Category: Personal Growth

Some people hate marketers, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s at least partly due to the out-of-hand volume of telemarketing calls trying to sell car warranties. Man, why are those people still calling?

Whether we like it or not, though, we’re all marketers, and the most effective and influential people are willing to embrace that fact.

See, not everyone embraces self-promotion so whole-heartedly. But I believe the reason more people don’t “market” themselves is that those people don’t understand how society works, and it’s natural to avoid or be downright abrasive to something you don’t understand. 

Here’s an oversimplification of how the world works:

In society, people need things. Food, housing, education, transportation, etc.

In a society where people have choices – in particular, a capitalist society where goods and services designed to meet people’s needs are produced and distributed privately – people need help deciding which goods and services are best-suited to fill their needs.

This may seem trivial, but not all products and services are commodities. In other words, some products are better than others, and much of the time it’s extremely important to make the right decision when deciding between goods and services.

For example, purchasing tires for your vehicle from a second-rate tire company can mean the difference between life and death. So how is a reputable tire company supposed to let people know how safe and reliable their tires are? That’s where marketing comes in.

Let’s say Jane Doe traditionally buys any old tires she can find, but for whatever reason she sees a marketing email from Firestone about their new run flat tire. So she goes in and buys a pair, thanks in part to those emails she’s been “bombarded” with. A month later while driving down the road with her small children in the car, she hits a huge nail. Only instead of her tire popping and her swerving off the road and hitting a tree, she drives safely down the road to the nearest gas station where she can call for help. All because of her new run flat tires that were marketed to her.

Were those emails from the tire company bothersome? Maybe in the moment. But Firestone had a solution to a problem the world faces, and I guarantee you, sitting safely at that gas station, Jane Doe is thanking God for Firestone’s marketing.

When we put ourselves out there confidently and unapologetically to the world around us, we’re helping people solve problems – real problems with real consequences. And that’s certainly worth doing.

So let’s tie this back to you:

There are people around you who need things. They have choices where they go for those needs to be fulfilled, and some of those places are better than others. Just like Firestone has a burden to communicate to the world that their solution is best for them, you also have a burden to communicate the value you already have to the world around you – even when it feels “sleezy” or like you’re being arrogant. 

The truth is, they need you to put your best foot forward and market yourself to them. And I don’t just mean self-promotion. I mean the way you dress, talk, and carry yourself – the way you live out your everyday life giving the parts of you your afraid people will judge. Those are the things people badly need, so why hold them back out of fear?

When we go on a date, we dress up and put a mint in our mouth because we’re marketing ourselves. We’re not ashamed of that. When we go to a job interview, we dress nice and try to say the right things because we’re marketing ourselves. And so on and so forth.

We’re always marketing, and that’s a good thing. Too many people shy away from putting themselves out there and being vulnerable, when in reality, we need to know how you can best help us, and that requires vulnerability. So please don’t hold back, even if at times it feels “pushy”. That’s normal at times, but I promise it’s what people need.

Every major religion and political movement throughout history spread because of marketing. Someone had an idea and they went out and told people who probably didn’t care to hear about it. But the fact that they did tell people about it changed the course of history.

Great leaders, innovators, fathers, and husbands throughout history were only able to change as many lives as they did by first committing to the idea that what they had was worth “marketing” to the people around them. They didn’t hold back. Do you think they were uncomfortable and ruffled some feathers along the way? Absolutely. And the world is a better place for it.

The biggest opponent to loving deeper, leading better, and leaving a legacy is not the lack of knowledge, experience, or will-power. Your biggest opponent is fear.

Fear is the number one robber of all things good in life. The reason you don’t have the life you want, the character you want, the memories you want, the job you want, or the friends you want is fear.

Fear tells you to hold back, play it safe, don’t let people get too close, don’t be too vulnerable, don’t go out on a limb, don’t dream big, don’t believe in anything bigger than yourself, and don’t have hope for a better tomorrow. 

Fear also tells you to compare yourself to others and criticize them. After all, you must be accepted by as many people as possible, fear will say, so build yourself up so that you look good even if it means tearing others down.

And fear is usually subtle. No one thinks this stuff out loud, after all. It’s typically deep-seeded from years past and experiences compounded over time.

