This is part four in a series dedicated to helping you unstuck yourself. You may catch up on the previous editions in this series here:

Part I

Part II

Part III

You’re not stuck.

You’re afraid.

Afraid to do what you know you need - or should - do to make the change you so desperately crave in your life.

How do I know?

Because I’ve been there.

I shared with you in part one of this series how stuck I felt in my marriage. I experienced a crippling sense of paralysis that left me feeling miserable, alone, and a shell of myself.

But I knew what to do.

I didn’t take action for far too long because I was afraid.

In today’s edition of the Unstuck Yourself Newsletter, I’m going to teach you why your surface-level fear - think I fear failure or I fear success - is only part of the story and not what you’re really afraid of.

By the end of this week’s newsletter, you’re going to have a deep, clear understanding of what you’re really afraid of, as well as be empowered with a framework to begin neutralizing and reframing that fear.

Why Are You Afraid?

Fear is a survival instinct; it’s an unconscious emotion programmed into your nervous system.

Fear is an innate survival response, but also a response that can be learned. This is noteworthy because if something can be learned, it can be unlearned - more on this to come.

Centuries ago, fear was what kept you safe, in contact with your tribe, and, therefore, alive. It ensured you were alert to danger and could quickly ready yourself to flee or fight.

Although this innate programming still helps to keep you alive to this day, it’s preventing you from doing what you’re really here to do: thrive.

Fear is a prehistoric emotion - meaning it’s been hardwired into you for centuries.

It’s irrational and often doesn’t make logical sense.

This fact, however, does make sense, given fear originates in the amygdala of your brain, which is part of your limbic brain. This is one of the oldest parts of the brain and is home to emotions, such as fear, anger, and anxiety.

What makes fear so difficult to conquer is that on the surface, we can often see how irrational our fear is. However, deep within, we feel such a symphony of strong emotions that the experience literally feels like life or death.

Except it’s not.

Yet, these emotions maintain a stranglehold on any action we’re thinking about taking, which keeps you stuck in your head and in your own way.

Sound familiar?

What makes the topic of fear even harder to comprehend and overcome is the fact that both real and imagined (or perceived) fears have the same vice-like grip on keeping you stuck in a state of inaction…

Fear Exists Both as Real and Imagined

Any time there’s a perceived threat, your fear instinct is triggered and your body begins to initiate several changes to facilitate the fight, flight, or freeze response.

For instance, this may occur when you’re home alone and hear a loud sound outside, when you hear raised voices and yelling from the couple across the table in the restaurant, or, of course, when you see a spider…

What’s captivating, however, is that this instinct can be triggered by both real and imagined threats, and these threats may be on our physical, emotional, or psychological well-being.

For example, walking through a graveyard at midnight on a cool October evening can evoke all sorts of fears…

But as you sit here now and think about it, chances are you’re eliciting the same physiological changes - increased heart rate, shallower breathing, nervous energy - just imagining what this experience would be like!

The same could be true if you are walking down the street at night and see a tall man dressed in a black sweatsuit with a black hat and sunglasses on. You have no definitive evidence to support feeling threatened on the surface, but underneath the hood, your physiology may be freaking out as fuel stores mobilize and your heart rate begins to elevate.

This example is noteworthy because it highlights the fact that fear is a learned behavior. What I mean is, logically, and removed from this situation, you know that there’s no definitive reason to fear walking past this man at night.

However, if you had a bad experience with a man dressed like this previously, your subconscious has stored this memory and kept the images readily accessible as it works ‘round the clock scanning your environment for threats. Fearing any person resembling the man you had a previously negative encounter with is a learned response based on a prior situation.

And, as crazy as it may sound now, the belief (fear) was created in an attempt by your subconscious to keep you safe.

There exists a moment, memory, experience, or repeated exposure in your early childhood that planted the seed for this fear.

Before we get to discussing how to begin neutralizing and unlearning these fears, it’s important to recognize all fears lead to one central fear, what I call the Fear JAR.

The JAR of Fear

I fear failure.

I fear success.

I fear embarrassment.

I fear love.

I fear connection.

I fear acceptance.

I fear being wrong.

I fear commitment.

I fear being exposed as an imposter.

I fear public speaking.

Does one of these resonate with you?

If I had a hunch, I’d guess at least two - or five - do.

I know that for me personally, I struggle with many of these, specifically fear of success, fear of acceptance, and fear of commitment.

If you were to unpack each of these individual fears, you’d recognize they’re all similar and interconnected in some capacity. This is true because underneath each of these fears is a biologically programmed concoction of fears, what I like to call the Fear JAR.

• Fear of Judgment.

• Fear of Abandonment.

• Fear of Rejection.

Each of these is rooted in survival.

Remember - your ancestor’s lives literally depended on being a part of the tribe. Anything that risked being kicked out of the tribe induced a deep-rooted sense of fear to serve as a red flag to stop the behavior immediately or risk, well, again, death.

• If your tribe judges you for your behavior, the risk of being kicked out exponentially increases.

