T. Harv Eker explains how fear of making the wrong decision prevents people from choosing and acting on business ideas, and recommends an experiential "try the coat on" method: pick an idea that resonates, research it, talk to people, try working in or marketing it, and check how it feels in practice. He illustrates this with his own shift into fitness, which became highly successful.
One of the things people struggle with is that they have quite a few ideas and they're not sure which one to choose. And of course, you know, a lot will say, well, what's the issue? The issue is that you don't want to make the wrong decision and screw up, right? So there's actually two parts to the answer to this question. Number one is how do you choose the right idea? And number two is this whole idea of screwing up, right? So the first thing, let's take the second part first. Because the fear of making a mistake is what holds you back from actually choosing not just the good idea or the best idea, but any idea. And so we end up with a lot of people their whole lives, they got idea after idea and they never do anything. Why? Because what if it's the wrong idea? We know nobody buys it, what if it's not successful, et cetera, et cetera. So the first thing I have to get over is the fear of making the wrong choice. And what I want to say is this. I'm a big believer in the try the coat on philosophy. I used to have in my life literally dozens of ideas constantly as to what business to get into, how to do, et cetera, et cetera. And I had a hard time making a decision for 10 years, it wasn't working. And so what I finally decided to do is say, you know what I'm going to choose, give it the best shot, make a choice here, something that resonates with me, something I want to do, something I feel and hope I'll be good at and be successful with. And I'm going to try it on. I'm going to take this coat, I'm going to take it from the rack that has hundreds coats and I'm going to put it on me and see how it feels. And in business, what that looks like is starting to research the business and, and the vehicle, right? Starting to talk to people about it, starting to maybe, maybe even get a job, even a part time job within that industry, in that business to see what it's like from the inside so you can experience it. In other words, get in the game, start being it, start doing it, start putting marketing material together, start talking to people about it, etc. Etc. And see how you feel when you're doing that. I did that. And at some point in time, something I thought was a great idea, the more I talked to people about it and you know, I kept the name secret and that, but the more I felt, I'm going, you know what if I have to spend my entire life talking about this, I don't think I'd be very happy. And I actually let that go. Then I started just naturally talking to people about things that I love. And my first thing was fitness. At the time, I started talking about people, fitness and this. And sure enough, I said, you know what? That might be a really good. I love talking about it, so let's do that. And, you know, I became a millionaire. So that's what I would say is, you know, you really want to be trying it on, talking to people, getting involved, doing the research and all that, and see how that all resonates you while you're doing it, not thinking about it, just in it, doing it as if you're going to do it full on, and then just check your feelings out. Sa.
