193. Becoming Fearless with Dr. Benjamin Ritter

[Music] what is your relationship with fear do you let fear get in the way of the person and the leader that you could become in today's episode of the leadership project we are rejoined by Dr Benjamin Ritter and celebrate his new book becoming Fearless Ben and I unpack our complex relationship with fear what is fear what is fear trying to tell us how can we reframe fear to be something that works for us instead of against us stay tuned as this episode is full of practical tips on how you can change how you manage fear and create the fulfilling life you have always wanted hey everyone and welcome back to the leadership project I've got a special treat for you today we have a return guest we have Dr Benjamin rter who you may recall from episode number 118 of the leadership project podcast he's rejoining us today with a special announcement and that is the launch of his new new book becoming fearless and that's what we're going to focus on today we've spoken about fear quite a bit on the show now we're going to go a little bit deeper so I'm really excited for today's conversation so Ben I would love it if you would share with the audience a little bit about why this book and why this book now what was inspiring you to bring this book becoming Fearless out into the market M I imagine you've created something for the world and people responded a little differently and that's like in a good way and that's what happened when I came out with my Fearless Friday podcast segments so every week I jump on LinkedIn and I give a two to three minute tidbit you know a thought an idea some sort of action that people can take to become a little bit more Fearless in their life get uncomfortable basically and out of everything that I've posted because I also post this on my podcast people just were seemed to be empowered intrigued engaged and I started wondering about this topic of fear and how it relates to how I work with clients in terms of self- leadership and personal accountability and empowerment and anytime a client is held back on a goal it's generally I mean I'd say all the time due to some aspect of fear some aspect of there's a belief that they are labeling in a way that prevents them from taking action and I was like well I want to write a book on this and guess what I have all the content or some of the titles and types of content from these podcasts I've been doing for the past year and a half to two years let's see if I can put together something that would add some value to the world and becoming Fearless was born yeah brilliant so now I want to get right into it I want to maybe even challenge some of this stuff you so you say becoming Fearless but isn't fear just a normal thing what I want to put to you here is when people feel fear it is normal but it's what we do with that fear that makes the difference so so is it becoming fearless or is it about being able to manage our fears when I look at your book I'd like to redefine the word fear I would I just let's get rid of it hence becoming Fearless where you stop labeling things as something to be afraid of and instead label them as information so as you said manage fear that's generally what a lot of the tips are doing they're letting you look at fear take a step back from it recognize that there's nothing to be afraid of and then try to plan towards your goals and towards your values but for that to happen you need to redefine how you interpret the feeling of fear and I don't want to not I want I don't want to denormalize fear I want want to make sure that people understand everyone does feel some aspect of fear just certain people that are fearless Define it as something different I like this a lot so it's a reframing or relabeling if you like that it is normal you are going to experience in your life but do we have to be so afraid of it so you really like that one of the things I noticed in the book you've you've broken it down into two major sections personal and professional which the first thing I look at there is we do come across it in multiple aspects of our life in our daily life in our family life in our daily interactions with the world and then there's a fear that we might encounter cter in our career in our professional world tell us more about why you you broke it down into these two sections yeah in even in those sections you have mindset success and relationships for personal and job satisfaction leadership presence and career growth for a professional fear can sometimes be very targeted for someone where they can have they can jump out of airplanes they have no problem talking to anyone in a room but then you get them in front of a boss and they feel like they have to be very beautiful and follow the hierarchy and not speak up and play their role and so I split them out into these different categories because people deal with different types of you know fear in terms of how it holds them back and also there just fear does impact Us in every category of our life but in different ways and sometimes we're not even aware of it we're not aware that the reason why maybe we don't send that networking message is because we're afraid of being rejected we don't realize that if we want to get a promotion that we don't just expect our boss to give it to us we actually have to become uncomfortable and ask how to get that promotion and start acting that way and in our personal life maybe we just have we we haven't defined really who we want to be what we want to achieve or even feel comfortable talking to a stranger just like we would in terms of a networking message but we Define them differently in our mind and so by calling these out I was really trying to create a book that was all-encompassing for the fear that faces us because all the leaders I work with I don't know about you but when I have a CO coaching conversation their personal life is still impacting how they show up at work and impacting what they they bring to that time and so if someone can learn how to become Fearless in any area of their life I feel it would be a learning opportunity for that can apply to also any area of their life there's no doubt about that it it bleeds across what's happening in your personal life impacts your career and vice versa and the more that we understand that the better that we can control it now one of the saying that we have here at the leadership project is that fear and limiting beliefs kill more dreams than failure ever did so it's the actual in action in the book you've got this first section under personal which is the mindset and you start with conquering your fears what does it mean to conquer your fears Ben it doesn't mean that fear disappears now maybe if we change the label and just believe that fear doesn't exist that would be wonderful but what it