Rhonda Britten on fearless living, God, diets and being your “magnificent self”
Rhonda Britten is the founder of the Fearless Living Institute and a Life Coach on the Emmy Award–winning, NBC daytime reality drama, Starting Over. Rhonda has written several bestsellers based on her Fearless Living principles, including Change Your Life in 30 Days, Fearless Loving, and Fearless Living. In addition to her work on Starting Over, Rhonda has spent two seasons on UK reality TV with her show, Help Me Rhonda. She is a featured guest speaker at this month’s What the BLEEP / Prophets Conference in Phoenix, Arizona .
Rhonda Britten
WTB - Is there anything you would like to add about your personal background that isn’t available on your website?
RHONDA - We’re starting the third season of Starting Over. I have a new book coming out, called Do I look Fat in This? Get over your body and on with your life dealing with body issues. So that’s something new that’s going to be happening in 2006. I think everything else is pretty much up to date.
WTB - How did you form your Fearless Living program? It’s not just something you pull out of your back pocket and say, “I’m going to do this.”
RHONDA - Yeah. One morning I woke and said, “I’m going to save the world from fear.” No, what is now my program called Fearless Living was really evolved over time, and it really was a step-by-step process of my own healing that ended up supporting and transforming other people’s lives. It was never my intention… I didn’t think to myself, “Oh gee, it’s helping me, I’m sure it will help others!” I didn’t have any grandiose plans. I was definitely not in the state of mind to actually believe anything I could do could make an impact on others. So it really was my day-by-day, moment–to-moment quest to get past my own past, to get past my own fears of what I thought I was – which was worthless; and who I believed I was, which was a loser, and to actually live a life that I would be proud of who I was. Because most of my life, like I think most people are not really proud of who they are. They don’t have any sense of about who they are. They’re not inspired by themselves. They’re not excited about living their lives. They might have moments of excitement, and moments of, “Oh, that was really great.” But even those, for most people, are rare, because we’re so self-deprecating and we believe fundamentally – we’re taught - that if we put ourselves down and if we are vigilant about our errors and the things that don’t work in our life, somehow they’ll get healed. But that actually is very ineffective. And I learned that for myself the hard way, based on my three suicide attempts and my own bout of alcoholism, and my own self-abuse and my own self-betrayal … the way I hurt myself over the years. And when I started to change my own life - how really Fearless Living came to be is that people started approaching me and saying, “Hey, I noticed that you’ve changed your life.”
It was very evident. People in my community, the people around me, acquaintances – I didn’t have a lot of friends when I first started, but the people that I knew, or knew of me or hung around in the same places started to see my changes. And they were, for lack of a better word, inspired by them. And they came to me and started asking how I did it. And I really didn’t, in the beginning, understand what they meant. Like “Did what?” I mean, I think you don’t necessarily recognize the changes that you’re making when you’re in the midst of them. And I think that’s another thing that stops us from growing and accepting who we are, and stops us from our greatness.
As people started asking me, I had to stop and think about what they were talking about. And that started the process of formulation. That started the process of, “Wait, what am I doing? What has happened? How have I changed? What are they talkin’ about?”
And I started handing out exercises that I did for myself, not really believing that it would be effective. Or not necessarily believing that it was going to work wonders. You know, they were curious and I was accommodating and I said, “Sure, here’s something. Good luck. See you later.” And what ended up happening was that people kept coming back to me. And it became clear to me that whatever I was doing was having an effect on people. And that’s how it started. And then I started just talking to people. And I was, at the time, in a program for spiritual counselors; I was becoming a spiritual counselor. And I was also in an intensive personal development program, and I was doing a lot of stuff myself at a deep spiritual level, mental level, emotional level. And so when people started asking and I was doing all this other stuff… it kind of all started to click for me; it all started combining itself and I started realizing, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, what I’m doing is really almost beyond what I’ve been learning. This really is something different that I’ve never read before or never had explained to me before. And, wait a minute, this has freed me up. What if it really does free others? And so then I started formulating it into a program.
WTB – Can you give me an example of how what you do is different from say, psychology and that sort of thing?
RHONDA – The difference is, I am literally the only model of mastering emotional fears that exists in the world today. You know, there are a lot of different spiritual programs. There are a lot of psychological programs that have aspects of understanding fear; but none that talk about how to master fear from a human level; a day-to-day working level. So that’s in What the BLEEP?! When I’m watching it, I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s like what I do every day. That’s what I do for people every day.”
When I would read books, or watch movies or whatever, I would be inspired and motivated, but nobody ever told me how to do it. And so what I really did was kind of create a foundation and a framework for how to do what all these movies and books were talking about. Because I would read all these fantastic spiritual books and I’d be inspired and moved and they’d say, “Oh, well, quit beating yourself up. And have confidence.” Well, it’s like, “How do you do that if you don’t?”
