The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Solo - How To Conquer Your Fears & Pursue Your Dreams

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

#740: On today's episode Michael is solo for a quick episode all about conquering your fears so that you can pursue your goals and dreams. Michael provides advice on listeners and viewers can get past their fears and move forward in their lives. Michael also provides examples and an exercise on how he has gotten past his own fears in his life in order to acheive his goals and ambitions. This episode is for anyone who has held themselves back due to fear, or anxiety.    To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential   The Skinny Confidential SPF is back In Stock! Use Code SPF for 15% off HERE Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.    

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Go to ShopSkinnyConfidential.com and use code SPF for 15% off. blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. One thing that Lauren and I have learned over eight years of doing this show is one of the most common themes that people ask that they write into us about, whether they're viewing or listening, is how to become confident, how to conquer your fears, how to execute on the things you want to execute on, how to really go after the stuff that you want in life. And what we realize is that many people, including ourselves at times, get held back by what we really want because of this immobilizing fear

that we all carry. And to take you guys all back for those of you that are not so familiar with my story, I obviously have done this show with Lauren for eight years now. I do public speaking all the time. I run a company called Dear Media that does nothing but produce a bunch of shows where people are speaking all the time. And it would be hard to believe at this point, if you didn't know me and didn't know my story, that at one point I was absolutely terrified of public speaking. It was my biggest fear. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I used to freeze up thinking, oh, I'm going to have to give a presentation or I'm going to have to go on stage. And if I never got past that fear, many of the things we're talking about now,

this show that you're watching, the company that I now run, the relationship I've continued to build with my wife, the people I've got to meet doing this show would never exist. And so I thought it would be beneficial to do an episode all around conquering fears so that whatever you're pursuing in life, you can have a chance of pursuing. There's a quote I'd like to start with by Seneca. And it goes, and I'm sure you've heard this, something like this, we suffer more in our imagination than in reality. And I think that's so true. All of us have a tendency to build up this big scenario where our greatest fears materialize and it completely derails our life and we get shamed or thrown off of the path or we lose our confidence. And I think a lot of this comes from this anxiety

that we build up around the fear of itself. And so what I've thought is, what are the things that I've done in my life that Lauren's done that we think you could do as well to help you get past those fears and that have helped us get past ours. So to take it a step back, like I said, at one point I was terrified of public speaking. So I started thinking, how am I going to get past this fear? One of the things I realized was, well, the only way to do it is to actually start doing the thing. So I started small. I started creating videos on social, just looking into the camera. I know that sounds strange, but I was just staring into a screen knowing, okay, this

is going to go out to people later, how to get past that. Then I started doing this podcast. Then I started speaking in front of a few people and a few audiences. And over time, just started building that muscle. And you can do this with many other things as well. Maybe you want to ask that guy or girl out on a date. The only way to start doing that well is to actually start doing that. Maybe you want to start speaking up more in company meetings. Okay, the only way to do that is to raise your hand and start doing that more. And what we realize is that

the only way to really conquer fear is to kind of face it head on and do the thing that you're most uncomfortable doing. Some tangible ways that you can start working yourself up to doing that is what I've learned about is called fear setting. And I'm not the only person that's talked about this. I think Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holliday and a bunch of different great authors have, if you Google fear setting exercise, they have these worksheets. But the way that I do it in my own life is say there's something that I'm nervous about doing. I'll use an example. Let's say I want to start a new company or share a new idea. And maybe the reason I haven't done it is because I'm

worried about the response of my peers, my family, people around me, the customers. So what I'll do is I'll say, if I start a new company and share this idea, what is the worst thing that can happen? And you just go down the list and you write all the worst things. Someone could tell you the idea is stupid. Someone can laugh at you. Your family may tell you, you can't do it. You might not be able to have your job. If you start, you write all these exercises and you, and you go through this fear setting exercise, writing all the things that you're scared of that you think could happen. Once you write out all those things, then you write your response. What if, or what would I do if this thing happened? So if people laughed at me, what would I then do?

What would my response be? If my family told me the idea was stupid, what would my response be? And you go through this and you actually live in the fear before you actually do the thing. And what you'll realize is the thing that you've built up in your mind is not nearly as bad when you write it out on paper. Or let's take an easier example. Say you want to ask that guy or girl out on a date, somebody that you've been crushing on. Your biggest fear is they say no, or they laugh at you.

