Build Your Courage Muscle: How to Overcome Fear and Take Action

Good morning, Believe Nation! Today we're going to talk about how you can build your courage. Rule number 5 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And also, as people are talking, if someone says something that really resonates with you, you know the drill— leave it down in the comments below, put your quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. Enjoy!

Here's a stat from, uh, from your show, and it says the richest 85 people on this planet have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion. Yeah, right. That's on the planet, however. You know, that's— it's not far off in America. No, it isn't far off in America, but we still here don't abandon the idea that it isn't finite. It isn't finite if you were born— where were you born?

Me?

Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Baton Rouge General Hospital. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. I had a long haul from from where I came from to here, but here we are. Right. So proof is in, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and here we sit at the dining table. But it's hard to, when you say that to some people, because they say, oh, there you go with the pull yourself up by the bootstraps thing, and you know, you're just being respectable. Not everybody can do that. Bullshit. Everybody can. Everybody doesn't— courage. Courage is the key to life itself. There are a lot of people who are born in situations where they say, "Well, I'll never get out of this." So they won't. I say to people who say, "Well, I would like to have done so-and-so-and-so." I say, "Well, you could have done it." They say, "Well, I couldn't get out of here." Man, the bus runs every day. You're exactly right. Yeah, you're—

if there—

if there—

if you can conceive it in your mind, if you can think of it, you can do it. That's the human condition. If we can imagine it, we can do it, right? And I think that the, the condition of each individual human—

10 years from now, you're going to arrive. The question is where. And if you don't do something today, you're going to show up somewhere. So what happens is when you go through the natural disappointments and frustrations, when things don't work out the way you expected, when people betray you or disappoint you or hurt you, what happens is all cynicism is, all skepticism is, is a protective device that says, "I don't want to get my hopes up because I don't want to feel that drop of disappointment. I don't want to feel the loss. I don't want to feel the hurt." So when people tell me, "I'm cynical, I'm pessimistic," I look at them and say, "Listen, let's be honest. You're gutless." It doesn't take any courage to think things don't work and they're wrong and they're terrible and never fixed because you'll never be disappointed because you'll never take any action, so it won't change and it's self-fulfilling. But it takes guts to say, "I'm gonna believe in something and try it, even though I might fail the first, fourth, tenth time, I'm gonna keep going." And I believe that most human beings, that if they put themselves on the line, they would uncover who they really are. But most of us are so afraid of failing or not looking good or losing out that we just never discover who we are. What I think we have in common is we're willing to step into the uncertainty. All passion, is found in the realm of uncertainty. And yet human beings are pulled to certainty because we, you know, we don't want to deal with our fears. Freedom, liberation is when you break through the fears. All of my brethren out there, all my brothers and sisters watching who are entrepreneurs or considering being entrepreneurs, you are what I'm made for. I mean, I've built 18 companies, 12 I actively manage, $5 billion in sales as I told you, 1,200 employees. It blows my mind. I have no business background. But I have this passion that says I must do more for others than anybody else, and I'll never stop growing, and I'll never stop changing, I'll never stop improving, and I feel alive by doing that, as opposed to let me do the same thing every day because I'm good at it, and let me continue to do that, and hopefully my life is really good. That'll make you feel, you know, feel numb, if not depressed or frustrated, overwhelmed, which is where most human beings live.

Develop the courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the willingness to act in spite in spite of the fear. I had a fear of speaking because I don't have a college education. I had a fear of becoming an entrepreneur because I never had any experience or any background in business. I had a fear of so many things. I was living a fear-driven life. As you look at yourself and look at your goals, develop the courage to go after your goals, to live your dreams and not your fears. And understand— and here's something that's very important— that anything that's worth doing is worth doing badly. I didn't want to make any mistakes. Hey, anything is worth doing at all is worth doing badly. Why? Because it's worth doing right if you know how to do it, but if you don't know how to do it, it's worth doing badly until you get it right. Just like I'm messing up right now.

But you forgive me, won't you?

Of course you will. So as you look at yourself, anything that's worth doing is worth doing badly until you get it right. And as you make mistakes, you learn from your mistakes and you come back again and again and again. They asked Benjamin Franklin— no, it was Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison. They said, Thomas Edison, how did you continue to learn how to develop the light bulb in spite of the fact that you had 10,000 failures? And he said he didn't have 10,000 failures. He said he had 10,000 ways that did not work.

Wow.

Think about that today.

