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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of The Horsemanship Journey podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be with us today. Today, I am very proud to present Rhonda Britton. Rhonda is an Emmy Award winner, a repeat Oprah guest, a master coach. This lady has changed lives. She's been in over 600 episodes of reality TV. She's authored bestsellers, including Fearless Living, which I will make a side note to that I recently purchased and have been listening to the audiobook, and I highly recommend it. This book was translated into 16 languages.
She founded the Fearless Living Institute, the home of the Fearless Living Life Coach Certification Program, which is considered the Ivy League of Life Coach Training. She's been read, heard, and watched by millions, coached tens of thousands of clients, and trained hundreds of coaches. I can't really say enough, but I'm going to stop it here. So, we're proud to be able to hear what she has to share with us today on The Horsemanship Journey podcast. Rhonda, thank you so much for taking your time to be with us.
Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure, my pleasure. I'm very excited. I don't know, I don't frequently get to be interviewed by a man with a cowboy hat. So that's very nice. You know, it's like very nice. Very nice indeed.
Awesome. So I have to tell you, when I was first introduced to you online, I was guided to a YouTube video that you were interviewed on. It'll come to me, the name of it. But anyway, I guess the name of it’s not important. What's important is I heard your story. Your story as a young 14-year-old girl, and this video was about a 60-minute video. I intended to watch it for about two minutes, and about 45 minutes in, I realized that my jaw had not... I'd just, like, taken in—I was taken aback. That was a better way to describe it. So, I guess I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind, for any listeners who may have not known you before, just putting us into context of your story the way you’d like.
Of course. Sure. Sure, I appreciate that. And I'm really excited that you found yourself caught up in 45 minutes. That's good news. Thank you for that.
Well, you're referring to The Worst Day of My Life. And I do believe that the worst day of our lives—the most horrific day, the toughest days, the days that we wish we never had to live through—actually carry the seeds of our destiny. We don't see that for maybe years, maybe decades, but when we have hindsight, when we can see the pattern of our life and how it unfolds, we all of a sudden look back and go, "Wow, that moment, that day actually had everything to do with where I am today."
And that's how I feel when I look back at my life.
So what you're referring to is when I was 14 years old. I grew up in a little tiny, tiny town in Upper Michigan—365 inches of snow. It snowed pretty much from October, early November, to May. I was actually home last year in May, and it was snowing in May. So just so you get a full view of how much it snows.
There weren't really any restaurants. We had no fast food, nothing like that. We only had two restaurants—Big Boy and Douglas House Buffet Hotel.
My parents had recently separated, and my dad was living with his mother. It was Father's Day, and my father was coming over to take us all out for Sunday brunch, which was a big deal because we didn’t go out to eat. My mom was fluffing up her beehive hairdo, putting on blue eyeshadow and her rose-colored lipstick. My sisters were fighting it out in our one bathroom.
My dad walked in the back door. "Come on, girls, let's go, let's go, let's go."
My mother and I started walking toward my father. My sisters were still in the bathroom fighting. My father noticed it was starting to rain, so he said he had to get his coat from the car.
Now, this coat was a tan Naugahyde leisure suit coat, which—if you're old enough to remember—was really good-looking. Those were really hot. So he was grabbing his coat. But as he opened his trunk to get it, instead of grabbing his coat, I noticed he grabbed a gun.
And then he started yelling at my mother.
"You made me do this. You made me do this!"
And he fired.
I started yelling, "Dad, what are you doing? Stop! Dad, what are you doing? Stop!"
He took the gun, cocked it, and pointed it at me. I believed 100% that I was next.
He blinked. I blinked. He blinked. I blinked.
We were frozen, just blinking and staring at each other. It felt like forever, but I’m sure it was just a few seconds.
Then my mother—who already had one bullet inside her—noticed what was happening. She yelled out, literally with her last breath, "No, don't!"
My father, realizing my mother was still alive, took that bullet intended for me and shot my mother a second time. That bullet went through her abdomen, out her back, and landed in the car horn.
And for the next 20 minutes, all I heard was—
“BEEEEEEEEEEEEP.”
Then my father cocked the gun one more time, put it to his head, and fired.
In less than two minutes, I was the sole witness to my father murdering my mother and committing suicide. I don't know how anybody else would react, but this is how I reacted—I blamed myself. I was the only one out there who could have physically stopped it. I was the only one who could have done anything. And I didn't do anything heroic. I didn't jump in front of my mother. I didn't kick his shins. I didn't grab the gun. I did nothing heroic.
