Why being ambitious is keeping you stuck (And how to fix it)

Why your ambition is keeping you stuck. Have you ever noticed that the more ambitious you become, the more stuck you seem to feel? Now I used to wonder this for years and it really, really frustrated me. The more I could imagine succeeding or success, the less action I was able to take, which was kind of crazy and it didn't make any sense to me because I knew I was capable and I, I knew I had potential, but I was still stuck and I wasn't able to do anything. And I finally realized what was happening. It took me a very long time for that and realized it was a quite a sneaky trick my, my brain was playing on me. So what we're going to cover here is why ambitious people get stuck, how I started solving it, at least for me, and a simple three step system that I now use, and I've used this with lots of clients I've worked with with the same problem. So we first need to look at the mechanism of getting stuck and why. Specifically ambition makes it worse. And this only applies to a certain set of people. And I'll be talking from my lens. Ambition forces you to think beyond yourself. That's a good thing because what we're saying is you've got your current life and your ambition is thinking about this desired place. So you're able to think about what that could look like. And you know you have potential, but where does that belief come from? You're already capable, but only in areas where the path is often clear. This has usually happened and you know, I've seen this from me and from lots of people I've worked with. Again, there are exceptions to this, but generally if you follow the education path, career path, or corporate ladder, these all have a type of structure for you to follow. And you've probably made it pretty far in these areas. And so your brain can extrapolate the confidence from these areas that you're familiar with. But the problem is to really reach your potential. The things that you're trying to achieve, they're probably in an area that you're not familiar with and something that might excite you, but it requires you to step completely outside yourself, a step into the unknown. And it's in this unknown where things generally start to fall apart. Now, you may have this feeling where your brain just wants to shut down. That's what we're going to talk about here. So the unknowns you've tackled before, they're often pretty straightforward and they follow the path. But the ones you truly care about, which is what I mentioned just now, the One is usually the one without a familiar path where there's no certainty of where you're going to end up and no exact map of how to get there. But this is where the real test is. And you think your brain is scanning for success. This is the ambitious side of you. So when we're talking about ambition at the beginning, this is the part you're thinking about, okay, I'm really ambitious. I can think about all these cool things that I'm going to achieve. But your brain doesn't spend the majority of time on that. It spends the majority of time scanning for risks and the source of the problem. At least for me and for all the people I've worked with, at least, it's that your brain is designed to be overweight risk. So for every one upside, you can think of about your, you know what your ambition is going to give you, it will generate multiple downside scenarios. And just think about this, because I've wondered this, the more analytical you are, so you can analyze and see opportunities in which is the ambition. But it also means that your brain is even better at identifying risks. So it doesn't just see what could go right, it plays a full simulation of how things could go catastrophically wrong. Is that how you think? Think about that. It was definitely how I thought, how I used to think and is one of the barriers that stopped me. And it's something I see with, with the majority of clients I work with, and it's something we have to work through. So why does your brain do this? Well, it's fairly simple. Your brain isn't designed for success really. It's designed to keep you alive. Yeah. And then if you just take that framing, you will see things from a slightly different perspective. Taking risks was really dangerous for our ancestors. And to stay alive, we would usually be safety oriented. So we want to take the minimum amount of risk to keep ourselves alive. Now, that wiring is still there. And so the problem with that wiring, it's a bit like having your foot on the gas and the brake at the same time. So the more ambitious you are, the stronger your legs are. Right? Just think about that. The stronger more power you can put down. But just to think that the brake is twice as strong as the gas pedal. So you just end up burning loads and loads of energy, coming up with, you know, thinking about all this stuff and you end up fighting yourself, just like having your feet on both pedals and nothing will move. So why, okay, now why you can't change. So we're going to talk about the comfort trap. Now, the worst part of this is your brain convinces you that staying put is the rational choice. Because often you're comfortable enough, you might have a good salary, stability and flexibility. Now, it's