So again, go back and listen to that. What I’m gonna be talking about in this episode today has more to do with the fears or anxieties that come up any time we feel called to step out of our comfort zone. And so a lot of times we can have a lot of mind drama, a lot of fear that comes up and it tends to keep us stuck, or it tends to keep us from maybe going after some dreams or putting ourselves out there, stepping out of our comfort zone, meeting new people. Sometimes it has to do with social engagements and, and things like that. And so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today in a way being a little bit more courageous and again, learning how to manage our mind around the emotion of fear that sometimes keeps us stuck. So in order to do this again, we have to understand a little bit about how our brain works.

And so what I want to remind all of us is that our brain at the most primitive level is trying to always keep us alive. And thank goodness for that. Let’s just take a moment to say thank you brain for always wanting to keep us alive. That is so important. And the brain does a really good job of that. So we have that to be thankful for, but sometimes if it’s not managed well, um, constant fear and constant looking out for us will keep us stuck or keep us paralyzed. Now, just like the brain is always scanning for danger, for anything that might hurt or harm us physically. We also have to understand that for many, many millions of years, and however long humans have been alive, the need for social acceptance, the need to be part of your community, your family, your tribe, whatever it happened to be was essential to your survival on a very, again, basic level for over the centuries. Any humans that were either outcasted from their communities, maybe excluded or left, usually meant that they would not survive, that they would die. So being a part of a group, being accepted, being a part of a community was essential to our survival. So again, the brain is wired for that. And so it’s still like it hasn’t caught up with where we’re living today because the brain still perceives any sort of social non-acceptance means that you might die. And oftentimes it feels like that. We have this sense internally that if I don’t fit in, if I don’t belong, then I won’t be able to survive. And it’s a terrible, terrible feeling. This is why so many people are absolutely terrified to speak in front of large audiences. They’re not afraid of talking in front of people. They’re afraid of how they will be perceived. And they are terrified, like their brain has convinced them that if they do or they say something wrong or they make a mistake, or they embarrass themselves that the fear of humiliation feels in a very real way, like death.

And this is why so many people don’t ever wanna speak in front of people. This is why so many people are terrified to put themselves out there or when they feel like they’re gonna do something like all of these real fears and, and worries and anxieties of what will people think will people like me, will they accept what I say or do? And so a lot of times these are very legitimate fears and our brain tends to freak out a lot when it comes to putting ourselves out there. Now our brain again is just trying to protect us because it’s so much easier to just stay small and to really not do those things, not be noticed in a lot of ways. And yet when we do that, we realize that we’re not fully living into who God made us to be. And when we hold back because of fear, that doesn’t feel good either.

And so we’re kind of stuck with this tension of either holding back or putting ourselves out there, both emotions don’t feel great. And this leads me to the concept that we, we talk about in masters, quite a bit of the motivational triad. Now this concept, again goes back to the primitive part of our brain. The part that’s wired for survival, it has three basic motivations and it’s this one it’s motivation is to keep us from experiencing pain. So that part of our brain wants us to avoid pain. It wants us to seek pleasure and it wants us to conserve energy. And this makes sense because obviously if we avoid pain, then we, then we’ll be avoiding danger. If we seek pleasure, it’s pleasure. That keeps us in survival mode. Like if we are hungry and food tastes good, then we will eat and we will stay alive.

Same with sleep, drinking, procreating. All of those things feel good because God wants us to continue to eat and drink and procreate and survive and continue on. Right? And then conserving energy. Like there have been times throughout history that we have had to, we’ve gone long periods of time with fasting and maybe not having, um, food at our fingertips all the time. So conserving energy was very important to our survival for many, many centuries, but again, here we are today. And so that motivational triad, however, you know, essential, it was to keep us alive, to keep us surviving. Doesn’t necessarily lead to us thriving. And that’s what I wanna talk about today because ultimately in order to thrive in our lives, in order to live lives of great purpose and meaning and significance to have beautiful relationships, to have all of these things in our lives, that that we would equate with thriving.

