Ep #29: Irrational and Unnecessary Fear

Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha-mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

What’s up, brothers. Welcome back to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud. Today, we’re talking about irrational and unnecessary fear. So we’re talking about emotions again. Now, this is the third episode, third week, that I’ve hit you guys with some very specific emotions.

Two weeks ago, was unconditional love. Last week, it was indomitable self-confidence. Today is irrational and unnecessary fear, but today is a little different, because understand that love and confidence are emotions that are learned; emotions that we create with our thoughts, with our belief system. Irrational and unnecessary fear begins very rationally and very necessary.

So fear is a little bit different, but very quickly, backing it up, what are emotions? I want you guys to remember this. This is the third episode now, you should remember, you should know that emotions are chemicals. They are molecules. They come from our brain. They are released when we believe our thoughts. We can have all kinds of thoughts. We can have an infinite number or our thoughts can be anything, but we will only have an emotional response when we believe the thought.

And that emotional response is the release of a molecule, a neuropeptide, a neurotransmitter into the body, and this molecule attaches itself our cells, the cells of the body. They attach to receiver sites. Receiver sites are like keyholes, they’re like the lock. And the emotion, the neuropeptide, neurotransmitter is like the key, and they go into these receptor sites and then the cell kind of receives this molecule. And it goes into the cell and it makes the cell change, it makes it vibrate, and that is what we feel.

So an emotion is a noun. It is a chemical, it is a thing. A feeling is an adjective. It is what we feel from the emotion. It is the physiological change in our body happening at a cellular level. Now, this feeling in these cells can come in different cells in different ways. It can cause us to increase our heart rate, increase our respiratory rate, increase or decrease our body temperature and cause the hairs on our body to rise, it can cause the skin on our bodies to sweat.

It can cause many different things, but whatever it’s doing is what the emotion is doing to our cells, doing to our body at a cellular level. That’s what an emotion is. That is the worst that could ever happen to us. As horrible as some emotions might feel, as horrible as fear, shame, guilt, as horrible as these emotions feel, betrayal, whatever it is, it’s still just an emotion. It’s still just a change happening in your body from a thought that you’re having, a repetitive thought, because it’s a belief. That’s what emotions are.

And emotions are important because whatever we’re feeling is how we’re going to act. We use food to sustain our life, right? Food becomes energy. But the cause of our action, not the fuel of our action, but the cause of our action always comes from an emotion. So we will act. Our actions are a manifestation of our feelings, a manifestation of our emotions.

Now, fear is important for this reason. Here’s the truth, guys; the beta condition is fear-based. The beta condition is survival fear-based scarcity. That’s its purpose, to keep the organism safe, to keep your body, your life, continuing, keep going. And it uses fear. It uses that emotion and the thoughts that produce that emotion to keep your body safe. So it’s really the job of the beta condition to produce fear. That is why fear is so powerful. That is why fear is such a strong emotion and it’s felt universally.

All human beings feel fear. In fact, I would almost wager to bet that all animals that have a brain, that have a brain capable of producing these neurotransmitters, fear is going to be one of them, absolutely, because of its function, because of what it does. It’s that powerful and that necessary. It’s necessary for us as children to learn how the world works because, as children, we don’t have a fully developed prefrontal cortex.

Our brain is not fully developed. We don’t have the ability to think about our thoughts. We don’t have the ability to elevate our alpha state. Our alpha state comes later about in our mid-20s. So, as children, we’re still learning about the way the world works and having a healthy fear about that is what keeps us alive as kids.

The truth is, I mean, if we didn’t have fear, if fear wasn’t a part of our DNA, we’d be climbing up into the tallest tree we could find and jumping out. That was my thing when I was a kid. I used to like to climb things. So if I didn’t have any fear, I’d be jumping off of buildings, man.

You know what I’m saying, it’s that fear of heights, it’s that fear of pain, it’s that fear of pain. It’s that fear of death that keeps us from doing that. It’s fear. Fear is what is driving our actions, or in this case preventing our actions, my actions, of jumping out of high places.

So, as children, we need this. We need to learn this primary emotion that is in our DNA in order to keep us safe. The reason why I called this podcast Irrational and Unnecessary Fear is because, as adults, we can supervise and alter the beta condition. I call it the alpha state. Really, it’s the prefrontal cortex. It’s the ability to be aware of your thoughts. And with that alpha state, from that alpha state, as an alpha male, you get to manage your mind, manage and master your cognition, the beta condition, so that you can choose the thoughts that you want to have creating the emotions that you want.

Fear is necessary as kids. But as adults, it doesn’t really work for us. It still comes up, and why does it still come up? It still comes up because we have a beta condition, we have a limiting belief about ourselves and the cognitive dissonance of dreams that challenge those beliefs. So I have a dream. I have something I want to do, but I have fear around it because of my beta condition, because of my limiting beliefs.

