Confidence is Overrated: Chapter 2 "Don't Forget the Special Sauce"

Confidence is overrated by Travis Thomas in informal reading. Chapter two: Don't forget the special sauce. Quote: Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson. To all of you out there who owned a TV in the '80s, I am sure you can finish this sentence. 2 all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickled onion on a— can you finish the rest? Come on now. On a sesame seed bun. Boom! Yes, proof positive advertising works. It's been nearly 40 years since that ad has run, yet that useless jingle is still stuck somewhere in my brain taking up valuable space. Shout out to Trevor Mowatt. And going back to the '80s, One of the big questions people wanted to know was, what is that special sauce in a McDonald's Big Mac? After an extensive 30-second Google search, here you go. Ingredients: 1/4 cup real mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons ketchup, 1 tablespoon finely diced yellow onion, 1 tablespoon sweet pickle relish, 2 teaspoons yellow mustard, 1/4 teaspoon white vinegar, tiny pinch of cayenne pepper. There you have it, mystery solved. So the special sauce isn't much of a secret, but it's crucial nonetheless. A Big Mac without the special sauce isn't a Big Mac, it's just another burger. Likewise, it's easy to forget the main ingredient needed for courage. That main ingredient, of course, Is fear. Without fear, there is no courage. So instead of seeing fear as a negative, as something that needs to be avoided or extinguished, what if we embraced it? Instead of running from fear, what if we leaned into it? Instead of demonizing fear as the enemy, what if we viewed it as an ally? Fear is a normal and important part of our consciousness. It prevents us from stepping into traffic, standing too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. Or petting wild animals. Fear is a survival tool. It's been an integral part of our evolution for millions of years, long before humans were on top of the food chain, before the technologically advanced society we live in now. Fear helped us question every rustle in the bushes as a potential threat to our safety. Disease, starvation, shelter, weather, other tribes, and dangerous wild animals were an everyday part of life. If I were able to decipher some of those early cave drawings, I'm sure you would find etched into some wall, better safe than sorry. Over time, the wisdom associated with being fearful became less and less practical as modern advances increased many of those early risks. Yes, there is still violence, disease, and plenty to be afraid of, but there is no longer the primal need to be in a constant state of fear. Today, unless you are a thrill seeker— try that one again. Today, unless you are a thrill seeker or live in a war-torn region, there is little reason to walk through life waiting for something tragic to happen. Most of the fear that grips people nowadays is associated with the safety of their identity within their communities and relationships. The fear of public speaking is the number one fear among people. Even higher than the fear of death itself. As comedian Jerry Seinfeld brilliantly joked, so if you're at a funeral, the person giving the eulogy would rather switch places with the person in the coffin. There is still fear of our physical safety, whether it's getting injured or contracting a disease, but most of our fear nowadays is a choice. For me, my fear of getting hurt on the soccer field was within my control. I didn't have to play soccer. It was my choice. What I needed was the support and tools to help me face those fears. I knew there was growth on the other side of the struggle, but it was never life or death. So since it was my choice, I chose not to grow. Intellectually, we all get it. Fear manifests as a wall we need to climb to get stronger. Joseph Campbell describes it as a key part Of the hero's journey. Fear is the dragon we need to slay. We know that adversity makes us stronger. All we need to do is run at that storm and take it head on to find the gold on the other side. So why don't we embrace fear? Because it's uncomfortable. That's why. Who wants to be uncomfortable? Yes, there are some individuals out there who really seem to enjoy pushing themselves to extreme levels of discomfort. That's not me. Is that you? Do you seek out discomfort or do you crave comfort? Courage without fear is comfort. We have become a society that puts comfort above almost all else. The allure of celebrity and fame is tightly woven with the luxuries and opulence that lifestyle brings. Mansions, yachts, private jets, clothes that are never worn twice, fine food, and all other sorts of excess. We get tricked into thinking that comfort is the reward for our hard work. And it's true, financial success brings with it the ability to offload less desirable responsibilities. But if comfort and convenience is the constant focus, what do we slowly lose along the way? Think of it this way: central heating has not always been a thing. In fact, it wasn't until around the early 1700s That people in England and Russia were able to circulate heat indoors using an air duct. In 1741, Benjamin Franklin developed a more efficient stove, and it's not until 1883 that Thomas Edison brought us the electric heater. Of course, all these facts I just knew. Up until that