Why Fear of Failure is Holding You Back

In today's video, I'm going to break down the fear of failure and how to overcome the fear of failure with science-backed strategies. I'm especially going to break down Sarah Blakely's secret hack for overcoming the fear of failure that her father taught her. It's an amazing tool and mindset that her father gave her as a young child. Plus, I'm going to talk about the power of the alter ego. We're going to talk about how to release trauma that might be handcuffing you from achieving your highest level of success. And we're also going to break down how to overcome procrastination and perfectionism. I call them the evil stepsisters of progress, uh, towards your greatest dream. So we're gonna dive in. Can't wait. Go ahead and click the like or the subscribe button, and, uh, let's dive in. All right, so guys, uh, I want to dive in the fear of failure that paralyzes so many of us, and it's closely tied to the fear of success. But primarily today I'm going to talk about the fear of failure and how to redefine failure in your mindset so that you can achieve your highest and biggest dreams and ambitions, and that you can show up fully for the greatest version of yourself, whether you're a young entrepreneur, a leader, a corporate star, whatever it may be, or you're a stay-at-home mom and you're just battling, hey, the mindset of failure, right? And overcoming elements around that to show up fullest for you. And let's start with the first major obstacle that most of us face. And I should also preface that today we're going to break down a lot of different things that are going to be backed by the neuroscience side of things, but also be backed by trauma-informed wisdom and insight that I've learned from books like Body Keeps the Score and Healing Trauma, and they won't see ordinarily taught, but it actually shows up in this peak performance world that we love to swim in, in the self-improvement world that I'm in, right? Of like, how do I grow faster? Well, sometimes we got to get rid of the junk in the trunk, which brings us to the first one, which is the first major step out of 9 major steps that I have so far. I might add a few more by the end of the video. They just flow into me. But the first one is to acknowledge and remove the emotional blocks, the traumas, and the limiting beliefs or stories that are handcuffing you. And you want to think of trauma or negative energy that got frozen in your body or your nervous system. It's almost like dead weight. It's like you're trying to take off, but you got these things that are stuck in your nervous system and that became frozen. What is trauma? It's basically where your nervous system got too overwhelmed and essentially got frozen. And so that negative energy literally is emotionally stuck. And you could have 4 or 5 or a dozen things that are just stuck in your nervous system that energetically don't allow you to show up in your biggest and boldest and most beautiful and magnificent self. Okay? And I see that happen with both men and women. Doesn't matter age, gender, race, whatever. There's things that get lodged in our nervous system where we don't know how to process something that is emotionally overwhelming. And the reason this is so important is your emotions are so valuable for the fuel for your success, for your fuel to overcome things, for the fuel for you to show up in life at your greatest version. And I had to become very deeply trauma-informed, as you might have heard from my wife's story. My wife's a 3-time suicide survivor. When we got pregnant in October 2020, it created a cascade of mental health crises from complex PTSD, deep depression, panic attacks 3 or 4 times a week. And it was a massive handcuff, not just for her, but for me as well, as I'm her partner and we were trying to navigate this together and get her on the other side, right? Fortunately, we did. And we've got— I've got other videos that broke down how we did it and, and how we essentially helped her get to a dramatically better place. But I'm not going to dive into that too much. But I want you to recognize that those things, if you do not address them, It's again like mixing a pure glass of water with dirty water. That dirty water is going to cloud that pure water that you had. And that's what's happened to you energetically if you don't clear the stuff out. And right now, personally, I feel as clear or as light as a feather energetically, the most I've ever felt in my life because of that work that I've cleared out, which is starting to rapidly attract more abundance, more opportunities, more growth. For me because I don't have anything holding me back. I'm not, I'm not dragging a dead carcass behind me of weight, of emotional heaviness and trauma. Okay, so, and I see that over and over with my clients. I'll actually share one story. One of my favorite clients, Alex, Alex Cattoni, you can see her in the video there. She had some PTSD and it was pretty heavy for her. And as we did the work, we did a private session. I flew up to Vancouver and we were— I worked with her and her husband. And as we released 3 different layers of PTSD, one, one that she could remember, okay, the other 2 she had forgotten about, but they were buried in her nervous system. And as we did the work, they came up and she felt safe to be able to process and navigate them. And so as we worked through that, she got on the other side of those things, as did her husband, who had 3 