Transcript
00:55
PATRICK SWEENEY: Thank you all.
00:57
It's a pleasure to be here.
00:58
I'm really very honored to be giving a Google talk.
01:01
It's exciting for me.
01:02
I was looking forward to this for quite a long time.
01:04
And we're going to talk today about the surprising power
01:07
of fear.
01:08
And I could have never imagined the things
01:10
that Elaine had mentioned.
01:12
If you look in the background, that's
01:13
me, actually going down across one of the glaciers
01:17
on Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe.
01:19
And I could have never even imagined that 15 years ago.
01:22
So I'm here to share a little bit of that journey.
01:25
Before we get started, tell me, who
01:28
today has made a decision based on fear?
01:32
Raise your hands.
01:34
OK.
01:35
Who in the past week has made a decision based on fear?
01:40
OK.
01:41
So if you think about it--
01:43
I think we've got a very confident group here,
01:46
or there might be a little bit of a confidence bias--
01:50
if you think about the reason you stopped
01:51
at a red light this morning on your way
01:54
into work, walking into work or biking into work,
01:56
was the motivation behind that fear or something else?
02:00
There's only two motivations in your decision making.
02:02
We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
02:04
So according to Dr. Srini Pillay at Harvard, 88% of us
02:10
harbor hidden fears.
02:13
And of course, if you ask anyone, no.
02:15
I don't have any hidden fears.
02:16
Because they're hidden, or else they wouldn't have them.
02:19
So we're going to explore that a little bit today.
02:22
Because it affects your emotions.
02:24
And if you look at Jane, here, so you're
02:26
not Mr. Perfect, Brad, but marriage means more to me
02:30
than love ever could.
02:31
So she has some hidden fears, obviously, of being abandoned
02:35
and that sort of thing.
02:36
The latest research that we have available to us
02:40
shows that the only way to conquer fear
02:44
is to find more of it.
02:46
Most people don't realize that.
02:48
That to really tame fear, you have to find more of it.
02:53
So there's only two choices you have.
02:55
You can either tame fear, or fear can tame you.
03:00
There's no in-between.
03:02
Ripping the lid off those hidden fears
03:04
will dramatically change your life.
03:06
They're going to change your emotions.
03:07
They'll change how you deal with your colleagues at work,
03:10
they'll change how you deal with your friends and family,
03:12
and they'll change how you feel about yourself.
03:15
So today, I'm going to go into a three-step framework,
03:18
using the latest neuroscience, that's
03:20
going to help you rip the lid off those hidden fears
03:22
and learn how to use that fear as fuel.
03:24
That's the exciting part is when you can get to the point
03:27
where that fear doesn't become something you avoid,
03:30
but rather it becomes a source of fuel for you.
03:33
So it's going to make you happier.
03:34
It's going to make you more successful,
03:36
and it's going to bring about world peace.
03:38
And I'll cover that in about 30 minutes.
03:40
Now, you Googlers should be impressed.
03:42
Because the Dalai Lama takes about an hour
03:45
to get to his world speech part.
03:47
I'm going to do it in half the time.
03:48
So it's 50% more efficient, even though the Lama
03:51
is a big hitter.
03:52
So my mission has been to bring fear to people
03:56
and to help people find more of it.
03:58
I've worked with CEOs, professional athletes, US
04:00
Special Forces, and we found some amazing things,
04:04
and I'm going to share that with you.
04:05
One of the things that's clear is we all have a gift,
04:08
and that gift is inside.
04:10
And oftentimes, fear keeps it locked in to people.
04:15
So I'm going to start out today, before we get into the science,
04:17
with a gift for all of you.
04:20
Whenever I come to a new country,
04:21
I like to do something to celebrate the culture.
04:24
So I'm going to sing "Frere Jacques,"
04:26
a traditional Swiss lullaby, but I can't sing.
04:30
So we're a little pressed for time.
04:33
I usually ask for volunteers, but Elaine said
04:35
we don't have so much time.
04:36
So I'm going to pick five people from the audience
04:39
to come up and sing with me.
04:40
And I'm going to start out with you, sir, in the gray shirt.
04:43
Ma'am, you with the kind of cranberry-colored shirt
04:47
back there.
04:48
And ma'am, back there, with the flowered shirt on.
04:51
Yes, please.
04:51
Come on up.
04:52
Yeah.
04:52
Come on right up here.
04:55
And sir, with the glasses on.
04:56
Please come over here.
04:57
Ma'am, even though you're not looking at me,
04:59
I can still see you.
05:00
Come on.
05:01
Come on up.
05:02
You'll be our last one.
05:05
OK.
05:06
Now, we have these five folks.
05:09
If I could ask your name.
05:11
AUDIENCE: Andres.
05:11
PATRICK SWEENEY: Andres.
05:12
AUDIENCE: Jana.
05:13
PATRICK SWEENEY: Jana.
05:14
AUDIENCE: Maria.
05:14
PATRICK SWEENEY: Maria.
05:15
AUDIENCE: Xander.
05:16
PATRICK SWEENEY: Xander.
05:17
AUDIENCE: Juana.
05:17
PATRICK SWEENEY: Juana.
05:18
AUDIENCE: Andrea.
05:19
PATRICK SWEENEY: Andrea.
05:19
OK.
05:20
So we've got these six folks up here
05:22
who either are going to become the stars of Google--
05:25
because this is going out to hundreds of thousands
05:27
of people, who will see it all over the world, all
05:30
over Google's organization, everywhere.
