Episode 272: How to Overcome Any FEAR That’s Holding You Back with Ruth Soukup

Hal: Goal achievers, welcome to another episode of the Achieve Your Goals Podcast. This is your host, your friend, Hal Elrod, and I have to ask a question right off the bat today. Today, the question today, are you ready to overcome the single biggest obstacle, arguably the single biggest obstacle to everything that you want for your life? I know that is a big statement. That’s a profound promise that you’re going to learn to overcome the biggest obstacle, the single biggest obstacle to everything you want in your life but today I’m going to introduce you here in a second to the expert at overcoming the single biggest obstacle. What is the single biggest obstacle? Well, it’s arguably fear. Fear holds us back from our big goals, our dreams. Fear holds us back from our greatness. And New York Times best-selling author, Ruth Soukup, is my guest today and Ruth is dedicated to helping women and men, technically, women but I’m going to say I know there’s men listening too to overcoming…

Ruth: Everybody.

Hal: Everybody, right, Ruth?

Ruth: Yes.

Hal: Yes, to overcome fear and creating life that you love and through her blog, Living Well Spending Less, check that blog out which reaches more than 1 million women each month. Ruth encourages her readers to follow their dreams and reach their goals and she is also the founder of the Living Well Planner, the Elite Blog Academy, as well as the author of not one, not two, not three, not four, but five best-selling books and her practical advice has been featured in numerous publications and news programs including Women’s Day, Redbook, Family Circle, and Fox News and her Do It Scared podcast launched April 30, 2018, and her next book, Do It Scared: Finding the Courage to Face Your Fears, Overcome Adversity, and Create a Life You Love, published by HarperCollins will be available May 2019 and that’s the month that we’re in so check this out. I’m excited. Ruth, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

Ruth: Thank you so much for having me here. It’s great to be here.

Hal: Yeah. I’ve followed you for a bit and you’re well-versed in topics that you can talk about. And so, we talked about what the topic would be for today.

Ruth: I feel like that’s a polite way of saying I have no focus.

Hal: Yeah. That’s true. Well, then I’m resonating with you because I’m all over the place too. So, no, but genuinely you’re a jack and master of many trades but your Do It Scared Podcast, a lot of what you talk about is overcoming fear and as I opened up the show with today, that’s arguably the single biggest deterrent in everything that we want to accomplish for life. It’s what holds us back mentally and emotionally and then we don’t even get out the gate to do the things that we’re capable of doing and want to do. So, I want us to just start at the beginning kind of what made you want to learn more about the role of fear in our lives.

Ruth: Oh, my gosh. Such a good question. I do, do a lot of things just like you said, and I have a few different communities online both at Living Well Spending Less and at Elite Blog Academy and then through my planner. And one common theme that kept coming up for all these mostly women, I do have a few men, but what kept coming up over and over was the theme of fear because exactly like you said, it’s the one thing, the one thing that stands in our way. We don’t always call it fear. Sometimes we call it feeling stuck. Sometimes we call it just apathy or apprehension or anxiety. Whatever it is, there’s something there and I kept hearing it over and over and over again people saying, “I feel like I’m standing on the sidelines of my own life. I feel like I’m so afraid to jump in to go after my goals and dreams. I see other people doing it, but I don’t know how to move past this.” And it got me so curious.

And so, I wanted to find out more. I started asking questions and those questions led to more questions but really what I wanted to find out is what is this fear that holds us back? Does it look the same for everyone? And more importantly, what can we do about it? And that led to this huge project that I had no idea what it was going to be when I started. It was sort of like Pandora’s box. You just start uncovering the questions and that leads to more questions and it ended up being this huge study of over 4,000 people so much data that I had to hire a whole team of researchers to help me sift through it all and figure this stuff out but at the end of it all, what we uncovered was pretty incredible and that’s basically what the starting point of the book.

Hal: So, what sort of questions did you ask people? And what were you hoping to find with that data?

