It is good to know what's holding you back and why we're stuck. We all have those voices that keep us stuck. We all have those stories. And the best part about it is that it means we all have the power to change them. However, when you want to change something, you go out, and you set goals. I want to get there. I want to go there. Beyond business and money, we could talk about being the best father you can be. It means coming from that place when I'm tired of the long day of work, and I get to ask myself, do I want to get into that? Or do I want to change my story and have the kind of interactions with my kids that the best father I can be would have right now?
Anytime you find yourself knowing you want to do something and then looking back at it at the end of the day, you haven't done it. Look for what's the story. And underneath that story, what's the fear? Because essentially, we all have this survival brain and are constantly looking for what's wrong. And whenever you try something new, or you approach a new target or set a goal right, that's potentially threatening because it's new and unfamiliar. And that will bring in fear.
That is pretty much the story of Sebastian and Ben and a lot of others. It is the story behind I need to, or I chose to. It is the experience of knowing what is going on and getting deep into what causes our resistance when determining the life we want. It is also the dilemma of what can we control, the outcome, or what we do?
When Ben shared his objective of owning a business, the process unveiled the fear that getting there would require a lot of effort with that a lot of time, the impact of that is it will take time away from his family, a core value of his. Fear and guilt are caused by stepping away from his responsibility as a husband and a father. A story that if he does what he sets out to do, it runs directly right into conflict with one of the other core values that he holds, and the fear is that. Well, if he is successful, he'll do that at the expense of his family.
Working through the process, he finds himself coming from this strong motivation to do what he does for his family and his son's legacy for the future. Ironically, it's that same drive that turns into fear that blocks him from achieving that objective.
But, what if instead of thinking about what could go wrong—starting to think what could go right. That is the next step that Seb took Ben through, which means looking at another side of the coin we neglect. Ben's story was all about the sense of fulfillment by really just starting towards that, not even really getting there at all.
Ben also learned how to deal with Status-Quo's bias, a blind spot that our survival brain has. It looks at the new thing and what could go wrong; that's the only thing the mind cares about. It means our brain is programmed to ignore what the status quo costs us. What it costs you if you don't take any action because we neglect those costs when we look at the risks of the thing we're trying to implement.
When you're looking for the silver bullet to taking control of your life, it's that, getting to your fears, get your stories out into the open, because then you can do something about it, you can choose to upgrade them, you can choose to really look down and what's really behind it. And you can choose to also focus on the other side of the coin. What could go right? It is not a question that's a survival brain asks, but you can.