I want to start a new business.  I have a fear of failure. Now, this fear of failure is irrational. It is unnecessary. But I have it left over from my beta condition. From an alpha state, I will see what that fear is. I will understand what that fear is and I don’t need that fear. But our fear of failure comes from a limiting belief. It comes from a thought that we believe that is challenging or in challenge from things that we want.

Approaching a beautiful woman, fear of rejection – so what we want is to approach this beautiful woman. We have a limiting belief that is challenging that desire and that is creating fear. And it’s unnecessary, it’s irrational. We want to quit buffering something, we have a fear of discomfort and change, we have big goals we want to meet, we have a fear of failure.

So I want you guys to understand too that this goes into the old alpha male definitions. Like, think about the old alpha male myths. I bring this back up again because this is the movement, right? This is the movement to the new definition, to the way to define an alpha male that has nothing to do with anyone else but is simply a matter of personal mastery. Because the old alpha male definition was something of a physical or a socially dominant man, so somebody who would physically dominate other people, might makes right, sort of like the greatest warrior or the greatest fighter or strongest leader.

Whatever it is, they would take over by force; so physically dominant man. Or, socially dominant man, which comes in later, more of like a power status or wealth status or something that still is to be compared to other people. So it’s very scarcity-based. It comes from that beta condition of fear where survival and scarcity is the perspective of the world, where the new alpha male, the definition I’m using, is only dominant over his own mind, over his own cognition, so he doesn’t need to be dominant over other people, which means he doesn’t need to fear them.

There doesn’t need to be any fear. There’s no space for fear as an adult alpha male. There’s only abundance. It has nothing to do with anyone else. At this level, at the elevation of the alpha, other people are rarely even considered. Let me put it this way; when you’re learning this skill set, when you’re elevating your alpha, when you’re in this process, other people have nothing even to do with it. And it doesn’t matter what your goal is, if your goal is to create more wealth, if your goal is to lose some weight, to be healthier, whether your goal is to find a relationship, you know, get on the dating scene or create a more healthy relationship that you’re already in, whether it’s to stop a bad habit, stop buffering something, it doesn’t even matter because it has never had anything to do with other people. It’s always a self-mastery position.

Other people aren’t a consideration. And it’s not in a callous or dismissive way, but it’s in a way that says I’m learning what it means to fulfill myself, to fulfill my dreams and my wants in life and there is no one I have to control in order to do it. There is no one I have to physically dominate, there is no one I have to socially dominate, those old alpha male myths. It’s self-mastery. And self-mastery is far from fear. Fear is in the beta condition. The fear that we feel is left over from our fear of the world and other people, so that’s what makes it irrational.

So again, as children, I get it. As children, we need it because we need to understand the physics of the world. When I talked about climbing to great heights, I was a climber as a kid, when I talk about climbing to great heights, I have to learn about gravity. I have to learn about the world and fear helps that occur.

But when we become adults, fear is now becoming a hindrance to us, and the reason is because of the model, bro. Go to the model, look at the model, CTFAR. It doesn’t really matter what the circumstance is, or the thought. Whatever the thought you believe that’s creating fear – put fear in the F-line – and when you feel fear, think about a time, go back in your mind, think about a time that you’ve felt fear. It doesn’t matter what the fear was of. It doesn’t matter whether it was failure, rejection, embarrassment, humiliation, it doesn’t matter, whatever you were afraid to feel.

Maybe it was afraid of feeling fear itself, maybe you’re feeling anxiety, but whatever it was, how did you act? The question is, how do you behave when you’re feeling this emotion? And if you behave at all, I’m curious to know what that behavior is and I’m curious to know if you’re not swapping models on me. Because most of the time, when we are afraid, when there is fear, it is paralyzing most of the time.

Emotions that are energizing are like confidence and anger. You can see how anger would be energizing; when you’re feeling angry, you might do things. You might be driven to action. And you can see how boredom is a passive emotion; it drives you to passivity.

Fear is a paralyzing emotion. It will usually drive you to some sort of paralysis. I have had so many clients, I want to say that the number one answer – well, I should say two, number one or number two, but probably the number one paralyzing answer I get in the A-line following fear in the F-line is procrastination, inaction. And it’s from the fear of failure.

Now, the second thing I get is buffering because clients don’t want to feel fear so they buffer away their fear with an action, a false pleasure, and that’s a whole other topic we’re talking about. But, most of the time, it’s procrastination. Other times, people just tell me inaction, you know, like go sit on the couch, which is procrastination, watch TV, go grab a beer, go grab some food, whatever. I don’t do anything and I don’t act at all.