And so for the next 20 years, I basically split into two—the inside Rhonda and the outside Rhonda. The outside Rhonda? "I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine." I did really well in school. I kept going, got straight A’s, was class president, and earned a full-ride scholarship to college. But on the inside? No self-worth. Not good enough. Always wondering when the next shoe was going to drop. I didn’t feel like I had any rights. I didn’t save my mother. And when you don’t save your mother, you don’t get to be happy.
So I lived in two worlds—pretending on the outside and loathing on the inside.
Eventually, I went to college. And in college, I found alcohol. That numbed me. And that was a great anesthetic, right? It helped me keep pretending everything was fine. It helped my outside pretend.
So I became an alcoholic. I ended up getting three DUIs, ended up trying to kill myself three times. And it really was that third suicide attempt—when I found myself alive, and I wasn't happy about that—that I realized I'm not very good at killing myself. I'm not skilled at that. But there must be a reason why I'm alive. There must be a reason I'm here because I'm trying to kill myself. I do not want to be here. I mean, why am I staying, right? And when you try to kill yourself three times, they do put you in a psychiatric ward for evaluation.
So I was evaluated and deemed not crazy. They let me out. I remember going back to my little studio apartment and just saying to myself, “I have to start over because I've tried everything.”
Those years in between my parents' death and my third suicide attempt—I went to therapy. I went to workshops. I read books. I was very knowledgeable about spirituality, personal development, and leadership.
I read all those books. I took all those workshops. I did inner child work. I did shaman work. I did energy work. I did everything. And yet, nothing took away the feeling of not being good enough.
I believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me.
So that day when I was released from the psychiatric ward and sent back home, I thought, “I have to start over. I just have to start over.” I remember thinking, “What do kindergarteners do? What do kindergarteners do?” Well, kindergarteners use gold stars and a calendar.
So I actually went to the store, got some gold stars and a calendar. And for the next 30 days—I still have this calendar, by the way—I puta gold star on any time I did anything worth living for, anything worth keeping myself alive for, anything at all. Any change at all. And I’m talking about something as simple as getting angry and not breaking something. That was the level I was at, right? Just the bare minimum—Am I worth saving? Am I worth living?
At the end of 30 days, I had a calendar filled with gold stars. And I had hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to live under the weight of my parents' murder-suicide. Because I believed that my past was who I was. I didn't know how to separate that from myself. I know—I heard all the things in the books. They say, “You are not your past.” But come on now. I really believed I was my past.
I really believed that I didn't deserve happiness or anything substantially wonderful in my life—because I didn’t save my mother. That was the beginning of my journey of changing my life.
You know, what you just said right there—thank you for sharing that. I think what you just said right there is that you didn’t know that you could separate who you were. I mean, I believe that we’re just—we're just going along, right? We're just going along.
That’s right. That’s right.
Nobody really tells us that, you know, all of the input that we're getting in here is who we are. It’s our reality. And a lot of times, we’re not really even aware that that’s what it is. But then maybe one day, we recognize it.
But the question is—Okay, I am a combination of everything that has happened to me, right?
That's it.
And then try to break that apart—and then what? I mean, tell me more about that.
You're asking such a great question because you're really—you're really asking the crux question that stops people from moving forward. That is brilliant because that is the moment. Okay, so yeah, I get that I’m my past. I get that I’m all these things. Okay, so what, right?
Well, on one hand, you’re more than that. As we all know, from a spiritual place—if you believe in something bigger than us—you’re more than that. But also, what you think you are, who you think you are, is not who you are at all. Because what we do is we adopt things from everybody around us, right?
We take on things. We take things that feel comfortable. We take things that we learn. We take those behaviors and those beliefs and everything, and that’s who we think we are.
But what we can do—if we decide—is we have to make a choice to become aware of, “Who am I really?” Actually asking ourselves that.
And this is what I did, actually. This was one of the very first things I did after this awakening, after the gold stars. I started realizing—I didn’t know who I was. Just like we’re talking about, I didn’t know who I was. Who was I? Okay, everybody’s like, “You know, you’re bigger than that.” Okay, then who am I?
So I started asking myself—literally, and I’m not joking—if I picked up this cup, I would ask myself, “Do I like this cup? Do I? Do I like what’s in this cup?” I was so used to living on auto pilot. My favorite color was green. And you know whose favorite color was green? My kindergarten boyfriend’s. He liked green, so I just picked it up and said, “I like green too.” And I never changed it—for decades.
Then, my ex-husband’s favorite food was Mexican. Well, that was my favorite food. And I didn’t know I was doing that. I wasn’t purposely being a chameleon, right? I wasn’t purposely doing this. But that is how we survive in the world.
