102: Exploring Our Fear Body

For a lot of people, fear is an obstacle that is difficult but not impossible to overcome. When we walk into an unfamiliar street and get to a dark area, we stop moving out of fear. Fear makes us not want to ride a rollercoaster or swim in a backyard pool. We stop going to places and experiencing life because fear is weighing down on our shoulders. However, there are two kinds of fear; one that is unconscious and the other conscious. If we are aware of our fear, then we are given the time to make a smart choice and use that fear as a stepping stone instead of a wall. Learn more about the fear body and how it can serve and educate you.

I am ecstatically excited for 2018. The word Robert and ecstatic are not two words that tend to go together. I’m that even keel, chill guy, unless something really happens and I get really excited. When it comes to 2018, I think there’s a stirring inside of my body. I was debating taking off a show but I was like, “Screw it. Let’s do a show.” We’ll be talking about preparing for the next year. We’ll be talking about how to really set yourself up for success in 2018.

Morgan and I had an incredible weekend and we spent a lot of time talking and connecting and getting intimate. I talked about my experience of walking in to 2017 and I painted the picture of the man on December 31st 2016 in a very quiet, wonderful New Year’s Eve we had, but the man was not a happy, ecstatic man. He was a burdened man. He was a man who was moving through a dying of a business. He was looking at an extreme debt in 2017. Just a man who was heavy. He was really just physically heavy, energetically heavy, mentally heavy, feeling sorrow and feeling burdened. I can tell you, after a year shy of ten days, my life is so transformed, is probably the best word. I paid that debt. I just recently did a cleanse for a month and lost 25 pounds, got back to the gym. Morgan and my relationship has gone ecstatic. We had some great conversations. This is just a big piece of the puzzle is looking back and saying, “Holy shit, what a year.”

If your year went in the other direction or your year has stayed flat or your year just went up a little bit and not to the point of gratification, you could say, “You did your best.” That’s one way to look at it and that’s perfectly an acceptable answer. The other way is take a hard look at yourself. Take a hard look at what you’ve done and what you haven’t done. Take a hard look at where you took a shortcut or cut yourself short or didn’t go for it, didn’t tell the truth, didn’t express yourself in the way you want it to be expressed. In my lineage, there are examples and extreme cases where people are enslaved and controlled and unable to move. Most of this world, most of the people, you do have a choice. You do have a choice and that choice starts with you.

That is the foundation of this talk. It’s just going to be the rant, no coaching. It’s really about this concept of fear. I’ve been thinking a lot about fear. I’ve been thinking about fear my entire life because in my line of business, fear is both the enemy and the grandmaster. I want to talk about that. Fear is the enemy because fear is what stops us from moving from point A to point B. It is the blockade. It is the weight around our ankles. It is the cause of our self-sabotage. Fear is the optical in the movie, in the game. It’s also a grandmaster because to me, fear is the great educator and the great thing you can use to find out what’s inside of you, what’s stopping you from moving. It’s an educational alarm system. It is your red alarm in places like you’re walking down the street and a tiger walks up. That doesn’t quite happen these days. It’s the grand alarm if you’re driving in a car and didn’t stop through a red light and it’s heading towards you. It’s also the warning sign if you get a private message or someone looks at you strange or you feel danger. It is the thing that wakes us up. Fear is one to be looked at and avoided and bypassed, but also to be deeply respected because there are a lot of biological things that happen in terms of fear.

When you’re in fear, some of these should sound familiar. They’re not rocket science. The symptoms of fear tend to be increased breathing also known as hyperventilation, increased heart rate, constriction of blood vessels, increased muscle tensions, goose bumps, and then changes actually in your biology, things like increased glucose from your blood. Your body actually responds and the respond is what’s commonly known as the fight or flight or as I’ve heard recently, fight or freeze response, when your body actually responds to the stimuli. There’s this whole chemical, and this is not rocket science. This is pretty familiar and not exactly what I want to talk about.

I do want to talk about two kinds of fear in my world. The first is conscious fear and the second is unconscious fear. Unconscious fear really is when somebody is coming from your peripheral and you feel danger and your body automatically responds. There is heat or fire or your hand touches a stove, there’s this autonomic response. Stimuli reaction, unconscious reaction and then the choice of fight, flight or freeze. The other one, which will be the primary part of the show, is the conscious fear. The conscious fear again is stimuli, conscious reaction, choice and then decision. When you have awareness of the foundation of your fear, when you have awareness of what makes you up, then you actually have larger time in response to the stimuli and larger time in terms of your decision.

I don’t like rollercoasters. I just don’t. This is interesting because I was thinking, “I don’t even really know if I still don’t like roller coasters.” The last time I was on a roller coaster, I was married to Carol. That was 2001, 2002, something like that, old school, OG. It was a long time ago. I’m 47 now. I theoretically don’t like roller coasters because up to the first 32 years of my life, my body does not feel good on roller coasters. I did this crazy car thing with Ariella at a fair about three months ago and it was a baby roller coaster. It was a roller coaster set up for a nine, ten, twelve, fourteen-year-old and I was a little scared. I was a little nauseous. My body did not respond too well to the baby roller coaster. The thought of me going to the Six Flags and riding those big ass roller coasters is not a pleasant thing. My body responds based on my first 32 years of experience with fear. I generate fear tapping in to the memory of that experience.

