Fear. Doubt. Anxiety. The mental spiral that makes everything feel heavier than it actually is.
In this episode, Todd and Chris go straight into the “real stuff” that shows up when you’re in transition or uncertainty – especially when you’re trying to make a big change and your nervous system starts writing worst-case stories.
We break down a simple truth: your emotions can feel urgent… without being supported by objective reality. And we give you practical tools to stop the spiral, separate facts from fear, and turn “negative” emotions into forward motion.
In this conversation, you’ll learn:
- Why your nervous system can react like the world is ending – even when the numbers say you’re okay
- How to tell the difference between real fear and “rollercoaster fear”
- A simple method to sort what’s valid vs. imagined
- The “control the controllables” mindset shift (and why it saves massive energy)
- Why numbing out (Netflix, distractions, checking out) keeps you stuck – and what to do instead
- The Allow & Reflect practice Todd uses to process fear and generate solutions
If you’ve been feeling stuck, frozen, or caught in old conditioning… this episode will give you a framework to work with fear – without letting it drive the car.
If this conversation resonated with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook and join a community of people just like you – people designing what’s next.
**Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
Chris: Hey, grownups the feeling of accomplishment and joy that you tried something new, tried something difficult, that was a little bit scary, generally has no attachment to whether you quote unquote, successfully did it, you still feel good that you just did the thing.
What are we talking about today, brother?
Todd: Today is a very well human episode, Chris, because we’re talking about the real stuff that we all deal with when faced with transition or uncertainty in our lives, and we’re addressing it head on today by discussing the quote, negative emotions of fear and doubt and limitation.
And our goal is to give you some new perspectives and practical tools that you can use to navigate the internal narratives that don’t always see the bright side. Okay. And I think it’s important to say upfront that while we are not therapists or psychologists, we both spend a lot of time helping people with the rollercoaster ride of their emotional states.
For me, it’s been 20 years of coaching others and literally thousands of conversations with people in all stages of the reinvention process. And today we’re gonna talk about how to deal with all the negativity we see in the world and on the news, right? It’s a big issue. And we’ll also break down ways for you to harness these quote negative emotions and to powerful new action.
So get out a pen or take some notes at least because ideas are going to pop for you as we’re discussing this. And I keep saying the word quote in front of the phrase, negative emotions for a reason. And I think, Chris, we must start this conversation by shining a light on the very notion of positive and negative emotions.
And I love the framework that you shared as we prepared for this about our nervous system versus objective reality. Maybe we can start there and you can explain what you meant by that.
Chris: Yeah. Well, it, a specific person that I was working with who prompted this conversation very recently. And actually it’s an experience that I’ve had, through my career reinvention. The way you feel and the nerves and the anxiety and the fears that you might have specifically in this context of career reinvention might not actually be born out by the objective facts and reality of your situation.
And you know, this conversation I was having recently with someone who is in the midst of a career reinvention or really just at the start of it, they were just a few weeks before that were expressing, oh, like all of this work I’m doing is taking up all this time and I really wanna re dedicate that time to more creative endeavors and what really drives me and what I think is gonna really kind of be my future work. And then some of that work dropped off their calendar. And rather than, you know, the way I interpreted was, oh, this is great. Now you’ve got an opportunity in some time where you can go do that creative endeavor But what I actually got was a bunch of texts saying, I don’t know, I’m getting a little nervous. I’m feeling like I’m not gonna get, this, paycheck’s not gonna be as big, like, what’s gonna go on here? And then finally ending in, but actually I have a financial buffer for just this reason and I, I’m good. You know? And so I think it was just really highlighting for me that it’s okay to have that feeling of fear and nervousness and anxiousness, and we say this all the time, this is inherent to reinvention because reinvention is change, and change is scary.
There’s no getting around that, nor should there be, but the process of feeling that feeling. Taking it on, moving through it, and then also just actually looking at what you got down on paper, what the objective reality is, what the facts are, and being able to, in a sense, talk yourself down off the ledge a little bit about, well, actually, the way I’m feeling about this, the fear I’m feeling about this is not actually supported by the objective situation.
