Yesterday, we traveled to your future. To the life you dream about. We helped you visualize your future and challenged you to perform this visualization exercise every day for the next month.
Today, we'll look at the single biggest barrier to your success. You may be suprised to hear this. Read more
Welcome to our fifth Big Success Show. Today, you'll learn how to overcome the single biggest obstacle to your success. The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. Last show, we traveled to the future, the life you want to peace of mind, and we challenged you to do a visualization exercise of your future every single day this month. So we hope you're keeping up with that, and if you don't know what we're talking about, we've got a link to that show on today's blog at BigSuccess.com. And today, we want to talk about the biggest barrier to your success. So Mary Lynn, if I ask you, if we did a survey of people, what do you think most people would say keeps them from succeeding? Well, there's all sorts of excuses. You can blame it on a bad boss, bad work environment, non-supportive spouse. If only I would have done this, I'd be here now. But then I also think that there's just fear. Sure, there is fear, and fear is good, right? We learn that as kids that there's certain things we should fear for our own safety. But as adults, there's a fear that we experience that is totally counterproductive to success, and that's the fear of failure. Now, why do you think we're so afraid to fail? There's all sorts of reasons. We've got a lot more at risk now. What if you do fail? Then you've got to explain that to your family, your friends, everybody who's been supporting you with this new venture, and you have to say, "Ah, it didn't work out." And who wants to say that? Well, and why don't we? Because we're embarrassed. We're afraid that they're going to look at us as a failure or whatever. But here's the thing. I'll tell you a quick little story. This guy told me this in class one time. The students that succeed are the ones that aren't afraid of getting the question wrong. And why is that? Because they may get it wrong, but they learn. And because they learn, they progress. And because they progress, they get ahead, and this is what makes them actually succeed. So what we want to think about is, how do we fail forward? And how do we fail forward? We fail forward by cultivating a fear. What's the opposite of fear of failure? Fear of success? Fear of success. Okay, well, let's not think about all the way to success. Let's go in between to the fear of not trying. So if we're afraid to not try, in other words, we're so scared that if we just don't try this, we're just going to be sick inside because we've got to try this. We're sick to death of just thinking about it. We've got to see what will happen if we try. So basically what you're saying, the fear of not trying, overcomes the fear of trying. Absolutely right. Michael Jordan wrote about this, by the way, in a great book. It's a short little read called I Can't Accept Not Trying. And we've got a link to that on our blog at bigsuccess.com. And so if you think about the point where the fear of not trying, overcomes the fear of failure, that's when people go for it, and that's how people succeed. So that's what we want to challenge you to do today, is to cultivate the fear of not trying. I'll tell you what. I've been through that inspirational dissatisfaction stage, and I would just picture myself in my rockers, an old lady saying, "Oh, I wish I would have done that." And that's what I'm afraid of. That motivates me to go for it now. And that's where you've got to get, to the point where you're just scared to death to not go for it. So let's review what we've discussed today. Today we looked at the biggest obstacle to your success, the fear of failure. And we challenged you to cultivate the fear of not trying. It will lead you to big success. And you can find a summary of today's show on our blog at bigsuccess.com. We also have the link to the Michael Jordan book that we refer to. I can't accept not trying. It's a great read, and like George said, it's so short. I mean, you can read it in like 15 minutes. It is the quick read, but great stuff. So as we always do here on the big success show, we wrap up the show with a big quote, and what is it today? Today's quote is by Winston Churchill, "Success is never final, failure is never fatal." It's courage that counts. "Overcome your fears by living your dreams. What can you lose by trying?" On our next show, we'll talk about the story on storytelling. How and why to tell a story well. Oh, and I hope it has a happy ending. And until then, here's to your big success. The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G Success.com.