05:33
So they're either going to be tremendous stars,
05:35
or they're going to be looking for work,
05:37
looking for a new spouse and partner,
05:40
and living in some shack in the woods
05:43
because they embarrassed themselves so badly.
05:45
So don't think about that though.
05:47
What I want you to think about is just what we're going to do.
05:50
OK.
05:50
Come on in a little closer.
05:51
On three, we're going to-- one, two, three.
05:53
Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, dormez vous?
05:55
Dormez vous?
05:55
You all know the words, right?
05:57
OK.
05:57
So we're going to start out.
05:59
One, two, three.
06:01
Fr-- oh, no.
06:02
I can't believe you guys thought I was actually
06:04
going to make you sing.
06:05
OK.
06:06
Nobody is going to sing up here.
06:08
And if you're in the audience, and you
06:09
were thinking you might get picked,
06:11
I want you to stop right now and answer the same question
06:14
I'm going to ask these guys.
06:15
How do you feel?
06:16
How do you feel?
06:19
AUDIENCE: Relieved.
06:20
PATRICK SWEENEY: You feel relieved.
06:21
A second ago-- a second ago, how did you feel?
06:24
Let's say, before you felt relieved.
06:25
How'd you feel?
06:28
AUDIENCE: Ridiculous.
06:29
PATRICK SWEENEY: Ridiculous.
06:30
OK.
06:31
And when you say you felt ridiculous, where in your body
06:34
did you feel ridiculous?
06:35
06:38
Can you pinpoint-- where?
06:39
AUDIENCE: In my mind.
06:40
PATRICK SWEENEY: In your mind.
06:41
Can you pinpoint a physical location?
06:43
No?
06:44
OK.
06:44
Who else felt nervous or embarrassed?
06:47
OK.
06:48
Well we've got-- so let's start down here.
06:51
Where did you feel it?
06:52
AUDIENCE: I am all shaking.
06:54
PATRICK SWEENEY: You're all shaking.
06:55
Your hands are shaking.
06:55
We can see that here.
06:57
OK.
06:57
So your whole body's shaking.
06:59
That's awesome.
07:00
And you?
07:01
AUDIENCE: I had no idea what song you were talking about.
07:03
PATRICK SWEENEY: Yeah, it is-- you didn't know
07:03
what song I was talking about?
07:04
But she was still ready to sing.
07:05
God love you.
07:06
Good for you.
07:07
And where do you feel it physically?
07:08
Is there someplace in your body?
07:09
AUDIENCE: Some right here.
07:11
PATRICK SWEENEY: Just kind of in your heart,
07:12
in your stomach, and that sort of thing.
07:14
And you?
07:15
AUDIENCE: I don't know.
07:16
[LAUGHS]
07:17
07:19
PATRICK SWEENEY: Tight jaw, tight shoulders?
07:21
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
07:21
Maybe also trembling a bit?
07:23
PATRICK SWEENEY: Trembling in the knees.
07:24
A little Elvis leg?
07:25
Right?
07:25
You can't get the leg to stop.
07:27
OK.
07:27
Well, give them a round of applause, please.
07:29
Have a seat.
07:30
Thank you very much.
07:31
07:35
So if you are in the audience, and you
07:37
were afraid you were going to get
07:38
picked, what I want you to think about is where you felt it.
07:42
Stop for a second and think, physically, where you had it.
07:45
Do we have any poker players in the room?
07:48
Anyone who plays poker?
07:49
No?
07:50
Does anyone know what a tell is?
07:53
What's a tell?
07:54
AUDIENCE: Me?
07:55
PATRICK SWEENEY: Yes.
07:56
AUDIENCE: It's when you give away--
07:59
that you're saying something about what
08:01
you're thinking right now.
08:03
PATRICK SWEENEY: It's a subconscious gesture, behavior,
08:07
or emotion that you do when you have something good.
08:11
So poker players call this a tell.
08:13
You might pull on your ear.
08:14
You might straighten out your shirt sleeve.
08:17
Or there's something you might do
08:19
that can give away the fact that you've got a good hand.
08:22
That's called a tell in poker.
08:24
Every single person has a fear tell.
08:28
We have a way that fear manifests itself in your body.
08:33
And that grows depending on the level of fear.
08:35
We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
08:37
Because it's important that you start to understand your fear
08:41
tells because they start to give you messages.
08:43
When you see an email from one of your colleagues
08:46
or your boss, and you start to feel that tell,
08:49
maybe you'll feel it right there, where--
08:52
I think it was Andreas was saying he felt it a little bit.
08:54
Or maybe you'll feel it down in your legs.
08:56
But you start to recognize those tells.
08:58
Most people do a lot to avoid that.
09:02
And I want to tell you, to be the best version of you,
09:05
and to let out everything you have
09:07
and not make decisions based on fear,
09:09
you want to find more of that.
09:11
So it's taken me an awful long time to figure out
09:15
the neuroscience behind it because I've interviewed
09:19
over 35 leading neuroscientists from MIT, Harvard, Tufts,
09:24
Trinity, all over the world.
09:26
And some of the technology we have,
09:27
just in the past five years, has allowed
09:30
us to have a look into the brain and understand how some of this
09:33
works.
09:34
I had a hidden fear, and I didn't recognize it
09:37
until it was almost too late.
09:40
Elaine mentioned that I had started a few technology
09:43
companies.
09:43
So I was a CEO of a venture-backed company.
