Implement the Blogging System that 40x My Online Business! Click here to get the training video
Implement the Blogging System that 40x My Online Business! Click here to get the training video
Hello, and welcome to the market. Your message show. I'm your host, Jonathan Milligan, and the author of several books, including the latest book, launch your platform. Now available on Amazon. And today we have a very special episode. I was thinking about what could I share with you to try to be a help to you right now? Maybe you feel a little discouraged, maybe. You feel a little stuck. Whether you're trying to blog or podcast or get your message out there in some meaningful way, or even write a book. But. There's just some hangups that you might have, and maybe it's the fear of failing. That's really holding you back. Well in my insider program, which is my top tier program. Every single Monday, we do a 30 minute call. And on that call, I bring a topic. We have a worksheet that I create. I have a couple of discussion questions. And then we take some action steps and we do it all in under 30 minutes. And I've been doing this now for a couple of years, having these mindset calls because our mindset is a big part of this process. I often say that if you want to build a personal brand, that building a personal brand business with a message is the greatest self-development program. That's out there. Because of what it requires of you. To stretch. You, maybe you don't feel like you're a writer and you have to learn how to write. Maybe you want to speak, but you don't feel like a very good speaker. It challenges us to grow. And that's why your mindset is so important. So originally I was just going to play a portion of that call and try to edit it down. And then I decided I'm just going to let it run. In the raw format. So you can see the type of call and coaching that we do in our program. So it's me. Handful of the insiders who showed up that particular day. And if you would like. To get more help support. Joining a community. In fact, our tagline. For insiders. Is that we want to, that we believe. Wholeheartedly. The success happens in community. And it's really hard to do this by yourself. You need a, you need a team, you need a mentor, which I would love to be. And if that is you feel free to shoot me an email, jonathan@marketyourmessage.com. And I'll give you some more info so you can check out what the insider program is all about. All right. So without further ado, Let's jump right into today's topic about embracing the unknown. And strategies for overcoming the fear of failure. All right, everybody. Welcome. Today's topic is embracing the unknown strategies for overcoming the fear of failure. And we all feel that at times, right? No one wants to fail. No one wants to work hard on something only for it to fall flat, but yet we know failure is inevitable. And you've probably heard the analogy that just look at baseball, right? I mean, baseball Hall of Famers bat 300. That means three out of 10 times they get on base. 70 percent of the time they fail, but yet they're put into the Hall of Fame and they fail 70 percent of the time. Crazy, right? So how can we better embrace the idea of failure as the Zig Ziglar quote that I heard years ago, that just, I never forgot, that failure is an event, not a person. And I think we've personalized failure. Failure becomes attached to our identity when it's not. Every successful person you've seen out there has failed. One of my favorites that I heard years ago is about the journey of Abraham Lincoln to becoming President of the United States. Listen to this. He lost his job in 1832. He was defeated for the Illinois State Legislature in 1832. He failed in business in 1833. He was defeated for Speaker of the Illinois State Legislature in 1838. He was defeated to run for Illinois Elector in 1840. In 1843, he was defeated to run for Congress. In 1848, he was, he lost his renomination to Congress. He was rejected for land officer position in 1849. He was defeated for the U. S. Senate in 1855. He was defeated for nomination of Vice President in 1856. He was defeated to run for U. S. Senate in 1858. And in 1860, he was elected President of the United States. Now, what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln, that first time back in 1832, said, I'm not cut out for this? Failure is what paved the path for him to become president of the United States. It's fascinating and we need to think about failure differently and that's what I want to do today because maybe this is the thing that's really holding you back from kind of putting yourself out there is that that fear of the unknown. How do I, you know, I don't want to waste my time, energy, and effort on something only to fail. Let's really challenge that today and let's, let me share the screen with our worksheet. Now let's have a good discussion where we can just build into one another on this topic and really try to use some of our own experiences and our own failures to help with this. So number one, I want to open this up for you guys so we can get lots of perspectives. What holds us back from embracing uncertainty? It could be an obvious question, but I want to, what do you think holds us back from embracing the uncertainty? Kind of moving willingly into something unknown. We've never done before. We never tried before. We don't