“I don’t have enough money to start a business. I don’t have enough time to start a business. I’ve small children I’ve got to make things going on. I don’t have any good ideas of my own. I don’t have access to the right people. I don’t have what it takes. I think I need to be older or more experienced. I think I need to be younger and thinner. I think I need to look different than I do. What if nobody wants to work with me? What if somebody else has already done this before me? What if nobody wants to buy this? What if I don’t have any clue where to start? What if I have so many ideas I don’t know which one to pick? I don’t know what gifts or expertise I have. I don’t like selling. I don’t know anything about business so I don’t know where to begin. I’m not very good at things.”
“What if people think I’m a fraud? What if people don’t like my accent? What if I’m not very text savvy? What if the thing I want to doesn’t make any money? What if I’m not good enough at the text stuff? What if it sucks? What if I suck? I don’t have fear of failure. I’m just not sure what I should do. I don’t want to disappoint my family. I don’t want to be wrong again. I don’t want to be in debt. I want to do it but I can’t spend any money to learn the things I need to learn. The market is saturated. It’s too late. I’ve tried a ton of other things, but I haven’t yet found something that’s my thing and works. I don’t like charging for things. I feel guilty taking time away from my family. It seems risky to start your own thing, especially when I already have a good job and a student loan.”
Lack of confidence in myself and doubt. Although absolutely I’m not ready, it needs to be perfect. I doubt myself and I don’t want to put myself out there. I lack the confidence that it takes to do it. I think it’s really very reassuring at least to me and I hope it is those of you when you hear those ideas, those beliefs. The reasons why; reasons, excuses, whatever you want to call it, for some people that it’s like non-excuse it’s legit. I don’t have the money to start right now. It should feel reassuring to some extent that moist everyone has those same fears or thoughts to some extent.
What is fear? We’ve all heard the term fear or failure fear of success. It’s like what is fear of success. I’m so afraid that I’ll have the money to do the things I want to do and it scares me. That’s still fear of failure because you fear that you won’t be able to maintain it or that you don’t deserve it. Here’s what I think every single one of these is about. Fear is a way to protect us. If you look at a danger situation, our bodies have been designed for our heart to race and for us to take a moment to pause and calculate the rest and say, “If I have to jump between these 2 cliffs and the crevice is 2 feet wide and I can jump and save my life,” I’ve got to calculate that risk and say, “Heart is racing. Makes me nervous, but I think I’m going to live,” and you jump.
That fear is meant to protect us in the event that the crevice is 8 feet or 10 feet or 12 feet an you feel that fear and you calculate the risk and you say, “No, this is dangerous. I hear a lion in the distance and that lion means that I could die.” It creates this adrenalin rush that fight or flight and you take off running or you stay and you fight the lion. Most of us are pretty able to calculate legitimate fear and illegitimate fear.
To tell someone to just do it is not helpful. If you know anyone who’s had a fear of heights or fear of flying, you know exactly how pointless that is or somebody who’s had a panic attack and then you just tell them, “Just calm down. You’re fine. Everything is going to be okay.” “Just get on the plane. Nothing is going to happen.” “Just climb up the ladder. It’s perfectly safe.” It’s pointless, because that fear feels very real based on programming. Fear is meant to protect us.
All of those reasons I just read for you that fall under the, I guess you could say the category of fear really, because every single one of them is a fear let’s just face it. I can’t think of one on that list that really isn’t about fear, but the fear is this. The fear in my opinion isn’t failure. We fear shame. We fear shame. Shame is the worst emotion. Guilt is one thing. If I tell you that I can’t come to your party because I’m out of town that ay, I probably have guilt because I wasn’t truthful and that’s a poor action and decision and behavior on my part.
Shame means I’m a bad person and so most of us fear shame. If I don’t think I have enough money to do this, that might actually be true. It’s not the not-enough-money-to-do-this that’s stopping me, it’s the shame that I can imagine. If put my family in a position and I fail and now we have less money, now I have shame because I’m a bad person that I would put my family in this position. If I’m not good at this and people find out and they call me a fraud or they think that I’ve taken someone else’s information then I will have shame because that shame means that I must not be a good person that there’s something wrong with me.
That shame quite frankly and like I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, I’m not. I know a lot them and I’ve worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs who have to get to the bottom of their fear. I’m not a therapist. I don’t care who you go to see, but I can’t fix your fear. I can’t fix your shame. You’re going to have to get to the bottom of it.