You're right. Okay. What would be my response if they did those things? And essentially what you're doing is you're teaching your nervous system to live in that fear and to feel what it feels like if that thing you're so scared of goes the way you think it will, if it goes wrong. And what you quickly realize is that all these things that you build up in your mind aren't nearly as bad as you think. And the reason this is so important is after doing this show for so long, I've seen so many people write in over the years that are holding themselves

back from their dreams or their aspirations or the person they want to pursue purely because they've built up this great fear in their mind of the person they want to pursue purely because they've built up this great fear in their mind of the thing they think that will happen, which again, if you go back to the quote I said earlier, may never happen. You may start that company and it might be a home run. You may ask that girl or guy out and they might say yes immediately and ask you why you've been waiting so long. You may share that idea and people might say, hey, that's the greatest idea I've ever heard. You may start to speak up in the company or in the classroom and people might say, hey, that's the greatest idea that's ever been brought up in this company or in this classroom.

I bring all this up because if I didn't conquer this fear of public speaking, so many things wouldn't exist in my life. I wouldn't have this show. I wouldn't be speaking to you. I wouldn't have the company I run. Lauren and I, like I said earlier, wouldn't have met all the incredible people. Even personally for our marriage, this has almost been like marriage therapy for us because we get to sit down and talk to so many people. And it all stemmed from me conquering a fear. Obviously, there's been other things. I'd have to give my wife a ton of credit because she's always been someone comfortable speaking. But you can apply this exercise to literally anything in your life. And the whole idea is that if there's something that you've

not been feeling confident about, or that you've been fearful of, or that you've been wanting to do that you haven't done because you're scared to do it. If you start to get into a rhythm where you do this fear setting exercise, where you live in it, where you write down what all of the worst things that you could think could happen and all of the things that you would do to respond to those worst things, you'll start to realize that some of these fears are really silly and that there's really no reason or warrant to have them in the first place. And if you can get past that, one of the biggest things that I realized from the people that come on this show is you can have the best idea in the world. You can be the most passionate person. You can be the most creative person, but if you don't

execute and you don't do the thing that you're supposed to do to either put yourself on the map or to build that business or to ask that girl or guy out or whatever it is, then you basically stay stagnant in life. What I've found is most people are unhappy, not because of external things, but because they're not keeping the promises they're trying to make to themselves or they're not doing the thing that they really feel called to doing. I know that's the case for me. Whenever I feel anxious or sad or get a little bit of depression, it's because I know there's things that I should be doing that I'm not doing. And I know there's things that I've promised myself that I'm not executing on. And it's mostly because of some fear or some anxiety. And so I share this message because I want everyone that listens or watches this show

to live the life of their dreams on their terms, the way they want to live. And I think sometimes you require that, just that extra push or that extra bump to get past whatever's holding you back. I hope this episode can help do that for you. Like I said, most of the people I've met, there's always this common theme or this story where there's this hurdle, this thing that they you. Like I said, most of the people I've met, there's always this common

theme or this story where there's this hurdle, this thing that they know they want to do, but they haven't done because of X, Y, or Z reasons. And once they do the thing and they start putting one foot in front of the other, they start to actualize their dreams and their ambitions and their life and everything starts to pan out and they start to become happier. Even if, and I just want to caveat this, even if they fail or make a misstep, just actually doing the thing and taking the leap gives people the confidence to feel good about their life. And so I hope this is an episode that will kind of give you the push in the right direction. Last thing I'll say, what I realized after doing this show and public speaking and working with so many people and being an entrepreneur is that we really overestimate the amount that people actually think about us

individually. All of us, myself included, have been guilty of really mostly thinking about the way we're perceived, the way we look. Of course, we're all thinking about other people, but at the end of the day, nobody's showing up to a comedy show or a play or to someone's presentation or a classroom presentation and thinking about, oh, if this person makes a mistake, we're going to judge them for the rest of their life. We're really mostly thinking about our experience in that interaction. And as much as I'd love to think that everyone watching or listening to this is thinking about me all the time, that's just not the truth. And once you realize that we're not nearly as important as

we think we are, and everyone's got their own problems and their own insecurities and their own fears, that's also a freeing experience for you to say, okay, everyone's kind of going through life with all of these things that we're carrying as well. Some further than others, some have gotten to a place where maybe they're more confident than others or less fearful than others. But we all start with these insecurities and these fears and work through them. And as soon as you realize that you're not the center of everybody's attention or world, that's also a way that you can start to realize, okay, I'm living an independent life, horse blinders on, doing my own thing in my own lane. I got to conquer my own issues, my own fears, and it's freeing in a way. So I hope this episode was

helpful. I hope that you can use some of these exercises. I hope you can pursue the things that you've been thinking about pursuing, conquer the fears that you've been hoping to conquer and live the life that you want on your terms. Hope this episode was helpful. See you next time.