Fear of Change!

22 Jun Fear of Change!

In today’s episode of The Causey Consulting Podcast, I discuss fear of change. Even though change is inevitable– the world doesn’t stay frozen in time– people still experience fear around it. Also, the growth and the exciting possibilities in life happen OUTSIDE of your comfort zone!

Key topics:

✔️ In some cases, the brain processes change in the same way it processes mistakes.
✔️ Resisting change puts you in a bubble and limits your life.
✔️ Do you view “the unknown” as a place of delicious possibilities? Or a place filled with terror, fear, and turmoil?
✔️ Can you let go and allow for spontaneity in life? Or do you have to pre-plan every possible moment as you seek control?
✔️ In the face of change, your ego is going to flare up in an effort to protect you.
✔️ Can you feel the fear and do it anyway? If you want the kind of life and income you dream about, you’ll have to.

Need more? Contact me.

Transcription provided by Otter.ai:

Hello, hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I’m your host Sara Causey and I’m also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. Today I want to talk about fear of change. And yes, it seems fitting that I should use a scary voice and some spooky music. Unfortunately, fear of change is very common. You know, I was reading a neurological research article that says uncertainty is interpreted by the brain in some situations, kind of like making a mistake. It’s like we get very uncomfortable with it. And we register uncertainty in such a way that we think it’s an error of some kind. So it’s really not a wonder that people get nervous and fearful about change. One of the things that sucks about that, though, is the really exciting stuff, the growth and the new opportunities, so often happen outside of our comfort zone. I mean, certainly, you can live a risk averse type of lifestyle where you eat the same foods over and over, you wear the same clothes, you drive the same route. You don’t ever venture out and you just stay in sort of a bubble. But I’m assuming that if you’re listening to this podcast today, if we’re connected on LinkedIn, if you’re one of my clients or we know each other socially, you’re not the kind of person that wants to live your life in a bubble, you probably feel like while you’re here, in this time and space dimension in this flesh suit having this experience, you want to get the most out of it possible. You want to make some money, you want to eat some nice meals, you want to have a nice fulfilling romance. You want to do some things in life before you kick off. I love how Esther Hicks sort of irreverently uses the term croak because it is rather funny. Before you croak before you get rid of this flesh suit and go on to whatever happens next. You want to have a good time and you want to get out of your comfort zone. Unfortunately, we can get in our own way and in our own head, big time when it comes to change. I love Joe dispenza, his book becoming supernatural, because he talks a lot about the unknown. One of the things that I want to encourage you to do is to stop viewing the unknown as a place of fear, terror, worst case scenarios, awful possibilities. When you look at the unknown as a place of dread, a place where bad things come flying out, then guess what? It is indeed going to be a place that lives up to your hellish expectations. But if you flip the script, and you view the unknown as a place of really cool, awesome possibilities, that’s exactly what begins to happen. And Dr. Joe tells stories about his son manifesting his dream job out of the unknown. His daughter had this idea of wanting to spend a summer abroad in Italy. Obviously, this was before the pandemic. So I don’t want to get a whole bunch of emails from people talking about irresponsible COVID behavior. This was this was before the pandemic, but she had this idea of spending a summer abroad and at first she was trying to make all of that happen on her own steam and as a result, the idea she had around getting there were not particularly appealing. But once she let go of the how and the wind, she just said, This is what I want to do. This is the way I want to feel. This is the type of experience that I would like to have in Italy when I spend this summer over there. A perfect opportunity presented itself out of nowhere. The truth is these really wonderful, awesome, delicious possibilities that we conjure up in our mind, so often hit us out of nowhere. And there’s an organization that I would really like to work with one day, and I was sitting here and notice of answering some emails and I was in my zone and my phone buzzed and I thought okay, well I’m not sure who this is. I’m not expecting any calls right now. I’ll get it once I am finished with this task. As an introvert, I really like to single task as much as possible. There is a lot of mythology around multi-tasking. And it often ends up with you doing several things not very well as opposed to doing one thing at a time in a way that’s exemplary. But I digress. So I’m sitting here and I’m typing away. And when I finished with that task, I remembered that the phone had buzzed and I looked over and it was out of nowhere. I kid you not one of the trustees of this organization reaching out to me. I wasn’t expecting it. She and I had never talked before. We’ve gotten to know each other to some degree now, which has been awesome, but it was like holy crap out of nowhere. Someone from this organization found me and called me What a world What a life. It’s really fun. When things pop up out of nowhere. Unfortunately, we can sabotage ourselves when we start thinking about all of these awful dreadful worst case scenarios. Like if I don’t control everything, if I don’t pre-plan at all, if I don’t know how and when and where everything in my whole life is going to happen, then I leave myself open for something negative. It reminds me of an Oscar Wilde quote, that I love. “There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it.” So often when we’re standing there, and we know that the time has come to make a change, or to try something new. We get scared. The ego’s job is to protect us. The ego