Inside the Mastermind That Creates Massive Breakthroughs

Hey everybody, I'm Dr. Toby Potter, The Unshakeable Investor. Welcome to the Ignite Series. Every Monday morning, 8:00 AM Central Standard Time, we do this Ignite Series, and this is all about empowering you as an individual. You know, doesn't matter what you want out of life. It does not matter how hard you work. It does not matter to what degree of commitment you have. If you are not right, nothing will change. If you haven't set this foundation, this strategy, the structure, this infrastructure, you're going to be in a roller coaster of emotions. You're going to be in a roller coaster of success, and you will never have fulfillment. So my goal with the Ignite Series is 100% to help you fully understand the 3 pillars that guarantees and ensures your ability to have success. The first one is spiritual, knowing that you absolutely have to be spiritually aligned, that no matter what, knowing and believing that there is something of higher authority, something of higher power, something that's bigger than you is in control. Number one. Number 2, mentally. There's not a person in the world of success that will say that they, they know it all. In fact, they tell you just the opposite. Doesn't matter how successful they are. They're continually learning, continually being educated, continually reading books of other people because there's no way we could ever fill our brains with all the knowledge of the world. And if we could only utilize 10 to 15% of it, we are pretty much a genius. So understanding that being mentally strong, educated, informed is a pillar that you must continue to grow and develop. And then the third pillar is physical. We see and hear so many stories of people that are struck down with illness. Um, and there's a combination of what causes that stress for number one seems to be the biggest killer. Which causes heart disease, causes cancer, causes high blood pressure, causes aneurysms and all these things. But if you are aligned spiritually, mentally and physically, you become unshakable. And this is what this whole— my whole platform is all about. When I get on stage, when I talk, I tell about the trials and the tribulations and the struggles that I've gone through being extremely wealthy to being homeless, to rebuilding, and I attribute 100% of that to those 3 pillars, knowing that there was always hope. And if you have hope, you have energy, you have excitement, you have ambition. Hope drives us through everything in life. Fear is the opposite of hope. Fear is the, the thing that drags us down. That causes us to drift, causes us to not take action. So I can, I can attest personally that knowing, knowing that I have a great relationship with my Lord and Savior and that I'm always, always learning, being educated by others, coaches, mentors, YouTube, doesn't matter. I'm always filling my brain. There's— I always— I try to read at least one book a month, at least one book a month, because I can take something from everybody's life. And as you— as this community grows, we're over 254 members in this Ignite community. As this community continues to grow, we get to wrap our arms around that many more people. We get to touch that many more people and they get to touch and inspire and lead us. Being part of a community is what everything's all about. Being part of a roundtable, a brotherhood. I know Nick's like, "Quit using that word." But it's the one thing I can relate it to. But, you know, it's belonging. To something that's bigger than us. And so I'm grateful for each and every one of you. As now it looks like we're almost fully loaded. I want to just share what this is about so that you understand our purpose. And what I want from now moving forward from everyone is that I need feedback from you. I need commentary. Go into, and do me a favor. Here's something that I really want to emphasize. So we're gonna start posting every day clips of these Monday Morning Meetings, little short videos to kind of remind you, because there's, there's, of the 254 members, most of them have jobs and they can't get on and they watch the replays. But there's also little segments in here that we see, we think are very profound when you interact and we ask questions and we, we comment back and forth. This resonates we get so much more feedback from that. So what I'm asking you guys to do is start logging in to your portal, to the Ignite portal, and start sharing your messages. I'm gonna push this harder and harder. Now that we have a great foundation, and now that we have a great community of leaders within this, I'm now looking for those others to help inspire more. So when you start commenting, when Stephen Tonks jumps in there and says, what he just went through and the transformation he just gave to somebody else, and Lynette and various others share their stories, it will resonate with the entire community. And it's so important that, that you understand people are needing this. People are longing for this and they're looking. And I'm now imploring you to be