09:47
We were really hot and successful
09:48
in the software space.
09:50
And I was working 70 or 80 hours a week,
09:52
typical VC-backed type of CEO.
09:56
And I was going out every night to these networking events
10:00
and CEO events and private equity events.
10:03
And I was drinking six or seven beers every night
10:05
when I went out.
10:06
And then I come back at about midnight or so,
10:09
and I'd feel guilty.
10:10
It's that whole Irish Catholic thing, right?
10:12
You're a redhead.
10:13
You get that.
10:14
So [LAUGHS] it was crazy.
10:16
And I woke up one morning, went to the gym,
10:19
just like you guys probably do here.
10:21
Went into the gym.
10:22
Hey, Sweeney!
10:23
How are you doing?
10:23
Good!
10:24
Got to work arms today.
10:26
Started working arms, ooh.
10:27
Boy, that arm hurts a little bit.
10:29
All right.
10:30
Well, I'll just do a little cardio.
10:31
Get on the machine.
10:32
Then the next day, I got in, woke up.
10:35
Same thing.
10:36
Starting to feel really bad.
10:38
And I thought, wow.
10:39
I should go to the doctor and get this checked out.
10:43
And I didn't.
10:44
Can anyone guess why?
10:47
AUDIENCE: Afraid to get bad news?
10:48
PATRICK SWEENEY: I was afraid to go to the doctor.
10:49
Yeah.
10:50
Yeah.
10:50
I was afraid to get bad news.
10:51
Third day, woke up.
10:53
I could barely move the arm.
10:55
I said, I've got to go to the doctor now.
10:57
So I went to the doctor, and he looked at it, and he said,
11:00
you know, it looks like a staph infection.
11:02
That's pretty common among guys who spent a lot of time
11:04
in the gym and working out.
11:06
So we're going to give you some antibiotics,
11:08
and we're going to take a few blood tests.
11:10
The nurse will call you back in the afternoon.
11:12
I said, OK.
11:12
Good.
11:13
Thanks.
11:14
Well, the nurse didn't call me back.
11:19
The doctor did.
11:20
And that's when my life changed.
11:24
He said, I don't know what it is,
11:26
and we can't figure it out here in our little hospital
11:29
in Virginia.
11:30
We're going to send you up to Johns Hopkins.
11:32
One of the top hospitals in the world.
11:35
So I got the express ticket to the Johns Hopkins matinee
11:39
for leukemia patients.
11:41
And I went up there, and I got checked in.
11:43
And I got put into this bed.
11:46
And I had a one-year-old daughter at the time.
11:49
And I had my wife, who was six months pregnant, with me,
11:54
who was just white as a ghost.
11:56
Stressed out as you could be.
11:57
I had more tubes and wires plugged
11:59
in me than the space shuttle, just about to lift off.
12:03
And I'm sitting in this bed, and all of a sudden, Dr. McDevitt
12:07
walks in.
12:07
He takes two steps inside the door, looks across the room.
12:11
There were three kids behind him who
12:13
I thought were the kids he must coach in the soccer team
12:16
after work, because they didn't look a day older than 12.
12:20
And he stopped, and he turned to look at them.
12:22
And he said, oh, wow.
12:23
This is really interesting.
12:25
This guy's T-cells went rogue and started
12:29
attacking the rest of his white blood cells.
12:31
He's got no immune system.
12:34
And he's talking like I wasn't even there.
12:35
I'm like, hey, doc.
12:37
Yeah, but the good news is I got the first colonoscopy
12:39
in the morning.
12:40
And he didn't even laugh.
12:42
He came over, and he sat down.
12:45
And he said, look.
12:47
We're going to do a lot of tests.
12:49
We're going to try and figure some of this stuff out.
12:51
But are your affairs in order?
12:55
Now, I'm no Doogie Howser, but when a doctor asks you
12:59
if your affairs are in order, you're pretty much screwed.
13:02
13:04
Does anyone not know who Doogie Howser is, by the way?
13:07
Oh, God, I hate all you people!
13:09
You missed the Dalai Lama joke too, from Caddyshack.
13:12
Does anyone know any '80s trivia?
13:13
Who knows the '80s trivia?
13:15
Stay with me.
13:15
Someone?
13:16
Anyone?
13:17
OK.
13:17
All right.
13:18
Couple people.
13:19
All right.
13:20
Doogie Howser was a prodigy doctor who was like 12 years
13:24
old as a doctor.
13:25
So anyways, they started figuring stuff out,
13:29
and it didn't look good at all.
13:30
It was a really rare form of leukemia.
13:33
I had no immune system, and my body
13:35
was being attacked constantly.
13:38
I sat there, and like Elaine said,
13:41
I had spent five years training for the Olympics.
13:43
My first Olympic trials, I finished 14th.
13:46
The second Olympic trials, I finished second.
13:48
The difference between those two was
13:50
I did a ton of mental training.
13:52
I was in Colorado Springs at the US Olympic Training Center,
13:55
learning how to use my mind to get my body faster.
13:59
So when I sat in there in Hopkins,
14:01
and they were telling me there's not
14:02
much they think they can do, and they've never seen something
14:05
like this before, I said, OK.
14:07
Well, there's something I've got to do.
14:08
I sat there day and night, imagining these warrior cells
14:13
coming out of my body and attacking those rogue T-cells.
14:17
And I just sat there, and I envisioned it day in
14:20
and day out for two weeks.
14:22
My body building up these warrior cells.
