Let’s face it fear is a huge limiting factor in our decision making process. In this episode we are going to talk about why you MUST do the things you are terrified of and I am going to give you my action steps of what you need to do TODAY to conquer those fears and achieve your greatest possible version of yourself.
In this episode, Dan Cotton will help you overcome your own objections and conquer your fears!
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Next Gen people and profits podcast. I’m your host Dan Cotton and today we are talking about why you absolutely must do what it is you are too terrified to do. If you love this episode, make sure you head over to our website, nextgenowners.com Subscribe for our blogs and email updates. And if you’re looking to join the Academy, you can do that there as well as head over to Facebook and request to join our NG cheer and gymnastics owners group if you are a gym owner right now or a prospective gym owner. For more great content like this on a daily basis request to join answer our admin questions. You must be a gym owner to be in that group. But we have so much great information we put out there and I don’t want you to miss it. Alright, let’s get to it. So number one, why is it that you must do the things that you are too terrified to do? Well, long story short, the things that scare you the most are the things that will change your life the most. All right, fear is your enemy. Right fear is the ultimate enemy though this is talked about a lot as your fight flight freeze complex, right we go back to that lizard brain where when we are confronted with fear, we’re confronted with that terror we either are going to fight, we’re gonna fight or we’re going to fight we’re going to flight we’re going to run away or we’re going to freeze and what we see a lot in business is a lot of freezing that analysis paralysis. Number two is fear. of failure is going to ensure your failure if you are too scared to fail, and therefore you do not ever go for it, you’ve automatically failed, right? So that fear that freezing that paralysis is going to cause you to fail and it’s all stemming from that fear. That terror that you are feeling in regard to this subject. And number three, the things that scare you have the most potential to grow you right there is no growth without discomfort and so things that terrify you things that scare you are things that have the opportunity to really change your life and really grow you and help you become a better version of yourself a better business owner and just overall find that success. So why why are we talking about this? Well, the reality is everyone I am here right now like in this moment, I am in the facing a terror mode. And it is it’s very real. For me this is a poignant subject because I am here and I have been thinking through something. Basically I’m at a mode and a point in in my business growth where I am looking at leaving my full time job. And if that doesn’t terrify someone, then you know, you’re luckier than me, but that’s that is a scary thing. And it’s a scary thing for a couple of reasons. Number one, there’s the financial aspect. There’s that security right when you have a full time job, especially my full time job in government working in law enforcement, you know, I’m comfortable, I have seniority, my job isn’t going anywhere. And I know that I’m gonna get paid every single time my paychecks up, so I’m gonna get that paycheck. And it requires me just to show up and do my job. And so there’s that that comfort in the known right. And there’s also the fear of failure, right? If I leave and I leave my career, and I go, and I just bet on myself. Well, if I fail, there’s no one else to blame but me, right. It’s just on me. And so there’s that fear aspect and so I’m there it is. It is a terrifying idea to think about that. And lastly, for me, it’s also just the identity right? I’m making a big change and, and being a law enforcement officer has been a huge part of my identity. And so I am in that moment,
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I am right there you guys. I am feeling that terror, that fear as I assess what it is I need to do. And and what I’m telling you is I need to do that right and I and that’s why I want to talk to you guys about it. That’s where I came to this conclusion of you know, what I’m experiencing and why I want to talk to you all. So that’s why we’re here. That’s why I started thinking about this. That’s why I started putting into how you get through this and why it is so important. Next with that is that every time I’ve faced fear head on, I’ve won in some way. Right? I’ve had other moments where I’ve had terror, I’ve had true fear, and when I’ve faced it head on, and I’ve fought I have had success in some way. Now I didn’t win outright necessarily, but I have ended on on the winning side on the upside of that fear. And it only came from facing it head on. It only came from doing the thing that I was scared to do. I can take it back to athletics any skill I was scared to get. audition I was scared to go to trial and I was scared to go to in the end it always had me winning, and it led to my overall success. So it’s so important to remember that as I’m in this moment of being terrified or if you’re in that moment of being terrified, you know, think back to those wins. That you had, and very very rarely is fear saving you from success. All right. Number two, I’ve already mentioned it there but like there’s no growth in that comfort. Right we don’t things don’t grow when they’re comfortable. Think about a tree. In order for it to its branches to grow you need to prune it you need to actually cut off a branch to it to create that growth in that tree. So there is growth from discomfort there’s growth from struggle. The strongest trees have the deepest roots and they have the deepest roots because they’re, they’re faced with adversity they’re faced with when they’re faced with rain