Todd: Yeah, and it’s a really interesting topic because the emotions can be out of control. They’re not things that you can necessarily control by having a mental framework around them. I mean, that’s what they are, right? You know, having fear, having doubt can overpower rational reality. And so I think what you’re pointing to is this idea that we can have fears that aren’t based on rational reality.
Okay. And when you’re talking about career reinvention, we find this to be very common. That people have money concerns pretty much across the board. They’re worried about financial, stuff. They’re worried about the future of their financial stability. And for some people, there isn’t really a rational reason to have that fear.
It’s just born out of a past trajectory of having some level of security while also Chris, for others, there really is a very real financial fear that’s very real that needs to be addressed. And I think what we’re wanting to get across, this is a nuanced thing, which is why I love that we’re doing this podcast, by the way, right?
Because this is like the real stuff that people deal with in their head. When they’re looking out into the future and thinking, well, what am I gonna do for the future, the next 20, 30 years of my career? How am I gonna match up my money making with the things that I wanna do and my lifestyle and all the fun things that we talk about here?
But at the end of the day, it’s these fears and doubts that we need to turn to and look at and start to understand how many of them are based on real things and how many of them are just kind of there because they’re ruminating in the way that I was brought up, or patterns that are deeper. And I think that when we shine a light on it and we get tactical around our emotions, which again is harder to do because emotions are strong and we just look at it.
And in this case, your example is a good one because. For some people, there is no rational reason why you’re so worried about money. And so when I get someone like that, I’m like, Hey, you are good. You did a great job building runway and having security like this is what you built it for. Now you want to turn to opportunity and the idea that, hey, let me now figure out a life in front of me and a work in front of me that can be exciting and make money because I have some time and let me now do the work that I need to do, which is putting those fears that are somewhat unsubstantiated aside for the moment, so I can now be free and excited and optimistic about my future. Right, and I think that’s probably what you told this client or a member of ours, whoever it was, but that’s a really wise way to look at it.
Chris: You brought up a great point, which is everyone’s situation is different. This is very circumstantial, right? So we are working with people, we know people who, the financial challenge is a little bit more real, a little bit more front and center. But you also brought up the flip side of that, which we both know people and work with people who It’s almost like you look at the situation from the outside and you say, you’re set for life. You’re set for life and you still are in this place where you can’t really bring yourself to get over that feeling of fear and emotion around this. We’re not psychologists, we’re not therapists in that sense, but there’s gotta be some childhood psychology or some scarcity or, you know, I know for me, I think about generationally the behaviors and mindsets of my family and the way everyone always sort of inherited that depression mentality from two generations back, even though the depression was two generations back. And I think you’ve got that at play with a lot of people. For me, I know Todd, you can be more direct sometimes than I am in the way we coach people individually right. I’m maybe a little bit more roundabout and oblique. But sometimes I do wanna just look at someone and say, do you realize the numbers we’re talking about here? Like, you could go be a greeter at Home Depot. It’s really interesting how the emotions can cloud the objective element of it.
And I think there’s more than just money around this, right? There’s prestige, there’s status, there’s all the identity points that we talk about but I think they sort of manifest as the emotion of fear or anxiety. And so there’s a lot that can be unpacked behind that.
Todd: Yeah, I was gonna say, there’s a saying that I learned a while back, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical, right? So you can apply this to money, you can apply this to virtually any area in your life. But when you have an internal experience of being hysterical around something like, oh my God, the world is ending.
Oh my God, how am I gonna deal this anxiety buildup. It’s almost always not a result of the circumstance that you’re in. It’s coming from what you said before, history, your deeper patterns, and so when you’re in a process of reinvention, okay, this means that you’re in a process of transition. Transition is scary, okay?
It’s scary for all of us. It’s just built in to the idea that, okay, we’re looking at creating something new. You’re gonna deal with historical patterns. The call is for the most successful reinventors, get that, understand that the waters are murky. You know, the terrain is a little bit messy. And so our shared belief around this is to turn into that and not run away from it because running away from it.
