How to overcome fear and anxiety in 3 SIMPLE STEPS
In this solo talk, Leila Hormozi explains why many leaders and entrepreneurs stall at a certain revenue level by choosing short‑term comfort over the discomfort required for long‑term growth. She illustrates the point with a real example of a technically skilled manager who avoided difficult performance conversations, leading to team dysfunction and ultimately his termination. Hormozi argues that this pattern—avoiding anxiety‑inducing tasks—prevents scaling from 7‑figure to 8‑figure businesses and beyond. She links the behavior to common avoidance mechanisms such as substance use and excessive reassurance. To break the cycle, she proposes three practical steps: (1) create a brain‑dump list of everything you are currently avoiding; (2) identify how you are unintentionally perpetuating the problem; and (3) imagine how an unafraid version of yourself would act and then emulate that behavior. By repeatedly confronting short‑term discomfort, leaders can build resilience, improve accountability, and unlock higher levels of business performance. The talk concludes with a call to self‑monitor for avoidance patterns and to adopt the three‑step framework as a habit for personal and organizational growth.
Chapters
What is up? In this video, what I want to talk about is substituting short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction. This comes from, um, an experience that I had with a leader, and it kind of seeps into understanding why some people are able to continue to grow in business versus some people stunt themselves. When I say stunt themselves, notice that I say stunt yourself because nobody does it to you, you do it to yourself. Essentially what happened was like we had this leader and he was super smart, really disciplined, technically very adept, right? Like he had a lot of skills. On paper, was a fantastic employee. However, he couldn't seem to choose long-term function over short-term discomfort. And so what I mean by that was this: every time I talked to him, I was like, okay, you know, he had teams underneath him. I would say, how are your direct reports doing? How's this person doing? These metrics over here look weird. Like, what's going on? And I would coach him on the conversations to have with those people below him. And every time that he would come back to me, I could tell he was really nervous and didn't really want to report back on what was going on with those people. And so eventually what I ended up doing is meeting with those direct reports of his and saying, hey, what's going on? Like, how's the relationship with your superior, etc., etc.? I'm essentially investigating. And time and time again, it happened with every one of his direct reports. Like, I would ask if they had gotten any feedback from him recently, how they feel they're doing, where there's you know, accountability, all this stuff, and they would have no idea what I was talking about. And it was very clear to me that the conversations that he was claiming to have with that team were not happening. What he was doing was he was trying to avoid the short-term pain of the uncomfortable conversation, right? But what he created for himself was long-term dysfunction in his role because he avoided doing a part of the job that was essential to succeeding in the business. And unfortunately, it ended up being that time and time again, after months of coaching, I had to let this person go. And the reason was, it was because it was exactly that. The team lost respect for this person. The team saw and knew that they should have been held accountable to a higher standard, and they weren't being. And so they thought— they looked at this person and felt like they weren't a fit for the team. Their peers started to notice and say, all the teams below you are dysfunctional and you're not doing anything about it. And so in an attempt to keep himself comfortable, he actually created himself a bigger problem. This is something that I see all the time with people who are specifically doing 7 figures a year and trying to get to 8. And if you're not able to push yourself out of that zone, then you essentially trap yourself in that, you know, whatever revenue level, right? And the reason for that is it's because we cannot delay gratification. Uh, I see this manifest a lot in different ways, and I've seen it in leaders in my team Luckily, unfortunately, I don't think a lot of people on my team do this at this point in time, but a lot of people would rather fix the problem in their immediate and actually create themselves a bigger problem later down the road. And so I'll give you a couple of examples. Something that I noticed— I was talking to Alex about this, actually. It was just a pattern that I noticed, and it kind of led to me thinking about this incident with this person on our team— is the manifestation of anxiety in people who are doing 7 figures. And what that looks like, which is in order to get to 8 figures, in order to get to 9 figures from 8 figures, you have to consistently put yourself at risk. Okay? And so what I mean by that is you have to consistently do things that are uncomfortable. It doesn't stop once you start the business. You have to constantly be putting yourself in discomfort. In fact, most of the time if you're running a business, you should be in discomfort at most points in time because if you are not, then you are probably not achieving what you could be. And I think a lot of the times people think that in order to achieve, I have to feel comfortable and confident in myself in order to achieve. I have never fucking achieved anything worthwhile while feeling confident. Most time