Mark Divine [00:00:53]:
We can do our part to help the world become more positive, less violent and just a nicer place to be. So today I want to talk about fear. Speaking of nice, a lot of fear going on, a lot of fear porn in our culture, coming from news and social media and our government. What the heck, all sorts of people or folks out there are like spinning, going, what’s going on? Right? We got drones flying all over the country and the government says, don’t worry, nothing to fear. Like, okay, we got fear mongering about the next pandemic and people are terrified that they’re going to end up having to wear masks and be locked down. And so you get triggered into fear. And we want to talk about that, right? First of all, recognize that there’s a reason they’re doing that. Because if a culture that is in fear is easy to control and manipulate and that’s what government’s all about, it’s control and manipulate.

Mark Divine [00:01:53]:
That’s their job. So, you know, instead of like staying in fear and being angry at them, take control of your own life, take control of your own mind and just smile and wave at all that. That’s just the dance of life. It is what it is. We’re not gonna singular single handedly change it, but together as a collective, we can change a lot. Right? We saw that in the last election, right? We see it with governments falling all the time across the world, right? So as a collective we operate, but individually we take control of our internal environments, the only thing we can control. And we got to live a positive, abundant, optimistic life. Otherwise you will suffer.

Mark Divine [00:02:36]:
So we don’t want to suffer. Our whole point here with unbealmind and what my work is and Catherine and everyone involved here with a show, including John at Jet Studios is to bring more light in the world to help you end the suffering that you experience in your own life. So what about fear? Fear, a couple acronyms I love. Fear is a false expectation appearing real. We know that expectations are probably not a great thing to really hold on to anyways because you don’t have any control how the things that you engage with in life and your projects and even the people are going to turn out or you know what they’re going to do or how things will look like in the end. So having expectation is just a bad idea to begin with. To have a false expectation is even worse. So you got to let that go.

Mark Divine [00:03:29]:
So the key here to eradicate the fear of a false expectation appearing real is not to have any expectation. You can have a goal, you can set the vision, you can work toward a better future. But let go of the expectation that it has to be a certain way that you can control some ideal outcome, because you can’t. In the yoga tradition, we call this non attachment or aparagraha. And aparagraha is simply that to let go of the expectation of some outcome. Let go of the expectation that you own anything. You don’t, you’re just borrowing it. Let go of the expectation that you can control others.

Mark Divine [00:04:09]:
You try, but it’s not going to work out well. And all of that leads to some having those expectations, having those attachments leads to a fear. And that fear is one of loss, one of not getting what you think you deserve or what you want. So this is a relatively simple fear to understand, but it’s not so easy to let go. So we got to work on that Non attachment. Right? There’s something that can be an object of your meditation. What are you attached to? How are you attached? What do you cling to? Do you have expectations? Do you judge yourself against some future ideal? Or do you look backwards and be grateful for the accomplishments and things you already have in your life? I suggest the latter. The other acronym I love is a false evidence appearing real.

Mark Divine [00:05:01]:
So this is like the story of the going into the shed and it’s dark and you see a snake in the shed and it scares you to death. You run out of the shed and you go get a flashlight and a club and you come back, club that snake. And you shine a light on and you see it’s just a coiled rope. So that’s false evidence appearing real. This is when you mistake something or something else. And how often are you misperceiving things? I would say quite a bit. Right? The perceptual capacity of Most human beings is fairly limited because you’re operating out of the conditioning of the mind that’s been conditioned since birth to think things are a certain way, when in fact they may not be that way. And everybody’s conditioning is different.

Mark Divine [00:05:49]:
So there’s actually, you know, I like to say there’s not one world out there. There’s 8 billion worlds. Every single human being lives in a unique world. From their perspective, things seem to be a certain way, like the way. But their perspective is completely different than the person standing next to them or across the room from them and every other person on the planet. There’s 8 billion worlds. So take control of your world and recognize that your perception is not someone else’s perception. And so if you’re making assumptions, then there’s a very good chance that you’re misperceiving something and that you’re going to have a false evidence that appears real based upon what you perceive another individual to be thinking or saying.

Mark Divine [00:06:33]:
Where this shows up quite a bit in terms of fear is fear of how other people are perceiving you. Now, it’s very real that a lot of people are judging you. So what? Right? That’s on them, right? But misperception around that and to think that everyone hates you because one critic posted a bad review, that’s irrational fear. You can let that go. Work on that. Then there’s very realistic fear, right? So it is realistic fear. If you see drones in the sky and you think, oh, my God, are these drones? Or are these, like, UFOs? And if there’s 5,000 drone sightings across the United States and Europe, you know, it would be a realistic thing to think, holy shit, I’m. I’m scared.

