Luka Lagunaviciute: Does Fear Really Have to Be Our Master?

And we are live. Welcome, welcome Luca. Hi, thanks. To the very first episode of Winning Within. Thank you very much for doing this. Of course, thanks for having me. My pleasure, my absolute pleasure. I'm a little uncomfortable right now because of the positioning here. I'm going to try and get set up. I think that works. Okay. Yeah. You okay? I'm comfortable. Great. So, we're going to talk about fear today. Yeah. How exciting. Exciting, right? What a topic. What a topic indeed. Yeah. Was there any way that you wanted to start personally? I was thinking just to ask you, first of all, what fear is for you? Thank you for asking that. I think fear is many things and I would say is perhaps misinterpreted and misconceived by a lot of people and judged and hated by a lot of people. And perhaps doesn't deserve all that judgment and hatred. The way that I see fear is I would say that a lot of people see fear is like a master that gives us commands. That is above us and that we must listen to. However, I would say fear is more like you are the queen or the king and fear is an advisor that comes to the king or the queen and says, hey, this is what I think. But you're the king or you're the queen. So you don't have to listen to anyone. You're sovereign. Right. You have to choose what you do with the advice that you get from each of your advisors, whether it's fear or shame or happiness or anything. And I would say that most people have been seen fear as this all powerful sovereign entity that commands their every action in life. I've never really done the opposite of what fear set. And I think that when you start to think, oh, maybe this advisor, maybe I should do what I think, what I feel I want to do. And you start doing that and you start to realize that a lot of the times this advisor is actually full of shit. Yeah, it's just throwing around the what ifs. What if that? Yeah. And I love what you said the first time we met, you said fear is just like it's just suggesting things. Things might happen and I really like this sort of way to look at it. Yeah, because also like how now I am regarding fear. I'm starting to adopt this more like position of acceptance and then I'm just asking the fear, okay, what are you trying to tell me here? Not like, oh, this is scary, the world's scary, but what are you trying to do? What are you trying to tell me? And more often than not, the answer is just like, well, I'm just trying to protect you. I want you to succeed. I want you to prosper. I want you to blossom. But then, yeah, it just sort of sometimes goes out of hand and has difficulties to tell that in a softer way. And it just starts screaming, like the world is scary. And this going to happen and this going to happen. But, you know, underneath it all, it seems like, yeah, it's just like, it comes from a very good place, but then sort of translated into this loud voice. That loud voice that is misguided. You said that it wants you to succeed and prosper. And I believe it does as well. But it's like fear is sort of like a protection, a layer of protection is just trying to protect you. But there are fears that I would say are grounded in truth that we should take heed of, listen to, and follow the advice of. But I would say the vast majority of our fears are like the bullshit advisor that saying, oh, you shouldn't do this. I'll get what thanks for your advice. Thank you for sharing that with me. But I'm just going to proceed anyway. Because we all have, uh, through our upbringing, through childhood and every, especially childhood, we developed fears, irrational fears. Essentially thoughts of that this is dangerous when it's not. So you're just through, it's kind of through your individual collection of circumstances and experiences. You have developed fears just because of those experiences, but they're not grounded on truth. It's really quite arbitrary. And if I had shared your experiences and I had your DNA, I guess that also contributes to it, then I would have your exact fears and vice versa. You would have my exact fears. But there are probably things that I'm afraid of that you're not afraid of. That your brain does not tell you is dangerous. And there are probably things vice versa as well. So it's like it's highly subjective. There are people who are not at all afraid of a lot of the stuff that you're probably really scared of. And so, so it is misguided. It's trying to protect you, but it's misguided. So it's coming from a place of love. Fear is trying to protect you, but you've got to realize that fear has been so misguided because fear has been created through the interpretations that you've made of the events that you were a part of and the experiences that you had as a child. And as a child, you don't have really the capacity to make rational interpretations. So if someone if your parent insults you, you interpret that as, "I am a bad person, not my parent is incompetent and not very good parent and not emotionally intelligent or whatever." You make it all about you. It's about me. It's about something that I did wrong. Yeah. And so, considering that as a child, you really can't make these rational interpretations. No child is able to do that. Then you can sort of conceptualize your fears as, "It's just my inner child, you know, it's just that child." Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get what you're saying. But it's not me, that's what I'm going to finish with. It's not you. It's not you that is afraid of that. It's just that your past is self that is currently still alive within you. Yeah, and what you said about this just being a child, like your inner child, that wasn't really capable of assessing the situation rationally and fully. I feel like, well, what I'm discovering within myself is just that I have to forgive myself for making that judgment for lacking rational thought, because I was just a kid. I was interpreting the situation to my best capacity and best ability. And then my choice at that time to kind of assess the situation was that, "Yeah, it's scary. I don't know what to do." But then now, from this point where I am now, I can forgive that child for doing that judgment for it. Because, well, that was the only choice, the only sort of thing that I could do at this situation. So, I feel like we also have to forgive ourselves that we made that judgment about the situation, whether it would be, you know, like 20 years ago or 10 years ago or yesterday. And how do you suppose we can go about forgiving ourselves for that? Yeah, it's a good question. I feel like that involves a lot of acceptance, but acceptance is easier said than done, you know. I feel like acceptance is a big process. How could we forgive ourselves? I suppose that's coming from, you know, just being still and then just asking yourself, what was it about? What was I thinking? How was I interpreting the situation? Yeah, why did I make this exact judgment? Indeed. I would agree with you. I would agree that through understanding you will naturally forgive. Because I wouldn't say that forgiveness is like, "Okay, it's good to forgive." This person did something to me. I forgive that person. "Woo!" You know, now free. I would say it's more of a process. It is a conscious decision of like, "Okay, this happened. I've recognised I've been holding onto this resentment for this person or for myself. And I'm deciding that I want to forgive them. So I would say you more use the intention to forgive. And then it's a gradual process. And one thing that I would say can accelerate that and facilitate that is understanding. Because I would say that forgiveness and judgment are sort of related to each other, such that the more you understand, the less you judge. Yeah, of course, of course. Because you know what preceded that judgment. How it came about. Exactly. How do we access that understanding? What do you think? What understanding? Like just understanding about what happened, why happened that way? I would say yeah look at the situation so let's say for example you currently now have this fear of abandonment or something because you're one of your parents left right let's say your father left and you have this fear this deep fear of abandonment understandably so because as a child you were abandoned but you made this interpretation and you probably generalize it to because your parents are sort of they are representations in the child's mind of people so if your parents treat you badly you you probably but develop the belief that people are mean people are unkind people are harsh and so a fear of people is actually perfectly accommodated to that experience or to that interpretation of that experience and so perhaps there is something to going back in your past and thinking and being like okay so my father left me and I made that interpretation yeah that like I can't trust people because they'll leave me and that I'll be abandoned I can fully understand why why I made that interpretation as a child and like I see that and and I recognize that and I love I'm giving myself love for that and or just for being me right I'm just giving myself that part of me that perhaps I haven't been loving by not recognizing I'm now recognizing at the same time the fact that my father left me doesn't mean that I can't trust anyone because my father was just one man and people very enormously yeah there are people who are kind and now people who who act less kindly and perhaps your father was just someone who who didn't treat you very kindly but that doesn't mean anything about you because he could have had a different child a completely different person and he would have still not treated that person kindly because the way that we act and behave is not a reflection of the people we behave to but more a reflection of who we are yeah yeah yeah I completely agree at the end of the day yeah all the interpretations they come from within yes it's our best attempt to understand what's going on yeah but then also like one thing that popped into my mind I remember like during my studies a couple of months ago actually one of my teachers who's actually a psychologist so it was very nice to be taught by an actual psychologist she showed us this concept of so to say shadow pain so what she said is that at the core well let's say if you have a problem so it's like a just difficult experience with with with I don't know parents for example yeah so there is a core where there is this you know real pain the situation was really just painful but then what we do in our mind is we create this like surrounding big sort of shadow pain around it and which is basically just fueled by our thoughts and then the pain or the fear just expands because we think about it and we just kind of enlarge it in our minds and then that's the thing that you should tackle for example in therapy right so you don't necessarily tackle the core the real pain the real assessment of the situation but then everything that surrounds it sort of the constellation of all the thoughts they're like I cannot do this this this bad thing will happen to me and what if what if what if what if so I really like this metaphor yeah that there is this big cloud surrounding the actual pain