All of those things require us to move from our comfort zone. The motivational triad wants to keep us in our comfort zone, but in order to thrive, we have to be willing to step out of it, to step out of that comfort. And essentially we have to be willing to experience discomfort. And at times, especially socially, we have to be willing to experience the emotion of fear, manage it, process through it and go beyond it. It’s in that place that we ultimately will thrive. It’s in that place, that our dreams will become a reality, it’s in that place that we get to do and experience things beyond our wildest dreams. And it’s usually in those moments that God gets to do his greatest works in and through us. God isn’t really working a whole lot with us when we’re in our comfort zone. Usually when God is doing his greatest works, it’s happening to us outside of our comfort zone.

And we can look through the history of the church and throughout the centuries that the saints, and almost always God, were doing great things in and through them when they were outside of their comfort zone. Let’s just look at St. Peter, for example, here he was in the boat, there was a storm. Jesus comes walking on the water and he’s like, Lord, if it’s you call out to me and I will come out and walk on water and we know how this story goes, Peter, like Jesus called him and Peter stepped out of the boat. He stepped out of his comfort zone. He stepped out of his place of security and safety. Why? Because he placed his security and safety in our Lord. When he kept his eyes on him. Peter got to walk on water. Could you imagine what that moment must have been like for him, what it felt like to step beyond his fears and to just trust in God.

And then we know how this story goes. He took his eyes off of Jesus. He looked around, he started to get frightened and scared and he started to fall into the water. And yet it was even in that moment that our Lord reached out and grabbed him and saved him. And ultimately it’s these moments that our hearts were made for. And this is what we desire to do. We desire truly to step out of our comfort zone. And yet it’s scary. There is legitimate fear that comes with it. And this is where our mind management has to come into place because we have to be able to be willing to experience that fear, to feel it, to process through it, to be aware of it and to be able to overcome it in a way. And so I wanna go back for a moment to the thriving idea.

And I just wanna, I wanna ask you, like, what does it mean to thrive in different areas of your life? What would it look like to really be thriving? Because I talk to a lot of women who say, you know, Larissa, I just feel like I’m surviving. I feel like I’m just in this survival mode, just going, going, going a lot of different directions, but not really thriving. And a lot of times, you know, one that has to do with maybe feeling too busy, feeling overwhelmed, again, like not managing our mind well, and not getting intentional about how we want to live, which is why it’s so important sometimes to just sit and become reflective and to think about what does it look like to thrive? What does it feel like to feel like I’m moving in a certain direction in my life that I’m not just running on a hamster wheel?

And so I asked myself this question earlier today, when I was preparing for this podcast, I was like, Larissa, what, what does it look like to you to thrive? And if I were to break it down into a couple different areas, I would say this first and foremost, what does it look like to thrive in your relationship with God? Because if you’re listening to this podcast, I would guess that having a thriving relationship with God is important to you and it’s important to me. So what does that look like? For me, in a nutshell, it looks like walking closely with God having a daily prayer life and also seeking to do his will. So I wanna just leave it at that. I’m gonna come back to these, but I just wanna highlight these different areas. And then I wanna kind of look at where fear creeps into those.

So the other thing, what about thriving in your health and wellbeing? For me, the idea of thriving in my health and wellbeing means eating well and exercising and getting movement and taking care of myself and giving myself time, um, to make sure my, um, my needs are met and making good choices. What about thriving in our personal life? What does that look like? For me, that means making room and space for the relationships that matter most, to me, it means cultivating relationships, making connections with people and spending time with people. And then finally, what about thriving in your career? Or maybe your ministry or in the areas of your life that you have passions or interests? What does that look like? For me? I think it means using your gifts and talents in a way that impacts and serves others and impacts other people’s lives.