14:24
And I had the greatest doctors in the world.
14:26
And I kept doing that.
14:28
And not to give away the ending, but I died.
14:33
I didn't die.
14:34
I'm here.
14:35
I lived.
14:36
And when I got out of the hospital at Hopkins,
14:39
I walked out, and it was in the worst part of Baltimore.
14:43
It's in a ghetto area.
14:44
It's really rundown.
14:46
And I walked out, and I saw this leaf in a puddle.
14:48
And it was red and tinged with gold around the outside.
14:51
I would have never even stopped before this all had happened.
14:55
I stopped, and I looked down, and I thought, wow,
14:57
that's really beautiful.
14:58
I know it sounds cliche, but it was like this gratitude switch
15:02
got flipped on in my head.
15:04
And all I could think about was how awesome it was to be alive
15:07
and how much I had wasted my life worrying about fear.
15:12
Being afraid of everything.
15:14
And I didn't even know how afraid I was of all the things
15:17
that were going on in my life until I got out
15:19
of that hospital, and I faced my real fear.
15:21
When I faced that real fear, I realized fear was a fraud.
15:26
A complete fraud.
15:29
I found this study from Cornell University called The Legacy
15:32
Study.
15:34
What they did was they interviewed thousands of people
15:36
between the age of 70 and 109.
15:39
And they said, we want to collect
15:40
the wisdom of our elders.
15:42
So they asked them a bunch of questions.
15:43
Asked them for their best advice.
15:45
There was only one thing of the thousands
15:48
of people that was common around just about all of them.
15:51
And that was that they wished they
15:53
had spent less time worrying.
15:56
They wish they had spent less time in their life in fear.
15:59
Because fear is all about the future or something bad
16:02
that happened in the past.
16:04
So if you're living in the present,
16:05
and you're enjoying the moment, you
16:07
can't be in a fearful state.
16:09
Fear is like a Rottweiler.
16:12
You get a little Rottweiler puppy,
16:14
you can throw it in a cage, and you can occasionally
16:16
toss him scraps.
16:17
That thing won't be able to hold itself back if you let it out,
16:21
because it's going to tear at your flesh just
16:23
to get something to eat.
16:25
If you take that same Rottweiler,
16:27
and you care for it, and you bring it into the family,
16:29
and you feed it, and you train it,
16:32
that thing will do whatever it takes to keep your family safe.
16:34
It will become your best friend.
16:36
Fear is the exact same way, but most of us
16:39
do our best to ignore it.
16:41
So I want everyone to stand up for just a second.
16:43
Pretend you're that Rottweiler.
16:46
Shake it out.
16:49
OK.
16:49
Now, I'm going to let everyone in on a secret.
16:52
And this is one of the key fear secrets to start with.
16:55
16:58
You are going to die.
17:01
And you are going to die.
17:03
And you are going to die.
17:05
And you are going to die.
17:06
And we're all going to die.
17:09
I want everyone to repeat after me, I will die.
17:13
AUDIENCE: I will die.
17:14
PATRICK SWEENEY: Louder.
17:15
I will die!
17:16
AUDIENCE: I will die!
17:17
PATRICK SWEENEY: One more time.
17:19
I will die!
17:19
AUDIENCE: I will die!
17:20
PATRICK SWEENEY: OK.
17:21
Now, is anyone unclear about that?
17:24
All right.
17:25
Sit down.
17:26
Because now we can live.
17:28
Now, if you're afraid of dying-- and that's one of the biggest
17:31
fears in the world--
17:32
no matter what your spirituality is, there is no argument,
17:35
we're going to go back to wherever we came from.
17:38
So I want everyone to close their eyes for a second,
17:40
especially if you're afraid of dying,
17:42
and I want you to think about yourself dying, right now.
17:45
If you were afraid to get up here and on stage
17:48
and be embarrassed or feel ridiculous,
17:50
I want you to think about that right now.
17:53
All of those things happened in your mind.
17:56
That was a movie you played in your mind.
17:59
And fear is always a horror movie.
18:01
So think about the worst movie you can think of right now.
18:03
Standing on the edge of a cliff, getting
18:05
thrown in water with a bunch of great white sharks,
18:08
whatever your biggest fear is.
18:10
Think about it now and try and feel
18:12
the sensations in your body that are changing.
18:15
Feel where you're feeling it in your belly
18:17
and your hips and your chin and your jaw and your knees,
18:20
anywhere you're feeling that.
18:22
Now, here's what I want you to do when you
18:24
feel that for the next time.
18:26
Take a deep breath in to a count of four.
18:28
Hold it for a count of four.
18:30
And let it out for a count of four.
18:32
In.
18:33
Two, three, four, hold it.
18:35
Two, three, four.
18:37
[EXHALES] Two, three, four.
18:40
In.
18:41
[INHALES] Hold it.
18:44
Two, three, four.
18:45
Out.
18:46
Two, three, four.
18:48
If you keep that rhythm up, when you get in a fear state--
18:51
I'll explain a little bit of the science behind it--
18:54
you change from having an erratic heartbeat--
18:57
which if you looked on an EKG is a heartbeat that
18:59
looks like a silhouette of mountains--
19:01
to having a coherent heartbeat, which is just a nice sine wave.
19:06
That allows you to take over your sympathetic nerve system
19:09
again.
19:10
Because it gets hijacked when you get in a fearful state,
19:13
and you stop thinking correctly.