and we decide actually sometimes well sometimes it's relatively difficult to decide not to like feed it with with those scary thoughts but for not conscious of it yeah yeah so it's like sometimes we're not fully conscious of that but I feel like we can't we we have a choice we have a choice to kind of stop feeding that shadow and then instead you know adopt a different perspective adopt a yeah a different kind of thinking to stop feeding the fire essentially because the the core pain that you're that you just mentioned I would say is kind of like yeah it was like a fire you started a fire fire burns right and the fire doesn't last forever eventually it burns up all the wood that's in the fire and it's gone but it's supposed to burn that for a second you don't stop the fire fire burns and then it takes up all the wood and then it's done but the problem is we see the fire and with our oh we panic and we try and put out the fire as we're putting out the fire we're actually like blowing on it with like a cloth and it's causing the the fire to spread to little bits of kindle and wood that's next to it the fire grows you perpetuate the fire by trying to put it out yeah yeah that's oh that's a wonderful metaphor because the suppression like when we try to kind of suppress the thoughts it just it's not possible you just have to feel it all it just have to kind of allow it to happen and then it will just leave you the same as the fire it will just burn out you try to like you know put it out with a cloth you just provide more oxygen the fire is like yeah burning even what you resist persists yeah yeah and to bring it back to fear I would say that fear is fear is definitely an uncomfortable emotion and it's functionally uncomfortable it needs to be uncomfortable to serve its function sure such as shame and guilt in other emotions that are generally and collectively rejected and hated and I would say the majority of people have a bad relationship with fear and shame and guilt and any emotion that doesn't feel good yeah we try to avoid it because hell it's like so uncomfortable yeah but your emotions are there to serve you they're not there to punish you oh yeah that's a good way to look at it so it's like you have you have these emotions that are there for you that are there for you and so everything they do they do to help you but you only show some of them love you show happiness love you show empowerment love you show pride love you show love love if love is an emotion that's arguable but when it comes to these unpleasant emotions such as fear and shame and anxiety we we have a bad relationship with them and we hate we hate them sorry we reject them we push them away and it's like imagine imagine you had like I don't know let's say you're building a house right and you're you're the person who has contracted a set of workers to build your house for you and you have a great relationship with the window guy every time the window guy comes you're like hey man how you're how are the kids yeah you good have a nice day and like the same thing with the with the guy who's setting up the foundation you got tie relationship with him and then but the the person who's doing the walls you're like hey you so what you're doing for a sec fuck you all right you I don't want to see and they're like but I'm setting up the walls like you need you need the walls for your house you I just don't like you I just don't like you and I don't want to see you and it's like yeah but I'm gonna I'm sorry but like I'm gonna stick around because like this is you need the walls and I can I can see you don't like me but like I'm really committed to my job and I'm just gonna I think I'm just gonna stay because I you need for your house you need walls I'm telling you and you're like yeah but fuck you dude like okay you stay then fucking stay but every time I see you I'm just gonna tell you to fuck off and reject you everything you do you know it's like well okay and what will the guy do then the wall guy yeah maybe the guy might get aggressive you know because if you if he has to do his job it's not like you can fire the wall guy because well right how would the house be set up then well there is a possibility that we he would get aggressive you know he would be like well you know what fuck you then yeah if you're telling me to fuck off fuck you also I'm gonna I'm gonna do my job poorly and I'm gonna do it aggressively and then I want that to happen and to bring it back to like fear or anxiety for example there's a someone I know who gave me a very good analogy of of anxiety because I I had a panic attack a few years ago I had a couple and I want to see this guy and I told him I was like okay first thing that I want to dress here is the panic attack because that was the scariest thing I've ever experienced he was like okay and we did some work with it and one of the things that he mentioned to me was my relationship with anxiety and he was like, "Because I told him like, "Yeah, yeah, I push it away, I don't like it." Obviously, I try and suppress it, I do whatever I can to not feel it, and he was like, "Okay, listen." All your emotions are messengers. Everything that you experience on an emotional level is there to tell you something. Anxiety is one of those messengers. So, anxiety is kind of like someone who knocks at you door and it's like, "Hello, hey, Luca, I'm here, I've got a message for you." But we don't like it, so we're like, "Yeah, I'm not opening the door. I don't know. Fuckin' let me switch on that TV or something." And we turn up the volume, it's like, "Hello, and you're like, "Fuckin' is still there." It's