 And here's the kicker. Many of us are surrounded by people who are also avoiding. So it compounds. If you've ever attended a bootcamp, if you've ever been in our training program, when you surround yourself with people who are stepping through the fear, stepping beyond their comfort zone, it actually rubs off on you. You now feel the power of the group, of the community, to take action in your life. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. AJ, you and I have been doing this for so long. That there is a running joke that you and I have when we're meeting young men who are a little bit still green, wet behind the ears and they're getting into their self-development journey. And one of the refrains that you and I hear all the time is, I've read all the books, but reading all the books doesn't mean you know what to do when you're in it. And when I mean in it, whatever it is that you are working on, whatever it is you had to work up the courage to step into, all the knowledge in the books is not going to help you in that moment. It is you're in that moment you will be reduced to the level of your training in order to work your way through that. And we hear it all the time. We laugh about it. And hey, listen, I've read all the books too. In fact, we read all the books for everyone who comes on this show because it is important for us to dig in and have great conversations. However, when you're giving somebody the feedback that you know they don't want to hear, when you're walking up to somebody to pitch them your idea, when you're at a networking event and you're going to say hello to somebody you've never talked to before, when those emotions hit, you will be reduced to what you know internally, what you've internalized, not what you read in the book, not what you heard on this podcast. It's not going to just come in and fall into you. It is what you've trained yourself for. And we can all relate to this, right? The anxiety, the fear, the self-doubt before that first date. How do you feel going into the second date after some experience with that person? Do you have that same fear and self-doubt? Or is there now excitement? So just the other side of that fear and self-doubt on that first time of doing something is the ability to get excited, to get highly motivated, to do more of it. But it's not about waiting. And here's the problem. The more you avoid something, the more difficult it becomes. Your avoidance of it doesn't make it easier. It actually makes it more difficult for you to take action in that area. So if you're sitting here, think about all the places in your life where fear is acting as the driver. You're the passenger and fear has the steering wheel. And it's saying, don't get up on stage, AJ. Don't put that piece of content out there. Don't share that story with people that you don't know. Don't get vulnerable. You can't say that. You're going to be judged. You're going to be criticized. Is avoiding that behavior leading to the success that you want in your life? Is avoiding that stage? Is avoiding asking that person out? Is avoiding telling your boss you deserve a raise, getting you the results that you want in your life? No, we know that. We know that avoidance doesn't work. But avoidance is what you're doing by reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos. It doesn't feel like avoidance to you because, hey, I'm getting knowledge. I'm getting information. I'm so worldly. I know every single perspective there is to have to overcome this fear that I have. The next question I ask of you is, have you taken action? Have you taken a step? And I hear this time and time again on our coaching calls. Oh, I love the podcast and I go, great. What have you put into your life and taken action on? Uh, you know, I'm not sure. So you have to ask yourself now understanding that experience points equal confidence points and that confidence equals freedom in your life. Should you spend another minute waiting on the sidelines, avoiding what you know you want to be doing? Of course not. The other thing that taking in all this information does is it gives you a false sense of security. And AJ, as you mentioned, it might be able to get you in there because you think you know what you're doing, but you haven't been trained on it. But it also sets you up for major disappointment. But when you don't meet your expectations that you set up from all the knowledge that you consumed, then you, then you put yourself in a position to beat yourself up. And why would you put yourself in that position again when you're only going to let yourself down? The first time was so bad that why would I want to do that again? This is why the training is so important. The training allows you to have an internal understanding of what is going on. It allows you to build repetition that you can lean on in order to work through to have the desired outcome that you are looking for. I want to add something to what both of you said, primarily around the avoidant thing. And experiential avoidance, like not wanting to do the difficult stuff, whatever feels uncomfortable, is highly correlated with low life satisfaction. And the problem here is our evolutionary upbringing because avoidance kind of works. So hear me out. I'm invited to a party, but I'm kind of anxious to go there because I might not know people. So I decide to not go. I avoid it. Guess what, guys? I've just solved my problem because the anxiety goes away, right? I'm scared to speak up in front of my boss so I'm going to avoid it and the anxiety goes away. This is the big problem because what people have been doing for years trying to find their freedom and develop their confidence is they follow the pattern that kind of works because the moment you think, I'm such a loser, I can't speak to that beautiful person over there. The moment you decide to keep walking, that thought goes away because it's done its job. And so your brain learns, hey, if I don't go to parties, I feel better. If I don't speak to people, the fear goes away. And then 20 years later, they're looking at their life and they say, what have I been doing? What have I been doing, right? But that is because our brain, the state our brain is in right now is still like 50,000 years ago. It's like running a really old operating system. It's like running DOS 2.0. And at our brain at that stage, it evolved in a short-term gratification system. It's like, do I eat something now or do I run away now? Whereas our brain now has to work in the long term. Like what happens if I don't speak up now? What's going to happen to my job in a