939 Become Friends with Fear

We’ve talked about the upside of dark emotions, how to turn stress into serenity, and now today’s guest, Dr. Lissa Rankin, is coming back on the show to share how we can heal ourselves (physically and emotionally) when we understand fear. Lissa is an incredible example of this in her own life, but for her new book on fear, she actually traveled the world and talked to many different people in varied cultures to better understand our concept of fear in the West. In our conversation she pulls the covers back on how fear affects our physical health, how our society perpetuates a sick relationship with fear, and how we truly have the power to heal ourselves when we understand what is behind our fear. For this 5 Minute Friday, I wanted to share a clip from a past episode where Lissa explains how we can become friends with our fear by learning to trust our intuition. If you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/939 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to today's episode with my dear friend, Dr. Lisa Rankin. I've had her on before and I just love the energy that I get from her. So I wanted to bring her back on to talk about a new topic which coincides with her previous one, which we talked about, which was mind over medicine. This one's all about fear.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  The other two of the courage cultivating truths, which is that the opposite of it's a hostile universe is it's a purposeful universe. Or maybe even it's a friendly universe. Albert Einstein says, "The most important decision you'll ever make is whether we live in a hostile or friendly universe." And you know, that's a belief system. I acknowledge that's a belief system, but I have lived a life, and I know you share this, Lewis, but I have lived a life where I have evidence that it's a purposeful universe, that everything that has happened in my life, I can look back and see how it grew me as a soul, even if it was painful at the time. How adversity can be an opportunity for soul growth.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  And if we, if we stop feeling like we're at the mercy of a random chaotic universe, where like bad things happen to good people and you know, and there's nothing you can do about it, so you better just shore up and try to guard yourself. If you start trusting that like, wow, I mean, one of the questions that I ask myself a lot, if something's happening that I don't like, I'm like, wow, why did I write that into my movie script? If I'm co-creating my life and my thoughts, beliefs and feelings are participating in what's actually happening in this 3D world, why, why would my soul have written this part into my life? And it actually helps to just shift my perspective so that I can see, wow, okay, I can see how

• 1:55Speaker 01

  this is purposeful, even if I don't love it. And then the last one is, instead of "I am all alone," you know, most spiritual traditions teach "we are all one."

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  That we're interconnected in a web of life, that we have our, you know, we are energy, as is everything else in the universe, and that the energy of us as humans is participating with the consciousness of plants and animals and even inanimate objects. I run a training program from doc- with doctors and we teach them how to kind of manipulate energy by bending spoons and all kinds of fun stuff like that. And, once you actually recognize the interconnectedness of all things, then you stop feeling so alone in a hostile universe. You start realizing that it is a purposeful universe and that everything is, you know,

• 2:49Speaker 01

  like dominoes. We're all, we're all related. And so, you know, you're not in this isolated bubble. And in the fear cure, like I said, I have such a scientific mind. I, there's a chapter about each of those courage cultivating truths in the fear cure where I include evidence. Like, this isn't just a spiritual belief. Like, here's the evidence that these things are true. And there's actual scientific evidence behind these things, which I think is pretty exciting.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, very cool.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  So I want to answer, I don't want to ignore your other question.

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Not at all. I apologize for interrupting you on it.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  No, it's okay.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  What did I ask you?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  You asked me about how we become friends with our fear.

• 3:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes. So what's, so can we become friends with fear? And if so, how do we start that process?

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's a lot of tools in the book, but I think part of it is learning how to discern true fear from false fear, and recognizing that both, we can have friendly relationships with both true fear and false fear. So it's not like, true fear is our friend and false fear is our enemy. False fear can also be our friend. So true fear... And like I said, the trick is discerning. That's the really, that's the challenge. That's the challenge is when you have a thought, like let's say you have a thought that says, "My spouse is cheating on me," right? Or, "I'm gonna run out of money." And this triggers a stress response in the amygdala, in the brain. It triggers the fight or flight response. It fills the body with cortisol and epinephrine. You know, your heart rate starts going up, your blood pressure raises, this increases

• 4:16Speaker 01

  your risk of heart disease. Sure. Okay, so what do you do with the thought? And is that, is that a thought that's gonna protect the physical body? Like when a tiger's chasing you? Well, no, not, not right now unless your spouse is cheating on you and has a knife. You know? Um, so how do we, how do we manage these thoughts that come into our head? Is it an intuition that is calling for our attention? Or is it a false fear that we need to really just ignore? And so, learning these tools to discern these, um, you know, can help us to identify which thoughts that show up in our heads are meant to be true fears that literally physically

• 5:00Speaker 01

  affect the body, but not just affect the body, like affect our life, protect our, our life, our, our loved ones, our hearts, our health? And which thoughts are thoughts that we need to, um, you know, have a different kind of relationship with.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.