Happy boxing day, pod fans. It's me again. You'll be sick of me, especially with all the daily

shorts I've been putting out there on the socials lately. Hope you don't mind. Ignore the stuff

that you're less interested in or you've heard before if you have to. I won't take it personally.

Easier said than done, I suppose. not taking things personally, isn't it?

Fear of judgment is just as important, as far as our brain is concerned, as fear of death.

Fear is fear.

Whether that's fear of being judged or fear of being eaten by lions, it gets processed all the same way.

And if you add into the mix the fact that emotions tell the brain what to remember and what to ignore,

then the next time something even remotely similar happens,

it uses those same neurons in the brain and brings in the same emotions along with it.

Which is the same process for learning?

Anything.

People talk about cross-transferable skills, don't they?

That if you learn how to repair a push bike, you'll find it easier to learn how to fix a motorbike.

Well, that's the same for learning how you fit in in the world. It starts with learning

how you fit in in your family or the classroom. That's a place where feeling judged can blossom with

knobs on if the conditions are right or wrong depending on how you look at it. If you combine feeling

humiliated with low self-esteem,

it'll feel that you deserve to be told off by the teacher for not understanding something.

You can learn that you're stupid and that everyone else is smarter than you. And then with

enough repetition, that feeling becomes part of their personality, something that

doesn't need a particular experience to fire off the neurons. Those neurons are firing off by

...