that extra voice for me to help continue to grow this. So we're going to jump into it. Series 2, our module 2 of the second series is the War Against Fear. False evidence appearing real. Fear is false evidence appearing real. I will tell you, I don't know how many studies have been done But I know I could Google it, I could chat it, I could AI it, and it would come up with this statistic that would blow your mind. But almost 100% of people who live in fear is fear of something that will never happen. It's our own mind predicting, projecting, foreseeing this catastrophic disaster. That never happens. Hardly ever does it happen. Especially never happens to the magnitude that our mind created that it would. So because of this, we cower down and cower is a bad word, but it's the only way I understand is that we don't execute because of fear of failure, fear of not achieving, fear of messing up. And yet, if we just executed, we would see that our fear was false. I was talking to a young man this weekend about him starting a new business, and we're, we're gonna, we're gonna work with this young man. But as you're starting a new business, you don't know what you don't know. And most people won't even step out in that leap of faith and until they have this perfect business model, this perfect plan. And yet it never becomes perfect. It never ever becomes perfect because we don't know what we don't know. And we can't project, predict the future. There's so many things out there that we can't control that's going to happen. And if we sit around and try to map out this amazing plan, nothing ever happens. And I told the young man, I said, move forward always. Win, fail, or draw, move forward. Because even if you execute and fail, you learned something from it. And that's what most people don't recognize and realize. As we're bringing on more and more and more individuals who are getting into real estate, and as we've built that platform, I hear people say, well, I just, you know, I've been trying to do this for 2 years, for 3 years. I'm like, how many deals have you done in the last 2 or 3 years? None. I'm like, so what do you mean you've been in real estate for 2 or 3 years and you haven't ever done a deal? Well, I'm getting educated. Well, then you're not in real estate. You're in education. And you're right, Lynette, you only fail if you quit. That's correct. And if you don't quit, you can't lose. So I want you guys to understand that fear will stop you from ever achieving anything. And we're gonna, we're gonna understand how to break through that. Fear will not fight fair, so neither should you. Okay, most people fail because— most people don't fail because of lack of talent. They fail because they never Fight the fear. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes uncertainty. But if we really look at life, how many things we take without allowing fear to stop us? We jump in our cars here in Texas. Now, I'mma tell you, we were just down there in Houston. What a nightmare. Human and congested. Human and congested traffic everywhere. But, but we jump in a car to go down a highway with over 200,000 people coming at 60, 70, 80 miles an hour. And there's always, there's always some idiot zigzagging in and out of traffic, running up people's bumpers. I had 3 cars about run me over and I drive pretty fast. We can't control that. So, so if we were to live in fear, we would be that person on the far right lane going 40 miles an hour because we're scared. But see, we're not. We're not that person in the far right lane going 40, 50 miles an hour, just poking along because that's what we can control. We're usually in the middle of it all because we have removed that fear of things we can't control. We can control us. We can control how we drive and we can see out there at 180 degrees and kind of project where to go and how to do it. If we can do that driving on something we can't, we all jump in a plane and we buckle ourselves in. We got this pilot who's carrying this 30-ton plane in the air that should have no right to fly. But we don't have fear. We just assume we're going to get there. We can't control it. So there's so many things that we do each and every day that we should have fear that we've overcome because of repeated history, repeated actions. I guarantee you the first time you jumped in a car on a freeway, you weren't as comfortable as you are today. The first time you jumped in a plane, You weren't as comfortable as you are today, but because you executed time and time and time and time again, the fear went away because you realized the probability of something going wrong is very minute. We need to understand that it's that same way in life and in business. One dream buried at a time through fear, one risk avoided at a time, one call in silence at a time. See, fear doesn't hit you all at once. It just nickels and dimes you. It nickels and dimes you. Fear is the most common reason people die with potential still left inside of them. We've talked about this several times, that Stanford did a study and they went around