and all those other challenges that they have to you know, dig their roots deep so that struggle and then creates growth. I also have learned how and then the steps I’m going to talk about I’ve learned how and why it is so important to be able to compartmentalize your fear, and I’ve primarily done it with physical fear. It started with sports and learning flips and things like that and I’ll be honest, I was terrified gymnast. I watched an athlete break their arm very badly when I was a young gymnast, and it impacted me for a long time and it wasn’t until I got over that fear. That I really was able to progress significantly as an athlete. And so I learned how to compartmentalize that fear. And then in my career and what I’ve done I’ve learned how to compartmentalize physical fear, but it’s a lot harder to do when it comes to conceptual fear fear of failure, fear of your business, not succeeding fear of not having enough money to support your children. Those fears are far deeper than then most physical fears go and they will cause more sleepless nights. And so I started I learned how to do it with physical fear. I learned how to do it in the military and then from a law enforcement perspective, and I’ve been in, in literally probably the most scary situations you can be in in those careers. I’ve physically had people trying to kill me and I’ve been in that moment I’ve been I’ve lived in that and I’ve been able to compartmentalize compartmentalize that fear and succeed. And so I started learning how do I apply this to non physical risks that oftentimes cause me to analyze more and be more hesitant. Whereas when you’re faced with a you do this thing or you you die, you have less options. So you really are it’s really is just as simple as fight flight freeze. And if you want to win, you got to fight so it’s a little bit easier to figure out. So how do you start to apply this to non physical risk? Well, when we start talking about fight flight or freeze response, I’ve spent a lot of time for those of you who listen to the podcast for a little bit you know that my job right now is in training new officers and I’ve seen this play out firsthand between the difference between someone who has experienced and has been trained well and been trained to compartmentalize and be analytical and, and have trained responses versus someone who’s brand new training these things that involve physical risk and failure. And what I’ve seen in new recruits facing fear is a most people will fight a little bit but are very hesitant in what they are able to do there there becomes a challenge and why I think the law enforcement side is so interesting and relates so well to business is
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if you’re just in a fight for your life, it’s very easy right? Every there’s no rules. You’re just trying to survive, but in a law enforcement setting where maybe I’m in a fight, but my life isn’t in danger right now. Well, now there’s all sorts of rules and all sorts of considerations and can I do this thing based off of this knowledge that I have is this is this lawful? Is this justified and it creates creates some analysis paralysis in recruits where they will kind of be frozen. And afterwards you’ll debrief with them and you’ll say, Hey, why didn’t you Why didn’t you go hands on why didn’t you take them to the ground here and they’ll be like, Well, I didn’t know if I could I was trying to think you know what, what was the level of the crime and Am I justified in using this level of force based off of what they’re doing? You know, are they actively resisting or attempting to escape? And they start going through those things, and they really struggle with it. And you see it initially a lot. And then as they train more and more and more and more than they get put in those situations more and more and more, they start to react quicker. They they’re still coming to the same conclusions, the correct conclusions, hopefully, but it’s happening faster, and it’s happening faster and it’s happening faster. And the reason that’s happening is because by training it and by doing it by facing those fears in scenarios, they are creating neural pathways that then when they are in that moment where they have to make a decision quickly. And they fall back to that that training they’ve had they fall back to that previous decision and are able to execute more successfully more quickly more seamlessly than they were before when they had to, you know, flip through that mental notebook of can I do this thing they’ve just they’ve been there they’ve done that they know they can do it. And we need to try to figure out how to do that within making business decisions making decisions for our life that terrify us. And we do that by mental roleplay. Right. Those are ways we can do it. We can do it with physical fear. We can also do it in that circumstance, that mental roleplay and then we also do it by putting ourselves in that position and facing that fear head on and dealing with it and even if it’s a micro fear, it’s not maybe as significant as the one I’m facing right now where it’s like, you know, I’m deciding whether or not I’m gonna leave my full time career. But now I’m making the decision about you know, whether or not I’m gonna hire this person, and I’m scared because I’ve been burned before by an employee or whether or not I’m gonna delegate this thing that has always been my thing and I’m terrified that it’s going to then fail if I don’t do it, right, you make those micro decisions, and then these bigger, massive decisions become a little bit easier. So on top of that, we have to think about the fact that fear of failure leads to not trying which then leads us to fail. And I can tell you I’ve dealt firsthand with this my daughter, she really struggles with this as an athlete where she struggles with if I’m not going to be perfect at it, I would just rather not do it, then do it and fail. And mentally for her. That