love based courage based decisions. It makes scared, threatened decisions and it wants to protect the car. But if I have it in the back seat and it knows that it's loved and that something larger is now at the wheel and making love based decisions, then, and it can calm down because it can start to see,

oh, life is actually going better with this larger part of me at the wheel. But it doesn't mean that I don't still feel afraid. So I can be making love-based decisions and having a very joyful life. And there's like a part of me that's in the backseat having an absolute tantrum because it's really scary to make the kinds of risky decisions that I've made, like when I quit my job as a doctor, you know, and I was the full-time caregiver for a newborn and my husband wasn't working. And, you know, I wound up getting divorced. My parents thought I was insane. I lost my entire, you know, life savings. And the small part of me was in the backseat just absolutely

screaming, what in the world are you doing? You don't know how to make life safe. And now people look back and they're like, wow, good move. Right, right. What is it? What does he think we're all so afraid of? I think we're terrified. Well, I think we're terrified of two things. Well, let me say, I could answer that in multiple ways. In the fear cure, I talk about what I call the four fearful assumptions. And these are four beliefs that I think make us really frightened. One is uncertainty is unsafe. One is I can't handle losing what I cherish. One is I can't handle losing what I cherish. One is it's a hostile universe, so I have to protect myself. And the last one is I'm all alone. So obviously, if you think you're all alone in a hostile universe at risk of loss and uncertainty, then life is scary. Yeah.

And I think just uncertainty, even uncertainty in the face of good things happening is scary for us. So even, you know, you talk to a mother who's about to give birth and she's often scared. You know, you talk to somebody who's about to get married, to the person that they consider the love of their life, and they're scared. So even moving into the uncertain in exciting ways is frightening to us because we don't know how to come into right relationship with uncertainty and we're terrified of losing what we cherish. So I love Brene Brown's work and she talks in Daring Greatly, she talks about what she calls foreboding joy.

And she describes it as that feeling of standing over your child. I have a nine-year-old, so I know this feeling, where you're standing over your gorgeous child who's sleeping. And you feel your heart just bursting with love for this child. child. And the second you let yourself really start to feel how much you love this child, you're flooded with this terrifying feeling of how vulnerable you are because of how much you have to lose. You can barely stand the thought of like, what if I lose this precious being? And I think we kind of walk around that way. Like I have this amazing life and I have these moments of foreboding joy where I'm like, what if I lost it all? And so there's a part of us that wants to like shore everything up and make sure we can shore up our finances and shore up the safety of our

loved ones and make sure we don't get our hearts broken and protect our bodies and, you know, make sure there's no toxic chemicals in our house. And we're so busy shoring up our lives that we stopped having joyful lives. I mean, we play too safe is what you're saying. Yeah. And you know, what I talk about in the fear care is how we can, we can actually shift those beliefs. It's a cultural choice. These are cultural beliefs. And when I was at 16,000 feet in the Andes living in a Keros village, studying the shamans there, I realized they don't have those beliefs. They actually have, I had just finished writing The Fear Cure, so it was very validating to be there. Because I didn't know this about the Keros culture, this indigenous tribe I was staying with.

But the four, what I called the courage cultivating truths, which are the opposite of the four fearful assumptions, these are the worldview that the Keros live by, and it's the opposite. So instead of uncertainty is unsafe, what if uncertainty is the gateway to possibility? What if when you don't know what the future holds, anything could happen, right? And there's a whole journey that can go on when you come into right relationship with uncertainty, where you realize that instead of playing it safe, you know, there's a way to allow your intuition to protect you so that you can actually safely take risks that open the gates of possibility. And instead of loss being something that we can't handle, that loss is natural and can lead to growth. And I know for me, when I went through what I called

my perfect storm, where I gave birth to my daughter and then within two weeks, my dog died, my healthy young brother wound up in full-blown liver failure as a rare side effect from the antibiotic Zithromax that he was taking for a sinus infection. And then my beloved physician father was 59 years old and died of a brain tumor all in two weeks. And I can look back on that and say, wow, loss is natural and can lead to growth. Like that was the most transformative loss of my life. And I wouldn't be living the life that I'm living now if I didn't have that loss. And I think almost everybody that's listening can probably think of some experience of loss in their life that at the time felt absolutely devastating. And in retrospect, we can see how it breaks your heart open. And that's not, you know, that hurts, but it also liberates the soul.