truly means is that you decide that how you feel is not going to prevent you from achieving what you want that's it and too often our feelings become excuses we lab we label them as maybe something that's not safe and so we feel that the thing that we want to achieve isn't we're not able to it's not possible and becoming fearless or conquering your fears means that if you want to do something if you feel that something is off in your life and it aligns with who you are as a human being that you have full right to go try to achieve that and take action towards it and the results don't matter but what matters is do you feel impowered and accountable to live a life that's based on who you are and what you care about and honestly if you take this up and look at it from a higher level it's all about what live for yourself Consulting is about you know how do you live for yourself will you identify your values and then you align them in your life in a way that's fruitless one of the things that we know about fear is how debilitating it can be and that our fear of loss can be 5 to 10 times greater than our appreciation of gain and why it might be so Omni in our thoughts and feelings my question to you is isn't fear trying to tell us something now whether that thing is real or not isn't fear trying to draw our attention to say hey hey buddy you better pay attention to something here how does that sit with you the fear isn't what's trying to tell her something and I yes it's like a yes and because like the cycle of fear that tends to happen when when it's negative when it's holding us back we have these feelings of trepidation our heart maybe starts beating our palms get sweaty our eyes get bigger we have feelings inside because we're about to do something that's uncomfortable to us at the time so we take these feelings and we label them and it might not be uncomfortable by the way it might be excitement it might be a lot of things we label them with our thoughts and that's where the thought comes in this is uncomfortable this is fear this is excitement this is something new whatever that thought is we label when it comes to fear we go this is something that's unsafe these feelings that I'm having right now represent Fear And depending on how we define fear and a lot of individuals and why I wrote the book define fear is something to avoid you then create a belief of this thing is not safe I need to get away from it so we could do a couple things we could recognize fear and then change the belief of fear means I take action fear means that I need to pay attention fear means means I need to do something what I would prefer us to do is when we start thinking that what we feel is fear do what you just said which is I'm going to not label this as fear and I'm going to label this as something that my body is telling me to pay attention right now that something important is going on Simon senic has this great little video and he's talking about professional athletes taking the game-winning shot and he talks about how when when they get interviewed after the game and the announcer goes or the interviewer asks them you know are you were you nervous were you afraid and the athic goes no I was excited and I would love us all to get to a point where fear becomes the sign that you just said of not fear but hey this means that you're on the right path go have some fun yeah I like this a lot and it it it is this reframing again it is paying it is drawing your attention to something but you get to choose what that is and how you feel about it and the excitement's really interesting so I'm going to throw one out here always feel like I'm going out on a limb here when I share this with people I'm a rare person that I've never had a fear of public speaking don't know why and yet for some people it's their greatest fear really debilitating fear of public speaking and then there's others that will reframe that and go if you're not feeling fear about public speaking it means that you don't care enough and that the you can reframe those same physiological feelings that you're having at that time before you go on stage and relabel that as excitement about what you're about to do as opposed to fear of what you're about to do how does that example of public speaking CU a lot of people that listen to this show this is going to be a big one for them how do we bring this conquering fears into this fear of public speaking as an example can't tell you how many clients I've worked with that have a hard time with public speaking anytime where they and they feel like everyone's looking at them I mean there's a bunch of stuff that is causing potentially that what we call fear maybe you're worried about what people are going to judge you maybe you're worried about some sort of consequence to your job maybe you're worried just in general that you're going to mess up maybe you're worried about the fact that you just know that you're not good at public speaking and are afraid of being bad at public speaking there's a lot of different reasons for whatever the the feelings that you might be having the fear is more than just the fear of public speaking it's the fear of practice it's the fear of hiring a coach it's the fear of listening to a podcast about public speaking it's the fear of practicing it's the fear of even like any sort of intervention so we have to be careful when we're like trying to intervene in an area that we're afraid of such as public speaking to solely focus on just that like the feelings themselves because there's a lot of interventions that we could do that potentially help this area of public speaking how you would apply this to it is generally you maybe think that you have to go speak you start feeling your heartbeat faster and my I I speak a lot publicly my leg will start to shake like literally my leg will start to shake and generally then when people are afraid they go oh this means that I'm going to break down I'm going to have I'm G to have some sort of nervous reaction I'm going to stutter I'm going to not remember what I'm going to say and all of a sudden now you just have you get caught in the cycle of oh no I'm feeling this thing this means this now this is a belief and it just actually ends up spiring out of control and I've known multiple people to have panic attacks when they have to speak publicly because they get caught in the cycle and they don't they don't learn how to interrupt it and it is a very real fear for for certain individuals so I'm trying not to undermine that fear but like for me personally I don't have it that high of a regard if I'm going into a big speaking event and I'm like feeling myself starting to get nervous instead of going I'm going to be terrible I tell myself wow my body is like getting prepped look at all this extra energy that I have to to