If you don’t have confidence, how do you get confidence? Nobody tells you how to do that. I mean really, nobody tells you how to do that. Nobody told me that really fear – that worry, guilt, shame are all aspects of fear. And so you know yes, I’m a student of A Course in Miracles…
WTB – Oh really?
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RHONDA – Yes. I’ve studied the Course for years and years and years. And it was really interesting. Because when I started doing Fearless Living, I didn’t know it at the time, but now that I look back on Fearless Living, now that I have perspective, I really feel I was a primer for A Course in Miracles. It’s kinda like A Course in Miracles is this great spiritual program and yes, it gives you some tools in there. But it’s … as you and I both know, it’s a difficult read, and for many people it keeps it out of reach. And really what I did was make it palatable and doable and actually put a structure and framework to “What is fear?” And I made fear really nothing truly to fear. You know I always say “Fear is just fear. It only knows how to be fear.” Like love only knows how to be love. Sadness only knows how to be sadness. They’re all just tools, and wording signals that our body, mind and heart use to lead us on a path. So all fear is, is one of those tools. But because it’s so elusive, so mysterious, so … you know, the veil hasn’t been taken away from it. It’s kinda like what I feel I did. I took the veil away from fear. I took the mystery away from fear. I made it very palatable. I made it doable. So when you watch something like What the BLEEP?! and you go, “Yes! That’s what I want!” Well, Fearless Living is really the 1-2-3, A,B,C, of how to do it.
WTB – I was going to ask what you thought of the concept in What the BLEEP?! that we literally do create our reality and that we literally do create a neuro-net with our chemicals and our emotions and our thoughts every day that we can alter and shift those neuro-nets.
RHONDA – That’s right. That’s absolutely right you can shift. And I use What the BLEEP?! all the time.
WTB – Well that’s cool.
RHONDA – I use it all the time, because What the BLEEP?! is a great example. I love What the BLEEP?! because it’s a great example people can visually see about what I’m talking about. And What the BLEEP?!, you know, when I see it, I get it. But for most people, it’s mind-blowing. It’s like “What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?” And so I give them … I tell them Fearless Living is how you get from here to there. It’s the tools.
WTB – On your website you said the only option you finally were left with is that you had to figure out “how to be happy as you.” What the BLEEP?! skirts the spiritual … it doesn’t come out and straight address the soul, even though it does, if you know what I mean. I don’t believe, and I would like you to address this, that it’s possible to be truly happy without a larger context of self beyond physicality, emotional programs and material goals. So this must obviously be a large part of your program?
RHONDA – Well, this is what I say about God in my work. People ask me all the time, “Is God in your work? Do you talk about God? The Higher Spirit, the Higher Power? Universal truth?” Whatever you want to say. And I say a couple things. If you are in that realm of being; if you are aware of that connection, read Fearless Living or Fearless Loving or Change Your Life in 30 Days, you’ll see it all over the place. Spiritual principles are within my books everywhere. Yet, I don’t talk about God, per se. Because I believe there is so much pain and hurt and trauma for many people, connected to God, connected to religion, connected to Higher Power, whatever you want to say; that they have a difficult time accessing their humanity, and their greatness when they have to put God in the mix.
What I found for myself is, if I work on people’s fear, and I can help them become free and actually support them in understanding what freedom means and understanding what it means to be fearless; what I’d recognize each and every time - and this has happened time and time again. Again, I never talk about God unless people bring it to me. When people bring it to me I’ll talk about it all day long. But if you’re not there, I’m not bringing it up. ‘Cause I don’t need to bring it up.
WTB – Right. We’ve got the image of the angry, judgmental God. So that’s just one more program we have to deal with.
RHONDA – Exactly. So what I do is I say, “OK, great. Let’s take care of your life. Let’s get in touch with your humanity. Let’s get in touch with your sense of who you are. And what I’ve noticed time and time again, is that when that comes true for them; when they get it; when it finally clicks for them; when they start understanding what it really means to be fearless, they automatically feel a connection to everyone and everything. And they automatically start asking me questions about what’s out there.
So I don’t have to talk about what’s out there. I don’t have to come from a God perspective. I don’t have to come a Higher Power perspective. I don’t have to come from any perspective. Because if I can show you, and support you in understanding your humanity today when you’re angry with your husband; when you can’t deal with the kids; when you’re frustrated at work; when you’re lonely, when you’re angry. Then what happens is you start feeling an inner connection. And an inner connection automatically leads to an outer connection, which automatically leads you to God. So, you know, I’ll take you any way you need to go. My whole philosophy is, I don’t have to hit you in the face. I don’t have to blow up your world … even though most people would say I’m like, in your face.
WTB – Well, you’re very good at blowing up people’s worlds, but you get them to do it for themselves.