not your dream, right, because it's not your ambition, but it's not bad enough to force a change. So every time you think about moving, your brain just defaults to the safer option. Again, remember, it's not thinking. It's not. It's not. What's the word? Focused on succeeding. It's focused on keeping you alive. So this trap, well, this situation, it can act as a trap. It's not technically, you know, it's not a necessarily a bad thing. It just. If it's not where you want to be, then you will stay here. And your brain is wanting to keep you here. So the cycle is step one. You feel the urge to change, so you want to change. And then your brain. So you press the gas pedal, but then your brain calculates the risk very quickly and presses the brake pedal. Sorry, yeah, gas pedal, then the brake pedal. It sees the unknown and pulls the brake. Step three, you tell yourself, well, maybe later, after you've assessed the risks and you've seen the opportunity, now's not the right time. So you come through many, many reasons. And then months will pass, and then years, and then a decade, easily. And that you know your brain will always take the safe option every time, unless you override it. So this is where a lot of energy comes in. You have to put in a lot of fuel to get over it. I was in a cycle for nearly 10 years and probably over with that, considering when I wanted to make content. So how do we override your brain? So here's the three key pieces. Number one, you need to change how you see your situation. It's not just about increasing desire for success, it's about making it unbearable to stay where you are. You need to emotionally trap yourself in the reality of staying the same. So how can we do this? Well, this is an exercise. I mean, I used to do this on myself all the time and there were lots of variations. I've got some other videos on this and this is something I will go through with clients really, really early on just to really put a benchmark here. So imagine yourself one year from now where you have not changed, you had no progress in all of these ambitions. How does that make you feel? And then extend it. Think about what it's like in five years, still stuck and you've not even tried any of this. And you may be, you know, cruising along in the status quo and whatever you're doing now. Now, for many people, remember this is for a specific type of person who has ambitions and wants to fulfill their potential, not necessarily someone who is totally happy with their current situation. Think about how that makes you feel. If you were stuck in that same situation, how do you feel? And then also reflect about that version. If you didn't try anything and you just kept making excuses and you didn't wander down path, how would you think about that version of you? You may have heard the horse to water analogy. You know, you can't. You can take a horse to water, but it. It won't drink if it doesn't want to. That can change if you make it thirsty by dehydration and putting salt in its mouth. Right. So you can change the environment and the scenario such that the horse is much more inclined to drink. And this is what you're doing here. So we have to do this emotionally to ourselves. This is why it's really hard, because it's often not a physical thing. You're trying to make it like a sensation, a feeling. And I had to do this to leave my corporate job because it was so difficult to make that jump for me because my programming would not allow me to do that in my head. And so I had to create this scenario. It had to. And it became, it became unbearable for me. And again, it's totally fine for many people and that is totally cool. But if it is not for you and you want to test something out, it has to become unbearable. Where, like having that salty mouth where you have to get, you have to get the drink. Right. Okay. I just remind myself to have a drink. So a couple of client examples. These are. Yeah. A client I worked with, she'd been waiting for well over 10 years to make a change and she just did. She just couldn't bring herself to make the change. But because she was in a comfortable, fairly well paid job. Same thing with Joe as well. And I've actually got. There's actually a whole bunch of clients who've been in this situation. It's really difficult to make this change. So don't underestimate it. They were always on the edge of taking it. They were right there. They were right there. And they kept getting to the same point every year, at least until I started working with them. And we had to find a way to make them jump off the edge. Right. In a way that works for them. And so we'll go over that in A minute. Yep. So they never jumped until we forced them to really look at their future and to feel the pain of staying the same. Yeah. So you have to get this bit. You have to have the desire. This is kind of like a motivation to do. To do that. Number two, we have to make a plan that you can actually execute. It's a plan that has to be something that makes sense to you. It can't if it is something too outside yourself. And I will, I will explain what this means in a moment, but if it's too different to you, you might just freeze. And that's actually what happens. So people