different, ironically, 3 different things that were heavy and we'll call it a little bit of shame, right? From the past, which as a man, I've had some shame. You have some shame, it's a dead weight. And the shame is our least favorite emotion and it's actually the lowest vibration on David Hawkins' Maps of Consciousness scale. As we work through those, then energetically, you can literally see them both by the end of the day, it's like their sun was bursting through their skin. And they were full of light and liveliness, and his shoulders literally pulled back, and he just felt more powerful and more strong, and she felt more vibrant and more magnificent in her energy, and it just sparked a new level of depth and love in their relationship. So, be sure to watch that video. I'll put that in the link here below. And she's a top YouTuber. She's, you know, one of the top people in her space in the world. And we did it all in one session. Okay. And so clearing that out just allowed her to soar. I didn't— and I anchored her in. We did some of the other things I'm going to talk about today, but that was the massive, the most massive aspect of what we did that one day. So the second thing— that's the first thing again, to recap: acknowledge and remove the emotional blocks, the traumas, and limiting beliefs. And the second thing is to visualize and anchor the successful outcome. So the reason I did the other one first is because if you have a bunch of junk and you're trying to visualize and anchor the successful outcome, it's like there's an emotional block. Your body is going to say, I don't think we can do that, that's too much, I'm blah blah blah. And you're, you're commingling, you're mixing things together that shouldn't be mixed. So you got to get rid of that stuff first. And I see that over and over in my programs, my Rewired program, where we'll work through some money trauma and boom, people will be able to lift off because we didn't even have to teach them new beliefs. They just had to clear out the money trauma. That was the dead weight. So, but the second thing, the visualizing the anchor to a successful outcome, this is where you go off into the future. You recognize who you are, who you have to be, like who is the person that shows up to attract the wealth, the partner, the love, the healthy family, whatever it may be that you want to create that buys the dream home. Who do you have to become and then anchoring yourself to that version. You want to see yourself already. I am that person, not I'm becoming. Well, ideally, if you need to, I am becoming works, but not I want to be. Okay, I just want to clarify, we don't use what I call weak-ass words here, which is I hope to, I wish to, I would love to. Those are all weak. Okay, they're disempowering, they're neutering words. Instead of I am becoming, I am this, I am him or her or whatever, right? I am the most magnificent, powerful version of myself. All right, so you want to visualize, anchor, and get as much vivid detail as possible. What are you seeing? What are you feeling? What are you hearing? What are you reading? What are you eating? What are you smelling? What are you dressed like? How are you moving? How are you walking? What's your self-talk look like? So you're getting those things anchored in. Have a great powerful alter ego exercise. I'll put the link in here. That you can just grab that and go through that worksheet as well, which I have another video you want to check out on the alter ego, which is one of the more powerful processes that you see like Beyoncé and Kobe Bryant and other super high performers that are world-renowned utilize. Okay. So that's the second thing. Visualize and anchor to the successful outcome. See it in your mind's eye enough so that your body believes it's true. All right. You listen to Joe Dispenza, you see Tom Brady late they see the outcomes before they happen. So much so that it just becomes like by that time that you have that game-winning shot that you have to take and you're Michael Jordan, you have already seen the outcome 1,000 times because you've already seen that video, that mind movie play over and over and over. All right, so that's the second one. Third one, reframe failure. This is where Sarah Blakely comes in. You know what her father used to say when she was a little girl? To her brother every night at dinner. They would ask her, he would ask her and her brother, hey, what did you fail at today? What that shifted in Sarah Blakely is that failure is not something to be scared of. Failure is something to be embraced and something to encourage in the sense of the more I fail forward faster, the more I learn and the more I become. You will never find someone that achieved extraordinary things that did not overcome a lot of things, right? Tony Robbins overcame so much, like no college education and working as a janitor as a high schooler and all these things, no dad, and his mom was kind of abusive, like crazy things that happened in his life. So you reframe failure, okay? Sarah Blakely took that to reframe failure as failure is a good thing. Failure is not something to be running away from, and you'll always see that high performers at their best Embrace failure as part of the growth step to get to success. Meaning every next failure leads me one step closer to my success. So I want to encourage you to really reframe failure as a good thing. If you look at the middle class, middle class versus abundant, middle