RHONDA – Yeah, but I’m very conscientious to go at somebody’s pace. I’m very conscientious in a room. I’m very conscientious of who’s in the room. I’m very conscientious of the questions being asked and where that person is. I’m very conscientious about it. And so what I believe my job is, is to get you to the next step and maybe two or three steps. But I’m not taking you the whole way because, you know, you ain’t ready for the whole way. You’re not. And if you get there too fast, what you’re doing is you’re missing fundamental stuff that you need to take to be able to integrate what I’m teaching. Because integration is the key.
You and I, all day long, can pretend we’re changing our lives. But you know, look at diets today. You know how many people go, “I’m now no longer going to eat chocolate.” And 90% of diets fail and most dieters gain more than what they lost back. So I kind of go with the approach of, if I can get you in touch with your humanity, your humanity makes you Divine. And I say that all day long. The more you’re in touch with your humanity, the more Divine your life and your world becomes and the more you’re in touch with that Divinity within you.
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WTB – So what people are left with after they’ve bridged their fears and are no longer running from who they really are, then they’re left with who they really are.
RHONDA – Yes! And who you really are is this vulnerable, courageous, passionate, expression of Life and it is just magnificent! I mean there is nothing more magnificent than watching a soul unfold. Nothing more magnificent. So I don’t live in the head. I can go there. I definitely work with a lot of people that are brain driven, mental driven. But my job is to connect the head and the heart. My job is to connect you, to integrate as one being. My job is to connect your thoughts with your feelings to your desires, and support you to understand the difference between when you’re living in fear and when you’re living in freedom. And once you start understanding that distinction, your life, literally… you start seeing your life. You know, just like What the BLEEP?! you know how you kind of separate things out, like this is happening and this is happening and this is happening. That’s exactly what happens to my clients. What I hear more than anything else is people say, “Now I understand why I’ve done everything in my life. Now I understand why this happened. Now I understand why I got married to the wrong man. I understand why I got divorced. Now I understand why I’ve never been able to be in my career. Your life just goes click click click click…. Your backbone’s aligned and you just get it.
WTB – I know you’re doing a lot of corporate work as well. Do you see a paradigm shift occurring in corporations as well as individuals?
RHONDA – I think What the BLEEP?! is an important feature of that. I think a movie like What the BLEEP?! because it’s deep yet simplistic – that’s what I loved about it. You know it gave a lot of depth, and yet it was simple enough that the everyday man could understand if you’d never read a spiritual book, or you never did personal development, or never did any self-help work, never went to church … you still could understand the scientific ways that your thoughts, your biology, and all that stuff work in tandem. So I think it’s a very important vehicle. Yeah, raising the consciousness is important. There are things coming to the forefront now that say, “You know what? It’s time.”
Now what I find fascinating is it’s also a time where there’s more obesity in the world today, in America specifically. And as you and I both know, obesity is a sign of dysfunction, a sign of unconsciousness. I’m not saying all obesity. There’s a certain level of obesity that is based in an unconsciousness of life. So I find it a very exciting time, that here we are, kind of at the crux … more and more is available to the public in addressing their challenges, their issues, their hopes and their dreams. And here we are intersecting with such a “disease” or condition that we as human beings have power over, like obesity, like overweight. And again I’m not talking about people who have health issues and who are dealing with that. I’m talking about the majority of obese and overweight people who could do something about it if they chose to. Yes, there is a certain number who have a medical condition and are unable to do anything. But the people who can…. Here we are having an outer manifestation of the inner struggle of humanity. I love it. It’s almost like, “OK, here we are.”… That’s why I’m writing the book Do I Look Fat in This? It’s like, “Ok gang, does everybody see it? Is it visible now? Can you see it now? Look in the mirror. It’s no longer hidden. It’s no longer silent. It’s no longer a mystery.” And that’s what’s so exciting to me, because I think this moment in time, when we are intersecting at a spiritual level as well as a body, physical level, we have a huge choice to make, I believe.
WTB – Interesting. How much heavier can you get in material mass than to be a huge, material mass?
RHONDA – Exactly! Exactly! And I find it fascinating that we’re at the brink of all this spiritual consciousness, and yet we’re heavier than we ever have been. I mean to me that is just an ironic, spiritual joke. Like God is going, “Do you get it yet? What more can I do?” Because you and I know it’s a choice. Just like Matlin has to choose not to react like she previously had so her connections can change. It’s the same thing. I mean What the BLEEP?! should be required viewing for every junior high student…. Bottom line every junior high student should have to watch that movie and write a report on it.
WTB – You’re right! But hey, maybe we should leave something for your talk at the Prophets Conference this month in Phoenix?
RHONDA – I’m really looking forward to it!
WTB – So are we. Thank you, Rhonda for taking the time to talk today.
RHONDA – Thank you.
For more information on Rhonda and fearless living: fearlessliving.org
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