So because of that, because there’s just not a whole lot of action coming from fear and we need action to get the results that we want, it’s really not an emotion that serves us in any way. Now, that’s the good news. The good news is we choose what we want to feel. The good news is that we always get to decide what we feel based on what we choose to believe, based on the thoughts we create over and over because we are driving our neural network; alpha men, that’s what we do.

You guys listening, we are creating our belief system by choosing deliberately our thoughts, and that belief system will lead to the emotions that we want to drive the actions to get the results in our life. And fear does not get our results. So fear is an irrational and an unnecessary emotion to feel.

Now, you might say, well but yes we cannot have courage without fear, and I agree, courage is acting while you’re afraid. So you feel afraid and you act anyway. Yeah, that is a demonstration of courage for you. That will feel good. When the action is over, you’ll look and say this feels good.

But courage and confidence – because remember, confidence is being unafraid to feel any emotion, including fear, but courage and confidence, they build and they can build while you’re learning to remove fear, because you still don’t need it. It still does not need to be a part of your life. It can be if you choose it to be, if you want to be afraid. Maybe it’s Halloween time, maybe you want to be afraid, you know, let go and be afraid.

But if fear is preventing you from having the results that you want in your life, there’s no need for you to feel it. You’re creating it and you can choose to not create it by elevating your alpha and learning that skill set.

Now listen, brother, we’re still going to feel fear. I’m not saying we’re ever going to get rid of it. It’s still going to creep in there because it is a primary emotion. It’s not an emotion that we develop like confidence. We create confidence deliberately. It’s a gift that we have as human beings. I don’t think other animals feel confidence, you know what I mean?

Confidence is something that we get that is for us, but fear is primal. Fear is a part of our DNA. Other animals feel fear. So it’s not something we’re going to get rid of. It’s not something that you can say, I’ve eliminated this from my life forever, it’s gone, it doesn’t really happen that way.

It’s going to come up, but it’s something that you can control. It’s something that you can process because you know what it is. And the beta condition is fear-based. You’re not going to ever get rid of your beta condition. It looks for problems.

We don’t need fear as an adult and we can recognize it when it arises so that we can control it, we can process it, but we will never get rid of the chemical. The chemical is always going to be there. We just need to know what it feels like and not be afraid to feel it. That’s where confidence comes in. And if we do feel it, act anyway, that’s where courage comes in.

Recognize it and try to figure out where it comes from, and that’s actually where I want to end this podcast. I want to end this podcast with just a tiny bit of coaching on what you can do when fear arises, because it will arise, no matter how adept you are at elevating your alpha state and really being in that chosen fixed mental frame.

There are going to be times when you feel fear. It’s natural. Like I say, it’s a part of our DNA as human beings. So when you have it, when it comes up, when you feel it and you know what it feels like because you’ve learned to identify this as fear, like you’ve felt it, you’ve gone into your body when it arises and said, okay this is what’s happening and I’ve identified, I’m naming this feeling as fear.

So the first thing you want to do is expose it to the alpha state, become aware of it. Know what it is in your body, identify it by name, and then when it arises, call it by name. Say, this is fear. I’m feeling fear now. And you can do this with any emotion, but really to get out of the paralysis of fear, to start undoing the mental blueprint, those limiting beliefs that are creating this and get to these big goals and take these risks and achieve more and talk to more people and believe beyond your current capacities and capabilities, you know, all these things living into your future, really removing this blockage of fear, expose it.

Feel it first. Just be aware of it. So the first thing is that, don’t avoid it, don’t resist it, because that’s kind of what we’re trained to do. We’re trained to avoid it; I’m just going to go do something else. I’m going to go busy myself with something else which might or might not become a buffer or an addiction; I’m going to go drink, I’m going to go eat, I’m going to go exercise, I’m going to go watch pornography, play videogames, watch TV, take a nap, whatever.

Eventually, if we continue to do this and avoiding feeling fear, it may become an addiction. It might become a buffer, so just feel it and don’t resist it either, brother, because when you resist it, then it becomes anxiety. That manifests itself in other ways, so don’t resist it either. Just feel it.

It’s not going to hurt you. That’s confidence. It’s not going to hurt you. It’s just a chemical reaction. It’s just a vibration happening in your cells, so just let it be there. Just let it handle. Let that chemical equation process – remember chemistry, chemistry from high school, 101, you know. If you’re a bachelor of science man, you know, we had chemistry in college, you know, you balance the equation, the chemical process has to go to completion. This is what’s happening in your cells.

If you avoid it, if you resist it, we’re in trouble. Just let it go.  Just let that process occur because it will end when the chemical process, when the chemical equation has run its course. But know it, become aware of it. What does it feel like? Where is the major vibration in the body? Is it in your heart? Is it in your upper chest, I guess? I don’t want to say the heart specifically as an organ, but is it in that upper chest area?