Ruth: Yeah. So, we ask really open-ended questions for the most part. I did ask specific questions about like what does fear look like for you, first of all, like what are you most afraid of when it comes to go in after a goal or a dream? Because that I should clarify here, wasn’t wanting to find out about phobias, not fear of spiders or airplanes or things like that. Specifically, the type of fear that keeps us stuck, and keeps us from stepping out of our comfort zone, what is that fear? And so, I would ask that question. What does that look like? Are you afraid of making a mistake or are you afraid of what other people will say about you? So, I gave some multiple-choice questions there but then also allowed people to write in their own answers for that and that sort of give us a baseline to understand what fear looks like for people. But then it was really, really open-ended questions.

First, tell me a time where you are afraid to do something, or you wanted to do something, but you are afraid and you let that fear holds you back and you didn’t do it? What did that look like? What did that feel like to you? Can you describe that situation? And then on the flipside, what was a time where you wanted to do something, you wanted to go after a goal and you are afraid, but you pushed past the fear, what happened? How did you do that? And so, from getting those type of answers in all of these stories and then matching those up to what people were responding about what their underlying fear was, that’s where we started to see a lot of patterns and that was the part that was really, really fascinating.

Hal: So, 4,000 people which is a very large sample size, you’re identifying the patterns and so I guess in terms of how does fear impact our willingness to step outside of our comfort zone and pursue a dream or an opportunity based on like the research that you did? How did you see the correlation between how fear is impacting people and stopping them from going after what they want?

Ruth: Well, what we found is that fear looks different for everyone. So, fear is universal. We all experience fear in one way or the other but it does not – the way we experience fear is very unique to each person. We each have our sort of fear fingerprint if you want to call it that, but we did notice that there were some distinct patterns and we call these patterns the seven fear archetypes, the seven distinct ways that fear tends to manifest itself and play out in our lives. And we all have a little bit of all seven of these archetypes but for most people there only one or two, sometimes even three or four that are most prevalent and most affecting you and so those interplay together and that’s what makes up your unique fear fingerprint. But the really interesting part about this is that fear happens most of the time subconsciously. Sometimes we don’t even identify it as fear in our lives. We just experience it as truth like this is our truth and we feel that that must have been truth for everyone. Everyone must feel this way. Everyone must experience fear this way.

Again, sometimes we call it anxiety, sometimes we just call it being stuck, and sometimes it’s just like being paralyzed and not being able to move forward. Whatever it is, whatever is holding us back, we don’t necessarily see it because the messages and the things that are happening in our head are happening subconsciously without us really realizing it. But why this is so important to identify your fear and to figure out where fear is holding you back and what that looks like for you it’s sort of like when you go to a doctor and you say, “Hey, doc, I feel terrible. Whatever. I’m feeling so bad. Can you please help me?” And the doctor has to, the first thing the doctor has to do is diagnose you because you might feel bad because you have the flu or you might feel bad because you have cancer or you might feel bad because you’re just hung over. Whatever it is, if the doctor doesn’t diagnose you, he’s going to give you the completely wrong treatment first.

And so, fear is kind of the same way. You have to diagnose the problem because as soon as you diagnose it and identify where fear is holding you back, that’s when you can start to do something about it. You can start to see those patterns happening because before they were happening subconsciously but all of a sudden you recognize the patterns and you’re able to start combating them.

Hal: So, the archetypes if I’m understanding correctly, the seven archetypes the purpose of them is to identify what are kind of the common causes of fear so that you can understand the cause then you could kind of pursue your solution. It’s that kind of a general dumbed down kind of simplistic version?

