Embrace Your Fear and Find Fulfilment

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance App. expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. Hey, I'm Dr. Z and I'm a neurosurgeon. So that means long hours, early rounds, late nights, and everything in between. And through it all, I wear figs. They're comfortable when it counts and functional when I need them the most. So where do you wear your figs? On shift, on call, on the couch in the break room listening to this podcast, wherever it is, they fit right in.

1:02And now listeners of this podcast can get 15 % off their first order. Just head to wherefigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wherefigs.com, code FIGSRX. This episode is brought to you by Opera Air, the first browser with mindfulness at its core. Now, most of us spend hours every day online, but how often do we pause to take care of ourselves whilst we're doing it. And that's where Opera Air comes in. It's a lightweight, fast, secure browser built not just for productivity, but for your wellbeing. With Opera Air, mindfulness is built right in. You'll find free breathing exercises, guided meditations and soundscapes with ambient sounds, lo-fi music and binaural beats, all designed to help you focus, relax and even spark creativity while you browse.

1:51Hi there, you're listening to High Performance with Jake Humphrey and Damien Hughes. This is one of our shorter regular Friday episodes where the two of us get to have a bit of a chat, look back on a few conversations and episodes previously on High Performance and maybe delve into something that's on your mind. How are you doing, Damien? Yeah, really good, Jake. How are you? I'm really well, thanks. Look, one thing that we really want even more of is a community feel around High Performance. We want to hear more from people that are listening to the show, what they want more of, what they want less of, what their views are on High Performance.

2:22and so I've decided today to introduce a message that I got from Mark. Can I read it out to you? Go on. So he said, Morning from Australia. I love the podcast as always. I was hoping that in the new year you could ask your guests about their biggest fears. From my perspective, it's not success that drives me but the fear of living an unfulfilling life. The challenge for me is I don't know what would make my life feel more fulfilling and I wonder if that's a common feeling among people. Well, let's first of all react to what Mark says there from his perspective. It's not success that drives him, but the fear of living an unfulfilling life.

2:57And how common, with all the work that you've done with so many different groups of people over the years, how common do you think that might be? Yeah, very much. I think we often talk about this idea of the ghost of your childhood wrestling around your adult body. And sometimes it might be craving parental affection that was never given to you, or maybe it was an experience at school of being rejected and wanting to prove those teachers wrong or, you know, being bullied by a group that you wanted to fit in with and wanting to almost answer them back. I think for so many of our high performers, when you can trace it back, you will often find those ghosts wrestling around.

3:34You know, the next question though is, is this a positive or a negative? You know, I every day wake up with this. I've said this before actually, you know um you know hamilton the musical yeah there's a great quote in hamilton where he says there's a million things i haven't done and despite all the things i have done i wake up every single day with the sense of there's a million things i haven't done and actually it's only when i do something like maybe i write a book intro or maybe i'm doing a corporate event and someone's written an introduction about me that i see it and go oh bloody hell i've done quite a lot that's quite But that feeling is so fleeting.

4:09And there's absolutely, without doubt, a fear inside me. But I don't know what the fear is. I don't even know if it's fear. There's some deep drive where I have got to, everything has to be done 10 out of 10. Everything has to be huge and perfect. If I see other people's success, it really is triggering. There is definitely, now that I'm 47 this year, there's definitely a point now where I'm thinking, how long can this go on for? How long can I have this feeling of being unfulfilled, right? I don't know if it's fear making me feel unfulfilled or just a sense of being unfulfilled. Well, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people do feel like this.

4:52And this was a topic of conversation we had with Professor Steve Peters where he gave us this really interesting distinction. Let's have a listen to him. We're going to say, right, we'll challenge the law of self-esteem and say what's its purpose and we'll replace it with something much more rational so we move systems and then we start saying right how would you measure self-esteem and what you'll find is generally the reason we've gone into survival low self-esteem for protection is we're looking externally to see what we've achieved and what other people think of us rather than moving system which is it's not about other people it's what i think of myself and we're back to values and then suddenly self-esteem rises because it's not based on achievement on possession on what other people think it's based on me and the way i'm conducting myself and living my life i think that's such a powerful clip and i see a lot of people who some of them are doing similar work to us actually and i think it's so driven by ego that i think not only do you not enjoy the process because the ego is not allowing you to enjoy it but i think there's never an end point right there's never a moment where you go oh i've done it and actually i look at you quite enviously sometimes because you don't seem to feel the need to tell the world what you've done numerous times i've tried to convince you to talk about the teams or the groups or individuals you've worked with and you've said i don't think that's right you know most people can't wait to tell the world of the right the work they've done you know do you remember when you worked with england ahead of the euros yeah and you did some work with them about having a buddy system for the penalties.