time, for millions of years, if humans wanted to stay warm, they needed to build a fire. And keep that fire going. So you had to be really selective about when you were going to build a fire and deplete your resources. For millions of years, people were accustomed to living, working, and thriving in weather conditions rarely held at a comfortable 72 degrees Fahrenheit. They adapted to the elements, which meant tolerating extremely cold temperatures as well as extremely warm temperatures. They adapted because they didn't have a choice. An extreme day of hot or cold for us was just another normal day for them. If given the choice to live and work in a home with central heat and cooling during that time, my guess is that people would have jumped at the opportunity. A temperature-controlled environment is clearly more comfortable. As someone who grew up in the Midwestern winters of the United States and then lived for over 20 years in the extreme heat of South Florida, Life without central heat or air seems unbearable. Yet if forced to live without it, I would adapt, I think. So what is it that we lose in comfort? We lose the tolerance to be uncomfortable. We lose resilience and flexibility. We lose grit. We stop doing hard things because they're uncomfortable. If we're comfortable for too long, we'll lose our perspective of how hard and challenging life can be without comfort. We become soft and complacent. We lose our fight. We lose our courage. We see this happen all the time. The hardest thing for a championship team to do is repeat. Why? Because pushing yourself to the top is hard. Getting to the top of any sport, field, or profession is incredibly difficult. It takes pain, sacrifice, commitment, discipline. It requires an effort way outside your comfort zone. It means saying no to people, activities, and opportunities that are distractions from your ultimate goal. Then, if you actually reach the top of the mountain, if you overcome every obstacle and defeat every competitor along the way and slay the dragon, Now what? It's time to celebrate. You want to bask in the glory and enjoy all the trappings that come along with your achievement. You want to take a break, hit the beach, hit the buffet, and start hitting the snooze button on your alarm. Of course you want to take a break. You won. You did it. But time doesn't stop. The next mountain awaits. Your competitors have not stopped caring. There are no free passes or shortcuts back to the top. You have to start over at ground zero, back with everyone else you defeated along the way. It won't be easier. In fact, you're going to be a lot— it won't be easier. In fact, it's going to be a lot harder. All of the pain you endured to get to the top, you are tasked with doing it all over again. As my good friend Trevor Moawad famously wrote in his book, It Takes What It Takes, There are no shortcuts. Now that you've done it, is that motivation still there? Was it worth it? You've tasted success. Do you need to do it again? How hungry are you to make all those sacrifices? Or would you rather spend less time working out, kick back a bit more in the off season, extend your vacation a little longer? Hey, you've earned this comfort. Relax. Rocky is one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In Rocky 1 and 2, Rocky is the poor, beat-down underdog whose only special gift is his ability to keep getting hit, knocked down, but never giving up. At the end of Rocky 2, he finally wins and becomes champion. In Rocky 3, he's rich and living in a mansion and padding his titles by beating inferior opponents. His success becomes his weakness. He eventually loses the title to the younger and hungrier Clubber Lang and is left looking like a shell of his former self. It takes the motivation of his former nemesis, Apollo Creed, to take him back to his roots, back to the streets, away from his new comfortable life, to reconnect with the hunger he once had. Apollo helps him find his eye of the tiger. Cue music in your head. Dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka dooka. And of course, the newly inspired Rocky wins back the title. In Rocky IV, we see the same recipe repeated. This time, it's the death of his friend Apollo at the hands of the unbeatable Russian Ivan Drago that brings him out of retirement. If he dies, he dies. While Drago gets the most technologically advanced training and some curious injections, Rocky isolates himself in a log cabin in Siberia to train the old-fashioned way. He chops wood, lifts rocks, and climbs snow-covered mountains. Also, no heat in that cabin. And yes, he beats Drago and ends the Cold War. Thank you, Rocky. It's such a common and cliché storyline that we've been able to spin off the Creed franchise to great success. And if I am scrolling channels and any of those movies are on, I have to stop and watch. Too much comfort creates weakness. Consistent winning is hard to maintain. It has been rumored that while head coach of Alabama, Nick Saban, mere minutes after winning another NCAA football national championship, was on the phone in the locker room recruiting players for the next season. Before the victory cigar had been lit, Nick was already climbing the next mountain. You've heard about Kobe's 4:30 AM workouts, his first of 3 for the day. Michael Phelps never skipped a day from training, even on Christmas and his birthday. Simone