will take courses or programs from how other people have done this. And it doesn't work because it's just too much. Right. In some way. So first thing, don't over complicate it. Don't, please don't over complicate it. Your plan must be. Now I say must. It doesn't have to be. But these are the plans I've seen work. Non ambiguous. It is not just about saying, I just need to get started. Most people don't know exactly what step one is. They haven't actually sat down and done it. Yeah. And step one for you, right? There's two things here. You've got to make it overwhelming and this is the tailored bit because what's overwhelming for one person is not overwhelming for someone else. So a step you can genuinely manage and it must be within your risk tolerance. And we'll talk about that in a moment. Stackable. You want these steps to build on themselves. You can think about this as a skill progression. As you start to work toward your ambition, you will, you will get more, you will believe in yourself more, your confidence will grow and we'll talk about courage in a moment. So the analogy I like to use here, if you've seen another video, I'll hopefully link it above here somewhere. Ollie the Octopus. Very quick summary. The idea is you want to be able to reach a first tentacle across to something where you know it is within your brain's risk tolerance. Remember the brake pedal from earlier? If you don't want to activate your brain too heavily. If it activates and it goes like emergency stop, well, you're not going anywhere. So you have to find a first step that feels manageable. And for me, example was content. For me, I remember took, I took a whole load of course creation, sorry, content, creation, thing, things. And I couldn't do what they said, you know, they said, publish your first video, put it online on TikTok. And just see how it goes. That was too overwhelming for me. I had to practice in the car shooting videos, talking to what I wasn't even recording. I was just talking to the camera app that was on, but wasn't actually talking. Sorry. Wasn't actually recording anything. And I slowly built up from there. The next analogy is the strategist versus performer. Your strategist side of you. So this is the part of you that likes to plan. Now, I know this is a planning step, but you've got to be careful. Avoid going to the perfect plan that doesn't exist. Being effective at this step at planning is not about making a complicated plan. It's exactly the opposite. It's about designing a plan that is perfectly suited to the performer side of you who is likely to struggle. It needs to be a safety. There needs to be a safety factor here as well. You have to make it a lot easier than you think. That's a summary. The strategist generally over plans, the performer gets easily, easily overwhelmed. So you just have to think. If you were trying to help someone walk across a rope bridge, how would you give them instructions about how to get across? You'd make it super. And imagine they're scared of heights. Right. The key, make it easy for the performer. Number three. Commit to execution even when it feels hard. This is not optional. And it requires something, you know, it requires something of you. It requires courage. Yeah, this is. This is not confidence. Right. Because confidence is nearly the knowing that you can do it. Courage is when you're really scared and you're kind of not sure whether you can do it and you're able to do it. It's a different power. You will not feel ready, but you must do it anyway. Now, provided you set up the plan up here so that is safe for you to do, then it requires you to focus on this piece. Okay. You will have emotional resistance. Again, you got to do it anyway. There is no way around this. I'll give you a side note here. One of my big roles when I'm coaching people one to one is helping them take this step. I can see how difficult it is. Like, literally when I'm speaking to them, it is extremely hard. So if you're doing this yourself, you have to find a way to coax yourself across that bridge. Or if you're at the edge and you want to jump in, you've got to find a way to do that. If you can't do it, I really, really urge you to find some accountability from someone. A coach, mentor, or anything like that. It doesn't really matter who it is, someone who's done it before. It's just. You just need to find a way so that you can execute this bit. The doing it anyway, even when you don't feel ready or you have emotional resistance. Okay. The first action is usually always the hardest because that's the first time where you've had to trust yourself and you've had to kind of take the step forward and be courageous. It gets a little bit easier each time. It doesn't. It's not easy. It gets easier. But every time you push through, you will get stronger. Remember, ambition without execution is just a fantasy. It will just remain like that forever. Are you willing to let your life flash by without ever knowing? In my next video, I'm going to go over how to practically build courage, because I realize people are going to a lot of people asking about this because it's important, and if you don't train it, you will stay in a cycle forever. Okay, see you in the next one.