I think too many people look to a mentor or their guru to fix them and then they start defining themselves by their guru or their mentor. It’s like, “Dude, I didn’t get that and neither does anybody else.” Who you become will be because of you and the people you surround yourself with, but it won’t be because of one person. I don’t want people to be dependent upon me or anyone else for that matter. I want them to know they have in them what it takes to do. I’m going to give you the steps, but I can’t give you the do. I can’t make you do things. I can’t make you overcome fear. Fear is meant to protect us. Fear is meant to help us avoid shame. Then what do we do about it? Feel the fear and do it anyways; true for some people.
I’ve got a couple of close friends who they don’t have fear failure. They’re like, “Go, go, go, go, go, go.” They do not fear failure. They do not fear being made the fool. They do not fear trying new things. It’s an incredible quality, but I don’t know that you can just tell someone to be that way. How do you become that? We both know, don’t you agree? Hearts if you agree. There are those people it’s like they’re born that way.
I have friends who have triplets. I have friends who have twins. All 3 raised at the same time, born on the same day within the same 10 minutes and one will look at the option to jump off the roof into the pool and go, “I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that.” The other one will go, “Let’s jump,” and then the one in the middle will go, “We should, but we should aim for the deep end.” There is part of that that is nature. Those of us who maybe it wasn’t nature, how do we change that?
Here’s what I want to share with you. I think there is an option other than just go for it. Feel the fear and do it anyways. I think there are 4 options. Here they are. Are you ready? Every single one of these is about fear. You’ve got 4 possible strategies to employ if it is your fear, fear of shame, fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of ridicule, fear that it won’t work out, fear that you don’t have enough money, whatever the fear is that has prevented you from going for it, fear that you need a better mentor, fear that you need a better upline, fear that you’re spouse to your husband or your family doesn’t support you, fear that you just don’t know what you’re supposed to do.
All of those fears resort back to we want to protect ourselves from shame. I don’t want to be shamed. I don’t want to be embarrassed. I don’t want to feel like a bad person if it doesn’t work out. I don’t want to feel like a bad person if I’m the only one who isn’t successful at this. I don’t want this to be an opportunity for my dad to say, “I told you. You’d end up being good for nothing.” I don’t want this to be more evidence that I’m a loser. I don’t want that shame and that’s why most people don’t pull the trigger.
The 4 opportunities that’s what they are. Strategies for you to break that cycle other than jut go for it. That phrase “feel the fear and do it anyways”, it’s an awesome phrase but just a very small percentage of the population does that work for and those are really courageous people who just a little bit born that way. For the rest of us there’s a possible other solution and that the first one is this. Think about what it is you desire. I desire a change. I desire to prove those people wrong, to prove that person wrong. I desire to give my family, my children what they deserve. I desire to have a life for my daughter that was different than mine. I desire happiness. I desire change. I desire transformation. I desire to get out of this.
If your desire is bigger than your fear, that’s one thing, what are you focusing on? Start focusing on the desire. The fear will still be there, but just keep focusing on what your desire is. For most people it’s desire to be better, change, transformation, overcome clarity, my desire for clarity, my desire for peace. That’s what it was for Bret and I when we knew something had to change and we needed to sell our businesses. That was very, very scary.
What if nobody remembers me? What if I’m not valuable? What if all these people that are being really nice to me it’s because my business keeps them employed? What if everybody thinks as being this way towards us and I feel important just because of our business? What if my kids think that I’m a lo- … What everybody I know sees me as a failure? What if we never make any money? What if we have to move out of our homes? What if we have to sell all of our cars? What if we have to move to another state?
All of those things were very real possibilities, but my desire for peace and clarity was bigger than my fears. If I may, you won’t pull the trigger until your desire is bigger than your fear. Anyone who tells you, “There’s blank smoke because you won’t,” if you’re paralyzed by fear you won’t do it until your desire becomes more important otherwise it’s still safe enough. That’s your first choice.
Do you guys watch any of those Survivor shows? There’s always that moment where they’re literally dying of dehydration and they find unfiltered water. They feel and they know, “I’ve got this fear that if I consumed this water it could be contaminated and I could get really, really sick.” They think about that fear and then they also think about, “I thirst. I have a desire to drink this water.” They hold out and they hold out and they hold out and then by day 3 or 4 they’re like, “Whatever I need to do to drink this water because now my desire is greater than my fear of falling you all,” my desire, my thirst. You’ve got to get to a place where your desire is more powerful than the fear. That’s one possibility.
Second possibility. You can use one of these strategies. You can use all of these strategies, but I want to give all 4 them to you because I think it’s different for each person. We’re also different like your background, your parents, all of these things, your experiences, what you focused on the past, the people around you, all of these things are fact which strategies can work best for you.
