This post is all about dealing with tension, how you can allow tension, and use tension as a constructive force in your life.
This is the second part of my series on tension so be sure to go back and read part one before diving in here.
What really trips most men up when it comes to stepping into Tension can be boiled down to two different versions of the same thing: FEAR. (After all we are “The Fearless Men.”)
In fact, most fear can be categorized this way: fear of failure or fear of success. We’re going to talk about both of them and how you can start changing how you operate when you come face to face with either.
What’s important to realize is that fear is one of the most primal emotions. Humans have been feeling fear since the dawn of time. Having fear is not a bad thing. In fact, it would be weird if you never felt fear.
Fear is a massive topic and this is certainly not the final word.
But consider this as a new mental model for managing fear that can improve your entire life. (If you let it.)
And as a general rule, everything we throw out here at Fearless is meant to be a tool to help you along your journey. Some of our techniques and mindsets will resonate with you strongly while others may not. As Bruce Lee said, “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
Got it? Good. Let’s keep going.
Fear Of Failure
The fear of failure is crippling.
It’s not even showing up to the challenge. Opting out. Letting the opportunities go to someone else.
Have you ever been invited to an interesting party or cool social event but you flaked out or made up an excuse not to go? I have.
For so long, I let my social insecurity and fear rule my life. That was me running away from Tension. I was afraid of millions of different things: being rejected by women, being rejected by the men I was hanging out with, being ridiculed by the men who I didn’t even know. All of it.
What I learned when I started working on myself and changing my life was that most of these fears were all in my head. Simply getting out there and facing these fears one at a time began to slowly dissolve them. (This type of step-by-step approach is big part of what we teach at our at our weekend bootcamp.)
How Fear Affects Tension
Anytime you are stepping into a new situation, you are stepping into some degree of Tension. Stepping into Tension and stepping into Fear are synonymous. Especially if you’re leaving your comfort zone.
It doesn’t even have to be in person. Think about calling your best friend on the phone. No Tension, right? Now think about calling the hottest woman you met last time you went out. Now there’s Tension. You feel it in your body, don’t you?
That’s good, stay with that feeling through this next piece. (If you don’t feel it in your body, you’re in your head – probably suppressing or numbing out your anxiety and other feelings. It’s important you get in touch with your true feelings and emotions in your body. Here’s a video to help you with that.)
Imagine you’re about to make that call. The phone is in your hand, you have her number pulled up, and you’ve been practicing what you’re going to say for the last 20 minutes. And then you don’t make the call. You psyched yourself out. Maybe you told yourself, “it’s too late in the day too call now. I’ll do it tomorrow,” or some other excuse.
How’s that Tension feel now? It’s gone and you probably feel a little weight off your chest, but in reality, it doesn’t feel too good. You don’t feel confident or powerful as a man to have avoided tension.
You didn’t step into it, you left it, unpenetrated.
That’s what happens when you avoid tension instead of facing it and moving through it. In fact the Tension didn’t move at all, if anything you moved backwards. Back to your starting place, your comfort zone.
The tension and fear subsided, but you gained nothing from it. You still have your same fears, your same limits. You’re getting jammed up by your fear of “failure” both physically and energetically.
We’re going to go way deeper into the psychology behind this fear in an upcoming post but for now, focus on how this fear interacts with Tension.
I want you to start thinking about tension and the fears associated with tension as a physical process, like traveling.
One of the many philosophies I teach clients is “Starting Point, End Point.”
Point “A” is your starting point – where you are now – and point “B” is the other side of energetic Tension.
Now assign point “A” as your current city, and point “B” a destination you’d love to visit but have never been to. I’ll say for this example my Point “A” is Anaheim, and my Point “B” is Barcelona.
Now, there is no way I can go from Anaheim to Barcelona without traveling. I need to move, I need to do work and expend energy, and all that energy is pushing through Tension.
Another thing that happens when you travel is that your world literally changes. You ditch your old environment for new surroundings. I want you to think of moving through Tension in this way, as a linear journey, because that’s the easiest way for our minds to measure progress.
What you may not be realizing is the benefit of what happens when you step into Tension, even if you fail to achieve your “outcome.” In fact, much like traveling to Barcelona, most of the joy is in the travel itself – the process – not necessarily the outcome.
When you’re faced with Tension, whether that’s with women or elsewhere in your life, and you step into that Tension, you’ve actually changed your whole world. You’ve changed who you are and how you’re showing up. You’ve traveled, not in the physical world, but energetically, perhaps emotionally and spiritually as well.
Do you feel a different type of energetic release now? A deeper sense of inner freedom?
I want to drive this point home a bit more. Because you’re literally built to handle Tension.
When you think about it, you’re pushing through different types of Tension all the time. Your workout routine, your job or business, and the very fact that you are still alive is all a testament to your long term, consistent track record to overcoming Tension. You’re probably a master a stepping into so many different types of Tension that you don’t even realize it.
I mention this because I think a lot of you guys actually don’t give yourself enough credit for all things you do accomplish in your daily lives. You’re on the journey whether you like it or not, and fear of failure is nothing but another way post on that journey.
Keep moving friend.
(In part three of this series we’re going to focus on how Tension works with the Fear of Success.)
