Erwin McManus is a pastor, author, and speaker. Fear is so ingrained in our minds that we forget it’s not our natural state. So how do we break free from it, understand ourselves better, and push past fear to become our best selves? Expect to learn why people find it so hard to know and show themselves, why so many people are negative at a default, how to not get paralysed by overthinking, how do you live a courageous life, how to overcome fear and how to stop being so afraid, the biggest differences between being lazy and tired, why we’re so mean to ourselves, the most common myths people should stop believing immediately, balancing the tension between humility and confidence, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How does fear shape our lives?
Well, you know, I think when I was young, I had the view that some people were just naturally heroic and some people were just naturally born cowards. And I fell into that category. You know, if I look back when I was young, I was afraid of everything. And some of it was experiential. You know, we got attacked by a dog. So I was terrified by dogs all my life.
I had a seatbelt break on a roller coaster and almost flew off the roller coaster. And so I was afraid of roller coasters or anything fast. And I began realizing that I began accumulating fear. And the problem with fear is that it doesn't stay in a category. It permeates throughout your whole soul, your psychological well-being.
And I began realizing that I was more defined by fear than I was by almost any other emotion. And I didn't really have a strategy. We didn't have what we have today, so many ways of accessing insight and ways of understanding mental structures and mind shifts. But so I had to make my own decision. I had to decide how would I affect this? How would I change this?
And so I developed a strategy to use fear as my life compass. Whenever I felt fear, I just moved toward it. Whenever I felt afraid of something, I actually moved more aggressively in that direction. And what I discovered by the time I'd finished my 20s is that there were actually international magazines and documentaries that were flying in to see what I was doing because they felt I was fearless.
And I thought this was so ironic that I was being defined as someone who was fearless. And in fact, my favorite superhero is Daredevil, the man without fear. And it was because I iconically longed to become that person because I knew how my whole life was captured by fear. And so I learned how to take negative material and turn it into a positive asset.
And I think that for me is the key is that I've lived a pretty adventurous life, traveled to nearly a hundred countries, gone to some of the most dangerous places in the world, walked the streets of Damascus, dropped into Pakistan and throughout the Middle East, different parts of the world that very few people ever go to and very few people ever survive.
And one of the most interesting things for me is that in those moments, I didn't feel captured by fear at all. And a huge part of that was because I'd learned how to take this emotion, this experience called fear, turned it into a positive fuel and use it as a way to motivate me to move forward in life.
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Chapter 2: What is the role of fear in personal growth?
How can people work out if they are being ruled by fear in their life?
Well, I don't think it's that difficult to teach. I think most of us know just intrinsically that when we're afraid. But it's usually related to when we have a dream, an ambition, desire, or goal, and we're more afraid of the consequences than we are the benefit. And so when we're paralyzed, moving into our best view of ourselves or our future, that's when we know we're controlled by fear.
Hmm. Yeah, the fact that the potential pitfalls are more terrifying than the potential outcomes are enthusing, the fact that you've got this sort of running away from something that you don't want as opposed to running towards something that you do want, and the balance between those two energies is really interesting.
Yeah, and one of the things we have to realize is that one of the things that's unique about human beings as a species is that we're interconnected to the future. Every other species, from the best that we can tell, is completely existential. They live in this moment. They're surviving the Serengeti. They're surviving the hunt and the fight for survival.
But human beings are inseparable from a relationship to the past and the future. And when we live in the past, we tend to live a life of regret. But when we live in the future, we have two options. We have an option to either live a life that would be described as a life of faith or a life of fear because the future is unknown. And from my perspective, it's uncreated. I'm not a fatalist.
I'm not a scientific determinist that thinks everything is mathematically already predetermined. I think we have choice, that we have creative agency as human beings. And so then we're connected to this obscure, mysterious space called the future.
And how we engage that, whether we have a sense of optimism and hope or whether we're filled with fear and trepidation, that will shape the way we experience life in the present.
Do you see faith as the opposite of fear?