Ruth: Yes. In a nutshell, the seven archetypes those are identifying where you fit within those and we actually along with all these research, we develop an assessment that you can go on to our website at DoItScared.com and take the assessment and, oh my gosh, there’s so much like research and science that goes into it creating an assessment like this where you have to make sure that you’re asking the questions in multiple ways and that there’s no bias in the questions and so it was all vetted by psychologists and a lot went into this but the results that people are getting from this and the ability to start to see those patterns in their life after taking the assessment has been really, really incredible and that’s been really exciting. So, you can take the assessment, or you can obviously read about the seven each archetype in the book but sometimes it’s hard to self-diagnose. That’s where the assessment comes into play. But that’s where you start to see those patterns and then, yes, you can start to replace those thoughts with other thoughts that are going to help you move past the fear.

Hal: Okay. So, I’m on it’s DoItScared.com. Where’s the assessment? I’m on there right now.

Ruth: It should be on the scroll down and it’s 49 questions. I don’t know if you want to take it live.

Hal: I won’t take it while we are on, but I just want to – I don’t like to add to the to-do list, so I just literally go open the website. All right. So, there we go.

Ruth: I love that.

Hal: I brought it up and I found it at the drop-down menu so it’s there too. Okay. All right. Go check that out, guys. I’m going to do it after I jump off this conversation with Ruth once we wrap this up. DoItScared.com. Cool. Can you run through the seven archetypes real quick?

Ruth: Yes. Absolutely. So, I’m going to go through them in the order of popularity because now we have enough. We’ve developed the beta version of the assessment about a year-and-a-half ago and we had about 3,000 or 4,000 people take it the first time and then we took off offline and worked on tweaking it and making sure it was 100% accurate and now we had about 10,000 more people take it. So, yeah, we’ve gotten a lot off, again, a really good sample size of people that have been taking it to see the results. But the most popular or the most common of the seven archetypes is the procrastinator archetype which is another word for the perfectionist and the underlying fear there for the procrastinator/perfectionist is the fear of making a mistake. So, a lot of times people are surprised to find out they’re a procrastinator because they think, “No, no, I like everything to just be right,” and a lot of times though what you get sucked in is analysis paralysis. So, the procrastinator is the person who’s doing all the research or who’s always tweaking things right up until the last minute or everything you’re so afraid of getting it wrong or make a mistake and that they’re sometimes even afraid to commit to things because they might make a mistake. So, that’s number one.

Hal: I see that popular. I fit under that. Okay. What else?

Ruth: Yes. Number two is the rule follower and I had a brain moment there for a second but…

Hal: It happened to me. They’re like, “I think in your book it said this in chapter 4,” and I’m like, “It did? I don’t remember.”

Ruth: I know. Oh, don’t you hate it when people ask me that like an exact quote out of the book and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t…”

Hal: I haven’t read that thing since I wrote it. I don’t know.

Ruth: Yes. No. It’s the rule followers, number two. So, the rule follower is basically the underlying fear is an unhealthy fear of authority, the sense that there is someone out there whether it’s real or perceived in a position of authority who’s going to crack down on you if you step out of line or color outside the lines or break the rule. And so, we’ve all probably know a few rule followers in your life. Maybe you are a rule follower in your life, but rule followers are the ones who always reads the instruction manual and who know that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things and they want to do it the right way. And a lot of times when it comes to going after your goals and dreams, being a rule follower can hold you back in a sense that you are paralyzed by the idea that you might break one of the rules or you might not get the regulations right or that there is something out there that you’re not doing quite wrong.

And yet on the other hand and I should clarify and say that all of these archetypes they’re all negative sounding because they’re based in fear, but they also have each one has positive qualities too. So, they’re not all bad. There’s good points and bad points to all of them. But the good point for the rule follower is that if you can find a path to follow, that can actually be really beneficial, that can help you move forward. So, I found in my program I have Elite Blog Academy, I found that rule followers are some of my most successful students because I give them a very clear path to follow and they do every single step along the way and I have to admit, man, if I was taking my own course, I don’t know that I would do every single step along the way but I’m glad that they do.

Hal: I think my wife is a rule follower, unofficial…

Ruth: Your diagnosis.