When we’re in survival mode, we just pick things up in order to keep ourselves safe. So, knowing that my husband’s favorite food was Mexican—well, whenever he wanted to eat, I just had to say, “Mexican!” And he’d be like, “Yeah!”
I didn’t know that I was— I mean, logically, obviously, I knew—but I didn’t know what I wanted, what I needed, what I felt, without the influence of others. And even though— I’ll even say this—people who think they do are still doing it. Because I didn’t know that I was afraid. I never said I was afraid. Come on, I’m Finnish. I grew up in Upper Michigan. We don’t feel. I didn’t think I was afraid. So I didn’t know I was afraid.
I didn’t know that I was picking things up from other people and just turning them into myself. If you had asked me, I would have said, “I’m amazing! I’m an individual! I can do my own thing!” No. I was an accumulation of all the things that I’d experienced.
And by the way, now they know that fear is handed down through our DNA. So I’m also carrying all the fears of my ancestors that weren’t healed. All the unhealed parts and all the healed parts—that’s what I picked up. Slowing down to find yourself. So it’s actually about slowing down. There’s a phrase that I say: “Slow is the new fast.” To slow down and really, really ask yourself, “Is this how I feel? Is this what I need? Is this what I want? Is this important to me? Really?”
And we have to be willing to be wrong about everything to find the right life for us. We have to be willing to be wrong about everything in order to find the right life for us. So slowing down—that question that you asked is so pivotal because that’s where people stop. “I can’t change.” Or, “I tried to change, and it didn’t work.” Or, et cetera, et cetera, whatever they say.
There's two things I, these are maybe they're two big things to say at once, but I'm going to do it anyway.
You go.
There's two things that are coming to me. And that is, is that just the idea, mean, that I have to realize that, that I can, that I can, it's, it's my choice.
Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right.
I mean, I get, I have to like really take that in to be able to even know, because I think, well, well, I'm this way. Well, of course I'm this way. This is, this is who I am. And so.
That's right.
That's one thing, but the other thing that was coming to me in this listening to you is this, the, if you were to ask, and you're well aware of this because you list that as something that you talk about is if you were to ask probably 10 people, you know, if they have fears, most people would be like, not me.
Nope, nope, nope, not me, nope.
Right. Tell me about that. I mean, what, what are we thinking when we're thinking, I mean, what's going on here?
We literally are so we literally are not educated about fear. We aren't aware of it. We haven't had school. We haven't classes on emotional management. We don't understand how fear works. I mean, I never even after my parents died. I didn't think I was afraid. Right. I didn't think I was afraid ever. And so the fact that I work with fear is so hysterical to me because it's like such an irony. Like what am I doing talking about fear when I never thought I had it? So what I do now is I actually pull out my book when I give a talk and we're going to do it right now. And if, if, if you're listening to us or watching us right now, if you're able to shut your eyes, do it. If you're not, that's okay. If you're driving, please don't.
And then I want you to nod your head if you do any of these things and feel any of things, because I'm going to go and answer Shane's question, but a little backwards. So let me ask you, can nod your head if you do any of these things or feel any of these things:
So go ahead and open your eyes. And I read these words, you know, and, I would dare say everybody has over 50%. What do you think? What percentage do you have, Shane? What do you think?
I would say about 80%.
Great, perfect, truth teller, thank you. So when I give a talk, I always say over 50, everybody raises their hand. Over 75, everybody raises their hand. 80,over everybody raises their hand. And then maybe 90, 99% of the room raises their hand, right?
And then when I get up to 100, probably 98% of the room raises their hand. And these are what I call fear responses, Shane. We do not get overwhelmed unless we have a fear ignited. We do not procrastinate unless we have a fear ignited. We don't want to control things unless we have a fear ignited. We don't get overwhelmed.
So we have all of these fear responses that are caused by what I call the Wheel of Fear. And it is that thing that is invisible. Nobody ever told us about it. And it is part of our neurobiology. We can't get rid of it.
It activates when we are in a new situation, an uncomfortable situation, or even thinking of one. We don't have to be in the situation. We could be thinking about the situation, or we could be, we could see the situation and we could get activated. So these are fear responses.
So when I give this quiz out, I say, okay, if you do any of these things you have fear, period. So you have fear. So this is how you start identifying when you are afraid. It's not like, do I feel afraid? No, because you probably won't feel that. But you probably know when you feel anxious. You probably know when you're procrastinating.