19:14
Just that breathing, that four by four,
19:17
is a great way to get you.
19:18
So the first step in this three-step framework
19:22
is to start to recognize your fear tells.
19:25
Start to figure out what your body does
19:27
so you can take control over it, and you
19:30
can get back in control.
19:32
So I was terribly serious about the World Peace part.
19:35
I think if I can teach millions of people to tame their fear,
19:39
we can have world peace.
19:40
Because I believe what Gandhi said.
19:42
He said, hate isn't the enemy.
19:45
Fear is the enemy.
19:47
And if we can all understand fear and learn to tame it
19:51
and use it as a fuel, we can get to a place of World Peace.
19:55
So to understand fear, you have to understand what
19:59
I refer to as a fear frontier.
20:01
Because we've got a battle going on inside our brains.
20:04
I call it the Battle of the brains,
20:06
and it has to do with two primary glands
20:09
within your brain.
20:11
The first one is the amygdala.
20:13
It's a little almond-shaped gland that sits at the base
20:15
of your brain, and it handles the three F's.
20:20
Anyone know what the three F's are?
20:22
When you get scared?
20:26
Fight is one.
20:28
Anyone else?
20:29
AUDIENCE: Fight.
20:30
PATRICK SWEENEY: Fight.
20:31
Flight.
20:33
The third one?
20:33
AUDIENCE: Freeze.
20:34
PATRICK SWEENEY: Freeze.
20:35
Exactly.
20:35
So the amygdala is what controls the fight, flight,
20:38
or freeze response.
20:41
So that is the gland that saves us
20:44
from saber-tooth tigers and woolly mammoths.
20:46
It's been there since the beginning of time.
20:48
What we didn't realize was that jumping
20:52
at the first sign of rustling grass or freezing
20:54
like a deer in the headlights every time someone
20:56
made a loud noise didn't exactly make us the best dinner guest.
21:00
So over the past 50,000 years or so,
21:03
we developed something called the prefrontal cortex.
21:06
And the prefrontal cortex is the adult supervision
21:09
for the brain.
21:11
What happens in a normal state, when
21:13
we're sitting here right now, the prefrontal cortex
21:16
is in charge.
21:16
For most of us, anyways.
21:17
Not for me, because I'm scared to death being up here talking
21:20
to you guys.
21:21
But the prefrontal cortex, you can see here,
21:26
handles your world when you're chilled,
21:29
when you're maybe a little bit uneasy.
21:31
But then when you start to get high on the anxiety scale,
21:34
on the dread scale, all the way up to terror,
21:37
the amygdala takes over.
21:40
And the amygdala is only making up stories about fear.
21:44
You can't measure fear.
21:46
You can measure risk, right?
21:48
Risk is of all the people in this room, in our lifetime,
21:52
there's going to be seven people in this room who
21:54
die of car crashes.
21:57
If we took this same size room, and we multiplied it
22:00
times 50 times, we'd find one person
22:03
who would die in a plane crash.
22:05
That's risk.
22:05
We understand that.
22:06
That's data driven.
22:08
Fear is different for all of us because it's not real.
22:12
It doesn't exist.
22:13
We make it up in our mind.
22:15
It's almost like risk is on one end of the solar system,
22:19
over here in Mercury, and fear comes out
22:22
of the other end of the solar system from Uranus.
22:26
That was a joke.
22:27
That's why my 10 and 11-year-old boys love my jokes when I
22:30
throw them in the presentation.
22:32
The truth is, fear is a joke.
22:35
There is no real basis for any kind of fear.
22:38
So if we can learn to take this prefrontal cortex
22:43
and bring it over here and make it in control when you're
22:46
doing it, this is exactly the kind of courage
22:48
that Special Forces trained for.
22:50
And they do it in just one realm,
22:52
and they need to do it in three realms.
22:55
I told you, there's two ways to make decisions.
22:59
One is based on fear, the other is based on opportunity.
23:04
If you think about every major decision
23:05
you've made in your life; to come to work at Google,
23:08
to move to Zurich, to get in a serious relationship.
23:13
Any major decision you've made in your life,
23:15
you've made it either out of fear or out of opportunity.
23:18
Out of opportunity comes growth and gratitude.
23:23
And those are the two pillars for happiness.
23:25
That's why understanding fear and taming fear
23:27
can make you happier.
23:29
I mention my 10 and 12-year-old boys for a reason
23:34
when I was talking about the amygdala.
23:36
For anyone who has children or anyone who's
23:38
a teacher, who's working with kids who are under 25 years
23:43
old, this is critical to know.
23:45
The amygdala is fully developed at birth.
23:50
So they have the fight, flight, and freeze response
23:54
when you're born.
23:55
Because that saves you from the charging woolly mammoth.
23:58
The prefrontal cortex, that doesn't get fully
24:02
developed until most people are in their mid-20s.
24:06
So think about that when you're in a situation where
24:09
all of a sudden, a kid starts screaming,
24:10
and you can't figure out, why can't you just think rationally
24:13
about this?
24:14
Because he doesn't have the capability
24:15
to think rationally yet.
24:17
So someone who's under 25 needs to be
24:21
trained to create the connections
24:23
between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala
24:25
so that prefrontal cortex can take control.
24:29
And there's three things, three types of fear
24:33
that we're going to address here.
24:35
But the important thing is even after you're 25 years old,
24:38
you can still change.
24:39
You can still create courage because of something
24:42
called neuroplasticity.