know how to do. What holds us back from embracing that uncertainty about an outcome? What do you think? Well, I mean, I'm going to answer for me. I have different areas of my life. So for some things I'm willing just to jump in and do them and other things. I mean, I've just put in the chat, like I've read a sense of finishing my book. I've really noticed it in the last couple of weeks. I, I can imagine success, but I don't want to finish it because then it's got to see. And for me, it's. It's almost like the stakes. Um, for me, I'm jumping into the unknown and experimenting and trying all sorts of new things with my garden, with plants, with, um, I've done things like, you know, zip lining, treetop trekking, all those kinds of pursuits. I quite happy just to jump into all sorts of different things. But when it comes, and I think for me, it's. With this business in the book, I think it's because it's so personal. And, and so I feel like unlike my job, which the jobs I've had, which I was good at, and I could do that. I think there was a safety. Hey, there was a safety net. Um, I still had a paycheck coming in, even if I completely fell on my face. Um, so this has. Is because it's my own thing, my own business, it fit my own knowledge. It kind or shared knowledge I've learned. It just feels like it's so personal and it, it, I suppose in some ways it does feel that, oh well if this doesn't work, I've been chasing after rainbows, um, all these years and I have no idea what to do next. Mm-Hmm. So that I have like said the two, the two sides I have part of me that just jumps in stuff and then this other part that's really struggling, that is such. Great perspectives and anybody else have felt that way some areas of your life It's like I don't have a problem stepping forward and then just certain other parts are just like, ah Why do I not feel like I can just fully lean into this why and I like that You said it's personal because sometimes it's an indication that you really really care about it And when you really, really care about it, sometimes we can not want to mess it up, not want to, not want it to fail and not want it to, to, to not be good because we really, really care a lot about it. So that's a, that's a very good point. Anybody else? What are some other ideas around this? Hold us back. What holds us back from just embracing that uncertainty? Yeah, Dave says our hesitancy is often the reason we don't succeed. Ain't that funny how it works that way? Uh, that Susie Kasem quote that I have in my Your Message Matters, I love that. That doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. Ain't that powerful? That the thing we should fear is not failing, it's the doubt. But yet the doubt we see as a good thing, but doubt's not always a good thing, right? So I love that quote, doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. When I heard that a couple of years ago, I was like, man, whenever I start feeling doubt, I know I've got to move in the opposite direction because it's the doubt that's the dream killer. That's the dream killer. Doubt is not reasons to not do something. Doubt's the reason to do it. Because it is the thing that often creates more failure. It's powerful when you really get that understanding of that. Let me go to, uh, Len. Uh, sorry, just briefly, uh, I kind of agree with Tara that it has to do, I think, uh, we don't embrace uncertainty when it gets closer to our, I'll say, our identity. Or values or, you know, you know, who I am is not necessarily some of the things I might feel free to jump into, but when it gets closer to who I am, uh, that's when it's, I think it's harder. That's a really good point because then it's like, it's, it's your own experiences, your own. Wisdom, your own thoughts, your own ideas, your own perspectives, your own stories. And no one wants to feel rejection around those things. Yeah. That's a really good point. Anybody else on this? I see Chris is trying to have all my ducks in a row to prevent the chance of failure. Yeah, that can be a reason. Uh, Lynn said we want to look good to ourselves and others. Yep. Um, fear that I can't find the help I will need, says Kathy. And Bev, lack of trust and lack of priorities. So all really, really good. Let's look at number two. How can we reframe failure as a necessary step towards success? What's some ways that you can reframe failure so that it doesn't feel permanent? Right? Failure is not permanent. And yet we treat failure as the ultimate ending. How can we treat it not as the ultimate ending? When I always remember a quote from somebody it had to do with marketing or actually cold calling and they said you're going to have to make 25 calls and get a no before you can get a yes. So then their target was to I want to make those 25 calls and get the nose out of the way, you know, so it's it's kind of am I willing to, you know, face the rejection knowing that down the road, it's going to happen. I did that very thing when I became, um, when I started to become, when I became an executive recruiter, when I started, I had to build my own book of business. I had to make my own relationships with CFOs in the area. And literally day one, I was handed the, uh, what they call the business journal book of lists. And it's literally the list of companies in Jacksonville, Florida. And it was like, start calling them and start talking