I do. And if faith is a hard word for someone, I'd say optimism. is I think every highly spiritualized word has a very non-highly spiritualized word, but we all have them. And some people go, I don't believe in faith. And I go, well, you psychologically live by faith. I'm getting on a plane today to go to Salt Lake City. I'm putting my faith in that pilot. I'm hoping he had a great day.
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Chapter 3: Is faith the opposite of fear?
Ironically, if you want someone to be paralyzed by fear, you don't get them to do the thing they fear. Because it's the fear of the reality that's more powerful than the reality itself. And so my fear of roller coasters was far more powerful than the roller coaster when I finally got on it. My fear of dogs was far more powerful. than the reality of dogs once I started spending time with them.
And so the irony is if you want to be trapped and paralyzed in your fear, stay away from the thing you fear.
Yeah. There's a lyric from a Beartooth song, the first song on the new album that says, all my worries were a waste of time. I've got that written. I've got that written on a post-it note above my desk at the moment that, you know, whether it's we suffer more in imagination than reality, whatever trite version of this you want to sort of rebring up. But
It is wild how much worse our minds are able to make anything than even the worst that reality would be able to deliver to us. All of the extremes, everything's maxed out at 10.
The way that people are going to judge us, the lack of forgiveness that the world's ever going to give us, the way that they're going to know, the way that it's going to define us, the way we're never going to be able to get over it. so on and so forth. And then usually that thing doesn't come to pass. And even if by some obscene chance it does come to pass, it's nowhere near as bad as we think.
And we get over it more quickly and nobody else really cares that much. So yeah, I think the fear of fear is the biggest one.
Absolutely. I don't know if the studies still hold true, but so many of the studies show that the number one fear people have is public speaking, which I think is amazing because when you speak in public, even if you're terrible, usually no one shoots you. You know, there are no physical or violent ramifications. You just... Have a bad moment.
I mean, I've been speaking for 45 years and early on, which is so ironic, I actually began speaking in the middle of government projects, in the middle of drug cartels, in the middle of gangbangers and assassins and criminals. And so I actually had a... genuinely dangerous environment. So the fear of speaking was way down the list.
It was the fear of surviving those 20, 30 minutes that was actually more real for me. And I've had the opportunity to speak in front of maybe 80, 100,000 people in a moment. And what's interesting to me is when I'm thinking about myself, I become consumed by fear. When I'm thinking about others, the fear is completely gone.
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Chapter 4: How can overthinking be managed effectively?
I've had incredibly exhilarating moments. Yesterday, I celebrated 41 years of marriage. Congratulations. And it's amazing to the same woman. And I say that somewhat hesitantly because she's not the same woman. She's changed at least 30 to 40 times. And so I always say, if you want to be with someone else, just stay with her. She's going to change on you.
And 41 years of marriage, and in those, we've had some incredibly exhilarating moments, some beautiful moments. And those moments become memories, but the experience of those emotions, they pass very quickly. But if you have a fight, those emotions stay with you a long time. And so we have this incredible, beautiful memory of our honeymoon. But two days ago, she threw away my...
apple turnover and oh my god do not touch a man's apple turnover you know and and it was on our anniversary And I'm like, hey, I bought this Apple turnover at this really great place. And I bought you something too. And she goes, I threw it away. And I realized all these negative emotions. It was like the world was just absolutely being destroyed by Thanos because she threw away my turnover.
There's something about negative emotions. They cause an instantaneous reaction. They go expansively and they go deep and they stay with us. which is why when you're in therapy, you're not working through, I don't know how to stop forgiving. I don't know how to stop having optimism about the future. You're struggling with, I don't know how to forgive. I'm holding onto this bitterness.
I don't know how to let go of this past hurt. Negative emotions stay with us. Positive emotions flow through us. And what we have to realize, and to me, it makes perfect sense because There is nothing worth achieving in life that doesn't take hard work. So why should we think the best version of us would not take hard work? And so you can only become the best version of you.
