Episode 268
Title: Fear is Imagined
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
________________
Transcription:
What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Integrative You Radio. Dr. Nicole here is feeling really spunky and sassy apparently. Um, I'm about to drop one on you guys. So, that's a great way to kick off a podcast, right? So there was a conversation that I was having with a client and I dropped this one on her and I was like, take it as you will.
Your fear is imagined. It is a figment of your imagination. She's like, Oh, shit, come on. And we got into it. And, and really that's the, the focus of this podcast is, you know, my goal is to keep this short and sweet, but to give you a different way of thinking about fear. Um, you know, sometimes I always think about changing my podcast name to thought provoking because that's like all that this is about it.
I don't ever want you guys to take away what I say as the gold standard. It's just for you to Provoke a new thought process and provoke a thought process of how you can, how this applies to you and how you could use it. So anyway, I derailed, as usual. But we were talking about fear and, and this is something that I personally heard and I remember it felt like a hammer fell on my head of, you know, fear is imagined.
And when you're in it, when you're in fear, and if you just got triggered by what I just said, like, Hey, I get it. I've been there, you know, when you're, when you're really in it and you have fears and they feel so fucking intense and, you know, you, you're thinking about like all the possible things that could go wrong.
If you make the wrong decision, you know, it's heavy. It's really heavy. But when we started talking about this idea that fear is imagined. I couldn't help but think of a specific, uh, module, I guess you can call it, from Reagan Hillier. She is a big manifestation coach. I started listening to some of her stuff on Mindvalley.
She's, I personally really like her. I think she's great. Um, but she was talking about manifestation. And, you know, a lot of us, Start to hear about this idea of manifestation and you know, a lot of us have desires in our life. We have things that we really want and sometimes we feel like those things are far away.
They're not always easily attainable and some of us feel like they're absolutely unattainable. And with that being said, of course, my dog wants to go out. Hold on.
I was just like, well, you guys are either going to listen to a dog whining in the background during this podcast or I let him out. But one of the things that she said was there is a difference between manufactured manifestation and surrendered manifestation. And I'm like, Hmm, what does that mean? And so she said, don't get me wrong, both work.
And that's kind of what happens that starts to. Put limitations on what people can manifest in their lives. And essentially what she said was manufactured is if I say I want to have a million dollars and then I want to manifest it a million dollars. And then I start to go into all of that, the how, you know, okay, well, you know, if I invest my money here, and if I do this crypto thing, and if I do this thing with my business, then it's likely that I will manifest this amount of money.
So you're, you're manufacturing it, you're manufacturing it because you're going down the rabbit hole of how it's going to come into your life. And you will only believe. That you will bring that into your life if you know, if you at least have an idea of the how, you know that it's possible because certain things are in the background working for you, a.
k. a. I have certain investments, I have a business, I have a side hustle, I have my 9 to 5 job, you know, you're like, okay, well, I have my 9 to 5 job, okay, if I, I can, I want to manifest a million dollars. So that's possible because I might get that promotion or I might get that commission or I might get that whatever.
And so what she said was, why are you putting a limitation on how something can come to you? The possibilities are limitless. The possibilities are infinite. I was like, shit.
Why are you putting a limitation on it? Because there's so much that you don't know. There's so much that is completely out of your consciousness. And it made me think about this idea of fear. And, you know, fear is rooted in control. But At the end of the day, if you fear something, the possibility of that fear coming to life is equal to the possibility that it won't.
It's like when people say, well, what if, and the rebuttal is, what if not? They're equally probable. So why do we focus on one thing? I will tell you, actually, why, for those of you that are, you know, the, the science, uh, neurology, uh, dorks like me, is that our brains are wired for the negative, I should rephrase that.
It could be presumed as negative, but our brains are wired for protection because as much as we all want to think that we have been protected. genetically evolved. Yeah, we have a capacity, but at the end of the day, the way that our bodies, our brains, our nervous systems are wired goes back to ancestral times, goes back to, you know, cavemen.
It goes back to the primitive era. That's why there are parts of your brain that are called primal parts of your brain. And so we can call it, you know, acting primal is when you, uh, act primal. You know, you protect yourself in a situation, you either run or you fight, because you're going back to those primal types of behaviors.
But the thing is, those are there as protection. That's even what, you know, people get very confused about what the idea of the ego is. The ego is protection. You know, you can either protect yourself verbally, um, by firing back at someone, or you can protect yourself verbally. Physically, um, by either running or by fighting.
So it's there for a reason, and it's not a bad thing, but we have to understand that fears come up as a protective mechanism. They're not a truth by any means, because, as mentioned, The possibility of the fear coming to life is equally, uh, likely as it is not. And so we have to be very, very conscious of where we put our energy.