So then we're gonna work backwards into that Wheel of Fear because everybody has what I call that core fear. And that core fear blooms like, let's use this as a flower, a plant. The core fear is that root. And you as a human being, every human being, we find fear responses that work for us, right? The overwhelm, the procrastination, the people pleasing, good, whatever it is.
And those work for us. We don't like it sometimes, but they keep us safe. Cause fear only wants to keep us safe and alive. And then we go to a procrastination school or perfectionist school or complaining school. And we learn not to do that. Well, fear doesn't care.
Fear doesn't care. It will just pop up another one. It'll just pop up another fear response. It could care less if you quit procrastinating, because it's got overwhelm over here and it's got it in its back pocket or it's got, you know, or something, right? It's got something else in its back pocket that's going to pull out.
And that's why we feel, you know, when I ask people, do you feel like you thought you solved this and it comes back around again and again? Well, it's because fear is going to keep using the things that work in order to keep you physically safe because fear only cares about keeping you alive.
It does not care about your happiness. It does not care about your joy. It does not care about your purpose. It does not care that you live this great life. It doesn't care. And fear knows everything you know. It knows everything spiritually, intellectually, education, knowledge, your history.
It knows everything you know, and it can use everything against you to keep you stuck, safe, and the same.
So you, in your own, back to your story, you learn, you see your own fear and you learn so much. I mean, you are like an authority on fear. You know, I hear sometimes, I hear, you know, I'm just going to bring this up. People talk about this and that and credentials and this and that.
And I think that credentials have a place. They surely do. They set the standards for certain things and this and that and the other. So do results. I mean, results in my opinion are credentials, and based on results and experience, you are surely an authority on fear.
So you, you, you recognize this, you break it down, you see it, and you look back and you see what you did with your own fear.
That's right.
So just tell us more about, okay, I can see 80% of these things. So I mean, okay, I'm with you. I'm in.
You're with me. Okay, Rhonda, what's next, right? What's next, right? So, yeah.
I don't like them. I'm not really liking them, but I mean, they're there, but so tell me more.
Yeah, so for the sake of simplicity, there's a Wheel of Fear. So when you're activated and the fear response is when you're doing a fear response, you are on what I call the Wheel of Fear.
Now, you are not on your Wheel of Fear all the time. There's probably lots of places in your life and lots of relationships in your life where you're fearless. And when you are being true to yourself and living that fearless life, you are on what I call the Wheel of Freedom.
So everybody, we're not afraid all the time, right? A lot of people are afraid at work, but not afraid in their relationships. Other people have fear in their relationships and not at work, right? Some people have stuff about their family, some people don't. So it's not like you're afraid or not afraid. It's not black or white.
It's you might have three areas of your life where you are really frustrated and not satisfied and really, really want to change those areas. Well, there's probably fear on patrol there, right?
So you have an experience of living on your Wheel of Freedom already. You already have one. You just may not be able to identify it. And then you have experiences on your Wheel of Fear.
So the Wheel of Fear has four components. The first component is that core fear. What is that core fear? And that, Shane, is the hardest to discover.
Because fear, because it knows you so well, it doesn't want to get discovered. Because once you see it, then the gig is up, so to speak, right? The gig is up. Fear can't trick you anymore. Fear can't get you believing in the lies it tells you. It can't keep saying, "Well, you don't have any self-worth. You just don't have enough confidence for that. You're just, look at you, you're just so anxious. I mean, you're just a procrastinator."
You don't believe the lies anymore. You slice through the illusion of all those lies. And so you see it and you don't beat yourself up anymore for damn sure. And you don't blame yourself and you don't shame yourself. And you don't feel all those feelings that keep you frustrated, depressed, upset, feeling less than, not good enough in any way, shape, or form.
So we got the core fear, which is the invisible part that nobody can find, but I did find it and created exercises to help you do it.
And then we move into, we don't, I'll use mine, I'll use mine as an example. So my core fear is loser.
Now, Shane, I was a straight A student, got a full ride to college, was class president, went to state for track. I mean, am I really? No, I was never called a loser in my life. Even when I was drinking, I wasn't called a loser, right? Because again, I looked good. I had it all together on the outside. Right.
So when people say to me, "I know my core fear is stupid. My parents called me stupid," Oh, trust me, that is not your Wheel of Fear. It is way smarter than that. So mine is loser.
Now, I could be in a room. I could be in my own thoughts. I could be watching something and that loser is invisibly and quickly ignited. How do I know that? Well, in the beginning, I only knew it because I was doing a fear response.
