Overcoming Fear

In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the power of fear and how to manage it. Fear exists for a reason. And it shows up in many clever and unexpected forms. My guest this week is Rhonda Britten, founder of the Fearless Living Institute, who discusses how fear shaped her life as the survivor of unimaginable childhood trauma. (Trigger warning for anyone sensitive to domestic violence themes.) We talk about the ways she struggled, internally and externally, until she finally understood her fears and how to manage them. She now teaches others how to identify and manage their own fears, and she shares some of those strategies and insights here.

About My Guest

Rhonda Britten – Emmy Award-winner, Repeat Oprah guest, Master Coach – has changed lives in over 600 episodes of reality television including starring in the hit daytime reality show, "Starting Over," is the author of four bestsellers including her seminal work, “Fearless Living” and is the Founder of the Fearless Living Institute, home of the Ivy League of Life Coaching Training. Named “America’s Favorite Life Coach,” she brings the neuroscience of fear down to earth giving you a path out of “not being good enough” using the “Wheels” technology she developed that saved her own life.

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Connect with Rhonda:

Website: https://fearlessliving.org

Free Gift: https://FearlessLiving.org/risk

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Transcript

Kim Meninger

Welcome, Rhonda, it is such a pleasure to have you here today, and I would love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rhonda Britten

Oh my gosh, telling me a little bit about myself. So wait, I could tell you about the time I won an Emmy, or I could tell you about my first book deal, or I could tell you about, oh gosh, I could tell you about so much, but what I really want to tell you is how I became who I am today. Because I think that's actually the most important place, you know, because I know so many times you can get caught up in accolades, and I like my accolades, by the way. You know, four books, Emmy three. You know, first life coach on television in the world. Like I love those things. But you know, what's so funny is, you know, if you would have asked me in my 20s or 30s if I would be do any of those things, do any of those things, that would have felt impossible because of the worst day of my life. Now I believe Kim that the worst day of our lives have the seed of our destiny. So, you know, when we think about those worst days of our lives, and we think of them and go, Wait a minute, if my worst days, if Rhonda Britten’s right, and the worst days of my life have the seeds of my destiny. Okay, wait a minute. I've got to start looking at those worst days differently, right? And so I'm going to the worst day I'm thinking about is the worst day of my life. And I was 14 years old. I grew up in a little, tiny, tiny town in Upper Michigan, 365 inches of snow a year. Yes, we had that much. It snows from like November to May. I was actually home. I live in LA now. I was home last year, and it was snowing in May, and everyone else is like, oh, and I'm like, Yay, it's snowing. It's right. Right? And everyone else is walking around going, it's been snowing since October. And I go, yes, but I live in LA. This is awesome, right? So I grew up in that little, tiny town, and we had two restaurants, the fancy Douglas house buffet hotel, and Big Boy, that's it. That's it. And my parents had recently separated, and my father was coming over. It was Father's Day, and he was going to take us out to Sunday brunch, which was a big deal. And my mother made me a brand new dress. It was white cotton with black polka dots and, and I just thought I was so amazing, because I was like, all cottoned up, and I couldn't wait to go to the Douglas house and flirt with the boys my age. And so my two sisters are in the bathroom fighting it out. It's our one bathroom. My two sisters are fighting it out. My, I go to my mother's room. She's fluffing up her beehive and putting on a rose colored lipstick and putting on her blue eyeshadow, and, you know, and I'm looking at her, and I'm like, Come on, Mom, let's go, right? She's fluffing it up. And my dad walks in the back door, and he comes in and goes, come on, let's go, girls, because that's what dads do. And my two sisters are in our one bathroom, still finding it out, and me and my mother start walking towards the back door to get in the car. And it starts raining, and my father says, I've gotta go get my coat from the car. Now this coat is a tan Naga hide leisure suit coat, and if you are old like me, Naga hide Leisure Suit coats were hot. My father in that coat was looking hot, so me and my mom are like, okay, sure, yeah, so we all start walking out. My father opens his trunk to grab his coat, and instead of grabbing a coat, he grabs a gun, and he starts yelling at my mother, you made me do this. You made me do this. And he fires. Now. I start yelling, what are you doing? Dad, stop. What are you doing? Dad, yell. Just literally stop, Dad, what are you doing? And he cocks the gun again, and he points it at me, and I absolutely believe I'm next. And he blinks, I blink, he blinks, I blink, and we're there, frozen, literally frozen. It feels like in time, and my mother with her literal last breath, yells out, no, don't. And my father, realizing my mother is still alive, takes that bullet intended for me and shoots my mother a second time. And that second bullet goes through her abdomen, out her back, lands in the car horn, and for the next 20 minutes, all I hear is and then my father cocks the gun again, puts it to his head and fires. So in a matter of two minutes, I was the sole witness of watching my father murder my mother and commit suicide in front of me. Now I don't know how you would have responded, but this is how I responded. It was my fault, because I was the only one physically there that could have stopped it, right? I didn't grab the gun. I didn't kick his shins, right? I didn't even jump in front of my mother, right? I just yelled, stop