The School of Greatness - The 3 Fears Holding You Back From Greatness: Chapters 4-6 of The Greatness Mindset w/ Lewis Howes EP 1446

Episode Date: May 31, 2023

This special episode focuses on chapters 4 and 5 of Lewis' new Audiobook, The Greatness Mindset. Lewis emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and embracing failures as an integral part of life's journey. Failure can be a stepping stone to success and innovation, and by learning from failures, we can grow, adapt, and achieve greatness. Reframe your fears, harness their energy, and use them as fuel for personal growth and achievement! If you liked this episode, be sure to download The Greatness Mindset on Audiobook today.In this episode you will learn,The barriers to greatness.How to overcome the fear of failure vs. the fear of success.Why acknowledging your failures is a critical part of the fabric of life.How failure can be used as a catalyst for innovation.Many of the common fears we share and how to make them your superpower.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1446

Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jaspreet Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to

dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials. So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there. Greatness Media presents The Greatness Mindset, greatness media presents the greatness mindset unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today by lewis howes narrated by lewis howes welcome to the school of greatness my name is lewis howes a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock

your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. I dedicate this book to my younger self for having the courage to carry me through pain, my current self for facing my shame and learning how to heal, and to my future self because the journey to greatness has only just begun. Step 2. The Barriers to Greatness. Chapter 4. Fear Number 1. Failure. Sarah Blakely was a frustrated consumer with a problem. She wanted underwear that didn't show lines, was flattering to women's figures, and was not heavy or uncomfortable.

It actually started with my own butt because I couldn't figure out what to wear under white pants. figure out what to wear under white pants. So with a sharp pair of scissors, she cut the legs out of a pair of control top pantyhose as a prototype, and the revolutionary idea for Spanx was born. At the time she came up with the idea for Spanx, Blakely was in her late 20s, and a former Disney cast member turned door-to-door fax machine salesperson, a career she had pursued for seven years. She didn't have a business background. She didn't have a lot of capital to invest. She didn't have connections to hosiery manufacturers.

She was even told by some businessmen to get ready because business is war. She didn't want to go to war. She wanted to help women. It was a perfect recipe for failure, but Blakely had a bit of a secret weapon that no one knew about. When she was a kid sitting around the dining table at night, her dad would ask her and her brother a seemingly odd question. What did you fail at today? Then her dad would encourage them to write down the hidden gifts, the lessons that came from their failures. Not exactly typical dinner table talk in most parenting books, but it helped her get in the habit of destigmatizing

failure and building her risk-taking muscles. In fact, she says that if she didn't have a failure to share, her dad would be disappointed. So she learned to define failure differently and embrace it as an important part of life. Failure for me became not trying versus achieving the outcome. Once you redefine that for yourself and realize that failure is just not trying, then life opens up to you in many ways. For two years, Blakely heard no from dozens of hosiery manufacturers who wouldn't give her a shot. She was priced out by patent lawyers, from dozens of hosiery manufacturers who wouldn't give her a shot.

She was priced out by patent lawyers, so she drafted her own patent agreement using a book she found at Barnes & Noble, only turning to an attorney for the things she couldn't do. Department stores refused to sell the product, saying it was too risque. She came up with the name Spanx because by changing the KS in Spanx to an X, it was easier to trademark and market. But still, she persisted. She knew she had a good product. So she ignored the chatter, trusted her intuition, and pushed forward.

After all, to her way of thinking, failure wasn't not launching Spanx. Failure was not trying. Fast forward 20 plus years, and in October 2021, this pioneer form-fitting shapewear company was valued at $1.2 billion. Now, the market is littered with competitors. The fear of failure didn't derail her because the fear of not trying was stronger. In an Instagram post, she summed up her philosophy. Two things are required to pursue your dreams. Hustle and willingness to put yourself out there. The two things people are most afraid of are fear of failure and fear of being embarrassed. I'm constantly working on both of these fears

so I can live the life I want free from the burden of caring what other people think of me. What I found is that it actually becomes fun and funny. The worst thing that happens, actually becomes fun and funny. The worst thing that happens? You end up with a great story. So what are you waiting for? At the end of our conversation on my show, I asked Sarah the same question I do of all my guests. What is your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness would be going for it no matter what, despite fear, and making the absolute most of the life that you were given because it's not a dress rehearsal. The funny thing about failure. Failure is a funny thing.

Not in the sense that every failure should be followed by a full-on chuckle or a belly laugh of epic proportions. Maybe that's true in some cases, but most of the time, failure is painful, embarrassing, and not a lot of fun. We certainly don't seek it out. Failure is funny because for something that we each do so well and so often, most of the time, we don't want to think about our failures, remember our failures, or in some cases, even admit that we have failed. And yet, without failure, we can't move forward. Without failure, we'd never try anything new. Without failure, we'd never discover a better way.

