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"FEAR" Painful emotion or dread excited by apprehension of specific impending threats or
danger, such as speaking in public. A basic survival mechanism causing behaviors of escape and avoidance, and irrational thinking. Fear is one of a small set of basic or innate
emotions including joy, sadness and anger. Long-term fear may cause anxiety which results from general non-specific threats that are seen as uncontrollable or unavoidable. Fear can
cause immediate physical illness and mental inability to function. It varies from mild caution to extreme phobia and paranoia, including worry, terror, horror, panic, dread, sleeping disorders, or
hysteria. The most common fears are pain or death, and the fear of social rejection, specifically public speaking. Fear can be instinctive, learned, or even neurological and biological.
Research shows that the amygdala (a key brain structure) processes emotions such as fear and anger, and also involves the frontal lobe of the brain in an area called the rostral anterior cingulate
cortex. This brain activity changes with fear from conscious and unconscious stimuli. There are documented cases of people dying from fear, due to stress on the body or sudden heart attack.
WHY LOVE2SPEAK WORKS Are you
afraid? Consider this: The Love2speak Method combines many powerful classic and modern psychological, neurological and physiological tools, drawn from a huge research pool over 100 years
old. Love2speak recognizes the enormous challenge presented by "irrational" fear and the complexity of its interwoven physical, emotional, mental and psychological components. Human behavior is
like a Windows program (what we can see) with original DOS-based computer software running underneath in the background (what we can't see). Many people remember the Millenium Doomsday Y2K
computer virus that potentially affected most of the modern machinery on the planet, including telephones, elevators and power stations. ("Y2K"=Year 2000) The bug was predicted to destroy
civilization as we know it. The tale of the Doomsday Y2K bug is actually quite fascinating, and reads like a detective novel. A description is included here because it relates directly to the
Love2speak Method. What most people don't know is how this "bug" was squashed. What even more people don't know is that the Doomsday Bug was written into the software and hardware by the
designers themselves. Until recently, all computers were relatively primitive. Every function was and still is designed around one simple concept: "on" and "off." This is called
"digital" with "1=on" and "0=off" or "bits." Programmers (software) and machinery (hardware) were extremely limited in how many "on-off" functions or digital 1-0 bits could be handled simultaneously by
the computer. In the Beginning, computers simply could not handle dates past December 31st, 1999. Software and hardware was designed with an assumption of the same "planned
obsolescence" that the automobile industry uses; they assumed their old stuff would be thrown out, burned up, junked or updated every few years. Apparently no one figured their stuff would still be
around ten, fifteen, twenty years later. But with engineering pride in quality, a lot of stuff was around, in unpredictable places like elevator controls and powerline substations. Midnight
"Happy New Year" the computer chips roll back to January 1st 1900 and the lights go off. Oops. Re-writing the original DOS and UNIX software (which the entire computer
industry was based on) would have taken billions of hours. Instead, the computer programming industry used a much simpler, more efficient, more "elegant" solution: write a "patch" around the
software bug, and paste it on top. Simply put, "short-circuit" the self-inflicted virus completely, so it became invisible to the normal function of the mechanism above it.
Astonishingly, the entire human nervous system works exactly the same way. Your brain is the Master Computer. It controls you by
electrical signals to and from your entire body, through wires called nerves or "neurons." Neurons have multiple antennas ("axons") that receive electrical signals, an amplifier ("body") that amplifies
the signal and if the signal is strong enough ("action potential") flips the on-off output switch to "on", sending a strong "on" burst of electrical energy through a single pipeline ("dendrite") to the next
nerve. Your nervous system is the most complex advanced digital computer system in the Universe. It is so advanced that some subsystems have learned to run themselves without your Brain
monitoring them ("autonomic functions" -heartbeat, breathing, digestion, muscle reflexes). Ultimately, your brain and nervous system control over 99% of you automatically.Learning is a
process where neurons grow communication wires between them over time. Wires can typically take up to 21 days or longer to build new bridges, which is why it classically takes 21 days to learn or
unlearn a new habit. But there are 70 trillion cells in the human body. Nature in its infinite wisdom has created multiple learning paths. Touch a hot stove once and you will really pay
attention before you do that again. The Love2speak Method recognizes the importance of "spaced repetition over time" to implant behavioral learning. But what about "instantaneous learning" which
employs alternate communication channels? Absolutely. Notice that your brain and nervous system controls 99% of you. Here is the key: you definitely control 1%.
Imagine you are driving your car, truck, SUV, airplane, train, motorcycle, boat, tractor. They all have essentially the same systems as the human body, engine, pumps, heating and cooling systems,
electrical systems, fuel delivery, exhaust, hydraulics and pipelines, pulleys and cables, electrical wiring, generator, fuses, on-board computer and so on. Someone designed the hardware and software to
keep itself running so you don't have to think about it. All you have to do is start it, tell it where to go and how to get there. Easy. It's all important, but you provide the 1% that
guides the programming software and machinery hardware. You are in control, not the robot. Now suppose you drive to the same job every day at the same place at the same time. You
wake up automatically at the same time, go through the same motions of getting ready automatically, follow the same directions automatically, drive the same streets automatically, think the same thoughts
automatically, go into the same building automatically, to the same workplace automatically, say hello to the same people automatically, do the same job over and over again day after day automatically, go
home the same way automatically, eat watch television go to bed automatically. Who is in control now? The robot. The computer is controlling you. And then one day on the way
to work you get bored or lazy or distracted or stupid or adventurous and you take a different road and the robot gets worried because this is not familiar and comfortable and secondary emergency backup
navigating and operating systems you did not even know you had start switching on and you drive by a new shopping mall and you stop and go inside and buy yourself a new guitar and some new clothes and a new
computer and a new hobby and new movies and music and art and some new furniture and some new kitchen appliances and sign up for some new courses and meet some new people and start a new way of thinking and
a new way of living and the robot is content again because you are closer to who you really are again and you know where you are again and the cycle starts over again.... Here is the
point. Sure it is easy to be instinctively intuitively afraid. Some fears come from primitive neurological programming ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" – your personal evolution reflects the
same developmental evolution of your species) that has been in your genetic code for millions of years. It helps the human organism survive. But most fear is learned at a conscious level
from an event or series of similar events ("association") that quickly gets buried in the subconscious programmed robot software, then burns into the robot neuron hardware over time.* This is called
"hardwiring." When you are afraid to speak in public, you are hardwired to instantly associate certain thoughts ("I am in front of the audience") with inappropriate physical responses
("I am terrified and my heart is beating a thousand miles an hour and I want to run away"). Your robot is automatic and instantly destructive. And it ruins your life. The Good
News is, your secondary wiring is already in place. Waiting to be switched on. By you. Instantly constructive. Because somewhere in your heart and your mind and your Spirit you really
truly need, want, desire and love to succeed. You know intuitively you deserve to succeed, you work hard to succeed, you are ready to succeed. You are about to take control of your 1% and take
control of your life again. Right now. Get rid of your fear of public speaking today. |
