 Today, we're going to talk about the number one thing you have to stop hiding from if you want to succeed in business. This is my secret to dealing with self-doubt, inadequacy, and lack of confidence in business. Without understanding this, you're going to be stopped dead in your tracks. This probably stops more people before they even get started than anything else. This also causes jealousy, envy, and self-doubt. So what are we talking about? Well, a couple of years ago I noticed a trend from the top people in business. I was looking at my competitors and I was trying to figure out what do these people have in common because a lot of times you can look at your competitors, direct or indirect, and you can say what exactly do they have in place that I don't, that maybe is causing me not to get as great of results as they have. It's a really good way to figure out what to focus on in your business. But while I was doing this, I noticed this unintended thing. I noticed something about the top people in business, and then I saw something on The Washington Post. According to The Washington Post, one in five chief executives, CEOs, are psychopaths. Did you know that? Now this is not a lesson in how to become a psychopath, and I do not recommend that, though I did dress up as Dexter for Halloween one year. But I noticed something my competitors had in common with psychopaths when I read this article. I noticed that the people at the top, the CEOs, and my top competitors are absolutely shameless. They have no shame. So what is shame? Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Basically means like you feel wrong for either what you're doing, or for who you are, or even just for existing. That's shame. It's that deep gnawing black hole feeling in the pit of your stomach that causes you to want to curl up in a little ball and hide and not do anything. Now there's a reason that 20% of the most successful people in the world, these CEOs, don't have shame. There's a reason that that's correlated. It's because getting rid of shame allows you to go in a straight line towards your goal. Let me show you what I mean. Here's what happens when you have shame. Could be shame around money, could be shame around publicity or being seen, could be shame around interacting with your market, could be shame around a million different things. But here's what happens when you have shame. Here's where you are now. Here's your goal and you try to go straight at your goal, but you hit what's called a shame wall. And this is this wall that is blocking you from everything that you want. Now shame is often unconscious. So I have to point this out to you. Shame is not usually, you usually don't know, oh, I'm feeling shame right now and that's why I'm self-sabotaging. That's not how it works. It's you set out to hit your goal and you hit a shame wall and all sorts of stuff happens. The thing that I see most commonly is you become a problem fortune teller. And what a problem fortune teller is, is this is where you are now. This is where you want to go, right? Instead of taking action in the straight line, what you do is you become a fortune teller and your crystal ball shows you all of these future problems. And all of a sudden you start to say to yourself, well, I have to solve all these future problems before I can even get started. Now, if you've ever been in business for a long time, you know, that's not a good way to operate. I like to do what's called just-in-time problem solving. That means even if we're doing a new project in my business, we figure it out piece by piece. So we say, what's step one? Okay, let's figure that out. And if step two is kind of an unknown, it's like, well, how are we gonna pull off step two? We say, well, we don't have to figure that out until we figure out step one. So most people become fortune tellers when it comes to problems and they come up with all these future problems and they want to solve all those problems before they even exist at all. Now, if they could just go straight at their goal instead of worrying about hypothetical problems that may or may not come true, they're gonna get a lot better results. But why does this happen? It's because unconscious shame often shows up as indifference in decision, doubt, worry, over-caution, procrastination, lack of ambition, jealousy, lack of motivation, and a myriad of other ways. All these reasons, all these reasons we step on our tracks, we might get really bored. That's the one that happens to me is I'll start to get really bored with the project and I realize it's just I'm hitting a personal wall because maybe I have shame around something. Maybe I'm uncomfortable with something about that project. Not because I think it's unethical. I think there's something wrong with it. It's because I'm uncomfortable showing up as that person. It's beyond my comfort zone. It's shame. And so what happens when you can rid yourself of shame is this, where you are now your goal and you just take a straight line at it. You just take a straight line. You take the actions and you hit the goal. Because there's a saying that I love. It's so simple. It's do the thing and you shall have the power. So if you look at any business, what are the competitors doing? If you do the same things, you're gonna get the same results. You have to stick with it. But most people will do anything to actually take those straight line actions. Those actions that are just a direct path between where you are now and where you want to be. So we don't want to rid ourselves of the ability to feel shame. Shame is a healthy emotion some of the time. We just want to learn how to process our shame. And that's because healthy adult shame will keep us ethical. It'll allow us to care about other people and do the right thing. But leftover shame from our childhood will ruin our lives. It will make us ashamed of things that we shouldn't be ashamed of. Like putting ourselves out there or putting effort