Transforming Fear Part One, Curiosity

Description

A video on transforming chronic fear in our lives using the power of curiosity and wonder.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,Fear (Symptom),transforming fear

Video Transcription

for a few months now Rebecca my wife has been telling me I really need to do a video on fear I don't really know what what's going to come out here but let's see what happens she considers it to be one of the most important videos I'd ever do and the reason for that is that fear usually plays such a powerful role in shaping our lives and it holds us back I'm so much what I'm talking about when I talk about fear is is chronic fear I called chronic beer as opposed to acute fear acute fear is that fear of a 700-pound bear as it charges towards you and that fires up your fight-or-flight response and and it serves the purpose but chronic fear is a fear that is always sort of running in the background and and it it affects all aspects of our life chronic fear might not even feel like fear to a lot of people in fact we know it by some other names anxiety frustration stress if you're living in the world of in the corporate world it's that feeling

squirrel thinks I'm talking a little bit too loudly it's that feeling of tightness that you get when you have that big presentation tomorrow and and we just call it stress but that is born out of fear fear of what other people are going to think of us fear of how this would affect our career fear it's running and visibly in the background and for a lot of people that I work with I get to see them they have passions they have ideas they have all these creative things that want to come out of them and how they want to interact with life but that fear that fear holds them back from trying these things you know if you have fear operating in your life it feels like attention it will manifest if you're going to go talk to somebody important and you're feeling that tightness it manifests if you have if you have children and you start to feel frustrated that comes from a very subtle sense of fear of often of what they're going to turn out like or how they are respecting or not respecting you as a parent the first step in transforming healthier operates in our life is to become aware of that to start to notice that tension sensation it actually has a I keep doing this because it has a physical correlate you feel inside of you it feels like a tightness in your chest or in your throat sometimes people will feel it like in there in their shoulders or their temples but for all of us there's a physical correlation between that emotion of fear and our bodily sensations

so becoming aware of it whenever its operating no shame in feeling fear we are taught this really really well and its operating in almost all of us in a powerful way so shed that aside you don't have to be afraid of being afraid feeling wherever its operating and then there's one little magic method that i'm going to give you that can start to transfer your form in your life make a huge difference okay here's the secret fear has what we might call an opposite inside of us and that is curiosity and curiosity is a natural emotion that all of us have inside of us but it becomes suppressed in our cultural training and replaced with fear the cool thing about curiosity is that it looks at a situation and it doesn't start making up stories about all the bad things that could happen or even all the good things that can happen pure curiosity is just a feeling of wondering the feeling of wandering without having that that end goal story attached so what I mean is just being immersed in the curiosity so if okay i'm gonna use this fake example of rebecca because this is totally not her personality she's a amazingly root self-realized person who this would not apply to but let's pretend she comes home and I see her slammed the car door she walks towards the house right away I could feel here it's that sense of like of tightness of resistance okay I'm not talking about guys out there like are you afraid of your wife what I'm talking about is that feeling of tension that comes up when you see that approach and you're getting ready to counter you've already made a judgment right like something must have been gone really bad in her day and she's going to take it out on me oh my gosh and oh you're already braced and ready for a fight out of that fear response you see how the shapes situation now rewind I see the car door slam instead I go straight into curiosity pure curiosity not starting to think okay well I wonder if something like happened at work I wonder if a friend of hers got mad at her or or not making up any stories I just go purely into like that sensation of curiosity when she opens the door and comes in I can meet her with total open arms and a total approach of for instance what are you feeling would you like to share it and that as you can see gives a very different set up to the situation then she opens the door and I'm like what is it out okay so two very very different ways you have children his words magic instead of judging what the situation is why they're upset why they're throwing the tantrum you approach with pure curiosity if you're giving that presentation tomorrow at work you just you purely curious about how people are going to accept it you don't need it to look a certain way that curiosity secret behind it is that it invokes play and play is something almost all of us as adults have forgotten how to do but when we remember how to play and we use curiosity as the entrance into play then life transforms because we're not scared we're not fear-based anymore we're approaching everything in life that open sense of wonder and then a tricky thing is that because we're approaching things like that will often see situations shift for the better just because we're approaching with curiosity and wonder if you approach a situation with fear and stress it's basically going to rise up to meet you all right especially if it invokes if it involves other people because when other people see a clenched fist they're ready with the clenched fist when they see an open hand it gets kind of hard to keep that fist clenched it's that simple so the tool I use is the wonder tool and all you do is anytime remember the first step was to notice when you're feeling that tension or fear when you notice that you stop whatever you're doing and you see oh I'm in a fear-based place and you look at the object of the fear ok Rebecca coming in after slamming the category and I shift to wonder put a smile on your face get into curiosity and say say this I wonder and it doesn't have to be I wonder what's wrong I wonder anything else just I wonder use that word those words I wonder to invoke curiosity and then when you do interact with people show them that you are genuinely curious you generally you're genuinely full of wonder you're genuinely interested without judgment this is magical it will do amazing things if you want to give it a try I would love to hear your experiences are your thoughts about it you don't think it will work tell me where you see fear in your life and where you may have tried curiosity and wonder and seen it make a difference thanks for watching as always and special thanks to Rebecca who never slams the guard oh okay and who inspired me to make this video