And when we find ourselves doing that, when we find ourselves really stepping into that role of using our gifts and talents in a way that helps other people like that, like that to me feels like being fully alive. That’s what it feels like in my mind to thrive. Now, listening to this, I would imagine that you would have your own additional things, but you would, I would guess you would probably agree with me that those are some pretty basic understandings of what it means to thrive in different areas of our life. But if you were to go into each one of those and unpack them, um, even more specifically, you would start to see, like, for example, walking closely with God and seeking to do his will. That sounds lovely. That sounds wonderful. That sounds like a great textbook answer. But when you really look at it, when you really look at what the saints like, how they lived walking closely with God and seeking to do his will, every time we actually really step into that, we realize that that takes courage.

It takes fortitude, it takes strength. It takes stepping out of your comfort zone because walking closely with God and creating a prayer life and, and seeking to do as well. And then actually following through and doing it can at times be absolutely terrifying at times it means going against the stream. Sometimes it means realizing that you might be alone because other people aren’t willing to do those things. Maybe it means sometimes saying or doing things that’s, that’s contrary to what the majority thinks or feels. And even sometimes following the will of God could lead us in one way or another down a path of martyrdom in some form. Maybe it’s a spiritual Marty. Maybe it’s a physical martyrdom. We don’t know, but we can look at the lives of the saints and see that it wasn’t always easy to follow God. It wasn’t always easy to seek his will.

And yet this is what our hearts and our souls truly long for, but it’s not easy. Sometimes it requires great courage. Sometimes it requires us to step out of our comfort zone to step beyond fear and to do the things that are hard and challenging and scary. When we look at thriving, when it comes to our own health and wellbeing, we can say, yeah, that sounds great. I wanna thrive in those areas. Like I wanna, I wanna exercise and eat well and do those things. But when we peel back the layers, we see that in order to really thrive in our health, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. We have to be willing at times to fill discomfort, maybe to say no to certain types of foods so that we can say yes to better ones. Maybe it’s saying no to certain activities so that we can say yes to other ones, but either way, sometimes it’s scary.

Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes we have to say no to certain people or situations, and that can be scary. And then let’s look at our personal life. Of course, we all wanna thrive in our personal life. We all wanna have meaningful connections and deep and powerful relationships. We wanna meet new people and make new friendships, all of that. But when we actually look at what that looks like to have thriving relationships and thriving personal lives, we understand that it’s no different. We have to be willing to step out of our comfort zone. It’s scary putting ourselves out there. The only way that you will have truly thriving relationships is if you’re willing to be vulnerable. If you’re willing to share your life with others, if you’re willing to share your weaknesses, your insecurities, the ways that maybe you fall short, all of that, that requires vulnerability.

And it re requires putting yourself out there sometimes again, stepping out of your comfort zone for people like me. I’m so much of an introvert. I get nervous and anxious sometimes in social settings. I don’t love going to big parties or big events because I’m always afraid. There’s that fear of like, what will people think of me? What if I say, or do the wrong thing? What if I don’t have any friends there? What if I am just standing there alone? All of those fears come up for me. But again, being willing to have a thriving, personal life means overcoming those fears and managing them and finally thriving in our, um, lives. When it comes to our careers or our ambitions, our dreams, um, our hobbies, our interests, whatever it happens to be, anytime we feel that God might be calling us to use our gifts and talents to serve others.

It’s ultimately gonna require us to step out of our comfort zone. It’s going to be at times terrifying because we have these thoughts. Like, gosh, what if I, you know, I have these gifts or I have these talents, I wanna serve others. And then all these fears come up. What if I’m not good enough? What if somebody else is better? What if people don’t like me? All of these things, whenever we put ourselves out there and yet deep down inside, we know that if we wanna thrive in this area, if we wanna succeed, if we wanna do great things with our lives, we’re going to have to face the emotion of fear and process through it and work through that. So my friend, how we do this is very similar in my last podcast episode, but there are a few things that are different.

First of all, when that emotion of fear comes up and we think to ourselves, who am I to do something? Or I’m scared to put myself out there, or the thought of putting myself in a social situation feels scary. The first thing that you wanna do is just have awareness around it. Just be aware of what you’re feeling like, get in tune with how you’re feeling, where do you feel in your body? What does it feel like? And recognize it? Oh, this is fear. I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m anxious. What is it? What are you feeling? And then be aware of what your brain is doing. Your brain is just trying to protect you. It’s trying to say, Hey, don’t put yourself out there. Just stay safe. Instead of going out, sit on the couch and stay home. Instead of trying something new, why don’t you just play it safe and just do what you’re, what you’re comfortable with, right?