that. Stop right? And that moment, that day, looking back on it, I basically, on that day, split into two, the outside Rhonda and the inside Rhonda, the outside Rhonda. I'm a straight-A student. I you know, I'm going on to, going on to, going to become the president of my class, like, I'm fine. No, I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. And I literally just believed I was fine, right? And that's the only thing I'd show to the world, I am fine. And, by the way, when I went away to college a few years later into a different state, and. Nobody knew my story. I never told anybody about my parents, because then they would think I'm from one of those families, and so I basically just hid it, because God forbid anybody knew that about me. So on the outside, I was fine, fine, fine, fine, but on the inside, like I said, I blame myself. So I had when you watch your mother die and you don't do anything, you don't happiness is off the table. You're not, you don't get to be happy the rest of your life like ever. And basically just feeling that lack of worth, that's low self-esteem, just on some level, just, you know, hating myself, right? Because I didn't save my mother. So for the next 20 years, I lived in that split and on the outside, like I said, I'm fine, I'm fine. And I went on when I went to college, I found alcohol. And that was a beautiful number, right? Found alcohol. Wow, this is amazing. Takes away all this pain away. And so I started drinking. I eventually became an alcoholic. I ended up getting three DUIs. Ended up trying to kill myself three times. And it was that third suicide attempt Kim that I realized something, that I realized I'm not good at killing myself, not good at it, and I've got to figure out another way. And you know, when I did try to kill myself a third time, by the way, when you do do that, they do put you in a psychiatric ward for evaluation, and I was deemed not crazy, so they let me out and I went home to my little studio apartment. I lived alone, and not a good idea, by the way, when you're suicidal, and I remember getting home and just putting my back against the wall. I remember this so vividly. And you know how you slide down the wall, and I just slid down the wall in my butt, and I realized I have to figure out another way. Now, those 20 years that I was drinking, DUI and suicide attempting, I also was going to therapy. I was going to workshops. I was reading books. I mean, I read my first self-help book. When I was 12, I was going to be a minister. When I was 13, I was the self-help junkie, so this whole time, I was trying to do something for myself, right? So I had a lot of knowledge, right? I had a lot of knowledge, and I had a lot of tools that, you know, people gave me, right? But it didn't take away the fundamental feeling that there was something wrong with me, right? So I had tools, I had knowledge, but it didn't take away that feeling. And so that third suicide attempt, well, I'm sitting on the floor and realizing something's got to change. What comes through my mind is, I've got to start over. I've just got to start over because I've done all this work on myself, I've done all this work on myself, and it's not working. So I got to, like, literally, start over. And I remember thinking to myself, What do kindergarteners do? Well, they go get gold stars in a calendar. And I went to the store and I got gold stars in a calendar, and I put a gold star on every day for 30 days, if I did something good, something worth living for, something hopeful. And the gold stars I put on were not, you know, extraordinary things. They were like, drank and didn't break, you know, didn't get drunk or, you know, got angry and didn't break anything. This is the level of awareness I was at, right? Like, it's like, Look at me. I didn't break anything. I'm amazing, right? So, so after a whole month of 30 days, I had a calendar filled with gold stars, and that was the beginning of me realizing I really had hope to change, that there was something good in me to save. Now, it would take me a few more years to recognize fear was the source of all this, because again, during those 20 years, I just blame myself, right because I wasn't good enough, perfect enough, you know, smart enough didn't save my mother. Again, whatever it was, I had no idea that it was fear, because even after my parents died, okay, even after my parents died, if you would have come up to me a year later, or even that day and said, Oh, you've got to be really afraid, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. I grew up in Upper Michigan. We don't have feelings. I grew up in a Finnish household, which Finnish people don't have feelings. Everybody knows that. So I had no relation to fear. And if somebody would have asked me, even when I was suiciding and when I was DUI in and when I was drinking, well, what are you afraid of? Rhonda, I would have looked at you like you were crazy. I'm not afraid of anything. Because I really believed I wasn't afraid. I just thought there was something wrong with me, right? So it wasn't until I started understanding how fear worked, and I and I really kind of broke the lock on it and started, you know, on, on, you know, opening it up for myself, that everything changed. So. It was the recognition how fear works, how our body and brain works, how our neurobiology works. It was that realization that this is fear. Rhonda, there's nothing wrong with you. It's just fear. And that was mind-blowing for me. The thought that there was nothing wrong with me was so foreign to me. You don't understand there is something wrong with me well, but it's fear. Rhonda, it's nothing wrong with you. It's actually just fear. And you've bought in to all of the all your fear responses, all of your procrastination, all your beating yourself up, all your people pleasing, all your impostor syndrome. You believed that there's something wrong with you, that you're doing that and not necessarily seeing those as simply fear responses because you're afraid. [Yeah.] Right? It was a humbling, humbling moment, humbling, humbling moment, and a and a wake-up, wake-up call.

