In this motivational talk, Matthew Hussey reflects on a recent virtual retreat where participants expressed newfound freedom after overcoming self‑imposed limits. He identifies fear of others’ judgment as a primary barrier to personal growth and offers seven concrete mindsets to counteract that fear. The mindsets range from embracing being wrong and focusing on long‑term character, to trusting one’s own good intentions, leaning on the opinions of trusted loved ones, visualizing life as a large canvas, accepting that one’s personal best is sufficient, and recognizing that the fear of social rejection is an ancient, evolutionary programming that should be subordinated to higher‑frequency goals such as speaking truth, making impact, and living fully. Hussey ties these principles to the purpose of his virtual retreats, which aim to help participants connect with their deeper, non‑material aspirations. He concludes with a promotion for an upcoming September retreat, highlighting an early‑bird discount, the psychological benefit of committing a future date, and the urgency it creates for personal development.
Questions this video answers
September 24–26 (final virtual retreat of the year).
25% off for the next 30 days (early-bird special).
April 3, 2021.
Chapters
Well, we finished the virtual retreat just over a week ago and you didn't come here to do a little bit of tinkering with your life. You came here to change your life, to change the conversation you're having with this life, with yourself and with the people around you. And my God, it was a beautiful experience. During the virtual retreat, one of the advantages of doing it virtually is that we have a live chat. And every time I got a glimpse of what was going on in the live chat, it was exceptionally beautiful. And one of the common themes was this feeling of people having held themselves back until this point in their life and finally feeling free. to go after what they want. In fact, there's a lot of people that said, I almost held myself back from doing the virtual retreat. And I almost didn't do it. And now I'm so glad I did. This is a common theme in people's lives. This idea that you have this potential, this unrealized potential. And yet somehow we get in the way of that potential. We hold ourselves back. And one of the big reasons we hold ourselves back is because of the fear of how people will react, what other people will think if we step out and do something different to what we're doing now. So I wanted to give you some practical tools that I use to help me overcome those fears of what people think and keep moving forward anyway. The first one is I'm prepared to be wrong. I don't put a ton of stock in the ability to be right all the time. I like being right. I like when people say, man, you nailed that. But the bigger picture for me is the search for truth, and I'm willing to get things wrong in the search for truth. And I know that if I make a video where something goes wrong or people correct me or add a subtlety or a distinction to a point that I've made that can make a future video better and craft, it's almost like those comments that people make, they chisel away at the point I'm making and offer me a better way of thinking about it so that the next time I say it to a new audience, I say it even better. Number two, I remember that the race is long, that I can be judged today for something I say or do, but the over a lifetime, what's more important is how I'm judged on my character. And character is consistent. Character to me, operates on a longer timeline. So anytime I'm worried about how someone's going to judge one move I make, I remind myself that the race is long. I am going to have many, many, many moments in my lifetime to show people who I really am instead of worrying that everything that I am has to be well represented in this one snapshot. Number three, I remember the intentions matters. If I put out a video, a lot of people will comment on what my intentions are for me. You know, they'll some people will ascribe the worst intentions to what I do or what I'm saying. And the danger is in valuing their representation of your intention over what you know to be your true intention. When my head hits the pillow at night, What I want to know is, did I mean well? Did I try to do the right thing? Was I trying to do something good? And if I didn't communicate that well, then that's a communication issue. I just need to work on how I communicate those things. But what I don't do is allow other people to tell me what I meant by something or what my intentions are. If you know your intentions are good, return to that. Number four, I remember the people that love me and know me and understand what I'm trying to do. My two brothers, Jameson, my mom, my dad. I think of the people that really get me and who know me for who I am so that when someone says something nasty or judges me too harshly without really knowing me, I remember the opinions of the people that truly know me and I return to that because ultimately those are the opinions that matter. And that may not be your mom or your dad, by the way, you know, it might be that your mom or dad don't know you as well as your best friend does at this stage or your partner, you know, and that might be some of the root of the conflict that you have with certain people in your lives is that they're not as close to you as certain other people who you've chosen to make family, but the person who truly knows you and knows you at your core and how good your heart is, return to what those people think about you. Number five, I focus on the bigger picture that I'm painting in my life. I think about all of our lives as a giant canvas that we're adding to every day with each brush stroke, that at the end of our lives is gonna be the picture of