Think for a moment. Everything in your life right now that you’re unsatisfied with – whether it’s an anger problem, stress, worry, feelings of insignificance, or anything in-between – likely started because you tried to control a situation that felt uncontrollable. For example, we lose our tempers when things around us get beyond our control, and trying to control a situation is simply a way to avoid the fear of chaos. Therefore anger is rooted in fear.

The same is true of anxiety and depression. Anxiety is caused by unthrottled and mismanaged thoughts about situations outside of our control. When we have a painful experience, our minds sometimes try to protect us from that pain in the future by attempting to control potentially harmful situations. Of course, we can never control all potentially harmful situations, and when we realize that control is an illusion, our brains search frantically for another solution to gain control. 

At that point, one of two things happens: We either give up control or our brains go haywire with stress, anxiety, and panic.

This is how mental breakdowns happen. This is why people snap under pressure. They’re walking around afraid of the future – consciously or unconsciously – and they’re doing the safe thing by trying to control their environment. But eventually, it will catch up with them.

You may not describe yourself as scared, but I assure you, if you’re avoiding something you see that isn’t working like it should in your life, it’s because you’re either afraid that it can’t be fixed or you’re afraid that you don’t have what it takes to fix it. Neither of those are true, and until you acknowledge that, you’re going to live a life that’s small and boxed in.

Fear is also the number one thing behind all evil in life as well. The Nazis only killed Jews because they were afraid of what the world might look like without a perfect race. Fear drives hate, which is why sometimes we’re surprised when people who seem like they’re otherwise well composed end up saying or doing things that are uncharacteristic of their composure. Why is that? It’s because of fear.

What is fear?

Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion that comes from a belief that something is dangerous or a potential threat. 

Basically, when we experience fear, what our minds are doing is weighing probabilities. We look at any given situation, and our minds start processing, the main question being processed is this: Is this situation dangerous? It doesn’t actually matter if a situation is dangerous, only whether or not our minds perceive the possibility of danger. When we do perceive a possibility of danger, our minds trigger processes that produce the emotion we label as fear.

On a chemical level, fear is a complex process that involves multiple parts of the brain and releases multiple chemicals, one of which is adrenaline. On a very basic level, when we take in information throughout our day, our brains consider previously known information and apply that to our current circumstance to determine if a situation is normal or not.

For example, if you suddenly hear a knock on your front door at 2 o’clock in the morning, your thoughts will immediately go to the idea that something is wrong. Why? Because your brain knows that normally, people don’t knock on front doors at 2 o’clock in the morning unless something is wrong. Your brain is taking information from your past and from other sources of information such as TV and radio and other forms of media, and it’s applying it to the current situation. 

More than likely, in that situation, your brain will determine that this is not normal and every experience you have with someone knocking on a door at 2 o’clock in the morning is usually bad. Maybe you’ve seen movies where bad news is delivered in the middle of the night, or maybe you have a past experience with a similar situation. Either way, your brain is taking what has been put in it and applying it to what is now being put in it.

This is largely an unconscious process. We can’t forcefully push fear away – not long-term at least. No matter how hard you try or how intensely you focus, the fear you avoid will ultimately find it’s way back in if the right circumstances are present.

Fear isn’t usually some external force pressing in on you that you just have to press back against hard enough to overcome. Instead, most fear is simply a judgment issue. 

If you have a fear of public speaking, it’s probably because at one point in your life you spoke in public or you witnessed someone speaking in public, and there was some sort of outcome that you labeled as negative. Maybe everyone laughed at you or maybe your face turned really red and people commented on it. To you, your goal in the moment or of the goal of the person you watched in the moment was to be accepted. After all, that is largely our motivation for almost everything we do. So anything you See that results in negative progress towards that goal will automatically register in your brain as being “bad“.

So you see, most fear is an issue of information and judgment. In the mid-1900s, white people were largely afraid of black people. Were they physically afraid of them? Maybe. But there was a deeper fear at work. 

The fear that drove the hatred from whites against blacks in the mid-1900s was solely based on the fear that society would change if black people were included equally. Many white people didn’t want change, so they fought it in order to control it, and anger was the mechanism by which they exercised their control. But it was all rooted in fear.

