BABH S1Ep18: 4 Things Birds Can Teach You About Overcoming Fear

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to episode 18 of be a brilliant human with me, Joe Young and welcome if you're back again for more, I hope you know how much I appreciate you choosing to spend this time with me. I love that you choose a tune in and listen to my meandering ponderings and musings on these topics and I'm hoping that it gives you pleasure, value, some entertainment, all that good stuff. And if you are new here. So good. Welcome. Welcome to [inaudible]. Welcome to me. Welcome to this welcome to the podcast. I love that you found me. Did go ahead and hit that, hit that subscribe button wherever you are listening to this. And I'm always open. If you're regular, you'll know this. I'm open to feedback. You can leave me a message on the be a pretty inhuman.com website. Or hit me up on social media for the most part.

I'm @JoelYoungNPA. There's also a page on Facebook, which you can just search NPA rocks and you'll find me there. So this episode today as they say in the movies, is inspired by true events. Actually speaking of the movies that we are in award seasons, I'm going to blow my own trumpet. I've won an award. Yes I did. I won the expansion catalyst award 2019. Thank you to the evolutionary business council for honouring me with that, I'm kind of stoked and I just said on social media is put up on social media. I feel like I want an Oscar. So yeah. So today's episode, I'm digressing a is inspired by true events. So it's all about birds and fear. Now I wrote that down. I laugh to myself cause I was, I was raised born and in the 60s and kind of grew up in the 70s and bird's back then in the UK was like another word for, for like girlfriend, you know, going down the pub and see if I can get some birds.

Very un-PC now, so birds and fare. Now this is not a dating episode. However if you want fearless dating, I actually have a friend called Arti Joshi has a great podcast called would you Adam leave it fearless dating. So if you want to find out about for this dating, I do recommend you go and check out our T's, a wonderful podcast. Just search for this dating. She also goes through the platform anchor, same as this podcast goes out on, which means it spreads itself far and wide across the entire web. And certainly on iTunes, Spotify, and all those wonderful things. And I will actually put a link to artist podcasts in the show notes. So, yes, birds and fare. So I guess before we dive into it, let's talk a bit about fear in general world. First thing to say is, you know, fear is part of life.

I think like so many things that I like to sort of stand on my soapbox about. Things get a bad rap and the idea is we're supposed to eradicate fear. Well, you know, there's good reason for it. Fair is part of our survival strategy, but you know, so often within us, you know, the fear that's inside there is based on some story in our head. It's either well, straight up, not true or at least grossly exaggerated. I always remember one of my great mentors and teachers, Byron Katie even haven't heard of Byron Katie in the work of Byron Katie that's borrowing kci.com. She tells this wonderful story, which I'm going to attempt to tell you. She says this, she says, so she was walking along and then a foot hit something and she looked down and she saw a snake and she was terrified and a, you know, a heart was pumping.

It was racing. And you know, the adrenaline was kicking off and then she looked down and she realised it was actually a piece of rope. And as she says, you know, try in vain to scare yourself. Silly. I'm thinking that's a snake when now you know it's a rope. And that's often the trick with fare. Sometimes when you look it in the eye and you see it for what it is it doesn't seem so scary. So if you're not being metaphorically chased by a hungry tiger, you know, our fears, ability to pump you full of adrenaline so you can run like Forrest Gump, then you know, chances are the fear is just a limitation. In those cases, it's worth looking at how you can overcome those fears. Just what today's episode is about. You don't have less limits and achieve and experience more in this brief and wondrous tic of universal time that we call a human life.

So that's the stuff that I'm going to focus on today. In fact, fears of vast topics. I'm actually going to focus on four things that, that some birds highlighted when I was watching them. I'll tell you all about that in a moment. Yeah, which can point to or remind you of some of the ways that you can deal with those likely false or unfounded fears. And of course I'll be offering some practical suggestions on how to implement each of them in your life. That sound good? Good. Then let's spread our wings and get right into it.

[music]

So I spend actually quite a lot of time out in wildlife looking at what's going on with the creatures. In fact, myself and my wonderful partner, Karen, maybe I should say my bird, Karen. We love wildfire, wildlife photography and, and do go out there and do, in fact I'm going to give her a plug. She's really an amazing wildlife photographer. I think I do pretty good. But she's fantastic and you can find her page on Facebook if you just search Kiki T photography, that's Kiki, K Iki and then T and then photography. And have a look at some of her pictures, but we do a lot of looking at wildlife is birds. But that the first story I want to tell you is all, both the stories I want to tell you is more of a domestic situation because Karen's garden is absolutely amazing and it's home to Jack and silver today about MMO.