Is where you then go to distractions. You then go to drinking or checking out, watching five hours of Netflix every night. Or just doing those behaviors, those checkout numbing behaviors, because you don’t wanna deal with the reality that you’re scared and that you’re nervous and that some of it doesn’t have to do with the actual situation that you’re in, and some of it does.
Right. I wanna get back to that because some of the things that you’re nervous about and worried about are real, you know, financial limitation, for example. So what you wanna do is start to get tactical by writing out the fears that you have and almost making like a list of the things that are valid and real and the things that aren’t as valid and real.
And this is a new practice for a lot of people because I don’t think most humans, we weren’t taught how to do that in school. Our parents didn’t teach us how to do that, but here we are, midlife kind of dealing with the state of the world and AI and all this stuff going down. And we’re literally trying to figure out what we’re gonna do going forward.
We’ve gotta master our emotions, Chris. Like we’ve gotta look at our internal states. We gotta turn to that and start getting tactical around it. And it starts there, right? Like it starts by not numbing, not distracting, but saying, all right, what am I dealing with here? This is a moment to look at yourself in the mirror and say, what am I made of?
Okay. Like for a lot of people that are reinventing, I tell them straight up, you said I’m direct. I say, look, you wanted this, you know, there is something about you are sick of that old life. You want this new life. Okay, let’s deal with the fear and the limitation and the doubt that you have, because otherwise you’re gonna stay stuck.
You’re gonna stay in this small life and you’re gonna make decisions that protect you from dealing with that fear and anxiety. And those decisions are actually the ones that have kept you in this trajectory that has led you to feel unsatisfied. So let’s change that.
Chris: That’s a real call to take this on. Right? And to lean into it and to accept and feel the emotional elements of it, the fear, the anxiety, and I said this I think in the community the other day, assessing whether you’re dealing with true fear or rollercoaster fear. Right? Just ’cause you have the boiling feeling in your stomach doesn’t always actually mean that you’re on a plane that’s going down. Sometimes you’re on a rollercoaster. Wheee, right? it’s that assessment, right? And I think when you’re writing down on paper what’s real and what’s imagined? I think that’s really important. And there’s another thought, and I, this is a phrase that I just read. I think I read this in this book by Daron k Roberts, who is a, uh, former NFL position coach, and he’s like a coach himself, control the controllables, right?
Todd: I love that.
Chris: Looking at it through the lens of there’s a lot of things that might truly be real and scary. But if they’re not controllable, you really have to assess how much of my energy, if any, is it valuable to allow or to put into that uncontrollable element.
Todd: Yeah.
Chris: there’s so much energy drain that can happen if we are not thoughtful and cautious and careful around that end. I know you and I differ on this, right? In terms of maybe bigger picture stuff, that it’s how blind are the blinders in a sense, right? Do you wanna know? Do you want to not know? But the point is, is that the controllables are the things that you can make and impact on.
And in terms of moving your life forward and moving your reinvention forward, you really want just about a hundred percent of your energy focused on controllables.
Todd: Yeah, totally agree with you. I mean, I think, you know, I’m pretty direct in my stance on the question of how much time and energy do we spend as individuals thinking about the state of the world and all the stuff that we see in the news, all of the wars, all of the sustainability issues that we’re facing as a global culture.
I mean, look like I am not blind to it. No one’s blind to the challenges that are happening in the world. All the suffering. Like, I mean, being human is tough, man. But then the question becomes, how do I interact with that? Because part of the stress and anxiety that we’re dealing with, it isn’t just your personal finances and the things that are unique to you.
It’s also this meta stress and meta anxiety about being human that we all deal with. And my approach has evolved on this over the years, by which it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I have a pretty strong stance that spending time worrying about the uncontrollables, and in this case, that’s the state of the world and what’s going on.
Isn’t very useful, right? My blinders are pretty strong and it’s actually served me well, you know, and I know that people say, well, that’s naive, and how can you not be connected and you’re not empathetic? And actually that hasn’t been my experience because I’m still very connected with what’s happening in the world.