I was overwhelmed or I was, if I were afraid to be a loser, a fear response might be bragging or it might be giving unrealistic deadlines, right? It might be giving too much in order to prove your worth, right? So all these little things that we unconsciously do really quick, right? Those fear responses, those are activated.
Now, we're all old enough. We know what our fear responses are. This is not a secret. We know what we wish we didn't do anymore. So then we go, "I can't stand. Why am I doing this? I know better than this, "right?
Which dumps us into what I call the core negative feeling. And this is the feeling you do not want to feel. You do not want to feel it, but you felt it many times.
Mine is worthless. Yours is probably going to be different. But I dump into that feeling. And when we have that feeling, when we have that core negative feeling of worthless, that only proves to us that we have, i.e., no value, i.e., that we're a loser.
Again, we're not using that word in our mind until we identified and we dump down to self-destructive behaviors. And again, we know our self-destructive behaviors. You know yours and I know mine.
So I do self-destructive behaviors. Well, when I'm doing self-destructive behaviors, now the Wheel of Fear goes, "Well, you just better try harder. You just better try harder to have people not see you as a loser. You just better try harder."
Right, so it keeps me spinning on the wheel.
So once we get activated, what's really cool is you can get off the Wheel of Fear anywhere. The minute you're activated, you start doing the people-pleasing or the bragging or the giving unrealistic deadlines. The minute you start doing that, you go, "Stop, stop, stop, I'm on my Wheel of Fear. I am going to move over to my Wheel of Freedom."
Now, what's the Wheel of Freedom? The Wheel of Freedom is that part of you that you cut off long ago because it wasn't safe when you were growing up to have this part of you. And by the way, it may not even be about your family or how you were raised or anything like that. Like I said, fears are handed down through our DNA. So it may be, you may not even know why this part of you was not able to bloom.
But there's a part of you that you hid away a long time ago. And that is what I call your essential nature. And my essential nature is authenticity.
So Shane, I want you to just think about this for a moment. If I'm afraid at my core, of course, unbeknownst to me, that I'm afraid I'm a loser, do you think being authentic is a good idea?
Sounds hard.
Yeah, it's impossible, right? Now, what did I admire about people growing up? What quotes as a little girl did I write down? It was all about authenticity. But I couldn't do that because it was too dangerous. I couldn't be authentic. How do you be authentic? Because if I'm authentic, everyone's going to know I'm a loser. Be authentic, right?
So that's the thing that the Wheel of Freedom calls. It calls you to reclaim that part of yourself that you left behind. So I, in turn, had to practice authenticity and I didn't even know what that was, right? That's why I did the whole like, "I like this glass? Do I like this? You know, what's in here?" I don't even know what is authentic to me.
And then the Wheel of Freedom moves into proactive behaviors, a sense of wholeness, and then self-affirming behaviors. So in proactive behaviors, you have to practice being patient, but self-affirming you're naturally patient.
So when you are living in your flow, you are in self-affirming behaviors. You are on your Wheel of Freedom and you are in your flow. And we want to stay there as much as possible and make the choice when we're on our Wheel of Fear to jump onto our Wheel of Freedom.
Okay. So I, that's a lot. I tell a story of when I was a teen and into my early twenties, you know, I, these voices that I wasn't good enough, that, you know, it was less than that, like, some, you're not quite the same and you'll just like somehow not capable as and on and on and on. In part, mostly that's what led to a cycle of addiction that further fueled this whole thing. And it was a terrible cycle that I was on this fear.
And so as I, as I watch people and observe and see, I guess the question is, I think that when I look at human beings, everyone, I see people that just want to know that we're good enough, that we're okay. And so I guess my question is, I mean, that part of the human experience just to wonder if we're good enough? I mean, tell me about this.
Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. So fear is part of our neurobiology, period, end of story. And the generic Wheel of Fear is, "Am I good enough? Am I good enough?" That's the generic one that all of us have.
And then what I've done is I've personalized it so it really activates in you. So it really relates to you personally, right? But yes, I have not met a human being alive that does not have the fear. In the darkest of nights, in the middle of the night when their life isn't working out, on some level they ask some version of, "I'm not good enough."
And so that causes us to make choices, right? And some of us go, "I became an alcoholic," you had your addictions. Then some of us try harder and we become workaholics, right? And it looks better, it looks better, right? Because we're gonna prove our worth.
I have a, one of my coaches works with high net worth individuals. I just talked to her yesterday. I mean, her clients make $100 million a year, okay? Like we're talking loads of money. What is she doing? These guys, mostly guys, some women, want to learn their Wheel of Fear because they've realized that the way they've lived their life, even though on the outside it's successful, they have relationship issues. They have the same thing. "I'm not good enough," even though I've made $100 million.