towards something that we could fail at or failing or succeeding. Or any of these things. Leftover shame from childhood will make us think that we don't deserve to exist at an extreme. Okay? At a lesser extreme it might think that we don't deserve to be in business or we don't deserve to win. But at the most extreme it makes us think that we don't deserve to exist. There's toxic shame right there. Now shame, getting rid of shame is also the one thing that you take care of that takes care of everything else. Let me give you an example of what I mean. If I do yoga, let's say I go to yoga at 4 p.m. today in Denver. If I go do yoga, I will feel good in my body afterwards. And as a result, I'll automatically eat healthier. Pizza is one of my favorite foods, but I don't like to eat it after I do yoga because it makes me feel really bad. So I'll automatically eat healthier. I'll automatically go to the gym more because all I want to do is move my body after I've done yoga because my body just feels good. It's light. It's lit up and I just want to move more. So I'll go to the gym more. I'll stay more active throughout the day. I'll walk places instead of taking an uber or a car. I'll meditate more often because I feel more calm and focused and it's easier to meditate. I'll sleep better and I'll stay calmer and be less reactive in all other areas of my life. All from doing this one thing. So I could try, I could put efforts towards doing all of these things which is going to be overwhelming and I'm not going to be able to do it very well. Or I could just say, what's the one thing I could focus on that will make everything else automatically happen? And when it comes to physical stuff for me, that's yoga. If I do yoga, everything else will happen automatically. This is called a leverage point. So I'm going to show you how this plays into business. If I rid myself of shame, I'm going to feel good in my body as well. And that's going to allow me to go out there and take action because it won't feel bad when I take the actions. And that'll get me to invest in myself because I won't feel silly investing in myself. I won't worry about what other people say. That's going to allow me to learn the skills. I'll feel good about reaching out to people. So I'm going to meet the right people, take the right actions. I'm going to sell myself, serve my customers and hire the right people. If I can give her a shame, all those things are going to happen automatically. Now, let's say I don't get rid of the shame. I might try and do some of these same things. I might still learn a lot, but I'm not going to do anything about what I'm learning. So if you've ever done that, you're taking a program, you learn and learn and learn and learn. You just never take action on it. That's happened to me in the past. And it's usually because I'm scared to actually take the action. So I trick myself into thinking that I need to learn more before going out there and taking action so I don't have to face that unconscious shame. But I learned from T. Harvecker in The Millionaire Mindset, if you want to change the fruits, you're going to have to take care of the roots. You know, if you're not getting the apples that you want from a tree, you don't go out there and work on the apples. The apples are the fruits that come from the tree. You go out there and you work on the roots. You change the soil or you change the water and you allow those roots to grow and become stronger and the apples will automatically come out, healthier apples. So our outer world is just a reflection of our inner world. Most things that we have in our lives, in our business, are just a reflection of our inner world. One of my mentors said, your business, life is just a reflection of your personal life. And we often see the same pattern show up in our personal relationships and in our business. So why do we have shame? What's this all about? Why do we feel bad about ourselves for no reason? And why can't we set out and do the things that we want to do without running into this wall? It's because humans are tribal. We evolved in tribes, in small groups of people that stick together to survive and a lot of our unconscious instincts developed to survive within the social model. And as we evolved, we became repulsed by shame, or maybe from the very beginning we were. We are repulsed by shame. It's for a very good reason, but if somebody is ashamed, we will be repulsed by that person. So let me give you an example. Let's say you're living in prehistoric times and you walk into a new tribe and you're meeting people and one person is absolutely full of shame. What is that signal telling you? It's telling you that that person did something very bad and that the whole tribe has turned against them because they're not safe for the tribe. So for you to befriend that person who's full of shame in this scenario, likely you're befriending somebody who is dangerous. Maybe they stole, maybe they committed violence against another member of the tribe. Maybe they went out hunting, they didn't share it. Any of these anti-social behaviors, they're going to be shamed for and now when somebody else walks up to them, they're going to be repulsed by that shame because associating with someone who is full of shame causes us to think we might be shamed too. So let's say you befriended that person who is shamed by the tribe, all of a sudden the whole tribe is shaming you as well and you're going to be left to die on your own without the support of the group. And this is very dangerous. So seeing someone else's shame makes us feel our own shame and most of us will distance ourselves as fast as possible from that person in order not to feel our own shame. Now there is an exception to this. If we're already full of shame, we might only associate with people who have shame. So I don't know if you've ever been in like a bad place in your life and then all of a sudden you start hanging out with lots of other people