The brain is literally saying, let’s just play it safe because when we’re safe, we are alive and we are surviving. And the part of our brain wants to just keep us surviving, but we’re not just a person with a brain. We’re also a person with a heart and a soul. And our soul is telling us to step out, to invest in our lives and our relationships and to do the things that we want to do so that we can follow and pursue those dreams. God is placed on our hearts. And so this is where we can use our intellect and our will to override that part of our brain. That’s sending these signals like scary, watch out danger, red flags. And again, we wanna just tell our brain, thank you. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I understand that you’re worried about me, that you may think that I will be in danger, that people won’t accept me or something bad might happen. And I appreciate you looking out for me. So this is like, again, it’s just having self-awareness, having compassion for ourselves, recognizing that the brain is just doing its job and trying to keep us alive. But then we move into our intellect and our will. And this is the part where we override it. We wanna tell our brain I’m going to be okay. I can do this thing and it can even feel scary, but I will be okay. I will survive. I could give a talk to this group of people and I’ll survive. I will be okay. I can put myself out there. I can go to a party and I can talk to people and I’ll survive. I will be okay. I know it sounds funny like thinking or imagining talking to yourself like this, but honestly, this is what we need to do because our brain really has two options.

It’s either gonna bring the fear up and then we’re gonna over indulge in that fearful thought. Like we’re gonna play it over and over in our minds, it’s going to grow and get worse and it’s going to expand and we’re gonna let our mind take control and the fear and the anxiety is gonna take over, or we coach ourselves and we tell ourselves, Nope, we’re okay. That’s just a thought, everything’s fine. We’re going to survive. And not only that, but stepping into this and overcoming this is going to help us to thrive. So whenever I find myself feeling like I’m terrified to do something, that’s outside of my comfort zone. I’ve gotten to the point where I tell myself, thank you brain. I see what you’re doing. I’m okay. And yes, what I’m about to do is very scary. Or maybe I’m not good at it.

I haven’t done it enough yet, but if I do it and I step into that fear and I step outta my comfort zone and I actually do it, I may fall down and I may make mistakes, but I will learn. I will grow. And if I do this enough times, then I will get better at it. And it won’t be scary anymore. And I’ll actually become good at it. And then I’ll get better and better. And I won’t have any more fear anymore. I literally talk to myself like this about almost every sort of fear that comes up for me that wants to keep me from doing the things that I really want to do. And so the self coaching piece is so important. I’m gonna give you an example for me. The very first few times I recorded a podcast. I was terrified out of my mind.

I literally like it, it felt so horrible. I wanted to die and I know that’s being very dramatic, but I almost decided like I was almost to the point of like, I’m not gonna do this. This is too hard. It’s too scary. I don’t wanna put myself out there. What will people think of me? Will people even care what I have to say? Will it even matter? What if I make a mistake? What if I sound terrible? All of these fears and thoughts just raced through my mind. And it was hard and it was scary. And I didn’t understand the technology and I didn’t know how to edit the podcast. I didn’t know how to do all of these things. So all of these fears came up. But I remember thinking to myself that this was an area in my life that was pushing me to thrive.

I wanted to thrive in this area and I didn’t want the fear to hold me back. And so I coached myself on it. I told myself these things, thank you brain. I see you. I see that. You’re trying to protect me. But if I do this podcast, I’m not gonna die. I’m gonna be okay. I will survive. Everything will be fine. Even if nobody listens to it or if nobody even likes it, it’s okay. I will be okay. So I just talked to myself about that. And then I also reminded myself that it’s hard right now. It’s scary. I’m learning a new skill. And yet once I do this enough times, I will get better at it. I will be proficient. I will be good. And eventually I’ll be even better, and great. And it will become easy for me and I won’t have fear anymore.

