2024 September 3 Stop scaring yourself!

Hi, this is Jim Cranston from 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com, the podcast and website about reimagining your life. Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about working through those scary life decisions. If you like what you hear today, please leave a like, subscribe, tell your friends, and send me a message.

Thanks for joining me tonight to talk about moving towards your goals in life, even when the needed decisions are little or maybe a lot scary. 

I occasionally listen to Gary Vee, or Gary Vaynerchuk. He just held VCon, his in-person conference. It recently ended, and he had a replay up on YouTube of his closing speech. It was very good. Gary's written some children's books, and he has some other kids stories and things. He was talking about two of his characters in those stories and books, and their personality attributes. He has a name with an alliteration toward the attribute he's trying to use as an example.

So, for adaptability, for example, he has a little alien. For courage, he has a cockatoo.  In that context, he was describing what he saw holding back most people. He was talking to a lot of people at his conference and people he coaches and comes in contact with.

What's holding them back from making the changes in their lives that they really want to make—they really want to do it, but they just can't quite seem to get started— He said something pretty interesting. If you don't change, it's because of fear, of what might go wrong, so be courageous. But when things go wrong, it just requires adaptability.  You're afraid that things will go wrong and you'll move backwards, but things are already wrong, and you're already moving backwards in your life. You'll never regret your acts of courage. 

I thought it was very interesting. That was a pretty tough thing to listen to, because honestly—we generally do follow that pattern. We often wrap it up in nice-sounding words, such as we're taking the safe choice or we're being financially conservative. But in reality, that usually means we're fearful of a potential outcome.  Living in that space of fear is exactly what leads us to mediocrity and settling for things. Seth Godin said it pretty nicely. The most important thing is that you do things that might not work. People who are mediocre aren't lazy, they're afraid. They've been pushed by the educational industrial complex to not make a mistake, to make everything defensible, to follow the leader, to fit in all the way.  

Now, there's probably a part of your brain starting to spin up all the arguments why what I just said isn't that easy. It's easy to say, but your circumstances are different. And off we go, justifying our lifestyles and accepting mediocrity. This is very much a we, a plurality. This isn't a criticism in any way.  Society drills it into our very being—literally from before we're even born. Don't dress differently. Don't act differently. Don't question the teacher. Don't propose an alternative answer to the one that's expected. And perhaps most importantly, don't take risks and don't be different in any way. 

It's somewhat amazing that anyone anywhere is ever able to escape the confines of society's defined behaviors, yet people do it all the time. Many do it by being negative—the bad boys and girls, the outlaws. Those are what are normally held up as the negative role models for unacceptable behavior.

See, if you're different—if you drop out, if you don't go to college—you can end up like little Johnny over there. He made nothing of his life. Yet many of our biggest entrepreneurs dropped out of college and are multi-millionaires or billionaires.  In reality, there are many other people who don't follow society's rules and are often successful—sometimes wildly successful. 

As we talked about before, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, the investors, didn't follow the rules on how to make money the modern way. Instead, they tended to invest in solid companies that actually produced real products. They produced something tangible—not a concept, not software.  They ended up some of the richest individuals in the world.

Elon Musk started a car company from scratch—which everyone knew was something you just couldn't do anymore. Yet despite all the predictions, he has been successful thus far.  Everyone laughed at Jeff Bezos for trying to sell first books, then everything, online when you could just go to any number of local stores and get what you needed. 

Then they punished the stock. They punished the stock when he foolishly invested in even more warehouses instead of going virtual, because that's obviously the way of the future.  Then in a crazy move, he started to compete with his own two biggest shipping companies with a dedicated shipping fleet. 

People don't laugh anymore. Instead, they talk about his great business vision.  That's the key.  When it isn't obvious, it's crazy.  Once it's successful, it becomes obvious.  In all those examples, the individuals involved are taking huge risks,  but they focused on being adaptable and courageous and took the risk anyway and succeeded. 

It's been said before that being courageous isn't not being fearful. It's being afraid and moving ahead through it.  Of course, large rewards have inherent risk. I'm not saying don't be prudent, don't think things through—but our brain is heavily biased towards keeping us safe and comfortable. 

There are multiple studies that show when people have reached the point of maximum effort or point of exhaustion—especially in athletics—that limit is really a pretty conservative stopping point the brain created to ensure that there was always a safety margin still remaining. 

One of my favorite studies is when male college athletes they're tested. They'll be in a lab environment, and they have the equipment they're going to work out on. They can either have a male or a female technician observe them. Pretty consistently, they performed better when there was a woman observing them, suggesting that when they felt the need to impress somebody, they were able to go right through that first safety limit and do additional exercises.  