24:44
Neuroplasticity has only recently
24:46
been proven with some of the new technology we have.
24:49
But basically, your mind can change at any age.
24:53
And that's what happened to me when I finally
24:55
faced my fear frontier.
24:57
So what I'm hoping everyone here can do
24:59
is figure out what their fear frontier is and move that out.
25:03
And the further you move that fear frontier out,
25:06
the more in control of your life you are
25:07
and the happier you are going to be.
25:10
If you understand the three fears that exist,
25:13
number one is physical.
25:15
So we talked about US Navy SEALs.
25:17
And I've worked with them in the past,
25:19
and they are tremendous in terms of physical courage.
25:24
And what they do is they've got this courage
25:25
factory in Coronado, California called Basic Underwater
25:29
Demolition School, or BUDS.
25:31
And SEALs go there for six weeks.
25:33
They take the strongest and bravest candidates
25:36
from the normal Navy, and they bring them to BUDS.
25:38
Now it's not surprising the average age
25:42
of a Navy SEAL going through BUDS is 21 years old.
25:46
So they're getting them before that connection
25:48
is fully developed.
25:49
And they ratchet up the amount of physical fear
25:53
that they get put in every day, until the SEALs start
25:57
to realize that when they get that reaction, when they start
25:59
to feel the same trembling knees, the butterflies
26:02
in the stomach, the tight jaw, they can say, OK.
26:05
This is our fuel.
26:06
This is energy.
26:07
We're going to get something on, and we're
26:09
going to kick some ass.
26:10
And anyone can learn to do that.
26:12
One of the challenges some of the Navy SEALs
26:14
I've worked with have is they only
26:16
learned to do it in the physical realm.
26:18
There's also emotional fears and instinctual fears,
26:22
as you can see from this graph.
26:23
And like any other fear, like any other skill,
26:27
you have to practice.
26:28
Courage, in those instances.
26:30
You've got to understand what it's like.
26:31
Because what happens when you hit your fear frontier is
26:35
cowardice begets cowardice.
26:38
My biggest fear was dead center in the middle of this.
26:41
It's flying.
26:43
I saw a plane crash, a delta DC-9, when I was six years old.
26:47
All 100 people on board died.
26:49
I was terrified to fly.
26:52
I had my entire life locked away from me for 30 years,
26:55
and I didn't know it.
26:57
And that planted a seed of cowardice
27:00
that crept through my whole body.
27:02
I was a kid in high school who was
27:04
afraid to go to sleep at night without the light on.
27:07
And that's how bad it was.
27:09
So my biggest fear became flying.
27:11
But then after I got out of the hospital, all I could imagine
27:15
was my one-year-old daughter.
27:16
And would I have to be the guy who
27:19
is remembered by his daughter as being
27:21
too afraid to get on a plane and take her to Disney World?
27:26
And I said, man, there's no way I want
27:28
that to be what I remember.
27:30
So I decided to go mano a mano with my flying fear,
27:34
and that changed my whole life.
27:36
And what happens from a physical perspective--
27:39
this is a great example of the type of technology
27:42
we've had in the past five years.
27:44
This is from Dr. Anna Byler, who used
27:46
to be at MIT, who just opened up the neuroscience center
27:49
in Bordeaux.
27:51
And what you're going to see now is a mouse's amygdala
27:55
creating a pathway to the prefrontal cortex
27:58
and the prefrontal cortex coming back in the other direction.
28:01
So what this shows--
28:03
more than anything else, what this shows
28:04
is how amazing the technological advances have been
28:07
in just the past five years.
28:09
But what you're seeing here is that pathway connecting
28:14
between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex
28:16
means that those neurons are firing together often.
28:21
And neurons that fire together wire together.
28:25
So that brain that you just saw was
28:27
creating a highway of courage.
28:29
And the more that those neurons fire together, the easier
28:33
it becomes for that pathway to fire together.
28:35
So the more in control that the prefrontal cortex can become.
28:39
That's the second step of this three part framework.
28:44
That second step is to scare yourself at least once a week,
28:49
so you can start to bring those feelings up and start
28:52
to control them.
28:53
And ideally, you scare yourself at a higher and a higher level,
28:57
and you start to get in control.
28:59
And you wire that pathway between your amygdala
29:02
and your prefrontal cortex.
29:05
Our bodies were designed for physical stress
29:08
over thousands and thousands of years.
29:10
And we live in such a stress-free world.
29:13
We avoid stress, and we've never lived in a safer
29:17
time in human history.
29:19
We don't even walk upstairs anymore.
29:21
We stand on an escalator, or we take an elevator.
29:24
We don't even carry our bags in the airport.
29:26
We drag them behind us on wheels.
29:30
We try and do everything we can to avoid stress.
29:32
The problem is, our bodies are wired for stress,
29:36
so we have to find more of it.
29:37
And that's step three is we want to build this courage.
29:41
We understand there's neuroplasticity.
29:43
It can happen at any time.
29:45
All of this can be easier if you create the right environment.
29:48
The right foundation for it.
29:50
And that's what I call fear fitness.
29:52
So the three steps are to learn your fear tells,
29:56
scare yourself once a week, and then stress your body three
29:59
to five times a week.
30:01
The easiest way to do this is with aerobic exercise.
30:04
It gets better if you add in strength
30:06
or some form of agility.
30:08
Rock climbing is a great example of that, or dancing.
30:11
And then lastly, there's so much new data
30:14
around what happens if you go back to environmental stress.