couple of years? But our brain always thinks in this very short term what's going to make me feel better in a minute from here on out? Well, not going to the party, not saying something, not speaking up, not asserting myself. And there's your problem because avoidance works. And here's the kicker. Many of us are surrounded by people who are also avoiding. So it compounds. If you've ever attended a boot camp, if you've ever been in our training program, when you surround yourself with people who are stepping through the fear, stepping beyond their comfort zone, it actually rubs off on you You now feel the power of the group, of the community to take action in your life. You know, when I talk to many of our clients and I ask about their experience before Unstoppable, they don't have a peer group who is working on their anxiety. They have a peer group that is reinforcing their anxiety. Yeah, you shouldn't talk to that person. Yeah, why would you tell your boss that? You're going to get fired. And now you are taking in their self doubt which is compounding on your self doubt. But imagine surrounding yourself with a wolf pack of five people, ten people who are also pushing through their fear, who realize that the value in life is in your uncomfort zone, outside of your comfort zone. That is when you supercharge yourself to take action. So it's okay. We get it. We all have those friends and family members who have their own self doubt and they want to pile it on our plate because their self doubt has allowed them to feel safe. But it's not working to get you the results that you want in your life. That wolf pack idea is, that is what I love most about Become Unstoppable because seeing those ten people or twenty people, thirty people in the group come together and support each other is amazing. So this is a little bit embarrassing to admit. But the amount of times I've seen them do their homework and I watched the videos they record in the morning and I had coffee come out of my nose because I'm laughing so hard. So maybe I should expand on this coffee thought for a second. Something that we do in the program simply because it is so important, like Johnny said, to not just take in the information but to practice, practice, practice. We're doing something that's called comfort zone challenges and that is me as the coach, purposefully pushing people outside of their comfort zone in a safe manner so that they can practice what we've just covered. So I might, we might cover in that week how do you deal with the inner critic with the thoughts that come up and they want to stop you and then I teach a couple of techniques and what you do about them and then I give them an exercise where I know for sure those thoughts are going to come up and why? Because I want them to practice this every day and every day and every day and then the first person does like the exercise shares it with the group and everyone else sees it and is like oh I have to do that too. I'm going to push it even further and then they start laughing and they start sharing and they push each other and they do variations on the exercise that I give them and it's scary and it's free. Like they oftentimes say like in the first week after doing the exercise for the first time the reply that I get the most is I felt so free because for the first time in my life I saw that my thoughts and my emotions they can speak up but they can't control me and if I build on that I'm unstoppable and I've just seen that it's possible. Give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Something I want to add and this goes back to what AJ was discussing about the people that you have in your peer group and they're going to identify with a world view that you have because that allows you to feel comfortable. Now a few weeks ago I had gotten the question on a tweet that I had sent out but the question was how do I find and build a high value peer group? So if you want to surround yourself by people who are confident, courageous and free well then you are going to have to change to be able to adapt and be welcomed into a group that is confident and free and taking action because those people have already done the curating of their peer group to make sure that the people they surrounded themselves reinforce taking action confidence and freedom because that's who they want to be that's how they want to run their life and so they're going to need the support of people who are also that way so if you are outside looking in how do I attract and build a high value social circle of like-minded people well you have to first start to exhibit those behaviors the mindset that you think that you have will be exhibited in the actions that you take those people who have worked to curate a peer group of like-minded, action taking confident, freedom loving people they know exactly what those behaviors and actions look like and they are screening for them and this is why again we are reduced to the level of our training in the actions and behaviors that we're going to take that reflect those mindsets this is the work that you need to do and many of us in our peer group have people in our life due to circumstance we shared a dorm room together we work at the same company we moved into this neighborhood we go to the same church we play on the same softball team and that's fine but if you're finding that you want more high value people in your life you have to take action it's in the action that you attract like-minded people it's not going to happen by hoping your friends change their mindset hoping your family changes that hope is not a strategy so when you want to attract high value people you have to become high value yourself and then you self-select and bring in new and exciting and amazing opportunities for better relationships for motivation for all of those things that right now you might be saying don't exhibit that my friends don't do that my friends don't want to push outside of their comfort zone and I talk to many of our clients saying you know the reason I feel stuck is because I look around and everyone else around me is stuck you know I love this as I was explaining this to the person who asked the question they're like well where do high value people hang out? I'll just go there and hang out and I'll start to build well, high value action taking freedom, love and comfort of people are hanging out at places where it is required you take action and are confident and have freedom of your own biological evolution and so it's going to be difficult if you haven't built that into yourself to find yourself there