Sure. Yeah, definitely. You know, uncertainty is a scary thing. It can be very painful. But it sounds like what you're telling me is that we need to learn how to fall in love with fear and become friends with fear and uncertainty is what I'm hearing you say, correct me if I'm wrong. And if that's, if that's the case, how do we become friends with fear? Well, I think there's two ways. I just want to finish the other thought that I was saying, and then I'll answer that, which is the other two of the courage-cultivating truths, which is that the opposite of it's a hostile universe is it's a purposeful universe. Or maybe even it's a friendly universe. Albert Einstein says the most important decision you'll ever make is whether we live even it's a friendly universe. Albert Einstein says the most important

decision you'll ever make is whether we live in a hostile or friendly universe. And, you know, that's a belief system. I acknowledge that's a belief system, but I have lived a life, and I know you share this, Louis, but I have lived a life where I have evidence that it's a purposeful universe, that everything that has happened in my life, I can look back and see how it grew me as a soul, even if it was painful at the time, how adversity can be an opportunity for soul growth. And if we stop feeling like we're at the mercy of a random chaotic universe where like bad things happen to good people and there's nothing you can do about it so you better just shore up

and try to guard yourself if you start trusting that like wow i mean one of the questions that i ask myself a lot if something's happening that i don't like i'm like wow why did i write that into my movie script if i'm co-creating my life and my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings are participating in what's actually happening in this 3D world, why would my soul have written this part into my life? And it actually helps to just shift my perspective so that I can see, wow, okay, I can see how this is purposeful even if I don't love it. And then the last one is instead of I am all alone, you know, most spiritual traditions teach we are all one, that we're interconnected in a web of life, that we have

our, you know, we are energy as is everything else in the universe and that the energy of us as humans is participating with the consciousness of plants and animals and even inanimate objects. I run a training program with doctors and we teach them how to kind of manipulate energy by bending spoons and all kinds of fun stuff like that. And once you actually recognize the interconnectedness of all things, then you stop feeling so alone in a hostile universe. You start realizing that it is a purposeful universe and that everything is, you know, like dominoes. We're all related. And so, you know, you're not in this isolated bubble. And in the fear, like I said, I have such a scientific mind. There's a chapter about each

of those courage cultivating truths in the fear cure where I include evidence. Like this isn't just a spiritual belief. Like here's the evidence that these things are true. And there's actual scientific evidence behind these things, which I think is pretty exciting. Yeah. Very cool. I want to answer. I don't want to ignore your other questions. I apologize for interrupting you on it. No, it's okay. What did I ask you? You asked me about how we become friends with our fear. Yes, yes. So can we become friends with fear?

And if so, how do we start that process? Yeah, well, there's a lot of tools in the book, but I think part of it is learning how to discern true fear from false fear and recognizing that both, we can have friendly relationships with both true fear and false fear and recognizing that both we can have friendly relationships with both true fear and false fear. So it's not like true fear is our friend and false fear is our enemy. False fear can also be our friend. So true fear. And like I said, the trick is discerning. That's the challenge. That's the challenge is when you have a thought, like, let's say you have a thought

that says my spouse is cheating on me, right? Or I'm going to run out of money. And this triggers a stress response in the amygdala, in the brain. It triggers the fight or flight response. It fills the body with cortisol and epinephrine. You know, your heart rate starts going up, your blood pressure raises, this increases your risk of heart disease, right? Okay. So what do you do with the thought? And is that a thought that's going to protect the physical body, like when a tiger's chasing you? Well, no, not right now, unless your spouse is cheating on you and has a knife. these thoughts that come into our head. Is it an intuition that is calling for our attention, or is it a false fear that we need to really just ignore? And so learning these tools to discern these, you know, can help us to identify which thoughts that show up in our heads are meant to be true fears that literally physically affect the body, but not just affect the body, like affect our life, protect our life, our loved ones, our hearts, our health,