give away to this stage sometimes I'll even like tighten up my body and release it because I'm like oh I got to get all I like I don't need all this energy let's get rid of some of it and then when I'm getting ready to go on stage I just tell myself it's just another conversation it's just another another conversation and so I'm trying to to show my body and my mind that the feelings that I'm having are a positive benefit or not true like there's there's a couple different paths I'm taking it's positive benefit oh I'm excited about this conversation there's a lot of energy that I can use and not true which is it's not that big a deal like it's just another conversation that I always have and now there's a lot of things I've done before that too in terms of prep and practice to ensure that I can believe what I'm telling myself and hopefully that adds a little bit of clarity of like how I handle it but also the fact that like this is a this it's not just about getting on stage in public speaking the fear can actually prevent a lot of the other things that can that need to happen to help you work in this area of your life there's three things I'm hearing Ben want to play it back to you and and see what you think so the first one is about it being an intentional act so if we leave it unfettered and these feelings come across us these fears these feelings if we don't intervene there's a good chance that it might go into a negative spiral and we start making assumptions are you're only feeling that because and you're ending those sentences with negative affirmations not positive ones the second thing I picked up from you there is to intervene and go well what is this trying to tell me do I even know this to be true so the challenging statement so the negative inner chatter comes into your mind and it starts telling you something and you know news break for everyone we all have an in a chatter in our mind and we get to decide whether it's a negative or a positive one we have this negative inner voice and the first step is to challenge it and go well do I even know that to be true or am I just being a little bit ridiculous here in terms of my extrapolations then the third one was really interesting Ben is then I'm hearing that you're going what can I make with this how can I turn this potentially negative feeling that I've just had how can I turn into this that that into something that I work with how does that sit with you so this kind of process of a intentional intervention then a challenge do I know this to be true and then what do I make of it instead of it holding me back how do I turn it into a positive we'll be back after a quick break hey business Enthusiast ready to boost your entrepreneurial Journey tune in to the growth gear podcast with Tim Jordan presented by car and six Tim dives into Cutting Edge business growth strategies and new brand insights whether you're a startup founder or a seasoned exec gain the tools to elevate your business subscribe to the growth Gear with Tim Jordan on your favorite podcast platform shift into high gear the growth gear is your guide to fast-paced business success mhm so in the book there's three entries one of them is feel your feeling so what's actually happening in your body bring some real awareness to it not anything else other than the feelings understand what's happening physically to you generally we just skip right ahead and label those feelings as something but those feelings can mean anything so let's just get aware of them there's a think about your thoughts so then it's okay so now I have this thought what could this mean in a positive way instead of jumping to the negative to prevent that spiral how do I use this and then there's don't leave your beliefs which means challenge how you previously have been labeling your fear and what it means about you and what you're capable of and be that champion relabel things in a way that serve you so you can figure out an action that you can take that does so they love the three different steps that you shared they're right on the money and it's not easy this is not a process that happens overnight but it is a process that can help you take one step forward in an area that you might be holding yourself back in I have a client who is getting out of the fear cycle right now their perspective on their fears is at a point where they can't think of the opposite and they need a mentor they need a support they need someone they can trust such as a coach and maybe even other resources because they were living in a silo they weren't listening to podcasts reading books about the areas that were holding them back to help them see that there was another way to believe about the situation that they were in and you see this sometimes people that get caught in kind of a this idea that the job market is terrible right now so they latch on to this because they've been rejected and they don't know how to navigate the current market and they've been in a silo and it's easier for them to believe that than it is to do the other actions that they might be able to take for whatever reason it was at a point where there was a belief that they would never even get another job which some people listening to this might be in that place but if you are I promise you you will get another job and I might there are so many different ways to navigate your career as long as you don't fall into hopelessness and I I believe the book becoming fearless and even just the thoughts even what you were sharing right now is putting us in the driver's seat of our life and saying that a feeling isn't strong enough isn't bigger than the things that we care about and that's really what we're trying to do I'm bigger than a feeling because my feeling comes for me and so that means that whatever I feel I can do something opposite it might be difficult but eventually over time I could I can yeah really good Ben so I'm hearing a couple of things here one is that don't believe your beliefs that caught my attention when I was reading the book for sure it was really interesting and there challenging of our beliefs to make sure that we are asking us ourselves those questions do I know this to be true and to intervene and to go along that process but something interesting you picked up there there might be people that are in the audience listening to this right now that might have developed a negative inner chatter that is a one track record and they keep on hearing the same thing over and over again and they're only seeing one perspective of any problem and a former guest on the show Steven shedleski he shared something with us that was really interesting that is people can't always read the label on the jar from inside the jar and what you're now saying is to get some if you find yourself in that same repeated pattern where