Your Iconic Image : 5 Steps To a Fearless Mindset

Your Iconic Image

Traci Fenton is the founder and CEO of WorldBlu, a global leadership education company teaching top CEO, leaders, and their organizations how to lead with the proven Freedom at Work™ leadership model. Traci is also a globally-recognized keynote speaker, author, and coach to CEOs and top leaders worldwide.

Traci is a “Thinkers50 Radar” award winner, received the Game Changer award for “Outstanding Results in Shaping the World,” was named a “World-Changing Woman in Conscious Business,” has been recognized in Inc. magazine as a “Top 50 Leadership

Thinker,” and as a Marshall Goldsmith “Top 100 Coach” in the world.

Traci founded WorldBlu in 1997 and has helped spark and lead the global conversation around leading and reinventing workplaces using freedom and organizational democracy rather than fear and control. Traci and her team have helped hundreds of top companies and leaders at world-class organizations such as The WD-40 Company, DaVita, HCL Technologies, Mindvalley, Pandora, Podio, RevAsia, GE Aviation, Zappos, and more in over 100 countries worldwide.

Traci developed the groundbreaking Freedom at Work™ leadership model based in part on the WorldBlu 10 Principles of Organizational Democracy as well as numerous mindset, leadership, and organizational design courses, all of which are delivered on BluSpark™, the cutting-edge gamification learning technology she developed.

Traci frequently speaks to top leaders, and has spoken at numerous organizations such as Harvard, Yale, Yahoo! and the US Naval Academy, and at worldwide events such as South by Southwest and TEDx.

Her work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, Inc., BusinessWeek, NPR, the BBC, and dozens of other media outlets around the world as well as in over three dozen books. She is the author of the book Freedom at Work: The Leadership Strategy for Transforming Your Life, Your Organization, and Our World.

Learn more at:

worldblu.com

worldblu.com/freedomatworkbook

www.marlanasemenza.com

Audio : Ariza Music Productions

Transcription : Vision In Word

Marlana: Tracy Fenton is the founder and CEO of World Blu, a globally recognized keynote speaker, author and coach to CEOs and top leaders Worldwide. Welcome, Tracy.

Traci: Great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Marlana: So today we're going to talk about a fearless mindset. And first let me ask you what you really mean by fearless? Is it just fearing less? Is it absence of fear? Is it talk to us a little bit about that? So, we have a basis?

Traci: That's a great question. There's a lot of ways to look at what fear is. A lot of people when they think of fear, they think of the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real which I love. It’s a way of describing fear. I like to think of fear as a limited point of view of what we're capable of and what we're not capable of doing. Why I say this is because the brain research tells us that the average person thinks 60,000 thoughts a day, and 80% of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts we had the day before and have those exact same thoughts. 95% of those thoughts are negative and fear based.

Marlana: Oh! Wow!

Traci: And so, most of the time, we're thinking fear based thoughts. And we might not even realize it, you know, we tend to use words like, I feel stressed, or I feel rushed, or I feel anxious, or I'm limiting myself, or I want to up level and I can't get there or excuses or lack of personal accountability, all of that when you dial it down, it comes back to fear, it’s at the root of it. And another thing that's very interesting about fear is that when we're in a state of fear, the peripheries of our brain shut down, and we become myopic. So, we literally have a limited point of view. And so that's why I like to think of fear as a limited point of view, it is an imposition on our unlimited ability that each one of us has. So, when we're ready to up level or ready to go and start our own business and begin a new career, or whatever it is that we feel called to do. What you have to know how to deal with is, how to handle the fear that comes up over and over and over again as you progress and go forward.

Marlana: Because each time we do that, each time we step into something bigger or something new fear usually packs its bag and comes right along.

Traci: Oh, yeah, those grounds. I call them the Gremlin voices, the Gremlin voice has come in and they want to give it a Yep, up in your ears. And that's why we developed a five step practice for how to overcome fear. We call it The Power Question Practice. We teach it at World Blu to all of our members who are part of World Blu, and it's a lifelong tool that you can have to literally handle any fear you may have in your life, whether it's a personal fear, a professional fear, a relationship fear, a business fear or health fear, whatever it may be, you can put it through this five step power question practice, and literally have a breakthrough, just like that.

Marlana: Well, go ahead and hit us with what they are then.