and which thoughts are thoughts that we need to, you know, have a different kind of relationship with. So, for example, a true fear thought, if you can learn the tools that help you recognize, oh, that actually is an intuition, not a false fear. Well, the intuition is going to call forth inspired action. And it's very different than paranoid action, right? So if you have, let's say, let's go back to the example of, you know, don't leave your child with the babysitter. Now, once you know how to make that discernment, then that's

a fear thought that can be your friend. Like maybe you need to call another babysitter and maybe it's time to cancel your dinner date. And one of the ways just as a practical tool, there's lots of different tools, but one of the really practical tools that you can use to discern that is that, and I interviewed a bunch of very, very intuitive people, including, you know, people who consider themselves psychics. And one of the things that they say is that an intuition has a very different feeling and experience in the body than a paranoid thought. So an intuition, they describe it as dropping in. It comes in as a neutral, no charge thought. And the body doesn't have a fight or flight response to it even necessarily. It may afterwards, when you start to think about it,

then it may trigger a fight or flight response. But when it first comes in, it literally drops in like something is just coming in through the top of your head and going straight to your heart and sitting there. And so it feels very calm and grounded. It's just a don't trust the babysitter with no story attached to it. And then you may make up a story, and so you may have a response. But it just comes in as my husband's cheating on me. Or I think, you know, I know a doctor who's doing a research study right now about women that have had an intuition that they have breast cancer, even in the face of a normal mammogram.

You know, how do you and they've saved their own lives from knowing that something was wrong with them, even though the doctors couldn't find anything on the screening test. So how do you assess that? Well, when it just drops in, people sometimes they get these very intuitive dreams and they've learned how to get information in dreams or they get clairvoyant visions. But this information that comes in as intuition is very calm in the body as opposed to the panicked feeling of don't trust the babysitter, don't trust the babysitter. And the heart rate goes up and the blood pressure, You can feel it in the body. You can feel the closing down of the heart. You can feel the racing of the mind. You can feel the ruminating thoughts.

And, you know, once you're able to learn how to assess that, and then you can start to practice it. You can start to get hunches and write them down and follow up on your hunches. What actually happened? You had a thought that, you know, you had breast cancer. Well, did you? You had a thought of, oh, well, this team's going to win the Super Bowl. Well, were you right? You know, and so that helps to allow the intuitive feelings to come in and develop trust over time. And then those other thoughts, the panicked thoughts, the paranoid thoughts, the ruminating thoughts, the anxious thoughts that go into the false fear category, these also are not something to resist because really what that is, is it's the finger pointing to everything in need of healing in your life.

In other words, if you're working with a therapist, this is the thought to take to your therapist. So physical therapist Val Zadzicek talks about pain, P-A-I-N, as pay attention inside now. And I like that. I used that on my latest PBS special about the fear care. Because I think that's how false fear can be. It's like, if you're having the ruminating thoughts, my spouse is cheating on me. Well, pay attention

inside now. Fear can also be the marker. False fear is the marker saying, pay attention inside now. What's that about? Like maybe your dad cheated on your mom and there's an unhealed childhood wound around that. And maybe you're actually attracting partners that keep cheating on you because of that unhealed belief or that, you know, that unhealed pattern in the unconscious mind. And a lot of us don't realize that, you know, our minds get programmed, our subconscious minds get programmed with all these bad programs, all these, I don't want to use bad, but it has a judgment. But, you know, all of these dysfunctional programs. And we're operating from these programs that were downloaded into the subconscious before we were seven, usually. And we're unaware of them. They're blind spots. and we're unaware of them. So they're blind spots.

We don't even realize that we're actually creating our own reality because we unconsciously want what we're creating, even though consciously it's the opposite of what we want. So, you know, that can be really useful information. Now when I notice that I'm getting afraid about something, I'm like, wow, okay, there's gold here. Let's mine this fear thought for all it's worth I'm getting afraid about something, I'm like, wow, okay, there's gold here. Let's mine this fear thought for all it's worth because it probably means I have a daddy issue. Right, right.