I was scared shitless. I was super anxious, I was super worked up, and I was super not about it. You know, if you look at this leader, he avoided all these conversations. The first, I don't know, 10 to 15 times I had to have conversations like that with teammates and tell them that their jobs are on the line, tell them that they were really at risk, tell them that they weren't doing a good job, I was insanely anxious and so nervous. Like, it wakes me up at night, gets me up in the morning, like like I can't relax, like I was super worked up over it. Here's the thing. If you don't put yourself in the situation and you don't do that thing, you don't show yourself what you're capable of and you certainly don't make it to the next level. And this is why a lot of leaders stay stuck. It's not because of a lack of technical skill. And that's where a lot of people look because it's really easy to point there. It's like, oh, I just need to learn marketing. Oh, I just need to learn how to run this funnel. Oh, I just need to learn this thing. Those are easy as hell. What's not easy is being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am constantly choosing to be comfortable in the short term and creating long-term dysfunction for myself. I am capping myself. And a lot of people do this through different means. You see it in business, in manifestations of, you know, a lot of times I'll talk to people and they're like, oh yeah, I'm totally good, et cetera. And then they drink a bottle of bourbon every night or they smoke weed every day. I see this all the time. And it's something that I actually talked to Alex about because I'm like, I feel like there's almost something wrong with me. I have feelings of anxiety and stress and things like that all the time, and I want to avoid these feelings, but I don't. And the reason I don't is because I know that I'm just gonna create more problems for myself down the road. And that's what this guy did. He kept saying, oh, I don't wanna feel these feelings. I don't wanna have this discomfort of letting these people go, of telling them they're not doing a good job, of having these conversations. So instead he got himself fired. And people do this in one way, shape, or form in their business all the time. It's specifically that jump from 7 to 8 figures. If I look at the behaviors that I had before we got to 8 figures, right? A lot of it was trying to avoid these things. And the reality is that in order to get to a level, a higher level in business, you have to accept the discomfort that comes with it and you have to not try and run from it. Right? And so think about it like this, right? Somebody goes on a diet and they're like, I want to lose weight, I want to get in shape, but I just can't feel super hungry all the time. Well, then what the fuck? Like, How are you going to be in a calorie deficit and not feel hungry? Please tell me. It's going to be a very, very hard struggle. Like, what are you going to do? Eat lettuce all the time, all day, every day to feel some sort of comfort? Or are you going to get used to feeling hungry? And that's the same thing that goes for business. Are you going to, uh, take stimulants to stay awake and get your work done, take stuff to go to bed and not think about your anxiety? Or are you going to face it, let yourself feel those things, tell yourself It's okay, it's normal. And then move on and get to the next level of business. And it's something that I see time and time and time again. And I think it is what prevents most people from becoming true leaders in companies, right? Because who's going to actually look up to somebody who has crutches like that? Who's going to look up to somebody who avoids discomfort? Not many people. Most people look up to people with values and resilience. If you're looking at yourself or you're looking at people on your team and you're trying to figure out how to break past this, right? How to get out of constantly choosing short-term comfort and then sacrificing your long-term functionality as a human, right? By limiting yourself, by creating these limits on yourself, by constantly choosing comfort. There's 3 things that I do, right? One is I will make a list of things that I am avoiding, because I think most of the time the things that we get scared of, the things that we constantly seek to, you know, not do anything about, are the things that we're avoiding. And so if you just sit down and you brain dump and you go, what am I avoiding right now? That's the first thing you want to do. And if you're coaching someone on this, you want to say, I want you to write down everything you're avoiding right now in your role. So in your role, maybe if you're talking to them about their life in general, their life in general, but in general, I would say you're talking about their job. And so it's like, what are you avoiding right now? The second thing that you want to write down is what are you doing to perpetuate the problem? So most people don't just have a problem, and I myself am included in this. I am coaching myself all the time on this stuff. You have a problem, but then you perpetuate that problem by by acting like you're scared of the problem. So think about like this, right? You're scared of elevators. Somebody's scared of elevators. And you can use it like— when I'm saying this, I'm just giving you the analogy. A lot of times it's scared of hard conversations, scared of going live, scared of making social media posts, scared of whatever, right? Talking at social events, etc. Um, say you're scared of elevators. And so instead of just being like, wow, I'm scared of elevators, every time I go on a freaking elevator it sucks, um, you