Hal: My diagnosis. So, what is the unhealthy fear of authority? So, is that typically taken from childhood where they like were under a strict like had a military father for example or something like that?

Ruth: It could be. That’s a really good question and our research didn’t cover that specific part of where this all came from but like my hunch is that it’s sort of a combination of our innate traits and to start personalities and also the environment that we grew up in so childhood experiences or the experiences that we’ve had, traumas that we’ve been through, those kinds of things as well.

Hal: Sure. That makes sense. Okay. All right. So, number three?

Ruth: So, number three is the people pleaser. The people pleaser, that underlying fear there is the fear of being judged or the fear of what other people will think. So, and we probably all know people pleasers, but people-pleasers are actually great people to be around because they’re always trying to make you happy and they’re always interested in making you happy because they’re interested in what you think. People pleasers can be a little bit overly concerned with their appearance or with keeping up with the Joneses, that kind of thing and where that can hold you back and keep you stuck is because you’re so afraid of what other people will say about something that you might want to do that it prevents you from moving forward and prevents you from taking action at all because, oh my gosh, what would they say about me? So, it’s a really important distinction to make between the procrastinator and the people pleaser because the procrastinator is afraid of making mistakes just as not want to get it wrong or screwed up. The people pleaser doesn’t want to make the mistake but more because of what people might say if you made a mistake. Does that make sense?

Hal: Yeah. Absolutely. This is so interesting that like which one am I? And which one is my wife? And which one is my friend?

Ruth: Does it take you all your willpower to not take the assessment right now?

Hal: Yeah. Exactly. All right. So, people pleaser. Got it. Definitely, I am partly one of those, know some of those. Yeah. Number four?

Ruth: So, number four is the outcast. The outcast has an underlying fear of rejection and so the outcast is probably the most ironic of all seven of the archetypes because the outside to other people, the outcast often appears to be very fearless, one of those people who just doesn’t care what other people think, rugged individualist, a person who is out to prove themselves a lot of times either very driven or a very like counterculture type of person. But where that comes from is this deep fear of rejection and so the way that often manifests to the outcast is by rejecting other people before they can be rejected in return.

Hal: Sure. So, I could see that. I imagine back in high school I remember someone who is maybe an outcast and they’re by themselves and it’s like I’m going to push you away before you can push me away kind of thing.

Ruth: Yes. Exactly. The funny thing about the outcast is that there’s actually a lot of entrepreneurs that are outcasts. So, the fourth most common archetype but among entrepreneurs is definitely the most common. I’m an outcast through and through and it’s been really interesting as I’ve been doing this work to see how much that actually that trait has held me back in my business and just to my personal life too because I kind of always thought of myself as like a go-getter and I don’t need anybody to help me but really like a lot of that comes from fear of being rejected. I don’t want anybody to help me because they might reject me.

Hal: It makes sense. Interesting. Okay.

Ruth: The fifth one is the self-doubter and the self-doubter is the person who really struggles with self-confidence. It’s the underlying fear of not being capable or not being enough. And so, the self-doubter more than any of the other ones really struggles with negative self-talk and hyper-criticism of themselves and that often manifests itself in hyper-criticism of other people around them especially the people closest to them. They tend to be the one people who are kind of nitpicky in everything that we do. And again, as you’re listening to these, you can probably think, “Oh, I know somebody like that,” but what I find so fascinating about these seven archetypes is that it gives you so much more empathy and compassion for people that as before you just thought that might be an annoying trait or now you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s actually coming from a place of fear,” and it gives you more compassion for people.

Hal: Yeah. One of my favorite kind of philosophy is in terms of humankind and like interpersonal relationships is the idea that we really – we should never judge another person because we have no way of knowing that have we lived their life, we would be exactly the same.

Ruth: Yes.

Hal: We would say the same things and do the same things and live the same way, right?

Ruth: Yes.

