#1503 - Your Deepest Fear Also Creates Your Biggest Strength…

Your deepest fear also creates your biggest strength . So this is gonna be a quick hitter because we have 10 minutes before it will , 12 minutes before our next meetings , so this is gonna be a quick one . So hang on .

I Did a podcast pre-call with a wonderful human last week I do not remember their name , I wish I did and One of the questions they asked so a pre-call is just making sure that you are aligned with the show and a Lot of people just show up to the microphone and if you've never met them before , it can go off the rails .

So a pre-call is hopefully to avoid that . And this person said what have you learned about yourself recently ? And I said I Learned that disappointment is the biggest exile I have . I do not like disappointing other people .

It hurts me , it hurts my soul when I disappoint someone , and you heard that if you listen to that episode recently and they asked a lot of follow-up questions after that . I'm super excited to go in this podcast , but the question that facilitated the thought behind today's episode was what are all the positives that have come with it ?

What are all the positives that have come with your fear of disappointing others ? And I said I'm sure you Expect that question to probably catch me off guard , but I've been thinking of this so so much over the last week or so because this Awareness genuinely changed my life . I said a couple things .

One , it allows me to have empathy when I do disappoint someone . There's always that ego that pops up when someone is disappointed in you , where you say , well , you shouldn't be disappointed , or I , my intentions were pure , or whatever it is .

I'm very empathetic when I disappoint someone because if I disappointed you , I feel really bad , genuinely , I feel terrible about myself , I don't enjoy it . I think that's one of the reasons I try to be super kind and as patient as I can be , because I don't want to disappoint people . That's one number . Two , I Always try to make someone feel like they're

the only person when I'm talking to them because , again , at my fear of disappointing them I do believe We've said this many times you're probably really good at Recognizing your deficiencies , but you probably struggle with recognizing your strengths . This is a very similar thing .

You're probably really good , like I am now , at identifying my weaknesses and identifying my fears , identifying my insecurities , identifying the stuff that I'm afraid of when it comes to judgment . But there are positives that come with all of those things and if you can identify them , I think you can utilize them better .

One of the other things this is a really good story . Wednesday I drove to New Jersey from New Hampshire . I got up at 330 and and my plan was to be there at nine . So I was like I have plenty of time , this can be fine . I go down , I get my car at 430 am and I turn on my GPS and it says you're gonna be there at 9 am .

If you leave this second , you don't hit an ounce of traffic and you don't stop once . You're gonna be there at 9 and I was like how the hell did that happen ? It said four hours , or said four and a half hours . Now it's Now it's five and a half . What's going on here ? This isn't right and I drove straight . I didn't stop to pee .

I didn't stop to get gas , I didn't stop to get anything . I drove straight five and a half hours from New Hampshire to New Jersey and I think I was like six minutes late and I was so pissed off that myself I was so pissed off even though that's unreasonable , you drive 430 to 9 I didn't stop to pee . I had to pee so bad You're sick .

It just is what it is . But I didn't want to disappoint the clients . That was my focus .

I learned from a mentor of mine that you run to the problem and you walk to the order . It's actually Amelia's father said that you run , we run to the problem and we walk to the order . In other words , we are here to solve your problems if you are our client , and we are here for you .

And , kev , you do a phenomenal job of that and I know part of that comes from not wanting to disappoint people . Definitely , the other part of that comes from fear of being broke , because when you were a kid you didn't have a ton of money and again , nuance there .

But our desires and our fears are connected and I think that's probably the the olive branch that I want to extend . Everybody on this episode . If you think about what you desire most , okay , let's say you really want a Really big , nice house .

Maybe you're afraid of Looking like you're poor or looking like you're not significant , or or maybe there was a time in your life where you felt insignificant and maybe your deepest fear is not feeling significant and maybe that's why you want a nice car .

Maybe maybe you want to fall in love , maybe you want to have an amazing wedding , maybe your deepest fear is being alone . I just think our desires and our fears are really connected .

So , whatever pain you have , whatever fear you have , whatever trauma you have from your childhood , usually there's a desire that's the polar opposite of that , the polar opposite of that

you . So I'll use myself as an example . When I was in high school I've talked about this I hit puberty very late . So in middle school , no one had hit puberty . I was one of the guys . I was athletic , blah , blah , blah . In high school , everybody

blossomed . People like Kevin got muscles and mustaches , you know , and I didn't . I was just a little prepubescent boy and my sister was the , a very , very , very popular girl in the high school and all of her Friends . I was like little Alan and they , they all pity danced with me . I used to call it pity dancing . They would .

They would dance with me to make me feel better , when in reality I was just a little boy and they were grown women . So I have a huge desire to be significant . That was born out of that time when I was a freshman in high school and I was a nerd and all the athletes got all the attention All the football players and baseball players .

They got all the attention and all the love and all the significance and everybody went through their basketball games and I just felt super insignificant because I was a nerdy video gamer and so I chased mastery and greatness . My mastery was born out of wanting to be more significant , my desire to be on point and to be excellent and all those things .

So at the end of the day , I think most of our greatness actually stems from pain .

What do you mean ? It's not your fault , it's not your fault . You had a great upbringing when I had challenges at times Like I would never want you to burden yourself to get even with me . I don't want that , but I wonder if that guilt made them shoot for something that they might not have shot for as

well . For sure , so , sometimes lack of pain is your pain . Yeah , believe it or not , I've seen that . I know you've seen that as well .

They were overprotective , and I get it , some parents are underprotective . I definitely in some cases was in that situation , but unfortunately that came with pain later on . So her deepest pain is that she was overprotected . She doesn't know how to do anything and I don't again , that's an exaggeration .

She knows how to do some things , but she had a really hard time flying away from the nest when she didn't have any of those skills . And so this is the way life works . You have painful things happen to you and you have

a response to that , and the response to that builds muscles that other people don't have , and that's true for you too . So whatever your pains were and whatever muscles you built to overcome that , those are now superpowers . They're now skills that other people don't necessarily have . You know , I felt really insignificant as a kid .

I really did , and I didn't have a dad and my stepdad and I didn't get along and I don't think he ever really wanted kids . So of course I'm significance driven and now I fortunately I channeled that into being really , really good at what I do and it later on becomes a really positive thing , if you understand it .

And at least now and I told Kevin this early on , I know this is the last thing I know we got to jump , but Kev has a chip on his shoulder . He grew up in a tough environment . He grew up without a father . I have a chip on my shoulder too . Everyone listening knows that . I mean , they know that who does 1500 episodes right ? Okay , we do .

We have chips on our shoulder . The difference is now we're grown more mature , emotionally mature men who now realize that we have a chip on our shoulder and we don't let it drive us all the time . But I said this to Kev . I said don't take the chip off . I said drive the chip , don't let the chip drive you .

And so my question to everybody my next level nugget is what is the chip on your shoulder ? Is it because you were helicopter-parented and you were too protected and now you need to go off and rebel and find your way and prove that you can do it on your own ? Or is it because you had so much trauma and you need to prove that you can overcome all that ?

Whatever that chip is for you , just make sure that you're running the chip and the chip's not running you , and make sure that you do all you can with all you have .

That would be my next level nugget . All right , we get a hop because I have a call . You have a call Tomorrow for episode number 1,504 , insecurities

get worse when we hide them . I feel like we're on a theme of these type of topics this week , so I'm excited for that one . As always , we love you , we appreciate you , grateful for each and every one of you , and at NLU we do not have fans , we have family . We'll talk to you all tomorrow .