not going away. It's not going away because it has to deliver a message. Exactly. It has to. And so, what happens when you continuously ignore the knock on your door that you know is there? It has to, right? It is just wired to give you the message. And you can ignore it as much as you want, but it will give you the message or it will. It's just going to give you the message. So, if you don't respond when it knocks on your door, it's going to kick down your fucking door. Hence the panic attack. It can't run away from a panic attack. And it's going to throw around the furniture in your house then as well. It's going to cause some shit. And it's going to make sure that you hear it, fooling well. It's going to do that. But it didn't have to do all of that. It didn't have to cause so much chaos. You could have just been like, "Hello?" And you're like, "Oh, hey, anxiety. Come in." Yeah, okay, what's the message? Exactly. What do you have to tell me? Oh, well, I'm just feeling a bit of anxiety because I've just been thinking of this thing that this person said to me yesterday. And my interpretation has been that maybe they don't like me. Maybe I said something wrong. I feel like I offended them because of. I don't know, just the way they looked at me after and they didn't talk to me. All this stuff and you're like, "Okay, tell me more." Yeah, well, there's also. The fact that they didn't text me, usually they text me quite often, they haven't text me. Okay, anything else that you want to say to me? Yeah, well, there's also this thing about this other person. Okay, okay, tell me more. And it gives you their message and then you're like, "Okay, is there anything else?" And you're like, "No, that's all I wanted to say to you for now." And I'm like, "Okay, well, thank you for telling me that anxiety." Yeah, yeah. Because I know that everything you tell me, you know, it's important. And I love you, just like I love any other one of my visitors. I don't love any visitor any differently. And I recognize you, just like I recognize everyone else. So thank you very much for giving me your message and have a nice day. Maybe I'll see you around, you know? Like you are welcome to come back anytime you want. Yeah, I mean, it sounds wonderful. But then I just wonder how do we actually cultivate love for these sort of difficult messages? Because I completely agree, I was thinking about the same metaphor. Like, yeah, a couple of years now, if you don't listen, then it's going to make sure that you hear it and it's going to do that by screaming, by kicking down your walls. And yeah, just storming in. And so how do we cultivate love for it? Yeah, how do you know? Well, what would you say love is? Oh. I don't know, it's many things I get. I guess. I would say personally, I would say that love is just simple recognition. Recognition. So the opposite of love would be judgment. So also love is pushing away. And I would say love is just more. So with a person, for example, to love a person is just to see the person as they are and to accept them. Yeah. And say that's love. Yeah. So to love your life, you can love your life and be in a state of sadness. If you're not resisting the sadness. You can love your life after missing your bus. If you don't resist having missed your bus. I would say love is just going with the flow and not making judgments and thinking that you know how things should be. You think you should have gotten that bus, but maybe you shouldn't have. Good things happen. You know there's this little story about some guy. I don't remember the story exactly, but it's something to the extent of. There's like a farmer out somewhere in some country and his son falls off his horse and breaks his leg. And everyone in the village is like, "Oh, that's bad news." And he's like, "Yeah, maybe." And then there's a war that starts with a nearby country. And people are like, "Oh, that's really bad news." He's like, "Yeah, maybe." And then because his son broke his leg, he can't go to the war. And everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, good news." And he's like, "Yeah, maybe." And then because he stays there, he gets sick. And people are like, "Bad news." And he's like, "Yeah, maybe." I forget. Yeah, I'm sort of like, you know, changing the story a bit because I forgot the details, but it's something basically. We make interpretations because we think that events have an inherent goodness or badness to them, such as missing the bus is a bad thing. Because I feel like I get on the bus at 8 o'clock and I missed it. So now I have to wait 15 minutes, which is bad, right? I don't know, potentially, potentially, but also. I don't know. Maybe you stay at the bus and as you're at the bus, you don't have anything to do and you think. And you start thinking and you come up with a really nice idea to do something. Or you meet someone. Or you meet someone at the bus stop. Or you think of someone and you text them. And you're like, "You know what? I like this person. I'm going to text them." And they text you back and they seem to like you. Things evolve, right? Missing the bus and this is not magical thinking. This is not magical thinking. I can see a lot of people would hear this and be like, "Oh yeah, okay, fine." Sure, that's one way of looking at it. But I'm just saying there are an infinite number of interpretations you can make from any given situation. And it's a choice. And it's a choice. And we always have the choice. We always have the choice. Yeah, which is such a freeing thought to have. You know that we always can just choose how we perceive the situation. I mean sometimes