Jocko Underground: It's Not Real. Getting Others Over Fear.
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This is the Jocko underground podcast number 170 sitting here with echo Charles We are going to present courses of actions available to you based on questions from you about your current situations in business in family and in life many aspects of life by the way, yes Okay, first question. I'd say that the word life encompasses all those aspects. Yeah, but you can reiterate if you want to the whole year of aspects Thank you. That's why you said life and I I

specifically chose to say many aspects of life yeah which is the same exact same thing yeah you just reiterate it big time leadership is hard and challenging and difficult there you go thank you all right first question my son is five last year he ended up seeing the trailer for the it movie and it terrified him it has been a problem ever since he won't even go to the bathroom without me or my husband going with him he says he can't get penny wise out of his head

He wakes up terrified after dreaming about him. It's very sad. I hate it. I don't want him feeling this way. I really don't know how to help him conquer this fear and feel okay to do things on his own again. I thought it would be a phase, but it has been months and months of this on and off. Do you have any advice for helping kids feel brave or just less afraid?

So this goes back to way of the warrior kid exposure therapy, right? Exposure therapy. I did not know that exposure therapy was a thing, but it is a thing. What is it? I, when, when Jordan Peterson came on the podcast the first time and he explained how you get someone to overcome their fear of needles, put a needle in the room and you tell them,

Hey, there's a needle in the room. I want you to just go to the, go as close to the door of the room as you can, knowing that there's a needle in there. Don't push them. Don't force them in there. Don't freaking grab the needle and surprise them with it. That'll make it worse. And when they feel they get to the door itself and they can't open the door, but they're like, I can't do it. Okay, fine. Yep. Cool. Come back the next day. Hey, go as close as you can again today. You know, and you continue to

Expose them to this thing that they're afraid of and over time that fear will dissipate Because they'll realize there's nothing to be afraid of in the warrior kid. We show that with water with the kids scared of water So what do you do you take him to the river? Just wades in the water and then he goes up to his knees in the water and then he goes up to his waist in the water and then he Goes up to his chest in the water and then he puts his head underwater. So you just and all voluntarily all voluntarily

- So that's the idea that we're talking about here is exposure therapy. Now, so for the movie "It," you know, it's a scary looking clown, right? So I would begin some exposure therapy with very happy looking clowns, right?

Clowns that cannot be remotely related to it, you know and and just pictures or drawings, you know something that is as abstract away from it as You can possibly get with still some Connection, you know, so maybe it's a picture Maybe it's a you know, if you find a funny TV show that there's a clown and or something like that But again, we don't surprise them. We don't put make them uncomfortable that does the opposite and

And I would just slowly over time, you know, it's, can you look at this? There's a picture of it or there's a picture of a clown in the room. Can you look at the picture? And we escalate from there. Okay. And then maybe eventually say, hey, there's a picture of the clown that's in it. And I think another huge opportunity that you have here is since it's a movie. Mm hmm.

You could do things like show the guy getting his makeup put on, you know, some behind the scenes stuff. It's all fake. Show that guy laughing and joking. Show the kids laughing and joking on the scene explaining that this is fake. It's all fake. It's not real. It's not real. The whole idea is just someone made it up in his head. And I think that would be, that would be my approach. You, again, just to reiterate, you have to do this at your kid's speed, right? Yeah.

Don't make them uncomfortable. Don't force me to do it. The other thing is, and as much as you can possibly do this, and this is a huge part of dealing with kids, is don't make things bigger than they are. Right? Don't make things bigger than they are. If this becomes the focus, this becomes the focus. If you start saying, you know, I really want you to overcome this fear. You know, if you really make it into a big deal, it's going to become a big deal. I did a good job for a parent

kind of you know accidentally or just instinctively of never making something into a big deal that could have become a big deal or in fact in some cases is a big deal in your child's head like something will blow up you know they get called a name they get they get told something they're afraid of something something happens and it's really easy as a parent to make it into a big deal and then it becomes a bigger deal to them whereas if a parent you're like oh

You know, if you, they called me whatever. Kids at school called me, you know, what do they call you? Plate face. Plate face. That's from where your kid, you know, my kid come home. They call me plate face. You're like, oh, okay. Hey, can you pass the, pass the milk? I'm hungry. I need some protein. You know, like, but if you go, what do you mean? Well, listen, you're not a plate face. It's okay. You go that whole nine yards. You make it into a big deal that bigger deal than it is.

