Why We Quit on Big Dreams (and How to Stop)

We've got to realize that the only judgment in our lives about our ultimate capabilities and potential really does come from within. It is your internal valuation of your self worth and your capabilities that drives most of your life. If you're conscious, if you do your self improvement, your personal development work, your study of philosophy. Otherwise you start letting everyone else drive you and your life's agenda isn't even your own. And so you veer off course. Beware of judgment. Beware of letting it knock down your persistence and your belief in yourself. This day's topic is about resolve, but most importantly, why most people lack it. You know, you set that big goal, that big dream, and you're so committed to it, you resolve that you're going to achieve it and, and you feel that internal will and spirit to chase it despite the hardships of life. But so many people quit, they lack that internal strength of persistence. Why? Well, I think it's pretty straightforward for me at least. After coaching people one on one for 20 years, I see the same thing. I mean, I even see it in my own industry. You know, I work literally with life coaches every day, coaching and mentoring them. Some of you know, I even certify the top coaches in the world through our certified High performance coaching program. If you haven't heard about it, please, someday visit growthday.comchpc that stands for Certified High Performance Coaching. So growthday.comchpc lots of people say I'm going to be a coach one day and they don't do it. Lots of people say I'm gonna lose weight one day. They don't do it. Lots of people say I'm gonna, you know, be amazing in my marriage. And they don't do it. What's happening? Why don't we chase those bigger dreams? Six reasons. Number one, judgment. Other people's opinions and judgments against us stall us out. Why? Because our ego's desire to belong, to be accepted, to receive the approval of others. So you're chasing this big dream and everyone around you says, well, you're crazy. What's wrong with you? You're not capable of this. You don't know how to do that. You didn't go to school for that. What are you, stupid? And they say the worst things to us. And we let other people's opinions, usually other people's uninformed opinions, get us down. We even let other experts opinions get us down. It's the judgment of others that tends to just trigger our ego in such a way that we feel embarrassed to be seen starting small and so we quit right when we're getting momentum. We've got to realize that the only judgment in our lives about our ultimate capabilities and potential really does come from within. It is your internal valuation of your self worth and your capabilities that drives most of your life. If you're conscious, if you do your self improvement, your personal development work, your study of philosophy. Otherwise you start letting everyone else drive you and your life's agenda isn't even your own. And so you veer off course. Beware of judgment, beware of letting it knock down your persistence and your belief in yourself. Second, big way that we fail to stay resolved, to persist in our life is the simple inconvenience of it all. To chase after a bigger dream, it's going to cause inconveniences in our life. We'll have to spend more time, sometimes nights, sometimes mornings, sometimes in between times. It's an inconvenient extra effort. We have to set up that new business or we have to ask for this thing from our boss, or we have to, you know, take time out from this thing over here. It's just, it doesn't fit into our current reality. That's the problem with shaping a bigger future, isn't it? That that bigger future doesn't fit within the current boundaries of our reality today. And so everything we do to step outside of that reality, to architect that future feels like an inconvenience. And people just get short tempered and short willed about it. And they go, well, screw it, what a pain in the butt, I don't even want to try. And a lot of people let a little inconvenience steal their life. Not you, not you, striver. Third, they get frustrated with the struggle to develop skills. You know, bigger dreams require more of you. You have to become something more. You have to develop new capabilities, more skill sets, you have to master new areas. You have to do a lot of learning and people just get frustrated with it. You know why? Because it's hard, why it's inconvenient, why other people judge you at the beginning of your journey when you don't have any skill and so you're frustrated with yourself that you're not learning faster. And because you're not learning and progressing as fast as you want, you get frustrated with yourself. You get frustrated with the progress and you say screw it. Because frustration makes you throw your arms up in the air and say, I don't care. And the unfortunate reality of that is most people never develop the skill of getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. Getting comfortable with frustration. I'm frustrated all the time and I'm crazy happy and progressing because I don't judge myself. I don't see it as an inconvenience. I see it as a challenge to develop self mastery and that is a big difference. Fourth and very related, impatience. It's a duration problem. People want the immediate gratification. They want to win next month, they want to win next quarter. I mean as many of you know, growth day is what, 50 some employees now? I mean we're really just getting going. I think of all the companies I run, we're