Shadé Zahrai

Let's say they don't like me.

They disapprove of me.

So what?

What actually would happen?

And when you work through it really pragmatically, often you realize it's nowhere near as big as you've made it in your mind.

So you're so right.

When we look at children, they don't tend to have the doubts that we have as adults.

I mean, they do have a fear response, which is great.

So we know that the brain is wired from a very early age to want to protect children.

you know, its host or the owner of the brain.

And so we know that they have this fear response, but they don't have that level of scrutiny that we do as adults, the fear of failure, the what will people think.

And that's why I love kids because they will just ask the darndest things, you know, whatever pops into their heads, they'll ask it.

Along the way, what often happens is that as we're going through our lives, especially as young children,

We start to develop these relationships with the people closest to us, our parents, our caregivers.

And what unknowingly happens is based on the nature of that relationship, it starts to instill in us certain beliefs about ourselves.

So let me give you an example here.

Let's say that you have a parent who is overly cautious.

and is constantly saying, be careful, dear, be careful, don't do this, you're going to get cold, and highlighting risks in your environment.

And you're a four-year-old.

You suddenly become very aware of all the risks, and because you have this parent figure, who is someone that you look up to, who is concerned about these things, you start to learn that, oh, I should be concerned about these things too, because clearly I'm not capable enough to handle them.