who are also in a really bad place in their life because you're comfortable around one another. Maybe you're all abusing drugs or alcohol to deal with your shame together and so you can bond over that shame but if we're in a healthy place in our lives, which hopefully some of the time we are, we're going to try and distance ourselves from that shame, okay? And this whole process again happens unconsciously. We just lied to ourselves about this stuff and we believe it. We become future problem tellers. We give ourselves excuses not to get what we want in life. Now on the flip side of this, human beings are extremely attracted to shamelessness. This is people with no shame. When is the last time you saw a president get embarrassed? It doesn't happen. They don't have any shame, okay? So we can look at a couple, the last couple presidents and we can see some commonalities between all of them. They can be very different but also the same. I was looking some of the stuff up for research and Donald Trump was on Stephen Colbert and Colbert says what do you have to apologize for? Now, if you're a healthy person, there is a chance that you have something in your life to apologize for. There's a chance you've done something that you could apologize for given the opportunity. And Donald Trump just says he has absolutely nothing to apologize for, okay? And so this brings up a good point, is we have to look at unhealthy versus healthy shamelessness because it's not healthy to be shameless all the time. We only want to be shameless when it's appropriate. So let's look at unhealthy versus healthy shamelessness. But first, again with these presidents, like you cannot get elected if you show shame. This is why we never have presidents with no shame. You cannot get elected, the public will not back you if you have shame. Okay, so Howard Dean had his famous Dean scream back in, I think it was like the 2004 elections. He had a little too excited, but you could tell he was kind of embarrassed about it. And then the media started to shame him for this excited scream that he had. And all of a sudden he went from one of the top contenders to being completely out of the race. And number one is, again, people don't associate with somebody who's being shamed, but then you could also tell that he was a little bit embarrassed, but he didn't admit it. And so he didn't bring the shame into the light and say, oh, yeah, I got a little carried away. I was embarrassed. He said, I don't think it was a problem, but you could tell he did unconsciously. And so now there's a discrepancy between what he's saying and what he's feeling. And you can pick up on that and people don't like to associate with that. And also it would be a reflection of our own shame if we were to associate with somebody who had shame and people just can't handle it. Which is why shame stays hidden and it stays with us for a very long time. This is the hardest part about it, is we just want to hide from it. And so that just perpetuates it. But let me show you how to free yourself. I've ever been to an amateur stand-up comedy night and felt how awkward it is when a performer is uncomfortable. So somebody's new to stand-up comedy and they get up there and they're kind of making awkward jokes. You can tell they're really embarrassed being up there. And the audience gets so uncomfortable. It's what we call cringe-worthy. And we almost can't tolerate even being in that scenario, right? Like it's almost too much. You talk to your friend afterwards. You say, like, yeah, I couldn't even handle when that guy was up there because he was ashamed of himself, right? But bringing it into the light gets rid of it. So I've heard a lot of stand-up comics talk about how they bombed for the very first time and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to them because these people that still have shame, it's like they've never accepted that they're going to bomb. And so they're trying not to bomb. They're worried about the approval of others. And you know the good comedians have absolutely no need for the approval of the audience. Anytime you seek the audience's approval, they won't laugh at your jokes. So bombing on stage sets you free. It's basically like the worst-case scenario happens and once you accept that, you realize that you're safe even when you bomb and all of a sudden you're liberated from approval, from the need for approval. So that's going to teach us a lot about shame and how to get rid of it in business. So how do we know if we're acting out of shame in your business? Let's say you launch a new ad campaign in your business or you take a sales call and it bombs. You're like the comedian, you go up there and you bomb. If you're having a shame reaction to this, you're going to say, I'm so stupid, I suck, I messed that up, it's my fault, something's wrong with me, I'm not good at this, right? That's a shame reaction. Especially if you're new, you shouldn't expect to be good at everything, so you shouldn't attribute this to there's something wrong with you. If you don't have any shame and you go out there and you're going to do that, you're going to say, this is great, I have more information about what doesn't work, I learned something, next time I'm going to try and do this differently and it might work a little better and I'll stay on that path. But the people who have shame are going to quit because they cannot handle those uncomfortable feelings that happen from failure. So no shame, you fail at something, you decide it's your approach and you try to do it differently next time. You decide that it's you, in that this isn't going to work for you no matter what. This is what happens when people go out there and they try something for the very first time. Maybe they try a guitar, maybe they try a new exercise class, maybe they try a new business. In the very first week, they're so embarrassed by how bad they are at it that they quit forever instead of sticking with it