the only that plays over in your head is the same pattern that you might need some external help to help you see a different perspective and see a different way of looking at whatever that challenge is how does that sit with youh if you're living in fear and it's been holding you back you probably are also in an environment that perpetuates that fear and that environment could also include your mind it is the number one reason why people are stuck in fear is that their mind is telling them that they should be now there could also also be a lack of positive influence like if you're there there could be a lack of external knowledge they're not listening to this podcast the shame on them right so share this podcast with all your friends and it it is something that is it is it sounds kind of easy on the surface it's okay so I'm having a hard time and I believe something about myself that doesn't serve me that I want to change okay so let's pick you up and drop you into an environment that focuses 100% on the fact that you can accomplish this thing so put yourself around people that are doing it read books about how to do it listen to podcasts about how to do it and write down every day I don't know if you remember like in The Simpsons Bart got in trouble and he was writing on a chalkboard the reason why he got in trouble over and over again we have to do that with the things that we feel that we want to accomplish too the problem is in fear especially in the fear cycle you know it happens every single time every meeting you're in you're in that meeting going they're going to judge me they're going to judge me they're going to judge me and then like you have five meetings a day and all telling yourself is they're going to judge me they're going to they're Jud me was was that stupid was that something or what what did they think of that and it's like literally you are on a broke you're a broken record of negativity to help you become who you really truly need to be I'm picking up an analogy here around habit building Ben so when we talk about habits there's you know a lot of science around there they say the average time it takes to build a new habit is 66 days obviously that's an average so depending on what the Habit is sometimes it could be long longer sometimes it could be shorter but let's say 66 days to to build a new habit and what I'm hearing from you is your current state of mind is almost like an existing habit that you've been doing for a long time and what you're going to need to do now is to build a new habit a new positive habit so your example of Bart Simpson writing on the chalkboard it's daily repetition that that gets as there to the new process this is going to require some commitment to be able to do this but what I'm hearing from you is if you don't do anything different it's just going to perpetuate and we need to step in and we need to take a few different actions but we need to do so over an extended period of time before the new way of thinking the new mindset might take hold how does that sit with you becoming fress is about building better habits that serve your values and your goals it's about being aware of your thoughts and your feelings and your beliefs so that you can take the actions that you need and there's a variety of areas of your life this could be helpful something as simple as focusing on one thing at a time during a meeting because you want to have more executive presence and you can't do that if you're not engaged to I mean something a little bit more complicated crafting your your job to increase greater levels of job satisfaction but fear tends to hold us back in those categories and this book you know covers 65 different areas of our life and it's not like you you can read the book in one sitting you totally can but you need to read the book pick one of those 65 things and try it for a week try it for a month and that will lead to change I read the book in one seting as well by the way and this is going on to what we might discuss at the very end of the interview but I did find it very affirming it's something that everything makes sense in the book and what I love is at the end of every mini chapter there's a single positive affirmation that that brings it together so I then see it as something that you wouldn't read once you'd actually have potentially on your bedside table and if you're going through some challenging times you might pick it up and just read another chapter again or flick to the chapter that you needed at that moment so what does the world need you to know right now it's a very powerful book the way it's been written B I share that I was going to share that at the end of the show but I'm going to share that with yeah thank you and yeah thank you I I was just going to say it's it's also how I learned and when I was growing and and evolving as a leader and as a human I'd read you know a 400 page book a 300 page book a 100 page book 150 page book and it would I'd pick one thing from every book and I was like just give me the one thing I need to do because I I understood that or one one thing I need to think or one thing I need to do and it was like because I understood that to actually create change you can't just sit down and wait for change to happen you need to create it and either in terms of how you approach the world in terms of your mentality your perception or through your actions and hopefully it inspires and some action all right so that's a beautiful segue to the next part I picked up in the book which was about create instead of Chase happiness and the shift from a victim to a creative mindset how does one start to shift from chasing happiness to creating our own happiness and to shift from a victim mindset to a Creator mindset that's probably an entire podcast on itself but how do you even start B I am a creative mindset so this is where I've got a practice a bit of empathy because I've never been one to blame my circumstances and to have a victim mindset but I know a lot of people out there get stuck in that rut how do they start to shift the frame from victim to Creator so we we have two different pieces there and I'll try to give one for each so we have the one which is great instead of chasing happiness what I focus on in the book here is what really stands out to me about happiness is that we have goals and we set those goals and we try to achieve them and I was actually talking to a client today this morning who said you know Ben this is just like really it's a really busy time right now in three months I think we're going to be like normal I'm going to be able to do the things that we would were talking about balance and all that stuff okay set a reminder let's send an email three months from now and see if anything has changed and he's like oh I see what you're doing is it is it my