say, I am going to avoid elevators at all costs. And I will not go to a building with elevators, and I will not ride, uh, on an elevator, and I will not live in a building with elevators. I won't go anywhere with elevators because I cannot do elevators. Okay, I actually know somebody who had this fear, and because of that, they couldn't live in certain buildings because they were so damn scared of elevators. But what if instead that person said, I am scared of elevators. Second course of action: what am I doing to perpetuate this problem? I continue to avoid elevators. Okay, I am no longer going to avoid elevators. I'm going to commit to feeling the short-term discomfort of going in the elevator, and then long-term knowing that I will be able to be a normal functioning person who this does not affect their life. Because yes, I get nervous in elevators, but eventually the nervousness goes away, and it goes away faster if I confront the elevator. That is the second thing you want to do. You want to ask yourself what you're doing to perpetuate the problem. What behaviors have you created around that problem to make it exist even more? You know, a lot of the times you look at like substances— people drink and they smoke to avoid something— and because of that, you're teaching yourself literally that you cannot deal with that emotion, that in order to calm yourself down, in order to relax, in order to get some respite, you must drink, you must smoke, you must take a pill. That's not true. But you don't give yourself the chance to see that it's not true because you continue to do those behaviors. Okay, so the first thing is, what am I avoiding? The second thing is, how am I perpetuating this behavior, feeling, etc., situation? And then the last thing you want to do is say, if I was not afraid of this thing, if I was not avoiding this thing, what would I do? Because you can come at it from two angles. There's the behavior angle, and then there's a thinking angle. I find for myself, when I have these situations, I have to ask myself, what would someone who's not uncomfortable, not afraid, etc., etc., what would they do? And eventually, if I do that thing enough, if I act unafraid enough, I will— my brain will catch up and be like, there is nothing to be afraid of, there is nothing to avoid. That's the third piece. You have to ask yourself what someone would do who was not anxious, scared, nervous about this situation. Okay, so in the case of the guy that I was telling you about who I had to unfortunately let go, if he had asked himself that question, he would have said, I should show up to the conversation, I should be okay with the fact that I might lose some sleep over it, that I might be nervous over it, that I might be shaking when I'm having the conversation. But I'm gonna do it anyways because long term, if I have more of these conversations, I'll get better at them and eventually they won't make me nervous at all. And that is what— if you look at the actual things that prevent people from getting to the next level, it is this shit. It's not the skills, it's not the marketing, it's not the sales. Yes, there are those things in people who are already not avoiding anything and not trading any short-term pleasure for long-term discomfort, but most people do because we're humans and we're programmed that way. And there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, you are good at being a human because humans are built to learn. They're built to assimilate patterns and they're built to protect themselves. It's not useful though when it comes to success. So it's like, you know, we can either use that as an excuse or we can say, I have to unfortunately train myself differently because my brain is a million years old. It doesn't serve me anymore. And so that's what's been on my mind today. I hope that it's of use to you because it's something that I remind myself of all the time. I have to catch myself and say, am I doing something to avoid, uh, that is going to create long-term dysfunction because it doesn't feel good in the moment. And then I have to ask myself, what am I avoiding? What behaviors am I perpetuating around this emotion or around this situation that are making it worse? And then what would I do if I wasn't afraid? And then I can logically walk myself into a situation and say, because of these 3 reasons, I need to do this, which means I will be uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long term, I will be a stronger, more resilient person. And ultimately, guys, that is how you grow a business. You become a stronger person, you become a more resilient person, you become the version of yourself that can achieve those things. Because the version of yourself that can achieve the things that you want to achieve often is unshakable. They are not easily manipulated, they are not easily subdued, and they are a fighter. And so that is how you continue to rise in the ranks of business. And I know this was kind of a rant, um, but I just felt called to do it because I've had so many conversations lately with people who are keeping themselves stuck because they just continue to choose. They continue to choose to avoid the conversations. They continue to choose to not have, uh, the uncomfortable situations with people. They continue to say that they have anxiety and they have to go to medication or alcohol. And it makes me sad because you know what? I've had so many times when I'm tempted to do the same damn thing. And I do not let myself because I know that it will just create worse for me in the long run. And so I hope that was of use to you. If it was, go ahead, hit subscribe. I will see you on the next one.