30:19
I tell everyone the easiest thing to do
30:20
is take a cold shower in the morning.
30:22
In the first week, it sucks.
30:24
And everyone in here-- everyone I've ever said,
30:26
said, no, no, no.
30:27
Other people can do that.
30:28
I can't take a cold shower.
30:30
And everyone says the same thing.
30:31
But you can.
30:32
And after a week or two, it actually
30:34
becomes pretty easy to do.
30:36
But you're training your body to handle
30:38
those environmental stresses.
30:39
I run in the wintertime with just a pair of shorts on.
30:42
And it's a type of stress that our body
30:45
needs because our genetic array has
30:48
been aligned for very specific instances and very
30:52
specific stresses.
30:54
And if we're not using those, it's almost like a race car.
30:59
A Ferrari is sitting there with all these tubes.
31:01
It has all these washers in them.
31:03
But because it never gets run, the washers get all dry rotted,
31:07
and they stop working.
31:08
That's what your immune system goes through when
31:10
you go through those stresses.
31:11
That's what almost killed me.
31:13
Because I was living that life of burying
31:16
my fears with beer every night and 80 hours a week.
31:19
So the other thing that just came out
31:21
in the past six weeks that's really interesting
31:24
is your diet plays a tremendous role in your courage
31:27
and your happiness as well.
31:29
So if you have the right gut bacteria,
31:32
if you eat yogurt and sauerkraut and kimchi and the things that
31:36
develop the good bacteria in your gut,
31:39
it's quicker to shut off your amygdala.
31:42
So it makes the circuits to turn the fear response
31:45
off much quicker.
31:46
And that's data that's just come out literally
31:48
in the past six weeks.
31:50
So there's so much amazing stuff around how
31:52
to live a courageous life.
31:54
Now what I want to do-- that's the three step framework.
31:57
I want to give you the five fatal fears that we
32:01
see a lot in corporations.
32:03
So you can use this to become authentic, courageous leaders.
32:07
And this is from, like Elaine said,
32:10
working with a lot of CEOs throughout the world
32:13
and a lot of government organization.
32:15
We've seen five fatal fears that are pretty prevalent.
32:19
First and foremost is the fear of the unknown.
32:22
You see this a ton in mergers and acquisition.
32:24
Right?
32:25
When people acquire something, they say, OK.
32:28
We want to keep the status quo.
32:30
It's called a status quo bias.
32:32
You also see it in market leaders too.
32:35
Kodak is a perfect example.
32:37
Kodak was such a huge, successful company.
32:39
And they said, well, we don't know anything
32:41
about this digital revolution.
32:42
We're not going to do anything.
32:44
We're not going to get into it.
32:45
We're going to sit back and see.
32:46
So fear of the unknown.
32:48
The second is fear of rejection.
32:50
Or fear of rejection from the tribe is what it boils down to.
32:54
The only reason anyone would feel ridiculous
32:56
standing up here, about to sing--
32:58
nothing changes.
33:00
Nothing changes in your world.
33:02
You're not in physical danger.
33:04
There's no reason that you should have any reaction,
33:06
except we're programmed instinctually
33:09
to stick with the tribe, because it's safer.
33:12
100,000 years ago, if you got rejected from the tribe,
33:15
that meant certain death.
33:16
You couldn't live.
33:18
Today it doesn't mean that at all.
33:19
Today, oftentimes, in fact, it means
33:21
you're an innovator because you don't
33:24
want to be stuck with groupthink or the sunflower management
33:28
that some people refer to, which is just like,
33:30
you do whatever the leader wants you to do,
33:32
so you can keep him happy or her happy.
33:34
So it's crazy.
33:36
Apophenia is the second one.
33:38
Or sorry, the third one.
33:40
Apophenia is finding patterns where patterns don't exist.
33:44
This is most easily seen when someone has had a few successes
33:48
and they get what's called the winner bias or the success
33:52
bias, and they aren't given the same scrutiny,
33:54
or their projects aren't given the same analysis
33:57
that other projects were, because maybe they
33:59
had one or two successful ones.
34:02
The fourth one is atychiphobia.
34:05
And that is basically the fear of failure.
34:08
It comes down to something called a stability bias.
34:10
We see this more times in careers
34:13
than we necessarily see it in companies.
34:15
But we see people who have a tremendous skill set,
34:18
and they don't want to do it because they're
34:20
afraid they might fail, and they have something good already.
34:23
I use my brother every now and again
34:25
as an example because he's such a great artist.
34:28
He's a federal agent, and he does law enforcement for the US
34:32
government from 9:00 to 5:00.
34:34
He's pretty good at his job.
34:36
He rushes home to build custom motorcycles.
34:40
And he spends all weekend at swap meets and going to shows,
34:43
and he's sold his motorcycles in Japan, all over the US,
34:47
throughout Europe.
34:48
And I've said to him a bunch of times, Sean,
34:50
you ought to do that for a living.
34:51
You'd be making millions of dollars doing what you love.
34:55
He'd say, oh, no.
34:56
I've got 15 years, and I'll get my pension,
34:59
and then I can do it full time.
35:02
And I see that all the time.
35:03
And that's the fear of failure.
35:05
People are looking for that stability.
35:06
If you ever hear someone saying they're
35:08
working for the weekend, right?
35:10
I can't wait for the weekend.
35:12
It means they have the wrong job.
35:14
You have the right job when you're
35:16
able to combine your passion with your vocation.