You know, you're going to spend the energy no matter what. So you can either spend the energy on focusing on the fear, which is probably more likely to, no, I don't want to say probably, it's more likely to create it, or you can spend the same amount of energy focusing on the fear. The opposite, focusing on the.
The opportunity, because every fear, every fear is a challenge, and every challenge is attached to an opportunity. We don't always see it that way, and that's really, you know, when you listen to other things that Dr. Nick and I have done, we always talk about this idea of perception. Because fear is a perception, you know, it's a perception that there's more drawbacks than benefits.
If you shift your perception that there are more benefits than drawbacks, It's the same situation. It's just the way that you look at it. It's the way you perceive it. You go and you lose your job. You can perceive that as horrible. This was really negative. This was really bad. This is a huge fucking challenge in my life.
All these bad things are going to happen. But what about the opportunity? Like what about the opportunity that's completely off of your radar? Things don't happen for no reason. And especially things like rejection, rejection of a job. Rejection of a person. It's a redirect. The universe, God, whatever you want to call it, knows way better than you.
Sometimes you need to pause, stop focusing on bullshit that doesn't matter, and, and be open to the opportunity that is outside of your consciousness. Because there are infinite possibilities. You just lost your job. Okay. What if there's a new job coming your way? What if it's because You're about to get really fucking sick and you need to pause, take your unemployment and just take a pause and heal yourself.
What if there is an opportunity for, you know, moving to a completely different place that you've always wanted to move to, but you would have never done it? Because of the job you have, you meet someone who lives in another country and you would have probably said this isn't real life because I got to stay here for my job.
You have to open, you have to widen your lens. You have to open up your eyes and, and. Take the minute to really see everything, to see it for what it is, and stop letting your negative emotions and your fears overtake your perception and overtake your consciousness and overtake your logic and overtake your intuition.
If we all could take a pause in these moments that feel hard, feel intense, They feel like a big challenge or obstacle that was thrown at us. And if we were able to open the lens, widen the lens as I say, and to look at all aspects of it, just like as a blank slate, a non emotional person, a blank slate and say, okay, this happened.
Maybe these are some reasons why it happened. These are some of the things that are gonna be challenging now that this happened. Here are some of the things that could be good. Here are some of the opportunities that are in my consciousness, but also give myself permission to receive information over the next day, two days, week, month of what are the other opportunities?
What is the redirection here?
I always find it interesting when people let their fears hijack their lives. They hijack them for an hour. They hijack them for a year. Like they hijack them for years. You And as I said before, you're spending, you're spending energy no matter what. Why are you going to spend energy keeping yourself in the exact place that makes you feel like shit or perpetuating it and bringing yourself and your life even further down?
Because we know that feeling when the snowball starts to go down the mountain. One bad thing happens and then we go, Oh, I'm so unlucky because all these bad things are happening to me. And it's probably because of the state that you're in, the, it's where, where your attention is going. If your attention is going to the worst case scenario, then that's what you're going to get.
That's what you're going to get. You know, I was just in Florence. And this is going to, you know, a silly example, because obviously I understand that there are more significant, uh, challenges that arise in people's lives, loss of loved ones that, you know, things like that, that are very, very intense, um, cancer diagnoses like the, I understand the magnitude of these events, but even something that, you know, cause everyone, I think everyone is different with what is creating the most pain in their life at different times.
And so. Where we currently live, it's a rental. We are moving. We need to move out very quickly. We have a baby on the way. So definitely feeling some pressure if we need to get somewhere. We need to get settled. You know, we need to make a lot of moves, et cetera, et cetera. Um, finding a home, a rental, anything in Italy is a very, very different experience.
The U. S. has definitely some significant challenges. Um, We went up to Florence and we were looking at apartments. We got turned down four times. Um, two times our dogs were too big. One time, this kid, this house isn't appropriate for kids. Um, and then the fourth time they got a better offer. And so two weeks, You know, spent a lot of time, spent a significant amount of money, staying in a villa for those two weeks, um, you know, cruising around town and just getting turned down left and right and it's just kind of like, okay, and our realtor, who's actually originally American, was very funny.
She's like, you guys are really just Taking this like a champ. She's like, most people would be kind of spiraling at this point. And I'm like, well, at the end of the day, all I can say is that this is clearly happening for a reason. You know, I have this idea in my brain that I want to live in the city center and be able to walk everywhere.
And this is going to be great for our family. And I think that, you know, someone higher up is saying, no, this isn't going to be the best fit for you. Um, you should be. You know, in a house with a little bit of property and, you know, an opportunity for your child to be outdoors and not necessarily in a city center.
And so then finally, we secured a place that wasn't the 1st on my list, but, um. Now that I've been able to widen my lens and shift my perception, I realize that this is going to be the best fit for our family, and ironically, the universe knows better than me. So. But the thing is, if I went and I spiraled, oh my god, why, nothing is working out, what are we going to do?