because you know you have to show up and suck at something in order to show up and be good at it. Now this carries over, the root of fear of success or imposter syndrome is rooted in shame. And here's the thing, if you're trying to succeed in this world or in business or whatever success is so much harder than failure. When you start to succeed there are a lot more people depending on you, there's a lot more at stake, you have a lot more to lose, there's a lot more personal accountability and there's a lot more required of you. When you haven't even gotten started you have nothing to lose, there's nothing at stake. There's a very small investment of your time and money in the beginning. The bigger you get, the larger the investment of your time and money, employees, team members customers, community family members that are depending on you and you're accountable for towards a lot more people. When you are successful more people will be happy with you and more people will be upset with you. So it's not like you start to be successful and everything just gets easier and easier and everyone loves you more and more. No, it's like a lot more people love you when you start to succeed and a lot more people hate you when you start to succeed and we'll see why that is. That's isn't all about feeling good and if you take anyone being upset with you as evidence that you're not good enough or what you're doing is wrong then you're screwed, right? You can never make it in business if you can't handle people being upset with you because the more visible you become the more people are going to be upset with you. People will give their shame away to you. This is what happens. As soon as you become visible you become a pillar for people to put their shame on to. So let's talk about how that works. There are three ways to deal with shame. Remember, we don't want to be shameless all the time we just want to learn to process our shame and that's what's going to get us through and get us the success we want. So shame reaction is we have three different ways to deal with it. Number one is people that can't or are unwilling to feel their own shame will keep it buried and they will hide. This is probably the most common I would say. So this is like a drug addict who stays high all the time so he never has to feel anything an aspiring musician who won't pick up an instrument he can't handle being bad at it. A promising young actor who sabotages his audition for fear of getting the part. A young woman who cheats on her boyfriend because she doesn't feel she's worthy of love. A new entrepreneur who sabotages the sales calls so he doesn't have to deliver the service. Or it could be the person who's a compulsive exerciser so they don't have to feel within their body. Or the person who can't go out to a social outing without having a couple of drinks no matter what. It's all these ways that we avoid feeling what's coming up in our own bodies. So again we all do this none of this is anything to be ashamed of. We just want to point it out that this is one way that humans cope with shame. And this is just like this is the extreme example is the drug addict. It's not that the drug addict is a bad person it's that they can't handle a lot of times the shame that they feel inside and so they'll do anything to avoid feeling that. These are all ways to hide and we all hide in some ways. But let's say we want to progress past hiding. The next way that people deal with shame and again something that we all do is people that can't who are unwilling to feel their shame will project it onto you. And this is why public figures get so much criticism among many reasons. But this is why the more success you get no matter what you do this is why the more success you get the more people hate on you. Let's say you write novels for young adults the more popular your books are you have. I mean it's pretty obvious, right? So this is people that can't are unwilling to feel their own shame they'll project it onto you. So I saw an interview with George W. Bush about Will Ferrell's portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live. So SNL, if you ever watch it you know that they always will mock the president. This is why the show exists it's social commentary and so no matter who is in office they will be mocked ruthlessly that's the whole point of the show there's nothing wrong with that that's why it exists. So I saw an interview with George W. Bush about this and he said he thought it was hilarious and it was great he's willing to accept that he's not a perfect human being now this is not a commentary on is he a good or bad person or his politics good or bad this is just about shame so he's willing to accept that he's not perfect and that's why it's funny when people make fun of me. Now our current president has been mocked on SNL and our current president does not have the ability to feel shame or admit that he's an imperfect person even though we are all imperfect people and so he gets mocked on SNL and he says question is how do the networks get away with these total republican hit jobs without retribution likewise for many other shows very unfair and should be looked into this is the real collusion the rigged and corrupt media is the enemy of the people and it says Trump's critics quickly fire back what they saw was an attack on the first amendment which it clearly is whether we have a democratic or republican president they will be mocked on SNL yet when Trump is mocked he literally wants to shut down the show that's how much he does not want to feel his own shame or his own imperfections because if he can come out and say like yeah I'm not a perfect person it's funny when they make fun of me that again he doesn't have to stay in the shame he's discharging it by bringing it into the light so we all do this we all project we all make it somebody else's fault to some extent he is just like the extreme example because he's completely unable to