Kim Meninger

And so, I mean my goodness, as, as a child, losing your parents, especially in such a violent and horrific way right in front of you is traumatic, you know, beyond words, yes, but then what you're talking about it the layers right of the stories you're Telling yourself, the, the responsibility that you're taking and the way that that's manifesting itself in your life. I wonder, can you talk a little bit about what shift understanding that it was fear and not you allowed, right? Like, what, what?

Rhonda Britten

It literally, you know, what it did when I uncovered, you know, and it really was a God download, when it was, when I really was open to understanding this and really getting it, because the first time I started realizing it, of course, I was like, what get out of here? You know, it took a few times, right? But once I got it, what it did was melted shame away, because it took away the burden of perfection. It take away the burden of having to be a certain way. It took away the burden of, of, you know, you are to blame. You're at fault, you know, and then what I could do after I started embracing this concept and starting to live from this place, I started I could see my father and mother differently. So, you know, I look at my father now, and my father murdered my mother because he was afraid, you know, he had no emotional resilience. He had no emotional intelligence. He had no ability to be with his feelings, you know, so my mother was leaving him, and you know, for him, it was humiliation, embarrassment. It was in his hometown, and you know, he had to get rid of the thing that was doing this to him, right? I mean, when he was murdering her. He was saying, you made me do this. You made me do this, right? Like he took no personal responsibility for this. So my father, sure, you know, people said, Well, I'm sure he had a mental illness. Well, he might have, but he never exhibited that, like again, not that something couldn't have happened. But regardless, regardless, you know, my father acted out of fear. He didn't go talk to somebody he didn't, you know, go, this is unusual thought. I shouldn't be thinking these thoughts, right? And then my mother looking back and seeing her innocence, you know, she stayed. She stayed for all those years. And when I was 12, my father tried to kill me, choking me to death, and my mother didn't take me out of the house. My mother didn't kick my father out, right? Like, like, there was no, you know, it was like, Well, you know, well, you know, always excuses. I mean, I don't remember my mother talking to me about it at all. Like, she didn't come up to me and go, Oh my God, you know nothing. We just pretended Nothing happened, right? And I don't think we're unique about that. I think that's the norm. So when I started taking when I started looking at fear as part of our neurobiology, starting to educate myself and starting to understand how it worked, and recognizing that is literally part of who we are, and unless we understand how it works, it will work us. It will own us, unless we understand it. Then I saw my father differently. I saw my mother differently. I could forgive my father, I could forgive my mother, and then I could forgive myself for not jumping in front of the gun because not, not saving my mother was a burden I carried, like I said, for 20 years. And you know, I used to have nightmares every single night my father would be chasing me and killing me in my dreams. And it wasn't until that forgiveness happened between us that the dreams stopped. So. Literally, my dream stopped, the burden of thinking that it was my fault was, was, you know, like sloughed off me and the shame and blame, just, I want to say, just stopped. So it was really quite miraculous. And when I understood it, I also quit beating myself up because I, I no longer blamed myself for everything, right? Instead, it was like, wait a minute, Rhonda, You're just afraid, and you don't have tools, right? You don't know how to do this. Oh, oh, you mean, I just don't know how to do this. Oh, it's fear. Oh, but it was so revolutionary for me, because, again, I had no relation to fear. And, you know, people would talk about fear, and I couldn't even understand it, and even the way people talk about fear today, the reason I created the wheel of fear and wheel of freedom is, you know, talking about it the way we do today. Like every speaker, every coach, talks about fear, right? Oh, you're afraid, right? It's like, okay, that is not helpful. That is not helpful. Okay, that's nice. Whoo, yeah, but tell me what to do, right, tell me what to do, right? And, and people really didn't have a solution. Oh, well, you have to get better sleep. FU, okay, just like, What are you telling me? Right? Eat better. Oh, screw you. Okay, like, I need something real, right? And so that's out of my own need. I created the wheel of fear and wheel of freedom out of my own desire to heal myself. And of course, like I said, it's a download from God that I was able to apply it to myself and figure it out and get the message, and be able to, you know, actualize it, so to speak. But yeah, I mean, we're walking around with so much shame and blame. It's like, yeah, no, no. Like, even the whole concept of impostor syndrome, right, which is the theme of your podcast. It's like, imposter syndrome is just a, it's just a fear, and it's in it, right? And it's just something we label as impostor syndrome, so it's so we can manage it, so we can, you know, kind of live with it, right? But, um, yeah, impostor syndrome is, is just a just a fear, right?