to CFOs. And I was like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm not an accountant. I know nothing about accounting and you want me to carry conversations on with CFOs. Won't they see me as a nuisance? And I had to embrace that. I literally did that very thing where I had a hundred nos. So I printed off something that a hundred check boxes on it. And I said, my goal is how can I get the fastest to a hundred nos? You know, it was interesting. By the time I got to 15 I actually had a really good conversation and it was a really good. Connection that ended up doing a lot of business with me down the road because they saw me just as a nice guy. And so that's just a, that's a great example of ways that we can reframe failure as a necessary step. All right, is somebody else, anybody else got something on this? Dave, tell us, tell us a little more about, uh, when we try something, we either succeed or learn. I'm pulling you in here and you don't even have your mic ready. Sorry. That's all right. You were trying to be chat only, but you got too much wisdom to not be on the mic. Oh, you're, you're, you're nice. Um, I just think how you look at failure, you almost really need to reframe failure. I mean, failure really, if you think about it, is completely giving up and quitting. Um, you know, um, and so when we try something, we either succeed at it or sometimes partially succeed or you know what, we learn a lot of things, uh, that don't work. So we're kind of ruling out things. Okay. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. I mean, after a while, eventually you'll find something that does work. So I think if you reframe it, um, it does help you to embrace it. Which is, I think, really kind of what you're talking about, uh, today is not being afraid to embrace it. And then I'll back up a little bit. I think on number one, sometimes we, we attach ourselves or say our personal self worth to what we're attempting to do too closely. You know, it's, it's, you know, we, you know, the fact that we struggle with something doesn't mean we're, we're a personal failure. And so I think a lot of, all of that kind of comes into play here, but just kind of reframing how we think about failure, how we maybe even define failure might be a good way of putting it. I think that's a really good conversation, probably for another mindset call is understanding what to put our identity in and what not to put our identity in. I got that lesson when I was 18 years old, you know, I grew up in Indiana. Dad was a high school basketball coach. And by my sophomore year, I started getting letters from colleges and junior year started picking up. And my senior year, uh, I mean, we had an awesome. Basketball team. We were like 29 and three and made it all the way to the state tournament. And in the third quarter of the game, I broke my leg in a basketball game. Last game of my senior year, I still have a metal rod and three pins in my right leg. And I just remember conversation after conversation of college coaches that were calling me when I was at home with my leg propped up in the air, not knowing if I was ever going to be able to like even run, because it was such a severe injury. And I remember their consolations, but there was no follow through. No one wanted to offer me a scholarship. No one wanted to take a chance on me. And I saw just what I thought were all of my dreams just going away that I'd worked for all my life. And, you know, my parents didn't make a lot of money. So there was also this like drive to go get a scholarship. So they didn't have to have the burden of paying for college. And man, those were, those were moments where my identity was shaken. Like, what is my identity now? And I went through that process of learning very early on that I needed to put my identity in something that was changeless. Now, for me, that was my faith. Because I, for me, God is something, someone, who never changes. And if my identity's in something that cannot change, then my identity's secure. If my identity is wrapped up in things that can change or fail, Then I opened myself up for failure, ultimate failure. And that for me has been what helps me now. I don't know what it does for each of you, but that is what allows me to say, you know what, if I completely fail and I've failed with a lot of things that just didn't work out, my identity is not in that, right? And so I think that's a, that's a really good conversation. I think we need to have at some point. Uh, that's really important in this whole topic. It's good stuff. Um, what are some practical strategies for embracing uncertainty and taking action despite the fear of failure? So what's the one go for it. This has to do with the school strategic planning with administrators and teachers. So there's this thing and there's a whole body of research on it called failure analysis and what they found was that many of the districts who focused only on how they could succeed were the ones that failed the most because they did not do a failure analysis, which meant where can we fail? So, it's related to our identity, but just recognizing what are some things that would cause me to feel, then brings that up so that you go in the right direction and you do set the priorities that are healthy and, like you said, sometimes the door just slams in your face, Jonathan. Other times, it's just