feel any of his own shame so what is the third healthy way to deal with shame okay we're seeing a lot of unhealthy behaviors here that again we all exhibit to some extent but we want to trend towards a healthier behavior so people that can feel their own shame will accept that they are flawed and they will bring it into the light have you ever heard like seeing a kid or maybe it's happening to you when you're younger or even as adults this happens all the time or you're just mocked ruthlessly on the playground for some attribute of yours in your self-conscious about it you try and keep it hidden and you try and resist it and people say like people make fun of you for it and you try and deny that you're that thing right but as soon as you stop fighting it like if somebody's making funny and you agree with them you say yeah I am that thing all of a sudden it takes away all of the power accepting the thing about you that's imperfect will take away all of that power and all of a sudden when people make fun of you for it and you accept it there's no charge there and they'll no longer mock you for it so there's those things that we resist endlessly that will continue to be made fun of for it it's like a cruel joke that the universe is playing on right the things that we resist will continue to show up over in Oregon and accept those things about ourselves and admit them takes away all of the power so this brings us to projection projection which was first brought to the attention of society by Sigmund Freud projection is the unconscious transfer of one's own desires or emotions to another person things that we don't want to feel will put on to other people it's like when Donald Trump doesn't want to feel his own imperfections he'll put it on SNL and he'll say the SNL should be shut down so let's look at a very innocuous case of how shame shows up in this way this is an episode of The Office and Michael Scott is driving a forklift in the forklift in the warehouse he knocks over these shelves and in this scene shortly after this he goes you should really get that forklift looked at and so instead of admitting that it was his fault that he knocked over the shelves he's just going to project that unwanted feeling onto the forklift and see like yeah you should really get that forklift fix something's wrong with it instead of something wrong with me something is wrong with that forklift so you see this can be done in a really silly way in a funny way but it shows up in our work all the time so this past summer I was having lunch with a woman and we were talking about this Rachel Hollis book Girl Wash Your Face now I've never read it but it's incredibly popular it was everywhere this summer and I asked her oh what did you think of Girl Wash Your Face and she said that it seemed like Rachel Hollis was just recycling a lot of material that has already been around for a long time and none of it was original now obviously this book was original enough to become extremely successful so obviously Rachel Hollis didn't just play dry something on the internet and so I asked this woman I said let me ask you a question are you scared to publish your own works because you think they're not original enough and she got a look on her face and she got very mad about this but it was clear that that statement provoked something within her that was there and so it was clear that like yeah she does feel really self-conscious about this and yeah she probably is holding herself back professionally because she doesn't want to put her own writing into the world because she thinks she has an realistic standard for what writing has to be because truth is not new, truth is old everything is just something old said in a new way and so if you think that every single thing that's published has to be this profound thing that's never been published in the history of the human race before you'll never publish a single thing you know it's been said that every single story has already been told and so if you want to write novels or you want to publish a book or a movie and you think it has to be the most original thing that's ever occurred you'll never put anything out there so you can see how the shame about being original caused her to criticize this book unfairly because then when I dug further and I said well what did you actually think of the book and it turns out that she actually really liked the book and she got all this really good stuff from it but her first reaction was criticism but when I dug into it turned out she really actually liked the material in the book and so that's projection that's projecting her own insecurities onto this author and saying this author is not original enough and what she really means is I'm insecure about my work not being original enough and so I won't publish it now let's look at a really extreme case of this okay this says anti-LGBT politician resigns after being caught having sex with a man in his office and so this is somebody who is dedicating their life to proceeding against the LGBT community because they're ashamed of their own homosexuality and so instead of accepting those uncomfortable feelings in themselves they are projecting it hardcore out into the world and then when they're caught of course they're deemed a hypocrite their career is ruined and they're gonna have to accept that thing about themselves in the end anyways so they might as well have accepted it up front and not been a terrible human being and you know been anti-LGBT but again I'll do this to some extent like there's nothing wrong with doing any of this it's just when you take it to this extreme all of a sudden you're ruining people's lives for it that's what you don't want to do and so what we want to do is we want to look within and see where it's coming up this is also why haters are so funny because if somebody hates on you they're just laying their cards on the table like that Rachel Hollis story like when she's hating on Rachel