Biles, before competing in her first Olympics, had already amassed her 10,000 hours of training as a teenager. You will find examples of this relentless discipline whenever you come across anyone who has achieved long-term sustainable success. Regardless of the comfort, glitz, and glamour their success has brought them, they continue to push themselves by doing hard things. That is their special ingredient. It's their secret sauce. It doesn't mean they enjoy the discomfort, but they understand that the discomfort is proof of being on the right path. Success is hard, so doing hard things is necessary for success. Why don't we embrace our fears? Because it's scary, it's uncomfortable. But since we know discomfort is requisite to success, we do it. So it's time to get uncomfortable in the spirit of growth and transformation. If we are going to do great things, we need to get used to doing hard things. hard things. We need to condition ourselves to be uncomfortable. As a kid, my dad did not like using air conditioning. He said it gave him headaches. So on a hot summer Michigan day or a vacation trip to Florida, the air conditioner stayed off. It sucked, but as the youngest of 4 children in the family, I didn't know any better. It was my reality. I was conditioned to it. Similarly, I had a friend who ended up living in the Bahamas while he was in high school. All his friends who grew up in the Bahamas rarely had air conditioning in their homes. They functioned just fine in sweltering heat. They were conditioned to it. We are all conditioned to what we consistently do. Warm weather schools struggle to play in cold winter climates. And cold winter schools struggle in hot and humid conditions. Why? Because no matter where you're from, you get used to your conditions. I grew up in Michigan my whole life and then moved to Florida. Going back to the cold Michigan winter was brutal. It felt colder than before. Was it? Of course not. I had lost my tolerance for the cold. I got soft soaking up those Florida rays. That brings us to the Iceman, Wim Hof, the Dutch extreme athlete, coach, and speaker who has worked with thousands of people around the world by introducing them to the benefits of cold weather exposure. Wim himself has set world records for swimming in and under ice, as well as running marathons barefoot in snow-covered mountains. He leads courses and workshops helping people use his breathing techniques and meditation to expand their tolerance and ability to perform and thrive in extreme temperatures. He changes their conditioning. Cold showers, ice baths, cold plunges— odds are you have been exposed to these recent habits. My 19-year-old son started putting a bowl of cold water in the fridge at night, and then in the morning he would submerge his face in it for about 60 seconds. He said it was supposed to be good for you and your skin and other benefits. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know the main health benefits, but just as I don't understand all the physiological recovery benefits of ice baths. But I do know that submerging yourself in ice-cold water is not pleasant, and it's definitely not comfortable. Mentally, these types of activities are a gold mine when it comes to building strength through discomfort. Whether it's sinking into a 3-minute ice bath, Tony Robbins motivating you to walk over hot coals barefoot, or pushing yourself to a deadlift PR, the willingness to endure discomfort builds the self-belief that you can do hard things. It takes courage to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. It means you can be comfortable being uncomfortable. The learning and growing is in the stretch. 3 minutes in the cold tub will feel unbearable at first, but over time you build your tolerance and you become more comfortable. The comfort is the cue that it's time to stretch yourself again. It's time for another stretch. So you extend the time, add more weight, progress to the next phase, level up, take on the next skill, learn a harder concept, increase your sales calls. Tweak your diet, shift your routine, and do whatever is needed to once again stretch beyond your comfort zone. Rinse and repeat becomes rise and repeat. The commitment to constantly stretching just beyond our comfort zone won't look or feel drastic in the moment, but the transformation is inevitable. The goal is not to get rid of the discomfort But to reframe it and see it for what it is— progress in action. Just like any living thing, we need to keep moving. Rest is necessary for recovery, but too much stagnancy leads to atrophy. Atrophy turns to weakness. The beauty, truth, and irony in our misguided obsession of greater comfort is this: The more discomfort we avoid in pursuit of comfort, the more discomfort we create. The goal then is not to eliminate the discomfort, it's to build discomfort tolerance. Life doesn't get easier, we just become stronger in dealing with the challenges. It might not be as delicious as a Big Mac, But it's special nonetheless. Chapter 2, Reflection Questions. Number 1, when was the last time you were pushed outside your comfort zone? How did it force you to grow? Number 2, is there an aspect of your life where you are feeling stagnant? What one new activity or habit would stretch you outside your comfort zone? That concludes chapter 2. I'll see you all in a bit for chapter 3.