Anything that you're going through right now, if you wanna take a big scary leap and you wanna start a new career or perhaps start a business, anything that you might consider a failure is really just a necessary step on your journey to success. So no matter what you're facing right now, no matter what's getting you so scared, there's only one question that you need to ask and answer to find the courage to make that big leap, and the question is this: What's the worst thing that can happen? So not just by saying yes, but what's the worst thing that could happen if you said no? So for example, a few years ago I asked my really dear friend Laura to come speak at one of our live events. Now this was a big opportunity for her, but I know it was kind of stressful. And I said, you know what, um, this is big, so take a few days, think about it, because once you say yes, you're going to be locked in. So first she had to ask herself, well, what's the worst thing that could happen if I said yes? So for her, it was the stress, it was wishing that she never committed, which she wished she never committed, but it was also this fear that she was gonna completely freeze up on stage, that she was gonna mess up horribly and completely ruin her reputation, which she did not. Now on the flip side, she had to ask herself, what's the worst thing that could happen if she said no? So you gotta get that Laura really wanted to grow her business and her brand, and if she said no to this opportunity, she'd have to face herself in the mirror every single day and say, Nice going, bonehead. You had the perfect opportunity to grow your business and you turned it down. So now it's your turn. I want you to ask yourself, what's the worst possible thing that could happen if you said yes and you'd fail miserably? So don't just think about this loosely. I want you to get really specific and tease out every single scenario that could possibly go wrong and how you deal with it if it did. What most of us discover is that no matter what the worst-case scenario is, we can can actually handle it. But don't forget, you gotta go on the flip side too and ask yourself, what's the worst thing that can happen if you decide to do nothing and keep your life exactly as it is? Are your regrets gonna start to pile up like pancakes? Are you gonna turn into some miserable, self-loathing sad sack? I really want you to tease this one out and get all the scenarios on the table and then take a look. What do you got? What's the worst of the worst? Going for it or not going for it?

I believe the master emotion of all life is enthusiasm. If you're enthusiastic about something, you're engaged with it. If you're enthusiastic about something, you feel energized for it. If you're enthusiastic about something, you look forward to waking up tomorrow and going for it. So prime that feeling every day. The way that I do that is every morning in the shower when I'm getting ready, I think, what could I be excited about for today? What could I have enthusiasm for today? And if I can't come up with anything off the top of my head or by looking at my schedule, I create it. I say, okay, what could I do today that would be fun and make me look forward to the day? Maybe it's prank a friend. Maybe it's do something good for somebody. Maybe it's something I'm gonna do that I just really enjoy that won't be, I won't spend a lot of time during the day, but I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes doing a passion small little project I'm interested in. Whatever it is, prime enthusiasm, because if you have that feeling of enthusiasm, that's what's going to keep you passionate over the long term. And it's— please listen, you need to prime your enthusiasms every day. See, a lot of people are very passionate people, but they're not living passionately because every day they're not engaging with what they want. You know, they set the big goal at New Year's, but then February and April rolls around, they've forgotten about it. But the reason they were so excited in January, at the new year, why is everyone excited? They're priming enthusiasm. They're looking at their goals, they're having an emotional connection and commitment to that, and that excites them for the year. So what you need to do is look at your goals every day. What you need to do is every day write the things down that are important to you, get excited about doing that, implementing that, experiencing it, and go for it.

It breaks my heart, my friends like live for Friday night.

Yeah.

Like they know they get the week, like Monday morning's the worst. It's just a huge percentage of one's life. I can't wrap my head around with the internet. This is not your grandpappy's life. We have the internet. You can make shit happen. You can build businesses or side hustles. I just don't understand why people relegate into losing mentality and just thinking they can't. You can't because you want to be on the bowling team or softball or play video games. That's why you can't. There's plenty of time. Get shit done. The level of complaining is unacceptable. Look, what if I told you this was the last day last Monday morning of your life? What if I told you you die this week? Would you complain about your crap job or that test you don't want to take? I doubt it. You would go much higher level thinking. Well, that's really what it takes. It takes understanding that if you're not pumped right now, if you're begrudging what you're about to do, if you're not looking forward, please recognize the world we're living in. We're living in a world where there's so much more opportunity. This internet thing created way more There's way more opportunity for all of us. Way more. I mean, look, you might not even be alive. Your mom and dad could've had sex like 3 minutes later and you wouldn't even exist and you're complaining. You could've ended up being a bus, a tree. I just don't get the mentality of being head down sad on a Monday morning. I'm gonna make Monday morning my bitch. I'm gonna make you Saturday Monday morning. That's what I wanna do every morning and that's what I want from you. Please, take a step back and think about how awesome it actually is and then recognize that you can attack the world in a totally different way because you were lucky enough to be born during this era.

