Why You Trust Fear More Than Your Own Potential - E204

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick

In this episode of 'Makes Sense' with Dr. JC Doornick, the host explores the psychological imbalance that causes people to automatically trust fear over their own potential.

Key takeaways

• Fear gains automatic authentication in the mind due to evolutionary conditioning and constant exposure, while potential requires proof and validation.
• Our brains are wired to prioritize threats over opportunities, making it harder to trust positive outcomes without evidence.

Main topics

• Selective trust
• Fear vs. potential

Notable quotes

What if one of the biggest things holding you back isn't fear itself, but how much more trust we hand it?

Fear just walks right through the front door with an all-access VIP pass. But when possibility shows up, the bouncer doesn't even notice them.

Conclusion

True empowerment comes not from suppressing fear, but from becoming intentional about what we choose

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) So what if one of the biggest things holding you back isn't fear itself, but the fact that you trust your fear, your worries and concerns more than you trust your own potential? Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been. for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock collar and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up. Let's rise up. And let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Just a quick little update on me. For those of you following along, I've gotten the hang of it. What's interesting about cancer and the whole treatment protocol is the cancer is not tough. It's the treatment, right? So you really have to just... go into it as healthy as possible. So if you have not faced that adversity yet, there's a chance that everybody could, right? I would just recommend that you make that a high point and why you would get healthy. I've spent the last 20 years of my life really working on my health. In fact, it's part of my career. I'm a health coach. So I'm handling the adversities. They were really tough in the beginning and they're still tough, but I've gotten used to it. You know, the analogy is like I have a little thumbtack here. And, you know, if I put this thumbtack against my finger, it hurts. But if I leave it there after a while, it doesn't hurt anymore. So I think I'm still experiencing a lot of the tough aspects, but my body is acclimated to it and I'm feeling much better. Greetings from London, Christian. That's awesome. So let's get started. Hey, JD. It says, good morning, JC. It's a pleasure to join for my first session. Hey, JD. That's awesome. JD is one of our... new dragonflies in our podcast academy. We're teaching everybody how to create, launch, scale, grow, and monetize podcasts. If anybody's interested in that, my partner Julie Loken and I have done that. I'm a full-time podcaster and so is she. We're teaching other people how to do that. Okay, so let's get started. This is Selective Trust, learning to trust your potential over your fears. Ooh, sounds good already, doesn't it? So what if one of the biggest things holding you back isn't fear itself, but the fact that you trust your fear, your worries and concerns more than you trust your own potential? We're going to explore a concept called selective trust, and that's the practice of becoming conscious and intentional about which thoughts, predictions, emotions, people, and possibilities are worthy of receiving the currency of us caring and trusting in them. So great morning, humans. Great morning, world. Welcome to another edition of the Make Sense with Dr. JC Dornick podcast, and welcome to the uprising of the sleepwalking masses. The Mindful Deviant says, awesome. Podcasting is hard. I've recorded 85 episodes so far. I would love to be a guest. Well, you are a guest right now, Mindful Deviant, because I'm talking to you and you're on my show. But come check out the Dragonfly Podcast Academy. tons and tons of people that are just growing extraordinary podcasts, you know, so we'd love to help you. But you're on my show right now. So most of us would say that we have trust issues with other people. That's typically what we say about trust. But... What if the more important question is this today? What have you been handing your trust over to inside of your own mind? What's going on in your mind, thoughts, feelings, and things like that, and you're just handing the keys of trust over to them? So think about the strange imbalance that takes place in our minds every day. A fearful thought appears. That's typically what happens. It's going to happen today. Probably already happened for most of you. Sounds like this. What if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if things get worse? God, I've been thinking about that a lot lately with cancer, right? And then all of a sudden the brain has this tendency of just accepting it almost instantly, giving it credentials almost instantly. No evidence required, no background check, no authentication process. There's no bouncer working the door at your nightclub. Fear just walks right through the front door. and it's carrying an all-access VIP pass. And then what it does is it goes in and it selects a seat, or probably like a private booth, that suits its needs, and it sets up camp in your mind, and it's just there. Take note of this. Our minds seem to roll out the red carpet when it comes to fear, wanting to gain entrance into our nightclub. But then converse to that when possibility and potential appears. Might sound like this. Well, what if I can do this? What if I'm stronger than I think? What if the future could be better than I currently imagine it to be? What if the seeds that I'm planting are actually growing and they just require time? Here's my favorite one lately, and this comes personal to me. What if this cancer is actually happening for me? What an interesting and novel idea, and is here to put the finishing touches on my transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. So a lot of people hear me talk like that, and that's a choice, but that's because I've rewired my brain using my systems. But what we're acknowledging right now is that fear seems to just automatically get authenticated and credentialed and come in. But when it comes to potential and possibilities, there's a little bit more of a filtering process. So in most cases, and this is unfortunate, these thoughts of potential and possibilities kind of have this tendency of getting stopped at the door or at least paused. The bouncer doesn't notice them on his guest list and becomes a little bit skeptical. So we're just talking about this interface, possibility and potential shows up and we're just like, well, hold on a second. I'm going to need to see some idea. I don't see you on the list. And why is that? They're very rare in most people's lives. And when things are rare and they don't happen all the time, it draws suspicion. A great analogy of this, and tell me if you've ever felt this, the mindful deviant says, I love this topic. Yeah, of course we love this topic. I mean, like this happens every day, you know. Here's an analogy that I draw, and this happened to me just the other day. So, you know when you go out and you purchase something? Like you spend more money or you purchase something in a place you've never done it, or maybe you're traveling and you make a purchase. And your bank kind of like throws off a red flag and sends you, first of all, it denies the charge. And then it sends you a text saying, is this you? This is an abnormal thing. It's the same thing. If you're not a possibility thinker and you're typically running your lives in reaction and response. to fear and things like that, which most people are doing, whether they admit it or not, it's going to send off a signal and create suspicion. So when potential shows up, your brain requires proof. It requires validation, guarantees, references. Make sense? But when fear shows up, we don't even ask for identification because we're so used to it. So why does fear get an automatic authentication while potential requires two-factor authentication? Isn't that two-factor authentication? Speaker 1 (7:54) It's like, would you like to apply two-factor authentication? The reason why we have to do that is because we live in a world where everybody's trying to scam and infiltrate things. I get that. My son works in that field in digital forensics. So why does fear get automatic authentication while potential requires two-factor authentication? Well, it's a matter of trust. Reminds me of that song. And conditioning. Trust doesn't come free, does it? And neither does what we care about. It doesn't come free. They must be developed and conditioned over time. And fear just simply has more validation and more clout than potential because it's been around more. We've been trained to acknowledge and accept and react to things that we're afraid of, which in many cases comes in handy if you jump out of the way of a car or... not move forward in a very high risk situation or something like that, not take too many risks, you know? So we live in a world that is breeding fear. Look at social media. I mean, that's why we're so susceptible to distraction as well, because we want to get distracted from this icky feeling. But everywhere you look, fear, fear, fear. So that's why fear gets