The Work Only You Can Do

December 15, 2011 By deacon 17 Comments

Last summer I attended Quitter Conf with 200 other people pursuing their dreams. The host, Jon Acuff, challenged us, “Give yourself permission today to be your secret self.”

Just for the day. Just at the conference. Let yourself be the person you deeply wish you were.

What would you be? What would you be like? We all have this desire inside us of what we ultimately want to be, but we don’t show it.

Whatever the reason is (and there always is one), something keeps us from letting that desire transcend from our secret-self to our true-self.

When you want to be an artist and your dad reminds you “You can’t make any money doing that.”

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Fighting The Resistance

November 17, 2011 By deacon 7 Comments

Lately I’ve been carrying a list of my top short-term goals in my pocket. It’s so easy to get distracted and to come up with new “urgent” things I need to be working on. If I’m not careful I’ll wind up racing from one shiny object to the next without ever really doing anything.

For the last few weeks my list has been one item long.

“Crush 2012” Workshop

If I really knew what I was doing this wouldn’t be so hard. If I had anything worth sharing this workshop would spring to life magically. The outline would flow out of me like a raging river and carry participants off to unimagined successes!

I should have never committed to this.

At least that’s what the Resistance keeps telling me.

Like any new endeavor a great battle awaits me every day. As Pressfield himself describes it: [Read more…]

Be the Worst, Now

September 26, 2011 By deacon 10 Comments

I stared blankly back at the fourteen JV high school boys huddled around me. The game was set to start in two minutes and they wanted to hear what their coach had to say. It’s time for last minute instructions. It’s time to instill in them the confidence that they were prepared for this. But I had nothing. It was a really uninspiring moment for everyone involved.

I grew up playing water polo. I’d been to hundreds of practices preparing for dozens of tournaments. I played at the NCAA level. But right then, in that moment, in my first pre-game huddle, I was failing as a coach.

I can’t remember exactly what happened in that game, or the one after that. But I remember being confused.

Why did that go so badly? Why am I so bad at this?

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One Bad Idea Away from Hobo

August 25, 2011 By deacon 8 Comments

I’ve been thinking about doing some coaching through Life Stoked lately. I’m passionate about helping people succeed and it’s something I’m good at too. But then I thought some more…

What if I put myself out there as a coach and it doesn’t work out? Suddenly LifeStoked.com isn’t a resource helping people succeed, it’s a place to get pitched to. My readers and fans would all abandon me because that’s not at all what they signed up for.

My friends at work would probably get wind of it too. Wait, so this guy is a coach now? I thought he was helping us grow Invodo. We don’t need that kind of disloyalty here!

I’d be “let go,” to go find work that’s better suited to my desires which of course would be hard!

We’d probably miss a few mortgage payments before we finally gave up and sold the house hoping families would be willing to take us in.

All because I thought helping people succeed one-on-one could be a fun.

What Happened Here?

During which paragraph of that downward spiral did you start rolling your eyes? Second? Third? It’s crazy right?

Right. But just because it was so easy for you to recognize my paranoia and fear through that story doesn’t mean you’re not telling yourself these same stories. Jon Acuff said it best:

“I feel like I’m one bad decision away from hobo.”

I had to laugh when I heard that because I know exactly what he’s talking about. I fought through that feeling a hundred times. I fought it to launch this blog. I fought it to start Bedrock Coaching. I fought it to leave old jobs and start new jobs.

Of course the list of things I never did because of that feeling is much much longer.

The fear of failure tries to get you to believe that your actions are forever.

– Jon Acuff

Being Realistic

My wife and I have been laughing about this feeling a lot lately with some big decisions we’ve been making. It helps a lot just to acknowledge that fear and understand that it’s inevitable.

It’s our brains at work.

David Rock explains in Your Brain at Work that our brains will try anything to avoid uncertainty. They will conjure up terrifying probabilities to keep things the same. They will lie to us, deceive us, and persuade us to thinking that staying the same is the wise choice.

Outsmarting Yourself

And so you have to use the right word when you’re trying new things. Instead of “starting” something new, it’s time to “experiment.”

Calling something an experiment removes “forever” from your thinking and frees you to fail without consequence. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal. It was just an experiment. Just something I was trying on to see how it fits.

I can experiment with coaching. I can experiment with new ideas at Invodo. I can experiment with anything.

I can feel a new energy in old, tired ideas I’ve had chained to the fence for months. I’m excited about new experiments.

What about you? Have you ever felt like you were one bad decision away from hobo?

Where To Look To Find Your Passion

August 18, 2011 By deacon 14 Comments

To reach the highest levels of success you’ve got to be doing something you’re passionate about. No surprises there really.

To me that tip was always about as helpful as “you’ve got to be saving more if you want to be rich.” Yea. Thanks. But I’ve got a mortgage, car payments, and a family to feed. I need a little more to go on to be useful.

If you want to find your unique passion, stop looking OUT at the world and start looking IN at yourself. Click to tweet this.

Figuring out what you’re passionate about and then turning that into dollars isn’t exactly straight forward (at least for me it isn’t!).

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Things I Will Not Blame

August 15, 2011 By deacon 6 Comments

As long as you blame other people for the fact that your dreams haven’t come true, you’ll never really work on your dream. These are people or things I will no longer blame:

1. My busy schedule

2. My position at work

3. My lack of experience

4. My fear of failure

5. My lack of knowledge about how to get started

6. My lack of a polished plan with a concrete destination

What’s holding you back from working on your dreams?

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