Tapping Into Your Fearless Factor with Jacqueline Wales

SPEAKER_02: So many people think that my story is inspiring.

How I became blind at just 17 years of age.

They always want to know how I've done it and how I've kept smiling all along the way.

Well, it's my yield.

I have to be a source of you.

Okay, welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Kevin Low, the host here on The Lowdown with Kevin Low.

And you are tuning in for episode number 67, where I'm sitting down with guest Jacqueline Wales.

Talking about our fears isn't something that a lot of us really like to think about.

Because, well, our fears are some of those things, when you think of fear in a little bit deeper meaning, it's the things that are quite honestly holding us back in life.

They're the things that are keeping us from developing the person that we were truly meant to become.

And well, that's what I think is pretty awesome about today's interview, is because Jacqueline Wales, she's the author of a series of books talking about the fearless factor.

When Jacqueline talks about being fearless, she's not talking about having the absence of fear, but instead having the courage to take the next step.

And that's exactly what we're talking about today.

We're going to hear a little bit about Jacqueline's past growing up in Scotland.

And to be quite honest, she really didn't have the best childhood.

But goodness gracious, our past certainly does not define our future.

And Jacqueline is a beautiful example of this because she has taken her past to propel her forward.

And well, she's kind of defied the timeline that society puts on life.

Like at this age, we're supposed to have this accomplished.

By this age, we're supposed to be settling down.

No, Jacqueline's definitely not following society's timeline, that is for certain.

And well, I don't know.

My interview with Jacqueline is just pretty awesome.

I think it's going to have you looking at your own life and thinking, what fears might be holding you back?

What fears do you still have that can be overcome to lead to bigger and better things in your life?

And well, let's get on with this episode today.

But first, hey, if you're enjoying the podcast, please be sure to leave a review on the app that you're listening to.

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All right, guys.

I hope you enjoy another amazing conversation here on below download below.

Here is my interview with Jacqueline Wales.

Jacqueline Wales, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Great to be here, Kevin.

Thanks for inviting me.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

Well, I'm so excited to have you here today to talk about a little bit of your life story, um, you know, kind of where your past has been, what you're doing today, and then, you know, maybe even where the future leads.

And so I would love to kind of just start things off, maybe in a general sense, by asking you to share, you know, a little bit about like your story.

And maybe from there we can, you know, lead off in different directions and you know, and see where this conversation goes.

SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.

All right.

So my story.

Well, you know, I'm often asked, you know, the author of The Fearless Factor and the Fearless Factor at Work.

And next year it will be the Fearless Women Leading the Way book.

So the Fearless Piece has been a big part of my life.

And, you know, I started at a very early age growing up in a family that was very definitely poor.

There was a lot of of really big dysfunctional issues.

My father was an alcoholic, he was physically violent, and there was a whole confluence of circumstances that led to some very unhappy childhoods, frankly.

And I left home when I was not quite 17.

So you could technically say, yeah, I was 16 years old when I decided to leave my home in Scotland.

I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I moved to London.

And so, you know, moved to London and then ran into a whole bunch of trouble in London by getting pregnant and giving my child up for adoption and then getting married and divorcing and leaving a child, a second child behind, and then eventually moving to San Francisco, which was a real big leap because I had no reason to be here except somebody said, Yeah, you might enjoy going there.

So I did.

So there was a lot of mistakes made right up until, you know, the 28th year of my life, and probably beyond that.

But it was in my 30s.

I was here in the United States.

I went from San Francisco down to Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles, it was a time when I really started to develop what I needed to be the person I am today.

And it was the start of a journey, and that took place in my mid-30s.

So, you know, we're we're on this track now where through my 40s there was a lot of transformational stuff.

I learned how to write, I learned how to sing, I took up martial arts, I traveled the globe because I went from Los Angeles to Paris and then Paris to Amsterdam, and then we built a house in Bali, and eventually we moved to New York City, and then now at this point I'm back in Northern California again.

So there's been quite a global tour throughout my life as well.

But primarily I see myself as a searcher.

I've always been in search of who am I?

Who am I really?

You know, once we take out all the garbage and how do we understand where the fear has dominated and limited the opportunities that I've had in my life, and yet there's a piece of me that has always been a rebel, has always been a bit of a maverick.