6:28You really had to have your arm twisted to talk about the fact that that's something that you had discussed with England and it had a really massive impact on our success in that tournament. So do you not feel this? Do you not have this ego-driven yearning for other people to know how well you're doing? Because it doesn't feel like you do. Yeah, not really. But I think, again, the ghost of the childhood is that it's like growing up in the boxing gym, the idea of the loudest were always seen as the most insecure. If you've got to tell people what you can do, it was seen as a sign of insecurity rather than just that quiet humility of just go about your business and let the results speak for themselves.

7:06So that's what I sort of was conditioned by. But when I think about it, I think about like when I stepped outside my comfort zone, when I first went into the corporate world and I told my mum what I was doing, my mum's first question to me, and I think it's only a question a mum can get away with asking was, what are you going to do when you get found out? And I remember sort of reflecting on it a lot to think about, well, if I get found out, I'll go back and do what I was doing before. But it was something that, it was only in hindsight, drove me for a long time in the corporate world because I used to assume that, I didn't know, this sounds daft, but I thought all work was cash in handwork.

7:47So if somebody didn't like you at the end of the day, they just pay you up to the end of the day and you go. so I didn't understand employment law and all things like that. So for the first year of employment, like having what you'd call a real job, when my boss used to call me in, I just used to assume I was going to be paid up. Why did your mum say that though? I think it was her own insecurities because she didn't know anyone that had gone into the corporate world either. So I think it came from a place of love of, well, how do I protect you? Are you going to get burnt here by going into a world that you don't understand because she didn't understand it?

8:21So I think it took me a long time to realise that that fear was fuelling me, the idea of getting found out, so what we call imposter syndrome. So the way that I sort of reconciled that is to understand that there's three questions my brain was searching for an answer for, which was, first of all, what are the expectations of the role? Do I have the ability to meet those expectations? And can I live with the consequences of failure if I can't? And I think when the brain can't answer any of those three questions, that's where it manifests itself as fear. So I think in any situation now, that's what I'll often try and boil it down to those three questions and try and manage my own anxiety or my own imposter syndrome.

9:03It's really good that. And talking of managing anxiety, managing fear, managing imposter syndrome, coming back to Mark's question, when he says it's not the success that drives me, but the fear of living an unfulfilled life, the challenge for me is I don't know what would make my life feel more fulfilling, is I think it is all about reframing. I think so much of this is about reframing. You know, if you're living a fulfilling life, Mark, right, but you also have fear that you're not going to live a fulfilling life, therefore you are, well, if you can manage that fear to the extent that that is not as high as the thrill of living a fulfilling life, then I think you're winning.

9:39I think in some ways we have to realise that there is a cost to everything. And if the cost is something that you're willing to pay, if the fear is not so huge it derails you, but it is there, but you're living this great life because of it then I think it's okay and I wonder whether I could play a clip just to share with Mark really that some of the greatest, most high-achieving people on the planet have had this same conversation in their head so this is a clip from Usain Bolt and this was his answer when Damien asked him what was stronger in his mind a desire to win or a fear of losing and here's his answer Wow for me, I think the desire to win I think you want to win so bad.

10:20Like with me, I've always wanted to win, and that's what drives me, my competition. There's this one thing. I remember in 2016, it was coming up to my last Olympics, and my biggest competitor was Justin Gatling. And throughout the year, I was struggling with motivation because I had won everything, you know what I mean? And it was at the end and I was like, going to training and the older you get, the harder it gets. And I remember watching a video that he was on a podcast at the time and they were saying, oh, are you going to win? And he said, yeah, I'm going to win. And they were going to go on a tour around the world with gold medals.

11:09And that, for me, did it for me. He'd light the fire and I was like, yeah, you're not going to win. So it kind of lit a fire. That's how competitive I was. You know what I mean? If I probably didn't see that video, it probably would have been different. But I saw that video and it helped to motivate me to say, all right, you know what? I need to get to training. I need to do this because there's no way I'm going to allow him to beat me. So that's how competitive I am. You know what that clip, Damien, is an example of the power of fear. Is Usain Bolt Usain Bolt with the medals and the trophies and the accolades and the kudos without the fear.