And I remember in those first few episodes, literally telling myself, there will be a point when you get to a hundred episodes where it won’t be scary anymore. And here we are, this is episode 99. And I have been able to produce this episode with no fear, no anxiety, no worry. Now I’m not gonna say that there aren’t times that I don’t feel a little bit nervous or maybe I get some of those butterflies in my stomach. Whenever I’m doing something to put myself out there, but I’m not terrified. I don’t feel like I’m gonna die anymore. I don’t have all of this drama that comes up with it. Why? Because I’ve managed the emotion of fear. I’ve stepped into it, I’ve experienced it. And I’ve come out on the other side, knowing that I’m capable of doing it, that nothing bad happened. And that honestly, the worst thing that could happen is just an emotion.

Maybe it’s the emotion of embarrassment or maybe humiliation, or maybe it’s even feeling alone at times because sometimes those are the things that we’re most afraid of. What if people don’t like me? What if I find myself alone? Well, even if we do, even if the worst case scenario happens, maybe we absolutely do something that’s totally humiliating. Which of course, none of us wants that, but ultimately that’s just an emotion. And once you learn how to experience your emotions and understand that there, the emotions are just coming from a thought and that we can take those captive and we can actually just feel them and process through them and then move on with other emotions. Then even those big, scary ones don’t seem to have much power over us. And again, my sisters in Christ, this leads us to freedom and it helps us to open up our hearts and our minds to the possibility that God could be calling us to do things and that we can step into it, that we can use our gifts and talents, that we can be willing to be vulnerable and to have meaningful relationships that we can do things that are oftentimes uncomfortable, that we can be willing to feel emotions of discomfort.

If it means that we’re pushing ourselves to the point of thriving, instead of just surviving. And to me, me, this is good news. It’s exciting. It’s exciting to think that we can overcome those things. Now I wanna wrap this up by talking about being fearless and also talking about the virtues of courage and fortitude, because when it comes to particularly emotional scenarios, the virtue of courage is really important, but this is the deal. We don’t wanna live a life where we don’t have fear, like where fear doesn’t exist because that’s not possible. First of all, it’s not realistic. We’re going to have fear. Fear is going to come up. It’s the way we’re wired. And we want to have it, especially in legitimate circumstances where we should feel fear, where we should be afraid that keeps us safe and it keeps us alive. So that’s a good thing.

But what we wanna do is when these emotions of fear come up, we wanna look at them and say, okay, is this a legitimate fear? Is there real danger? Or is this just something that my brain might be reacting to and overindulging in? And if it is then what do I need at this moment? Because courage doesn’t occur in the absence of fear. Courage happens when we step beyond our fear. And even the word fearless is a little bit elusive because it is, we, we make it mean that it, like we shouldn’t have any fear, but really if you look at the word, it just means to fear less. So what that means is the fear comes up and instead of indulging in it, instead of magnifying it in our brain and like allowing it to overcome us, we look at that fear. We have awareness around it.

We thank our brain and say, okay, thank you for protecting us. I see you fear. But now I’m going to step into the virtue of courage and realize that in being courageous, I am going to manage my emotion of fear. And I’m going to fear less. I’m going to try to have less fear and more courage so that I can truly do the things and make the impact and have the relationships that God desires for me to have. I want to have a life where I’m thriving, a life that’s exciting and meaningful and impactful. And in order to do that, I have to manage my thoughts around fear so that I can, in a way, step into courage and truly become who I’m meant to become. Now, this is the cool thing. Whenever those fears arise, we have kind of two options. Again, we either allow fear to control us and we stop.

Basically, we choose to not face that fear and we choose to not move forward and we stay where we’re at, or we work. And we coach ourselves and we, we create thoughts in our minds where we work through them. We turn to courage. We ask for God’s help. We pray. And we can also again, use our imagination to help us manage our thoughts around fear. So just like in my last episode, I talked about, instead of just imagining the worst case scenario, when it comes to fear, like we can imagine the best case scenario and we can do that in this case as well. So for example, let’s say you are invited to give a talk to a group of people and you initially you have this, this extraordinary fear and anxiety around that. You’re like, I don’t wanna put myself out there. I don’t wanna speak in front of people.