I can only become the best version of me if I'm willing to put the work in to become that person. If I don't want to put the work in, I become the worst version of me.
Yeah, there's no seminars on how to be more depressed or how to have less confidence. All of those things come so easily, so naturally. We don't need any more coaching. We're already black belts. Yeah, we're naturals. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. I wonder how... universal this is. Different people have different constitutions and different set points.
But for a pretty big cohort of people, this is the thing that they're going to be battling with.
It's the fact that for some reason, they seem to always be swimming against the tide when they're trying to get themselves toward a good state, toward a hopeful state, toward something that appropriates optimism or abundance or a vision for themselves that isn't based around fear or around concern or worry or anxiety. And yeah, that
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Chapter 5: Why do successful people often struggle internally?
And as I was leaving, what really hit me was he was absolutely right. I hid in the average. The one way to remain invisible in life is to be average. And I was trying to to cover all my insecurities and all my self-doubt by just being average. Because if you become extraordinary, you now become the target of other people's critique or criticism or evaluation.
And one of the choices I had to make in my own life is realizing I want to make a difference in the world. I want to do something that matters. And I remember I had an uncle who drove me to college about 15 hour drive. And he saw me years later, goes, hey, do you talk now? And he didn't mean for a living. He meant, do I actually talk? He goes, I drove you 15 hours. You never said a word.
I was so introverted. No one would have ever guessed I would end up speaking to millions of people around the world. And what I can tell you, Chris, is that what shifted for me wasn't that I wasn't afraid to walk up on a platform. What shifted for me was I didn't walk in that platform for my ego. And I didn't walk in that platform for my need or search for self-worth.
But I wanted to actually help people find freedom from the fears that had held me back. And I looked at myself and I thought, if I've been trapped in fear at such a profound level and have found my way out, I'm convinced most of humanity is trapped in fear.
And if I can just help people find just enough self-belief to break out of that prison that they've created themselves by believing these things about themselves, then for me, my life has been well spent.
Where does that self-belief come from or that courage?
For me, it came really deeply rooted in what later I found as a faith. I grew up irreligious. I didn't have any spiritual contacts. I didn't know there was a God or believe in God. And when I was 20 years old and I was in college, I was studying philosophy and was just trying to find meaning in life. And I was on a desperate search to figure out whether my life had any significance.
I was drowning in a personal nihilism that life had no meaning, that existence was just arbitrary, that human action was empty and hollow. And then to consider this narrative that we're created by God and that we're created in his image and that God what gives God pleasure is for us to express goodness and to live a life of love and to elevate the value of other human beings.
And for me, I found that in the person of Jesus. And what helped my self-belief was this possibility. And I know you can have a lot of scientists and philosophers, and for me, it's just very, very personal. The possibility that my life actually mattered was overwhelming to me. And I wish I could say I made this incredibly scientific, academic, mathematical decision. It wasn't.
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Chapter 6: How does action counteract fear and overthinking?
We decide diamonds have value, right? We decide avocados have value, whatever it is, right? And those things change based on our own preferences or our own opinions or perspectives. But it's the same with human beings. When a human being has value to us because they contribute something to us, then we consider them to have value.
And if our personal value is based on what other people project our value is, we're slaves. We become absolutely captured by the opinion of other people. And that's why you can't let someone else decide whether you're gold or diamonds or avocado. You have to decide your own value in life and go, I... I have value because I exist. And I have value because I am a unique human being.
And I can work from that value and I can work from that love. And I don't actually know how you find that. And I'll admit my limitation. I don't know how you find that without a relationship with God. And I think it's a very difficult thing because it's ethereal. Like, what is the outside value?
determiner that tells you your value and uh and i and and that for me is like been so life transforming to go i know i have intrinsic value i believe i've been created in god's image and likeness but i also believe every human being is created in god's image and likeness and that every human being has intrinsic value and so it's my responsibility and my privilege to treat every human being
with that kind of value and that unconditional love.
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