11:47You could argue not. You could argue that about anyone that's been successful. Like, how can we do great things without fear? It's part of it. I mean, that was fascinating with you saying, because he spoke very much about when he was a young athlete, he felt real crippling fear and anxiety when he first was appearing in sort of Jamaican track meets. But by the time he sort of impinged on the world's consciousness, he'd learned to manage it. But I suppose you could frame it in a different way. You know, when he spoke about Justin Gatlin and Justin Gatlin sort of going out into the world and telling everyone he was going to beat him at the Rio 2016 Olympics, how that was almost the rocket fuel for him to come out of his sort of quandary about retirement and go out to beat him.

12:27So you could legitimately argue that maybe it was the fear of losing to Justin Gatlin that was also used as a propeller for him to go on and win his triple gold medal. I think that this tension exists in everybody. And it's this tension between I want to be successful, but I don't want to be fearful about it. I want to do well, but I don't want to spend my life comparing myself to other people. You know, I want to have a fulfilling life, but I don't want to make too many sacrifices to get that fulfilling life. You know, I said at the very start of this conversation, nothing comes for free. You know, this constant quest for balance.

13:05there's a good question to be asked which is is it achievable can you have the balance i'm not sure you can but what i do think you can do is reframe and that's where i found real value like when you are feeling fearful reframe it as you've been triggered in a good way when you've got self-doubt reframe it as this is something i really care about when you have imposter syndrome reframe it as, well, I wouldn't have imposter syndrome about something that didn't matter to me. When you're envious, and that's definitely something I struggle with is envy. When you're envious, reframe it as, well, maybe what they have is just what I want.

13:43And I think sometimes instead of trying to fight the fear, you know, for Mark, who's hopefully still listening to this, instead of trying to fight that sense of that fear, learn to sit with it. You know, when I had some issues with my mental health years ago and I went to see a therapist, She didn't say, right, we need to fight this till it goes away. She went, we need to accept the feeling. And as soon as you accept the feeling and sit with it and let it be there, you realise it doesn't hold any power over you. It just is. You know, I think that that is something that we should really think about carefully.

14:14And I think over the years, you know, we've had many conversations with people about this power of reframing. Well, let's listen to one. You know, the best-selling author and motivational speaker Mel Robbins captured this very point really articulately when we were lucky enough to sit down with her. So many of us that are high achievers, by the way, are trying to prove through our actions that we're actually worthy. And all of the bolstering and the nice cars that we drive and the fat bank account. Look, I'm one of the most successful people you'll meet. I make a shitload of money. I am making a huge impact in the world.

14:54And all of that shit is outside of me. It created a life, guys, where I'm just busier and busier and busier. Because the second you get the Range Rover, what's the next car that's going to prove it? The second that you get a million dollars, how are you going to get$10 million in the bank? The second that you're not racing around and you're not busy and the book's not on the bestseller list, that just means that you're no longer worthy. And so when you marry your worth or your lovability with what you are achieving or how you're performing or the shit that you have, you will always be trapped in this rat race of trying to get more.

15:29You'll also be consumed by jealousy and comparison because the second that somebody outranks you or does something more or does something that looks better, you will at your core feel like you're no longer lovable. There's Mel Robbins there and she's capturing a message that we've heard echoed in so many of our other guests that you can get caught up in this comparison culture you know this trap of constantly measuring your worth against somebody else's highlight reels but the point she's making is that we know that doesn't lead to sustained happiness or to use the words of from the email from mark fulfillment yeah well look we've all seen the phrase um comparison is the thief of joy many times over but i think this goes even deeper right and it's not just comparing ourselves to other people that robs the enjoyment.

16:20It's the fact that the human brain does it naturally anyway. You know, how many people have we sat with here on High Performance who've told us they wanted to achieve great things, they achieved it and felt nothing. You know, Srebren Hillary climbed his first mountain. When he came down, someone said, what did you think when you got to the top? And he said, I saw a higher mountain. I saw a higher mountain and had to go for that one. That is the sort of the negativity bias, if you like, of the human brain is that whatever we've done, it isn't enough. So I suppose it's also important for people to realize that that is kind of the way that we're wired you know you buy brand new sneakers for a few hundred dollars within a few weeks you're letting mud get on them you buy a beautiful car it's the most important thing you've ever owned before long it gets a scratch in a car park and you don't care because you've moved on to the next thing and i think that's that's a really important message for people that you can't have fulfillment as something that is down the road.

17:13It can't exist in the future. Fulfillment needs to be in this moment. So whether it's Mel Robbins talking about doing great things like getting a new car or getting a promotion at work, you need to realise that the joy comes now. But that also is the flip is there as well that you can't spend your life thinking about the fear that might be in the future. You just have to be in this moment. And if right now there isn't any fear, then don't suffer in advance. Don't be thinking about the fear that might be in the future. I'm a great catastrophizer and I can't recommend it to anyone. Well, that links to the work of a psychologist called Philip Zimbardo that talks about how our brain's almost like a time traveller.