Kim Meninger

I’m so glad to hear you say that, because I couldn't agree more. And I feel like I started this work with a really strong focus on impostor syndrome, but when I started to dig more deeply, I realized exactly what you're saying. At the root of it all is just this fundamental fear that has baked into us, first, survival and everything, and that it manifests itself in some as impostor syndrome, in others as aggression, right? There's all kinds of ways in which we compensate for that fear, but that's the root problem that we're not talking about and we're not giving people the tools to address.

Rhonda Britten

That’s right, that's right. That's right. So you know, when I give a speaking event, or I, you know, any type of speaking event, if there's 10 people or 1000 people, I give everyone a quiz. And so I'll read a few of them, because I'm sure you will totally relate based on what you just said. It makes me think of doing this. So I'm just going to read some of the ways fear shows up. So if you're in a if you're listening to us right now in your safe place, shut your eyes and nod your head. You know, if you're not in a safe place, don't shut your eyes, but still nod your head and nod your head if you do any of these things or feel any of these things, because I want to build on what you just said, Kim, because it's so important. So do you ever isolate yourself? Do you ever pretend everything's okay when it's not? Do you ever hide out? Do you ever whine? Do you ever settle? Do you ever compare yourself? Do you ever manipulate? Do you get defensive? Do you judge? Do you complain? What about procrastinate? What about wait and call it patience blame? What about struggle? Do you ever worry? Do you ever deflect? Ever feel like you have to control things? Do you feel bitter, powerless, dissatisfied, resentful, entitled? Do you ever feel guilty, disappointed? Do you ever get in perfectionist mode or people-pleasing mode? Do you ever feel indifferent, irresponsible, irritated, like probably now reading these words, victimized, ignored, get caught in self-pity or annoyed? So when I read these words to a group, 95% will raise their hand. Because I'll say, how many had over 50? How many had 75 and I will say, Over 95% raise their hand to over 95% and I would say most people in the room say 100% so based on what you just said, right? How we compensate? You know, some people compensate with impostor syndrome. Well, most of us compensate with more than one. We're compensated with many of these. And so then what do we do? Kim, we think we're the problem. I just wish I could quit people pleasing. God, I wish I could quit, you know, disempowering myself and complaining so much I was so judgmental. So we take these fear responses and label them character flaws. You know, I should know better. I should do better. I should be better. It's like, well, let's just stop the being, doing and all that better stuff, and just go, “Hey, wait a minute. How much compassion can I have for myself?” Because you know what? I got some fears going on, and my fear is showing up in all these ways. Okay? Because that's the thing we do. It's not just impostor syndrome. We're also beating ourselves up. We're all so procrastinating, right? So we might label it like imposter syndrome, but, but we're doing it more than that, and then, like I said, every time we do it, because we're high achievers, because we want to be better, because we know better, because we've taken the classes and we do yoga, right? We know all this stuff. We go, what is wrong with me? Why can't I get this right, and it's like, this is not hard. I should be able to do this. I'm a smart person, right? But it's not you. It's part of our neurobiology. And fear, what I call the core fear, what I call the wheel of fear, is not meant to be found. Okay? Fear doesn't want you to find it, because then fear can't keep you safe. So fear is going to keep you distracted by, oh, let her have her beat herself up. Beat yourself up. Go ahead, do it. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, now have her. Judge, yeah, judge, Judge, Oh, yeah. Wait, wait. Now, right, like it's gonna have you dancing, because then you just blame yourself, and then fear goes, mission accomplished, right? Mission accomplished because fear is as smart as you are, as educated as you are, as knowledgeable as you are, and as spiritual as you are. So it uses everything you know against you to keep you safe. The challenge is, safe for most of us feels like stuck small, right? And so here we are stuck and small, and we blame ourselves for it. I'm just afraid to shine. Okay, okay, okay. You are not afraid. You your authentic nature is not afraid to shine. You, your authentic, no, you are not afraid to shine. Fear is tricking you into not shining, but you, you are not afraid to shine. You are not afraid to be your authentic nature. You are not afraid of that at all. But fear has tricked you and said, Well, that's dangerous out there to shine, right? And then it's giving you all the language, Well, people are going to reject me, and I'm going to fail, and people are gonna be jealous of me, and it's like all of that is just distraction. All of that is just keeping you off focus of what's really what you're meant to do. And we all know this logically, right? So I've created the wheel of fear and the wheel of freedom to pinpoint help you understand what that core fear is that causes all those fear responses, so you can actually have a tool to address it, so that you can quit beating yourself up, putting yourself down, thinking there's something wrong with you, because there is nothing wrong with you. It's just fear.

