How to 'overcome' fear | Trevor Ragan | TEDxCedarRapids

We learn best when we operate at the limits of our capabilities and a little outside our comfort zone. Honestly, I could talk for a few hours about what that looks like and how we can do it, but today I want to zoom in. We're kind of at an underrated angle and that's why we hate getting out of our comfort zone. I think if you delve into the research on learning and development, it becomes pretty clear that one of our biggest obstacles to becoming a great student is

fear

, the

fear

of looking bad the fear of the unknown the fear of being wrong that's one big reason why we definitely prefer it in our comfort zone the good news is that anyone can learn to

overcome

fear that is a skill that any of us can develop, but the way we do it is very different from what you could think.

My intention today is very simple. It's simply bridging the gap between what science says about fear and how we normally think and talk about it. First we have to talk about where the fear comes from. Actually, it's connected. and it comes from a region of our brain called the amygdala and some people call it our lizard brain, it doesn't really matter what you call it, we know a few things about this first, everyone has an amygdala, it lives right next to our brainstem, It is approximately the size of two almonds, it is there to survive, it is there to keep us alive and one of its most common tactics to keep us alive is to generate fear to get us away from danger, so if we are at a baseball game and the batter he accidentally throws his bat and it flies into the crowd.

Most people crouch down. That's our lizard brain at play. It is fast and reactive. Detects a threat. Generates fear. We crouch down. It's also why I can walk around the edge of this point and feel perfectly fine. it's about two inches tall if this was a hundred and fifty feet tall it would be scaring me right now that's my lizard brain generating fear saying buddy stay away from the edge of the cliff our lizard brain is excellent at its job however there is a bit of a glitch in the glitch system our amygdala doesn't really know the difference between good and dangerous challenges in life and it doesn't know the difference between good and bad risks, so its tactic is to simply avoid them altogether.

There are four types of triggers that really increase and create fear uncertainty attention change in struggle the idea here is that if these four elements are present the fear will be present now I think we can all agree that those four elements could absolutely describe a dangerous situation, but They are also present in the best learning opportunities and they are present when we perform and compete in art. Learning music involves many of these things and, again, if these four elements are present, fear will be present and most of the time we will feel it. Out of fear, we find a way to avoid doing something that is great when it comes to danger, but not ideal for learning.

So yes, this keeps us safe from bats flying at our heads, but it's also why we don't like asking or answering questions. In a group, think about if I call you and you raise your hand to speak and give an answer. What's happening? Most of the people in the room boom and look at you. You have attention. There is also some uncertainty at play. be it the wrong answer or a silly question with uncertainty and attention comes fear most of the time we don't ask the question we call that the lizard won the battle this small moment would challenge us and take us out of our comfort zone we feel afraid , we don't ask, we've all been there, that's why in the past you had to turn in a paper in two weeks, what day would you write the paper the night before?

Every time procrastination largely comes from the lizard brain. because every day leading up to the due date we have the option to sit down and research and write or watch Netflix which one do you think my lizard wants Netflix? But let's talk about why through the lizard's eyes the world is black and White, in his eyes, doesn't really know what we're doing. Either he could fight right now or not fight. He will always choose not to fight. Another tactic I do. I call it downgrading the fight instead of writing a new article. on my website I will vacuum my house three times.

I keep busy but choose the option that involves less struggle, uncertainty, attention or change. That's why I wake up in the morning and say I'm definitely going to cook a healthy meal. tonight and then I work all day and drive home feeling tired and my car does something really strange it sees the Chipotle and picks it up and takes it out, that's my lizard brain in play at that moment I'm presented with an option that I can have something salty fatty and delicious right now or go to the store buy the ingredients go home and prepare them which do you think my lizard wants Chipotle with extra guacamole now I want to make it clear that the tactic of taking what we can get and get Now we choose gratification easy instant instead of hard, which was great in the past for survival and we didn't know when our next meal would be.

It's great for keeping us out of harm's way, but now we're playing a different game, but the software is the same, this is also why giving this talk is so much harder than the one I did last night in my hotel room. This is also why we've all been in our basement watching TV for a couple of hours and we know for a fact that there are no monsters in the basement but then you turn off the TV and turn off the lights and then you go upstairs like that, that It's our lizard brain, think about it, we know there's nothing in the basement, but as soon as it gets dark, the lizard looks.