You know? So it's like, great. Instead of judging myself or seeing it as some weakness, like, wow, let's heal that. Let's get to the root of that. I'm curious. This has been golden wisdom wisdom you've been sharing. I'm curious, what is more valuable or important to heal first, if there's such a thing to do in order to guard yourself against fear? Is it the mind or the heart? Well, that's a great question. I mean, you can't heal one without healing the

other because the whole thing is a journey from the head to the heart. I just saw the cutest cartoon. I should send it to you. It's adorable. It's like this little brain with feet and it's at a crossroads and the brain is walking left and the heart is there's a little heart with feet and it's running to the right and it's chasing a butterfly and like skipping away and the mind is saying this way heart right and it's so cute because that's what the mind is always doing it's like this way heart the heart oh and at the crossroads it says like adult responsibilities and that's the way the heart the mind is going and the heart is going the other way. And it says utter nonsense, right?

Like the heart is off chasing butterflies, heading towards utter nonsense. And the mind is attending to adult responsibilities this way, heart. And I mean, I think, you know, call it what you want. I'll call it walking the spiritual path is the journey from the head to the heart. Like, are you going to let your mind make your decisions, or are you going to let your heart make your decisions? And Gavin DeBecker in the book The Gift of Fear talks a lot about that, like making your decisions from your logical mind

versus making your decisions from your intuitive gut, or call it your intuitive heart. Which one should you make decisions from? Which one? The mind or the heart? Yeah, the heart, right? The intuitive side. Well, you know, I mean, again, it's both. I actually just started writing a blog yesterday, Lewis, called The Anatomy of a Decision, I actually just started writing a blog yesterday, Lewis, called The Anatomy of a Decision, because I had a big decision to make yesterday. I got a call. I've had a troubled relationship with a close friend, and we've been trying to arrange time for us to get together to see each other in person for some repair work. And he just called me yesterday to say, OK, I'm coming. I'm coming on April 8th, a week from now.

And I was so excited. Okay, great. We're going to see each other. And two hours later, I get a phone call from the Dr. Oz show and they want me to fly to New York to appear on the Dr. Oz show, talk about the fear cure on April 8th. Oh, that's tough. You got to go for the Dr. Oz show, right? Well, so here's a moment, right? We all have moments like this every day. That's a more exaggerated version. But we have moments like this every day of like, how am I going to make that decision? And what part of me is going to make that decision? And what's going to drive that decision? What would fear do? What would love do? Right? Which part of me do I want to let take the wheel of Lissa? So I, the first thing that happened,

where can you create the win-win as well? Right? Well, sure. And so that's why you don't want to ignore the mind. So first, I'll tell you what happened. The first thing that happened is I got the drop-in intuition that said, say no to Dr. Oz. And then the mind comes in and says, that would be crazy. Why would I say no to Dr. Oz? That would sell lots of books and help me spread my message. So the mind is saying, but that's a fear-based thought. That's a scarcity thought. That's a scarcity thought that says, if I say no to this opportunity, Dr. Oz will never call again. So I go back to the opportunity, Dr. Oz will never call again. Right. So I go back to the heart. What would love do? How do I want to live my life at the end of my life? Do I care more about healing this relationship with my friend or do I care about

selling more books? Do I care about my mission and life purpose or do I want to live my mission and life purpose in my relationships? Well, they're not separate. But, you know, when it comes back to those decisions, I'm always coming back to what would love to do, what would love to do. But then the mind, I'm not ignoring the mind. So the mind has been coming in saying, well, I could ask my friend to change his ticket. I could try to see my daughter's on spring break. Maybe I could work her schedule around. Well, I ended up writing back to the producers and saying, you know, I'm not available on that date, but I'm available next week. It's my daughter's spring break. If you don't mind me bringing her with me, we could come to New York and be on Dr. Oz next week.

I haven't heard back from them yet. We'll see what happens, I guess. We'll see what happens. Yeah. Right? But for me, that felt like— But you didn't make a decision based off of fear of loss. No,

I made a decision to prioritize the love of my friend and the love of my work. Wow. But I'm also trusting that it's a purposeful universe. And if Dr. Oz doesn't want me on some other future time, then it wasn't meant to happen. And that's okay.

And my word, this message will get out there. If what I'm teaching is meaningful and helpful, then the universe can use anything to deliver a message. That's a powerful place to stand on. Right. So I'm not afraid to say no to that. That would be a scarcity thought. We're filled with scarcity thoughts.

