hello everybody I know a lot about fear
I’ve experienced a lot of fear and today
I’d like to share some of my experience
to do and also just talk about fear and
as well the illusion of fear the fear
that we put into the universe and that
we live in as a as an existence this is
your brain when you experience fear in
your brain this little blue area sensory
cortex fires up and immediately tries to
decide is this a real fear or is this
just standing on stage a TEDx fear right
if it is a real fear then your amygdala
jumps in to protect you it’s like a a
man in your corner and it instantly
floods your brain with these chemicals
that put you in a fight or flight that’s
the real value and the real need for our
fear reflex it’s there to protect us
from serious threats and the beauty of
that or the non beauty of that is all of
those memories are then stored in your
Megillah because there’s a base mark
that protects you so if you saw a
poisonous snake and it almost bit you
you’re gonna have a little mark there in
your brain going avoid poisonous snakes
they will kill you that’s what the fear
response is for and so what most people
don’t realize about fear is fear slowly
begins to control your life when you
don’t understand what it is talk about
ancient stories talk about sailors
traveling the world and having dragons
and all these different fears those were
there because something of fear happened
and then it needed to be addressed or
they need to be a baseline of
understanding how we made safety so my
experience in fear started when I was
very young and what I know about fear is
that fear only has power over you when
you don’t share it when you hold it
inside and so I’m about to share with
you the biggest fear that I have in my
life and it looks like that
right most people I just spent six
months talking to people about fear and
and I talked to hundreds of people all
over the world and here was the most
interesting part about fear the people
in our country their two biggest fears
are the fear of death and the fear of
public speaking which is crazy right I
even met one guy who was an uber driver
who told me I would rather die than go
on stage and share my passion and I
thought to myself that’s crazy but also
that’s how powerful our fears are that I
would choose death then come up here and
share with you my passion and my love
now I realized early on in my speaking
career that fear did control my life and
I realized early on in my life that I
had more fear than anybody else and so I
started asking myself where did these
fears come from and I’ll ask you are
there any fears in your life that are
stopping you from moving forward and if
there are fears what would happen if
instead of running from them you ran
towards them and you embraced him and
you replace them think about that what
would happen if you marched toward your
fears with a plan of attack instead of
retreat think about that for just one
second this is where my fear comes from
I came up in a home of abuse and when I
got in trouble when I needed punishment
my parents locked me in the closet I
left me there for hours that was a
normal punishment in my household I
never knew that that was not correct
but what it did to my body and my mind
was filled me with tremendous fear and
anxiety and it really frightened me and
what I didn’t know is that it was
shrinking my hippocampus and it was
making me less available to deal with
emotions I was less available to deal
with deal with fears because of my
childhood and so I did like every good
American does I found the way out and my
way out was breaking the law I learned I
could get out of my abusive home by
committing crimes and that worked great
until I ended up there and then it was a
huge problem I didn’t wake up until I
was 19 years old and I was in
maximum-security prison and I still had
years left until I got out I hadn’t
realized that the fears I had the fears
that were upon me I was using them to
build walls around me I woke up in
Folsom Prison and realized I put myself
there yes I had been hurt yes I’d been
damaged but each one of those angered
actions was my action I took control and
I ended up here this is my biggest fear
and my biggest failure when I went here
I lost my family I lost my son I lost
everything in my life I mean I was in
prison you can’t get any lower than that
but it was in prison where I realized it
was all me I did it to myself and I had
to figure out a way to get out but I was
consumed with fears everyday fears
common fears I’m afraid of this afraid
of that I was basically a traumatised
human being I didn’t even know it so I
started going to college and I started
studying and I started learning that
there was this aura of fear around me I
had built this world of my own doing
that put me in prison and I decided to
get out I decided to make a change that
came with education I didn’t know I was
doing this to myself until I woke up and
one of the things that helped me wake up
was this quote and you know this is
Franklin Delano Roosevelt the shortened
version this is the one we all hear in
the face of fear and I read this quote
and I was like yes but then I was like
but where are the tools I cannot be
afraid of fear but I’m still afraid of
fear and I’m still full of fear and
they’re still fear all over me so how do
I not recognize the fear that’s I’m
supposed to be just didn’t make sense to
me and so I dug deeper and I started
realizing but wait a minute I’m so full
of fear I’m so full of crap I don’t