Without failure, we'd never get any better, stronger, or tougher. Failure isn't something to be shunned, overlooked, or wasted. Failure is a critical part of the fabric of life. Robert Greene, an American author, has found that depending on how we choose to avoid failure, insecurities can operate one of two ways. First, we can choose to let our insecurities hold us back and avoid the pain of failure by never trying anything. From this perspective, you might try your hardest and find others who are still better than you, but if you don't try, you can always be the best slacker. Second, we can choose to let our insecurities motivate us and avoid failure by working our hardest.

As Sarah's story shows, the fear of failure, when channeled properly, can actually cause us to develop persistence, build resourcefulness, and fuel innovation. The Doubt Diagram. In her book, Good Anxiety, Dr. Wendy Suzuki identifies an array of common anxieties, including the fear of public speaking, financial insecurity, social anxiety, and general anxiety. These anxieties can lead to obsessive compulsions until all you can think about are your fears. Add to that things like pandemics and all the uncertainties of life, and none of us have a shortage of candidates for fear. I've wrestled with debilitating self-doubt at times myself, the belief deep down at my core that somehow I was not enough. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't

smart enough. I was too young. I didn't have good enough connections. My talents weren't enough. I even had other people tell me that I wouldn't be able to realize my meaningful mission, and my fears contributed to all of it. Self-doubt is simply the killer of all dreams. When you doubt yourself, it's really hard to have the confidence to chase what you want and take action to pursue your meaningful mission. That sense that you're just not enough can usually be traced back to one of three core fears. It might help to think of them in what I call the doubt diagram. So imagine three circles. Circle one, the fear of failure. Circle two is the fear of success.

the fear of failure. Circle two is the fear of success. And circle three is the fear of judgment. And if you overlap all three circles, at the center of those three circles is self-doubt. In her book, Woman Evolve, Sarah Jakes Roberts says we are in a relationship with our fears. Like an overbearing partner, they constantly influence us and often dictate our actions. They go where we go. They pretend to keep us safe, when in reality, they just consume and manipulate us. That is why Sarah says we need to break up with our fears. And the first fear you may need to break up with is the fear of failure. Our default position. Dan Millman, an American author and lecturer in the personal development field, often says, raise your hand if you've ever been afraid of failure. He told me that at least

80% of the people in the room always raise a hand. I've seen that same trend when I make the same request. Clearly, the fear of failure is common to us all, but that fear holds so many people back from pursuing their meaningful mission. As Millman told me, our self-doubt inhibits a purposeful life. Dan has learned that the best way to get out of your own way is to focus on your purpose, your own meaningful mission, not on what might go wrong on the journey. I have found that to be true as well for me. As an athlete, I was taught that failure is a part of the journey towards success. You fail your way to learning how to catch the ball. You miss a shot, and then you adjust. You make a mistake,

learn from it, and make a change. Failure for me was just part of practice, part of my daily learning to improve and move me towards my goals. Because I knew emotionally and mentally that failure was a necessary step to accomplishing success for my goals, I was never afraid to fail as an athlete. Like I mentioned earlier, all of us know this from a young age. When we're learning to walk, no one expects a child to succeed on their first attempt. Of course not. Every child stumbles and falls a thousand times while learning to walk. But no one tells the child, walking isn't for them. We encourage them to pick themselves up and try again, knowing the only thing that can stop them from succeeding is not trying. But then, as we get older, we let that fear of failure feel abnormal,

even though experiencing failure and fear are part of what it means to be human. You're always afraid, says Dr. Jordan Peterson, Canadian professor of psychology, except when you learn not to be. Fear is our default position as humans. So if you are afraid of failure, that means you are normal. But running from your fears isn't the answer. Letting them define who you are doesn't work. According to Peterson, when we are exposed to what we are afraid of, we get less afraid of everything. Believe it or not, one of my top fears used to be public speaking. After I joined Toastmasters and started speaking every single week to a small audience,

I began to feel more comfortable and eventually was regularly getting paid good money to speak to audiences of up to 20,000 people. But I still wasn't always comfortable with it. Not at all. Every single time I had a speaking engagement, I was afraid of how I would look on stage. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing and being embarrassed while people laughed at me. I thought I would start stuttering and fall all over my words if I didn't fall on the stairs on the way to the stage. A few hours before one of my big events, I told one of my coaches, Chris Lee, about my fears. He challenged me to flip the script running in my head by pointing out that my fears were all about me. How I might look, how I might feel, how I might make a mistake.

What if I made it all about serving other people? Why was I speaking in the first place? For me or for the audience? That shift in thinking about service began the wheels turning. He followed it up by asking questions in what I call the then what exercise. What if I forget what I'm going to say next? Okay, then what? Well, I'd be embarrassed. Okay, then what? Well, I might run off the stage. Okay, well, then what? Well, then everyone would laugh? Okay, then what?

