Fear

The Lizard Brain, Again?

Garth Beyer

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Yes, because it never really goes away. The lizard brain is everywhere, but the best time to catch it is right at the beginning. The beginning of a project, anyway. Why? So that when it comes knocking again (it always will), you will be ready to dance with it.

Daily I meet people who have things they want to do, dreams, wishes, goals, but don’t start. They are waiting for the right moment, they are waiting for more experience (when starting is the experience they are waiting for), they are waiting to get picked, they are waiting to meet and learn from this person or be referred by that person, they are waiting until the weather is better, or they have more contacts.

They say excuses are endless and reasons are few, but I’m not saying these are excuses. They are very valid reasons. Convincing. Logical. It just makes sense to wait.

What no one focuses on are all the reasons to not wait. This is how you begin to challenge the lizard brain.

The earlier you start the further ahead you are to others. Everyone else is letting their lizard brain win. The experience you want is actually the experience you will get from trying, whether you end up failing or not. The best way to get picked is to pick yourself. The greatest referral you will ever get is the one from someone who never saw you coming. The right moment is now.

It’s not about working your way up a ladder, it’s about doing what you love. And to do that, you have to acknowledge the lizard brain. After that, the rest handles itself.

 

Stay Positive & Come On Now, Let’s See What You Got

Garth E. Beyer

This post was inspired by someone who is truly going places. Start now.

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Waiting For Confirmation

Garth Beyer

2392520183_405635fcb6_nI’m getting bombarded with calls about whether students are confirmed scholars – that they will get the grant.

I’m talking to a close friend about a possible relationship. She just wants confirmation that the guy feels the same way.

Confirmation is like expecting a genie to come out of a lamp without rubbing it.

My shortcut to overcoming fear’s defensive method of convincing you that you need confirmation is that the feeling itself is confirmation enough.

Outside of typical fears such as a fear of height, being afraid means that you are thinking about something risky, special, and all-so-worth-it. Cut yourself a break and realize that the desire for a confirmation is confirmation.

If it wasn’t worth it, if you weren’t right, if it wasn’t meant to be, then you would never need or ask for confirmation in the first place, now would you?

 

Stay Positive & Go Make It Happen

Garth E. Beyer

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More On The 2nd Part Of Being Scared

Garth Beyer

There are two parts to everyone being scared.

The second is my favorite because it has the potential of making you feel better than you ever have before. At my work, I have evaluated applications from students that have put in more than 2,000 hours of community service over a span of four years. But when I think of the second part of fear, I can’t help but realize that more empowering results can be created by talking to someone for two minutes.

Online example

Despite Twitter’s popularity, it’s far from perfect. In fact, I gave their ads a try and was revolted. They gave me $50 to start running ads and I quit before it was spent.

They also required you to have a debit/credit card on file before they gave you the money. Once I quit my ads, I wanted to delete my debit card information. I could not find any place to do this. So, I emailed them.

Within a day I received an email saying that the feature I requested was not available and that they would work on it – in the mean time I would basically have to deal with it.

Since then, a few weeks have passed. The other day, I opened my email to find this:

Twitter

There is always room for improvement

Whether the person, company, or client you’re talking to follows through with your suggestion – or in Twitter’s case, takes your unfulfillable request and turns it into something real – it’s still your responsibility to make that suggestion.

Out of the millions of Twitter users, I have no clue how many will be happy that they can delete their card from their account. I have no clue how many employees it took, how much red tape it had to go through, or how successful their actions really were. What I do know is that they took a request, an idea, and made it happen. And for that – although I still can’t stand the ads, – I will stick by Twitter’s side.

Personal examples

An old friend of mine wanted to start a blog about teen dads. I gave him roughly five lines of hard encouragement. I told him exactly what he needed to do. He never did. I didn’t let fear get to him, he did.