Kim Meninger

Yes. Oh, and it's liberating to think about it that way, right? I mean, gosh, managing versus like, overhauling everything about ourselves, right?

Rhonda Britten

We run to procrastination class, then we run to overwhelm class, and then we run to boundaries class, and then we run to people pleasing class, and then we run to right? We run to all these classes. And this is the thing with fear, Kim, is, you know, like, let's say there's a core fear. You have a core fear called the wheel of fear, right? Well, fear doesn't care what you do. Fear doesn't care if you procrastinate. Fear doesn't care if you people. It could care less. Okay, so if you solve one, if you solve one, fear doesn't care. It'll just point something else out. It'll just bring something else out. It doesn't care. So you think your problem is procrastination when you quit procrastinating, which, by the way, I'm going to give you a tool to support you with that and help you understand your fear better, but you know, then it's only going to have you do something else. So it's just trying to keep you because it loves you so much. Fear loves you so much. Fear loves you so much, and it is his job to keep you safe. It's not your job to make you happy, okay? Fear’s job isn't to make you happy. Fears, job only job is to keep you safe. Doesn't care about your happiness, doesn't care about you fulfilling your purpose, doesn't care if you're authentic, doesn't care about any of that. Doesn't care how healthy you are, doesn't care. It only cares, I've got to stop her from going into the unknown, because in the unknown, I can't keep her safe, right?

Kim Meninger

It's dangerous out there. [Yeah, it is dangerous.] So you're mentioning the wheels that you've created, and I know that there's a lot of complexity to your work, so I don't imagine. You know, I'm not asking you to boil it all down, but I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit about what. What your solutions look like and what the level of effort is because a lot of times I think people are listening thinking, oh my gosh, I don't have time for I've got all these other things going on in my life, right? So, so, yeah…