So we all have it. And like I said, it's part of our neurobiology. And so it's not about getting rid of fear. It's about understanding it, seeing it, and working with it, and knowing how it operates. Because once you know how it operates, you're no longer tricked by it.
So yes, this is, it's part of our neurobiology. We're never gonna get rid of it.
So the more times that we can recognize, I mean, the goal is to recognize that we're in or on this Wheel of Fear and move to this Wheel of Freedom, which sounds a lot more peaceful because now it sounds like I'm doing things that are affirming my value to myself, right?
That's right. That's right.
And then as I become, mean, being over there in the times that we all are in our Wheel of Fear, it's a pretty destructive cycle. I don't think that we really know that, the things that you're describing, they not only have impact on the way that we believe about ourselves, and that's coming out all over the place. We don't think it is, but it's coming out everywhere to all relationships.
That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. And our children and our children.
But it seems like, it seems like as you move, the things that you describe in the Wheel of Freedom are things that allow us to show up better. I think to have the capacity to have better relationships, we kind of all want that also I think.
Yeah, and have the right to have them because when the Wheel of Fear is activated, we don't think we have a right to do that. You know, we don't think we've earned that. We don't think that we can do that. Right. But the more that we live on our Wheel of Freedom, we start accessing that natural state of who we really are.
And so then what happens is the wheel, because in the beginning, the Wheel of Freedom almost feels uncomfortable because I'm like, what? Right. But eventually, as we live on our Wheel of Freedom, the Wheel of Fear becomes really uncomfortable. You know, like, like when I'm on my Wheel of Fear, it's not okay with me anymore. Like that's not okay, right?
It's not okay if I judge somebody. It's not okay if I start people-pleasing. It's not okay if I lie to get out of something. I mean, the minute I do it, before it even comes out of my mouth, I can feel it, right? And I'm like, it as much as I can. Of course, I'm human, so sometimes my Wheel of Fear gets the best of me too. But the point is, that in that moment, I clean it up as soon as I can in order to live on my Wheel of Freedom.
So yeah, so the Wheel of Fear is activating. We treat each other. I mean, the way we see the world, the way we treat each other, the way we're seeing each other through our own Wheel of Fear, right?
And I have so many parents come to me and go, I don't want my child to have a Wheel of Fear. It's like, well, that's impossible. It's part of our neurobiology. The greatest thing you can do for your children is know your Wheel of Fear. So you learn how to operate it so that you can then educate them and show them how to operate theirs.
So you being a good role model on your Wheel of Freedom will give them the skills to live on their Wheel of Freedom, right?
Love that.
So yeah, so we're spilling it out all the time, and righteousness, being righteous, is a Wheel of Fear. Thinking you're right is a Wheel of Fear activity because when you are in the Wheel of Freedom, you're willing to be wrong about everything. You're willing to learn, you're willing to grow, you're open-minded.
When you're on your Wheel of Fear, you're not open-minded. There's gotta be an enemy. There's gotta be good and bad. There's gotta be duality. There's gotta be black and white. When you're on your Wheel of Freedom, you're comfortable in the gray. But on the Wheel of Fear, you want everything to be black and white. On the Wheel of Freedom, you're okay. You can live in the paradox. You can live in the gray. You can live in the "I don't know."
So most of us were raised in the good, bad, black, white, everything needs to be one way or the other. And that keeps us in a straightjacket, that we're on a straightjacket. And we're not able to change. We're not able to change our mind because we're so inundated with black and white thinking, with good and bad. So we have to move into this place.
So just feelings, for instance, people think there's better feelings than other feelings. Feelings are just feelings. There's no good or bad feelings.
But let's think of a value, for instance. Let's just call it integrity.
Well, I don't know anybody who wouldn't like to be called somebody that's, "You're an integrist person. Oh, you have so much integrity." I don't know anybody that wouldn't like that, right?
But when you're on the Wheel of Fear, living your integrity, that's rigidity. That's keeping promises that no longer serve you. "I said I was going to do this, dammit, and I'm going to do it." And you're like, but you're so outgrown that you don't, but you won't stop. You will not change your mind. You will. You're rigid, right?
So you stand on, "Have integrity." Yeah, based in fear, right? When you're in integrity and freedom, you can actually renegotiate. You can actually think of new solutions. You can actually expand, but on the Wheel of Fear, you can't.
What do you think about, you're talking a little bit about things that we believe that we should do and that we believe we have this meaning of what integrity means to us, and we want to have integrity. And we have these words like, "Well, I should do this and I shouldn't do that."