Hollis she's just telling me exactly what she's insecure about you know so a lot of times if somebody calls you a scam when they don't know much about your business or what you do I'm not talking about somebody who's done business with you and calls you a scam that's something different if somebody calls you a scam when they don't know much about you it's usually because they don't believe in their own value they don't think they're worth it if somebody makes fun of you for being self-promotional it's usually because they're uncomfortable with their own self-promotion if somebody thinks that business thing is weird and risky let's say you start a business your friends are judging you for it your family is judging you for it it's usually because they're afraid of losing their own security right because here's the thing secure people aren't your haters secure people don't hate on you it's people that are insecure about things and that's because your actions go against their values which exist to keep them safe so if you have a value that money is bad and it's going to make my family unhappy let's say you grew up and money was a source of conflict you might create a value that says money's bad will make my family unhappy you know that they're going to hate on anyone who values money right or you might start hating on people who value money because your value says money is bad it causes conflict or maybe you have a value that's not safe to be seen because you were bullied as a kid something like that you might hate on anyone who self-promotes you know it's been said that the things that we hate in other people are the things that we're unable to accept within ourselves you might have a value I'm not good enough to start a business and then you might hate on people who start a business from scratch and start to be really successful you might find things that are wrong with them this kind of thinking and behavior is going to result in what's called self-sabotage I think we've all experienced self-sabotage but if your subconscious mind has one goal and your conscious mind has another your subconscious mind will win every single time so if your conscious mind won't success but your subconscious thinks that you'll be shamed for success again because maybe it caused conflicts growing up then your subconscious mind will win as soon as you start to succeed you will sabotage yourself and you'll go back to being unsuccessful this happens a lot with people that friends that start to make a lot of money too if you think it's bad to have a lot of money in your bank account and you make a lot of money you're going to find a way to get rid of that money in your bank account whether you give it away, whether you spend it whether you lose it on bad decisions you're going to find a way to get rid of that money so that your subconscious mind feels safe so how do we move past shame because this sounds extremely frustrating doesn't it it sounds like we could just stay stuck in the same patterns forever and never get the results we really want how do we move past it we touched on this, we bring it into the light shame cannot survive being brought into the light so there's a number of ways we can do this I'm going to go through them one by one the first way we deal with shame is to find a tribe that rewards you for your efforts not just your outcomes what does this mean let's say that you get started in business and you have to do sales calls to pitch yourself if you're sitting alone in your office and your family doesn't believe in your new business your wife doesn't believe your husband doesn't believe in your new business you get on a sales call and the sales call goes bad how are you going to feel about yourself you're going to feel terrible, you're going to feel really ashamed and you're going to think that they're right now let's say the exact same scenario happens but you're in a community and you've made 10 best friends who are also starting a business and you get off that sales call you bombed it and you go into messenger or you hop on a group call and you say guys I just bombed that sales call and they're like that's awesome way to just take the next step forward every no you get is getting you one step closer to yes now all of a sudden you've been rewarded for taking action and not just for the outcome because your husband or wife is probably only going to reward you for the outcome if they're not used to being in business they're probably going to say well did you make a sale no well then this must be the wrong path but your business friends know it's a numbers game so they're going to reward you for taking that phone call so that's going to help you not to be ashamed when you're failing when you're not getting the results you want a lot of times in business we're not the game of consistency the way to get results is be consistent and you know even the people at the very top lose the majority of the time that's why we say it's a numbers game it's because most people don't want to do business with us but we have to play the numbers way number two how to deal with shame work hard enough and long enough to give value to other people and you start to believe that you deserve it when you've worked harder than anyone else you start to get really successful it's just going to be obvious it's like yeah of course I'm successful I work harder than anyone else in the world at solving this unique problem for this unique set of people because business is just solving problems for people so practice your craft for years and you'll know that you're better than others you know like Ed Sheeran there are videos of him out there like busking on the street when he started and he was a bad musician but he worked harder than anyone else like in the whole world and he's at the top now and if you ask him you know if he deserves to be at the top I can almost guarantee he's going to say hell yeah I deserve to be at the top I worked harder than