makes sense. You know, it’s just like, Nope, I’m not going to be good at it. I’m not going to do it. And that oftentimes leads her down a path of not being as successful as you can. And it’s something that we’ve been battling with her for a long time. And I see this with business owners that I coach all the time. They’re afraid to make the decision because if they make the decision and the decision is wrong, and they fail, it’s their fault. And they would rather just not make the decision and not make that leap then make an error that leads them down the path of failure. And I also have pulled from this because I’m at camp right now. I’m running cheer camps and in our cheer camps. We do a campfire thing where we sit around with teams and we talk to them and one of the topics that we’ll talk about is what is your deepest fear? And when we do this, it is remarkable how many kids and these are teenagers. How many teenagers will say my biggest fear is failing. My biggest fear is being a failure, not amounting to anything letting my parents down, just overall general fear of failure. And for these kids, oftentimes that leads to not wanting to try because if they don’t try, they can’t fail. And it’s a very, very common, deep rooted fear right people will stay up at night for separating on things because they’re afraid of failing at them. They’re afraid it’s going to go badly. And sometimes failure is okay. You need to fail to get better at things and I will relate this back to a experience I had in college and it actually relates back to dating. And if you think about dating and you think about you know what it’s like now granted, I’m gonna go back to before Tinder so there was no swipe right? No swipe left. None of that stuff. No social media dating stuff. This was you know, the style of going to the bar and meeting people. And I cheered with a guy in college. His name was Drew and I’m not going to say anything insulting about him.
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The joke was always that if you went to a bar, and there were 100 guys and one girl, you could bet money that drew was going to leave with that girl. And it was because he just had this aura of confidence to him that he was he was successful. He tended to execute when a talk came down to the opposite sex. But additionally, it was because he was not afraid to go up and ask drew would be a guy who would go to a bar and he would talk to 15 Girls and yeah, 14 of them might shoot him down and not be interested. But one would be and I jokingly refer to it as a shotgun approach. You know, you wide enough blast pattern, you’re gonna hit something but at the same time that can be applicable to what we do in business. You have to try things and be willing to fail at them to find the thing that works. And if you simply don’t try anything, because you’re afraid of failing, then you fail. So it works in that realm where you, you put yourself out there and you try and you try and you try and you try. And you fail and you fail and you fail and then you find that correct pattern, you find that correct thing and it works out. So failure is not always a bad thing. In fact, failure can be a very, very good thing if you’re using it as a springboard to success. So the absence of fear or not really the absence of fear the controlling have that fear that that courage, that ability to control the fear allows you to fail forward, quickly achieving overall success in a short period of time. So you have to be willing to make those those leaps and make those risks and have those failures in order. To find the overall success. So I encourage you, be willing to fail. And if you’re in that moment where you’re not going to do something because you’re you your reasoning is I just don’t want to be wrong. That’s not a good enough reason. Just don’t want to be wrong or I just don’t want to fail is not a good enough reason to not do something you got to go for it. You got to take that risk. All right. Lastly, you’ve got to remember that those things that scare you the most, tend to be really big deals and tend to have the opportunity to influence your life in the greatest way. For me, if I leave my job, right it’s terrifying. Leave my full time job. What does that do? Well, I’ve never owned a business where I haven’t had a full time job. So imagine what I can accomplish when I’m all in on my companies. I mean, just I can’t even imagine. Imagine how much more time I get to have with my kids. By not going in working 40 hours a week and then getting off and working 80 hours a week on my businesses and there’s probably not that quite that many hours in a week. But you know what I mean? I’d work all day I come home I coach or I go home and I work on I do a podcast or I write a blog or I’m sending an email or I’m doing these things where I’m always working and how big of a change could that be if I get four more hours every day to spend with my family spend with my kids and my wife, right life changing. And on top of that, potentially the success financial success that I haven’t even dreamed of. Right? I’m limiting myself because I have the comfort of my consistent paycheck. But that consistent paycheck potentially limits me from the really big paycheck that changes my kids lives forever, and sets them up and my grandkids up for success. So it has the opportunity to change my life in a really big way. And even if it’s not as big as that even if it is you are deathly afraid of hire your first time employee because you’re your first full time employee because you’re not sure you can afford them. Right and you jump off that ledge. You take that fear How much could that change your life? How much could having a full time employee, change your business? Someone who has dedicated 40 hours a week to working on your company and building your company and selling your company? It could be huge for you. And yeah, it’s scary. What if I What if I can’t support them? What if I can’t pay them? The salary that I say I’m going to pay them? Well, maybe you lay them off? And yeah, you failed. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth the risk. And and I’m just using that as a simple example. But it doesn’t have to be as big as leaving your full time job. It