and talked to 1,000 people on their deathbeds, meaning they knew their time was coming to an end and there wasn't much time left in the the common answer to the question was— the question was, do you have any regrets? And a common answer, almost unanimously, was, I wish I had done more. I wish I had done more. Don't be that statistic. Don't be that statistic. When you're there and you know your time is limited and you're almost out, and we should live every day as if Know that you gave it your all, that you didn't allow fear to slow you down or hold you back, that you knew exactly what you needed to achieve today. And no matter what, win or fail, you were going to learn. That's what you need to change your mindset to, is that win or fail, I'm going to learn something from it. And tomorrow I'll be better. If every day you improve, then the fear will go away. The fear will go away because it becomes a repeated habit and you get more and more confident and you learn what worked and what didn't work. So let's talk about what is fear. Fear is the internal voice that says you're not ready. Oh my gosh, so many times we talk to people and I'm like, Why haven't you done something? Well, we're just not ready yet. Just not ready yet. That's fear. That's not, that's not being strategic. That's not being mature. That's not being conservative. That's fear talking you into wait till tomorrow. It won't work for you. I have so many conversations about this when people say, well, I'm just not blessed. I just wasn't born of that caliber. I just, wasn't born on the right side of the tracks and this and that. And so I, I let them, I let them vent, and then I paused and I said, do you believe in God? Yes. Oh yes, yes, absolutely. I'm in my Bible, I go to church. I said, no, no, no, I don't care if you act godly. I don't care how you act. See, this is what we have to understand, is that being religious doesn't make you a Christian. Being religious does not make you a Christian. How you act doesn't make you a believer. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Do you believe? Well, yes, Toby, yes. So, so if you truly believe, then are you going to say that God favored that person over you, that he loved that person more than you, that he blessed that person more than he's blessing you? Well, everything turns out for them. Every time they start a business, every time they go down this path, everything works out for them. You know why? Because they work their ass off. God doesn't favor anybody over anybody else. He favors those who execute. He favors those who take action. He favors those who are willing to trust and believe and never look back. So yes, if you're saying that this person is more favored, it's because he's earned it by his works, by his actions, not by his lip service. Don't tell me you believe and then tell me that God is testing me, that God is challenging me, that God is not favoring me. I'm gonna say you're the one who's drawn that line in the sand and has chosen not to take action. Fear says you're not enough. Fear says, what will people think? We've talked about this so many times, so many times. If you have dreams and ambitions and you hold them inside you, that's fear. And but if you can sit at your, your dinner table, at your family reunions at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and all your Relatives around. And if you are scared to share your ambition and your dream, that's a good dream to have. Because, and what I'm saying is if you share it, if everybody in the room laughs at you or says that won't work or what makes you think you, if they are the naysayers comes out, then you know you're on the right path. Because your dream has to be so big that it's profound and it's offensive. To the people that are closest to you. It needs to be offensive. I've shared the story that in 2024, our hard money lending was not growing. And every time I'd get on the phone with our 13,000 clients and I'd say, where's your loans? Where's your deals? Toby, there's no deals out there. Toby, there's just no deals out there. I'm like, really? So I said, you know what? I think there's some really good deals out there. In fact, I'm going to go find out. And so I was headed to El Cajon with my brother. I said, you know, he said, so what do you guys do? How's business? Blah, blah, blah. I said, yeah, we're going to— I'm going to set out in 2025 and I'm going to buy 1,000 units. He said, 1,000 units? You got to be kidding me. You can't achieve that. That's impossible. That's 100 units a month. I said, yeah. I've done the math. You just, you can't do it. You just, it's impossible. So for, and it's a 12-hour ride from Tulsa, Oklahoma to New Mexico to go elk hunting. So for 12 hours, I had to listen how it just was impossible to be done and how many people he knew, wealthy people, very astute people who were gonna, who thought they were gonna get into real estate and they were gonna buy a bunch of units And they failed all the way there, all the way back. And then we set out to do it. See, I— it made me smile. It made me— because if it was so impossible in his eyes, I know it was achievable. I knew I was right. Now, did we buy 1,000 units? Absolutely not. But we did buy almost 300. We bought almost 17 million. And if I had set my goal so low and achieve it, I would have failed. In his eyes, 100 units was plenty. 