It's like, oh, I have to jump at this one opportunity or it'll never come again. Well, maybe Oprah will call a week later, right? Who knows? So I try to really, when I'm making decisions, and this is what doing this process, going through this process of coming into right relationship with fear and allowing fear to be your friend. So it really helps us when we're in these difficult decision-making situations. Like really nuts and bolts. I think I might write a book about how to make decisions because I'm fascinated with how people do this. Like really, how do I make the kinds of decisions that will allow me to live a really joyful life without limiting my capacity to have a successful business and sell books and, you know, fulfill my life purpose and all of that? I don't think we have to choose.

And I think too often we live in a culture where we're so busy making fear-based decisions that we actually compromise our joy. And, and, you know, we're overscheduled, we're over busy, we're, we're compromising our relationships. You know, we're, we're trying to overachieve and we're addicted to approval and we're not actually fulfilling our soul. Like we're not feeding the soul. The soul, you know, when I love asking people when I teach workshops, I'm doing a couple workshops this year about the fear cure. I'm doing one at Kripalu and one at Esalen. And when I teach about this, I love asking people to write down, like, what do you want? What do you want?

What are your desires? What do you dream about? What do you want? And people write it down. And then I say, turn the page. Now, tell me what you yearn for. And the list is usually very different. Really? Because what we want, it might be like, oh, I want my book to hit the New York Times bestseller list. I want to be on the Dr. Oz show. I want to be popular. I want to make a million dollars. I want to buy a house with an ocean view. And then when you say, what do you yearn for? People say things like, I yearn

to feel connected to the people that I love. I yearn for my life to have meaning. I yearn for a sense of connection to God, or I yearn for whatever, whatever it is. You know, we're all unique individual souls. But, you know, the first list tends to be a list of what does my ego want? And the second list is usually a list of what does my soul crave? And I think we just, you know, maybe I just spent too much time in my former life in this lifetime getting what my ego wanted and realizing it didn't really make me happy. Like I've done the New York Times bestseller thing. I've done the make a million dollars thing.

I've done the impress lots of people and have PBS specials and blah, blah, blah. And it's nice. It's not that I'm diminishing those things. It's nice. It's not that I'm diminishing those things. It's that ultimately at the end of the day, like what really feeds my soul is doing this repair work with my friend. nature and a sense of mission and purpose and feeling like my gifts and services are being used in the world in a way that allows me to fully express my unique soul signature on this planet in a way that I feel like I'm able to get my ego out of the way and let myself be used as an instrument of service, as an instrument of the divine in human form, in the world. And it just feels better. You know that feeling, Lewis, where you feel like you've been training your whole life to do exactly what you're here to do. And other people are benefiting in a way that isn't about feeding your ego.

It's about really easing the suffering of others and really creating joy in others in a way that it just fills your heart. Yeah. That's a good question. I'm going to start asking people that. What do they yearn for? I like that. And I have to remind myself of it because especially, you know, I just launched a book.

It's really easy to get in the place of, you know, what does it take? I mean, you have a book launch coming up, too. It's so easy, especially in the kind of industry that you and I are in. It's so easy to get caught in the traps of feeding the ego. It's so easy to get caught in the traps of feeding the ego. And when I talk about the ego, I'm not talking about like the Sigmund Freud definition of the, you know, the id, the ego, the super ego. I'm talking about the part of you that is sort of your self-image, the part that cares what other people think, the part that has a story about who it is in the world and what it's good at and what it's not good at and what it likes and what it doesn't like and kind of that individual identity that is constructed from childhood patterns and limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviors. The part of you that doesn't recognize

that each of us has a little spark of divinity within us that animates us, that makes us all equal and special at the same time. And, you know, I think of the ego as the part that covers that part up. And when you kind of clear that out, then there's this glorious, magnificent spark within each of us that's just yearning to shine, to radiate, not because of approval or achievement or climbing up the corporate ladder or making enough money or being popular, but because it just feels good to fully express the authenticity of who you are in service in the world. It feels good. It's fulfilling at a deep level.