But this aspect of our brain being slightly overprotective isn't reserved just for physical activities. The brain applies a very conservative, overly safe approach to most situations, including our life choices. I started taking an MBA program at RPI many years ago in Troy, New York. Then I didn't actually enter the program—of course, the claimed reason by my brain was that money was an object. I'm sure my brain was lying, and there were other reasons why I didn't enter. 

Nonetheless, the people I knew in that course—I stayed in touch with them, and I was invited to graduation. It was really neat. One of the big things that I learned from the people I knew in that course was that high achievers often just don't believe it when the brain says it can't be done.  I've adapted that attitude in a number of areas. In general, it works out pretty well. 

If you are absolutely overwhelmed, and there's no chance of completing something on time,  just start on it anyway and give it your best effort. You might be amazed at the focus and the cleverness your brain can generate once it realizes you're going to go ahead with it no matter what.  Our brains are very good at keeping us from failing, so they will switch into solution mode and find a path to success. 

The important part is to focus on the next task. Ignore the thoughts that it's all impossible and overwhelming.  Your brain will usually come up with ways to make the impossible either fully possible or find a workable solution to attain the best possible outcome—but that's for a very specific task. What about life's decisions—these big things that are much bigger than solving a single problem? 

Well, most of life's decisions, even the big ones, are really driven by a number of interrelated tasks.  When we feel overwhelmed, it's usually because instead of thinking about how to solve the next totally solvable task, we let ourselves get focused on the enormity of the overarching problem, and that leads to overwhelm. 

That same thought process can happen when we want to make significant changes in our own lives. Our brain—good little protector that it is—immediately comes up with every reason in the world to tell us what we're thinking about doing is just crazy. It really is far safer to just continue as we are. Don't make any changes. Of course, we complain about it, and that's part of the whole deal, but don't change. Don't put yourself at risk. 

That's usually driven by a fear of the unknown.  We've talked about this before, and we'll talk about it again, on how to solve that problem. The most important point for tonight is that we, usually with society's help, have created these roadblocks to our own personal growth based upon our own biases and fear of a perceived catastrophic unknown. 

By identifying each impossible task before it arrives and giving our brain time to consider solutions, we can usually solve (or largely mitigate) each blocker and move on to the next step.  This allows us to then move closer to a life consistent with our vision and to be successful in whatever way really matters to ourselves. 

I would encourage you not to let perceived or self-created fears keep you from taking that next step towards your true vision.  If you just start and take that next step, no matter how small, you might be surprised at how those enormous roadblocks are removed by your own self confidence, courage, belief in yourself, and your brain's cleverness. 

That's it for the evening. Remember, society likes to keep us all at whatever life status we're in, because that helps keep society nice and tidy and orderly. But if your vision points you in a different direction and you want to grow personally, don't be afraid to try to live up to your fullest potential and try one of those crazy ideas. Once you believe in yourself, your brain will do amazing things to make the impossible possible.  

Your homework (always optional) is to think of some crazy goal you've always had and consider if it's really important to you.  Is this something that really has meaning in your life? If yes, that's excellent. If not, move on to the next item in your wish list until you find something that really and truly is important to you. 

Extra points if you now take that one item and think about the very next thing you'd have to do to make it a reality. The next step can be tiny, even as small as just writing a short description of what your goal is and why it matters to you, and very importantly, when you want to get it done. Extra, extra points if you take that next step. Congratulations. You're on your way to a life that you really had envisioned.

That's it for tonight. Thank you very much for stopping by. Remember the many wars and issues and elections being contested and everything going on in the world. You can support activities in Ukraine through links at UKR7.com or go to World Central Kitchen at WCK.org.  They work in disaster areas by taking local food and getting it to a point where it can be prepared and delivered to people.  They work all around the world.

If you're not in a position to, or choose not to give, to an international organization, maybe you can donate locally. That's fine, too. Or there are other ways you can change the world and make it a little better place. Even something simple such as just smiling at somebody who looks like they're having a bad day: Good morning, how's it going?  That's all it takes. Living outside yourself changes your perspective on the world, and can make the world much better in ways you hadn't expected. Remember, one of the best ways to care for yourself is to care for others.  

As always, thank you for stopping by. If you found something interesting or useful, please pass it along. Please subscribe, hit that like button. If not, please drop me a comment as to what you'd like to hear. 

Have a great week. Remember to live the life that you dream of, because that's the path to true contentment. Love and encouragement to everyone. See you next week on 7EveryMinute and 7EveryMinute.com. Thank you.