10 units a month was plenty. But 100 units would not even have scratched the surface to go back to my people, my community, and say, look, the deals are out there. You just don't know where to look. It wasn't about achieving the 1,000 units. It was about achieving the education and the information to guide, lead, and direct others. See, he missed the whole point. And therefore, since I set my goal to 1,000 and we achieved 300, we had tremendous success because not many people can go and do that in 12 months and acquire almost $17 million in assets. But see, you got to set those goals so high and don't let the naysayers and the fear shut you down. I want people to think that I'm crazy. I told people we're going We're gonna grow this community to 500. And they said, it'll take you years. We're at 254 in 6 months. It may take us a year, but not years. Set your goal so profound that it offends everybody around you. And then you know, because see, Les Brown said, shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. And that's where you've got to overcome the fears. Fear is not just a feeling. It's a strategy against your future. Here's how fear takes hold of you and take notes. Let this sink in. Let this really resonate with you. Nobody, nobody says today I'm going to be ruled by fear. Today I'm going to raise my hand and I'm going to let fear rule my day. Nobody says that. And yet at the end of the day, if you really took an audit of your day, how much of it was derailed by fear? How much of it was held back because it was uncomfortable? See, a dream is met with criticism. Great. If your closest people criticize your dream, the dream is getting on the right track. You're headed in the right direction. If nobody criticizes it, it's too small. It's too small. You put limitations on your God, you put limitations on yourself, and you put limitations on your blessings. And then we start comparing. See, fear compares you with everybody else. Well, look at so-and-so over here. I mean, are you as good as they are? Can you achieve— no, see, they're, they're blessed. They're, they're, they're the golden child. No, they're not. You're the golden child. You have just as much right to have just as much success. The question though is, are you really willing to do what it takes? To achieve it, and you may have to work harder than that person did. Nobody said that you can cut the same path in the same timeline. You may have to work harder, you may have to overcome more objections, but it doesn't mean you'll have less success. Failure leaves a wound unhealed. See, fear will tell you that because you fail, that's gonna live with you for the rest of your life. And so therefore you don't want that, that label, that stigmatism, that criticism. And that's wrong. How many, just do your own research on any person, any, I don't care who it is. Any millionaire, billionaire person, success, celebrity success, go search them out, and I can promise you this 100% of the time, they've had a multitude of failures. A multitude of failures. Failure made them stronger. Failure gave them information and education to continue how to work. Thomas Edison failed over, I don't know the number, 10,000 times, I know that, on just the light bulb. And they asked him, was it not discouraging when you failed over 10,000 times to come up with this light bulb? He said, no, I never failed. I just found 10,000 ways it wouldn't work. And along the way of those 10,000 failures, other things were invented. So they weren't even failures, they were redirections. Everybody gets hung up on the failures. Donald Trump bankrupt, $9 million, no, $3 billion, yeah, $3 billion in debt, was running and hiding from his banks until one day he showed up at a banquet. At a fundraiser, pouring down rain. He had to walk 3 blocks, didn't want to go, just knew that all the bankers were there, knew that everybody that's been hunting him down was going to be in this room and he was going to be there and they were going to hound him. He knew it. He said, but I had to be there. And I made a choice, a conscious decision to face my fear. And I walked 3 blocks in the rain to go to that dinner. And by the time I got there, all the seats were filled except for one. And I had to sit beside the guy that was the meanest, most ruthless collector in the New York banking area. This guy had no emotion, had no feelings, had no compassion, and had annihilated all of his friends who are also going through this turbulent times. He had to sit right beside that guy. And he said, you know what, I might as well face the music. And he sat down and they started talking. And by the end of the dinner, this guy was willing to sit down with Donald Trump and remap out a plan instead of making him sell everything and