I mean, how does a human being even negotiate all that? I mean, it's almost like it's a default that just comes out of this, like, "Well, for whatever reason, with all the input I have right now in this position, I think that I should do this, but I didn't do it."
And so, I mean, what does that mean about me?
Yes, yes. So you're asking a fundamental question about, do you trust yourself? You know, what is your decision-making criteria? And so what you're describing is a default decision-making criteria. And a default decision-making criteria most likely for many of us is on the Wheel of Fear because we're seeking safety. We're doing the thing that we think we should do. We're seeking safety.
Well, on the Wheel of Freedom, we have internal safety. So safety in the world doesn't have the same addiction quality, right? The same need as we do on the Wheel of Fear. On the Wheel of Fear, we have a huge need to feel safe. And we don't trust ourselves to speak up or stand for ourselves or have enough courage or fortitude or knowledge or communication skills or anything in order to stand up, right? So we succumb and we take the safe place and succumb to the Wheel of Fear.
So we have to, again, as you live on the Wheel of Freedom, you are going to have new experiences. So I'm gonna step back for a minute. Neuroscience says that the only way we can change our lives in any way, shape, or form is through changing our perception. Okay? Well, if your perception is based on the Wheel of Fear and a story, that's your perception. When you start moving on the Wheel of Freedom, that opens up a whole new world of perception.
And as you start navigating these two worlds and starting to understand, "This is me on my Wheel of Freedom, this on my Wheel of Fear," your perception starts getting real clarity. You start really understanding how you are and how the world is in fear and freedom. You really start, it gives you peace. It gives you peace because you're no longer sitting there going, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with them? What's wrong? What's wrong? Why? I can't believe it. What should I be doing?"
It's like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. What would you be doing if you were being authentic right now? What would you be doing in this moment if you were living on your Wheel of Freedom? The answers get really simple. I'm not gonna say they're easy to do all the time, but you know the thing that must be done. You know the thing you must say. You know the thing. And many of us know the thing already. We just don't have the courage or the skill to do it.
And that's one of the things that I'm fanatical about is the "how," because I don't think, I know for me, I would read books and they say, "Love yourself." And I'd be like, "How do you love yourself?" Or they'd say, "Have more confidence." Well, how do you have more confidence? How do you do that? And so I'm a huge "how" person, you know, in all my books and all my courses, "how, how, how, how, how," because if you do not have the "how," I can tell you all day long to be fearless. I can tell you all day long to love yourself. Well, how are you going to do that?
And that's why I love your questions, because you're really getting to the "how." So yes, with all the information I know right now, on my Wheel of Freedom, I'm going to— I mean, on my Wheel of Fear, I'm going to make one decision. On my Wheel of Freedom, I'm going to make another decision and I need to navigate that.
And by the way, the way we're wired, if we're on automatic pilot and fear is in charge, because when we're on automatic pilot, that's what happens. You're in a present problem. You've got a present problem you're trying to figure out. The brain, our whole body automatically will go into the past to find a solution.
It'll go back there to find something that will work in this situation. And then we apply it to the present thinking we're going to get a different future. So the only way to stop that, to change that is to use our frontal lobe, to use our pre-cortex, prefrontal cortex, right? To use the front of our brain. Some people call it the executive brain, executive part of our brain. But to use that takes effort and it takes slowing down.
When you first start doing it, you're going to get tired. You're going to get really tired because to stop and actually think beyond automatic pilot takes effort of the brain and our body. And it's going to burn a whole bunch of calories and your awareness because you have to increase your awareness. And again, you have to be willing to be wrong about everything.
So if you are looking for evidence to keep your opinion, you're not on your Wheel of Freedom, you're on your Wheel of Fear. So we want to be able to think outside the box, think outside of our norm, and use our free frontal brain so that we can actually go, "Well, what is true here? What is real? What if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong?"
Right? What if I'm wrong that all these people aren't evil and all that, you know, that they're not trying to get me and, you know, all this is happening. What if I'm wrong? Yeah, what if you are? And that takes great humility, right? And a lot of people won't go to humility. They will not allow themselves to be vulnerable because the Wheel of Fear has got them by the throat.
So in order to live a life of freedom, humility, vulnerability, willingness to say you're sorry, to forgive yourself, to forgive another, are critical skills to keep your heart open.