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could be hiring someone it could be transitioning to a new building. It could be you know, buying a piece of equipment. Any one of those things could be that really deep fear of what should I do this thing? Right? Am I terrified of this? Our greatest fear is not that we are truly weak and going to fail. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure is that we can actually do it and we’re scared of what we can accomplish. And oftentimes we limit ourselves because if we accomplish that thing, then then we have to actually continue to do it. And that can be scary. But you’ve got to face it and you’ve got to just do those things because they can change your life. The things that terrify you are going to make you better if you can conquer them. I know it can feel very lonely as a business owner. It can be really easy to be in this position where you are scared where you don’t know what to do. And my recommendation is to have a coach or an outsider that can advise you without the fear without the emotional connection to what you are going through. And that’s one of the great advantages of being in our academy. Our clients get coaches, they get direct coaching with someone who has been there and done that, or know someone who’s been there and done that and can advise you and say, yeah, the fear you’re feeling is normal, but you can do it or we can give you that outside perspective of Yeah, what you’re saying makes sense. It’s maybe not a good idea right now. Right? You can have that coach who says, okay, buying a new building isn’t really the thing at the moment. You want to buy a $5 million building, but you’re only, you know, grossing $10,000 a month. That doesn’t make sense. But now let’s make a plan for how we’re going to do that thing because that’s the thing that scares you. That’s where you want to be. So let’s make it happen. And we can work diligently with you to help you get to that. So find someone who inspires you who can help you grow to that point. Your fears limit you from achieving your ultimate success. You need to face your fears like you are the hero of your own story. Because if you’re not the hero of your own story, no one else is going to be no one else is going to step up and make that thing happen but you and you have the power you have the ability. Be the hero of your story. When you when you die someday guaranteed going to happen. What do you want people to say about you? What do you want people to think of you do they want? You want them to think of you as someone who face their fears and conquered them and found success, or do you want to be that person who had so much potential but never lived up to it? So leaving this podcast where I want you to do is I want you to write down the top three things that scare you the most as a business owner. The top three write them down on a piece of paper. Not in not in notes on your phone. I like this paper, write them down one, two, and three. Then I want you to write down what success looks like for each of those three items. So if you were to do that thing, what would be a successful execution of that thing.
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So what I want you to do is then if you write down those three things, write down what success looks like for each of those three things. So if you execute it, if you face that fear, and you do it and it is successful, what does success look like for those three things and how will that change your life? And then lastly, take that success goal and create actionable steps that can get you to the goal, you backwards plan. This is where I want to be this is what it’s going to do for me. And now I start to plan Okay, these are steps I can take to get there. Right if if it is a revenue goal, you want to be at x amount of dollars. Okay? Well, then I need to get to if you want to be at $2 million annually, okay, well, then I need to get to $1 million annually and I want to do that within the next three years. And then I want to get to that means I have to get to $500,000 annually, right and you start backwards planning those things. And then you start figuring out how you do it. How do you achieve that goal? What is it that you can do right now in the moment to move you one step forward in the right. You do that thing? And you can change your life? Right I know that being a business owner can be scary. I know that it can be intimidating. But you can do so much more than give yourself credit for if you’re already a business owner. You’ve already done it. You’ve already taken that leap because no one opens a business without a little bit of fear. You’ve already taken that lake, you have that entrepreneurial spirit and you can do it right so take those three things, write them down and find out find your steps. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I had a lot of fun recording it. I’m feeling fired up about facing my territory. My terrifying fear right now. I’m I’m using this as a as a springboard encouraged for me to start taking those steps to make what I need to have happen happen. So thank you for listening to me. If you’ve loved this content, make sure you subscribe, share this podcast with your friends or anyone who might get anything out of it. Make sure they subscribe. Leave us a five star rating if you love our podcast. It helps get this to more people more business owners just like you. And like I said at the beginning make sure you head on over to nextgenowners.com Subscribe to our emails and join ng cheer and gymnastics owners on Facebook with that we will catch you on the next one.
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