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The Wheel of Fear: Rhonda Britten's Path to Fearless Living

Phoenix and Flame Podcast

Release Date: 12/14/2025

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A gentle note before you dive in: this conversation touches on murder-suicide and suicide attempts. It's okay to pause, skip ahead, or come back to this one another time.

It's Father's Day. A little tiny town in Upper Michigan, two restaurants, snow in May. My guest is 14 years old, standing in the driveway with her mom, waiting for her dad to grab his coat from the trunk of the car. Except it isn't a coat he pulls out. In under two minutes, Rhonda Britten watched her father murder her mother and take his own life, and then spent the next 20 years believing it was her fault for not stopping it. That's the story Rhonda tells at the start of this one, and I promise you, it only gets more remarkable from there.

Rhonda is an Emmy Award winner, a repeat Oprah guest, and a master coach who's worked with people across more than 600 episodes of reality television. She's authored four bestsellers, including "Fearless Living," translated into 16 languages, and founded the Fearless Living Institute. After three suicide attempts and a stint in a psychiatric ward, Rhonda started over like a kindergartner, literally, with a calendar and gold stars, and built what she now calls the Wheel of Fear: the invisible core trigger running your life until you know its name.

We get into how to find your own core trigger, why "fear of rejection" and "fear of failure" are almost never the real fear, and why you don't have to feel calm, cool, or together before you act on your Wheel of Freedom. If you've ever wondered what's actually underneath your procrastinating, your people-pleasing, or your perfectionism, this episode hands you the map.

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlSP_QbSW2M

In this episode

  • How witnessing her father's murder-suicide at 14 split Rhonda into two people, and the 20-year spiral of alcoholism and three suicide attempts that followed
  • What her third suicide attempt, and the psychiatric ward evaluation after it, actually taught her about starting over
  • The Wheel of Fear quiz that reveals how procrastination, people-pleasing, and perfectionism are all fear responses in disguise, not the real problem
  • How to trace your own "core trigger," the single hidden fear driving your specific self-sabotage
  • Why you don't have to feel calm before you act on your Wheel of Freedom, proven by the true story of a first date in a two-seater convertible
  • The free course Rhonda is offering Phoenix and Flame listeners to build their own Wheel of Fear and Wheel of Freedom

Timestamps

  • (00:01) Welcome and guest intro: meet Emmy winner and master coach Rhonda Britten
  • (01:19) The worst day of her life: her father's murder-suicide at 14
  • (03:08) Splitting into "outside Rhonda" and "inside Rhonda"
  • (06:32) The kindergarten reset: a calendar, gold stars, and the seed of courage
  • (07:01) Physical fear vs. emotional fear, and 20 years of insisting she had none
  • (11:06) What the Wheel of Fear actually is, and why it works to stay hidden
  • (12:35) The fear-response quiz: nod your head if any of these sound familiar
  • (18:58) Finding your core trigger: Rhonda's own is "loser"
  • (23:19) Tracing a fear response back to its root, and what to do if you can't find the moment
  • (25:53) The Wheel of Freedom and "essential nature": Rhonda's is "authentic"
  • (31:41) The convertible-car story: acting on your Wheel of Freedom before you feel ready
  • (36:17) Where to find Rhonda, her books, and her free "Stretch, Risk, or Die" course

About Rhonda Britten

Rhonda Britten is an Emmy Award winner, a repeat Oprah guest, and a master coach who has worked with people across more than 600 episodes of reality television. She has authored four bestsellers, including her seminal book "Fearless Living," which has been translated into 16 languages, and she founded the Fearless Living Institute, home of the Fearless Living Life Coach Certification Program.

Learn more and browse her books at FearlessLiving.org, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Favorite quotes

"The worst days of our lives are really the seed of our destiny." —Rhonda Britten
"In order to pick the lock on your Wheel of Freedom, you got to act now, whether you're shaking, whether you're crying." —Rhonda Britten
"There's nothing wrong with you. It's just fear." —Rhonda Britten

Resources mentioned

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