So let me tell you about Karen's garden cause it's amazing. She spends a lot of time nurturing it with, with she's got feeders everywhere and she puts, you know, fat balls out and fat cubes and, and seeds and nuts. And so there's lots of lots of birds that come and visit her garden. In fact, she gets like crows, Jack door's magpies, you know, all those. And even Jay's beautiful, beautiful JS, all the Corvettes for those twitches of you out there. There's Kai's a fly over head where she lives and then even cormorants cause she's quite close to the river and see goals and even flocks of geese. That's a great spotter would pack her, comes and visits it, sits on the top of the tree, is not hatches that store nuts all over the place. And of course the usual in this, this country, blue tits, great tits, long-tail tits, even black caps are regular along with Don Oaks and blackbirds.

And of course Robbins. Now, Jack and silver are a couple of Robbins in a garden. And this is so interesting to me to watch this start right when we first met the one we called silver, he was a juvenile, a young thing. Well, he, she had to tell Robbins, maybe one of you can tell me how you distinguish between the two when they grow up. They were different to begin with because Jack was the grownup one and then silver was the young one, but silver was young and fearless. And and one of the things that Karen gets is mealworms and puts them out. And we'd sit out in the garden and she'd put them in on the wall by us and, and silver would literally just fly up onto the wall, look us in the eye as it cheer up at us as if to say thank you and gobble down a few of those little mealworms.

Whereas Jack would not do that. Really. He'd sit away and he'd wait for us to go. And then maybe he'd come and eat some even chase silver off, you know, but he wouldn't stop and stay in and an eat that close to us. You know, but eventually after time, in the end he did, I guess, I guess still the grew up and then Robin's are very territorial and, and, and Jack chased him, chased him away. But then after a while Jack could be just watching us and eventually he began to get more and more safe and feel more and more safe. And, and now he will happily cheer us when we, we go out sit there or say, Oh, we've got worms. Not like, that sounds, that sounds bad. Have you got some mealworms? And then we'll put them on the wall and he'll pop up and he'll be very happy, sort of coming very close to us.

And by the way, if you're thinking, well, Silva Silva actually went down to the end of the garden is set up, you know, his own territory there. And these days they're actually, they're quite unfriendly terms. So we're kind of wondering if maybe there's a male and female and they kind of getting ready to Springs. Maybe this is about Phyllis dating after all. So there we go. So, so it was really interesting to watch how, how bold young silver was and then how over time Jack sort of went from being fearful and cautious to being much more courageous and actually really without any sort of true fear of us. So that's one story. I'm going to refer to these stories later. Okay. Now the other one kind of really inspired me doing this. This episode I was sat out in my yard so I didn't have a garden.

Like Karen's got a lovely lush garden I live in, in Skipton, a Northern town and more than a coronation street for those of you in the UK. No coronation street that know what I mean. But terrorist houses at the back is like a yard. So there's, there's not much for the birds to come on. But I did decide to start putting out some scraps now and again. Now round here, you generally get, well the crows and seagulls, there's lots of seagulls around me so, so I put the scraps out and really interesting because you know, a seagull comes, sits upon the, on the aerials, on the houses opposite and starts calling out to others and they come, you know, come flying in. But they're, they're all kind of surfing around. The first time I did this, it all circled around squawking and squawking and the crows came and they sat up on the roof and they were squawking but not coming down.

And then suddenly this pigeon turns up, he sits on the, on the gutter, on the house opposite. He looks down and he looks around at the C goals, you know, and all the crows. And it's lucky when you were says, sorry, came flying down. And the, this fabulous greedy kitchen pigeon just nodded, gobbling up and pecking away at the scraps, which point all of the birds went, Oh my God. So the crows and the, and the seagulls also are diving in. Of course I have my camera, he steps up and snap away and absolute frenzy ensued. And it's really instincts that I met a few times. And I've noticed that because, I mean, I was sat there with my camera during this, right? I should have painted that picture earlier, but I was sat there with my camera and my yard is a, so there are only like 10 feet away from me.