Another friend of mine was applying to law school and asked if I would review his personal statement. I gave him a few suggestions but explained more about human personalities and how those reviewing the application are real people. He understood, realizing that there was fear that the person reviewing his application might misjudge him. Because of fear, he wrote a safe statement. Once I called him out on it, he made some changes and while he has yet to hear back, I’m sure he will get in.

I shared a speech I wrote with a respectable entrepreneur. She critiqued the staleness and boredom out of it. Because of her, my speech became more remarkable. I also gave the original draft to a friend who said it was good, providing a couple grammatical corrections. You can guess which one had more of an impact.

Criticism is tough work

So is encouragement, accountability, and inspiration – all of which are required to back up another’s dance with fear. I’ve always thought that doing your own work is easy, well, maybe not easy, but always easier than helping someone else do their own work.

I suppose that’s why I love giving people feedback. Maybe, just maybe, they will see how valuable it is to them, that they give feedback to someone else.

 

Stay Positive & Let Others Know What You Think And Feel

Garth E. Beyer

A Dangerous Reminder

Garth Beyer

We’re all crazy.

I can say that because we love destroying things – rather, when we do destroy things, we have fun with it – a lot of fun.

Finally getting rid of your old desktop computer? Smashing it in the driveway sounds like a great idea. Stereo-system broke? Time to tear it to pieces and see how it works. Need room to build something? I’ll get the sledgehammer.

A few months ago my dad and I had to get rid of some wasp nests. Naturally we tried wasp spray, but it was ineffective. Then we bleached the nests. Still alive. So we poured gasoline and set it on fire.

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A couple of months ago my dad and I took apart my original droid. (After five years, it finally broke.) This is the outcome.

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It’s easy to break something, to dissect it, to experiment with what has already been created. It’s much more dangerous to build something from scratch, to experiment with your own creativity.

What puzzles me is how we can have so much fun destroying things, yet not be as insanely excited to create something.

There’s a few different ways to overcome this. All dangerous.

1. Build to destroy it.

2. Build to let someone else have fun destroying it.

3. Build knowing that you will already be building something new, thus, not caring whether it gets destroyed or not.

Bonus: If you want a real challenge. Build something new from the remnants of what you destroy.

 

Stay Positive & Whatever You Do, Just Have Fun With It

Garth E. Beyer

Chasing A Dream

Garth Beyer

While we are chasing our dreams, we can’t forget that there are people around us also chasing theirs. And you know what? You may be working on different projects, but you’re still in the same boat.

Tim Gallen is a friend of mine who is chasing his dream. Here is what he has to say about it. (Thank you, Tim, for writing this up.)

Stay Positive & Enjoy The Read… And The Chase

Garth E. Beyer

 

Enter Tim: 

They say a funny thing happens when you chase a dream.

They say the more real you try to make it, the more you try to birth an idea, make a dream come true, the more doubt gets in your face.

I didn’t NOT believe this, of course. I mean, I’ve been around the InterWebs, have heard through the digital grapevine whispers of such incidents. Times when people – excited, energetic, passionate people – pursued their dream but kept feeling uncertain: What if this doesn’t work? What if I fail? What if I’m not cut out for this?

But reading and hearing about something is completely different from feeling it firsthand.

I know this because I’m experiencing it right now.

For years, my brothers and I have had aspirations to tell stories using video. In other words, we’ve wanted to make movies.

This is a dream we’ve talked about ad nauseum. And for the longest time, that’s all it was: talk. Short bursts of excitable, dreamy-eyed chatter that gave way to the pressing obligations and reality of day-to-day life.

Until last year, when we finally reached a point of enough-is-enough. It was time to make a go of this dream of ours. We planned and plotted, recruited and recorded. It took us longer than we originally hoped and wanted, but we created a promotional video for a spoofy web series called Harbor Shores. It was an idea we’d had for a while and one we thought was perfect for launching our foray into visual storytelling.

I can’t speak for my brothers, but you’d think at this point, I’d be feeling the doubt creep up my spine. Well, honestly, I didn’t.