Hal: And so, yes, so this to me, I love that. That’s interesting and I’m sure I don’t know if you imagined that when you were writing the book and doing your work but like I would imagine that you’re really helping people increase their empathy, which I think is a beautiful trait for human beings to focus on so that’s very…

Ruth: It’s so true. I love the way that you said that but I think, I mean, this is not necessarily from my work in the book but just what I found in my line of work and what I do is that when you start to hear people’s stories and understand where they’re coming from, it increases your capacity to love them so much more even people that you thought on the surface were just too different from you or that you had nothing in common with. You realize that as humans, there’s so much more that connects us than drives us apart. That’s a tangent for another day.

Hal: That’s another – our next when I get you back on the show.

Ruth: Next episode. Yes.

Hal: All right. What’s number six?

Ruth: So, number six is the excuse maker and the excuse maker we can probably all think off an excuse maker in our life, but the excuse maker is the one person who never wants to be pinned down. They’re the ones who are afraid of taking responsibility and that’s really the underlying fear, this fear of being held responsible or held accountable or being blamed for something and I think you can know an excuse maker when it’s the person who is never at fault for anything but also like won’t even pick the restaurant that you’re going to go eat at because if you guys don’t like it then they might get blamed for it. They’ll never be the ones to make the final decision.

Hal: That’s interesting. Okay.

Ruth: And then the final one…

Hal: Drumroll, please.

Ruth: Last but not least is the pessimist and the pessimist is that one I think more than any of the other ones comes a lot of times from as a result of difficult circumstances. So, the pessimist is often somebody who has had hardship or trauma in their life and instead of outgrowing from that trauma or rising above it, they become stuck in that place and feel and because they’re most afraid then of more pain or more adversity and so it’s almost this idea of like why should I even bother? And so, that can be a really, really hard one and a really destructive fear archetype probably even more than most of the other ones because if you stay stuck in that place of just self-fulfilling prophecy, it becomes your truth and it’s hard to break free of that.

Hal: Ruth, I don’t know the last time I was this fascinated. I don’t know why like I’m finding this is such a fascinating topic.

Ruth: Thank you.

Hal: So, yeah, absolutely. It’s really interesting. Now, I know that I saw somewhere you said that or maybe you said this earlier and it’s why it’s in my head, but the path of overcoming fears is a bit different for everybody.

Ruth: Yes.

Hal: Can you talk about how is that so? Why is that?

Ruth: Well, because how you overcome fear is going to really depend on how you experience fear. There are some general guidelines that I think can help no matter what your fear archetype but how you play it is going to depend on exactly what your specific fear is. So, for instance, one thing that I recommend for everyone is just like you diagnosed with an illness, sometimes they want you to build up your immunity, so you need to build up your immunity to that specific fear. So, once you identify say I’m a procrastinator, they need to work on how do I build up my immunity to that fear. My deepest fear is making a mistake and I need to learn how to make mistakes without being afraid of it. And so, you practice. You practice that specific thing. You become conscious of practicing how to make the mistake. Same thing if you’re a rule follower. You practice breaking the rules, you practice doing things that are coloring outside the lines or doing something just a little bit out there. For me as an outcast, this has come into play a lot over the last six months to my business because one thing that I have an accountability group that really challenged me knowing that I’m an outcast, they really challenged me to start reaching out to people and then especially in advance.

I’ve got a book coming out and my MO, normally this is my sixth book, my normal MO when I have a book coming out is to do it all myself, to launch it myself, to speak to my own people, my own tribe, and I don’t need to run my own Facebook ads or whatever it is. I don’t need to ask anybody for help. But this time they said, “No, you really need to make those connections. You need to reach out to other people. You need to ask to be on people’s podcasts. You need to pitch yourself to media,” and that was terrifying for me and yet they challenged me in a way that I couldn’t not do it. They told me I needed to pitch 20 people that I knew were going to reject me over the course of 24 hours and they actually made the list for me and said, “Here you go. Here’s your list. These people will almost certainly reject you but if you can pitch 20 people in 24 hours, you can get over this fear.” And I did it and I didn’t think I was going to.