anybody else for this so the longer you work hard on one problem whether it's becoming an amazing musician or a stand-up comic or growing your business or solving a problem building an iPhone whatever it is whatever problem you're solving for the world you're going to start to think you deserve like Elon Musk I think he thinks he deserves for Tesla to become the biggest car company in the world eventually you know he's worked so hard at accomplishing that he's not going to feel like he didn't deserve it because he just works harder than anybody else to accomplish these big goals that he's after that's an extreme example though the same thing applies to our own unique business if I do Lee Jen for a carpet cleaning company and I work harder than anyone else at Lee Jen for carpet cleaning companies and I get really successful and start to make millions of dollars doing that I'm probably going to think that I deserve it the next way is to have people depend on you to succeed so again with that sales call let's say you know you have a two year old daughter home and you need to pay the mortgage this month you're probably not going to care about one person saying no do you want a sales call whereas if you have nothing on the line you might get really bad out of shape over that but if people are depending on you it's going to be a lot more shameful to fail and not be able to pay that mortgage payment than is to lose one sales call so you know I've seen people have babies and they've struggled in business for years, the year they have a baby their whole business takes off and it's because they have to make it work now and they're not worried about the shame now they're wanting to go straight at that problem and get it done next one this one's going to sound a little woo-woo but you have to talk to yourself like someone you love if you talk to yourself like you would never speak to a child if you swear at yourself you call yourself names you've got to stop doing that you've got to just catch yourself doing it talk to yourself like someone you love picture yourself when you're a child and talk to yourself that way the other way to deal with this reach out to someone you love and tell them your story tell them what's going on shame cannot survive being spoken so if you have somebody you trust and you can actually listen to you and hold space for that shame this could be a professional it could be a therapist or it could be a friend reach out and tell them how you're feeling instead of hiding it and that's going to allow that shame to resolve itself next we have gratitude you know a lot of people think this is nonsense especially non-successful people everybody says practice gratitude every day it's amazing how much of a difference this makes it makes a biological difference but it also gives you perspective okay it gives you perspective and it allows you to realize like the things that we think are a big deal are not a big deal like we're all going to die someday in the grand scheme of things most things that we get upset about are not important at all um you know my friend and I were talking about this the other day just the fact that in here in America in the United States you can go to your kitchen and get clean water is like something to be really grateful for it's something amazing you don't have to walk three miles to a well to get clean water for the day um you know so if something goes bad in your business it's really good to put it in perspective by just being grateful for all the things that are going right as well that's going to help deal with that shame and not spiral out of control um next is breathe you know again sounds like woo-woo stuff but this is important stuff uh the nervous system tightens up when you get stressed you stop breathing if you breathe through the pressure if you breathe through the shame it's a signal to your nervous system that you're safe and all of a sudden it's going to start to let go of that so again you can do this in yoga you can do it in meditation you can literally there's some apps you can do this for but if you're stressed out if you're ashamed of something if you feel like you're hitting a shame wall just sit down and just breathe for five minutes just do a continuous breath in and out in and out five minutes um and see how that makes you feel and you realize that breath is very very powerful and then also realize this is a lifelong process every new level you ascend uh requires working out your own inner demons around that ascension every next stage you get to is something and you have to learn to work through that now this is the hardest in the beginning the you know the bigger you get the more practice you have working through shame and the more you're going to be able to to recognize like oh I made more money than I've ever made this month um I'm starting to self sabotage because I don't think I deserve this or I'm in a I'm in the relationship of my dreams I'm starting to self sabotage because I don't think I deserve this and then work through that sabotage instead of actually ruining what you have going on so in summary how to deal with shame adult shame is healthy and keeps you in line and in integrity leftover shame from childhood often causes you to hide or project your shame onto somebody else uh that's what we generally don't want to be doing when you go against someone's values they will shame you for it when you start a business um the people in your life who have nine to five will shame you for starting a business until you make more money than them that's just how it happens that's how it works um they're just trying to stay safe mean to you but we have to recognize this and not let it affect us and we have to look at haters and say okay if you're hating on me you're just telling me exactly what you're insecure about and I don't need to worry about it it's nothing to do with me it's everything to do with you um haters are usually just telling us what it is