A few weeks ago, I listened to Joe Hudson’s interview on Chris Williamson’s podcast Modern Wisdom – and there was a casual comment Joe made that I’ve been thinking about ever since.
Joe and Chris were talking about money anxiety, the fear of running out of money etc. To paraphrase, Joe says something like:
A classic high-achiever thing is: “I’ve got to keep hustling because if I stop, I’m going to end up broke and homeless.”
I’m listening to this thinking: yep that makes sense. I often feel an underlying anxiety to this effect: I need to grind harder on the business, because if I don’t, we might run out of money, and I’ll end up broke and homeless.
But then he goes on to say:
But you’re not afraid of being homeless itself. You’re afraid of the EMOTIONS that you think you’ll have when you’re homeless. Because if I told you “yeah you’re going to be homeless, but you’re going to be incredibly happy, the joy you’ll feel will be amazing, the level of connection you’ll feel will be incredible…” all of a sudden, you’re probably not that scared of being homeless anymore.
His point (from what I can gather) was that we’re not afraid of the situation itself. We’re afraid of the emotional experience of the situation.
Btw, I’m probably not doing this insight justice in the context of this email, and I’m sure some people are rolling their eyes: “well actually, being homeless has real physical consequences, not just emotional ones, not least for yourself but also for your family etc etc”.
Even so – there was something in this casual exchange that massively resonated with me. My thought process went as follows:
Wait a minute. He’s saying… I’m not afraid of the reality of being homeless. I’m afraid of what I perceive to be the emotional consequences of it…
That’s a hot take… but okay let’s try this on for size… let me close my eyes, and fully imagine that the business crumbles, and my YouTube channel no longer gets any views, and I’ve got to lay the whole team off, and I’ve got no money at all… and while we’re there let’s say my wife leaves me, takes the kids, and I’m saddled with child support payments and alimony etc for the rest of my life… so I then declare bankruptcy because I literally have no money left… so then I’m well and truly broke, homeless and alone…
Okay that would feel pretty bad… but from what I understand about emotions, they’re literally just an internal bodily sensation accompanied by a thought-based narrative… so when my mind goes into “uh oh we’re going to run out of money and end up homeless, we better hustle harder”… the state of “broke and homeless” that I’m so afraid of… well, that’s just a set of internal bodily sensations and accompanying mental narratives…
Huh, that’s interesting… so I’m literally afraid of what I perceive would be an unpleasant set of internal bodily sensations…
Huh that doesn’t seem so bad… okay let’s imagine that in this world where I’m broke and homeless, I actually feel great, I feel joyful and happy and super connected to everything… huh all of a sudden, I’m not afraid of going homeless anymore…
So that was my thought process as I was listening to the episode, and I’ve been thinking about it on-and-off since then. Whenever I find my mind going towards some sort of future-based fear – eg: the YouTube channel’s dying, the business is going to crumble, I’ll run out of money and end up broke etc – I’ve started shifting my thinking. Instead of reassuring myself with thoughts like “okay that probably won’t happen”, or strategising “I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen by doing XYZ” (which was my previous way of dealing with those fears), I’ve instead been thinking: “okay let’s say that the worst-case scenario DOES happen, how will I feel then?”
I’ve been doing my best to really imagine the feelings that I’m afraid of… and within seconds, I realise: “oh that’s not so bad”. So then the fear goes away, because I’ve just modelled what the unpleasant internal bodily sensations are, I’ve realised that I survived it and it wasn’t so bad… so then I’m not afraid anymore. And I can then (in theory) make decisions that aren’t rooted in fear.
Not sure whether this will “stick”, but in the last couple of weeks, it’s been an enormously liberating insight that I hadn’t previously come across in the world of personal development.
Have a great week!
Ali xx
