78: How to Conquer and Bend Fear To Your Will with the Founder of Fearvana, Akshay Nanavati

This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Akshay Nanavati. Akshay is a former Marine Corps veteran, adventurer, speaker, and author of the best-selling book Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

The Dalai Lama said, “Fearvana inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives..”

Through his work, Akshay has been featured on CNN, Fast Company, INC, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and almost all of the major news outlets.

Simply put, Akshay has faced and stood down fear and learned how to bend it to his will. Fear is something everyone faces and struggles with in some form or fashion, and for some time I have wanted to do a show where we dive deeply into facing our fears and overcoming them. When I met Akshay, I knew he was the guy to do it!

www.Fearvana.com

Akshay and the Fearvana movement really started in high school. He wasted a year of his life with drugs and lost two friends. It was the movie “Black Hawk Down” that triggered to get out of his selfish, meaningless life he was in. He went to join the Marines, but it too a year and half to get in because of blood disorder he has. He had to fight his way in and once in he started to learn how to push himself and started to explore other ways to do it. Outdoor extreme sports became his playground.

He was then sent to Iraq where his job was to clear IEDs. When he returned, he had trouble and was diagnosed with PTSD. He started drinking and go to the brink of suicide.

When he hit that low, he knew he had to change and learn to heal himself and learn to lead a meaningful life. He began to study it and learned how to manage and control his fear and harness it to his advantage. Fearvana and the business he has built around it came from this journey.

What is the one thing people should know about fear and how to use it to their advantage? T

he single most important thing is that it is not a negative emotion. The reality is that we just have emotions – it is us who choose whether to view them as negative or not. You must build a positive relationship to suffering. If you can, you can do anything in life.

At the 7 min mark, Akshay answers the question, “What is it about fear that paralyzes people and makes us react the way we do to fear? What do we actually have to overcome?”

You do not want to miss his answer…

• It happens from amygdala hijack.
• Like anything, you have to train yourself and you have to put yourself in high stress environments to create “stress inoculation.”
• Once you get comfortable with that feeling and can use it to your advantage
• Fear releases very beneficial chemicals that are essential to success – adrenaline, dopamine, and others.

How does somebody recondition themselves to use fear to their advantage?

• Self-awareness is the key.
• “Man is a machine, but a very peculiar machine. He is machine that with the right circumstances and treatment can know that he is a machine, and by fully realizing this, he can find the ways to cease to being a machine.”
• What that means is that simply by acknowledging that we don’t control most of what happens in our brain – it’s all a part of our subconscious, we can then stop fighting the subconscious, but instead embrace it and decide what we do with it.

At the 10 min mark, Akshay gives a great example of this with his PTSD and how he used this process to overcome it.

“There is no such thing as irrational fear…”

Does fear masquerade itself as other things in our lives?

• It often shows up in other forms such as stress and anxiety.
• It is normal to feel stress, especially when you are working hard for something
• Book: The Upside of Stress

“The biggest thing that separates peak performers is that they don’t stress over stress”

• It is a good thing to label our emotions

Take us through the Fearvana process?

5 steps: The Unstoppable Warrior Formula

1. Label and Language. Label your emotions – really noticing and calling it out. “I’m feeling fear.” “I’m feeling stress.” Then shift your body language to one of confidence and strength.
2. Meaning. What is the meaning? Why am I feeling this? (bringing consciousness)
3. Not me. This is where you take control and say, “it’s not me, it’s my brain.” This is how we stop ourselves from assigning our identity to our emotions.
4. Opt for a new meaning. Change the meaning to what you want it to be.
5. Purposeful action. Take consistent action toward rewiring your brain to what you want it to be. Lastly, do pre-emptive strikes. Plan ahead and prepare for situations where you know fear is possible. Know what you are going to do with it.

At the 18 min mark, we discuss how to get people to the action step quickly. Why is there a disconnect from when we recognize things to actually acting on them? Akshay gives a number of examples and what to do.

One key is to work your way up the ladder of fear. Put yourself in incremental levels fear as you progress. What has surprised you to most in all of your work with fear?

How much everyone is suffering In their own way. We tend to think we are the exception and the “odd one out,” when in reality we all are suffering in some way. People should take comfort in that. Even the people you look up to have their own levels of suffering, but there is a gift in that when we learn to find it and embrace it.

At the 25 min mark, Akshay talks about the post fear process.

What is the most important habit and how do you break any habit at will?

• The most important habit is the habit of willpower
• Willpower is engaging your consciousness. It is planning ahead for the suffering you know is coming
• Willpower makes you comfortable with you fear
• Build systems to help maintain your willpower because you will drain it throughout the day with the decisions you make.
• Use the systems to conserve your willpower for when you need it most
• Use checklists – they keep you from having to think about things so you can act
• This allows to channel and condition any habit any time you need it
• In summary, create systems for everything that allow you to save and use your willpower when you need it most.

At the 31 minute mark, Akshay talks about his routines and how he sets them up.

• Uses the “ToDoist” app
• Works in chunks
• Morning and evening routines 
• Reading adventure stories
• Prayer

There has to be something you are truly afraid of??

• Having children
• Where he wants to take Fearvana because he doesn’t know how he will really get there

What have you learned in becoming an entrepreneur that is important to share?

• Clarity in some form is so important
• Give value first
• Being patient with the process

Other resources you used to develop the Fearvana Philosophy?

• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel
• Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith
• Peak by Anders Erickson

 

Best Quote: “The balance of action and awareness is ultimately how all growth happens…”

 

Akshay's Misfit 3:

1. Getting immense clarity on your why, you what, and your how and then taking consistent action, and adapting along the way
2. Build systems that help you to conserve willpower for when you need it most and plan and track everything you can
3. The most important skill you need to succeed in anything is building the positive relationship to suffering. If you can suffer well, you can handle anything that life throws at you.