And it’s funny because this is why it’s important to know how different fear is for different people because some people who are low outcast score would listen to this right now and think, “I don’t see what the big deal is. That doesn’t even sound scary at all like what’s the big deal? You send an email.” But for me, that was terrifying, terrifying, but I did it and it was amazing. I did get rejected multiple times, but I also have three out of the 20 people say yes which was completely unexpected but more importantly, it cured me of it pretty much. It cured me of this fear of asking for help because I realized, “Oh, that wasn’t actually so bad.” So, on any of these fears, building up your immunity is like a really, really, really essential thing and that can only happen, you only know what to build up your immunity on once you know what you’re dealing with.

Hal: Yeah. You understand the fear. And I’m imagining like I can relate to multiple of these archetypes but some more than others and talk on that for a second. Just like how would you explain how we identify with one archetype primarily or more than one? Or maybe I did have all of them at some level. I know you said something about it early on, but I don’t remember.

Ruth: Yeah. So, we each have a little bit off all seven within us and we’ll identify and so the higher your percentage on a particular archetype, the more likely that it is that that fear is impacting your life. So, when you take this assessment, we have a free version of the assessment and the upgraded version of the assessment and the free version of the assessment will just give you your top archetype but the more valuable is the premium version of the assessment which gives you your top three and goes in depth about how those three specifically interact and work together but then it also gives you your score on all seven so that you can see and your overall fear score because the higher your percentages are and the higher like percentage that you have on multiple of the archetypes, the more of an impact fear is probably have in your life. I’ve seen it where people have scored fairly low on all seven. They’ve been maybe in the 30th or 40th percentile for all of seven and that means that they’re probably not dealing with a whole lot of fear but I’ve also seen the flipside where people score in the 90th percentile for five or more of them and that means that fear is really having a huge impact in their life. So, it’s really, it’s a degree of each one but then it’s is also how they interact together.

Hal: Okay interesting. And by the way, I am going for all of our goal achievers, all of you listeners, I am going to take the assessment, I’ll probably do the paid one, and I’m going to post my results in the show notes below this episode. So, I believe this will be Episode 272 so that would mean if you would go to HalElrod.com/272, you can see my results for the Do It Scared assessment in the show notes and if for some reason the numbers get mixed up and that’s not the number of today’s episode, go to HalElrod.com and find the episode with Ruth Soukup. Is that right? You think it’s going right?

Ruth: Yes. And let me just say one more thing about that. If you do, if you are sure that you want the premium assessment then I would highly recommend that you order the book because right now with our book bonuses you can get the premium assessment for free. The premium assessment is $15 to upgrade to it or the book is $16.50 on Amazon. So, there you go.

Hal: Got it. So, I’m definitely ordering the book, Do It Scared. So, hold on, I had another question written down for you here in my notes. So, that’s right and this is something that I saw I was reading the kind of the breakdown in your book and there’s something, you talked about adopting a new set of core beliefs on what you called the principles of courage. Why is that important?

Ruth: So, pretty much because of what we talked about. So, once you start seeing these patterns of fear in your life which have previously happened subconsciously, all of this self-talk that’s happening inside your head, you have to then figure out what you’re going to replace that with and what I recommend is that you replace those thoughts that have been happening with new thoughts, new self-talk, a new set of core beliefs and that’s what I talk about the principles of courage. So, for me those are things like there are no mistakes, only lessons and rules are for suckers. And I talked through seven specific principles of courage in that book that I highly recommend people adopting but there are…

Hal: One to handle each for your archetype or just happen to be assessment?

Ruth: Not specifically. They don’t like correspond to specific ones because again we each have a little bit of multiple fears in us so they kind of just our general good principles I think, principles of life that I feel everyone should adopt. Hopefully, you do. I would guess I read enough of your book that you probably agree with me.