And it comes, I mean, literally, sometimes I feel like my heart's going to just burst. In a good way. Right? Like, yeah, it's a feeling of deep, deep gratitude. Gratitude for the ability to express one's gifts. And that's where I think a lot of real joy comes from. I mean, anybody who's ever had that feeling, who's ever been able to use their gifts in a way that uplifts another, it's a deeply fulfilling experience. Exactly, yeah. It feels much better than seeing your book on the New York Times list. Not that that doesn't feel good, but it's kind of a hollow glory. Yeah, because once it's on there, you're kind of like, okay, now what? You're like, okay, now what? Okay.

Now what? Now I've got to keep my book on the New York times list for another week. And now I've got to make sure my next book, like it's the hungry ghost. Yeah. That's tough. I've been in that position for first 28 years of my life. Uh,

it wasn't until a couple of years ago where I really started to shift out of that. And not to say that I'm like perfect and still don't have that inside of me sometimes where my ego leads but I think I'm much more aware of it now and I feel much more fulfilled because I come from a place of service as opposed to you know achievements or or those specific wants that are feeding the ego. I could talk about this information and have conversations with you for hours and hours, Lisa, and I want to get you back on

when your next book comes out later this year. I have three or four couple questions left for you. Sure. One, speaking into gratitude, what are you most grateful for in your life recently? Well, I sort of just said it. I mean, I'm incredibly grateful. Well, I'll say two things.

One is I feel like I'm smack dab in the center of my purpose. to live my life, or at least to try to live my life as a channel, as an instrument of spiritual service in the world. The gratitude for being able to live that way is intense. And the other is, I just got an amazing compliment. I write a writing program for healthcare providers, and one of the doctors in my program at the Whole Health Medicine Institute, which we're actually recruiting for right now for the 2015 class, one of the doctors said, Institute, which we're actually recruiting for right now for the 2015 class, one of the doctors said,

Lisa, you're an amazing person magnet. And I was like, oh my God, that is maybe the nicest compliment anybody has ever given me, but it's also one of my deepest gratitudes. It's like, look, I'm on the phone here with you, Lewis. Like, I am an amazing person magnet. I have somehow making this journey from the head to the heart has attracted the most incredible soul tribe of really magnificent beings that are in part of my business, that are clients of mine, that are deep soul friends, that are rich community. I live in the Bay Area and like, I have the most amazing,

like my church is a ecstatic dance, sweat your prayers. It's like every time I walk in there, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm so lucky that these are my people. And I just feel like ecstatically grateful for the amount of love in my life. And I guess when I think about being on my deathbed one day, like, what am I going to care about? How many books I sold and how many times I hit the New York Times list or how much I loved? Yeah, that's a powerful thought right there. Yeah. I just want to keep that in mind. I mean, my dad died young, so it's sort of my mortality. I'm not afraid of my mortality, but I just want to make sure that I really joyfully and graciously live this one wild and precious life. I want to feel like at the end, I went all out.

I'm all in. And I did it with love. I like that. And speaking into that, the next question, uh, let's say it's the last day for you, you know, however many years away, you know, there's no, there's no day, but today that we have guaranteed for anyone, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm expecting you're going to be living for a long time and it's far in the future. And all of your books have been removed. And all of your information you've ever written somehow got deleted, let's say.

And you were able to write down three truths that you know about life to be true to you, to leave to your family, your friends, the world. What would you say those three truths would be? Wow. This is the kind of thing I would really want to think about to give you the best answer, but I guess just off the top of my head, I mean, you know, it's funny because these kinds of answers, they sound so cliche when you say them, but I think it's cliche because it's actually true that all you need is love. I guess I would say that adversity is an opportunity for soul growth. If we could look at everything that is happening that we wish wasn't and see it gratefully,

not only come into acceptance with it and stop resisting what is, because so much of our pain comes from resisting things we can't change. And to not only come into acceptance with it, but to be grateful, like in the moment, like a friend of mine just lost her 17-year-old daughter, like every parent's nightmare, right? And her attitude towards it is just unbelievable. Like acceptance of this horrible tragedy, but not just acceptance. It's like grateful for the opportunity to love her daughter for as long as she got to and grateful for the feeling of being broken open. It's like having the ego so cracked, there's nothing left but pure light shining through her right now in spite of her pain. And I guess the third thing would be like, play more.