And yet deep down inside, you can feel this nudging of the holy spirit prompting you, that he wants to use you as his instrument, that he’s giving you these gifts and talents, maybe for speaking, or maybe it’s in particular to this topic and you have insights that you can share. And so you decide to coach yourself, instead of imagining you getting up in front of a group of people and totally messing up, maybe imagining your, your brain going blank, not knowing what to say, your voice quivering, um, people laughing at you like this is where our brain can go. When we over indulge in, in fear, like we go to the worst case scenario, we imagine the worst thing and our imagination makes it so terrible that we like that, that fear just magnifies, but let’s put our imagination to use for us. I want you to imagine going and speaking in front of a group of people, I want you to imagine practicing your talk in advance, writing it out, practicing it, feeling really confident about it.

And then I want you to imagine sharing it with a group of people and feeling excited and alive and knowing that your words are making an impact that you’re sharing something that you care about or that’s important to you. And then also imagining how the crowd is gonna respond. And maybe even imagine people coming up to you after your talk saying thank you for your willingness to share that I totally can relate to this, or thank you for what you had to say, because that really made me think, or really helped me with this scenario in my own life. We can put our imagination to work for us in a way that helps boost our confidence and boost our courage, and we can pray. And we can trust that God is gonna give us the gifts of the holy spirit, wisdom, knowledge, understanding fortitude in those moments to overcome and to put ourselves out there and to do things and to do them well.

And to do them in a way that really does make an impact in the lives of others. My sister’s in Christ. When we manage our minds around this, when we coach ourselves in this way, when we’re willing to step out of our comfort zone, this is where we live life, where we’re fully alive. Like our Lord says, I came to give you life and life to the full, because we’re willing to experience all the emotions we’re exposed to. We’re willing to know that God is not going to abandon us. And the more we face our fears, the easier they become, the faster we overcome them. I promise you, there were things in your past that terrified you. And yet you were willing to do them. You were willing to go out of your comfort zone and now those things aren’t scary at all. It’s an amazing, amazing feeling.

And finally in wrapping all of this up, I just wanna say this when we are willing to step out of our comfort zone, when we’re willing to do the things that scare us a little bit. When we manage our mind, we actually put ourselves out there. Something amazing happens. Not only do we overcome those fears, but we also become a beacon of light to others. I don’t know about you, but whenever I see people going after their dreams, when I see them doing things that I know are scary for them, but they’re willing to do it anyways, it always, always inspires me. And in a way, it gives me extra courage to know that I can do things as well, that are scary and hard and challenging. So let us never underestimate the power of living a life that requires us stepping out of our comfort zone.

That requires us to be a little bit more courageous using the gifts of the holy spirit, practicing fortitude. Because when we do that, we automatically give others the strength and the permission and the ability for them to believe that they could do the same in their life. And I think this is what God wants as well. This is why when we look at the lives of the saints, we’re so inspired. We’re like, look at her, look at what she did. Look at Joan of arc. Look at St. Teresa Avila look at St. Catherine of Sienna. She couldn’t even read or write, but look at how bold and courageous she was to go and speak to pops and advise bishops and tell them these important things. Could you imagine how she had to overcome her fear to do that? And yet she changed the world. She changed our church.

She became a Saint, a doctor of the church, not because she was the smartest person in the world, but because she allowed God to work through her, she overcame the fear of what that might look like. And she stepped into fully trusting in him. This my sisters in crisis is where miracles happen, miracles abound, and don’t, we wanna be the catalyst of that. Are we willing to manage our emotions of fear in order to step into that into lives, where we’re thriving and living for his glory and building up his kingdom. This is my hope for myself, and it’s my hope and my dream for you. And ultimately we can only do it when we remember that the world offers us comfort, but we are not made for comfort. We are Made for Greatness. Let’s do this. God bless.