Fear is an Illusion | Frank Shamrock | TEDxSugarLand

Hello everyone, I know a lot about

fear

. I have experienced a lot of

fear

and today I would like to share some of my experiences and also talk about fear and also the

illusion

of fear, the fear that we put into it. universe and in which we live as an existence this is your brain when you experience fear in your brain this small blue area the sensory cortex activates and immediately tries to decide if it is a real fear or it is just standing on stage a fear TEDx true, If it is a real fear then your amygdala intervenes to protect you, it is like a man is in your corner and he instantly floods your brain with these chemicals that put you in fight or flight, that is the true value and the true need of our fear. .

The reflection is there to protect us from serious threats and the beauty of that or the non-beauty of that is that all those memories are stored in your Megillah because there is a base mark that protects you, so if you saw a poisonous snake and it almost bit you . You will have a small mark on your brain to avoid poisonous snakes, they will kill you. That's what the fear response is for, and what most people don't realize about fear is that fear slowly starts to control your life when you don't. I don't understand what it is, talking about ancient stories, talking about sailors traveling the world and having dragons and all these different fears.

Those were there because something scary happened and then needed to be addressed or they need to be a foundation for understanding how we live. made security, so my experience with 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 keep it inside, and that's why I'm about to share with you The biggest fear I have in my life and that seems to be true for most people. I just spent six months talking to people about fear and I talked to hundreds of people around the world and here was the most interesting part about the fear of people in 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 a guy who was a super driver who told me that he would rather die than go on stage and share my passion and I thought To me, that's crazy, but that's also how powerful our fears are. I would choose death and then come here and share with you my passion and my love. Early in my speaking career I realized that fear was controlling my life and I realized that early on. In my life I was more afraid than anyone and then I began to wonder where these fears came from and I will ask you if there is any fear in your life that prevents you from moving forward and if there are fears, what would happen.

If instead of running away from them you ran towards them and hugged them and replaced them think about what would happen if you marched towards your fears with a plan of attack instead of retreating think about that just for a second this is where my fear comes from I grew up in an abusive home and when I got in trouble when I needed punishment my parents locked me in the closet they left me there for hours that was a normal punishment in my house I never knew that was wrong but what it did to my body and it filled my mind with tremendous fear and anxiety and it really scared me and what I didn't know was that it was shrinking my hippocampus and making me less available to deal with emotions. available to deal with fears because of my childhood, so I did what every good American does.

I found the way out and my way out was to break the law. I learned that I could get out of my abusive home by committing crimes and that worked very well. Until I finished there and then it was a huge problem. I didn't wake up until I was 19 and I was in maximum security prison and I still had years to go before I got out. I didn't realize that the fears. I had the fears that invaded me. I was using them to build walls around me. I woke up in Folsom Prison and realized he had put me there.

Yes, I had been hurt, yes, I had been harmed, but each of those angry actions was my action. I took control and ended up here. This is my biggest fear and my biggest failure when I got 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 find a way out but I was consumed by fears everyday fears common fears I'm afraid of this afraid of that I was basically a traumatized human being I didn't even know it so I started going to college and I started to study and I began to learn that there was an aura of fear around me.

I had built this world on my own 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 it was doing this to me until I woke up and one of the things that helped me wake up was this quote and you know, it's Franklin Delano Roosevelt. the abbreviated version this is the one we all hear in the face of fear and I read this quote and I said yes, but then I said, but where are the tools? I can't be afraid of fear, but I'm still afraid of fear and I'm still full of fear and there's still fear over me, so how can I not recognize the fear I'm supposed to have?

It just didn't make sense to me, so I dug deeper and started to realize, but wait. one minute I'm so full of fear I'm so full of crap I really don't know anything about myself 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 am It was and luckily on that trip I met a man named Bob Shamrock and Bob Shamrock cared about me as a human being and Bob Shamrock said listen, you have value but you have to work for it and this work that you are doing now in prison is not.

It's going to be enough and he gave me a purpose to move forward and he was there for me and when this quote came up I was looking for an answer and I said, yes, that's me, I'm going to deal with the fear, but first I needed some tools, so I read. the rest of the quote, most of us never get that far and this is the rest of the quote so first of all let me state my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself and this is where it comes in. really good, nameless, reasonless, unjustified terror that paralyzes our necessary efforts to turn retreat into advance.