Wow, that is awesome right there. You've been doing this a little bit. I’m just gonna, you've been, you've said that, you know, at this stage of the game that occasionally, you know, you're analyzing, but you're getting quick answers and I guess I wanted to know what, like, what is living fearlessly to you? What does that look like? Could you just, you've been kind of painting a picture, but just kind of open the picture of like, what's available to me if I… What does living fearlessly mean to you?
One, that I am here to live a life filled with peace and that I am on my trajectory of my place in this world, my purpose, my destiny, and that I have the right and the ability, the ability to connect with human beings and that I can receive, give and receive love, you know, without fear and I can be my authentic self with everyone everywhere I go.
So for me, because my word is authentic, your word might be different, but my word for essential nature is authentic. So my whole thing is, can I be authentically me every minute of every day? That's what I want. That's what I want. Right? And that's what I attempt to live. Again, not always perfect, because I'm human. And we're all human. But fearless living to me is really not about jumping out of a plane, which most people automatically think, but it's really just jumping into your life and occupying your own skin and occupying your own life and being in charge of your own destiny and being able to have the courage and the fortitude to go for it.
That is awesome. Super powerful. I love that. Not like jumping out of a plane, jumping into your own life. Beautiful.
Yeah, with two feet, right? Because how many of us feel like we're living somebody else's life? And you know, that nurse, can't remember the name of the book right now. I think it's called The Top Five Regrets, but she was a hospice nurse and she interviewed people on their deathbed. And she did this for decades. And the number one fear that people had on their deathbed, the number one thing they regret is they didn't live their life. They didn't live their life. They lived a life that was suitable to other people, right? That it was just enough maybe on the edge if they got some of it, but they didn't really live their life.
Because I believe that we actually don't even know what we want or what we think because we're so busy inputting so much information. We don't even go into silence. We don't even, you know, go for a walk and don't have any noise on. And what is your brain? What are you saying to yourself? Can you hear your intuition? Can you hear those nudges from spirit? Can you hear those, you know, nudges from, you know, source, God, right? Can you hear those? And then do you have the courage to go do them? You know? So that's what I want to do. I want to hear God and I want to act.
When I was in fear, I couldn't hear it and I definitely couldn't act it. And now I hear it and act on it most times. And I would say most all times I'm working on it. Some I can do quicker with more courage and others are I have to grow into that. I have to grow into that person. And that's the other benefit of Wheel of Freedom. You have all the patience in the world because this is what life's about.
This is what life's about. This has been an awesome conversation. I could talk and I'm sure people could listen for hours. They've done it before. This just shows that, you know, I guess your history of, you know, why you can be and what you've done, how you've done the things that you've done are so successful at. It's just so, so inspiring and so powerful. Tell us, Rhonda, last thoughts if you want, and also just where people can get a hold of you, what you got going on now.
Yeah, thank you so much. I have a free gift, a free course that I'd love everyone to go grab. And it's one of my clients' very favorite tools. It's called Stretch, Risk, or Die. And it helps cure procrastination. And it's also going to help you see why you keep getting stuck in certain places.
So this tool is for you if you have a dream, if you have a goal, if you have something like, “God, I wish I could write that book. Oh my God, I wish I could become a coach. Or gosh, I wish I could A, B, or C,” whatever it is. Whether it's love, whether it's career, whether it's family, whatever it is, Stretch, Risk, or Die is gonna show you how to do that.
And I have, it’s three 15-minute videos, so it’s very easy, very simple. It's me speaking to a crowd, so you're gonna laugh too. And there's a workbook, there's templates, there's a cheat sheet so that you can use them for whatever issue you have, whether it's finance, like I said, love, et cetera, there are health ones, they're all there for you.
And I really encourage you to go and watch those three 15-minute videos. And on the last video, the last 15-minute video, I actually explain the Wheel of Fear in more detail. So you'll actually get to see it in action. So go do that. You go to fearlessliving.org/risk, R-I-S-K, fearlessliving.org/risk, R-I-S-K. Put your name, your email in there and you'll get access to the course. And like I said, challenge yourself to do it in the next 24 hours.
Because as they say, research shows that if you don't do it in the next 24 hours, you're probably never gonna do it. So I really highly encourage you to do it.
And then last words, sorry, last words. This is the thing I wish everybody could hear me say and like take into their hearts and in their marrow and their bones and their cells. If you could just take one thing and just soak it in, is there is nothing wrong with you. It's just fear. There is nothing wrong with you. It is just fear, there's nothing wrong with you, it's just fear.
Rhonda, thank you so much for your time and for your message and for your passion. Appreciate you being with us today. And thank you all for joining us today on The Horsemanship Journey podcast. Remember, you cannot fail if you Don't Ever Stop Chasin It.Â