really know anything about
me as a human being I spent my life
surviving on the streets I spent my life
surviving in emotional situations but
not sharing who I was and luckily on
that journey I met one man named Bob
shamrock and bob shamrock cared about me
as a human being and Bob shamrock said
listen you have value but you got to
work for it and this work you’re doing
now in prison it’s not gonna be enough
and he gave me purpose to move forward
and he stood by me and when this quote
came up I was searching for an answer
and I went yeah that’s me
I’m gonna deal with fear but first I
needed some tools so I read the rest of
the quote most of us don’t ever get that
far and this is the rest of the quote so
first of all let me assert my firm
belief that the only thing we have to
fear is fear itself and this is where it
gets really good nameless unreasoning
unjustified terror which paralyzes our
needed efforts to convert retreat into
advance I was like wow this is amazing
I get it fear that is nameless doesn’t
work fear that is unreasoning we got to
figure that out for you there’s
unjustified we need to work on that and
so I began to dig deeper into what my
fears were what were the things that
caused me to be who I was in prison and
that’s when the fog started to lift and
I realized the anger and the pain and me
I took it out on the rest of the world I
put myself exactly where I deserve to be
because of the pain that I was in and
then I had to figure out how to get out
of that position and out of that pain
and that’s when I started really
bringing things down to the smallest
level you know when you’re in prison and
you’re trying to survive it’s as simple
as this you find a group you get with
the group and they become your
protectors they’re usually a prison gang
but somebody’s got to look after you
because when you’re alone it is the
scariest existence you can ever imagine
you were literally alone on this journey
well I wasn’t alone because Bob Shamrock
had never left me so I had hope
there many people didn’t and when I read
this I tried to boil it down to its
simplest form this was too big for me my
brain is very simple and this is what I
came up with this is my method well I
use it for everything in fact I just
used it for this talk because I had to
get down into is it justified or
rational that I am scared to death on
this TEDx stage probably not but here’s
how the formula works got fear my fear
was fighting I was gonna choose to
become a professional fighter to get
myself out of prison that was my exit so
here’s the formula got fear yes I was
horribly afraid of fighting name it I’m
afraid of fighting there it is decide if
it’s reasonable is it reasonable that
I’m afraid of fighting yeah I don’t know
how to fight I don’t know how many
training I have no understanding of how
to protect myself that’s perfectly
reasonable number three is it justified
yes my fear was justified and the fact
that I needed to do that to be
successful was justified so there was
only one answer move forward right move
forward and that’s what FDR says when
you condense this this formula can be
applied to anything got fear name it if
you don’t name your fears you don’t even
know why you’re afraid and that was me
when I was in prison I didn’t understand
what I was afraid of until I started
naming stuff and then I got real serious
because then I realized all the problems
that were wrong with me but in the
meantime this is how you keep going
because it is what it is
when you have nothing left when there is
no hope
there’s just moving forward and all you
need is one person to care one person to
step forward and show you another way or
another opportunity to move forward that
one person for me was Bob Shamrock and
he gave me the value but more than that
he never left so even though I went to
prison even all that stuff happened to
me he stood by me and said listen when
you get out there’s an opportunity for
you it looked like that
I became a professional fighter now I’ll
be honest with you it was scarier to
become a fighter than it was to be a
prisoner and I would have easily turned
away from that had I been given the
chance but my dad he eventually adopted
me he said no no no here we go and so I
began to deal with the fear that now is
going to become professional fighter how
do you deal with that
that’s pretty challenging I don’t how
many professional fighters we have in
the room it’s incredibly stressful and
so I started spreading out my wings I
started being honest with people listen
I’m terribly afraid of what we’re gonna
do here and this drives me crazy and so
I started sharing my fears and it was in
the sharing of those fears that my
community came to support me where it
was one man it then became five and then
500 and eventually it became millions of
people supporting what I was doing and
on that journey of learning martial arts
I learned to speak
I learned to teach and interact with
other people and when we joined our
missions together and we spoke about
these fears we shared the same fears
they didn’t know how to fight I didn’t
know how to fight we came together we
built this community that eventually
became the fuel to my success it was the
millions of people behind me that
believed in me that helped me push
forward and in fact I had so much
success then when I was 37 years old I
retired I had become a broadcaster I’d
become a league owner like I’d literally
done everything I ever imagined and I
was able to retire and go home try to