You still get your news, you still get your information, you still feel the feelings, but it’s more compartmentalized. In a way that it’s not bringing me down and making me frozen in my life. Okay? And I think that’s the important thing. So my recommendation when I’m coaching people is you’ll have your own experience of how you’re dealing with all the problems in the world.
It’s your choice how you want to deal with it, but your life is short. Your life is this finite thing that’s going by like this. As we get older, we see how fast it’s going by, and you have a choice about how you wanna roll through this life. And for me, I’ve made the choice to really stay in that optimistic lane that, I have an opportunity to have an impact.
I have an opportunity to help others. I have an opportunity to raise my daughter in a certain way, and I want to give the best of myself as much as I can. And what that means is not getting bogged down in the things that I don’t have control over. Right, like how many wars are happening in the world and like the state of global financial systems and all these things that are just in play right now.
And so it’s a pretty direct approach that I have that I know is not for everybody, but I will say that when you’re in a process of reinvention, this is a time to hone it in, you know, to start to get in your own life, in your own body, and start to get really clear about what the things you can control versus the things you can’t, and start spending more of your time and energy, just like he said on the things that you can.
Chris: And I’ll put my, slightly different lens on it. I mostly align with that. Some of the things that I am seeing in the world are so egregious to me that I have the question to myself of, do I have a responsibility or what is my responsibility to act on that? And I will not get into that ’cause I don’t want to get down that rabbit hole in this conversation.
But what I will say is, if I am not going to act on that, or if I am unclear on what my actions are going to be on that, simply thinking about it and worrying about it and spending time ruminating on it is wasted time. So if I’m going to say, Hey, I have choices to make where I have to do some things in this area because I feel like it’s my responsibility for whatever reason it is.
Great, well then I’m gonna dedicate some time to that and take action. But if I think my action is, I better read a thousand threads about this, that is not a valuable use of my time. It’s a compartmentalization, I think, of a similar but different kind. And we all have choices to make about how we prioritize our time, and especially let’s get back to people who are specifically in career reinvention.
When you are moving from a place of more structure, in most cases to less structure, time prioritization gets more and more important, and that’s why emotional mastery gets more and more important because every day you are going to wake up, in some cases, if you’re an entrepreneur, you are going to wake up by yourself and have to define what that day looks like and what you are accomplishing and what you are going to work on.
And you don’t have this big behemoth system that you’re in that the train is just running and you just have to hop on it every day. So emotional mastery, while I would argue it’s very important for everyone in all walks of life is especially important for career reinventors.
Todd: Yeah, no, I agree. And I just wanna like go back to that initial point. I know we we’re kind of going into some deep stuff here about our beliefs, but I do want to talk about it because when you talk about responsibility, the reflection that I’ve gotten over the years from even people that I’m very close with in my family, you’re turning a blind eye to so many of the problems in the world where you could be making a positive impact based on who you are and what you do, and you’re not doing that.
I’ve had that very direct feedback from a lot of people, and I feel misunderstood when I hear that because my approach is to live my best life and to hone myself to be an optimistic stand for my own greatness and best life and for everyone that I touch.
And that’s my responsibility. That’s my solution. And it is very polar in a sense
Chris: That’s mission.
Todd: It’s my mission is to help people live their best life. If enough people are doing that, I believe in the good in humanity. That there will be tipping points along the way where things will change collectively to be better.
So I feel like I’m fueling people to live, with energy, with optimism, with positivity, so that way they can go out, and have the impact that they’re meant to do. ’cause not everyone’s gonna hold it like I do. I’ve helped so many people as a coach over the years, and I watched what they do years later and people were doing extraordinary things with their lives, so training them to have that emotional mastery and holding this kind of negativity in maybe a way that’s different than they were taught. I’ve seen it firsthand that that’s actually helped them and they’re now out there. We’re all here to help others become the best version of themselves, and that’s what we are here to do.