I'm gone, it's kind of funny, the joke about the problem is that that's the force that drives a lot of our behavior, that's the force that makes a lot of our decisions. I guess what I'm talking about is the tactic of avoiding uncertainty, attention, struggle, and change is great. Yes, we are in danger but we spend most of our lives not really in danger and in this case that tactic really robs us of incredible opportunities to grow. I have had the absolute honor of teaching research like this and principles like this to hundreds of people. groups from all over the world I have worked with major league baseball teams I have worked with hundreds of schools, students of all ages, Fortune 500 companies and even inside a prison before and when we teach this we ask a powerful question: when do I has stolen fear? you have the opportunity to increase the answers, I think it says a lot, one everyone has an answer, which means that no matter who we are and what we do, this happens because fear steals our experiences.

We taught a third grader this concept. He got up and shared he said I play baseball and every game I tell my coach I want to play right field because no one ever hits the ball to right field he said I want to play infield but I'm afraid if someone hits a ball on me case, I can be wrong, so I always play right field. Everyone can relate to that story, but there's something we wanted to do, maybe even should do, but when the time comes to do it, we end up in right field, which is our comfort zone. and we've all been there, a high school student shared that she was in the final round of qualifying to participate in the singing show and that she had to sing one more song and that if she did well she could have made it, came the moment. to sing the song she got scared and left, she shared this in front of her classmates and many of the students in the room gave her a wrinkled face, what are you thinking?

Look, and they're right, like singing that song could have changed her. life here is the truth about fear it's very easy to sit in a comfortable room and talk about what we could and should do and it's even easier to talk about what other people could and should do as it's easy to say on paper of course , the third graders should play in the infield he will be fine and on paper of course he should have gone up on stage saying the song that is easy to say but the truth is that if we are in his shoes with his experiences we will probably do the same Because Fear is a very powerful force.

The other angle I want to talk about with the example of him, we don't know how it would shake out, but I think we can agree on two things that you can't achieve on the show otherwise. You don't sing the song the same way you can't get the job if you don't apply and you can't get into college unless you apply, so fear is robbing us of a lot of potential outcomes, but it's also robbing us of something else that may be even more important and it's the experience of getting on stage and singing the song, applying for the job and going through the interview process, those are good experiences whether we make it or not, and the fear of getting in the way.

Every day, no matter who we are and what we do, fears rob us of opportunities to grow. I actually learned about this topic from my hero, that guy over there, his name is Seth Godin, he's my absolute hero and I had the honor of Skype with him a few years ago and we had an amazing conversation about fear. , he taught me about the lizard brain and what it does while he was going through this. This shook my world greatly because while he was teaching me this, he was remembering all the times in My life, that fear ruined me, this is the biggest one.

I actually grew up in Lander Wyoming, which is also called the middle of nowhere and it was my dream since fifth grade to go to school at Duke University and I was obsessed with it since fifth grade. Until the twelfth grade I pursued that with everything I had, long story short, I was accepted into the school probably because they needed someone in my path, but I intervened and went out to Durham, North Carolina, for my first year of college, thousands miles of Home was way out of my comfort zone, which meant there was a lot of fear.

I felt like everyone there was smarter than me and better than me and richer than me and that I didn't really belong during my first year of classes at my dream school I never said a word in a class I never asked a question I never answered a question I didn't I participated in the discussion on the days I was supposed to get up and present so I skipped why because my lizard was behind the wheel generating a lot of scary things that I felt if I gave the wrong answer they would know I'm the guy from Wyoming who doesn't belong here, maybe The way I see it, fear robbed me of a year of development at an amazing school, so let's get back to this.

Conversation with Seth as he shows me this and I remember that. I think you can start to guess what I asked him below. My question was how to get rid of this because my thinking was that fear made me bad at learning if I eliminated the fear. then I might be good at learning, so the question I asked was how do you kill the lizard's brain. His response changed my life. He said I'm delighted you asked the question that way because that's exactly the wrong question you're looking for. to destroy defeat conquer the lizard brain you will fail your brain is nothing more than a chemistry experiment it is electricity and chemicals and when you push back the lizard brain when you try to negotiate and reason with the lizard brain it gets scared, it becomes inflamed you can't win but what you can do is dance with the lizard brain.