my mindset and how I'm approaching work or is it the environment itself maybe it's both and so when we think about happiness we set goals and maybe we don't work on things right now because we're thinking that something's going to change we'll be able to work on it later or we set goals we work really hard and we think we're going to be happy when we achieve them then we achieve them and then what tends to happen we set we set new goals working towards them again I'm gonna be happy when I get this thing and we have to stop and just say like when was I actually happy or in that that example with that individual when did I actually have balance because you've accomplished it before like You' you've had this thing in the past that's how you know it exists but when and remember that that feeling wasn't generally because you achieved something it was because you felt it you decided to create it so in our lives we need to remember that we can create Joy just by feeling that we're joyful by remembering the things that we've accomplished in the past by being gracious and having gratitude for who's in front of us today by taking a moment and connecting with the person in front of just remembering the things that make us happy and so that's what I mean by instead of chasing happiness we need to create it because it's within us all the time some harder than sometimes harder than others and then in terms of the victim situation and I've shared this before but I was a victim very much in my career I blamed my boss I blamed my organization I blamed my job for not bringing me meaning for making me feel unsafe and sometimes you hear this too when you're in a relationship and you're arguing and you're like I can't believe you you made me angry you made me feel the you made me sad no no the person didn't do that the situation the action created some sort of you know you have some sort of belief or some sort of expectation in that situation and then you decided to label it in some way shape or form so I was expecting my job to give me meaning and because I wasn't happy every single day I blame my job for doing that and I was being the victim or you're a victim in a relationship because maybe you don't set expectations or follow through or you stay in a situation that isn't right for you well in my job I have power in my relationships I have power and so if if you don't want to be the victim you take a look at the things that you want to achieve and then you go am I doing everything in my power to Go Achieve that thing or am I waiting for someone to do for me and going back again to the how do I feel how do I think and what do I believe and how do I act in if you want to change from being a victim stop blaming people for your situation and start creating some personal accountability for it and yes everyone has different starting lines and different situations and different bosses and maybe toxic work environments but a toxic work environment is a lot more toxic if you just react to the people around you instead of setting boundaries I like this word personal accountability it's really powerful and it's sitting well with me Ben and just knowing that we can't always control what happens around us we can't control the behavior of other individuals we can't always control our circumstances what we can control is how we respond and what we can control is what we do about it so taking that a personal accountability to take some action to do what I can with what I've got from where I am and from there we can make the most of any situation even a seemingly bad one how does that sit with you what is that quote it's the Serenity Prayer which says let me basically let me be able to know what I can change yeah God give me the serenity to bear with the thing and I'm getting it wrong as well bear with the things I cannot change to change the things that I can change and to know the difference that we're both messing it up but it's it's along that line but yeah that's it it's it's understanding what we can and can't change and then Having the courage to change it when we can change it and I would even add just believing you can change things most of the things in our life we have an opportunity to impact the process so we can change how we act what we create so for an like we tend to Define our success based on the outcome of our life and the situation or our current this present point in time like if you're in a work environment and you're trying get on a project and someone said no you would be angry about not getting on that project but that is only one door towards an in in a direction that you want to go what are behind all the other doors so instead of being the victim of your current situation ask yourself how do I start building the path towards the goal that I have for myself instead of waiting for others to create one for me that I walk down we can do that in almost every situation yeah well said Ben one of the things that also caught my attention then was about the power of always being present so this is touching on the world of mindfulness if you like but making sure that you're present in the moment what makes that important Ben we never get today back ever and the time that you have with the people in front of you or in the thing that you're doing at any given time is the most important place to put your attention we're very often living in fear of the future we're living in fear of regret of the past and we miss out on the the happiness or the opportunities that the present provide us in the book I talk about never rushing a hug so this tip came for me because I was rushing hugs and so one Friday I was like wow I really missed out on creating a positive moment in my relationship there so I jumped on the Friday video and made a whole few minute thing about just hugs and I've never forgotten that because you know there are going to be days when you can't hug that person there's going to be days where you can't play with your dog pet your cat there might be days where you can't walk to kind of like rush because of a project or because of a deadline or because of a time that you're supposed to meet somebody somewhere because the stress that you feel that's kind of sad when you think about it and I I don't want to regret those moments yeah well said Ben there were two things that popped into my mind when I was reading that element the first one is slightly different at what you're saying and I'm going to play that to you and then the second one that probably doubles down on what you just said so the first one about being present everything that we said before about feel your feelings don't believe your beliefs the the asking yourself the question about do I even know this to be true if we're not present we won't have the awareness to be able to even challenge those thoughts and