Right? So I just have a very particular way because when people say, oh, that very irresponsible or naive, I’m like, no, it’s a choice, about what my responsibility is. And so training myself to be a certain way and then helping others is something that I take pretty seriously. And it’s not like I’m perfect,
meaning this notion of compartmentalization of negative emotions, which we touched on. Let’s talk about that for a minute. ’cause I think this is a very practical way that you and I both agree. This is not a call when you’re reinventing to squash all of your negative, fearful thoughts down the toilet and not allow them a place to live and breathe.
This is not human. This is not our recommendation, right? This is not what I do. I have a particular practice where I call it allow and reflect, and we’ve talked about it on this podcast, and I know it’s something that you also do in your own way, but this idea of allowing and reflecting, allowing the negativity, the fear to come up.
Sometimes when I’m sitting in meditation, sometimes I write it out. Sometimes I talk it out, I allow it. Because there’s also information there that’s useful. But I don’t allow it to dictate and control the trajectory of my life, it’s almost like that negative stuff, Chris is fuel that wants to burn and wants to come out, and I let it burn and come out, but it’s under the umbrella of that’s gonna happen for a period of time. But then I’m going to use that to try to do my real mission to life, which is to be positive, to help others, to be a force of good in the world. So it’s not a complete dismissal of this stuff. It’s more like putting it, in its place and allowing it its space under some form of relatively structured way of going about it.
Does that make sense?
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And by, by the way one of the ways I deal with this stuff, the allow and reflect, is through the morning pages, writing in the morning, letting it out. But I have stolen from you the walk and talk. I do the walk and talk. I put Otter on the phone it’s great. It transcribes the walk and talk.
I’ve done a couple of run and talks this week where I go for a jog and I have it on, and I’m just speaking on the jog. I mean, you know, i’m in New York, so people assume I’m doing like a hedge fund deal or something like that. But actually what I’m doing is I’m just free associating and letting it out and processing emotions, processing nerves and anxiety around things.
And then also like getting some great business ideas, getting some content ideas, getting some things I wanna work on, ideas for things with the family. I mean, it’s really, it’s been really effective and that’s not necessarily the goal of that, but it’s been pretty cool.
Todd: Getting it out, right? Like giving yourself some space and like, oh look, the free writing stuff that Julia Cameron made famous with her book, The Artist’s Way, doing morning pages and just allowing your fingers to move, right? And getting to a state where your fingers are moving, which is just getting information out.
It could be good, it could be bad, it could be whatever the self-talk that you’re talking about is another practice that, look, if you’re listening to this moment, start doing this practice. Right? And Chris, you mentioned it, but I want to get more detail of like going for a walk or a run. I never did it running.
Putting on some headphones and just allowing yourself to talk about what’s going on. And for me, when I do this, most of it starts off with negative stuff, my fears, my doubts, my limitations. Like I let it out. I’m really worried about this right now. I’m really worried about money. I don’t know how we’re gonna do this.
I let it out. You know, you allow it, that’s what allow and reflect is you start with allowing, you let it out. And what always happens, and I’ve been doing this for years, is that I let it out and at some point it’s like, I’ve had enough of it and I’m like, okay, like that’s there. And then I get into like creative solutions and creative ideas.
it almost like spurs something else to come out. Right? And this is so big for people that are in reinvention right now because there’s so much anxiety and stress. But if you just allow, you get to solution faster and I think most people just miss that one. I’m so happy to hear that you’re doing that.
Are you getting emotional? Like are you really allowing like the emotions to come out when you’re doing it,
Chris: Yeah, I mean, listen, when I’m running, it’s mostly heavy breathing, more so than emotions, but, uh, yeah, exactly. Read the transcript, don’t listen to it. But it is actually interesting because I notice, especially, again, I work from home and I’m creating the structure every day, right? A lot of times when I go for a run, like I don’t do it first thing in the morning too often.
Right now, at least in the winter. A lot of times when I go for a run that is spurred by the fact that I’m feeling frustrated. I’ve been banging my head against the wall on something I’m working on, or I’m trying to figure out all the millions of different things you have to try to figure out as an entrepreneur and a business person.
