Ep. 28: Wealth Creator Moment: Overcoming the Fear of Failure

Wealth Creator Moment: Overcoming the Fear of Failure

Over the last five years, my calling has been evolving into a more refined version of something in the money & life space – an opportunity to share what I’ve learned in my career through my observations of wealth creators and the issues they face around money & life.

I felt that writing a book was part of the journey, so I decided to hire an editor to help me develop a book proposal.

There have been many instances in my life, where I’ve thought about things I want to do and then never stepping off the curb and moving towards it. What held me back? It was negative self-talk! I was continually thinking about the reasons why I couldn’t do it, and the time it was going to take. I didn’t know what I was doing. Who was going to care anyway? Some of this might be true, but as I’ve moved down this path, the doors keep opening.

Once my proposal was sent out to publishers, I started to hear the word “no.” As a “type-A,” wealth creator, I don’t like to hear the word “no.” I want to hear the word “yes.” And I heard “no” a lot. It was hard on my ego. I had to sit there having to realize that I was putting myself in this incredible, vulnerable place. I was exposing what I cared about, what I believed and held it out there for publishers to judge.

I heard Dusty Baker, a former Major League Baseball manager, quoted recently, who said, “My job is to effectively be the best manager and coach that I can be. But how I perform and the outcome of that performance is for you to judge, not me.” For me, still, hearing those judgmental words and hearing the “nos” did have an impact on me and my confidence to a degree.

Isn’t it interesting that as we look at our ideal outcomes and our futures, we want to kind of control? We want to make sure it happens, but that’s not that way life always works. A good friend of mine shared with me along the way that, “in every ‘no,’ there’s a hidden ‘yes.'” What I learned is that it’s okay to hold opportunities with open hands, because the reality of it is that there could be just a bunch of “nos” that turn into another “yes” that I can’t see right now.

The writing process has taken me down a self-awareness path of realizing how tightly I hold onto outcomes I have and how those are connected to my identity.

That said, what if the doors don’t open? What if money, and influence, and power, and all the things that are at my fingertips can’t make something happen? What I learned is I have to let them happen. In fact, I didn’t have to have a publisher for me to be okay. I could have failed in that part of the adventure and still be okay. I started to realize that if all the answers were “no,” there was a plan that God had for my life that might be different than going the traditional book publishing route.

As it turned out, there was a plan to publish my book. I have a publisher and the book is due out in the spring of 2019. I’m excited, but I think I’m holding this dream a little bit differently now. There’s going to be an opportunity for me to learn what it feels like to have that work judged, to be in the court of public opinion, and to potentially fail in that court. I’m hoping as I step into this new journey, that I’ll also hold it in the same way, that there is some “yes” there for me to see and find and be part of moving forward towards my outcome. This is really the success of my journey.

So I want to leave you with a couple of questions for you to ponder around this subject of failure, and identity, and holding some of these outcomes loosely.

1. What outcomes in your life are you trying to control instead of just letting them happen?”

2. Is there possibly a different outcome that might be even better than one you imagined?

3. Is your identity too wrapped up in your ideal outcomes? If so, how can you lessen that grip?”

I hope this gave you some hope, and inspiration, and a little different way around failure in your life. Thank you very much for tuning in! I look forward to talking to you soon.

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