liquidate. The guy said, now that I've got to know you, I'm willing to work with you. And it changed the whole trajectory. Which then enabled him to rebuild, allowed the economy to kick back in, and let him be who he is today. See, fear could have stopped that process. Fear could have, and it was justified. Oh my gosh, I can't go in there. I'm embarrassed. I'm failing. I owe billions of dollars. He said as he was walking down the street, there was a homeless guy sitting there under an archway. Getting out of the rain. And he said, that guy is wealthier than me because I owe billions and he doesn't owe anybody. I'm a negative billions. He doesn't owe anybody. He's wealthier than me. See, ladies and gentlemen, it's perspective. Small fears feed daily, become prisons. When you allow the fear of hit you day in and day out, you create this prison in your mind that stops you from becoming amazing and, and, and becoming everything that you've been destined to become. Fear compounds like a discipline. Fear compounds like a discipline, except for the fact that it's against you. It's not for you. Daily disciplines are created to enhance you spiritually, mentally, physically. Daily disciplines. If you're not doing this stuff every day, you're not growing. But if you're allowing fear to be your new daily discipline, you're shrinking. Because it works against you. And it's something I need you to understand. That fear is a cancer that will destroy all hope. Fear doesn't always look like fear. Here's some of the things that it looks like. So take notes, take a screenshot, chime in if you want to. But I know this is going to resonate with the majority of you. I know that this is something that's going to hit home. With so many of you, and you're gonna say, well, no, I don't agree with that, and that's fear. That's fear justifying the fear in your life. But number one, fear is procrastinating, putting off to do later what you need to do right now. Procrastinating. Well, I'm not ready. Yes, you are. If you're not ready now, what makes you think you're gonna be ready tomorrow? Well, I'm gonna get these things taken care of. No, you won't, because Once you take care of them, something else will pop up. And the way I know that this is true, just back up a week, a month, a year. You said you wanted to do it then, but because of things need to be done, it's now a year later, you procrastinated and you didn't take action. Well, perfectionism, oh my gosh. I hear this so many times. Well, I'm a perfectionist. No, you're not. I can show you where you're not perfect in every way, shape, or form. You're not a perfectionist. It's a word that somebody told you that you now live by to give you the reason and the excuse not to execute. People all the time, I'm a perfectionist, Toby, I've gotta have everything. No, you do not. Stop it. Stop it. Perfection. There's no such thing as perfectionism. It's a made-up word that somebody said. Well, I'm a perfectionist, therefore I take my time. Time you don't have the luxury of taking. People pleasing. I want to make sure that, that everybody around me is happy. I'm trying to please everybody. Stop. Because as we said, I've always said, Nothing around you will work until you work, until you're ready, until you're fixed. You want to talk about perfectionism? Be perfect in you first. Be perfect in you first. Overthinking. Probably one of the biggest frustrations I have with many, many, many people. They overthink everything. And I used to think it was a, it was a my— I used to think that it was there was something to it that maybe I wasn't thinking it enough. Maybe I wasn't executing enough. And so they were that yin to my yang. And then I realized, no, this was their excuse for taking so long to accomplish something. They overthought it. They said they didn't understand, they needed clarity. BS. It's fear telling you, you don't understand. It's fear telling you because you're not have it perfected, you can't execute, where therefore makes you procrastinate, staying busy, staying busy, and never starting. This is what fear looks like. And when you do an audit at the end of the day, when you, when you sit back and really are honest with yourself Man, wow, what a day! Time flew by. I was so busy, but I didn't get anything done. That's just not very smart. I was going to say something else. It's not very smart. If you're not accomplishing anything, then what are you doing? See, you're staying busy looking busy. You're staying busy acting busy. You're not executing what you know needs to move the needle. The enemy of your destiny doesn't always roar. Sometimes it just whispers to you. See, the devil's very, very smart. He's very, very smart. He understands and knows that if he comes at you barrels a-blazing, you're gonna run the wrong direction. But if he comes to you in soft whispers, soft, justifiable excuses and reasonings. You can absorb those. In fact, you can accept those. And it allows you to really think that that's the right direction, the right decision. See, if you can actually name your fears, you can