Rhonda Britten

No, it's, it's actually not complex. It's actually quite simple. And it's quite actually, once you wrap your head around it quite easy, and when people discover their wheel of fear, I just taught a class. I just sometimes, I teach the class live to do wheels, and I do it perhaps periodically, and I just did people's wheels just last weekend. And when people get their wheel, I've seen this now, because I've been doing this for almost 30 years, is it's like, it's like they can see like for the first time. And the thing they say to me, more than anything else, is, now I know why I've done everything I've done in my life. I know why I got married, why I got divorced, why I went to school, why I didn't go to school, why I left that person, why I left that job, why stayed in that job, why I did it right? So because, like, I had a client come, come to me, and she's like, oh, I want to leave my job. My boss is So, you know, such a jerk, you know. And I said to her, I go, Well, do you want to let that jerk run your life? Or do you want to master that jerk? And she's like, I want to master that jerk. Because we, you know, had a conversation. So she identified her wheel of fear. We worked with her wheel of fear, and then she went to work every day knowing what her fear was knowing what her wheel of freedom was, and was able to completely shift that relationship with that boss. And that boss completely no longer treated her that way, and she is the only person that ever has been asked back like when she finally did leave, he goes, you have a job here anytime, because right? Because she was no longer intimidated, no longer worried, no longer you know, afraid of what he could do to her, afraid of what he'd say, afraid, right? So, yeah, so, so let me just share with you so it is actually easier than you think. I would say that the system is the system is not complex. Is it, take some effort to find your best wheel? Yes, because remember, the wheel doesn't want to be found. So, so I have created a series of exercises to help you uncover it. So you can either uncover it by doing my book, Fearless Living by doing my course, Fearless Living Transformation Program, I take you through the whole process or so if you're willing to do self-paced, that's a great place. Fearless Living Transformation Program. And if you want to work with a coach, work with me or one of my certified fears living coaches. So there's three ways to get it right. You can do it on a book, you can do it in a class, or you can do it personally. And so like I said, sometimes I do that fearless living transformation program, live. So you could also do it, live with me, and I could maybe do your wheels right so I'm going to show you really quick. It has four components, and each one has four components. And for those of us, for those of you who are watching rather than listening, I'm going to show a picture right now. And have you ever heard the concept righty-tighty versus lefty-loosey right when you're screwing it right, you're screwing in. I'm from the Midwest, so it's righty-tidy when you're doing a screw screwdriver, using a screwdriver, and lefty-loosey when you're when you're taking a screw out. Well, the wheel of fear goes righty-tighty. So the first component of the wheel, how it starts in action is what I call the trigger, and that's really your core fear. And when I created this, the word trigger wasn't what it is today, so it's really your core fear. So that trigger, so you're triggered, and then you start doing your fear responses, which are all the things you think are wrong with you. Okay, all the words I read are fear responses. Okay. Now we start doing those fear responses. I start people pleasing. Start procrastinating. What do you do? You feel like crap. So then you go, jump, jump into your core negative feeling. Now the core negative feeling. All of you know what your core negative feeling is. I just have to help you refine it. But you've all had that feeling. You all know what that feeling feels like, and you don't want that feeling. The feeling, the core negative feeling, is the feeling you do not want to feel okay. So you do the fear responses to avoid that okay. So once you have that feeling, we jump into self-destructive behaviors. And again, we all know our self-destructive behaviors. You know, whether that's working out too much or too little, but that's isolating, whether that's eating a not a pint, but a quart of ice cream, you know, eating the whole bag, right? Whatever that is, we know our self-destructive behaviors, okay? So when we do our self-destructive behaviors, it actually solidifies the wheel and says, See, you have to try harder. You, you, you just have to get better at this, right? You just if you just got better, if you just were better, if you just were if you just tried harder. Then, then we could avoid this. And so then you just get better at your fear responses. So you're not right, you just get better at your fear responses, right? And you just shift your fear response. Right? So, so you're not, you're not actually addressing the fear itself. You're just changing the chairs on the Titanic, right? So what we do is we let, we peel back that, that trigger, that core fear, because once you can see it, game over. So I'll tell you mine, just to give you, you know, ease. So my trigger is loser. Now, has anyone called me a loser ever in my whole life? No, they haven't. I was class president. I was a straight-A student. I went to regionals for track. I was leading score on the back. I mean, I was, you know, late sang every solo. Now, mind you, I was like from a little, tiny, tiny school, but saying every solo, right? You know? Like, I was like, ahhhh, right. I was never a loser. Went to college. Was the only female on the I went to the University of Minnesota, the largest enrollment college in the country at the time, and I was the only female on the Finance Committee for the entire university, right? Like, what are you talking about? I'm amazing, right? So I was never called a loser. So that's the thing people say to me, I know what my wheel of fear is. I was called stupid my whole life. It's stupid. And I'm like, That is so not it. That is not but good work, good thinking it is, but it's not so the wheel of fear, the trigger, is the thing that you would never think like. It's like so hidden, you would never think that about yourself. So when I go out in the world now, knowing my wheel of fear, when I start beating myself up or judging somebody or getting impatient, I know that there's some place that I'm not feeling seen and appreciated. And yeah, you are not what you what do you think I'm a loser? Now, again, that word doesn't resonate, and it never resonated with me until it hit me like a like a knife. Right? Now, I know it's loser, right? It's like, I'm like, oh, okay, something around here, whether that's that person's look, or something is happening right now where loser is popping up for me. Okay, Rhonda, okay, Rhonda. If you don't stay awake, you're going to move into fear responses, right? So the minute I recognize a fear response, the minute I get impatient, the minute I start getting haughty, the minute I start competing, or any of those things I know I've got to jump over to my wheel of freedom. And my wheel of freedom is like I said, lefty loosey, and it has four components. And the first component is the essential nature. Now, the essential nature is that part of you that you hid by the time you were seven, it was the part of you that was not safe, in your environment, in your family. You know what you're exposed to, but even more importantly, what they're discovering is that fear is actually handed down. Can, can be handed down through our DNA. So it could be something that didn't even happen to you. You didn't even have an experience of but you knew that it was not safe to be this way or do this, you know, show up in the world like this, you know, because it just wasn't safe. So mine, mine my wheel of my essential nature, the thing that I hid was authenticity. Now, when I was 12 years old, I was writing E.E. Cummings quotes, right? Like the one I'm going to butcher it, but it's like, you know, to become yourself is the hardest thing you could ever do, right? Like, I worshiped those quotes. Like, yes, be yourself. I mean, when I was 12, I read the book, Why am I afraid to tell you who I am? Right? Like, it's like, if I could only be myself, right? But in my family, I was too much, I was too I was too something, right, like, I was too much, I was too this. I was too that. And by the way, if my greatest fear is loser, is it safe to be authentic? No, because then they're going to know you're a loser, right? So my whole being was wired not to be the very thing I died to be, right? And the fear of looking like a loser again, unbeknownst to me for most of my life, kept me in that false sense of like, Sure, it could be imposter syndrome, right? It could be, could label lots of things low self-esteem. Again, label lots of things, but, and I believe that was real, and again, I blame myself for that, right? So the wheel of fear has four components. The wheel of freedom has four components, and you flip from your wheel of fear to your wheel of freedom. So when I am when I'm feeling a fear response, or when I'm doing a fear response, I know the first thing I have to do is go, Wait a minute. Rhonda, wait a minute. If you were being authentic, right now, what would you do or say? And I'm like, I right, like, Oh, right. And so, of course, I have more tools than just that one sentence, because you. Productive behaviors, etc. So, so once you identify it, the game changes, because you have now exposed the wheel of fear, and the wheel of fear can't trick you, because, right now, it owns you, because it can trick you because you're ignorant of it, right? And it and it likes it that way. Remember, it's trying to keep you safe. It's, it's doing its job. So once you expose it, um, it, you can have lots of reactions. You could, you know, I've had people, you know, be like, No, that's not it. That's not it. When, when I know I hit it right on, because it's just so like, No, it can't be No. Not that. Not me, right? I've had other people just start crying because they're just like, Oh my God. Just like, oh my god, oh my goodness, right? I also have other people just stare into space going, Oh, right. I have and then I another response is confusion. I don't I don't understand. I don't understand, because confusion is such a lovely fear response. I'm confused. I'm confused. So those are the, those are the four main responses that people have when they get their real fear. And then we have that rare person that goes, Oh, my God, I see it everywhere, yes. But then once you like, embrace it and go, Okay, I'm going to accept that for now, because I trust you. Rhonda, right? And they start working it. Their whole life changes because they can no longer not see it.