And I’m like kind of pissed off and then I’ll go for a run. And now that I’ve added in this talking element of it, like you said, it starts from a place of like, I just am almost complaining in the beginning or just letting it out, like letting the steam off. And then it’s a combination I think, it’s a multiplier because running itself walking and running.
Both just is gonna make the feeling better and then it’s getting the words out with the feeling together that’s pretty awesome. I, I recommend it. I can already hear people saying, I don’t wanna run or talk to myself. And I’m saying, do both at the same time,
Todd: Well, the, the body part is big, having the body movement part of it. There’s something to to that aspect of it that allows like the emotions to come through. I remember I had done, years back, you know this, Chris, I’ve done a lot of personal growth work type work, a lot of programs, you know, in my past.
And I did this thing called the Hoffman Process years back, which is like a seven day deep dive retreat, you know, into like mommy and daddy issues. And one of the things that they do there is this, pretty well-known technique of bashing, you know, where you actually get out like a whiffle ball bat and you’re like you know, you have to think about, your mom and you’re hitting this pillow, and at first you’re like, oh my God, whatever. You know, like literally it’s like this, you’re like, okay. But you’re in a room with people and then all of a sudden, like, you know, that hitting gets a little bit more, you know?
And, and I am not lying okay. You’re in a room with 40 people doing this, an hour into it, it’s unbelievable what happens. Like there is a lot of stuff stored in our physical bodies and that technique is used to get it out and the getting it out counts it clears it, right? and then in the clearing, new stuff can emerge.
And that’s what you’re doing when you’re running and you’re moving and you’re talking, you’re allowing information to move through you. And so that’s why this emotional mastery part of reinvention is so big because for a lot of people, we get stuck in our head. It’s so much of the rational, what do I need to do?
Like, we are living in a culture that is addicted to the prefrontal cortex way of processing information, which is just not the only game in town. Right? So we need to get into our bodies. We need to get into our emotions. And I’m not saying change the way that you’re being. Be a prefrontal cortex person 90% of the time, but for 10%, use the other aspects of yourself to get the information out.
And that’s where the freedom lies. That’s where the ideas lie. That’s where the creativity lies. So I love that you’re doing it and it feels weird at first, but it works.
Chris: Let’s Stay here for a minute. I think we’ll probably do a whole episode on physicality and vitality, and I think that’s a really important topic we talk about in the realm of reinvention, but for people who are in the career reinvention moment, especially if maybe, maybe you got laid off and you’re between jobs, or maybe you are doing some freelancing or consulting and you’ve got a little bit more of a flexible schedule.
Can we please all take advantage of the beauty of this, that what you can do, that many adults do not do and cannot do is at random times during the day, you can get up from the damn desk and go move around and move your body in space. And it doesn’t always have to be my official exercise time. You can get up and this is a good one, Todd.
My daughter got a gymnastics mat for Christmas.
Todd: Mm-hmm.
Chris: And it was laid out on the living room floor. And you know what I did the other day? For the first time in probably 30 years, I did a forward roll, Todd.
Todd: I have a very weird visual of you breaking like your super expensive coffee table that your wife, you know,
Chris: Right, exactly. I came up and I saw stars, but I did a forward roll, damnit, you know, just, I’m saying it is one of those things that like this is actually, if you’re in a time when you might be feeling a little untethered, you’re like, I had my 40 hour a week job and now I don’t. Can we look at the flip side and the beauty of it to say, Hey you just got like 40 hours back, right? I know there’s a lot of stuff you’re nervous about and you’re gonna fill that time and figure out what you do and for work, but like you also have a flexibility now that you can literally, you don’t have to be sitting in this desk all day long. And I’m gonna tell you, for me personally, a lot of times when I’m away from the desk, I have this ancient feeling of I should be at the desk. I’m not doing the right thing, I’m not being responsible, or whatever it is. Well, we just talked about it. A lot of work gets done out there too, right? Going out, walking around, running around, keep your transcript going if you’re doing the walk and talk or whatever, but it is an integration of your physicality and an integration of your body into your life.