This is important because almost everything you do in your life is driven by either fear or faith. By faith, I’m not talking about religion. I’m not even really talking about spirituality. Faith is a much broader term, and it is the direct opposite of fear. 

For example, in the mid-1900s, white people could have had faith in human nature and in their system of government and trusted that their lives will not be ruined by the full inclusion of black people into society. Having a mindset that’s willing to trust and open to solutions is what starts the process of overcoming fear.

How to Overcome Irrational Fear

The only way to overcome this type of irrational fear is to give your brain accurate information to make better judgment calls. That’s not to say we should avoid fear, but most of the time, fear is rooted in a lack of information. 

Like pretty much everything else in life, fear and faith are balancing acts. You have to input the right information in your brain to make a decision with sound judgment. Not enough information, and you’re operating in fear, too much information and you are again operating in fear, this time it’s just the fear of making a wrong choice. But right there in the middle, there is faith – the place where you let go of being certain and walk forward despite fear.

And again, faith is not limited to religion or spirituality. 

We put our faith in human nature every day. For example, if you drive down the road on a two-lane road, then you’re putting your faith in the person in the other lane who is speeding in the opposite direction of you only feet away from your vehicle. If that person veers in your direction even slightly, you’re either severely injured or dead. Yet we trust them.

Consider for a moment, though, if you had a bad previous experience with driving. Imagine if the first time you drove a vehicle, the first person that came past you in the opposite lane veered into your lane ever so slightly and rammed the front end of your car. 

If that was one of the only memories you had of driving down a two-lane road, then two-lane roads would probably cause you to feel a certain amount of fear. That’s because that’s all you know, and your brain is simply acting on the knowledge you have. 

Memories are very strong sources of information for our brains. We all have things that have happened to us throughout our lives that shape the way we see the present and the future. Our brains are very good at processing information, but sometimes we make false connections between a memory and a fact. 

In the example above, you might be led to believe that cars are inherently dangerous or that driving down two-lane roads is dangerous. But in reality, another person may go their entire life without having a wreck, and for that person, driving down two-lane roads probably brings about zero fear at all.

So, one person is willing to put their faith in other drivers, and the other is not. They both face the same reality and the same probability of having a wreck. But it’s the way we interpret the information and experiences we have that create fear.

Fear can be very subtle. Some fears are blatantly obvious, but others lie just beneath the surface driving our actions without us ever noticing. 

For example, the fear of spiders is very apparent. You see a spider, your brain thinks of every negative experience or piece of information connected to spiders, the adrenaline is released, and your body is now in fight or flight mode. But not all fear is that dramatic.

Some people live their lives surrounded by a safety net of comfortable living. They base every decision they make on the amount of money and comfort to be gained from that decision. 

Many people fear not being accepted, respected, and remembered. They fear looking socially inadequate by not driving the right car or having the right clothes. Many people fear not having the right size house. They wouldn’t admit to it, and they probably don’t even know it’s going on, but at some point society, the media, or the family and friends around them convinced them that being accepted was the chief goal of their existence. So they drive on towards this goal they don’t even realize they don’t need.

So what does faith look like as an antidote to fear? In order to get past a fear of spiders, for example, you have to choose to place your faith in something that has the potential to protect you from the fearful ideas in your mind about spiders. 

Maybe you’ve spent time around someone who knows a lot about spiders, and they’ve shown you the reality of the nature of spiders, which is that they are actually not out to kill you. This may be contrary to the movies and social media posts you’ve seen about spiders or all of the Halloween decorations that include creepy spiders, but that new information can give your brain something to work with in order to then place your faith in that information going forward. Or maybe you just simply put your faith in your ability to get away from spiders quickly.

Here’s the bottom line:

To combat the fear that lies just beneath the surface that drives us to make irrational and unproductive decisions, we have to offset fear with the faith and trust that we don’t have to control things in order for us to move forward. 

In fact, embracing fear as a necessary obstacle to doing anything worthwhile is one of the best things you can do. And your life and legacy as a husband, father, and leader will be marked by courage not because you overcame fear but because you let go of being in control and walked right past fear to do what matters most. 

One of the most valuable assets we have as parents and leaders is our reputation. As the old saying goes, a man is only as good as his word. But how do we keep our reputation strong by keeping our word in the times when all we want to do is quit or change direction?