And maybe we should throw in the towel, just go back to the US. I potentially would have had zero opportunities. I would have, I could have completely redirected everything because all of my energy was negative. All of my energy was, this is so bad. And you know, I'm a victim of, of all of these people not wanting, letting me live in these places.
I could have had a very different outcome depending on where I put my. my energy and my focus. So if I put my focus on all of the negative, I probably would have had a different outcome. But because I just weathered the storm and I knew that something was coming, like something that was more aligned, that was off my radar was coming, then that is what allowed me to receive the opportunity for the house that we will be in.
Keep that in mind. You could either block opportunities or you could receive opportunities. And that's not because you say it, it's because of your mental, emotional, and energetic state. You are either blocking opportunities, blocking quality relationships, blocking the love of your life, blocking your dream job, blocking all of these things.
You're an open vessel to receive them. It's all on how you choose to spend your time, to spend your energy, and how you choose to show up mentally and emotionally. And if you've listened to other things that I've done, I always say, you know, if you feel like hijacked, if you feel that your nervous system is fucking wrecked, listen, I know what it's like to have a nervous system that was wrecked a decade of being under extreme, extreme stress and pressure, being an entrepreneur, being a doctor of thousands of patients, having a team of 25, everybody always needing me, needing something, bills to pay, things to do.
You know, it was, it was a lot. My nervous system was fucking toasted. It took some time to repair. To get out of that state, to get to a place that my body knew how to run. Without stress hormones, my body ran on stress hormones, like, and this was going on so much before becoming an entrepreneur because I worked in the restaurant industry.
I used to run around with my head cut off for hours on end in, you know, being a waitress and you don't eat. Because you don't have time and then you calm your nervous system down by having a cocktail at the end of the night. Like that was my, my all through high school, all through college, that was my profession.
And then I went to school and chiropractic school was for me, it was very intense, uh, you know, very intense with the schedule and the curriculum. And I was on the, uh, what did they call it? Deaccelerated. Program. Uh, so everything was condensed into three years. So it was, it was a very intense program. And then I went, I never took even a minute off.
I went right into entrepreneurship. And so my system just operated in a state of stress. Actually, I knew that's how I operated best, honestly. And when I had my son and I took a step back, I remember feeling like the, like you guys can't see me for those of you not on YouTube, but like a shaking, like I, I, I almost felt like it, like if you were shaking, like shivering, I felt like that on the inside, like my nervous system was doing that on the inside, I wasn't doing it on the outside.
I wasn't shaking or trembling. It was, it was, that's the way my nervous system felt on the inside by being, you know, Slowed down. And then my mind was, what are you doing? You're not productive. You need to do shit. Like you, you know, you need to be busy. If you're not busy, then you're like a waste of life.
It was a wild experience trying to work through that. And I did leverage integrative medicine to work through that. I, you know, I did some very specific protocols and supplements and therapies in order to call my nervous system down. And my journey would have been, you know, A lot longer and a lot more difficult if I didn't have those tools.
And so this is something that we absolutely love helping people with because, you know, there are people that want to stay in a state of fear. They may not realize they want to stay in a state of fear, but staying in a state of fear and being a victim in their life gets them benefits. It gets them support.
It gets them love. It gets them financial support. It gets them things. And so unconsciously, they stay there because there's more benefits than drawbacks. And then there are other people that are like, I don't want to be in this state. I just don't know how to get out of it. And that is really amazing because sometimes it's about balancing the nervous system, balancing the biochemistry, and then working on how to shift how you think and how to shift your energy.
Thank you. And then sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes it's about let's shift how you think, shift your energy to eradicate some of the programs that have been holding you back in your life, recalibrate your nervous system, and then we sometimes will nourish the nervous system with just certain supplements and vitamins and cofactors like magnesium and zinc that will help it work better.
So it's all about timing. Um, if you will follow us on social media, I talked about this in a recent post and a lot of people were like, wow, I never thought about it that way. And this makes a lot of sense because you can do a lot of different things, but if they're not timed correctly and they're also not built into an integrative approach, you're going to hit either roadblocks or plateaus.
And so, um, That's the beauty of bringing strategy into the mental, emotional, and physical healing process. Because if you can use strategy, you could see, uh, you could see beneficial results in a very short amount of time because you're being extremely strategic and methodical. So I want you guys to remember that bad, scary, it's in the eye of the beholder.
This is about your perception of the situation. Because Someone else. might have the same situation and look at it completely different. We call that, Oh, they're, they're a glass full, half full person. Oh, the other ones, they're a glass half empty person. All that, that means it's perception. One person is looking at life from one lens.