The next one is this. Most of our fear is of the unknown, like what if. What if I don’t know anything about business and I decided to join a multi-level marketing organization just to learn about business, what if? I don’t know what might happen so I’m just not going to do that. I’m not going to do that. It’s fear of the unknown. What if I do sell my businesses; this is Bret and I, our example, what if I do sell my businesses and then we absolutely have no money left and people lose respect for me and we have to move away and we have to move into a small home in another state? That unknown is pretty scary so that create fear for me.
What if I invest my money in this coach or this mentor or this program and then I don’t do the work or it’s not what I thought it was? That’s a pretty big fear because I don know. I don’t know if it’s going to work. The fear of the unknown it stops a lot of people. Here’s your number 2 solution. Research it. Stop worrying about what could happen and research it and embrace it and make a list, embrace them. What could happen? Here’s all the positive things that could happen and here’s all the negative things that could happen. If all these negative things happened, what would I do? Would I be wears off and what would i do and what would I do. You know.
I know you don’t know what could happen, but here’s what you do know. You do know what you would do. You do know what you would do. Even if you don’t know right now what if this happens, what if it does? Make that list and when you make that list and you educate yourself; most people have fear because they’re like, “I don’t know what’s involved. I don’t know what could happen.” You’re a big boy. You’re a big girl. Do the fucking research. How do you get your money back? What would it take for you to actually make your money back? What would you do if that worst-case scenario were to happen? What would happen? What would you do?
Rather than allowing it to become this giant monster under your bed, consider a plan for what you would do at the worst-case scenario were to come true. Educate yourself. The number 1 reason why most people fail even in their business attempts like the person who says, “I’m not afraid of failure. I’ve had many, many businesses I just haven’t picked one that worked,” that’s because that person doesn’t have fear of failure, but they have fear of research. You’ve got to do your research.
Bret and I fell in love with snowboarding and it was about the time we want to sell Powder Blue Productions and I thought, “I know what I want to do. I love designing clothing.” I love my snowboarding apparel even more than I love snowboarding. Sometimes I like to look cute more than I do going down the slopes and so we just start a snowboarding apparel company, that’s it. We already know about apparel. We already know about women’s fashion. I already have it tried. This is perfect and then we did our research. About 3 days into the research we said, “(Voice sound) wrong idea.” Bad idea. It would have been a failure. It would have been a failure not necessarily on a financial level. It would have been a failure in terms of being aligned with our priorities.
Do your research, educate. Number 1 was focus on your desire. You’re desire must be larger than your fear. Number 2 is educate. Get the knowledge you need to reduce and minimize your fears. When people say to me, “I really want to go try that workout, but I’m nervous to try it.” I’m like, “Have you googled it to watch a video to see what it looks like? Do you know what people wear? Do you know what to expect?” People come to one of my events like SMART Success or Marketing Impact Academy. They’ll tell me, “I was so nervous the night before the live event because it’s an online academy. People are in it all year long and they’re studying and they’re going to the lessons.”
Then we have a kick-off live event. When people come to the live event, they’re like, “I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what to wear. I didn’t know what it would look like.” I’m like, “Do you own a phone or a computer? You can minimize your fear as if you’re like, ‘That’s what it looks like.'” That’s how people dress or that’s how people behave or that’s what it looks like and then fear is removed. Educate yourself.
Number 3. This relates to that you just got to do it and that is you need to collect an evidence file of your experiments. The more experiment you have the more you lose that fear and self out. You cannot and will not be successful without lots of experiments and failures, lots of them. The more failures you have the more successful you will be. You’ve got to stop trying to be perfect, because you won’t ever be considered a success if you’re worried about being perfect.
Perfect people are not successful. They can’t be because never freaking pull the trigger. They’re always aiming, aiming, aiming, aiming and I’ve just poked at it. I just poked at it. I just poked. Are you kidding me? Seriously, do a fault. I am not worried about perfection. I’m like, “I checked it, send it,” and then they’re like, “Do you know there’s 500 or 1,000?” I’m like, “At least it went out.” Otherwise it’s not going to out. You can’t worry about mistakes. You can’t worry about being perfect. You can’t worry about people criticizing it. The people who are criticizing it, guess what? They don’t do anything except looking at other people’s things to criticize it. I don’t care what you think because what have you done lately. Nothing, so yes.