Hal: I’m probably on the same page.

Ruth: You’d probably be on the same page.

Hal: I would imagine.

Ruth: Yeah. It’s more about accountability. I talk a lot about accountability in the book and how important it is to put those truth-tellers in your life, and I think that that’s something that most of us don’t do intentionally. We tend to as humans surround ourselves with people who think like us and talk like us and who are on the same page as us. We like to have an echo chamber of people who agree with us. But if you can surround yourself with people who first of all know you well enough to know what your fear archetype is and where you’re holding yourself back and then can push you to be better and push you pass those things kind of the way I was talking about of my friends did for me. That was huge and it was an ugly conversation. I yelled, they yelled. My arms are crossed. I almost walked out of the room and yet like I’m so grateful to them and I’m so grateful to have those kinds of people in my life and I guess I talk a lot about that and just about the importance of taking one step and then the next step and to just keep going no matter what.

Hal: Beautiful. Now, I’m a huge fan of accountability and I’m an even bigger fan of just surround yourself with people that will hold you to higher standards then you’ll hold yourself to because we, myself included, I’m sure we all have our own standards and those are different for everybody but no matter what, you don’t have impeccable standards and having people in our lives that will – my wife’s a great example. She keeps me honest. She keeps me humble. She keeps me grounded. She kicks my butt. She holds me to high standards.

Ruth: Isn’t that the best? My husband is like that for me too and he is thoroughly unimpressed with my bio like I can go out there and I can go do my thing and I can be, “Oh, I’m so great. I’ve done all this stuff,” and he’s the one who will just like he doesn’t care, and I need that in my life. I think everybody needs somebody who’s our counterbalance and our counterweight and I say he’s the sharpener of my sword because he does make me better.

Hal: That’s awesome. My wife she’ll go to events and do something, and people are waiting in line to get their book signed or take a picture or whatever and she’s like, “You’re just a big dork. I don’t know why everybody thinks you’re so cool and they want to meet you and stuff.” I’m like, “Don’t tell them I’m a dork. Or tell them. I don’t know.” So, I know you explained that, and I think this to me is how I would if somebody asked me, in fact, I can say this to my kids all the time that action is the antidote of fear.

Ruth: Yes.

Hal: So, whether it is action or whether it is action included but what are some practical steps that someone can take to move past fear in their own life? I’d love to kind of close with that sentiment for people.

Ruth: The practical action steps. Well, this will be perfect for what you talk about on this podcast and I’m all about the practical and that’s why the third section of the book or the third part of the book is all about taking action and moving forward because without the action then it’s all theory and it doesn’t help you. You need to know exactly what to do and how to do it. And so the first thing I recommend for people to do if you’re dealing with fear in your life is to take the time and give yourself permission to think big, to think bigger about what you want and what – because I think so many times and I’m sure you see this too, so many of us don’t even give ourselves the permission to think a little bit bigger than whatever it is that we’re doing right now. We immediately go into the how am I going to make it happen and I don’t think I know how to do that or I’m not capable or the self-editing, the self-talk, all of the stuff that happens subconsciously. So, it’s actually consciously giving yourself permission to set your sights a little higher and to give yourself that motivation and to hone it and figure out what is your target, to clean your target of where you want to go. That’s step one.

Then I really recommend that people get in touch with their why and I know we talk a lot about find your why, it’s so important to know your why, but what I discovered through this research and I thought this part was so, so interesting was that every single person in our study that was able to overcome fear and actually go after big goal or dream, every single person without fail there’s always a catalyst. There was always something that did it and those catalysts range from things that were on one end of the spectrum completely outside of their control so some big tragedy happening, some major life events, something that spurred them out of where they were at and gave them the motivation to keep going or to do something different. And on the other end of the spectrum, it was completely self-driven where it was completely within their control. They woke up one morning and they said, “I’m not going to live like this anymore.” But in the middle of that there was all sorts of things in between from getting an opportunity and having an opportunity offered to them and deciding to take advantage of it which was a little more on that outside of their control spectrum but still they were the ones to have to say yes to the opportunity to starting to listen to self-help books or podcasts or finding teachers or even hiring a coach or mentor.