I thought, wow, this is amazing, I get it. work on that and then I started 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 I took I expressed it. to the rest of the world. I put myself exactly where I deserved to be because of the pain 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 really started. taking things 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 join the group and they become your protectors usually they're a prison gang but someone I got You have to take care of yourself because when you are alone it is the scariest existence you can imagine.

You were literally alone on this trip. Well, I wasn't alone because Bob Shamrock had never left me, so I was hoping a lot of people wouldn't. and when I read this I tried to reduce it 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 only used it for this talk because I had I have to delve into whether it's justified or rational that I'm scared to death in this TEDx scenario probably not, but that's how the formula works I'm afraid my fear was fighting I was going to choose to become a professional wrestler to get out of prison that was my exit so here is the formula I'm afraid yes I was very afraid to fight name it I'm afraid to fight there is to decide if it's reasonable it's reasonable that I'm afraid to fight yes I do I don't know how to fight I don't know how much training I don't understand how to protect myself that's it 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. There was only one answer keep going, keep going and that's what FDR says when you condense this this formula can be applied to anything you're afraid of 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 things and then I got very serious because then I realized all the problems that were wrong with me, but in the meantime, this is how you go. go because it is what it is when you have nothing left when there is no hope you just have to keep going and all you need is a person to take care of you a person to step forward and show you another way or another opportunity to move forward that person I was Bob Shamrock and he gave me the courage, but more than that, he never left, so even though I went to prison, even everything that happened to me, he stood by me and told me: listen, when Come out, it seems there is an opportunity for you.

I became a professional wrestler now, I'll be honest with you, it was scarier becoming a wrestler than being a prisoner and I would have easily rejected him if I had the chance, but my father finally adopted me. He said no, no, here we go, so I started to deal with the fear that now I will become a professional wrestler. How is that handled? That's quite challenging. I don't know how many professional wrestlers we have in the room, it's incredibly stressful. and then I started to spread my wings, I started to be honest with people, listen, I'm really afraid of what we're going to do here and this drives me crazy, so I started sharing my fears and it was by sharing those fears that my community he came to support me where he was one man, then it became five and then it became 500 and finally it became millions of people supporting what I was doing and in that journey of learning martial arts I learned to speak, I learned to teach and interact with others. people and when we came together on our missions and talked 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 for my success.

It was the millions of people behind me who believed in me that helped me keep going and in fact I was so successful that when I was 37 I retired. I became a broadcaster. I became a league owner like I had before. I literally did everything I ever imagined and was able to retire and go home to try to start another family. I remember that I failed my son 20 years before, so 20 years later a girl was born and I realized that the purpose of my life is not to beat people is not to make money, it is to remake these memories and remake this experience both for me as well as for my daughter, so that's what I committed to and every day I woke up and said yes, but the fear, the pain and the shame of what happened to me didn't go away all the success I achieved 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 morning and cry just because of the pain I felt. I had everything I ever wanted in life and I was hurting inside, so one day I sat with myself and thought: What are these fears that sustain me? you come back and how we move through them and that started this journey. You know that fear is like a brick wall. Every time you walk away from that fear, you put another brick in that wall every time you say no, I can't do that. too much every time you turn around you place another brick on that wall the wall starts to get stronger 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 ahead the wall crumbles the only power in the wall is you laying the bricks you making the fears find someone to share your fears find a passion in life that you believe in more than anything else and if it's not there start talk to people because It will come out when you find that passion and that purpose, then you can continue with your mission and share it with all honesty.

I'm here to share my honest fears with you. I'm definitely scared of this moment, but I know I have to continue. This trip because I am going to become a professional speaker and this is what I have 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, everything what you see. in your brain everything you put in your mind is your reality so why can't we fill our minds with new experiences and incredible memories? Why don't we focus that superpower, that incredible warning system on personal growth if we convert that fear system? that stops all this movement in this movement we would achieve everything we were looking for fear separates people walls separates people well, slowly building slowly building if you tear down those walls with your mind that's a superpowername your fears embrace your fears and add new memories when you do that then you are using your super power to achieve your ultimate dreams thank you