challenge those beliefs because we're walking around on autopilot would be the first thing and then the second one I think you've said it beautifully but this temporal aspect of you can't change the past and no amount of regret will change the past we can learn from the past like you said before but no amount of regret will change the past no amount of anxiety will change the future but what we can do is make the most of the present moment how do those two things sit with you one is the situational awareness and then one is the temporal awareness of no the only moment is this moment overall and trying to build a pause from reacting to our environment to being able to be proactive in our environment to say whatever happens around me is the thing I can't change in this instant now based on the things I care about what do I want to do and with presence that is possible without presence that is not and when we're overly stressed or frustrated or anxious or living in fear generally we have a hard time building that pause in from the other piece with which is worrying about the past worrying about the future not being able to impact any of them in this moment really basically having to wait for the future thing to happen or to pave a different path in a direction that can maybe get to a different place we want to go but we for sure can't change the past all of that I think requires the ability to have that pause I used to have a pause button in front of me by the way it would just be a little button that I would push to remind myself to wait and one of the number one things I work with leaders on by the way is is commun Comm unication and generally that is not waiting to communicate but overc communicating so jumping in not listening directing and I bet you if you're that way when you talk to people you might not have that pause when you're not with people either and so it's important you can even just practice in conversation to give someone a couple seconds of Silence before jumping in to try not to interrupt people for a day and see what that does for you in terms of your own life in terms of how you your inner chatter oh that's really powerful I've never thought of it that way I have always seen that ability to pause as a sign of respect and to make sure that I show that the other person that I'm truly listening to them also try to pause when I'm speaking to allow people to process what I'm saying etc etc but do I have a pause the negative inner chatter or even if it's not negative inner chatter just the inner voice no I don't think I do Ben I don't think I've ever done that that's a big takeaway for me today I love love it all right now we have spent a lot of time on the what I'm going to say is the first section of your book which is around personal and around mindset like to just do a rapid fire go through some of the rest because there's so many more powerful things in the book band and this what I wanted to concentrate today was on that mindset piece but there were many other nuggets of gold here as well but we'll do it in a in a faster sense so under this Banner of success you talk about always dreaming bigger about changing your how for Success about investing in yourself about ignoring your critics where does this whole concept of success come in with becoming Fearless when I was putting this book together I was trying to really think about who I was talking to because people have a different definition of success but I I think that there are at least from the people that I talk to a large majority of them that would like to achieve more either they're professional they're they're executive leaders they're younger leaders that want to grow they're entrepreneurs they're people that want to do more but their fear is holding them back for who am I to create that business who am I to be in that director or senior director or executive level role and well you're you and if you want to achieve it you can so let's talk about how to get there and also let's talk about a healthy mindset that in terms of what is success and what should you believe success is in a positive way way to help you achieve it or to Define it in a way that serves you and still allow you to make progress one of the the simplest things that we talk about in the book too is investing in yourself again I can't tell you how many leaders I work with that haven't read a leadership book don't listen to podcast such as this but if your goals are to grow and to achieve something new well let's talk about how to get there and yes you can achieve it and the actions to to help you achieve it involve an actual investment of time or even money sometimes but towards your goals instead of just towards like material things and such so there's a couple of things there I'm hearing as well B is about overcome something of our limiting beliefs again maybe some of the impostor syndrome and then I'm hearing take action invest in yourself if if you do know what you're trying to achieve in your own definition of success it won't happen by sitting around just thinking about it it happens by investing in yourself and taking action and prioritizing what that success is very see very often with high Achievers High performers I know we have time to go through the entire book but just tend to spread themselves very thin and then think they don't have time to work in the things that are going to lead them to Greater Growth work again working with an executive today thinks everything is important is cre personal excuses on the fact that he needs to work on Executive presence and storytelling but then that was we've been working together a little bit now though and he caught himself and he go oh that's an excuse I do have the time I need to block my calendar I need to spend invest my time in preparing for to become the type of person that I want to be and these other priorities need to change yeah we become what we prioritize and and if our schedule is just scaton all over the place don't expect any really prolific results on the thing that you're trying to focus on yeah well well done Ben all right let's go into the professional side then that now that makes a lot of sense so you talk about using this fearlessness as a way to drive job satisfaction about remembering how great you are and the true meaning of your work and tell me how we apply this in our professional life around job satisfaction so job satisfaction has a couple different components but to summarize it and make it quick generally we're afraid to change the things we need to change to make ourselves happy at work we think our job is what it is not what we need it to be and so we don't take action we don't even think of our job in a positive way is if we're we're generally going into work trying to find reasons not to be happy and so fearlessness relates to the