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
Chapter 1: What does fear signify about our goals?
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 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 gonna bring? We all set these big goals, things we wanna achieve, accomplishments we wanna 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?
Chapter 2: How can we normalize fear in our lives?
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 succumbed 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 gonna put all this effort into a book and no one's gonna read it. I'm nervous that I'm gonna put all this work into a course and that people won't buy it.
I'm nervous that I'm gonna 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 gonna 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, in finding the peak us,
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Chapter 3: What are the three roots of fear?
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, 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 on the show, I do not believe 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, being 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 lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson, lesson. 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 itself.
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? They think I'm crazy. They think I've lost it. I couldn't handle the pressure of a corporate job. Or I couldn't hack it. Whatever. 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 changes 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, or 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 am...
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Chapter 4: How can we confront our fears effectively?
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. 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 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 wisely.
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 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 gonna 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.
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Chapter 5: What wisdom can Stoicism and the Bible provide on fear?
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 is it's 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 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.
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