And so, what I realize is that for a lot of people when you say something like you need to find your why, you need to find a why that’s bigger than your fear and I truly do believe that. It’s so important to have a why that’s bigger than your fear but it’s also hard sometimes to find that, to find something that’s going to motivate you, but you can’t but what’s easier to do is to actually manufacture a catalyst. So, even if you don’t have that big why just yet, you can find ways of creating that and manufacturing that in your life. Listening to this podcast would be one of them. Finding great coaches and mentors, taking a course, doing something that is a little bit easier but that would give you that motivation until you can find your self-driven motivation.

Hal: Yeah. I love that and that’s something that I’ve always said, I don’t know – I’m sure I’ve heard this from someone but that you have to sometimes borrow the belief that someone else has in you until your belief catches up.

Ruth: So true.

Hal: And what you just said like if I read a book by an author like that author has belief in me as the reader. That’s why they wrote the book. They’re like, “Hey, look, I’ve done this in my own life. I know that if you follow the same steps I’m giving you, you can do this in your life too.” And so, for me that sometimes is the belief that someone else has. Me, it’s not even somebody I know. I’m not talking to them directly but I’m reading their book. I’m learning from them. And I would imagine anybody listening to this, right, whether you are any of the seven archetypes, whether you’re a procrastinator/perfectionist, a rule follower, a people pleaser, an outcast, a self-doubter, an excuse maker, a pessimist, any of the seven, I would imagine that reading your new book, Do It Scared, is going to understand that you understand me and my fear archetype and then understand how to overcome it and being given those practical steps is so powerful. So, yeah, I’m excited like this really was looking forward to talking to you but I didn’t know how good it would be.

Ruth: Well, thank you.

Hal: Great content so I’m excited. In fact, I’m going to share this with my wife and go, “Hey, sweetie, my little rule follower, come over here. I’m going to show you this chapter,” of the book and that I’m going to read to her.

Ruth: I love that. You should have her take the assessment too.

Hal: Yes. I will tell her that. I don’t know if she’s home right now, but I will do that. I’m in my little office cave here but, okay, so wrapping this up, best place to get in touch with you? Where can we get the book? I know the assessment is at DoItScared.com but you said it’s one of the bonuses with the book. So, how does it all that work? How to get the book? How to get the bonuses?

Ruth: Everything is at DoItScared.com so that’s really the only thing you need to remember is just go to DoItScared.com. It’s the hub for everything. It has the instructions for how to access the bonuses. You can buy the book anywhere books are sold and then just keep your order number and you can go and claim your bonuses. And then the assessment is there as well, and you can do it all.

Hal: Perfect. I will be doing all of the things as soon as we hang up here.

Ruth: Awesome. I can’t wait to hear.

Hal: I appreciate you. Thank you so much for today. And thank you for the work that you’re doing. It’s really, really important.

Ruth: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m such a huge fan and it was great to be here.

Hal: Yeah. And I’m book launching as I just got finished up with mine and so anything, feel free to text me. Call me any questions or anything that I can do to support or lend some advice or guidance or anything at all. I’m happy to help.

Ruth: Oh my gosh, thank you so much and same here. I would love to have you back on the podcast to talk specifically about your new book.

Hal: Yes, great idea. Cool. All right. Well, goal achievers, thank you for tuning in. I hope you got as much out of this conversation with Ruth Soukup as I did and that’s Soukup, S-O-U-K-U-P and yeah, I hope you got as much out of as I did and go to DoItScared.com. Check out the book, check out the assessment, I’m doing both right now. And I will talk to you next week, everybody. Take care.

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