So it took the pigeon just sort of inspire them to come and come and have a go. But I've actually sort of continued to do that since that first time a few more times. And I noticed that, you know now the, the, the seagulls and crows that will, I don't wait for the pigeon to come along. But they seem a little more what should we say? Brave. They're coming in faster inside to come down and take the scraps. So so I guess maybe the idea that they're a bit more safe with me sat there with that strange one big eyes thing up to my face that clicks whenever they, so those are the two stories that kind of inspired me to do this episode. So that one time I sat there going, Hmm, it's interesting to observe how they respond to fair. So what does all this teach us about overcoming fear? Well, I've thought of four things that this illustrates it. We'll share them with you now.

[music]

Okay. So the four things that birds can teach you about overcoming fear. The first one is that clear desire overcomes fear. Fortune favours the bold my friend. Sometimes you just got to take the plunge. So going back to those two stories, silver as a young juvenile just dove in. Give me those mealworms. I don't care. I'm not, you know, the, the desire for them overcame any trepidation or ferry may have had of me and Karen. And the same with the pigeon. I may have been sat there with my camera and all the seagulls and the crows and everything else that was around was sort of holding back. The picture was like, ah, food me want food straight down. No fear at all. You know, just, just they're gobbling up this grabs, you know, that it was very simple. They knew what they wanted and any phase I may have had were overcome.

I know I've had this experience where, you know, I mean, when I first started this podcast, I mean, what did I have no fear. The first time I turned the microphone on, of course I had failed, but I was very clear that I wanted to do a podcast. I was ready. It was time. I knew what I, why I wanted to do it. And so I was able to overcome the fear. And here I am on episode 18 so sometimes getting clear on the desire is, is really strong. So you need to have a strong and, and again, strong and clear. So another other way of saying that is you need to get super clear on your motivations. How can you apply this? So if you're afraid of doing or saying something, well first of all, why are you even considering it? Why was I considering even doing a podcast if it was a scary thing?

There was some deeper motivation that was going on. That's a good question to ask yourself. If you're thinking of doing something but fears coming up or why are you even considering it? There must be some juicy sense of what can come. If you can overcome that fear and just do it. I mean, what do you really want? What amazing beneficial outcome can you see if you actually go ahead, if you take the risk, if you're bold, if you go for it. Great question. I love to ask. When I'm faced with a scary story in my head is, you know, it's sort of run with it. Even if my scary story is true, you know, or if I, if I take a chance, I might fail, for example, why would I choose to do it anyway? In other words, you know, what's my deeper motivation?

You know, even if I might fail, maybe my motivation, like with the podcast, you know, why would I do it? Even though it might be rubbish, people might hate me. All the stories that go on in your head. Well, at least I've given it a go. At least I've, I've sort of honoured my desire to, to have a crack at it. You know, it's like those are the kind of motivations that will, will help you get clear on it. So even if your scary story might be true, and it probably isn't, why would you do it anyway? So getting clear on your motivation, which gets you clear on your desire and that desire can overcome fear. All right. Number two is safety in numbers. So remember how I told you that, that you know, the first Siegel turned up, I had the scraps on the wall first.

Siegel turns up but didn't come straight down. He sat on the roof and he started making this call. It's really interesting to watch. So he sort of called out, looked around this particular call and and more appeared. So it's interesting how seagulls call in other seagulls. I mean, it seems odd. I mean if you think back to it, was it finding Nemo where they're all sitting along, they're going, mine, mine, mine, the greedy seagulls. You think, you know, there is single Sego all that food just ready to go. You could just jump down there, Wolf all down and have all the scraps itself. But no, you know, he had the sense or in a way, he had the wisdom to acknowledge that he was too afraid to come down by himself. So we called his brothers in, you know you know, he's not sometimes if we're not sort of quite there yet, it's, it's good to acknowledge that if sometimes, you know, we don't have to do it on our own really.

I mean, in fact, I think the greedy pigeon calling them all verses, not that he did that, but that was my little projection. It was about a little bit unfair, you know, I mean with lots of thinking about it, with lots of seagulls around that, there's lots of them squawking. There are lots of eyes on me and, and less chance of me in their eyes kind of pouncing without warning. So it's that safety in numbers and you don't have to do it on your own. It's all there. So how can you benefit from this lesson? Well, again, it's sometimes, you know, it's really good to get help with overcoming fears. You know, we don't always have to do it on our own. There's actually a great power in acknowledging that, you know, to really acknowledge that, you know, what, I can get a sense of the desire, but the fairs kind of getting in the way then get some help.