I never just took up on the corporate world simply because after a brief experience with it, I knew damn well that I was not gonna be a rule follower, and that it was it was gonna be unhappy for whoever was involved.

One of my ex-bosses once told me that, you know, the only consistent thing about me was my inconsistency, and I thought that was great because it meant that I I wasn't gonna be you know going down a straight line, put it that way.

So there's been an awful lot of lessons that have been learned.

I have beyond the two children I just mentioned, I ended up with two more children in a second marriage, which I've now been in for 42 years.

And I have a stepdaughter who's half Thai, and she came to us at the age of almost 10, a complete stranger.

So there's a lot of history and a lot of stories, and I've used all of these stories through throughout the last 17 years primarily, because I was in my 50s when I realized that I needed to figure out how to make a career for myself because circumstances had changed and it was now time to focus on that.

So, anyways, I uh I started the coaching business at the age of 54, not knowing anything about anything, except that I knew what fear was, and I knew what fear does to you.

And someone suggested I start writing about it, and that's kind of been the journey for the last 17 years, and I've coached hundreds of women primarily, but also some men, on how do you develop your your fearless factor, how do you figure out how to deal with fear on a regular basis, and how do we keep moving ahead of it?

Because I like to say that being fearless is not the absence of fear, it's the courage to take the next step and keep taking those next steps until one day you look around and you go, that doesn't bother me anymore.

You know, but it's a process, and we all know that change is hard, but you've got to be willing to make that commitment to show up for it.

And I learned a lot about that doing martial arts when I was in my forties and fifties, where I earned a black belt in karate.

That the discipline, the focus, the commitment, the follow-through, the perseverance, the consistency, these are all elements that are necessary for our survival, both in in you know, martial arts sense of the word, but also in terms of life and business.

I feel like these are really critical elements.

So that's that's pretty much it in a nutshell at this point.

SPEAKER_02: No, no, I think that's wonderful.

That's wonderful.

And and one theme that I took out of out of your story so far that I love and I think is very, very encouraging to a lot of people is the fact that, you know, society puts a timeline on our lives for us.

By, you know, a certain age, you're you're supposed to be married, you're supposed to have your career, you're supposed to have your family that's perfect, and everything's supposed to be figured out.

And certainly society tells us by our 40s, our 50s, you know, we should be set and everything should be good in life and nothing new, you know.

And the the reality is that that's not the truth for for many of us.

And I love the fact that it wasn't for you either, and you really embraced it.

And really, to me, obviously came into your brilliance, you know, quote unquote, like later in life.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it was it was interesting because, you know, when I was in my 20s, I I had a brief stint of being an astrologer.

And, you know, I I learned a lot about astrology at the time.

And I remember reading uh charts of of people, you know, based on all the information they give you, planets and positions and so on and so forth.

And then I found myself giving people information that really wasn't on the page I was looking at, but I was picking it up, and it was it was my intuition at work.

And so it is kind of interesting that I've I've come to this place late in life.

But to the point about astrology was an astrologer told me back in my 20s that I would be a late bloomer.

She said, you will not reach the pinnacle of your life until you're much, much older.

And you kind of hear that, and you know, you're in your 20s and you go, Well, that doesn't sound very good.

You know, I've got to hang around for a long time before I finally get what I want.

You know.

But I have to tell you, it appears to be the truth.

You know, I mean, I wrote my first book when I was in my my 40s, but it didn't publish it until I was in my 50s.

And of course, in my 50s, I created this whole business of mine, and here I am, and I'm not ashamed to say this, but I'm gonna be 70 in December.

And I have to tell you, I still can't believe that I'm putting a seven in my my numbers on terms of age.

But apart from that, you know, it's like I feel like I am so totally out there at this moment.

You know, I got nothing to lose.

You're basically looking at the short end of the stick.

You could be dead any minute now.

So why the hell hang around?

Get out there, do what you gotta do, and and make it work.

Well, that's it.

SPEAKER_02: Well, I must say I can tell you one thing.

You're gonna be totally redefining for a whole lot of people what it means to be 70 years old.

Because I can tell just in your spirit, you talking about your past, what you're doing today, you've got a whole lot more life to live.

And I have no doubt that that's going to continue, even with the seven in the age.

SPEAKER_00: So when I get to the eight, Kevin, that might be getting real interesting.

SPEAKER_02: Maybe, maybe.

We don't we don't know.

You know, I picture you as one of those who turns a hundred and goes skydiving or something, you know?

SPEAKER_00: So well, funny you should mention that because I've already put it on the calendar that in December I'm going skydiving for the first time.

And you know, it's been on the bucket list for a while, and I said that this is a year I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, that's so exciting.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

I figure you can't go wrong.

You're gonna be strapped to somebody, so you know, and they should know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02: Exactly.

We we we all hope.

We all hope.

So yeah.

Yes, well, wonderful.

Well, so so tell me a little bit more.

I I'm anxious to dive into this whole kind of uh mindset shift, I guess, that you you have when we talk about fear and the fearless factor.

So, so you kind of touched on it to begin with.

I guess, I guess we'll start general.

What exactly do you define as the fearless factor?

SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we all have fears.

It's an emotion.

It's like, you know, anger, sadness, grief, whatever.

It's they it's seen as a negative.

But the way that I look at fear is, and it's a question I've started asking recently, is why does fear matter to our success?

Now, a lot of people would look at that and go, well, that doesn't sound like it's it's really positive, but it is, because fear is either a driver or it's a barricade.

And I I think it's really interesting to think of it as a barricade, because you know, when you think about going to the barricades, there's all kinds of stuff, mattresses and boxes and this and that.

That's what barricades are made of.

That's the excuses that we all hang on, whatever it is that we're anxious about or uncertain about.

That's all it is.

So when we look at our fearless factor, what we're looking at is what happens when fear shows up in your life?

Is it a driver or is it a barricade?

So if we look at it as a driver, it's like that old internal alarm bell that goes off and says, yeah, there's stuff here that you know you could pay attention to, and there's areas for growth because when our fears show up, it's a time for some growth in our life.

But here's where people get off the rails on fear.

They start thinking of the future.

They're pushing out into the negatives of the future.

You know, it's like my I'm not gonna have a job, I'm not gonna have enough money, I'm not gonna have a relationship that matters to me.

You know, there's these are the stories that we create.

And I think what I really want to impress upon your listeners, fear is the stories that we tell ourselves.

Fear primarily is imagination-based.

Now, I would say not true for everybody.

Absolutely.

There's a lot of people who are suffering in this world right now who have every reason to fear for their future, to fear for their lives.

We see it on the news every single day.

And I know that there's poverty can is definitely a fear driver, domestic violence is a fear driver, the lack of financial stability is a fear driver.

All of these things are real for a certain segment of the population.

But for a lot of people, they have a roof over their head, they can pay the rent or the mortgage, they've got food on the table, they've got gas in the car, but they live in a negative state of being.

And when you live in a negative state of being, what happens is you create a reality that is associated with that negative state of being.

You know, it's like I called myself a chaos junkie for years, because if things got too settled, I had to find a way to make sure that I was unsettled and, you know, rock the boat, basically.

And so, you know, it's a hard way to live.

But when we acknowledge that being fearless is simply the ability to know that you can handle whatever it is that comes your way.

Whatever that might look like.

It might be that you're incredibly resilient, you're very determined, you're persistent.

Mine's is persistence.

I don't care how many times I get told you can't, I'll get up and do it.

Because that's just who I am.

And I've confronted fear over and over and over again in my life and and still do.

Um nobody's immune to it.

Everybody has it.

What do you want to do with it?

You know, do you want it to be a driver or a barricade?

That's really how I look at where's your fearless factor?

What do you do to get beyond that discomfort that you've currently got going on?

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

So it's really kind of a mindset in like of I can compare it to like, you know, the the thing that, you know, people always talked about forever is, you know, do you view is your your glass half full or half empty?

And my takeaway kind of is trying to look at life things from that glass half full perspective.

Am I grasping that?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no, you're not grasping.

That is absolutely true.

I mean, here's the thing the brain doesn't differentiate between negative thinking and positive thinking.

So if you're gonna fill your head with your negative messages, which frankly a lot of them are arrived at an earlier part of your life, somebody told you somewhere that you know you didn't measure up, or you you set the bar so high, or somebody else set the spy bar so high for you that you can never quite reach it.

And so therefore you're always feeling like you're underperforming, you're not really being the best version of you.

Because frankly, fear has two major components that that I you know absolutely agree with, which is the fear of not being good enough undermines ourselves so much.

You see it, you know, the self-doubt, the inability to claim your skills and talents and take ownership of your life.

The fear of not being good enough is shows up in perfectionism.

It shows up in our need for approval, it shows up in the comparing ourselves to other people on a regular basis.

So, or not taking decisions because somebody else may not like it or it might be the wrong decision.

The fear of failure is huge for a lot of people, and we can talk a little bit more about that.

But there are many ways in which fear, you know, is showing up in people's lives, and the positive mindset is essential.

You have to challenge the negative thinking because it's it's what I call default thinking.

You're already in it before you even realize you're in it.

So the next time you call yourself stupid, or the next time you tell yourself you can't, or the next time that you hear a voice in your head that that says, not a chance, you know, ask yourself who's doing the talking.

And and again, from a personal experience, my father told me for years, now this man was uh a huge alcoholic who had incredible resentments, disappointments, and anger in his life, told his daughter on a regular basis that she wouldn't amount to anything.

And what happens when you get that message early on in your life?

It gets embedded, and you absolutely look for circumstances to back that up.

You will not amount to anything.

And yeah, I made a lot, a lot of mistakes in the early part of my life, and then spent, you know, the middle part of my life trying to figure out how to get beyond it.

So when you hear that voice in your head criticizing you, who's judging you, who's coming down heavy on you, ask yourself who's talking, and then change the message.

Positive thinking does work.

Positive intelligence shows up in our bodies too.

How are we carrying our stress?

What are the and you know, what are the hormones that are are in your life?

You know, do you have a lot of cortisol?

Are you under a lot of stress?

Yeah.

Well, that'll bring up fear for you right there.

So find a way to to have better self-care.

Because that's a piece that's missing, especially for this workaholic society we live in.

And burnout is real for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So now, since you shared this little piece that, you know, because I I think it it's something that maybe a lot of people up until just now listening to us talk, you know, can think.

To themselves, well, you know, it's easy for for her to say because she didn't have the childhood I had.

But you just shared a piece of your childhood of being told you wouldn't amount to anything, that you weren't good enough.

And so I'm curious, either at what point in your life or what was it in your life that made you break that barrier and change that thing that, you know, that road that so many people would let then just, you know, lead them in that direction in life.

But instead you you broke through it and you chose to look at life differently.

How did you, how did you do that?

SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, to be honest, it was certain individuals who came along at the right time.

You know, none of us makes changes without the help of someone else.

You know, you can sit in your own head for for years, which certainly I did, but there were people who came along from time to time who would say to me, Don't go that way, go this way.

And I'll tell you the first example of that.

I had a neighbor growing up who would take us as children and basically take care of us when father was too drunk or mother was out working and things were a bit crazy.

Now I had a young brother who he was the youngest in the family who was severely disabled.

We called it spastic back in those days.

He had very little physical functionality and took him a long time to teach him how to walk, never could speak properly, couldn't see properly, and you know, was in diapers pretty much his entire short life.

He died at the age of 11 from grandma's seizure.

But, you know, we we had him uh the reason why we think this happened, and this was a family story that came out, and I wrote about it in my first book, When the Crow Sings, is that we the story I heard was my mother tried to give herself an abortion until she was five months pregnant.

Because my father had said if she had another child, he would put his head in the gas oven.

Now, that's the kind of, you know, frankly, total bullshit that was going on in my household, uh, you know, growing up.

So I had to grow up fast.

You know, I had care of my youngest brother from about the age of seven for at least two or three years because my mom had to go out of work, and and of course, you know, who knew what kind of state father was going to come home in?

So you get to grow up really, really fast in that situation.

So my my background, you know, I don't care what your background is, you do not have to be the victim of your past.

The past is a story at this point.

You know, for me, I look back on it and I go, yep, that was part of what has made you as strong as you are.

But to your point, that didn't happen overnight.

That didn't happen for a very long time.

And it was those people who came around.

But this neighbor was the first one.

The second one was when I gave my daughter up for adoption, the social worker who was handling the whole thing.

And I had my daughter for three months, by the way, before I gave her up, realizing I could not do this.

I was gonna do her some damage if I if I tried.

The social worker said, you know, you're a fairly smart person.

I think you should go and have an IQ test just for the hell of it.

Find out where you're at.

So I did, and I came back and she looked at the results and she said, Hmm, do you know what this means?

And I was like, No, not really.

Because I left school at 15.

What did I know?

So she looks at it and she says, Well, it says here you're pretty smart.

Okay.

So if I'm pretty smart, what's next move?

You need to go to school.

You need to go back to school.

So she encouraged me to go back to school, and and this was in London.

So I got what was called A levels and basically BS'd my way into the program by saying, you know, I got my education in Scotland, and well, I left school at 15, but you know, I think I qualified to do these A levels, which is, you know, I missed a step basically.

And then out of that came you're gonna go to college.

And I I did, I got a degree at the end of the day.

So, you know, there's there's your guides.

Everybody needs guides, everybody needs allies and champions and people who say, yeah, this is pretty messed up, but there's other options, and and you can go from there.

And, you know, totally transparent.

I was very blessed.

I ended up with somebody who had the means to be able to help me get therapy, and I got plenty of it.

I had 10 years of therapy, but it was during that time that I really started to understand just how much I was my own worst enemy.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: And what I could do about it.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: A lot of stories on that one.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And then I can't help but feel like is that then the driving force that led you to do what you are today and in and writing these books as a way of you trying to be a guide for someone else?

SPEAKER_00: No question.

You know, and it's it's interesting you should put it that way, Kevin.

I think you might be the first one who's actually said that to me, is that in some ways, this is for me paying it forward.

All the things that I learned over my lifetime to date, all the things that I know to be true about how fear totally hangs us up and keeps us playing small and limits our life and the experience of life.

This is something I definitely feel like the universe handed me a whole ton of stuff to say, here, learn about this.

This is really hard stuff.

And one of these days you're gonna teach other people how to get beyond it.

And that's that's really my main driver at this point.

SPEAKER_02: That's that's wonderful.

And and and I I have to say I've had this conversation with other guests here on the podcast before, and and and I feel it's true in in this you know situation as well, is I say, you know, if we can figure out a way to use what we've gone through in our life, to use the bad things, the negative things, to use those as positive as a way to help someone else.

I said, if we're able to turn those negatives into a positive, then if you look at it in the big picture, then it's all really just a positive.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I mean, I uh, you know, in so many ways, I have to say I'm grateful for some of these experiences because it gives me a much deeper insight about human behavior.

And I like to say in my bio, I'm an acute observer of human behavior.

And mostly it started when I was uh was a child because you were watching for the signs of, you know, where's it, where's it gonna go next?

You know, is is it gonna go off the deep end?

You know, and how do you stay out of trouble?

Of course, you know, me being me, I basically walked right into trouble constantly because I had a real F you attitude, you know, and it didn't necessarily work in my favor, but I look back on all of this and I think, what a rich life I have been given.

And that's really interesting to think about it from that point of view, from a rich life that I have lived.

And I've lived both, you know, on a physical level a rich life, and also on an emotional, spiritual level, a very, very rich life to date.

And as I said, I'm just getting started.

That's the way I feel every day.

I'm just getting started.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I love it.

I love that that mindset.

Now, one thing that that I know that I read about about you that I found interesting, and I want to ask you is that you you say that you believe that the challenges that all of us face, no matter how different we all are and what we go through, they're really not any different from one another.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00: It's all emotional, isn't it, Kevin?

You know, I mean, you you had your own story of the things that you've overcome in your life, you know, and and losing your sight, of course, is is a big one.

But, you know, you've adjusted, you've you've made the changes.

So there are unique situations.

You know, I've never been blind.

I know that uh, you know, up until now, um my eyesight still works real fine.

Although aging, you've got to put glasses on more often.

But that's that's a whole other story.

But the point the point, your point being is that when clients come to me and they go, you know, I got this real problem, you know, I just don't have enough confidence to ask for what I want, you know, I'm I'm staying silent in meetings, or, you know, I'm really having trouble making decisions about which direction I want to go in, or there's a family member in my life that I'm I really need to get rid of because, you know, they're making my life miserable, uh, you know, and so

on and so forth.

Uh that there are universal problems that we all have to deal with.

And when you're trying to find out the essence of who you are, Joseph Campbell said it best when he said, the privilege of a lifetime is knowing who you are.

Now, this is a fabulous quote.

The privilege of a lifetime is knowing who you are.

Learning who you are and finding out that these, you know, elements of circumstances of life, you know, we all put our pants on the same way, we all, you know, go to the bathroom the same way, whatever.

But our reactions to the circumstances, that's what changes the circumstances themselves, we all have a lot of commonalities, but it's our reactions, and that's what I'm most interested in.

What is the behavior that's driving these circumstances in your life?

And why are they not so different from other people dealing with it?

Well, the difference simply is how are you showing up for it?

So if you show up positively to something that's a negative, with the expectation that you're optimistic or hopeful that things can be different, that's very different than showing up to something that's like, oh well, this is the end.

We're done for at this point in time, and it's never gonna get better.

And the word never is always interesting for me because it's like up until now, this is how things have been running.

But now you have a choice because that's really what we're talking about here.

What choices are you making to do things differently?

What choices are you making that has you committed to something that actually doesn't work for you?

And how can you change that?

So, again, to that point of yeah, we all have similar things that we're dealing with.

Our reactions to those circumstances are what defines our differences.

SPEAKER_02: I totally love that.

Absolutely love that.

Yes.

So the books that you have written on this topic, you know, because you now have coming out in 2022 will be your third book about fear, the fear factor, correct?

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: So I I guess I'm kind of wondering, like, when somebody looks at, you know, is is finding this conversation very interesting, very, you know, maybe, maybe equating it to aspects of their own life, and they're thinking, wow, maybe maybe this is something I need to look into more.

What exactly is kind of covered in these books?

SPEAKER_00: So the first book, The Fearless Factor, has a lot of my own story about how I, you know, overcame my own fears and some of my own family history and so forth.

But I also invited in the first book a bunch of women to tell me their stories about how they became fearless and whether that was leaving a relationship that wasn't working, or getting a divorce, or starting a company and having to deal with the ramifications of being an entrepreneur and the constant uncertainty about whether you can make it work.

That's that was another big piece of that.

Or different ways in which you felt there was a moment of feeling like I'm dealing with the fear, I'm moving beyond the fear.

So that was really the fearless factor.

And the one thing about all of my books is at the end of every chapter, there's a series of questions that are designed to get you to self-reflect.

Now, we all know because we've done it, and I'm sure maybe even you've done this, where you've gotten a book and they have exercises at the end of every chapter, and they say, you know, go do the exercises, and you go, Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it later, because I want to find out what else you have to say.

And then you read through the whole book, and the exercises never get done.

So that's the fearless factor right there, but primarily written for women who were going through transitions, who really wanted to up the ante on being more confident, being able to claim their skills and talents, and being able to move into a different phase of their life because my first company was called The Fearless Fifties.

And the reason for that was, you know, women in their 50s are going through a lot of transitions for one reason or another.

Then a little while later, which was primarily last year, I ended up writing The Fearless Factor at Work.

And the reason I wrote that book was I had been coaching mid-level managers for about three years.

And what, and I've done you know, other things along the way, but this was pretty specific to a particular company I was working with.

And what I found was that there was a real lack of self-awareness in these individuals who were managing other people.

Now we know that you know being a leader is not simply about having a role and status.

It's about how do you manage people?

How do you get people to follow you?

How do you get people to trust you?

How do you create a communication system that is actually caring about what happens to these people that you're working with?

And so the book became a kind of a mentor, virtual mentor, to talk about self-awareness, to talk about building trust and empathy, to developing communication skills, to being more open to influence and how do you build your power base?

And then it went on to talk about how do we set some real goals for ourselves that matter.

And again, at the end of every section, there's a bunch of questions that I ask people to sit and think about.

And it really is a bit of an eye-opener to say, you know, how are you showing up to the world?

And how are you dealing with your leadership and understanding how you bring yourself and do you know who you are?

Because we talk about, you know, a lot of the behavioral work I do, I talk about the constructive side of things.

And that's really all about how can you be more collaborative?

How can you help people grow and encourage them to try new things?

And are you setting the bar high for yourself too?

Because, you know, what's your ambitions?

What do you want to achieve?

What is your lasting legacy?

Because that's a really important piece of being a leader.

What is your lasting legacy?

And I touch on that in the book as well.

So that book in particular, I feel like it's a real good.

I'm not sure the word I'm looking for, but it's it's it's a book that will help you understand how you're showing up in the world.

That's that's the really important piece of that.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

I love that.

Totally love it.

So so I'm looking at you, I'm looking at your life, and and you you seem pretty much fearless to me, just with all that you've done and your plans for things like skydiving and and and more books coming out.