Is it in the middle chest area? Is it in the lower chest area, like the lower torso area? Is it happening in your shoulders? Do you feel warmer, do you feel colder? You can mess with temperature, like, what’s going on? Are you sweating? Is it a cold sweat even? What is happening in your blood, in your breathing? Is your heart rate up, your blood pressure? You probably don’t know blood pressure, but you can definitely check pulse, you can check your heart rate.

What about your respiratory rate? Are you breathing faster? Are you breathing more shallow? That’s the other thing, are you holding your breath? So really go into your body. Are you sweating, I mentioned that, do you have tight muscles anywhere? Is the hair standing up on your neck, on your arms? But just go into the body. Be aware and feel it. You name it, you recognize it, and you let it process because that’s the thing, it’s just a chemical process, it’s just happening.

And when you’re feeling it, this is your opportunity to practice courage. That’s why courage is so nice because courage only comes up when you feel fear. It’s like, oh this is it, this is my chance. You have no other time to be courageous than when you’re feeling fear, because when you’re feeling confident, you’re not going to be courageous, you’re just going to be confident.

When you’re feeling excited, you’re not going to be courageous because you’re just excited. The only time you can be courageous is when you are feeling this, when you’re feeling this emotion in this way and you act anyway. So you have to take ownership of your emotion and knowledge of what it is, then you can practice courage and then you can act anyway.

But the second thing you can do is expose it, because you want to expose it, bro. That’s kind of the idea here. You want to expose it, you want to explore it, you want to find the cause of the feeling, you know, the cause of the feeling is the emotion but you want to find the cause of the emotion. So, what is the thought?

What is the belief? What do you believe will happen that is the cause of this fear? It’s not something that has happened, it’s not something that’s happening, let me put it to you that way. When we feel fear, it never has to do with the moment. Do you understand that? Fear is a projection, that’s why it’s irrational, because it’s a projection. It’s something that hasn’t happened and we’re afraid of something that will happen in the future, usually based on something that has happened in the past.

We’re using the past to create evidence for the future. That’s the way we did it as children. That’s what is called the beta condition, bro. I mean, to be quite honest with you, that’s what the beta condition is. It uses evidence of the past to create the future, which is why if you are continuing getting the same results, you are living in your beta condition.

The only way to get out of your beta condition is to elevate your alpha, to change how you think so that you get different results. But, my man, what is it, what is the thought that is creating this emotion? What is it? You want to explore this, you want to find this, you want to find out, what is the thought and why do you believe it?

That’s what is happening here with your beliefs. You believe something will happen in the future. So with that happening in your mind, it is a projection, it is an illusion, it is not real, it is irrational. It is from the beta condition, but it’s creating the fear.

So what do you think will happen? What is the thought?  What is the belief? What is the thought and why are you choosing to believe it? Now again, I can go back and we could look at examples, you know, creating a business, the fear of failure. But the fear of failure isn’t happening now because you haven’t even started. There’s no starting in the creations. The fear that if you start it, it will fail – so again, the fear is coming from one projected possibility out of an infinite projected amount of possibilities, right?

Again, approaching a beautiful woman – so you’re a single man, you approach a beautiful woman, what are you afraid of? What are you not taking that action? Fear of failure again, but rejection, but again, that has not happened. You haven’t even approached her. You haven’t even talked to her.

So without even having made that move, there is the fear of something that has not occurred and will not occur if you don’t take the action anyway, which is again, usually why fear is a paralyzing emotion, because it prevents you from taking that action and hoping to not get that future. But, brother, it’s all irrational because you can expose it for what it is. You can expose it for a thought about the future. It’s just a belief that you have about yourself based on things that are coming from your past.

So, when you expose it, when you explore it, when you get to the thought and you really know what those thoughts are creating that belief system, then we can go with that neural network. We can start to choose thoughts to create different beliefs. We could even look at the trigger, the circumstance. If you know what the circumstance is, you can ask yourself, what do you make that circumstance mean and why are you choosing to believe it?

So that’s what I’ve got for you today when it comes to fear, bro. Two things – number one, feel it, let it be there, let it be a part of your body, let it run its chemical course. Let that chemical process just happen because it’s not going to hurt you, it’s not going to kill you, and you’re going to find that out. And you can use your courage and your confidence to act anyway. And number two, let’s get to the thought, find out what is causing it so that we can explore that, we can expose that, we can look at the beta condition and separate it from the facts.

Exposure is victory, my friend. When you expose the beta condition, you are supervising it. You are in alpha state.

Alright, brother, that is it, irrational and unnecessary fear – I will see you next week. And until next week, as always, my friend, my brother, elevate your alpha.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoy what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash Your Alpha – your guide to shifting to the alpha mindset – at thealphamalecoach.com/unleash.