In a way that to me, feels much more the way humans were actually designed and expected to live before we got into this, post-industrial dystopia, Excel desk phase
Todd: Yeah. Look man, you’re right in my wheelhouse right here because you know, one of the things in my, one-on-one practice, I talk a lot about changing the physical routines, right? So you doing a forward roll, this is breaking physical patterns,
Chris: and my neck
Todd: which then, which then break, right? Which then can break emotional patterns, which then can break mental patterns, right?
So changing the physicality is huge. Right? Jumping in, you know, this isn’t for everybody, especially for women. There’s a lot of research out, but jumping into a cold shower on the whole Wim Hof thing, I don’t know if you’ve ever done Wim Hof, I have been a big jumping into a cold shower guy and then for a while I was really got all into David Goggins.
I don’t know if you know who he is, but this dude is like
Chris: that might be too much.
Todd: oh no, he is off his rocker. No doubt. I am not sitting here saying, you guys all go do David Goggins stuff, like did I start getting up at five o’clock in the morning and did I have a little ruck sack on, or did I start running in the dark out with all the homeless people by where I live with a ruck sack. Like in a lot of pain and bewilderment about why am I doing this? Just so I could start to break some patterns and then come home and jump in an ice cold shower and be like, what am I doing? And then by six o’clock I felt better than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. And before my daughter and wife got up, I had gotten like all this work done and I’m like, what is going on right now?
Like my eyes are. Like this stuff counts, right? Like this is what we’re talking about here is just the idea of breaking patterns, right? And getting out of the real and not real reasons that you’re stressed by using physical practices and things that we’re talking about here. So you can start to have more space and start to see the opportunities in front of you because, I like to say that, wherever you’re at right now listening to these words, there’s an infinite number of possibilities in front of you, and that’s very hard for our condition minds to understand. But like literally, there’s an infinite level of possibilities and you can make choices starting in the right now to start to change stuff.
And that’s what reinvention is. It’s an opportunity, to make change based on the things that you really wanna have happen, like the life that you want, the career that you want, the money that you want, it’s all possible. We just need to start putting and compartmentalizing some of these negative ways of thinking and being in the world, including what we talked about today, the stuff in the world, the stuff that in our personal life that maybe doesn’t even really matter, being smart about compartmentalizing it, not squashing it, allowing it as space in a compartment and then moving forward and building that life, building that future man, like you and I are doing it right now with reinvention. Even doing this podcast as part of our dream to do this right. And then building a community and the things that we’re doing, I just want to fuel more people to see that.
And I think the physical stuff we tapped into, which is unexpected is a big part to it.
Chris: it is. Absolutely, the physical part really is a good metaphor too, because what it is, is when you feel that frozenness or that blackness or that frustration or whatever it is, physically go take action and it breaks up and you feel better and you process it and maybe you get some good ideas.
Similarly, the metaphor is, when you’re stuck and ruminating and you’re thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking yourself through something, well, when you actually go and take action, then you’re probably gonna notice the thing that you are so scared of, in terms of a career reinvention activity that you do. It’s not quite as scary as you actually thought it was. A lot of times the stakes are not that high in the beginning around the specific actions that you’re gonna take. The overall stakes are high, right? This is a life thing. This stuff matters. But the actions themselves, it’s just this interesting thing, how much scarier they are, prior to the time of the event.
And then when you actually go do it, afterwards you look back and you’re like, that’s what I was scared of. It’s really interesting, no matter how many times as a human being, you go through that.
Todd: Not only that, but how about like how good you feel that you did it? I had this whole thing with my daughter today on the way to school because she is eight years old and terrified of speaking in front of her class, like public speaking. Right. Jerry Seinfeld has that famous joke where he said, public speaking and death are the two biggest fears, you know, that humans have, but actually public speaking is higher, more of a fear than dying. So that means if you go to a funeral, you’d rather be the one in the casket than giving the eulogy. Right. You know, like, so, so it’s a big fear. I said to her this morning, I’m like, part of life is addressing that fear and building the courage to do that thing.