a clear direction of go this way, not that way. That's so good. That's so good. And when you're talking, it was immediately my mind went to what you see on the screen right now is something I've done since 2018. The earlier ones to 23, 24 are on here. We started a new one, but it's to do debriefs out of it after everything. And if you do a debrief, you're going to learn some things, like, like Dave was talking about, right? You're going to find success in failure because not everything was a failure. But you're also going to find things that you could do differently because you're going to learn from them. And so this is really simple. It's just a spreadsheet. And it simply has do different, do again, start doing, don't do again. And, you know, this comes from like the military and the military would do these debriefs after they would go through, uh, an engagement or a mission and practice and go through it and I'll say, okay, now what would we do different? What would we do again? The same thing. What do we need to start doing that we did not do? So maybe we need to start doing for next time. And then what do we say, we're not going to do that again. That obviously didn't work. Bad idea. That's okay. That part of it, maybe we could call that failure. But the start doing is, hey, there's some hope for this the next time. The do again is finding the gold nugget. In failure and the do different is it was good, but we should have done this a little bit differently. And if you, I mean, if you see here, I, and I could just take you through so many things that, you know, where, where some of these, we didn't do stuff, but if we get down into some of these, uh, I mean, I could go back here, just stuff that we would revisit. And what was great about this is like the next time we do that promo, we would come back here and say, Oh yeah. So what happened with these, with these promos? What worked? What didn't? Oh yeah, yeah. We're definitely not going to do that again. We even do this with our live events for your message matters live. It's like, okay, what are we going to do different? What are we going to do again? We're going to start doing, and what are we not going to do again? Right. Very helpful exercise. And what this does is it brings something practical to. And you see it more as a, a growth mindset because you are learning from what took place, not just deciding whether something was a failure or success. Right? Because ultimately when we decide we're, we're making our own judgment towards what was actually a failure and what was a success. Good stuff. All right. Here's some action steps. Choose a wildcard activity. What that means is select something that you've never tried before. Maybe it scares you a little bit and do it. So like, if you've never done a video before, maybe record a video that you're going to put on social media. If you've never live streamed before, find some kind of an activity. Maybe you've never done a podcast interview before. Do something that you've never done before. That pushes you out of your comfort zone because part of this journey of being an entrepreneur is getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. That's just the way it is. That's the process. That's why I forget who said it, but I believe it wholeheartedly. This is the best self development program around because of what it challenges you to become in the process. It's going to push you past your comfort zone, whether you're writing books, Recording. Teaching, speaking, creating courses, blogging, podcasting. All of it is going to feel out of your comfort zone when you first start. Set a stretch goal. I like to do this. I like trying to find two things at the beginning of every year that I want to do. One of them this year is to actually publish four books in one year. And I've already got the next one on pre order, which means I've got to finish it because it's publishing May 21st. And that's the third book. In the series and then finally start before you're ready. This is this is hard to do But sometimes we just need to start before we're ready you go. Listen to my first youtube video. It's terrible Listen to my first podcast episode. It's creepy Like there's a lot of things that I did if you go back and listen to them. They were not very good but Hopefully they've gotten better because I just got started and I figured out how to get better after by doing it not by Thinking about how to get better. All right, two quotes. I love absolutely love this Michael Jordan quote It's one of the best of all times We know Michael Jordan's one of the greatest of all times. I've missed more than 9, 000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeeded. Wow. Powerful. And Wayne Gretzky, amazing quote. You've probably heard it. He's the Hall of Fame hockey player. You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take. Now, when you're growing up and you're, uh, playing basketball in the schoolyard, you'll be called a ball hog. If you embrace that philosophy too much, you know, Hey, I'm going to miss a hundred percent of the shots I'm going to take. So I'm going to shoot every time I get the ball. That doesn't work out too good. You won't make friends that way. Good topic today. Any final thoughts, uh, Lynn, tell us about practicing in public. Cause I think that's really good philosophy. Well, it got to the thing