recognize it and refuse it. We've always said in all throughout life, you must face your fears. You know, my son-in-law, who's a fireman, has anxiety against heights. But yet, knowing his job, his duties, responsibilities, sometimes he has to go out on an extension ladder off the back of a truck. He has to get into a lift. He has to rappel off of the side of a building. Sometimes his job requires him to face that fear. And he can't sit there and negotiate. Time is not on his side. Lives are at stake. Even though we know we have this fear, we don't have to succumb to it. We face it. It doesn't go away. He's always going to have a fear of that, but he's going to be able to achieve success by executing. And the more he executes, and the more he realizes that the probability of something going wrong is slim to none, the better he'll be at executing that with less resistance. Here are the 6 signs that I want you to really understand and really think long and hard on. The 6 signs that you're living in fear. Number 1, you're timid, you're introverted into rooms that you should be running and owning. You should be the most profound person in that room, meaning you go to a network meeting, you go to a banquet, you go into a a group and you're the most timid person there, that's fear. You don't think you measure up. You don't think you're qualified. You don't think you have anything to contribute. That's fear. You should be the loudest, most outspoken, most pronounced person in every room you go into. You should be that person that when you walk into the room, it lights up. That the energy level goes to another level because you walked in. This one's the most profound. You quit before you fail publicly, meaning it just wasn't working. I didn't want the world to know about it, so I just shut it down. I just quit. And quitters never win and winners never quit. If you don't quit, you can't lose. There's so many things that needs to be ingrained in your brain. It needs to be so profound that you're embarrassed that you executed the quitting mode. So you're living in fear when you give up, period. You overthink decisions that need action. I've already gone on a tangent. It's probably the one thing I hate the most. People that take hours and days to execute that should take seconds and minutes wear me out. Wear me out. You protect comfort more than your calling. See, this one, I think 99% of us so many times I talk to people who have amazing stories, have amazing life situation, and I say, you need to tell it to the world. You need to be sharing that with the world. And they're like, oh no, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. Why? Well, I'm not a good speaker. You're not speaking. You're sharing a true story. People, people think that when they're on stage that these are professionally groomed speakers and they're not. They're professionally groomed life storytellers. And the way to tell your story is to tell your story. And when it's your story, there's no way to screw it up. Now, if you're trying to tell somebody else's story, you could screw it up and you could be called out on it. If you're making up a story, yes, you're going to get exposed. But when you're telling your story, You can't screw that up. And trust me, everybody needs to hear it because somebody will be moved by it. Did not want to be on stage. She said that it's just something she's not comfortable with, but yet this weekend her and I got up there on stage and shared our story. It's the wrong one. Oh, yeah. Back. Okay. Yeah, right there. And she did an amazing job because, see, it's easy to share your life. Now, if she had to get up there and recite a speech, recite a commentary note or something like that, yes, she would break out in hives. She would break out in sweats. She would stutter. But to sit up there and to share our marriage, our life. It's not hard, people. But when you understand to get out of that comfort and start exercising and execute your calling, you realize it's not that hard. It's the perception that was hard. It was the fear that allowed you to think that, well, I can't do that. That person's amazing. See, I have no fear of getting on stage and sharing my story. Neither should you, because it's your purpose, it's your calling. Seeking approval before you execute is just— let me tell you, you'll be heavily, heavily disappointed. If you continually seek other people's approval. You will be completely distraughted when you spend all your time seeking other people's approval, and that will eat at you. That will literally eat at you and destroy all your energy, all your momentum, and all your success. And then this one, this last one, you dream privately but act small publicly. See, I'm the guy that tells everybody what I'm going to do. And I know there's many, many philosophies, I guess is the best word, that, you know what, don't tell people what you're going to do. Just do it. I agree. You don't have to put a billboard up, but you know what? Sometimes you need to. Sometimes you need to put a billboard up and says, here's what