And what you’ll find is that it’s not as scary as you think and you wanna have that feeling on the other side. It’s a new experience. Right. And I think that’s what we’re getting into here in reinvention. As adults, we’re so locked into 40, 50 years of trajectory of our thinking that breaking this stuff up is always a little bit harder.
So when you talk about doing a front roll, that’s so relevant, Chris. You know, and I challenge you next time, do a handstand go against your door and actually, yeah, you’re laughing. They’re like, start doing a handstand .
Chris: Like we say, find the limits of your talents. I think that might be a way I find the limits of my talents. But I wanna latch onto something you said there Because I love, it’s so beautiful, I love when you bring up your daughter in this ’cause these are such beautiful life lessons.
I love that you get to give them to her and share them with her as you go to school. Right. But hey, grownups that are listening, You too. the feeling of accomplishment and joy that you tried something new, tried something difficult, that was a little bit scary, generally has no attachment to whether you quote unquote, successfully did it like I didn’t say I did a pretty forward roll, Todd.
I didn’t say I got a 6.0 from the Belarusian judge. you know what I’m saying? you still feel good that you just did the thing and that’s what is s o interesting. ’cause these good feelings are readily accessible to us. If we just had the courage to really, to drop the ego a lot of times and just do the thing that’s a little uncomfortable, put ourself out there.
How many people have we talked to in our one-on-one practice and in the community who, like when they do their first social media post, they’re on the front side of it for like a year. I’ve been thinking about putting something on social media and then they do it and they’re like, oh, that wasn’t bad.
Like they feel great. They’re like, oh, I did that. Yeah. It’s not like their first video they make gets 50,000 views and they get like all these followers. It’s just like they did the thing now they don’t have to have the feeling of not having done the thing, and they do get to have the feeling of having done the thing.
It’s that simple.
Todd: Yeah, it’s, feel the fear and do it anyway. It’s not squash the fear and never deal with it. Right. That’s why I love the allow and reflect cause like we’re building it in we’re human and we’re gonna have these bad moments, you know, and bad hours and even a bad day, and we’re gonna have a fear.
and we keep moving forward. Right. And so, man, I gotta tell you, I love this conversation. You know, we didn’t have much of an agenda coming in here, where we went to is really fortified some of our partnership in terms of like what we’re really trying to get across.
Because at the end of the day when we’re working with people that are reinventing the career, it’s hard, right? There is fear, there is doubt, there is anxiety in the process and my belief is that this conversation is so very important to that because it gives all of us hope. That we don’t have to stay stuck in a prior trajectory.
Our whole premise of reinvention is that your next career can be extraordinary if you align it with a version of yourself that you want to become and not who you were. This is real transformational stuff right here. And so this conversation is big. ’cause this is like the nuts and bolts, like where the rubber meets the road.
’cause we’re dealing with it. We’re all in it, you know, dealing with our stuff. And so we invite you to continue to follow us along here, subscribe to us wherever you’re listening to us, follow us along, right? If you’re interested in potentially joining our community, it’s unbelievable. We have these amazing people that are into reinvention.
They’re reinventing their careers it’s a beautiful energy. On the calls, we do like two calls a week. It’s a lot of connection. We also have a workbook, a reinvention workbook that you can work yourself through. It’s a self-guided thing that we’re working on right now, releasing at the time of this recording.
We’re about to release it so when you’re listening to this, it’s probably there. And we’re a stand for reinvention. We’re a stand for you to get to the other side and find success and fulfillment faster. And I just love doing this with you, man. ’cause it just. Spirals up, and it just makes me feel motivated and clear about what we’re doing.
And I think we’re modeling it for others as well. And that also makes me feel like we’re in flow. So thank you
Chris: Exactly. It’s really exciting. We’re practicing what we preach here and it’s a lot of fun and I love helping people and working with the people in our community and, and our listeners. So thanks man. I appreciate it, Todd.
Todd: so good. Yeah. More soon. We’ll be back shortly and, uh, have a good day. Thanks everybody.