actions you could take as well as the mindsets you can take see this theme here when it comes to your job to make sure that you're happier or at work the other chapter that caught my attention was leadership presence so this is the leadership project so a lot of leaders are watching the show and by the way we we do speak about leadership in three dimensions leading self leading others and leading the business so all leaders everything that Ben has been saying up to this point about personal mindset it's where you got to start once you get through that and you're looking to lead others you're bringing this in now in terms of leadership presence what does it mean to become Fearless in terms of your leadership presence Ben and I feel like I'm doing the books of Justice cuz you're asking these great questions and I just want to say in terms of leadership presence you know the book focuses on engaging in meetings trusting first respecting the way others work asking questions before making suggestions leading with optimism focusing on Solutions like all these different traits that a leader can help them have a greater level of executive presence but do it in a Fearless way because we tend to hold ourselves back from these things like for example delegation it is like the Trinity of leadership skills and so many leaders are stuck in micromanagement because they're afraid to trust their team or the potential of maybe something going wrong and also maybe not knowing not being looking bad potentially to their senior kind of leader but all that is about fear and so we we need to realize if we want to become the leader that is fearless then we need to exemplify executive leadership skills despite how we feel about doing them and that's so that might be might mean you have to build some greater confidence in learning the skill it might mean you have to take a small step and be uncomfortable with something new and try something different it might be that you open up and share something with a mentor that you haven't done before it might mean that you give certain feedback to someone that you've been afraid to give but will improve the outcomes of a project and so it's it's it is all encompassing but basically it just relates to your presence and traits overall I think you now this Ben first of all the role modeling of behaviors that you want to see in others so if you want others to step up and step in and overcome their own limiting beliefs and fears you need to be able to role model that you do it yourself and you've got some wonderful things there about presence and about holding space for others so that they can actually do that and then the common fears and you know we do a lot of work on the leadership project with these the common fears of lead is can be delegation like you said and the other one is giving someone feedback and this one is a really interesting one Ben because it's really counterintuitive cuz if you ask most leaders do they enjoy getting feedback most of them not all most of them are going to say yes because if there's something that they're not doing well that they're not aware of they can't do anything about it and yet you ask that same leader well okay now you got a staff member who needs to hear some feedback what's holding you back and it's that fear of the uncomfortable conversation it's the fear that's holding them back from giving that feedback so if there's leaders listening to the show now that could be either of those two or or it could be another one adjacent to this B either the fear of Delegation because oh what if it goes wrong or the fear of giving feedback or just the fear of EX validation what will people think of me their own identity and their own ego can get in the road here how do they step forward and start addressing these things if they're self-recognizing listening to the two of us right now how does a leader take the first step in overcoming some of those fears so if you want to get feedback by the way you might be afraid to ask for it and so the solution generally would be to start giving feedback and create a norm and role model as you talked about but then if you're afraid of giving feedback then we have to learn a little bit of how to give feedback because generally we're afraid of giving feedback because we're afraid of offending someone we're afraid of the ruining the relationship we're afraid of how it might impact us it's a very selfish General generally like a certain fear and so you can start with something pretty easy and just give positive feedback you can find something that you really think someone is doing well and just start practicing that try to do it once a week and get used to creating this culture of kind of positive feedback and then once you've learned a little bit and feel more comfortable on constructive feedback you can start small and you you generally like there's a model that you might know and generally what I try to recommend is s which is you talk like you learn a framework and you try it with someone that you trust first someone that you have a really strong relationship with and on something really easy and really small and something that is not about the person but is about of some sort of future development opportunity and it's as we start taking these small steps you're start impacting the culture and the expectations of the people around you and you start changing them of yourself and that will lead to some change and hopefully becoming a little bit more fuess on the topic what I'm loving here Ben is the what I'd refer to as the competence confidence cycle so I'm hearing that you start small you're stepping outside your comfort zone start with something small and you'll build the competence by practicing it and you're using an framework I use a similar one SPI a so use a framework to help you get started you build some competence in using that framework and when you start small and you take that first step and it works you build a bit of confidence and then next time you're going to try a little bit further step even further outside your comfort zone you'll build a little bit more competence and it's going to be successful again and then you're going to build more confidence and it's just this kind of virtuous cycle that's going to build upon itself now and by the way it won't go perfectly every time but you need to be able to reset and to be able to learn from it and go again so I'm hearing you got to step in you got to step outside that comfort zone and you got to give it a go try something that is manageable first and start building the confidence that it works how does that sit with you mhm 100% And you start changing expectations of the people around you too you create a culture of back all right brilliant now we've been going for a while now and we want to encourage the audience