probably 150, 200 employees total. I think of all the companies I invest in, we're in thousands of employees. But so many people come in on a career and especially when it's related to startup and they want to make it overnight. They want their equity to be worth millions of dollars overnight. They want to be able to master something overnight. They want to know the whole team tomorrow. They want to make their 90 day impact and suddenly they're out. They're too impatient. I think if you're going after something in your life and you can't dedicate yourself for two or three years toward it, why would you expect extraordinary outcomes? You know, in my personal career I had created four pieces of content for seven years every day on social media. I had released 20 online courses and I was on my fifth book before I got the call from Oprah and Oprah Winfrey Network. I mean I was basically looking back. I was in the eighth book year of my career. Full focus, full progress, no joking around. It didn't come fast. You know, sometimes the wealth can come fast, but the influence takes a little longer and vice versa. You gotta be cool with that. You gotta keep progressing every day, even when no one sees it, even when the accolades don't come because you have the patience to know that long term efforts towards good causes, towards advancing your life, towards growing, towards momentum and progress. Trust me, they pay off. Another reason that people fail to have that resolve, even when they really want it, even when it's necessary, is failure to reflect. They just don't reflect enough on their journey to be learning the distinctions. They don't reflect enough on the journey to learn the bad mistakes they make, to learn about other people, to learn about their decision making process, to learn about their even their thoughts and their feelings and their hopes and their desires. If you aren't journaling, we can measurably show that your chances of achieving long term goals decreases. We know from the study of Psychology and its field of study or field of work and therapy that journaling is one of the most dramatic ways to increase someone's self awareness, their self acceptance, their self confidence and their leadership capability, including their opportunities for promotion and their opportunities to manage more and their income. It's all correlated with journaling. Why? Because it forces self reflection, which forces self awareness, which develops self confidence and self mastery over time. You gotta be patient for it. But if you fail to reflect enough, you know, I'm sure you've dated somebody who never reflected on how their parents relationship style impacted their own. I'm sure you've been in a relationship with somebody who never reflected on their last job's challenges. So they're carrying into the current jobs challenges, never reflected on their last two relationships, so they're still carrying that anger into yours. It's very clear. Lots of people say I'm going to be a great husband and they don't look at their history. A lot of people say I'm gonna be a great manager and they never learn from the last two roles. Failing to reflect kills persistence over time. Last idea, and I hope this doesn't feel too negative because I'm really genuinely trying to share like this is like the opposite of all this is true. If you can remind yourself not to succumb to others judgment, if you can remind yourself that inconvenience is okay. If you can honor the struggle instead of get frustrate frustrated with it. If you can stay patient, if you can reflect along the way, that's how you stay on the journey. Well, the last idea here is most folks, they say they're resolved to win the war, win the battle, win the thing, create the thing, build the thing. But they fail to ask for help. You're not going to build something extraordinary by yourself. Some people do it and they say they were self made. And that's almost always the ego talking because somewhere along the way somebody helped them. Even if they can't thank their team, even if they can't thank their partners, even if they can't thank those who funded them or supported them. You'd hope that at least they could say I'm not self made because I at least had the support of my community of customers. But sometimes ego gets in the way and it feels better to thump our chests and say I'm self made, look at me. You can too. And the hope and obviously the intention there is to inspire other people to take action even if they don't have complete support. But let's not fool ourselves. No one's self made. And if we can remind ourselves that we might be able to go next step and next time on our path of resolution to achieve great things, we get in trouble, we're unsure, we question ourselves. We don't get it. We don't have the capability, we don't have the skill, we don't have the know how. We'll ask for help literally every single week. I don't finish Friday without asking for help on something. Often I don't even know. I just get to end of a Friday. I look at that sheet of Friday finishers right there in the plan section. I go, oh, you know what I wrote down? Ask for help. I haven't asked for help. What do I need help with? And I have to sit there and think about something and it creates an idea to reach out to a mentor or an expert to reach out somebody on my team to reach out to somebody and ask for some assistance. The more frequently you ask for assistance, the more you get it, the more you build the machinations of momentum that is social support. Ask for help, baby. Ask for help.