• If your tribe does abandon you, well, it’s likely a matter of days before you’re impending death.

• And, of course, if you are rejected by your tribe, you’re ultimately abandoned, and, well, death.

Bleek times, I know.

And, again, I’m right here with you: these seem too primal, simple, and silly to be prevalent today.

But they are.

And, they’re powerful AF.

For instance, if you grew up with just enough to get buy and start having significant financial success as an adult, you’re going to begin to experience a collection of sabotaging behaviors that stem from fear of judgment and rejection.

Additionally, if your family and friend group live an unhealthy lifestyle that’s characterized by being at least 20 pounds overweight and you decide to strike out on your own health kick…

Well, fear of rejection, judgment, and abandonment is going to sink in and play a critical role in creating resistance to keep you stuck where you were - in a bubble of safety within your tribe.

These three key fears are everywhere and every goal you’re pursuing that’s providing resistance in the form of a self-sabotaging behavior(s) can be traced back to the Fear JAR.

Fear is a Learned Behavior

Important reminder: fear is a learned behavior.

This means it can also be unlearned.

To begin the unlearning process, it’s essential to return to the source - the moment - when this fear first formed.

Fear typically forms as a belief (or story) around a particular area, event, or person in your life. This belief is authored by your subconscious, meaning it’s rooted in comfort, predictability, and safety.

Here’s a personal example of how a financial fear of mine played out…

For five consecutive years, I made the same amount of money.

I mean, like an eerily similar amount of money within a couple of thousand dollars in each direction. This occurred despite a herculean effort each year to exceed my previous year’s income.

Fortunately, I came to recognize that after years of frustration about changing my business tactics and experiencing zero change, I was dealing with a mindset problem, not a strategy problem.

So, I pursued mindset and performance coaching to help discover what was behind my relationship with money and keeping me stuck at this current income.

What I found, phew, was quite interesting!

Through my own reflection and completion of online courses, I knew I had some limiting beliefs around money that were instilled in me throughout my childhood. I was aware and had made some subtle changes through this surface-level work.

However, through mindset coaching (and specifically hypnosis), I was able to not only shed these beliefs and gift them back to their rightful owners (my parents), but I was also able to clearly see the fear-based story running the show…

It wasn’t safe to earn more money than my parents.

If I were to do so, it would lead to judgment (rich people are assholes), which could ultimately fuel rejection and eventual abandonment.

Let me be clear and state the obvious: I know that this wouldn’t happen and my parents don’t judge or love me based on my income (though, I am sure they’d like it if I could make more and help them retire sooner, ha!).

To this day, I cannot tell you how much my parents earn per year, especially given the fact my dad worked a commission-based job for nearly 30 years! However, I can tell you I have one snippet of an image in my mind in which I saw an estimated income written on a college FASFA form…

And, clearly, this image stuck in my mind and helped to fortify the fear-based belief that it wasn’t safe to earn X amount of money per year because that number was pretty damn close.

Let’s unpack this even further: money aside, my Dad is someone I look up to and consider to be an excellent role model.

How dare I “surpass” him and outdo him by earning more money?

Who am I to do that after all he’s done for me, sacrificed for me, and taught me?

The thought of this instantly connects to rejection and abandonment.

Yet, again, on the surface, this sounds so freakin’ immature and silly. But when I remember that my subconscious - and yours, too - operates at a primal and immature level when it comes to doing what it thinks is necessary to keep us safe, well, it makes a little more sense.

Through hypno-mindset coaching, which allowed me to work with this story and belief directly within the subconscious, I’ve been able to reframe, heal, and reprogram this belief so that it now works for me, rather than against me.

I can confidently tell you now that I work less, charge more, and earn more than I ever have.

And, my parents still love me :)

Whether you fear failure, success, embarrassment, speaking up, or being wrong, each of these can be traced back to a deep-rooted fear of being judged, abandoned, and rejected.

If you don’t take action to unearth the fear-based story that’s in the driver’s seat of your self-sabotage cycle pattern of life, then you’ll remain stuck.

Let me help you uncover this fear-based story and take action to heal, reframe, and reprogram it so that you can unstuck yourself.

Apply to work with me here.

Your Next Step

This newsletter series has been dense, to say the least.

There’s a lot of depth behind what I’ve shared.

I’m working on being a bit more concise, but I encourage you to go back and read each part of this series (see the top of this edition to find the links to each previous newsletter).

This time, however, take diligent notes while reading. And, of course, complete the freakin’ action steps!

You can’t change unless you change.

Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter.

In next Friday’s Unstuck Yourself Newsletter, I’m going to share with you what we can learn from lobsters - seriously - when it comes to unstucking ourselves to brace for change, growth, and achieving all that we desire.

You may catch up on previous newsletters here.

If you have a question about anything I discussed in this week’s Unstuck Newsletter, feel free to drop me a message on Twitter (@pauljsalter7) or Instagram (@paulsaltercoaching).

My email inbox is always open, too: [email protected]

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Are you ready to get out of your own way and stop self-sabotage at the source?

Apply to work with me here.