17:53So we can either go into the future, we can go into the past, or it allows us to be present. And sometimes we spend our time either reflecting on fear that consumed us years ago and what it did to us, or like you say, we can catastrophize in the future the difficulty. but actually as probably the most moving guest that we've listened to, David Smith told us when we sat down with him at Fern Cotterson's Happy Place Festival. Joy, contentment, happiness, however we want to define it, comes from doing exactly what you said, Jake, and being in the moment. Let's listen to David. I try to think back to the younger David and what the older David knows now and what his advice he would give him, but also I tried to look forward and say you know what if I'm I do a lot of memento mori which is not for everyone the meditation of your own mortality I think in my situation I have to be connected to that and I think it makes me use every second of every day wisely so I try to look forward and say well you know if you're if I'm lucky enough to live to 85 that's 480 months 2 ,000 odd weeks how am I spending them and who am I spending them with so time became a very precious thing to me so I said you know every day I want to leave my house I say a little thing before I leave every day I say be curious be compassionate and and be more someone with more courage I'm so pleased to have welcomed him back onto high performance for those of you that don't know his story he's a paralympian he's an athlete he is constantly battling a very rare form of cancer and he's also well worth following on instagram davidsmithmbe because he shares his journey in fact not long ago and he is you know paralyzed down one half of his body you know he's a paralyzed human being who was out skiing skiing with the use of one leg right and i watched this video i thought wow what an inspiring guy and you know what the very next day the instagram story was him going into the hospital for the latest scans to find out what's happening with his ever growing tumor um which is incurable right yeah and that actually is almost the perfect way to end this conversation about fear because what David has shown us there is that scan is going to happen 24, 48 hours after he's on the slopes of Val d 'Ezère.

20:07But it doesn't mean that he can't enjoy being on the slopes of Val d 'Ezère. None of us know what's around the corner. We do know on average we get 4 ,000 weeks. So we can't spend those 4 ,000 weeks on earth fearing what's next. Actually, all we can do is live in this moment. And so often, and this comes right back to you, Mark, with your question at the start of this episode, as soon as we stop living in the past or stop living in the future, and only live in this moment, I think so much of our fear disappears. Because we're just here. Do you know what I mean? The power of now. Yeah, I love that.

20:39That is incredibly powerful. And I think that any of us can, you know, Dan Carter, do you remember when he spoke about the fear of missing a kick or thinking about a kick he'd just missed? And he used to kick the toe of his boot into the turf. Not because it was a gimmick, it was simply so that he could feel, in this moment now, my feet are touching the grass on which I'm playing. And that brought his brain back to the present, which allowed him to go out there and fulfil his own potential. There you go. As Seneca said, don't suffer in advance. We suffer far more in our imagination than in reality.

21:15Oh, I like that. Thank you, mate. Thank you. Again, and thank you to Mark and to the whole High Performance community for sharing these ideas. I mean, one of the things we said when we started this, Jake, was that we wanted this to be a place where people can come together we can lift each other up we can share ideas and hopefully inspire each other on our own journeys to high performance and these conversations are a great way of doing it yeah and if you're struggling with fear in your own life then you can listen back to the episodes that you've just heard but there are so many other brilliant conversations i would recommend that you listen to oliver burtman i mentioned him a moment ago who uh came on and spoke to us really movingly just recently if you could offer one episode to someone to listen to?

21:56Dr. Pippa Grange. She spoke about fearing less. And that to me was really quite significant. She spoke about see the fear, face the fear, and then replace the fear. Brilliant. Thank you very much, Damien. Thanks, mate. Thanks to Mark. And thanks for you for listening. We're back very soon with plenty more from High Performance.

22:53We'll see you next time. Right now, Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code FALL25 at checkout. That's FALL25 at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures are per serving of Hero Bread. Contains 2 to 18 grams of fat per serving. See the product nutrition panels on Hero.co for more information. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success. Like your enrollment specialist, who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program.

23:26Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu. Dr. India Woods here. As a veterinarian, I demand a lot of my scrubs on the job. That's why I show up in figs. Figs are made for the sometimes crazy situations I find myself in. It doesn't matter if I have to squat, sit, bend, or even chase after one of my patients. FIGS moves with me and keeps me comfortable in the highest pressure situations. FIGS gives me one less thing to worry about. Get 15 % off your first order by visiting wearfigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout.

24:05That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX.