Hi! I’m new to SCS and so glad I got in just before the doors closed. Thank you Brooke for the work that you do. I’m a two year listener of the podcast. I joined primarily to work on my thoughts around money, but the universe has a funny way of using one thing to get us to something else.

I was excited about the DOD challenge and got geared up to do one a day, but quickly realized two things: 1) There’s not a whole lot that I’m afraid of 2) What I am afraid of is a doozy. When I say there’s not much that I’m afraid of, another way of saying that is “I’m afraid of an awful lot, and have had much general anxiety for years” but decided about 25 years ago that it wasn’t going to stop me and I have really lived by observing a fear and the thoughts around it and then doing it anyway. Flying, speaking, eating sushi, risk looking foolish (this post is an example), starting a business… It was very hard for me to come up with daily “scary things” for the challenge that “counted”. When I dug deeper the main fear that I struggle with is emetophobia (fear of vomit) and it occupies space in my mind on an almost daily basis. It shows up as a panic attack when I see, hear or are exposed to someone that vomits. It can be in real life, or in a movie, it doesn’t matter, it can stop me in my tracks. My primary dare is to look at this more closely and take one step a day of a self led online exposure program. I will be using the Model to observe my thoughts and reactions around it as I do. Being fearless around this would blow my mind! I’ve had this reaction since I was a child and would love to be rid of it.

Q: Does tackling one big scary thing by doing one small dare a day towards changing my thoughts around it count? Or is it better to find a bunch of smaller dares that are all different, random and not related? ~Shaun