But I still wonder though, are there still fears that you deal with in your own life?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

I mean, there's there's no doubt that, you know, I mean, I should say there's no doubt.

There is doubts, you know.

You you might want to say, you really want to go for that?

You really want to step it out into a bigger arena.

For instance, I want to do a TED Talk next next year.

I've never done a TED Talk.

And I've been working on a public speaking program all year with Michael Port, who is, you know, one of the top people in that business.

And I'm I'm ready to get out onto a bigger stage.

But to take that leap, yeah, there's a piece there that goes, well, yeah, you can do this.

You can do this totally, you know, and I know I can.

But you know, still there's a little old tapes in there that go, yeah, right, maybe.

You know, we'll see.

Yep.

But there's the feel the fear and do it anyway.

You know, it's like, yeah, this is uncertain.

In fact, I said to a coach just recently, I said, you know, I'm really setting myself up here for, you know, wanting to get out into the world in a much, much bigger way than what I've been doing.

And I'm gonna need some help to do that, by the way.

And that means asking for help, which is where a lot of people get caught up in fear.

You know, I can't ask for help because I'll be seen as weak, I'll be seen as ineffective, you know, you name it, whatever story you want to tell yourself, it's right there.

And I'm good at doing that to me too.

So I have to fight that one.

I have to go, no, that's not true.

There's a ton of people out there waiting to help you.

All you have to do is know how to ask.

That's it.

Not ask.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.

And I feel like, I feel like that that kind of brings up an important point is the fact that these fears that we have in our life are going to, I believe, constantly be there as we go through life.

New, new fears will come into play that we then have to keep what you're you're teaching, presenting in mind.

You know, that it's a continuous thing.

It's not just handling what's happening in our life today, but to be there as a tool to use in our life tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I mean, the the fears that we have in our lives, you know, again, I'm always going to come back to choice.

You get to choose how you wish to react.

You get to choose who you want to be, because the past may feel like it defines who you are, but as Carl Jung says, it doesn't define who you want to become.

And we are in a constant state of evolution because we're organic beings, and if we're not growing, we're dying.

And when we look at what are the fears that are getting in your way, and you really sit down and you think about it, my response to that is do you have empirical evidence that those fears are real?

Or are they simply the stories that are the labels that you attach to events and circumstances that are making you very uncomfortable?

And what I like to say about change is you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable because that's how we push through those barricades that we've built up in order to somehow put a stopper on on feeling uncomfortable.

Well, just continue to go with status quo and go along to get along.

And how many people go along to get along and miss the boat on how wonderful they can actually be?

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.

I love it.

Well, well, Jacqueline, where can somebody find out more about you, more about your books, and just you know, keep up to date with, you know, especially with your new book coming out, where can they go?

SPEAKER_00: So if they go to my website, jacquelinewails.com, that's an easy one right there.

There's a whole bunch of stuff on there.

There's probably some resources that you can download.

There's videos to watch, there's all kinds of things that that you can look at.

And if you want to get in touch with me, you can definitely reach out via my website or my email is very simple.

It's Jacqueline at JacquelineWales.com.

And I will be more than happy to hear from you.

And if I can be of any assistance, I will certainly do my best.

But uh that's the best way.

And of course, on LinkedIn, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, you can find me there.

There's a lot of articles and and different things that that might be helpful to read, as well as the books which are available on Amazon.

And you know, bookseller to the world.

There it is.

It's on Amazon.

SPEAKER_02: Well, wonderful.

Well, well, I must say that that you are a a breath of fresh air, a a new view on fear and looking at it differently and changing the our perspective, flipping the script, and using the fear, the fearless factor, you know, to benefit us.

And I want to thank you so much for sharing that with me and my audience.

SPEAKER_00: My pleasure, Kevin.

Thank you again.

This is a very important subject.

And I think given everything we've been going through for the last 20 months, it's really, you know, we really do need to understand how our fears function.

So I'm happy that you've given me the opportunity to share this with your audience.

And I know you off the talk too.

So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02: Of course.

Well, thank you.

And uh for you listening today, you know, I hope that you have enjoyed my conversation.

You know, learning about this this new way to approach our lives, I think really is it's how this comes it up because in our lives we we all have challenges that we face.

We have fears.

I got but you know what?

You just tell us forward.