Like, I really think we're supposed to be holding hands and skipping on the beach. Like there's lots of things. I really believe that there's this kind of seen world and then there's the unseen world. And for me, the's this kind of seen world and then there's the unseen world. And for me, the veil between the two is thinner and thinner. And I like to think of like, what can humans do that spirits can't? Like humans can ski, like we can hold hands and skip on the beach. We can have sex. We can go skydiving. We can swim. We can hike. We can dance. We can do these cool things because we have bodies. And yeah, it's hard to be human because we also have these, like the density of, of bodies

and we have the density of our negative emotions and all of that. But it's like, what if we can just even experience the density of our human emotions as like gratitude for the ability to be fully human, even in our grief or our anger or whatever. But if we can play more, you know, like play into my, my, one of my mentors is Martha Beck. She says, play until you feel like resting and then rest until you feel like playing. And if it doesn't feel like play or rest, don't do it. And that might sound lazy, but I think actually when you move fear out of the way, actually play, like spiritual service becomes play. Like my work is play for me. Like this is playing.

I feel like you and I are playing on the phone right now. Of course. My work, right? Yeah. I like it. Well, those are three great truths. Thanks for sharing those. Yeah.

On the spot. Sorry not to give you any time. No, it's okay. Like I said, I'll have to think more like it. Well, those are three great truths. Thanks for sharing those. Yeah. On the spot. Sorry not to give you any time. No, it's okay. Like I said, I'll have to think more about it. Yeah, yeah. I'll post about it on Facebook. Yeah. I've got one final question for you for this episode. But before I ask you that one, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Lissa, for being courageous after years and years of practicing one thing that you felt like you were supposed to do and that you spent all this time and money and energy into and then leaving it to follow what your intuition at the moment told you to follow and now inspiring

millions of people with the curiosity that you have, that the research that you do, it's so incredible that you've dedicated your life to helping others heal themselves and overcome the things that hold them back. So I want to acknowledge you for the incredible courage you have and the gift that you are, Lissa in the world. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you,

Lewis. I feel like I said, I feel really grateful to be able to do this work and live this life. Yeah. Well, we're grateful for you. And the final question, I don't know if you answered this the last time,

but the final question is, what's your definition of greatness right now? Oh, well, I talked about that spark of divinity that lies within all of us. I think that's our greatness. I think when we actually are brave enough to peel back the layers of who we aren't so that we can fully express that spark of divinity. And, you know, when it comes to my spiritual beliefs, I really do believe like we all have a piece of call it whatever you want, consciousness, God, our highest self, our soul, whatever. When you actually are brave enough to

let people see that and to let that take the wheel of you and to let that part of you express its gifts, that is true greatness and it's greatness completely free of ego. So it's not about approval or about arrogance or any of that. It's just your radiant light shining in the world in a way that's unapologetic and, and truly magnificent. But it's because it's coming, it's coming from the soul. It's coming from the spirit within you and it's shining through your heart. It's not coming from the mind and it's not, it's not tied up with the ego or the self image or the, your identity of yourself. It's, it's that piece that we all have. And when you peel it back, and that's what doing this work about fear, when you move beyond the fear, this part of you starts to express itself more and more.

It's almost an unstoppable process once you just make the decision that you want to start living that way. And that part of you, courage is a natural side effect of that part of you. And then that part of you starts to do brave things in the world that make the world a better place. And I find that really hopeful and exciting. Thank you so much, Lissa Rankin. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you, Lewis. And thank you all for being here and listening. It's such an honor to be here. Part of your greatness. And thank you all for being here and listening. It's such an honor to be here. Part of your greatness. Thank you for the courage to express your unique magnificence, Louis.

And there you have it, guys. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to head back to lewishouse.com slash 163 for all of the notes from today's episode. We'll get links back to all the resources that we covered. Everything that was mentioned in today's episode will be linked back there and also where you can get Dr. Lissa Rankin's new book on fear and what it means in your life. So make sure to check out all those links. If you enjoyed this episode, please share with your friends, tell a friend, email a friend, post posted on Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn, tag me on Instagram and let me know where you're listening to this. I keep getting so many photos posted on Instagram with tagging me of where people are listening to the School of Greatness podcast all over the world and what they're learning from it. I'm getting a lot of

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