Saying something is one thing, but sticking to what you say when it stops being fun or comfortable is another thing entirely. As husbands and fathers, our wives and kids learn to trust us based on how well we stick with what we commit to. That’s why consistency isn’t just something that’s nice to have – it’s absolutely essential.

Most people aren’t good at consistently sticking to goals. Statistically, the large majority of people who set New Year’s goals give up on them before they achieve them. And we all know people who talk about all they’re going to do – start a business, lose weight, stop smoking, etc. – only to find them back to their old ways a few months later. If we’re honest, that’s us, too, a lot of the time.

But what’s the key to accomplishing the goals we want to hit? The answer is day-in, day-out consistency in the little nuanced aspects of the thing you’re working to accomplish. Author Malcolm Gladwell says that 10,000 hours of doing something consistently is how you achieve mastery of a skill. To put that into perspective: if you did something for 4 hours per day, it would take you just under 7 years to master something. 

In other words, no matter how you slice it, consistently doing productive things over a long period of time is the key to success in any area of your life.

So how do we do that? How do we stay consistent? If we’re not naturally consistent people, is there a way to learn how to be consistent so we can finally stop quitting and giving up on things before they have time to materialize?

Here are a few tips to help you stay consistent so you can build trust and accomplish the vision you have for your family and for your own life:

Make a plan

This should go without saying, but most people don’t make plans for the things they want to do. DHM Research found that only 33% of Americans have a life plan that they have committed to in writing and use to help guide them. 

Yet studies have shown that having a plan has been shown to increase follow-through on a wide range of beneficial behaviors.

So do this: start small and write down how you plan to get to the place you want to go. Don’t overthink it. Just put it on scratch paper or in a Google doc if you have to. But hold onto it and keep it handy for when you feel yourself starting to deviate. 

Then do this…

Tell someone

Once you have your plan written down, then you need to share that plan with at least one person. Tell them that you need them to help ensure that you don’t leave the plan. See, when you have someone who knows what you’ve committed to, you’re much more likely to follow through. 

We’ll let ourselves down, but we hate letting other people down. Use that to your advantage. Tell your wife or your best friend and tell them to follow up with you regularly. And do yourself a favor: make sure you pick someone who will be honest with you. The last thing you need is people around you justifying inconsistency.

Once you have your plan written down and you have someone you’ve told to keep you accountable, next…

Make a “when I feel like quitting” plan

The number one reason people quit on something they should be consistent on is because they believe that if they drop the ball once, they’re done – the fight is over. To overcome this all-or-nothing mentality, we have to do away with perfectionist thinking.

Tell yourself up front that you’re going to fail – because you are going to fail in some way. You’re human, it’s going to happen.

The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is ultimately found in how tolerant they are of themselves when they fail.

This is why tracking the number of days in a row you’ve done something isn’t the most productive thing you can do. As soon as you don’t do it – as soon as you skip the workout or eat junk food or somehow break the streak – the clock “starts over” and it feels like it was all a waste.

But the way to stay consistent is to tell yourself ahead of time what you’re going to do when you feel like skipping or when you miss a day, drop the ball, or fail completely. Giving yourself that grace takes the pressure off to be perfect, and it removes the “pass or fail” grade we all try to place on ourselves. And we won’t quit if we don’t see what we’re doing as a failure.

Here’s the bottom line:

Success isn’t found in the absence of failure, it’s found in the persistence of pursuit. 

Your marriage, your emotional growth, your parenting – they’re all infinite games you’re playing against yourself. You don’t have to be perfect in accomplishing your plan, you just need to be persistent. Stay in the fight and do the next step regardless of what happened yesterday.

Stick to the plan, and have someone you’re accountable to. Then, if you’re still ready to quit, give yourself a two week notice. We give notices to jobs before we leave them because we had made a prior commitment to them and we owe it to them to make the proper adjustments with our leaving. So why don’t we do that with ourselves? 

Next time you want to quit something, tell yourself you’ll quit in two weeks. Then, at the end of those two weeks, if you still feel like quitting, then by all means follow through with your plan. 

Otherwise, keep putting the next foot in front of the other and watch consistency and trust and success fall into place as you stick with the process.