where, um, You know, I wanted everything to be perfect before I presented it in public and Jody was encouraging me to, you know, go ahead and share that crappy draft or share your first thoughts and because in today's world, you can keep keep growing and, you know, just like you said, Jonathan, you can keep putting out new and more refined thinking. So, uh, Even if you put out something you're not sure about, once it's there for one thing, that'll help you refine it because feed, you'll probably get some feedback on it, you know, and, and so it's, I think it was the whole thing of, I got to get the bad stuff out or not get the bad stuff, but put out my first thinking and not worry about my final thinking. Yeah, I think that's really good. You know, it makes me think about my first um, Charity showed a facebook post with me, you get those memories I got a memory that it was uh, nine years ago that I published my first Actual self published book 15 success traits of pro bloggers. You know what? I decided to go back in my kdp and I didn't even realize it at the time, which is crazy. But like in the first month, it was either first month or two. Might've been the first month I sold almost 9, 000 copies of that book. And you know, that's more than some of my more recent books. And it's crazy because my audience was smaller. Um, I mean, there's probably a lot of things going on there. You know, maybe I was very early on with, uh, publishing on Amazon. It wasn't maybe as, maybe as near as many books potentially. I don't know, but you know, when I look at that book, it's probably the worst written book of my book so far. I like to think mine's gotten better and looking back, I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I, I, I, you know, it doesn't look the best. It's not the best book when you get it. It's like, it's probably the formatting could have been a little bit better. There's a lot of things that I would probably do different, but you know what? It kind of put me somewhat on the map back then. And in a lot of eyes for a lot of people with a book that I would consider today to not be the greatest, but you know what? But I do believe it still had lots of value in it. It obviously did because people left good reviews. So, Even in the midst of me just not really knowing what I'm doing and self publishing, it still brought lots of value. And I think that's a really good point. Go to Dave. The only thing, I made this comment in the chat, but I want to just elaborate on it a little bit. Um, you know, I think a lot of times when we're hesitant to do something, we kind of, I'll call it partially engage. We're a little tentative in, in putting our effort and energy in, into it. And that actually increases our struggle and our likelihood that we will, you know, fail, if you want to use that word. And so I think maybe, kind of at the beginning, we kind of decide, look, I'm either going to do this or I'm not going to do this. And if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all in. Because if I go all in, the likelihood of me succeeding is much higher. If I sort of dip my toe in the water and test it out and try it and I'm hesitant and nervous and all that, usually that's going to actually cause me to struggle or fail. So I think maybe even making a decision on the front end, whether or not this is something that we're really committed to. And if we're not just be honest with ourselves and say, you know what, I'm, I'm not committed to this enough to go all in. So anyway, just the thought. That's really good. That makes me think of, uh, was Jim, I think it was Jim Rohn's quote that. There's something like failure weighs in ounces, but regret weighs in tons or something like that. And it's like, you know, regret is the thing that is going to have more of a burden on us and impact on us on the things that we wish we would have done instead of the things we tried and failed at. So remember that failure weighs in ounces, but regret weighs in tons. And, um, I think that's just a really good reminder and it doesn't make it easy, right? It doesn't make, just trying to minimize failure doesn't make it easy, but knowing that failure is not fatal, it's not final, and that failure is not you, it's not a person, it is an event. And the people who have succeeded solve failure as part of the process sometimes to get to their goal. And that it's not your identity. And there's so much more to you in the, you can learn from every single thing that doesn't come out the way that you wanted it to. It's a really good lesson. Hope this was an encouragement to you guys today to get out there this week and stuff that maybe you've been kind of holding back on, like, why not? Why not me? That's what I want you to say. Why not me? If other people can do this, why not me? And put yourself out there. We're here to support you. We'll have our regular coaching calls. If you want to get a little clarity, a little bit of feedback, perspective, coaching, jump on any of our calls. I'm there to help. Or if you just need to get like back on the wagon and you just need like, I need to push some of these goals forward. I'm going to show up on those calls just to get some work done. All right, that is it for now, thank you guys for being here, I hope you have an awesome day, thanks for hanging out with me, we'll talk with you guys later, see ya, bye bye.