So whether it's friends or family or an experienced coach just like me or getting, you know, just to get some help and support when the fairs have got, you know, that's a real kindness to yourself. You know, if you do want to get help for me as you know, you just got to be able to, in human.com you'll find a link there somewhere or just go to Joel young mpa.com/sessions if that's where you want to go. But whatever you do, get some help. It's okay to not be able to sort of conquer the fear on your own. And it can be really great actually to get some help. So that's number two, safety in numbers, which brings us to number three. Number three is FOMO can overcome FOTA. Okay. So if you don't know, FOMO is F, O, M, O, which stands for fear of missing out and photo.

I kind of just made up F O T A which is fear of taking actions, a FOMO can overcome FOTA. So similar to desire, it's kind of it's sort of a, an about face, but it's very, very powerful. So again, I noticed that once the pigeon went for it, the seagulls and crows, you know, they were in there diving in, you know, the greedy pigeon was chugging down those scraps, you know, and if they didn't act fast, then they might miss out. So that sort of fear of missing out, it's sort of overshadowed the fear of, you know, what might happen. So scarcity or the FOMO principle is actually quite a powerful force in the human psyche. So in a sense, if you can't quite sort of get to the desire thing or that's not cutting it, you can use the FOMO as a way, again, to overcome the fear.

So if you're gripped with indecision, inaction, worry and doubt, you know, you know there's an opportunity within your grasp. But the fears have got you. You know, and again, that positive desire isn't quite cutting through. Just try some FOMO, you know, in terms of helping you to motivate you. So here's some good questions you can ask yourself so you can ask yourself. So what, ask yourself, what are you missing out on? Bios are coming to the fair. Matt goes directly to it. So think about the opportunity, why you're attracted to it and what great things it could bring you. You'll miss out on if you don't take action and you know, ask yourself, what would it cost you to not take action now? So most, most of these actions are about making a change. So again, if you don't change, if you continue doing what you're doing and the pattern continues over time, what's that going to cost you emotionally, financially, in terms of health or in your relationships?

Whatever it is, you can even turn the volume up, you know? See yourself a year from now looking back, you know, if he took no action, if the fair one and you missed the opportunity, would you regret it? How does that feel? You know, even if the opportunity to comes back around, say a year later, you know, and you took it then and got all those benefits, would you regret having denied yourself a year of experiencing those benefits? So I remember these questions aren't designed to make you feel bad. That's not what I'm driving at. There are another way to overcome the false and limiting fears and access that motivating force that move you to action and get you what you've already identified that you want. All right? That's a FOMO principle, which brings us to number four, the number four slightly different, but number four I put down as trust is built on evidence and experience over time.

So let's come back to Jack. Remember Jack and silver? The two Robbins Robbins are funny. You know, they like sit and they just watch you. They watch what's going on. They'll chirp away there. They're generally relatively brave compared to a lot of species. But Jack would kind of watch silver, you know, he'd watch silver eat, sit, sit sort of a better way, and he'd watch silver come and silver would just come and he was bold. He just came and sat on the ball and got his fill of mealworms. You know, and as I said, Jack would come and see him off, you know, try and scare, scare silver away, but you know, he wouldn't stay, he wouldn't stay and eat the worms where they were, at least not while we were around. But over time he would start to sit closer and closer to us.

And occasionally we throw a few worms a bit further away from us, sort of halfway across the Belden. And then he could come and get them. But now with those little steps, a little bit safer, a little bit more trust. Now he just comes and sits in the wall, just like, you know, silver used to do. It'll come, it'll sit there. He's only like about two feet away from us. He'll cheer up. He's like, you know, where am I, where am I? What brave is can be. But he's again built his trust with evidence and experience over time. And you know what, at times there's tremendous wisdom and caution. Again, not pushing yourself beyond where you are. So Jack kind of reminds us that again, that trust is built on evidence over time. And that's a great principle to remember if you think about a lack of trust is like a deeply embedded form of fear.