raise another family I remember I failed
my son 20 years earlier so this is 20
years later have a little girl she’s
born and I realized that my life purpose
is not beating people up it’s not making
money its redoing these memories and
redoing this experience both for me and
for my daughter so that’s what I
committed to and every day I woke up and
I was saying yes but the fear and the
pain and the shame of what happened to
me
didn’t go away all the success that I
achieved it didn’t stop how I felt
inside so I had to keep moving forward
and I had to find ways to embrace those
fears I’m not proud to say this but I
would wake up early in the mornings and
cry by myself because of the pain I felt
I had everything I ever wanted in life
and I was hurt inside and so I sat down
one day with myself and I was like what
are these fears that are holding you
back and how do we move through them and
that began this journey you know fear is
like a brick wall every time you turn
away from that fear you place another
brick on that wall
every time you say no I can’t do that
now that’s too much
every time you turn away you place
another brick on that wall the wall
begins to strengthen the wall gets
stronger but this wall is all in your
mind
if you don’t place that brick the wall
doesn’t exist every time you take a step
forward the wall crumbles the only power
in the wall is you placing the bricks
you doing the fears find somebody to
share your fears with find yourself a
life passion that you believe more than
anything else and if it’s not there
start talking to people because it’ll
come out when you find that passion and
that purpose then you can go on your
mission and share with all honesty I’m
here to share with you my honest fears I
am definitely afraid of this moment but
I know I have to go on this journey
because I’m gonna become a professional
speaker and here’s what I’ve learned
about the brain you can replace any
image in your brain no matter how
traumatizing it is you can add new
memories and with new technology like
virtual reality anything you see in your
brain exists anything you put in your
mind is your reality so why can’t we
fill our minds with amazing new
experiences and memories why don’t we
focus that super power that amazing
alert system into personal growth if we
turn that fear system that stops all of
this movement into this movement we
would achieve everything we were looking
for fear separates people walls separate
right
it slowly building slowly building if
you kick down those walls with your mind
that is a superpower name your fears
embrace your fears and add new memories
to it when you do that then you’re using
your superpower to achieve your ultimate
dreams thank you [Applause]
I’ve experienced a lot of fear and today
I’d like to share some of my experience
to do and also just talk about fear and
as well the illusion of fear the fear
that we put into the universe and that
we live in as a as an existence this is
your brain when you experience fear in
your brain this little blue area sensory
cortex fires up and immediately tries to
decide is this a real fear or is this
just standing on stage a TEDx fear right
if it is a real fear then your amygdala
jumps in to protect you it’s like a a
man in your corner and it instantly
floods your brain with these chemicals
that put you in a fight or flight that’s
the real value and the real need for our
fear reflex it’s there to protect us
from serious threats and the beauty of
that or the non beauty of that is all of
those memories are then stored in your
Megillah because there’s a base mark
that protects you so if you saw a
poisonous snake and it almost bit you
you’re gonna have a little mark there in
your brain going avoid poisonous snakes
they will kill you that’s what the fear
response is for and so what most people
don’t realize about fear is fear slowly
begins to control your life when you
don’t understand what it is talk about
ancient stories talk about sailors
traveling the world and having dragons
and all these different fears those were
there because something of fear happened
and then it needed to be addressed or
they need to be a baseline of
understanding how we made safety so my
experience in fear started when I was
very young and what I know about fear is
that fear only has power over you when
you don’t share it when you hold it
inside and so I’m about to share with
you the biggest fear that I have in my
life and it looks like that
right most people I just spent six
months talking to people about fear and
and I talked to hundreds of people all
over the world and here was the most
interesting part about fear the people
in our country their two biggest fears
are the fear of death and the fear of
public speaking which is crazy right I
even met one guy who was an uber driver
who told me I would rather die than go
on stage and share my passion and I
thought to myself that’s crazy but also
that’s how powerful our fears are that I
would choose death then come up here and
share with you my passion and my love
now I realized early on in my speaking
career that fear did control my life and
I realized early on in my life that I
had more fear than anybody else and so I
started asking myself where did these
fears come from and I’ll ask you are
there any fears in your life that are
stopping you from moving forward and if
there are fears what would happen if
instead of running from them you ran
towards them and you embraced him and