to buy the book cuz there's so much more in this than what you and I have been discussing we've gone deeper into some of the chapters and we've skimmed over some of the others there there's an amazing amount of useful reference here and validating statements that you can use to help you to conquer your fears and to get fear to work for you instead of against you Ben what I'd like to do is give you the floor for a few final statements if you were to sum up what you want to see people use this book for and and how it can help them to approach becoming feelers what's the best way that you would sum it up if you're in your life saying I can't do that I would love for someone to open a book to the chapter that relates to that I can't because there probably will be something there and dedicate at least a week of their time maybe half an hour a day focused on believing that they can or proving to themselves they can I care unbelievably deeply about people feeling empowered and accountable for their own success in their life and that success can be not doing anything by the way that success doesn't mean that the hustle and the grind and the book becoming Fearless should hopefully help people get there yeah well done Ben I'm going to add a couple if that's okay just from what I took away so I I do believe it's a reference I do believe it's going to be one of these books where you don't read it once that you go back to it you might read it once the First Time cover to cover because it's manageable in that regard and you are going to go back to it at different points in your life something might be going on and you go into that specific chapter to help you to remind yourself a little reminder of no you you can take control here and if I was to sum up what I took away from the book in a few words it's the word curiosity actually to get curious about your fears to challenge your thoughts to challenge your feelings and ask yourself the question what is this trying to tell me almost like why this emotion why this emotion now what is this emotion trying to tell me what is this feeling what are these thoughts do I know these thoughts to be true and then to step in and take action because you can't control what's happening around you but you can control how you respond everything I took away from the book is summed up in kind of those three elements Ben I'm going to make a little mini book and it's just going to have that in it it's going to I'm going to attach it to the the front cover oh all right well done Ben okay so it's a wonderful reference for for everyone I encourage you to get a copy we'll uh Ben will share with you in a moment how you can if you listening to this early you can go onto a pre-order list and if you're listening to after like after it's been after this episode has been launched for a few months you can obviously go and directly buy your copy and I encourage you to do so so Ben we normally finish off with our rapid round which are the same four questions that we ask all of our guest but you've been on the show before so you've answered some of these questions before so I'm going to do a very much an A bridg version I would like to know what have you learned since the last time you on the show particularly as you've put this book book together learn about yourself what have you learn about yourself and what have you learn about others from the process of bringing this book to life I learned that I was a very very very different person in the past when I needed to learn these tips and these strategies and tricks and how integrated in my life and my personality they've become and how even more important it is that I want other people to learn them too because the level of confidence and Clarity and control I feel over my life my relationships the contentedness that I feel each and every single day is something that I I value greatly but the other piece that I learned from that thought though is that I need to remember what it's like to not feel this way because that's how you truly can help people that do yeah that was a really powerful one Ben as well that's remember when you didn't feel like that remember when you did feel Joy when I remember when you did feel happiness is is part of learning from the past you can't change your past but you can learn from the past you've all felt it at some point what was it what was going on in your life at that time that you felt that joy that happiness that you felt Fearless at that time yeah really powerful message all right finally how do people find it Ben how do people find you and how do people find a copy of the book either to pre-order or to purchase so you can go to live for yourself consulting.com becoming Fearless you can get to get on the list but it will be very shortly up on Amazon starting September 17 2024 depending on when you hear this if you can't find any of those things connect with me on LinkedIn Dr Benjamin Ritter send me a message be like I heard you on the leadership project I have no idea where your book is help me out and I'm I'll send you the link too all right brilliant Ben it's been such a pleasure having you back on the show thank you for sharing your wisdom and Guidance with us today this is a deep topic it's a one that impacts all of us we all experience fear in our life you're not unusual if you're experiencing fear what makes a difference is how we process that fear and what we do about it thank you again Ben it's been a absolute pleasure it's been a pleasure too thank you m you've been listening to the leadership project in the next episode it'll be a self-reflection Friday where I'll be sharing my Reflections on everything that I took away from the episode with Ben R today which was really game in for me I'll also be sharing my leadership Reflections from this week including the very complex relationship that we can have where sometimes as a leader where our well-intentioned actions have unintentional consequences for our team members if you are finding our content valuable we would love it if you could leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast or your preferred podcast service you can also subscribe to the leadership project YouTube channel where we share weekly video podcast curated videos and our weekly live stream show thank you for listening to the leadership project at mix bear.com a huge call out to Farris sedc for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP Joanne goes on Gerald calbo and my amazing wife say spear I could not do this show without you don't forget to subscribe to the leadership project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week and you can follow us on social particularly on LinkedIn Facebook and Instagram now in the meantime please do take care look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and Lead together