who we were, what we stood for, what we created, what our life meant. And therefore, when someone judges your brushstroke, when they're looking at something you're doing in your day to day and judging it or commenting on it or criticizing it, remember they can only see that brushstroke and they don't have the picture of the whole painting. Maybe they're not zoomed out enough to see what I've already created and they're certainly not aware of what's being created, of what that painting is going to look like at the end. So, I don't allow someone's judgment of the brushstroke to deter me because I understand that they don't have a perspective of the full picture that's being painted. Number six, I always remember that my best has to be enough for me. I'm always going to fall short. I'm going to fall short of certain expectations that people have of me on any given day. I am gonna fall short of sometimes the expectations I have of myself. And sometimes, by the way, that's true even in a relationship. You know, we get worried that like, am I gonna lose this person? Am I gonna be enough for this person? We think about that in jobs too. Am I gonna get fired? Am I gonna do well enough for this job? Our best has to be enough for us because that's all there is, is us waking up, giving our best that day, and resigning ourselves to the fact that that's what we were able to do that day. Tomorrow we'll wake up and we'll do the same thing again. But if that's not enough for somebody else or an organization or the world or an audience, that's okay. My best has to be enough for me. Your best has to be enough for you. Number seven, I remember that despite all of my better, wisdom. The feeling of worrying about what other people think is something that's not my fault. There is an evolutionary programming to this, you know, the ancient fear of being outcast from the tribe, that it may affect our survival in some way if the angry mob comes to our door, if people don't like us. This is not our original thought. It is millions of years old. We just get stuck with this thought that's not our own, that's part of our programming. That's not our fault, it's our burden. And what we have to allow ourselves to do is take a wiser stance than that primitive egoic stance that's perhaps always going to be with us in some form. And what I do to combat that is I don't try to eradicate the part of me that cares what other people think. I find a goal that's more important than the goal of making people like me. the desire to be liked is a low frequency goal. The the I have three other things that I have as higher frequency goals that are more important than the desire to be liked. One of them is to speak truth and that's whether I'm being liked or not, I want to speak truth. The second is to make an impact in the world in my own modest way. And the third is to live a full life. And I know that I cannot achieve those three goals, speak truth, make an impact, live a full life. If I'm trying to constantly serve that lower frequency master. If I'm trying to serve the goal of being liked all the time, which by the way is an impossible goal to achieve, it cannot be achieved. But trying to achieve it will also cost you the higher frequency goal because you can't do those things whilst you're trying to be liked all the time. You don't have to even think about it in terms of confidence. It's just rational to say the only achievable goal is the higher frequency goal, but I can't achieve that unless I let go of this egoic low frequency goal. That, by the way, for those of you that are wondering about the virtual retreat is one of the primary aims of that retreat is to get people in touch with what it is they actually want to do in their lives what's important to them, what they stand for. I'm not talking about external material goals and achievements. I'm talking about what do they want to achieve in their life as a high frequency goal. Because once we get connected to that, it's then that we're not, it's not that we're able to eradicate all of these fears, it's that we just found something much more important. And that becomes our compass, our north, for the way that we live our lives. if you missed the retreat in March, I have another one coming up in September, which will be the final virtual retreat of the year from the 24th to the 26th. I would encourage everybody who is thinking about this to come and get on board now for a couple of reasons. One, we just, for the next 30 days, released an early bird special on this program, meaning it's 25 off. It is the best price that we'll have between now and the program itself. In 30 days, the price goes up again. The second reason is so that you have a date in your diary that makes you feel like, you know what? No matter what else happens in my life this year, my growth is secured. That's how I feel. Every time I book myself onto a program or a mastermind with amazing people that I know are going to level me up, even if it's six months away, it gives me this sense of, I I can breathe because I know that this part of my life is going to be handled. I've put something in the diary I can't avoid. It's happening. And by the way, the last reason is because when I have a date in the diary like that, it gives me a sense of urgency about doing things today because I want to have achieved things and made things happen and have grown by the time that date comes around. So just having that date, the 24th to the 26th of September in your diary, will make you do more between now and then because you'll want to have momentum by the time you get there. I'll leave a link here. Get on board now. If you're even thinking about doing this year and you know you're gonna sign up later, sign up now. I will see you in next week's video. Thank you as always for being here.