they have shame around and again to rid yourself of shame you have to admit to it and bring it into the light into the tribe um admit it to the tribe admit it if you're not good at sales admit it to your tribe who's on the same journey as you who's on the same path as you that you're not good at sales they're going to help you get better at it and all of a sudden you don't have to pretend like you're good when you're not you know one of the things I had to do in business was um admit that I wasn't as good as I thought I was or I wasn't as good as I wanted to be and that's when I started to get a lot better because I stopped pretending I was good and I stopped saying okay you know I know I've been in this a couple of years but I could really use some help you know I know it's kind of embarrassing to ask for help at this point because I'm not as far along as I want so I need to go get help and I need to be okay admitting that I need help and not be ashamed of that so how to deal with shame find a tribe that supports your efforts and your outcomes okay so you cannot just depend on people to give you approval for getting the sale for growing the business for getting that funding whatever it is you have to have people that support your efforts best way to do that is join a community with people who are on the same path as you because then you're all putting forth the same kinds of efforts work harder and longer than anyone else to solve a unique problem so your niche your market whatever it is you know most businesses eventually you got to go all in and just be the best at solving that unique problem have people depend on you to succeed this will help you just take a straight line accept that you're not perfect this is big none of us are perfect accept that you're not perfect admit to your weaknesses talk to somebody about them talk to yourself like someone you love breathe and get professional help when you need it get a therapist they're going to help you in business so if you're embarrassed about a therapist because you don't think you need one for your personal life what if I told you a therapist would make you a lot more money would you be more inclined to go then because it will so go get professional help if you need it and then if you want more resources on this The Millioner Mind by T. Harbecker is a great book about this The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks this is where we hit our ceiling of what we're comfortable with with how good life can be and we need to break through that ceiling in order to keep going up because most of us will hit a ceiling we'll self-sabotage it'll bring us back down to where we're comfortable with so if we're only comfortable making $100,000 a year we start to make $500,000 a year guess what's going to happen we're going to ruin the thing we have going on we're going to come back down to $100 Daring Greatly by Brene Brown she has TED Talks, a bunch of books she talks a lot about shame and she's definitely a good resource to check out and then if you need a community to build an online business where you can work from anywhere come get support come be supported by people who are on the same path as you at digitalnomad.com slash yes that's all I got please if you like this kind of stuff it takes a lot of time a lot of effort and I hope it makes a difference if it does smash that like button so we can keep making more of these because the YouTube algorithm needs you to subscribe and like and view to show other people that this content is valuable so that they can discover it the more people discover it the more resources we can put towards making more free content for you and of course put in the comments what do you think of this training does this show up in your life at all and what do you want to see next so it's Christian Martin from digitalnomad.com I'll see you on the next one Adulting is hard have you thought about retiring instead what about the new millennial retirement plan these kids took it on themselves to say screw it to the traditional path working a 9-5 job for 40 years in hopes of a pension and enough time to finally travel when they're 65 instead they ask themselves what's retirement really all about it's about having the flexibility to travel the world and do the things you want to do on your bucket list before you're too old to do them it's about having the resources you need to do the things you want to do it's about spending time with your friends and loved ones so retirement then is not about not working in fact most people get so bored after actually retiring they feel like they're just sitting around waiting to die they wish they never stopped working retirement then is about freedom and flexibility so that you can work forever while living your best life at the same time millennials figured out if they can start a certain kind of business with freedom and flexibility or you can work from a rooftop pool in Vietnam or in between snowboard runs in Colorado where you can spend your days off skydiving in the cascades or riding four-wheelers in the Sahara desert they figured out that this is better than working for 40 years just to retire and be too old and too tired to do what they really want to do even if they have to work at the same time they figured out that millennial retirement plan is hard work plus freedom they figured out how to become a digital nomad and work from anywhere with just one to two clients even if they're new to business it helps that they're doing this in one of the fastest growing industries in America with 40% growth year over year and more demand for labor than there is supply it helps that this is the way of the future and it's just getting started that they're getting in on the ground floor and that 500,000 new potential clients are created each and every month yes this all helps but not unless you get started are you ready to discover your millennial retirement plan? take the magic back at digitalnomad.com