The other person is looking at life from another lens. Being extremely positive and being extremely negative both have their drawbacks. So if you're a positive affirmation person and everything is great and, you know, even the worst things that ever happen are actually blessings in disguise. P. S.
you, like, it's been proven you can actually change your brain chemistry and your brain, um, activation. You can see it on scans that you develop a level of psychosis. When you're everything is so great and you're so positive and at the end of the day, everything is not always great and positive. Like you're being fucking crazy.
So just stop it. There are good things. There are bad things, but it's a matter of what do we let go? Persevere, are you going to let these fears and these negative emotions persevere? Are you just going to feel them, acknowledge them and move on? They're never going to be gone. You're never going to not have any stress or any fears in your life.
It's just dancing with them, embracing them, saying, I see you trying to protect me, trying to make sure that I'm sure about this decision. I get it. But. I'm gonna, I'm gonna look at all aspects here to make the right decision for myself, to make an aligned decision for myself. So what I want to leave you with is that if you can get to a place where you have the ability and the tools to make decisions out of inspiration and not desperation, you're going to have so much more fulfillment, success, abundance, and love in your life.
And. When I say this, what I mean is making a fear, making a fear, making a decision out of desperation means that you're making a decision out of a scarcity mindset. You're making a decision out of fear. You're making a decision that probably serves someone else and not you. If anything, it detracts you.
So, A lot of us make decisions out of desperation because we abandon our intuition. We also don't know enough about ourselves. We don't know enough about who we are at our core. We don't know our values. So we abandon our intuition. We don't have the knowledge of our values. And we go to the pros and cons list.
Oh, well, this guy, this girl, you know, they have a good job. They are really nice. My parents do really like them and, you know, uh, they have a good job and, you know, life would be pretty good. Life would be pretty good. And your gut is like, fuck. Fuck this person. We are not aligned. I'm not attracted to you.
Like there's no fun or excitement in our conversations. And, and you will look at the pros and cons list using your analytical mind and make a fucking decision out of that. And guess what? That decision blows up in your face. It, and some of us are too stubborn to acknowledge it. So you marry the person and you just stay with them and you're fucking miserable.
Or you get a divorce, no matter what, you know, there's a lot of challenges that come along with making decisions out of desperation. You know how many decisions I made in my business out of desperation, what I had to do, what I should do. I have to make this much money. So I'll take on this client. Who's fucking crazy.
Like, do you know how many decisions that I made out of desperation and they didn't blow up in my face. They were like that. Fucking nuclear bomb and it's because they were so misaligned and so instead of thinking about it from a different lens to say, if I don't take this client because they're not a fit, then it's going to open the door to clients that are aligned.
I wasn't in a place, my nervous system wasn't in a place, I wasn't in my wisdom, in my personal growth evolution, I wasn't in a place to even think like that. It was like, you gotta do what you gotta do, and you gotta, you know, you gotta struggle sometimes, and you gotta persevere, like that was my mindset.
And After 10 years of feeling like things were just so hard and, and watching so many things spiral or watching so many things blow up, you're just like, all right, universe, I guess I got to listen because this ain't fun and I can't take it anymore. Like, I'm about to lose it. And what's even more interesting is that when you make a decision out of alignment, it could be really, really scary.
Um, so that fear creeps up, but. You know that the outcomes are worth it. I moved to Italy. You can look at that from the outside and say, Wow, that's amazing. That's such a, that probably was such a great decision or an easy decision of like, I'm going to go live in Italy and, you know, eat the best food and see the most amazing sights.
Yeah, but I left my family behind. I changed my business model. I took my, uh, kid away from his grandparents, you know, I, I didn't know where I was going to live, I didn't know the language, like, there was a lot of scary aspects of it, but because I know my values, because I know my family's values, and because I was able to to sit back and widen my lens and widen my perception, I knew that it was an aligned decision.
And even though there were going to be some challenges that come along with it, it was going to be worth it in the end. And that has definitely rung true. So do not fear the worst. Be prepared for anything. Be prepared that that might come to fruition, but be prepared that The complete opposite can come to fruition, because again, the possibilities are the same.
The possibility for your fear to come true, the possibility for your fear not to come true. And the probability of your fear coming true actually lies in where you put your time and energy. But if you can just remember aspects of this, of, you know, This fear is imagined. This fear is created by some program, some limiting belief, but it's also here to protect me.
I'm going to acknowledge and appreciate it being here to help me, but I'm not going to let it overtake me. And I'm going to use this as an opportunity to see The other side to see how it's potentially redirecting me. How is it potentially trying to give me feedback that I'm doing something or saying something that is out of alignment with what is important to me?
How can you use your fear? Because again, it's just a feedback mechanism. It's not fucking real. Let's just be black. It's not fucking real. It's just a feedback mechanism to tell you you're out of alignment. And it's also potentially a redirection to push you in the direction of something that is more aligned.