it's. don't get me wrong. Sometimes it seems impossible. And you know, it's like. Everything is just screaming at you and you cannot even process what's going on at the moment. But still, you have a choice. You have a choice to just breathe at the moment. You have a choice. Whether how quickly you have to respond. You have a choice as to the meaning that you give to things. Yeah, absolutely. Because life, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to say this. I'm sorry to say this to those who might initially interpret this as pessimistic. But I find it very, very empowering. Life has no meaning. There is no meaning to anything. That happens. Meaning is something that you give to something. And you, whether you are conscious of it or not, you are the person who allocates a meaning to everything that happens to you. But I would say that most of this happens unconsciously. So we don't realise it. We've already been programmed to associate certain things as good or bad. So we're not conscious of it. And so things happen. And then unconsciously we make these interpretations. We give meaning automatically. So we're sort of like we've relinquished control and sovereignty of our lives. To our programming. To our experiences. To our past. To which. Which doesn't exist. Right? The past no longer exists. But it just does not exist. It's all in your mind. So you have the power to give the meaning that you want to any situation. And why would you want to do that? Because then you're not, you don't suffer mercilessly at the whim of the circumstances that come at you. It's not, it's like Jim Rohn used to say. It's not the wind. It's the set of the sale. Something to that extent. Right? It's not about where the wind is going. It's about the set of your sale. Right? So someone who is a Boatsman or Boatswoman will use the wind to get them to where they want. It could be blowing east. But they can still get north. They don't have to go east. They can still use the wind to go north. You just got to manipulate the wind. You got to give the certain meaning to these events. And then the day I missed the metro, like this actually happened. I missed the metro. And I was like, fuck. And then I was like, wait a minute. What a minute. I'm like, I'm going to use that some meaning. Yeah, this has no meaning. And I was like, okay, well, whatever. Like this has no meaning. meaning. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna think, you know, like automatic, automatically, I was like, this is a bad thing. I'm annoyed because I wanted to get the metro. And then I was like, okay, let me remind myself that actually this doesn't have any meaning. And I was like, well, there's probably a good reason for this. And I just sat there. And 30 seconds later, I saw a girl that I know. And I was like, Hey, and we have this really nice conversation. 30 seconds later. Really soon after. I was planning on just being there and just thinking. And just using the time. And before I started, I saw this girl. And I said, hi, and we had this really nice talk. And it was a girl that is a friend of the girl friend of one of my good friends. And we had met before we had like a had a brief conversation. But we never got to know each other. And with this conversation, I felt like we connected. And then I saw I bumped into her again a couple days ago on campus. And we just stopped and had like a 40 minute conversation. And like connected even more, I would say, at least I felt so. And so it was like, maybe the metro was really bad to miss. Or maybe it was the start of some kind of relationship that I'm starting to develop with a new friend. Wow. Thanks, metro. Honestly, exactly. And it is like, you can't predict these things. You don't know, you can't be like, I just missed a metro. Fuck, say that's bad. No way. It's probably good because I'll probably develop a friendship out of this. There's no way there's no way to predict that. But life will surprise you. So, and so if if you automatically stick with the thought of this as a fucking bad thing, like I missed a metro and all that, it's much harder to, well, first of all, it's much harder to draw a positive interpretation from it, a meaning. And also you're deluding yourself. You've been kind of arrogant in a way where arrogant to be like, oh, this is what this means. I know just me, little old me, I know how things should be, how things in the universe should be. I know that me, I should not have missed this metro and I did. And that's why I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed at the universe for being the way it is. And that's not love. That's resistance. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like the opposite of fear is trust, right? Just like trusting that. I don't know. So to say God has a plan or whatever you, however you want to look at this, maybe just that you can just trust however things are unfolding right now. And I feel like when I stop trusting, this is where fear comes in and then it becomes difficult. And yeah, I don't know how about you, but I sometimes really just struggled with trusting that whatever's happening right now is just the exact, like the exact thing that is supposed to be happening right now. So that you said that. Yeah, really? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like, there is a lot of resistance because of this. Yeah. As you said, like I'm a small human being in this whole, you know, big rock floating in the space, knowing how the things should be. And that should, I feel also this should be and what if and when and blah, blah, blah, all of these, these sort of create a parallel, so to say, life is or like parallel universe, which you will never reach because it's always just like a hypothetical, it's supposed to be that it's supposed to be this, it's like this ideal sort of scenario, which you're never going to reach. And it's as if you're looking at that universe, you're like parallel universe, just floating somewhere, but there is like a wall, like the wall of glass and you can never reach it. And you just always like, what if, what if, what if, what if, and that sort of you imagine a parallel universe of, I mean, you're just creating that by just saying to yourself, this is how it was supposed to be. Or this is how it should be. You're creating a fiction. Yeah, because you have this ideal sort of scenario, which you're never going to reach because it's like, well, it doesn't exist first of all. And it's your, yeah, it's your best attempt to visualize and imagine how it could be. We suffer more in imagination. Exactly. And this is like the thing that I just discover again and again and again, it's not that reality makes us, well, I mean, reality makes us suffer sometimes. It's inevitable. But then the expectations that we have for the reality, well, I would say that we can experience pain, but I would say there's a difference between pain and suffering. We can feel pain, like let's say our boyfriend or girlfriend breaks up with us. Let's say I'll use a museum example of it sounds weird. Let's see my girlfriend breaks up with me. I'm going to feel pain. Let's say I'm in love with this girl. And then she, she comes out and says, like, listen, like, I'm no longer in love with you. And I want to stop this. Yeah. But I won't necessarily suffer. I would say, I would say there's a difference between experiencing pain and suffering in that suffering is pain plus resistance. Yeah, I would agree. And I would, I would say, you know, that suffering comes from the what if that you have, for example, when you broke up, break up with a person and it's all of this, we could have done this, we could have done that. It could have been this and this sort of expectation, this sort of imagined scenario is the thing that gives us most suffering. I feel like. Yeah, because we're up in the hypothetical, we're not present. Yeah. And then we come back to this, this preline moment where we are here, right? Then we look around and it's like nothing close to that. Nothing close to what was up in our minds. Yeah, it's like, it's a lot. Yeah, like anxiety sometimes will tell you things. And then you, you find out the reality and you're like, oh, it wouldn't act at all like this because anxiety likes to exaggerate. Yeah. Yeah. It's like fear, fear, like bringing it back to fear. We'll bring it back to fear once in a while, even though we're getting one of these wonderful tangents that I'm really enjoying. Fear likes to exaggerate. So does anxiety because your brain wants to keep you safe. So let's say there is a certain situation that may be slightly, maybe dangerous, might not be even the right word, but like unpleasant that you may not want to experience your brain. Since it's priority as to keep you safe, it's wiser to exaggerate and overestimate the situation than to underestimate it. So by default, it's always going to overestimate it. Sure, because of how else it's going to get your attention. That too. Yeah. If it's just like, oh, this little thing could be a little bit, yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah. Like, yeah, it can become malfunctional and it can become very unpleasant and have a negative impact on your life. Like anxiety to the point where like you can't speak to people you can't act authentically, can't socialize. But it's just there to protect you. Yeah, but I also remember that there is one theory, I cannot recall the exact name for that, but essentially it's that anxiety gives us so much, like it just makes us so uneasy, so tense, and so, you know, basically just makes it difficult for us. And what it actually does, it just kind of gives us the most unpleasantness it can so that when we enter a situation, it's like there's less anxiety. And in our minds, we're like, oh, by being anxious and having all these anxious thoughts, I sort of prepared myself for the situation. Right. So just like entering a situation is then less scary than it was to just think about it. But there's a big butt here. Yeah. Because it makes sense, what you're saying, that the brain is like, okay, well, let's say the situation's going to be like a four out of 10 in unpleasantness, but we're going to tell this person it's a seven. Just so that when it comes to see it, it's like, oh, it's only a four. Like, great. Minds, said, it protected me. Sure. At the same time, would it not be better to only experience that four and not experience the seven in your head that's going on for like days before? Of course it wouldn't be. Right. It's not really functional. Yeah. It's not really optimal. Yeah, absolutely. But this is just like a hypothetical sort of role that anxiety may play. Yeah, but just trying to prepare us. That's not the most adaptive way, but it means, but still. I'd like to bring this back quickly to something that you mentioned earlier about how do we get ourselves to trust that things are unfolding the way. they should be as that word should. Yeah, I don't think you need to believe in God or anything because if you believe in God that can also help and personally I'm not religious but you know I guess I can imagine how having a God that you believe in could help you and be like you know God is always there for you and stuff but the way that I see it the