Persevere through our deepest fears

Decisions shape our destinies. It's been said, by one of the greatest minds in business today "It's in our moments of decision that our destinies are shaped". My experiences tell me this philosophy is dead nuts accurate. The power that comes from making a firm decision and standing behind it is magical, in that it forces us to make our decisions work, so they become the right decisions. But, fear will always try to stand in the way and keep us in these little boxes of conformity we've all had built around us, since we were kids.

There is really only one way to make sure that the decisions we make become the right ones...that is to persist and persevere until we get the outcome we desire. Napolean HIll, in his classic Think & Grow Rich, tells the story of a man named Darby, who stopped three feet from gold. Darby lived in the days of the Gold Rush out west, where men were leaving their jobs and businesses to seek out gold that was being discovered beneath the soil out in California. Many of these men risked everything they had to pursue their dream of striking gold.

Darby headed west and began digging for gold. A few weeks into his operation, he found a vein of the precious ore. He had struck gold. Based on his predictions about the quantity of his findings, he needed help. He could not do this alone, so he hid the operation and traveled back east to get help. He gathered a team of men went back out with proper equipment and supplies, to extract the gold and claim their riches. Down they went into the earth, pulling out a significant amount of gold in the first few days. But, within a day or two, the vein dried up. They drilled and drilled, but found nothing. It was a frustrating situation for Darby, having only brought up enough gold to pay for the operation's expenses. After a couple of days of drilling to no avail, Darby faced the decision to persist through what seemed like failure, or he could give in to the fear he felt of potentially never finding gold and losing everything he had and giving up. Darby sold his equipment to a local man for pennies on the dollar, including the ground he staked.

The local man hired a consultant to come in and examine the find. See, Darby knew very little about geology and how gold veins ran through the soil. The consultant had experience in this area and helped them find the vein Darby had lost in the process of drilling. Well, the local man ended up rich and Darby left with nothing, because, as it turns out, he stopped three feet from gold when he quit. Had Darby had the perseverance and stick-to-it-ive-ness to exhaust all possibilities before he quit, he would have been the one to find that wealth of gold.

The point is we have to push through the challenges and setbacks that are inevitable along the way, if we are going to succeed in any endeavor. Nothing of any real value is going to come easily-we are going to experience temporary defeats along the way. Only when we push through and persevere will we bust through and make it, in whatever calling we choose. But, once we've made a true decision to follow our passions, we must forget any and all possibility of retreating. We must persist even through what feels like ultimate failure. Only after this kind of relentless persistence will we break through. In my life, now that I've decided to follow my true passions-which is to write and coach, I can't keep one foot back in my contracting or rep businesses. If I do, then I won't have that fearless and relentless desire to make my dream career work. As I've mentioned already, nothing of any real value is going to just happen without true commitment and persistence.

Of course we are all going to have moments at which fear sets in-we're human, but we can do something to overcome, or at least harness, our fears. One effective tactic I employ, is to immediately bear down and take massive action toward my objective any time fear starts to rear its ugly head. Fear is menacing-it can lead us to dark places and will do anything it can to pull us away from the thing we love the most. We all are battling decades of past conditioning in which we were all taught the fearful belief to get a safe job and be happy about it. Now that the global economy is shaky, the world is really telling us we ought to just take what we can get and be damn glad we're not standing in bread lines. I say bullshit. The world can keep all that fear. I don't want it. So, rather than let fear control us, we need to recognize that it's there and that it's trying to steer us off course. We get super focused on what we want and immediately take action toward it. This will crowd that worry right out of our consciousness. After a few times of this, we'll develop a pattern of handling fear this way. We'll be on our way once we learn to control our fears.

Fear is constantly looking over my shoulder right now, as I'm working to get the book done and decide what to do with it once it is done. Everything inside of me screams that I'm doing the right thing, yet those around me question my decision. Fear of being poor has always guided my thinking, which is why I've worked jobs and built businesses I didn't care for all that much. But, I've been coming to terms with this fear, and have realized that life is short. I know this is about as cliche as I could be and sound, but life is short-life here in my home is flying by, to the point at which my little girl is going to be gone in four short years. The one thing I won't do is continue to chase money, working a business that I don't enjoy, because doing so has slowly chiseled away at my spirit. My mind is never at ease, because my entire focus is money. We will NEVER know security to any degree if we chase money. Only when we do what we love and say "who gives a shit about the money" will we know true security. My life will not be about money any longer. I don't care if I have to sell my home and live with my parents. I will not do this anymore. I won't live a life full of distraction, fear, and angst.

I recently had dinner with a friend of mine, who is a high-profile guy in our community. We both were completely honest with each other about a lot of things-things that are never discussed amongst even the closest of friends(well, at least they're not discussed in my social circle). We opened up completely. It was the most freeing and rewarding conversation of the last twenty years of my life. We both got past so many fears and issue that night, from being honest with each other.

I've gotten off on a tangent here, but I don't mind because I think this is a huge step-getting past our fears, because they hold us back and keep us from pursuing our passions. Fear has been tearing me up inside. I'm simply not going to allow that into the equation any longer. And now that I'm on the path of doing what I love, there is no retreat. I hope you all get to know the feeling I am trying to describe here.