class, they are stuck in failure is something to be avoided at all costs. Got to get perfect grades, got to do this, got to do that, don't bring shame to the family. Versus a billionaire. Hey, they've probably been bankrupt 2 or 3, 4 times, right? So I really encourage you, you got to embrace failure as progress, and that's intentional growth. Okay? Not just, hey, I'm winging it, I'm just going to flail around, but I'm intentionally working towards a worthy goal or dream, and I'm okay with the failure because I'm learning. Failure is learning. So seeing failure as learning. So that's what Sarah Blakely's father taught her, is that failure is learning. and it's making you one step closer to your ideal goal. It's something to be embraced essentially on a daily basis. Wow. So if I'm embracing failure on a daily basis, I'm going to be a lot less scared, and my ego is going to be in submission to growth. Okay, so I want to emphasize that ego and submission to growth. Fourth thing: redefine success. And this is tightly tied into reframing failure. Redefine success as Progress towards the desired destination. Progress over perfection is your obsession. That's one of my favorite quotes that I came up with, so you can quote me if you want. Progress over perfection is my obsession, which then also helps you start becoming, uh, and becoming accepting of the imperfections along the way and loving the progress. You want to fall in love with the progress and just find joy in the pursuit. The pursuit becomes the joy and the obstacle becomes the way. So redefining success as progress towards the desired destination, which brings us to the fifth thing, shedding perfectionism and procrastination. When we are in a perfectionist mindset, it actually handcuffs us towards progress, meaning we're going to stand back and we're going to be like, ah, hands off. I can't figure out a way to make this perfect. Instead of just saying, hey, how can I make this 80% better? Which is— learned this from Dan Sullivan's great book, 80% Approach. You can read it in like 40 minutes, but it's one simple principle, which is— and it's actually kind of borrowed from GE's Six Sigma process— which is how if I have a big dream, big goal, and if I say, what if I just make the goal instead of going in one shot all the way, 0 to 100% perfect, my first iteration, I just want to make 80% progress over where I'm at now. All right, boom. Then I make 80% progress over where I'm at after the first 80%, then the 80% improvement 4 more times. So 6 times of 80% improvement. Guess what? You're going to be like a massive, uh, massively closer, and you will have reframed, and your nervous system will have let go of this quest to be perfect. Okay, so looking how to make 80% high-quality progress. That also helps you reduce the procrastination. Another thing around procrastination is perfectionism and procrastination are the biggest things that sabotage our fear of failure or fear of progress ultimately, right? And if you can move those out of the way by creating new patterns and new patterns being like 80% progress is a mindset and a strategy That helps your perfectionist tendencies or procrastinating tendencies say, oh, I can make 80% progress. I can just improve upon what we have right now. Beautiful. Now you're going to be off the races and your nervous system is almost like you're going to start skiing downhill instead of skiing uphill. Okay. So that's the fifth thing, shedding perfectionism and procrastination. Six, apply the 1% rule to everyday activities. And here's what I mean. How can I get a little bit better every day? And a simple way to measure it is just, can I make 3 steps forward every single day? If I make 3 steps forward every single day, I'm going to make over 1,000 steps in a year towards my desired dream and destination. So it's almost like biting, you know, eating an elephant one bite at a time. I don't like to eat elephants, but you know, supposedly that became a metaphor somewhere in our personal development world. But if I make a little bit of progress every single day, I'm gonna make a lot of progress over the single— over a year, and a ton of progress over 2 or 3 years, and a mountain of progress over a decade. So 1% better every day, and the simple way to measure it is 3 steps forward every single day. And that can be like, hey, one of them could be reading a book about your chosen subject. So I read 10 minutes today, I listen to podcasts, I, uh, I wrote down some ideas, I improved the landing page, I whatever, I started, I reached out and had a conversation, I tested an offer, whatever, whatever it may be, you figure out what your steps are. But if I just make 3 simple steps for it every single day, I'm going to be in a very different destination in the year and by the end of the year. Right. Seventh, the power of the alter ego. I love this one. This is one of the most powerful tools that more people should use. I learned about it initially through NLP and where I started helping people create Alter Egos. And then of course Todd Herman came out with a great book about 6, 7 years ago called Alter Ego. It's really good. I highly recommend that as well. Links in the video description. But go ahead and start imagining. And I actually take people in my Claim Your Power NLP meditation and take people through the process to anchor and connect with their alter ego while we're deep in a hypnotic or subconscious state. Where we can access what