Kim Meninger

Yes, you can't. Yes, once you know, you can't know.

Rhonda Britten

Yeah, know, right? And so then, as you're walking around the world trying to beat yourself up, you're like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, beating myself up as a fear response. Oh, crap. What's really going on? Oh, well, I just, I got offered a new job, and, you know, I'll just use mine, loser. Well, what if I go to that new job? I'm really excited about that new job, but what if I don't fit in? What if, you know, again, make up all the things, right? That's why we say the devil you know right is better than the devil you don't know, right? So then we stay at the job, right? We stay at the job like, well, it's a good job. I gotta, gotta stay. It's good job. I should be thankful, right? But it killing your soul, right? But again, wheel of fear goes, Yes, but this is a good job. And then everybody else, our lovely fear junkies in our life, not knowing what they're doing, are like, yeah, it's a good job. What's your problem? Right? Why aren't you thankful? Right? So we have fear junkies in our life. We have fear busters in our life. And I do want to say one more thing is that there are areas of everyone's life that you're already fearless. So the wheel of fear doesn't pop up unless you're in the unknown. So it doesn't pop up. You know, you might be awesome at intimate relationships. It's, it's probably not even around, but you might be scared to death in career, or you might be masterful in career, and it shows up with your family. So when you're thinking of your wheel of fear, you do have to think of the areas where life isn't working for you, where you are constantly hitting the wall. Then that's how you're going to find your wheel of fear.