Don't do that. And you know, that applies to everything. It's like you in your own personal life. Don't make things a bigger deal than they are in your business. Don't make things a bigger deal than they are. And with your kids, don't make things a bigger deal than they are. Just start small exposure therapy. Don't make a big deal out of it. Joke about it. Joking about things. Doesn't, doesn't it? Hey, you gotta be careful. It's not funny. Cause we don't want to get that reaction. Yeah. Diminishing. But yeah,

Just go slow. Take it easy. This isn't a big deal. Your son has been scared for months. Cool. He's got 80 years left. He's only going to be scared of this clown for another like six months, maybe a year. And then he's not going to be scared. If you don't do anything, you won't be scared of this clown in a year. You could do nothing at all and he's not going to be scared. So the cool thing is you can teach him.

about how to overcome his fear the military does a good job of that the military makes you climb over the cargo net which is 50 feet up in the air whatever how many 50 feet up in the air and then it makes you rappel off of a wall and then it makes you flash rope out of a helicopter then it makes you parachute out of an airplane you just get you've overcome fear overcome fear overcome fear overcome fear you've learned how to do it you have an opportunity here to make that happen

Good opportunity to learn. That's what I got. Interestingly, I went through this exact same scenario with both my kids. And you're right. Both of those things were correct. We did both. What were they scared of?

Well, the most recent one was Megan. You ever watch that? Megan? It's a movie. Robot? Yeah, it goes rogue and she's scary. That was my daughter back when the first one came out. Can you let her watch that? Yes. Well, she wanted to. Okay. Bro, I thought it was a freaking kid. It is. It's literally, it's more of a teenager's

Kid toy robot movie, you know, I wasn't thinking like your most child's play. I'd never watched it But I remember Chucky. Yeah, Chuckie like to me it came off as way more child movie than Chucky Chucky was kind of psycho. Yeah, the first one. Yeah, remember Chucky's a horror movie. Yeah, yeah straight-up dog anyway, um, but the the exposure therapy wasn't with a

Megan, to me, I understood, hey, Megan's a scary robot for kids. So that's not what I want her to get over. I think with age, that kind of you get over freaking Megan, the robot when you're freaking 15. Who cares?

But this idea of like going places by yourself and I don't know, maybe Megan's there, maybe it's another freaking horrible monster. You know, I don't know. I just felt like that was her issue. So with the stuff that she would want me to go with her, like to the bathroom and we have this bathroom that's kind of down this hall and it's like, I kind of understand when you're a little kid. Exactly.

So what I do is I'd go with her and then slowly I'd be like, hey, like, just so you're not scared in the future, you go and just you go in the I'll go with you, but I'll just cruise outside the bathroom. And then after a while, it's like, you know what? I'll just go to here. You go the rest of the time. We'll turn on the lights. All good. But that was the exposure therapy was like doing stuff with her that she required. The Megan part, I was like, bro, let's not watch Megan. And how's this? She wants to watch Megan, too. And she just watched that same Megan recently. She's 12 now. Yeah, yeah. But she's very scared of her.

Exactly right. They get over it for that kind. Well, I would like scaring people. It's kind of fun for me. And I scared... Have you ever played the game Scary Maze? No. So Scary Maze is a game. It's like a website. You go play Scary Maze.

And as you, you just have to move this little object down this maze and it starts real wide and then it gets narrow and narrow. And each time you hit a wall, it starts you back at the beginning. And so what it does is it lures you into being more and more closely intent on making this work.

And finally you like turn the corner for this last little, little thing. You got to move the, with your, with your mouse, you got to move this little object down this very, very skinny kind of hallway and, and this freaking satanic. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to Jocko underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this.

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