you replace them think about that what
would happen if you marched toward your
fears with a plan of attack instead of
retreat think about that for just one
second this is where my fear comes from
I came up in a home of abuse and when I
got in trouble when I needed punishment
my parents locked me in the closet I
left me there for hours that was a
normal punishment in my household I
never knew that that was not correct
but what it did to my body and my mind
was filled me with tremendous fear and
anxiety and it really frightened me and
what I didn’t know is that it was
shrinking my hippocampus and it was
making me less available to deal with
emotions I was less available to deal
with deal with fears because of my
childhood and so I did like every good
American does I found the way out and my
way out was breaking the law I learned I
could get out of my abusive home by
committing crimes and that worked great
until I ended up there and then it was a
huge problem I didn’t wake up until I
was 19 years old and I was in
maximum-security prison and I still had
years left until I got out I hadn’t
realized that the fears I had the fears
that were upon me I was using them to
build walls around me I woke up in
Folsom Prison and realized I put myself
there yes I had been hurt yes I’d been
damaged but each one of those angered
actions was my action I took control and
I ended up here this is my biggest fear
and my biggest failure when I went here
I lost my family I lost my son I lost
everything in my life I mean I was in
prison you can’t get any lower than that
but it was in prison where I realized it
was all me I did it to myself and I had
to figure out a way to get out but I was
consumed with fears everyday fears
common fears I’m afraid of this afraid
of that I was basically a traumatised
human being I didn’t even know it so I
started going to college and I started
studying and I started learning that
there was this aura of fear around me I
had built this world of my own doing
that put me in prison and I decided to
get out I decided to make a change that
came with education I didn’t know I was
doing this to myself until I woke up and
one of the things that helped me wake up
was this quote and you know this is
Franklin Delano Roosevelt the shortened
version this is the one we all hear in
the face of fear and I read this quote
and I was like yes but then I was like
but where are the tools I cannot be
afraid of fear but I’m still afraid of
fear and I’m still full of fear and
they’re still fear all over me so how do
I not recognize the fear that’s I’m
supposed to be just didn’t make sense to
me and so I dug deeper and I started
realizing but wait a minute I’m so full
of fear I’m so full of crap I don’t
really know anything about
me as a human being I spent my life
surviving on the streets I spent my life
surviving in emotional situations but
not sharing who I was and luckily on
that journey I met one man named Bob
shamrock and bob shamrock cared about me
as a human being and Bob shamrock said
listen you have value but you got to
work for it and this work you’re doing
now in prison it’s not gonna be enough
and he gave me purpose to move forward
and he stood by me and when this quote
came up I was searching for an answer
and I went yeah that’s me
I’m gonna deal with fear but first I
needed some tools so I read the rest of
the quote most of us don’t ever get that
far and this is the rest of the quote so
first of all let me assert my firm
belief that the only thing we have to
fear is fear itself and this is where it
gets really good nameless unreasoning
unjustified terror which paralyzes our
needed efforts to convert retreat into
advance I was like wow this is amazing
I get it fear that is nameless doesn’t
work fear that is unreasoning we got to
figure that out for you there’s
unjustified we need to work on that and
so I began to dig deeper into what my
fears were what were the things that
caused me to be who I was in prison and
that’s when the fog started to lift and
I realized the anger and the pain and me
I took it out on the rest of the world I
put myself exactly where I deserve to be
because of the pain that I was in and
then I had to figure out how to get out
of that position and out of that pain
and that’s when I started really
bringing things down to the smallest
level you know when you’re in prison and
you’re trying to survive it’s as simple
as this you find a group you get with
the group and they become your
protectors they’re usually a prison gang
but somebody’s got to look after you
because when you’re alone it is the
scariest existence you can ever imagine
you were literally alone on this journey
well I wasn’t alone because Bob Shamrock
had never left me so I had hope
there many people didn’t and when I read
this I tried to boil it down to its
simplest form this was too big for me my
brain is very simple and this is what I
came up with this is my method well I
use it for everything in fact I just
used it for this talk because I had to
get down into is it justified or
rational that I am scared to death on
this TEDx stage probably not but here’s
how the formula works got fear my fear
was fighting I was gonna choose to
become a professional fighter to get
myself out of prison that was my exit so
here’s the formula got fear yes I was
horribly afraid of fighting name it I’m
afraid of fighting there it is decide if
it’s reasonable is it reasonable that
I’m afraid of fighting yeah I don’t know
how to fight I don’t know how many