Mark Divine [00:07:27]:
Maybe this is something big, right? It could affect everything, right? What if it was an alien invasion? I mean, sure, you’ve had those thoughts. We all have like, wow, or what’s our government up to now that they’re lying about or not telling us about? And so you have this like, wow, I’m really fearful about what’s happening in the world right now. I’m fearful about nuclear war because of all the saber rattling over Ukraine and Russia. I’m fearful about these drones in the sky that nobody can explain. I’m fearful about the next pandemic that the WHO and the Gates foundation seem to be cooking up or preparing for. All this stuff, like, is unbelievable. It’s hard to believe that it can happen. And it can lead to almost a traumatizing effect where you get really kind of in a State of hyperarousal.

Mark Divine [00:08:21]:
So this is actually rational. It’s not irrational. It’s not a false expectation, it’s not false evidence. But it’s not good for you to let it debilitate you, right? Things will happen. Crazy stuff always happens in the world. And if there’s real danger coming your way, you’ve got to be aware of it. And you need to make plans. We should all make plans.

Mark Divine [00:08:47]:
But you don’t want to let it debilitate you because then even if the danger does come, you’ll be trapped. You won’t be able to move. You’ll be stuck in fight or flight or freeze or fawn. So the tool that we use in the seals for this was to pause, breathe, think and then act. And the pause is really important because anytime you start to feel that sense of I’m out of control, this is the latest crisis or what’s happening to me, and it could be something even with your family. Pausing gives yourself the opportunity to. Right, to not react, not react. So, okay, just pause.

Mark Divine [00:09:25]:
Let’s see what’s going on here. Let’s not overreact. And then you breathe. And the breathing that we teach is like deep diaphragmatic nostril breathing. Five count in, five count out and. Or box breathing if you’re in a place where you can do box breathing, which is to breathe in that box pattern. And the breathing is an arousal control mechanism. So the breathing will reset your nervous system, activate the parasympathetic rest and digest and calm you down.

Mark Divine [00:09:56]:
So it’s also great as a daily practice. And then thinking like, what are we going to think about? Well, let’s make sure that we’re thinking positively and out of that fear loop. Right? So at Unbeatable Mind, I teach an interdiction process where you witness yourself spinning into a negative fear loop or a fear based internal dialogue. And you intercept it, interdict it with a powerful positive statement that says, no, not now. I’m not going to have that thought pattern. That’s not serving me. I’m going to redirect my attention to something more positive and productive. And then you maintain it.

Mark Divine [00:10:33]:
That’s W I R M. Maintain it with a positive mantra. So when it comes to the thinking after the pausing and breathing, we want our thinking to be positive. We want our thinking to be forward oriented and not retro. We don’t want to be operating just out of memory and thinking about what happened in the past and how things were such a disaster. We want to be forward focused and optimistic. And positive. Right.

Mark Divine [00:11:02]:
And we want to also think about what’s the smallest thing that I can do right now to get off the X, to move towards safety, to move in a more positive direction. So set some micro goals also. Another great way to intervene here is to think about bigger picture. Like in 10 years, will this matter 20 years, will it matter 5 years, will it matter 5 months, will it matter 5 weeks, will it matter? That type of thing? So pause, breathe, think and act helps get us situated, grounded, more positive and back in control when that type of acute fear, that realistic fear of something happening to us accrues. Now, there’s another type of fear that arises repeatedly. And this is the type of fear that is hard to pinpoint. And the pause, breathe, think and act doesn’t always work with that. In fact, it rarely does because this is the fear that comes from either primordial fear of death, which can get activated with normal things in life or triggered, but also fear from the traumas of our childhood.

Mark Divine [00:12:24]:
And so you could have a lot of fear of conflict, for instance, because you’re conflict avoidant because you were shamed as a child. And so that fear is just going to keep coming up and up and up, and you can pause and breathe and think about it and act on it all you want, but it’s still going to come up. So those types of fears that are based upon or built upon adaptive child trauma conditioning need to be dealt with through emotional work, through therapy and deep introspection and contemplation. I think that’s it. There’s plenty more we could talk about, but I appreciate you being with me here today and having this. I want to close this. Yeah, yeah. Go forward and don’t be fearful.

Mark Divine [00:13:34]:
Yeah. So regardless of what your fears are, and you might have elements about all the ones that we talked about today, just, you know, it helps me to keep in mind that at your center, at your core, at your irreducible core, everything’s okay. You are already free, you are already whole, you are already amazing. And there is absolutely nothing to fear because you are a spiritual being having this human existence. All fear resides in the ego’s need for survival, craving for significance in the world, and success. So I think the master practice for me is to recognize that any fear you experience is coming from the ego and the ego’s conditioning. So the quick route out of that fear is to recognize that that’s not who you really are. So focus on that, on who you really are.

Mark Divine [00:14:42]:
Remember who you really are, and your fears will just dissipate. Flow away. Thanks for joining me today on the Mark Divine Show. Stay focused, stay positive, and let’s go to town to work on those fears. Oh, yeah, I know.