There are also things like my history of OneTaste and things I did there that have caused harm and pain. Recently, I’m working with an incredible therapist. I think I talked about her how she reads me like a book. She said this great thing to me, “Your lessons and the fear you’re holding, it’s a life lesson not a life sentence,” which I thought was pretty deep because I do look at it as a life sentence. My fear and my past and who I was and things I’ve done, I carry on my back as a shoulder, as a life sentence. If you can think of the worst murdered view of feeling, that’s what it feels like in my body. Because I did these things from 30 years old to 40 years old to 100, 200 people that I lacked out of integrity, I carry inside of myself the life sentence. The fear that I’m going to act out of integrity again and hurt someone. In my conversations with this mighty therapist she goes, “You are powerful. You have sight. You have skills. You have the potential to be as big as you want to be but your fear holds you back. Your fear is the one with the foot on the brake.” It really is this way of keeping myself small.

What inspired the show talking about the fear body was our good friend, Eckhart Tolle and A New Earth. I was looking through this book, I read this book a long time ago and I’m definitely going to read it again. If you haven’t read this book, I highly, highly recommend it. I know Oprah loved it. If you don’t want to jump on the Oprah train, but still ignore that because this book is awesome. It was written in 2005, came to power in 2008 due to Oprah. It’s a really incredible book. It has a lot to do with the ego. I found this one little passage I remembered and I wanted to read it to you.

It’s called Carrying the Past. It’s three paragraphs. “The inability or rather unwillingness of the human mind to let go of the past is beautifully illustrated in the story of two Zen monks, Tanzan and Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side. The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn’t restrain himself any longer, ”Why did you carry that girl across the road?” He asked. ”We monks are not supposed to do things like that.” “I put the girl down hours ago,” said Tanzan. ”Are you still carrying her?”

That’s a good story. I like that. How many of us do that? All of us do that. I do that. That’s the fear of my past. That’s the fear of me hurting someone again. I’m carrying the past really deeply and my inability to let go of that pain is really what’s stopping me in terms of my expansion. It’s funny because I’ve been thinking a lot about money recently. I feel like I overtly, on the top level, think I have a very healthy relationship with money. I can make money, I can save money, and I can spend money with the best of them. Making money for me is rather easy. Maintaining money or holding money is significantly more challenging. I built a business that cost me $700,000 and I’ve done a lot of things in my life that have stopped me, so I’ve been really thinking a lot about this. I do want to do some more sessions with my amazing therapist around this. I think there’s a fear of being successful.

There are deep viewpoints I’ve been holding around what it means to have a lot of money. We’re going to New York in January to see a client of mine. We have a couple of days to play and I’m looking at Airbnbs. Looking at the Airbnbs that cost $200, $250 a night, that is my Jewish heritage to the nth degree. It’s a business expense. I can expense part of this but it’s just like, “I should only spend $200.” Just for fun, I decided to look at the same timeframe of the $1,000 and up price range. I found this epic church-like townhouse, three-story class loft. It is ridiculous. It is pure decadence. Part of me was thinking like, “What would it do for my psyche if I spent the money and got that? The ridiculous overpricing, the ridiculous expenditure of this church-like for me and Morgan.” We’re not big people. She is shorter than I am. At the same time, it’s like, “What would it be like just to push it?” We’re not going to do it. We’re not going to go for it at this time but there was still a really mental thought of like, “Where do we stop ourselves from abundance out of fear and how does it stop?”

All these things have been pieces and this is all attuned into what I call just riffing off the mighty Eckhart Tolle of the fear body. I have fear of what it would look like. I have fear of what it would feel like. I have fear that if I spend that money, then I can’t put money towards paying taxes, estimated taxes, or putting money into savings and all these things that arise in it. My parents gave us a really generous wedding present. My dad’s recommendation was to put half in savings and half buy shit for the house. That is the extent of my upraising with my dad was that exact thing. That is the core thing, “You want to buy a present? Make $10, spend $5 on the present, put $5 in savings.” That is the core element. That is the weight I carry around because of some fear that it’ll run out or one fear that I’ll do it wrong. Those are some of the thoughts.

Facing 2018, my possible expansion and my growth. To go back to the Tony Robbins axiom, “The success of the business is based on the psychology of the owner.” If you own your business and on some level we all do, if you want to look at how to expand the business, go back to your psychology. Go back to the places where you don’t think you’re worthy or capable or possible of holding the vast success that lives inside of you. Of course, I am having this internal conversation with myself around this. What do we do about that? The practice I want to say is confront. The first thing, and this is my other practice, is you need to confront what’s going on for you.