I'm going to do over the next 12 months. Because number one, now you've got accountability. Now you've got people that are looking at you to say, will you really do it? Will you really do what you say? And so now you have that pressure on you, and then you go out there and you execute. And even if you don't hit the mark 100% you still had progress. And they will be so impressed to say, you know what, he called his shot. They called their shot. And that creates so much synergy and respect, it's unbelievable. So don't dream these big dreams in a closet, but live this meek, conservative, humbled life Live your dream every second of every minute of every day. I tell all my team, act as if. I've told my loan officers that for, for years they were saying, hey Toby, you know, the only reason why you close 10 to R1 is because you're the CEO. I said, then be the CEO. I don't care if you need to put CEO on your title. And, and you need to have that leverage, then do it. Whatever it takes for you to have success, I don't care. A title means nothing. Now, it means a lot to the public, but I had no problem. My loan officers were changing their titles— Vice President of Director of Relations, Vice President of Finance. Executive finance. I mean, all these highfalutin titles. If it gave them confidence, I was happy with it. Whatever it took. Act as if. Act as if. When I won Private Lender of the Year in 2019, we had just gone public nationally for one year. And we won Private Lender of the Year by a very large national private lenders association. And we were competing with firms that were doing $100, $150, $200 million a month. A month. We were doing about $20 million a month. And nobody knew it. Nobody knew that we were doing 10% of their— because every time I was in the room, every time we had an event, I acted as if I was doing $300 million a month. I was acting as if I was the biggest person in the room. And all that perception gave me the award that this guy just went national in 2018. He's already tearing it up. Everybody knew me. There wasn't a client. There would be 3, 4, 5, 600 people at those events, and everybody knew me. They knew our company. So the assumption was, he's doing business with everybody, fastest growing company out there. Act as if, act as if you own that dream, you're living that dream today. Watch the fear dissipate. Fear shrinks your world to the size of your comfort zone. Get out of your comfort zone, ladies and gentlemen. Get out of your comfort zone, because where you're comfortable is broke. Where you're comfortable is unfulfilled. Where you're comfortable is miserable in your marriage. Get out of it. Fear is a spiritual battle, for God has not given us a spiritual— a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and sound mind. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but he gave us a spirit of power, of love, and of sound mind. If that is what God gave us, then why do we allow something of the world to run our life? When fear leads, God's word gets drowned out. Obedience becomes conditional. Meaning I'll only be obedient when it works for me, faith is replaced by calculations and our purpose becomes paralyzed. Fear is not just emotional, it's a spiritual attack on your assignment. So many people say they want a better life, they want a better marriage, they want a better job, they want better, better, better, better. But they keep living in the same comfort zone. They, they keep running in the same circle. It's— I was with Brenda this weekend, who was a, uh, was, was, was a felon, spent 4 years in a federal penitentiary, and she got to know several ladies there. And she was sharing a story of one lady who, um, had spent 14 years in prison. And the minute she got out, she went right back to her same neighborhood. Brenda went by one day to deliver, say hi, deliver some food, a casserole. And she said when she showed up, the neighborhood was horrific, meaning that the lady said, why are you driving that car here? That car's going to get stolen. She's like, "It's my car. I don't wanna—" She says, "You can't drive that nice of a car into this neighborhood." And then she looks around and the lady has 14 pit bulls. And the house was a disaster. It was infested with bugs. It was just nasty environment, which is the exact environment she was in prior to going to prison. She didn't change her environment, therefore her life will never change. And she said the probability of that lady going back to prison was about 90%. The other 10% was she'd end up dead. That's not a life, ladies and gentlemen. But see, we all want more. We all subscribe to this, I'm committed, I'm committed, until it takes action to get out of the environment that you're in that you're so miserable at. Until it takes action to say, I have to go away from these people, these people that continue giving me drugs, continue drinking, continue partying. I gotta get away from them to get better because as long as I'm around them, I'm gonna become them. But we choose not to do that. It's not because we're forced, it's by choice.