What you can do is realize that our lizard brain is a compass and then when it gets scared, it tells you that you are on to something and that you are about to do something brave. and bold and powerful and that we should listen to him doing the opposite of what he wants us to do. I think moving away from this concept of dancing in fear and using it as a compass is brilliant if we know our lizard absolutely loves us. stay in our comfort zone, if we ever get out of our comfort zone of course we will get scared, getting scared is a sign that we are in a learning experience if we know how it works, so now I stand up. here in front of you saying that we should use fear and feel afraid and to be honest, that's a 180 degree turn from how I used to talk about this.

I used to go around telling people not to be afraid and not to be afraid now that we understand how fear works. and where it comes from, think about the problems with that approach. I think there are two big problems with telling someone not to be afraid: we are actually telling them to do something that can't be done, and we are doing something that involves uncertainty. attention fight and change we are going to feel afraid and the only way not to feel afraid is not to do it we don't care or repress ourselves and that is not what we want so logically if I care and it implies uncertainty attention change and fight I'm going to feel afraid.

I can name it whatever I want, but that feeling is there. I think the second problem is that it creates shame around the fear and can make it worse. Let's say you're sitting in the lobby before your dream job interview. there before entering, do you mind thatinterview? there is probably some uncertainty, yes, you may understand it, you may not, there is some attention, there is struggle, you are going to feel something sewn up, without a doubt, the problem is if everyone around you tells you so. You have to be brave, don't be afraid, see how that can start to snowball and create shame?

You could sit there and say oh, I'm not supposed to feel this way, something must be wrong, I'm not supposed to. be ready, no one else feels that way and all of that can snowball and make the fear worse, but it all comes from this misconception that I'm not supposed to feel afraid. The big improvement we are trying to make is for people to understand how to feel fear in a situation. great job interview or a performance or a talk anything that stretches and challenges us doesn't mean something is wrong doesn't mean we're not ready it means we're human that's the human response with our old school approach to fear we look at it It is a very negative thing so we assume that the presence of fear means that I cannot or should not do.

This with our improved focus we realized that it is natural, it is human and with that knowledge, you see, we are more likely to put ourselves in those situations, we are more likely to do what helps us learn, grow and improve, to be honest with you. No topic I've learned about learning has helped me more than this one: Before that conversation with Seth, I was an absolute disaster before, during, and after presentations like this, and I assumed all the fear I felt was because I was too young. or I'm not smart enough to do this literally since the day he gave me permission to feel afraid, it has totally changed the way I do this, but that doesn't mean the fear goes away.

I've done almost 900 talks like this in the last three. Years of dancing in fear is a skill, so the more we do it, the better we get, but speaking from experience, fear isn't going anywhere. My lizard is going crazy right now. This is a skill. This is something we can all improve on. I think we need to steal a page from Liz Gilbert's brilliant book Big Magic, where she talks a lot about fear. In fact, she has a card to fear and talks about how we should keep fear in the back seat of our car knowing that we can.

Let's not take him out of the car, we have to keep him in the back seat. I think it's brilliant because the problem is that when the lizard is behind the wheel it detects many learning opportunities as threats, every problem, challenge, obstacle or change through the eyes of the lizard is a threat when we detect threats we find a way to avoid them If we can put the lizard in the back seat and take the wheel we realize that most of those things are actually opportunities when we frame them as opportunities that we are more likely to do them, experience them and help us learn, grow and improve over time.

Time, again, this is a skill, meaning it is something we can develop. I'm not saying go home tonight and pick what scares you the most and do it tomorrow, but I am saying that by treating this as a skill, we can start getting repetitions and practicing feeling afraid and asking the question anyway feeling afraid and volunteering for the project a little out of our comfort zone the more we do it. We are developing that muscle for the big leaps we will take later. No one is perfect with this. My lizard brain still wins many battles. The idea is to be aware of the process and our choices and work to spend a little more time outside our comfort zone. and that is something we can all do.

I hope this helps you do it, thank you.