Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

So this is The Gathering Room. I'm Martha Beck, and today's topic is The Safe Side of Fear.

I heard this phrase a couple of days ago.

I was doing an interview with Michael Sandler,

who does the Inspire Nation podcast. He's a fascinating guy, so sweet, so fun. He's been an Olympic

athlete. He's been an Iron Man in triathlons. He publishes books on things like barefoot running, but he's also super spiritual.

So we had a really fun talk, and we were actually discussing the issue of denial and integrity,

because it's all about my book that's on integrity. And here's the thing, you guys. One thing

integrity will bring into your life, you're not going to like this, is fear.

Because as you become more and more true to yourself, there will come a point where you notice

that you've been betraying yourself. And the only reason you're betraying yourself is that the

people around you want you to act differently

from the way you want to act from inside. So typically, we go along with the crowd and we betray ourselves.

And at that point, we're split in two. So our real desires and our culture desires are not in

harmony. And we don't pay attention to our nature. So this is, the whole pursuit of

integrity means that you're going to face the most terrifying things that humans can deal with. And the

reason I say that is that, do you know what the number one phobia is for human beings? Number one

fear. Three guesses. Not death.

Death is not up there. Well, it's up there, but it's not at the top. At the top is public speaking.

Why? Because you're standing up in front of other people and you're being evaluated, judged potentially.

And that is actually more threatening to a human even than death.

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