But again, conversely trust itself is a deeply embedded antidote to fear. So on these times it's worth building trust where you can. So and sometimes we lose trust in ourselves. I mean if, if Ferris stopped us from taking those opportunities, for example, sort of over and over or we've taken the plan Joanie to sort of to back out on, let ourselves down after a short time, you know, that's where you've lost trust for yourself. And this is where small moves and baby steps are your friend. If you go back or if you've listened to your, but if you go back to, if you haven't had it before, episode two, the second episode of I did was my five-point blueprint for growth. And number three on my list was consistent baby steps. I am a huge fan of small moves and baby steps. So crucial because they help you to get traction.

So you know when trust is like a scarce resource and an area where you really want to build or rebuild it, you know, because there's again, there's a desired outcome. Just just ask yourself a simple question like what small move, what small action, what small tests kind of do that will build my trust. So let me think of an example. So exercise is classic. So you start an exercise regime and you want to get fitter, but you sign up to programmes before you got overwhelmed, you collapsed on your commitments and then you just gave up. So you've betrayed your own trust when it comes to your commitments to you. You know, and perhaps that's happened a lot in different areas of your life. So that level of trust in yourself is pretty low. So in that situation it's worth, first of all, I think a really good thing to do is identify what level the repair of that trust needs to begin.

So what I mean by that is maybe it's just about the exercise. So it was just about the exercise focus there. You can ask yourself what exercise can I easily commit to? Maybe a walk once a week, maybe just 10 bicep curls every other day over the next three weeks. Whatever works for you. But it's something you know you can easily do. But if you send it a bit deeper, you know, maybe, maybe there's many areas where you've lost trust in yourself, then you may need to go back, you know, beyond the exercise and focus in on that deeper level of self trust. So you know, again, even before you go into the exercise thing, I work with what's deeper. So if that's the case, and it's really more about just a general sense of lack of trust of yourself, you can ask yourself, what commitment can I make to myself and easily keep?

It's a simple question. Anything will do. In fact, it might seem like ridiculously insignificant or small, what you come up with, something that you can easily, a commitment you can easily keep, but I tell you it's not ridiculous or insignificant because age commitment you keep no matter how small affirms your capacity to keep a commitment to yourself and begins the process of building that trust. Again, small moves and evidence and experience over time. So you know, even if it has to be something like today and tomorrow I'm going to at some point stand up, stretch up to the ceiling, just once, relax, take a breath and then turn around, throw it and 60 degrees just once. Then so be, it seems like a like what use is that? But if you feel you can do that, just doing it is a step towards building trust and as you step by step, build your trust or rebuild the trust in yourself, all sorts of possibilities can open up. You know, again, going back to fortune favours the bowl. That was one of the, within the first one, you know, people who, who really build a bedrock of trust in themselves do become bold in deed. So that's the four things birds can teach you about overcoming fare. So I'm going to do a quick recap after the little song

[music].

Okay, so let's recap. So number one was clear desire overcomes fear. So a strong enough and clear enough awareness of the positive benefit of stepping forward in spite of the fear can be enough to overcome it. Number two is safety in numbers. Sometimes we need the help, support and encouragement of others. Of course it needs to be the right support and depending on the circumstances in your environment that might mean professional help. And you know, I'm here. Number three was FOMO can overcome Fota. So FOMO can give you leverage enough to end the paralysis and actually take action. Focus on the opportunity, the benefits of seizing and the cost to you and your life of not seizing it. What will you miss out on if you succumb to the fair? And number four was trust is built on evidence and experience. Over time. If you take the time to build trust, it's a strong antidote to fear.

It's all about repeating and building upon small steps, ideally neither overstretching or under stretching. So again, ask yourself, what small thing can you do to build your trust today? So that's a wrap for me. Thank you so much for being here as ever. I hope this episode stirred you, touched you, and gave you a perspective that helps you up your game in some form as ever. I'd love to hear your feedback. Make sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you are. If you're an iTunes or somewhere that gives you a chance to leave a review, I'd love a review. If you'd liked it, give me a lovely review. That would be fantastic. And if you want some help for me, again, that link is Joel young, npa.com/sessions and as always, you can find this episode and all the episodes that be a brilliant human.com/episode number. So today it will be Bria brilliant, human.com/eighteen that's where you'll find the show notes and the links. Everything you need there. Otherwise, have a fantastic rest of your day and I will see you next week. Oh, yes. I've got to say Q, the moo [music].