35:19
And that's what I call your genius.
35:21
If you can spend every day in your genius,
35:23
you love coming to work.
35:24
You love doing what you do and working with the team you're
35:27
working with.
35:27
If you don't, you're being held back
35:29
because of a fear decision that you made,
35:31
not an opportunity decision.
35:35
The fifth one is a fear of loss.
35:37
And we see this with sales teams all the time.
35:40
A lot of sales guys will come from meager backgrounds.
35:43
Families that maybe never had gone to college.
35:47
Never made a lot of money.
35:48
And they'll start making $150,000 a year,
35:51
and they'll buy the Porsche, and they'll join the country club.
35:54
And these guys start to get pushed from their VP of sales
35:58
or their CEO.
35:59
They say, OK.
36:00
You can do way more than this.
36:01
And they could.
36:02
They could do million dollar years.
36:04
They could really have an incredible life
36:06
that they only dreamed of.
36:08
But all of a sudden, when they hit a certain level,
36:11
they think, well, what if I lose the Porsche?
36:13
What if I lose the big house?
36:14
What if I lose the country club?
36:16
So we see this a lot with sales guys having fear of loss.
36:19
And again, it's a decision based on fear, not on opportunity.
36:25
So I'm going to share one more tool that I put up
36:27
on the web for you guys.
36:29
And this is a great way, especially with your teams
36:32
or with your personal decisions, to make a decision.
36:35
This is from the stoics over 2,300 years ago,
36:39
and it's called--
36:39
I love the name--
36:41
pre-meditation of evil.
36:44
So when you get trouble, or you get scared, a lot of people
36:47
say, oh, go to your safe place.
36:48
Go to your happy place.
36:50
That's the worst thing you can do.
36:51
You want to go to the evil place.
36:53
You want to go someplace where you absolutely think
36:56
of the worst scenario possible.
36:59
And then you want to see that happening,
37:01
and you want to create the mitigation
37:03
for it, the likely results.
37:05
And then that brings you a whole new level of confidence.
37:08
And this is done by Marcus Aurelius,
37:10
who's a famous stoic, who made this famous years
37:13
and years ago.
37:14
And there's a whole process that we use with corporations
37:16
to do it.
37:17
But it's a great way to start taking control of life.
37:21
Because life only happens two ways.
37:24
Life can either happen to you--
37:27
if you're making decisions based on fear--
37:29
and that means you're a victim.
37:31
Or life can happen by you.
37:34
And you're the author of your life.
37:36
And that means every decision you're making
37:38
is based on an opportunity, not because of fear.
37:42
So I made this transformation for flying.
37:46
When I got out of the hospital, I
37:48
decided to get my private pilot's license,
37:51
and I fell in love with flight.
37:53
And I couldn't believe for 30 years,
37:55
this had been completely locked away from me.
37:58
So I got my instrument rating so I could fly in any weather.
38:02
And then I went on and got my commercial pilot's license.
38:06
And I wondered, how many other people are living in fear
38:09
and having the greatest joy of their life locked away
38:12
from them because of a fear?
38:14
So that's when I started trying to convince other people
38:16
to go out and find their fear.
38:18
So now the kid who was afraid, who
38:20
would cry every time I saw an airplane, is this guy here.
38:25
This is the Green Mountain Valley Aerobatics School
38:28
Aerobatics Contest in Vermont last year.
38:34
And I had more fun doing this and flying on the water,
38:39
in aerobatics, doing all sorts of different stuff.
38:41
And I was just amazed that this has been held away for so long
38:45
for me.
38:45
38:54
And if you ever get scared of heights or anything else,
38:56
let me know.
38:57
I'll take you up for a flight.
39:00
So I got second in this aerobatics competition
39:03
last summer in Vermont.
39:05
And I know someone out there is saying, well,
39:07
if this fear stuff works so good, why didn't you get first?
39:09
So you try pulling five G's with your stomach trying
39:13
to duck out of your sphincter, and let me know how easy it is.
39:15
Because it's tough.
39:16
But it's so [INAUDIBLE].
39:18
And I would have never known.
39:19
I would have been hidden away.
39:21
I would have never traveled to all the places that I traveled.
39:24
I would have never done all the stuff that I do with my fear.
39:26
So what I'd ask you is what is holding you prisoner
39:31
from your greatest joy?
39:32
What fears are influencing the decisions that you make?
39:36
So now I've got one last thing.
39:38
I want everyone to stand up one more time.
39:42
And we're going to take the courage code together.
39:44
I want you to raise your right hand, and repeat after me.
39:47
I will scare myself once a week.
39:50
AUDIENCE: I will scare myself once a week.
39:52
PATRICK SWEENEY: Very good.
39:53
I will extend my fear frontier.
39:56
AUDIENCE: I will extend my fear frontier.
39:59
PATRICK SWEENEY: I will face life with courage.
40:01
AUDIENCE: I will face life with courage.
40:03
PATRICK SWEENEY: I will make decisions based on opportunity.
40:06
AUDIENCE: I will make decisions based on opportunity.
40:10
PATRICK SWEENEY: And I will lead with bravery.
40:12
AUDIENCE: And I will lead with bravery.
40:14
PATRICK SWEENEY: When you do, I promise, your life will change,
40:17
and you'll have such an amazing life.
40:18
And what's in here will come out to share with everyone else.
40:21
Thank you all very much.
40:22
I'm Patrick Sweeney.
40:23
Goodnight.