One thing I did practically to figure out 2018 is I built a forecast for 2018. I looked at every aspect of my business. I looked at every piece of how I want to make money. I put down my consulting clients, I put down my life coaching, and then I put down my plans on the book. I put down where I want to make the money and how I want to do it. I want to just say this for the record as an example of what you can do. I want to make $100,000 from selling my book next year. Let’s think about that. $100,000.00, those are a lot of effing zeroes in there. Moreover, everyone knows you don’t make any money selling books. That’s just a fact but I say, “Screw it.” I still want to do it anyway because I know I’m going to write a book that’s powerful. I know I’m going to publish that sucker on October. I know I’m going to create a pre-sales funnel. I know I’m going to create a product to go along with the book where you get a book alongside of it.

I am in that confrontation, that deliberate awareness, the excitement, the building up of my intestinal fortitude, the scrunching of my groin, my shoulders tightening and pulling on the back with excitement of this expansion and growth of what’s possible. I’ll say this right for you. If I don’t make it, if I make $10,000 or $20,000, that’s okay because to me the starting point is to gear myself up to imagine, to believe in this possibility. The first thing is to look deep into it and confront it. I built my forecast as a way for me to presence this question and these concepts. See how the fear is serving you. Look at how your fear is taking care of you. In my example, my fear of not hurting someone has probably stopped me from hurting people but it’s also kept me in line and kept me small, which is comfortable.

It’s not very comfortable to say I want to sell 10,000 pre-sales in 2018 before the book comes out but it feels alive. My genitals are tingling. Maybe that’s a little TMI, but my body is tingling. Look at how it’s serving you not to have it. Ask for reflection. Ask for help. I have two people I trust as therapists, a somatic therapist and this new woman, Leilani. I have Morgan to constantly reflect back what she sees. Then I probably have 100, 200 people who love to give me advice, some solicited, some not, but thankfully I’m grateful for the attention. Ask for reflection. Don’t do this in isolation. Don’t do this in a bubble. Take the chance to put yourself out there. Announce on a public podcast and then go forth and do it.

Make a practice around moving against your fear. Make a practice of taking those little baby steps away from your status quo and what you’re familiar with into a place where you’re actually confronting it. Celebrate your successes. Really revel in them, brag. Mama Gena has this great thing where women in her program are actively encouraged to brag. There’s a whole format and style of bragging. Brag, be proud, be a peacock, but don’t be obnoxious but still find a place. That’s hard for me and I realized that. I lost this weight and I’m looking at myself in the mirror and I’m just like, “I look good,” and I just feel shy about telling it. I started to make a practice with Morgan like, “I’m really happy about the way my body looks,” and she smiles and then we get to share in the joy. Celebrate your successes. When you hit that new success, enjoy it with that appropriate time period then set yourself a new goal. “What if I make $10,000 pre-sales in the first three months of this campaign? Let’s go for another $10,000.” There is no limitation. You can always recreate your goals. That is the main concept.

My good friend and constant listener, Henrik, asked about the concept of fear inventory. Fear inventory was a practice that we learned at OneTaste. I thought it was a really powerful practice and it’s actually based on the twelve steps. What it is is everyday you write down your fear, “I have fear that blah, blah, blah. I have fear that blah, blah, blah. I have fear that blah, blah, blah. I have fear.” You can write five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, an hour, and listing all your fears. What this does is this brings up and out of your system into your consciousness. Then what happens is you read your fear inventory to another person. Your witness in your fear. They don’t pick it up, they don’t comment, they don’t coach, but then you actually read your fear. At the end, you rip it up and you can rip it up into a thousand little pieces. I did fear inventory consistently for about two years, maybe three years. The practice itself was really powerful for me for about three months of those two years. The rest of the time, it was part of the tradition, it was part of the group practice, so I did it. There are times where it really helped.

For me, I was not a big fan of fear inventory because I morphed it. I morphed it into what I call my self-discussion. My self-discussion is, “Rob, what’s going on with you?” It’s a self-coaching technique. When something happens, when I get a negative message or something’s off with me and Morgan or something with my mom or my dad and I have this little angst inside my system, this little creak, I’ll actually have a self-coaching conversation which for me replace fear inventory. It’s an honest conversation, “When I didn’t show up for that call and I felt really embarrassed and I felt really foolish, no one else care but I really cared.” It’s a self-conversation. That’s my viewpoint on fear inventory.

You can ask questions and get your answers done in real-time or you have to emailme or do something. That is the rant for our show. There’s no coaching. We’ll be back next week. We’ll be talking about the concept of how to prep for 2018 and some other ideas. I gave you some little clues and I’ll be going deeper into setting yourself up with goals and concepts, and making those New Year’s resolutions so you can kick ass just like I kicked ass in 2017. If you had a minor kicking ass in 2017 and you want to go to a major, ultimate, epic, mind-boggling asskicking in 2018, come listen to the show via iTunes. If you enjoyed the show, please as always, if you would be so kind to go to iTunes and give me a little loving via a review, a little five-star, four-star, three-star, whatever works for you. That’s it. Thanks so much for coming up. Go forth, be merry, get some nookie, get some mistletoe nookie as possible. We’ll see you next week. Thank you so much. Take care.

Resources mentioned:

• • OneTaste
  • A New Earth
  • Carrying the Past
  • Mama Gena

• Here’s How »

• robertkandell.com
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