Kim Meninger

I’m so glad you said that, because I think we tend to think in all-or-nothing terms too, right? And to recognize that when we talk about anything, there's a lot of, you know, going to make up a word situationality to it, right? Like…

Rhonda Britten

100% yeah, it's the context, it's the situation, it's the comfort, yeah, it's so many things. So you know, you might be fearless 98% of the time, you know, but that 2% it's where you beat yourself up, where you judge yourself, where you go. I should be better. Why don't I know this? I should know this. I've done all this work. What's my problem? You know? Like I said, I go to my yoga class every Sunday night. What do you eat? Well, what is my problem? It's like, Well, honey, it's, it's not a problem. It's not you. It is just how fear works. And it's meant to stifle you, unless you decide to unveil it. And, you know, kind of see, see it for what it is, so then it can't trick you anymore.

Kim Meninger

Yes, that's right, and I think that's a really important too. And when we get to that place of acceptance, I always say fear is a feature, not a bug, right? [Yeah.] That we're trying to get rid of. It's there for a reason. But how do we see it and manage it so that it doesn't hold us back from being…

Rhonda Britten

Yeah? And that's why we have a will of freedom, so that you actually know how to manage it, right? And so, for instance, I had one client come to me. I work with coaches as well. So this coach came to me and started working with me, and you know, she was telling me about how she was working with one client, and she was, you know, really proud of herself, which I'm like, Yeah, you go. She goes, I, I helped my client discover that their wheel of fear. Near that the wheel of fear, that fear, before she came to me, I just I helped my client discover her fear was not being good enough. Okay. Well, not being good enough is a generic fear for your wheel of fear. So everybody's generic fear is, in some version, not being good enough. [That's right.] Right? So what we want to do is we want to personalize it, because the generic understanding of fear is not as impactful and empowerful because it's not personalized. So the wheel of fear and the wheel of freedom that I do and that I created is very personal. So your wheel is going to be different than my wheel. My wheel is going to be different than, you know, Gene’s wheel, Gene's wheel is going to be different than Sally's wheel, right? Everybody's wheel is going to be different. So it's about uncovering how you operate, so that you can see yourself, so that you can catch yourself, so you can shift yourself.

Kim Meninger

Rhonda, I love what you're saying, and could talk to you all day. I am definitely going to rush out and buy the book and do more, you know, research into what you're doing. But I also want to make sure that others who are listening, who also want more of you, have the access to you. So, where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you're talking about?

Rhonda Britten

Fearless living dot org fearless living.org so that's my website. If you click on the books tab, you can go get a free chapter of my all four of my books. You can get a free chapter of everyone. And I would love to gift a course. It's called Stretch Risk or Die. Stretch Risk or Die, and it's one of my clients very, very, very favorite tools because it helps them take action, and it helps them understand what does, how does procrastination work? How does fear work in procrastination, so to speak? So if you have a dream, a goal, something you want to make happen, whether it's health or career or love or whatever it is, then you pull out the stretch or die tool, and again, it's one of the most common, most familiar, most loved tools. So you're going to go to fearless living dot org, O-R-G, forward-slash, risk, R-I-S-K, fearless, living dot org, forward-slash risk, R-I-S-K, and you're going to put your name in, you're going to put your email in, and you're going to get access to my platform, and you're going to get access to the Stretch Risk or Die course. Now the course is only three videos, 15 minutes each, and so it's super easy. It has a workbook, it has a templates, right? It has everything you need to help you understand how Stretch, Risk or Die works, and how to apply it to your life. And then in the third video, I actually go through the wheel of fear. So you're going to be able to see the wheel of fear in action. I actually go through the wheel of fear. So you're going to get a little bit more deeper depth to that. So go over to fearless living dot org forward-slash risk within the next 24 hours because you and I both know you won't do it otherwise. Go do it. Go do it. Take 45 minutes, people, 45 minutes, and you are going to understand fear differently, and you're going to have a tool that will impact your life today.

Kim Meninger

That is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that, Rhonda, that will be in the show notes for everybody listening, and thank you for the amazing work that you're doing.

Rhonda Britten

Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited. I love it and I, and I just want everyone to know that there's nothing wrong with them. It's just fear.

Kim Meninger

Yes, you and me both. I really appreciate it. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you.