your body, what your body's connection is with his or her higher alter ego. So when you are being led by your alter ego, so I got a couple. One of them is Magic Mike, and it's not the dancing Magic Mike, but I create magic in the lives of, in my life and the lives of those I serve. Another one is Hollywood Mike Z. He's a little more entertainer. And when I step into those characters, guess what? I bring in different energy. And allows my mind to creatively stretch and imagine and play. So I invite you to figure out some things. And I have an alter ego worksheet that you can download and it goes through like, how does he or she walk? How does he or she talk? What type of things does he or she not tolerate in her life or his life? What words does he or she say? What's the music? What's the playlist? How does he or she dress? How does he or she speak of himself and others? Things like that. So it takes you through that process to get really intimately connected, and then you invite that version of you to show up and to lead and to bring your highest and best self further. Okay? Or more present into your regular life. And then you can also identify the weak versions of yourself and ask them to sit in the backseat. They're no longer driving your car, no longer driving the vehicle of your life, right? You invite them to go in the backseat. Which I go through in my Claim Your Power NLP meditation. But that's a really, really powerful process. I've seen it work time and time again. I'm not going to go through the whole process today. Then the 8th one is the anchor. Creating the anchor. And this can be like a physical anchor. It can be something like putting Post-it notes that remind you of your higher self. Hey, I am Magic Mike. You might put that in a window. Right? Or I am powerful and abundant. Whatever it may be. I am a world-renowned speaker. So you're anchoring in, this is where I'm going. This is who I am. This is how I'm showing up. And clothes can be an anchor. Like if you figure out, I have a little necklace here. This necklace here has a little lion on it. It's for me. My wife got it for me for Christmas and just reminds me to show up as a powerful version of me, which one of my you know, not alter egos, but an animal spirit, we'll call it, is a lion. And a lion that protects his family. Or a lion that is loving and powerful and unafraid. Like, you know, one of those quotes, "A lion doesn't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep." A lion doesn't lose sleep over the opinions of sheep. That helped me. It's helping me. Just unconsciously and energetically remind myself, I'm— I want to be a lion man. A man who is a force for good, a man who protects the people he cares about, and a man who is not going to let the opinions of sheep sway him from being who he truly is. Okay, hope you guys are loving this, by the way. Be sure to share this out with someone who could use this as well, and give me some likes, some comments. Let me know if I missed a couple that you would add, all right? Because I'm creating more videos. I want to add some more content as well. But the number one, or the ninth one, is affirmations. And they're really, really powerful. They're such an easy tool. And what you want to do with an affirmation is you write it out in a powerful present tense. And it can be like, I am becoming, I am this. Okay, if something like, I am becoming, I am a millionaire. If that doesn't feel true in your nervous system, it feels like scary. Oh no, I'm not a millionaire yet. Blah, blah, blah. Well, you might write out, I am becoming a millionaire. All right, so as you start writing out these affirmations, like, I would say them morning and night, or at least the morning, and it shifts your energy to go to that higher state of who you're becoming, where you're going with your life and your destination. And it really— I don't actually do them currently, but I did them for about 2 and a half years, and I need to rewrite my affirmations so that I can because so many of them changed and actually so many of my last version have come true, which is wild, right? In 2 years, I was in a really dark spot and I did these every day. I probably missed 5 days in the whole year. And you know what? So many of them already come true, which motivates me now as I'm talking to you guys. I got to go back and create a new version of my affirmations. And then I want to leave you guys with this quote from Marianne Williamson. And I'm gonna see if I can remember it by memory. I don't have it pulled up on my screen, but it's Marianne Williamson's quote from A Course in Miracles, and she says, or Return to Love, I'm sorry. And she says, our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, talented, gorgeous, and fabulous? Who are you not to be? You are brilliant. Uh, you are a child of God and you're playing small. Doesn't enlighten anyone. In fact, as you let your own light shine, you unconsciously liberate others to do the same. So I encourage you guys, remember, you are meant to be a bright shining light to liberate others to do the same. So shine bright, don't hold back your greatness, bring it forth. And I hope you guys like this video. Be sure to subscribe, like, comment, and grab the downloads if you want to go deeper. I've also got the 14 tools to rewire and rapidly rewire your nervous system. That's neurorewiring.com. I got a bunch of other stuff right down there. Take a look, and, uh, I'll see you on the next video.