People were super busy criticizing and critiquing don’t do anything, but they’re really consumed about perfection. They’re like, “I feel I’m just about ready. I’m just about ready to do something. I’m just about ready to start this and I’m just about ready to launch this. I’m going to do this any moment now. I just need to get a little bit more knowledge. I just need to review it one more time. I just want to go over it one more time. I just want to double check this. I want to protect this. I think I need I need a little bit more kno … I think it’s not time yet. I think I need a little bit more experience. I think I’ve done this long enough. Did you see what those mistakes that person made?”
Like, “I’m not going to notice your mistakes because I’m busy doing stuff. I will not notice your mistakes. I am too busy doing.” You go to my website right now. I’m sure there are broken links and typos and I’m killing it, because I do. Just do. This will turn into a comedy hour if I talk to you about all of the embarrassing mistakes I’ve made just because I don’t worry about perfection concept. You got to get the concept out there. I just got to get the concept to you.
You need to start collecting evidence. You need to collect a file and you need to focus on more experiments. You can them failures if you’d like. I like to call them experiments. The more experiments you have I guarantee you this the more successes you will have. It’s just the law of numbers that’s how it works. If you go knock on 10 doors and try to sell vacuum cleaners to 10 people, you’ll get 1 yes. If you knock on 100 doors, you might get 10 yeses. Do you see? It’s a ratio. It’s just it’s the more you experiment. Guess what? The more you experiment the less it hurts. It doesn’t hurt guaranteed.
My fourth and final way for you to get over this is not just get over it, but to get through it. It’s to identify where does this come from. Why am I so afraid of being criticized? Who criticize me that it was so painful I will sacrifice my own greatness? I will deny myself joy and the things that I deserve, because this person programmed me to fear criticism. Where does this come from this thing that I think I have to be perfect? Why is it I’m so afraid to even do the research to know where to start? Why am I afraid that I’m going to … What was the first experience where I did something on my own and it was the wrong thing? What was that experience that has you traumatized by that?
This isn’t always about your childhood. It may be about your first boss. It may be about the first time you went out on your own. There’s a reason why this is literally cutting your life short in terms of your joy like there’s so much out there for you and your letting this programming that’s gone deeper and worse. You’re letting that programming stop you. What do you do about that? It is programming. It’s like your mindset about money. It’s your mindset about what you’re capable of that you’re good enough that you are enough that you have to be perfect that your mindset about your creativity it’s just not good enough. I’m not enough. It’s not going to work out.
Those beliefs have been programmed. What do you do about them? Step forward is this. You’ve got to get help. If you’ve been stuck for too long, you’ve got to get help in the form of either a therapy or a coach or a program. I have to be really general here. If it’s deep like you ant even leave your house and it’s ridiculous and you know it’s killing then you need to get a therapist. If it’s like, “I’ve got the confidence. It’s not that big of a deal, but I really don’t even know what to do first,” then you need a coach or you need an upline or you need a program that teaches you the steps.
Maybe you’re not good at the brainstorming part, the coming up of the steps part. You’ve got to go get help. You’ve got to get help from others, because you’ve got the programming and the programming is going to stay there until we can collect enough evidence and so just wheeling yourself to just go out there and do it. You’ve tried that and if that’s not working then it’s time to invest; invest in a therapist, invest in a coach, invest in a program, invest in a mentorship, invest in a business where they teach you business. I don’t know what that is for you, but it’s an option.
4 options. I’m going to go for them again and then I’m going to get your feedback. Your 4 options, number 1, your desire must be your focus and that desire when it’s bigger than your fear you will take action. Number 2 is the reason why most of us have fear is because we don’t know what’s going to happen. The unknown scares us. Get as much information and knowledge and research about what could possibly happen as possible. With knowledge, our fear diminishes. We don’t know what something looks like. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know what that’s going to be like. Your fear is heightened and then once you’re there you’re like, “That’s what it looks like. It’s not so bad. I can do that.”
Third one was to create an evidence file, an evidence file of your experiments. The more failed experiments you have the faster your path to success. The fourth and final way was you’ve got to get help. You can’t do this on your own. You can but it’s going to take you up forever and that’s a maybe. The shortcut to success is help. It’s a coach. It’s a mentor. It’s an expert. It’s a program. It’s having someone say, “Here are the steps. Let me help you.” Only once you start having more evidence that you’re going to be okay do you begin to change the programming and sometimes that really requires somebody teaching you how, someone showing you the steps. They’re not going to carry you. No one will carry you. If you’re waiting for that, good luck to you.
I would love to continue to help you grow your business! And Marketing Impact Academy is NOW open! We only open once a year and we’re almost full. Head to www.marketingimpactacademy.com to sign up!
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