way that I see it we are all part of nature right? um everything that happens in nature we never doubt we never doubt when like a tree falls we're like oh that tree should not have fallen or the lion eats the gazelle and we're like I should have done that you know there's no perilous scenario you know it's just how it is right now it's just how it is the sun comes up and we're like oh the sun came up we don't say the sun shouldn't have come up yet I should have waited another 20 minutes you know yeah like we don't judge these things but when it comes to our personal lives right we suffer when the tree falls we suffer when we when we separate from our branch and we judge these things yeah and it's almost as if we believe we're not part of nature we see the grass as nature we think the soil is part of nature all the trees of course they all nature as well the clouds yeah it's nature yeah the planet yeah that's that's nature what about the other planet yeah like Jupiter and Mercury all that stuff that's yeah that's all nature and all the other galaxies all nature the entire universe all nature but us human beings are not we're not part of nature you're worried something we're we're special us human beings we're special out of this enormous just inconceivably unfathomably ridiculously gigantic universe us little tiny human beings we're apart from it because we are smart because we have created Coca-Cola and because we think we're special but we're not maybe if we're inside the soup it means that we're part of the soup and if we part of the soup then maybe the laws of this soup must apply to us too so everything that's happening is happening naturally so everything that's happening in your life maybe is also happening totally naturally and you don't judge that the tree falling you don't judge that as a bad thing but if you get fired you're like that's a bad thing I don't care where anyone fucking says that's a bad thing because now I have no job but maybe it's only because you only see where you lost and you're not sure yet you can't yet see where you're going to gain can't predict it yeah maybe it's because there's another job waiting for you maybe you were working in some job that you it was like a four half ten in satisfaction but you stayed there out of fear right but you lose a job and now you're you're even more scared because you don't have any money coming in and you could you could you know go down in a downward spiral because you have these automatic judgments and meaning that you allocate to this I lost my job job with security losing job is bad okay but and then you allow it to consume you you're going to downward spiral you start taking drugs let's say right no prospects of getting a better job so you're now living on welfare so and and then you're talking to people and they're like oh now you're homeless right let's say you've lost your job you lost your house and people are like what happened you like I lost my fucking job my asshole boss fired me that was the worst thing that happened in my life okay but that's maybe because you made it become the worst thing in your life a different person could have seen the situation differently and drew a different meaning drew a different interpretation allocated a different meaning and be like oh you know what I just lost my job that does suck in a way because I don't have any money coming in and I've got to be honest I'm feeling some fear right now because I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills at the same time if I'm honest with myself this was only a four out of ten terms satisfaction and I deserve a ten we all do and there is this thing this project that I've been thinking of doing this job and I was kind of afraid of doing that too so I thought like you know it's not everyone succeeds in it and stuff and like you know businesses go bankrupt and stuff but fuck yeah I just lost my job well if I got to lose we're just gonna start that let me start that business right now this actually is the perfect opportunity to start my business and this person starts the business and you know what they've got like they've burned the boats they're like well I don't have that other job so I better make this work so they're really motivated and they get a hundred percent committed to building this business and you know why it thrives they start making loads of money from it and they start making loads of people happy with their business and then that are like so happy and down the line someone says oh what happened like a few years ago to that job and you're like yeah I got fired my my my boss he released me from that job that was the best thing that ever happened to me yeah I think it ties well to what I said previously about the the actual pain or the actual fear and then the shadow surrounding it so some some of us are like more proficient and just that are creating that shadow around it same as you said like okay this bad thing really like objectively well kind of you could say unpleasant thing happened I'll just be fired but then yeah it's what about the meaning that you kind of extract from that and the shadow that is like create it all around this particular experience indeed yeah you can create your own type of cloud you can let it be automatic or you can consciously create the cloud that you want and just the matter because life is meaningless so you can't be wrong whatever meaning you give it that's the meaning it has to you and that's the meaning that it just has and that's going to influence your your actions so that's going to influence your life so just choose the meaning that you want yeah [BLANK_AUDIO]