So my take on building courage is I think it's like a muscle. I think it's something that you need to develop and constantly push and train yourself to get stronger and stronger and stronger. There will be periods every single day that you have the opportunity to build your courage muscle. And what usually happens for most people is they have this opportunity in front of them that is scary, that they've never done before, that they're afraid of, and they'll justify it with a practical reason. You tell yourself you can't do it because of all this, and it'll make total sense to you, and you just shrink down. You constantly play the smaller game, the weaker game, instead of being bold and believing in yourself and trying to go for it and take that action. And so how do you go from being afraid and being scared to actually having the courage to do it? Here's what I found really helps. This really helped for me multiple times, and I think it can help you. The first part is the awareness. So many people just play small by default. They don't even realize that they're playing small. It's just so ingrained in you that it just happens constantly. Every day you talk yourself down from things, every single day, and it makes perfect logical sense. The reasons why you say you can't do something are rational. They make sense. And so you constantly do it. But when you catch yourself, it's usually not in the moments, it's like the next day or the next week you catch yourself to say, you know what, yesterday I should have done that. I should have said yes. I was just too afraid. Why didn't I say yes? That's self-awareness. That's the start. That is the start. If you can realize it, don't, don't worry about it being a day later or 2 days later, a week later. If you can realize at any point that you played I played small the other day. That's the starting point. Because the next time it happens, you wanna catch it again, it's gonna get a little closer. Instead of it being the next day, it'll be a couple hours. Next time it happens, it'll get a little bit closer. Next time it happens, it'll be as you're leaving that meeting. You realize almost instantly that, ah, I did it again, I did it again, I'm playing small. I'm justifying these things when I shouldn't be. I should bet on myself, I need to believe in myself. And then the magical moment happens. The magical moment happens when you have the opportunity sitting immediately in front of you and you have the decision to make. You catch it in the moment instead of the next day or the next week. You catch it as it's happening, where somebody asks you the question to say, do you want to do this? And in your head you're thinking about all the reasons why you can't, and you catch yourself saying, this is it, this is what always happens, I'm about to play small again. And then develop pain The courage to say, I'm going to do it, I'm going to try, I'm going to say yes. And what really helped me is just thinking that I am tired of living with regret. Once you can catch it, once you have the self-awareness to catch that you're playing small consistently. I was tired of living with the regret of constantly playing smaller than I should. And when you're in that moment and you have to make that decision and you're afraid, it's okay to be afraid. It's not be fearless. You're going to be afraid. It's feeling the fear, doing it anyway, because you don't want to live in regret for the rest of your life looking back on this moment and saying, I played small again. And so that has really, really, really helped me a lot. It's helped me develop the courage muscle to the point now where whenever I'm afraid of something, whenever I'm worried about somebody else's opinion, whenever I feel like maybe I can't do that, then I have to force myself to go out and do it. If there's a real reason not to do it, right, like I'm not interested in it, I don't have the passion for that, I don't actually care about that, then I won't go and do it. But if I have a passion for it and then the only reason that I'm not doing is because I'm afraid, then I force myself to go out and do it. And every time you do that, you build your courage muscle up. Every time you're afraid, even a small— one small little interaction, talking to that girl on the street, having that difficult conversation with your partner, employee, or customer. Every time you think of something that you need to do and you're afraid to do it, and then you do it, you build your courage muscle up. Every single time you get stronger and stronger and stronger. And what I want you to develop the habit— this is so important— I want you to develop the habit of whenever something difficult comes up, you resolve it, you jump into it, you address it instead of shrinking down. Because if shrinking down is all the way up here and addressing is all the way down here, I want you I want you to start to switch this. I want you to switch it. Where now every time there's something major, some big problem, something you're afraid of, something that you might regret, you're going to attack it every single time and you're no longer going to accept playing small with your business and with your life. So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Wombat Philosophy asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, Leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what did you take from this video? What was your favorite clip? What was the favorite story? What are you going to immediately apply to your life or your business? This is such an important topic. If you guys could be more courageous in what you're doing, it will have such a dramatic impact on your life and the people around you. So what did you learn and what are you going to apply immediately to your business and your life? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm going to join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Peter Arca. Peter, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and taking that picture. I love it. I hope you enjoy the read, man, and I really appreciate the support. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, have an amazing day, and I'll see you soon.