reminds us of past things that didn’t go right. Remember when you spent money in this before? Remember when you had credit card debt in the past? Remember when you tried self employment and it didn’t go? Well? Remember when you went out on a blind date two years ago and it was just awful. The ego is going to tell you these things. And it’s not because it wants to derail you, it wants to cause you to have a terrible life. You know, just think of it sort of like the voice of a parent or grandparent who’s sitting there in the room with you going, Hey, I just want to make sure that you’re taking good care of yourself. And it’s okay in those moments, to step back and say, ego, thanks, I get that you’re here to protect me, I get that you’re just trying to run through scenarios so that I can be prepared and protected. But like, I got this dude, you don’t have to get on my case about it. This is a change I’m ready to make or this is a calculated risk I’m willing to take and you can just go and chill for a little while. It’s sad, but some people never make it into that space of being able to tell their ego to calm down and be quiet for a little while. It’s like that old book, feel the fear and do it anyway. It makes sense that you’ve had the invitation given to you to speak in front of a large group and you’re nervous. Or someone has said, hey, I’ve got a friend I’d like to fix you up with I think you guys would have an awesome time together. Maybe it’s been a while since you’ve been out on a date and you’re like, Oh my god, I just what if I say the wrong thing? What if the other person doesn’t like how I’m dressed? What if I have spinach in my teeth during half the date, you just have to remember that the ego is going to pop up and tell you about these things from the past and do what it can to protect you. But like you don’t need to allow that voice to command your whole life. Living from a place of fear and expecting negativity, frankly, has no life at all. Three quick tips I can give you around this. The first one is to acknowledge what you’re feeling. Don’t repress it. Don’t deny it. Don’t try to pretend that this voice isn’t jabbering at you in your head. You acknowledge it and you call it out. You call it for what it is. And you can even thank it. ego, I thank you that you’re there to protect me, I thank you that you ultimately have my best interest at heart. But this is something that I need and want to do for myself, I got this. The second thing is, in order for your comfort zone to get bigger and bigger and more and more expansive, you have to be willing to take those risks and to try new things. I think I’ve used the analogy in another episode before if you always go to the same restaurant and order the same dish, or you wear the same clothes over and over again, or you only talk to the same friends, and you’re never willing to meet somebody who might challenge your viewpoints or to try something new that you’ve never tried before. You’re staying confined to a small space. You know, I think about, there’s a quote, about travel, like travel, not not traveling through the world not seeing the world as sort of like buying a book and only reading the first page. Well, the same thing is true if you never expand your social circle. If you never go outside the norm if everyday for you is like Groundhog Day, then your comfort zone never has a reason to expand. In fact, I would say if your comfort zone is not expanding, it’s actually shrinking. Because over the course of time, you will become more and more risk averse, and less and less willing to branch out. We sort of get into that. Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it mentality of well eating mac and cheese every night for dinner, and talking to the same friends and wearing the same sweater every Friday hasn’t failed me. So I guess I’ll just do that for the entire rest of my life. The third thing is stop portraying the unknown as a place of despair and terror. If you decide that the unknown is a place where bad things happen, bad things are going to come flying at you. That is precisely what will happen. The truth is we all deal with the unknown. I’m not really sure how pleasant life would be if we just knew every single thing that was going to happen in our life. Moment by moment, at four o’clock today, you’re going to have a headache. Thursday at 3pm you’re going to have a flat tire. Saturday afternoon, you’re going to have the best milkshake you’ve ever had in your life. I mean, okay. Doesn’t it sort of take some of the romance and the intrigue out of life? If you have all of those things, conveniently telegraphed to you ahead of time. I mean, where is your inspiration to create in that situation? I mean, You know, I’m saying this to myself as much as I’m saying it to the listeners, I find it interesting how Esther and Abraham Hicks talks about contrast. Contrast is a necessary part of life in order to be inspired to create. In order to launch rockets of desire, we have to have that contrast. Now trust me, there’s been times in, in life and in business where I’m like, Okay, I know this experience is hitting me for contrast, but like, oh, it doesn’t feel very good. I know it’s serving a higher purpose. But like in the moment, it feels pretty awful. But it’s there for good reason. If you knew everything ahead of time, if you knew every obstacle that you were going to face, or every joy, every moment, joie de vivre that you were ever going to have for the rest of your life if you knew about it ahead of time. Wouldn’t that be boring? How would you ever come up with new ideas and be innovative if everything was just handed to you ahead of time. It might be fun for a day or two, but I would have to think after that it would get awfully old. If you’ve been struggling with change, you’re afraid of change quite often. Or you would just like to shift out of this idea of the unknown as being a place filled with terror and awful outcomes. You can PM me on LinkedIn anytime. I’m more than happy to discuss this topic with you and see if I can potentially help you to shift out of those limiting beliefs and mindsets. I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now.