training I have no understanding of how
to protect myself that’s perfectly
reasonable number three is it justified
yes my fear was justified and the fact
that I needed to do that to be
successful was justified so there was
only one answer move forward right move
forward and that’s what FDR says when
you condense this this formula can be
applied to anything got fear name it if
you don’t name your fears you don’t even
know why you’re afraid and that was me
when I was in prison I didn’t understand
what I was afraid of until I started
naming stuff and then I got real serious
because then I realized all the problems
that were wrong with me but in the
meantime this is how you keep going
because it is what it is
when you have nothing left when there is
no hope
there’s just moving forward and all you
need is one person to care one person to
step forward and show you another way or
another opportunity to move forward that
one person for me was Bob Shamrock and
he gave me the value but more than that
he never left so even though I went to
prison even all that stuff happened to
me he stood by me and said listen when
you get out there’s an opportunity for
you it looked like that
I became a professional fighter now I’ll
be honest with you it was scarier to
become a fighter than it was to be a
prisoner and I would have easily turned
away from that had I been given the
chance but my dad he eventually adopted
me he said no no no here we go and so I
began to deal with the fear that now is
going to become professional fighter how
do you deal with that
that’s pretty challenging I don’t how
many professional fighters we have in
the room it’s incredibly stressful and
so I started spreading out my wings I
started being honest with people listen
I’m terribly afraid of what we’re gonna
do here and this drives me crazy and so
I started sharing my fears and it was in
the sharing of those fears that my
community came to support me where it
was one man it then became five and then
500 and eventually it became millions of
people supporting what I was doing and
on that journey of learning martial arts
I learned to speak
I learned to teach and interact with
other people and when we joined our
missions together and we spoke about
these fears we shared the same fears
they didn’t know how to fight I didn’t
know how to fight we came together we
built this community that eventually
became the fuel to my success it was the
millions of people behind me that
believed in me that helped me push
forward and in fact I had so much
success then when I was 37 years old I
retired I had become a broadcaster I’d
become a league owner like I’d literally
done everything I ever imagined and I
was able to retire and go home try to
raise another family I remember I failed
my son 20 years earlier so this is 20
years later have a little girl she’s
born and I realized that my life purpose
is not beating people up it’s not making
money its redoing these memories and
redoing this experience both for me and
for my daughter so that’s what I
committed to and every day I woke up and
I was saying yes but the fear and the
pain and the shame of what happened to
me
didn’t go away all the success that I
achieved it didn’t stop how I felt
inside so I had to keep moving forward
and I had to find ways to embrace those
fears I’m not proud to say this but I
would wake up early in the mornings and
cry by myself because of the pain I felt
I had everything I ever wanted in life
and I was hurt inside and so I sat down
one day with myself and I was like what
are these fears that are holding you
back and how do we move through them and
that began this journey you know fear is
like a brick wall every time you turn
away from that fear you place another
brick on that wall
every time you say no I can’t do that
now that’s too much
every time you turn away you place
another brick on that wall the wall
begins to strengthen the wall gets
stronger but this wall is all in your
mind
if you don’t place that brick the wall
doesn’t exist every time you take a step
forward the wall crumbles the only power
in the wall is you placing the bricks
you doing the fears find somebody to
share your fears with find yourself a
life passion that you believe more than
anything else and if it’s not there
start talking to people because it’ll
come out when you find that passion and
that purpose then you can go on your
mission and share with all honesty I’m
here to share with you my honest fears I
am definitely afraid of this moment but
I know I have to go on this journey
because I’m gonna become a professional
speaker and here’s what I’ve learned
about the brain you can replace any
image in your brain no matter how
traumatizing it is you can add new
memories and with new technology like
virtual reality anything you see in your
brain exists anything you put in your
mind is your reality so why can’t we
fill our minds with amazing new
experiences and memories why don’t we
focus that super power that amazing
alert system into personal growth if we
turn that fear system that stops all of
this movement into this movement we
would achieve everything we were looking
for fear separates people walls separate
right
it slowly building slowly building if
you kick down those walls with your mind
that is a superpower name your fears
embrace your fears and add new memories
to it when you do that then you’re using
your superpower to achieve your ultimate
dreams thank you [Applause]
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