You see, we used this promo as part of a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to produce our first season of our show. From the middle of March through the middle of April, my brothers and I – along with some amazing support from friends and family – blasted social media and talked up our project. We managed to raise enough to fund our project.

And, while ecstatic about chasing the dream, a tiny voice called from my subconscious: “Why are you wasting your time?”

Truthfully, I may not have heard it the first few times. But you gotta hand it to forms of resistance – fear, doubt, anxiety, et al. – they’re nothing if not persistent. They gnaw away at you like a dog chewing a bone. They wear you down, tire you out. Persistent.

My brothers and I are knee-deep into our dream: putting together our Kickstarter rewards, securing locations, and filling the final remaining roles in the cast. We begin filming later this month.

And ever-present, I hear that voice whisper inside: “You’re a fake! Why waste your time with this? You’re going to fail!”

In my weaker moments, I wish I could somehow eliminate it completely. But I know all too well how resistance never goes away.

Knowing I will never completely be free of the fear and doubt, I choose to use them as a signpost. When I hear that whisper of doubt, when I sense the prickle of fear climb up my spine, I know I’m on the right track, chasing a dream.

Everyone’s Scared

Garth Beyer

Which means two things.

1. Very few dance with it or merely walk calmly forward. Few carry on when fear is pulling them back. That means that if you were to go forward with every fear imaginable (all fear is imagined), then you have an instant advantage without doing any of the easy work. Yes, dealing with fear is the hard work, actually making/doing whatever it is you’re passionate about is easy. Haven’t you walked into an art gallery and seen paintings that you know you could replicate? Making art is easy, but shipping it, putting it on the wall, giving it away, selling it – that’s the hard stuff. And fear is with you every step of the way.

2. Shame on you for enabling others to let fear control them. For saying it’s okay that they don’t give their work away, or suggesting they keep working on something until it’s better instead of showing it as it is. After all, the only way they will get better is if they show it and get feedback… from more people than just you. Yes, fear is what walks between you and your friend with its arms around both of your shoulders. Fear is tactful at making you as nervous as the person doing their work. That’s why you have as much responsibility to push others forward as they have to push themselves. Fear is about tough love and tough love will out.

 

Stay Positive & Keep On Keeping On

Garth E. Beyer

Repairing Motorcycles

Garth Beyer

You’re faced with a huge project. Or you’re trying to face one. Fear is eating at your gut. The saying now goes: No gut. Nothing to follow. But you try your hardest to not let it.

Gumption isn’t so much about putting up a fight with fear and pressing forward; actions and emotions are only half of it. The first half is having a project for fear to work on.

For me, I’m putting together a team to make ideas happen, for Robert Pirsig, it’s repairing a motorcycle, for you it may be starting a blog, showcasing your art, deploying a new business strategy, deploying a new business, talking to people who are different from you, or simply tackling the list of to-do’s you’ve put off.

Gumption isn’t associated with the tough decisions you hear CEO’s having to make, nor is it connected to those wearing hooverflags. No. Gumption doesn’t follow guidelines, restrictions, or limits. It doesn’t care how you were raised, what school you went to, or whether you skipped breakfast or not.

L. M. Montgomery said, “Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.”

I suppose Maud never tried repairing a motorcycle. But now, everyone has to repair a motorcycle at some point during their life… or at least something similar to repairing a motorcycle.

Puzzling to acknowledge is that there are a lot more meaningful predicaments similar to repairing a motorcycle than not. Pirsig would agree with me that, yes, repairing a motorcycle takes courage, spunk, guts, initiative, aggressiveness, and a high altitude of resourcefulness.

It also takes fear and dances with it. When you go to repair a motorcycle, you know you’re going to have one hell of a time. Bolts won’t fit, parts will be stripped, dents will be accidentally made, you’ll have to repeat tasks, and – my favorite part – you will deviate from instructions.

If you ask me, Maud was partially right. Gumption can’t be defined.

However, it can be felt.

 

“I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.”

― Robert M. Pirsig

Stay Positive & Go Find Your Motorcycle

Garth E. Beyer