Traci: All right! What are the questions? I want to share this with you, and for all of your listeners, I'd like you to just kind of play along with me. You can grab a piece of paper if you want, as we talk this through, grab your phone and write this down. This is the gift that I want to share with you. And before I share the five steps of The Power Question Practice, I want to share with you where it came from. Because for me, when I was in my mid-20s, I was living in Washington, DC, I had started my company World Blu. I was a full time graduate student, I was also working for the NASDAQ stock market, I was travelling all over, I was living a crazy life, I was mean, was just busy, very, very, very busy. Talk about up levelling on every level. And when I was about 25, I ended up calling a spiritual mentor of mine and I said, I am totally overwhelmed. I'm totally stressed out. I kind of barf out all my problems to her, and she listened patiently. Then she said, Tracy, I have just one question for you. What is this one question? And she goes, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And her question kind of startled me because I didn't think I was afraid. You know, I thought I was just stressed out. I didn't realize how much fear was impacting what I was and wasn't doing and the opportunities I was taking, what I was going for, literally, in a moment with that question, what would I do if I weren't afraid? And my ability to self-reflect and be honest with myself, I thought, wow, I would change this, this, this, and this. And it was just like everything clicked into place. So, I started to call that question, what would you do if you weren't afraid? The power question, because when we're in fear, we're not in our power. But when we're acting from freedom, we are in our power. And so, what I want is for each one of us to be in our power, so that we can realize our full potential and greatness and go for our dreams. So, I started teaching the power question and taking people through it. Oh! Gosh! Probably, I started my company 24 years ago, World Blu. But I started teaching this probably about 15 years ago. And I've taught what I'm about to teach you all to 1000s of leaders now around the World. And they've all had massive breakthroughs. And in the process of teaching them, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And how to work with that question. I realized some people it was a little bit hard for them to break through just with that one question. So, as I finessed it, I eventually came up with these five questions, which are in my forthcoming book called Freedom At Work. And they're the five questions that I will walk you through now. So that's a little bit of the backstory of behind what I'm going to teach you. So now with that said, Here's what I like anyone to do listening, I'd like you to think about a challenge you're facing. So, it could be a personal or professional challenge. Maybe you're starting your own business, and you're trying to figure out what's that next step? Or how do I get the money I need to build this? Or what's my brand identity going to be like? Or how much do I want to be out there not out there? What was it that I actually want to do, or whatever that may be, or maybe it's a relationship issue, maybe you're challenged with a child right now, or a significant other, maybe there's a communication challenge that you have in your life, or maybe you have a huge opportunity that you are weighing if you should go for or not? So, think of a really clear challenge that you're dealing with in your life. Now, once you have that clear in your mind, let's go to the first question. And the first question is, what are you afraid of? So, what are you afraid of? All right now, first of all, to go into this practice, we have to be humble. And we have to be willing to see ah, I am afraid, as I briefly mentioned, remember, there's many symptoms to fear. I was reading a Harvard Business School, Harvard Business Review, article, interviewing CEOs, and they identified over 500 masks, I called a massive fear. So, remember, everything boils down to fear? So, we have to be humble and admit, yeah, I am afraid now, what am I afraid of? So sometimes what we think we're afraid of, and what we're actually afraid of are two different things. So, we may say, Well, I'm afraid that if I put myself out there, you know, what if my business doesn't take off? Or what if I don't have enough money? Or what if I fail? Okay. And so, all those things, and what I've found in the coaching work that my team and I do with top leaders around the World, is that almost everything comes down to the same core fears. And the same core fears are usually what if I fail? And I'm afraid that I'm not good enough, right? And the ultimate fear is fear of death in some way. It's not just literal death, it can be death of your reputation, or your image or your finances, okay? So, it usually boils down to the fear of failure, the fear of others’ opinions of us, okay? And so on, and so forth. So those core fears of really that I'm not good enough, I'm not going to be good enough to rise to the occasion. So, when you think about what you're afraid of, you got to make sure on that first question, you're really going deep enough, and you're not just staying on the surface. And I can't even tell you how many people have had breakthroughs, just realizing what it is that they're actually afraid of. Because again, it's often not what we think. Okay, so that's the first question, what are you afraid of? The second question is, why are you afraid? And why are you afraid? Is it because of something that happened in the past, that you're now projecting into the future? Is it because you saw someone else go through a challenge, and now you're thinking this could happen to me? You know, why are you afraid? And so, you got to get really, really clear. Are you afraid because, you know, your dad always says you're never going to amount to anything you know, is other people's opinions, whatever it may be, why are you afraid? Get really clear on that? So that's the second question.

Marlana: let me just ask you this. How many people with that second question? Is the fear based on what other people have told us? Or led us to believe?

Traci: Yes! Well, look at it right now in our world, right? So much fear is, oh, this is happening to other people, or this is what experts are telling me to believe, are telling me what to think, right? Instead of thinking for ourselves. And that's what we have to do, think for ourselves and think from our own experiences natural also that we pull from the past and project to the future, that is an exactly healthy thing to do. So, we have to make sure we, you know, stay in the present. And so often, again, we're limiting ourselves because of other limiting beliefs, or because of basically made up limiting beliefs that we're projecting into the future. And I also talk about this in my book, Freedom At Work is 80% of what we worry about never comes true. Never comes true. That is a proven fact, 80% of what we worry about never comes true. Well, then you may say, Yeah, but what about the 20% that does come true? You know. And so, what the research finds is that of the 20%, that actually may come true, most people find that they're able to overcome the challenge. And there's always a silver lining, right? There's always a silver lining, we all know what it's like to go through hard times. But we also grow, and our characters grow as a result of that. So yeah, it's a very important question. But we have to remember as leaders, to think for ourselves, and that's a part of being fearless, not having others think for us, but doing our own critical thinking. So, the third question is the power question, which is, what would I do if I weren't afraid? So, you've now identified, what am I afraid of? Why am I afraid? And now Okay, so what would I do if I weren't afraid? And what you really want to make sure you do here is you identify what it is you would do if you weren't afraid. Sometimes I've seen people there's so in their story of their fear. And they've built such a sense of identity out of their fear that they don't even want to imagine what they would do if they weren't afraid like that actually feels scary for them, because it means that they're going to have to give up their old sense of identity as they grow it. So, you want to really think through what would I do if I weren't afraid? What action would I take? What conversation would I have? What new thought would I have? Now obviously, as we're talking about fearlessness here, we're not talking about reckless fearlessness. You know, we're talking about responsible fearlessness. So, this isn't about well, if I weren't afraid, I know what I would tell my boss, you know, if I weren't afraid, I know what I was, you know, none of them know what we're talking about. Is that responsible fearlessness? What action would you take, that's going to enable you to live more of your purpose? And your potential? That's what we're talking about hair? So, what would you do if you weren't afraid? Let yourself think big. Let yourself really expand into that question. You know, I remember one time, I was teaching this to an executive team of a company out in LA, and we got to this question, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And I remember the CEO, they were all sitting around the table. And the CEO goes, Ah, vague exhale. And she's just like, I know what I would do if I weren't afraid. And that's how it should be. It should be like this. Oh, my gosh! You know, back to my mentor, he said that to me, what would you feel if it was like, because see, you've been in fear, you're thinking like this. That's that limited point of view. And now all of a sudden, boom, I know what I would do if I weren't afraid. That's that expansive sense of freedom, not fear, not restraint, not constraint. But that's what we're going for here. So, what would you do if you weren't afraid? Now, the fourth of five questions is, okay. So how would you now feel without the fear? How would you feel without the fear? Well, you can imagine all kinds of words come up. Relief, joy, excitement, I would feel energized. You know, I don't know about you, lady, but I've had my times when I'm in fear. And boy, sometimes it is such a fog on your thinking, and it's exhausting. Right? I've had sometimes in my life where I am just like plodding through feeling so fatigued because I'm working through a fear, you know, and no amount of caffeine is gonna get you out of this, right? It's when you have that breakthrough through the fear. You feel that energy come back to you. And I think again, most of us are operating, whether it's with little fears that pile up. And then of course, there's the big fears and it really can weigh you down and really create that fatigue. And so that's why this mental work of really letting just overcoming that fear it just energizes you and it gives you joy. So, yeah,

Marlana: let me ask this. How often when we are in that, like exhaustion phase or, or mental fog, or any of that? How often is that usually fear?

Traci: I think almost all the time. I think there's so much like, Look, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a doctor, any of that. But I think so much of the talk about mental health and all these mental things. Often, it really comes down to fear. And we're not, we don't have the tools to handle the fear. And that's why I wrote this book, that's why we're doing the work we're doing, is we want people to have the tools to handle the fear, because so much the fear weighs you down. And the fear creates this paralysis, right? Where we don't want to act. We don't want to move forward, because we're so afraid of what others think of us, or what if we fail? Or what if we're all these hypotheticals, and sometimes it's not a hypothetical, sometimes we have failed, and sometimes others do think poorly of us. And that's part of life. That's part of like, look, I mean, I built my own company from scratch, I've had, I've made a million mistakes. But my worth doesn't come from those things, you know, and that's a whole mother thing we talk about at World Blu is where does our worth come from. So, you have to know your worth, you have to know your purpose, you got to get grounded on the walk rock. And you have to be able to also forgive yourself, you know, I'm here at World Blu. We don't talk about mistakes; we talk about learning moments. And I actually got that from one of our clients we work with is called WD 40. Gary Red is the CEO and he's a good friend of mine now. He taught me that when he went into WD 40, which is also a World Blu certified freedom centered company, and he took over as CEO, he found that they had a very punitive culture. And that created a culture of fear in their workplace. And he said, You know what, he did lots of different things. But one of the things he said was, we're not going to talk about mistakes anymore, we're going to talk about learning moments. And we've adopted that rather, into my company, and with my team, and we teach it to our clients Worldwide. And so, we have to be willing to forgive ourselves for mistakes, we have to be able to see them as learning moments, learn from them, and then you go higher, you can't up level without making mistakes, you know, that's how we learn, that's how we grow, take what you need from it, brush off the dust on the rest of it, and just keep moving forward. Don't let it all stick to you, you know, because all that again, is just fear based reasoning and that's really