Well, I'd probably not leave home for a week. Okay, well, then what? I'd probably eventually pick myself back up and keep moving forward. I realized what Chris was getting at with this exercise. Even in the worst-case scenario, I'd eventually be okay. And like Spank's founder, Sarah Blakely, mentioned, I'd have a funny story to tell. So why not just skip all the anxiety in the middle and start with everything will be okay in the first place. After that awakening, everything changed for me. I realized the power of what Sukhinder Singh Cassidy,

president of StubHub, calls the choice after the choice. And I knew that if my focus was on serving other people, then all my fears about what might happen to me became relevant. What can failure teach you? There are two general types of fear. The first type is a healthy fear of something dangerous. There are some things we should fear, things that will, in fact, harm us. That is when our fight-or-flight instinct comes in handy to protect us from harm. But the second type consists of wounded fears that hold us back emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically from making decisions that will make

our future greater. These fears keep us living in the past. They are psychological fears as opposed to being driven by real-life danger. Our fear of failure usually falls into this psychological fear category rather than the threat of real-life danger. Even though it sometimes feels like it, the world probably won't end if you fail at most things in life. Some notable exceptions might include skydiving, atomic fusion, landing on Mars, but I digress. Remember, there is something worse than failing.

The regret of not trying. On the other hand, failure can help us learn and grow. You might fail and may even receive criticism, but if you take that failure as an opportunity to learn what didn't work, you'll create something better, maybe even great the next time. For example, after his wildly popular book, The 48 Laws of Power, Robert Greene worked on another book he just knew would be a breakthrough success. He labored over the manuscript for a year. But when he submitted the manuscript to the publisher, they dropped the project.

Robert was stunned. The feedback he received was that his audience wanted to hear more of his thoughts. But he collaborated with rapper 50 Cent and made the book more about his collaborator than his own perspectives. Instead of quitting, Robert chose to learn from his spectacular failure. He took the feedback to heart, rewrote the book in eight months, and found another publisher. The 50th Law by 50 Cent and Robert Greene became another huge success. As he told me, Robert has learned to see failure as a chance to reorient or better yourself. And he knows all about a disrupted life. When he suffered a stroke in 2018, nearly half of his body stopped functioning the way it did before. Yet he calls it a blessing because it taught him that any day could be his last.

Defeat and failure are the greatest things that could ever happen to you, says Robert. Failure teaches you your limits and makes you realize what you did wrong. It shows you what you could do differently. With this mentality, he has pressed forward, working on yet another transformative book. Successes rarely spark much reflection. Failure is how we grow. Sarah Jakes Roberts' theory is that people quit after failing because they are looking to add to their own value. But as Sarah says, success is in the process, not the outcome. When you don't depend on a specific outcome to define your worth, you are free to become great by failing, learning, and moving

forward. Dan Millman is another terrific example of someone who embraces the failure is learning mentality. When he was 60 years old, he decided he wanted to learn to ride a unicycle. He borrowed one from a friend who gave him sage advice, practice on a tennis court. Dan donned a helmet and mounted the unicycle, gripping the chain-link fence with white knuckles. On his first attempt to pedal, the unicycle shot out from under him, leaving him dangling from the fence. Again and again, he failed. It took a week of humbling practice every day to reach the point where he could pedal six times before falling.

After two weeks, he could do about 12 pedals. By week three, he was doing figure eights. From this experience, he learned two things. First, whether it's changing habits or learning to ride a unicycle, everything is difficult at first. And second, there were intermittent days when everything fell apart. He would be doing well one day, and then the next day would be worse. This trend confused and discouraged him until he observed a pattern. He discovered that his breakthrough days came right after his bad

days. He was on those alleged bad days that the learning happened. The struggle to climb out after our failures explode can give us perspective and make us stronger and wiser. Dan told me he believes this same pattern is true with other life skills. Sometimes we feel like we're getting worse, vegetating, or even going backward. But we may be backing up to get a running start. Even when we can't see the progress, learning can take place if we keep moving forward. Sometimes you're going to suck. Back in 2009, Ryan Serhant was a fledgling real estate agent in New York City.

One of his first clients was a woman who was hunting for an apartment in the West Village. He was excited about the possibilities because the commission would have set him up for a while. However, Ryan was not on his home turf and without a GPS. The morning that he drove her to check out apartments, he got himself and his quickly disappointed client lost not once but twice. He was, she told him at the end of the day, the worst agent and should never be allowed to practice real estate again. Ouch. Although the experience shook him, Ryan learned an important lesson from that failure. It doesn't matter how long you've been in any business,

new challenges can still catch you off guard. But that doesn't mean you give up. Ryan took an honest look at his performance and admitted that he could have prepared better. He should have researched the area in advance. He should have woken up earlier and learned the streets. At that moment, he made a choice. Even though he was not from New York, didn't have the connections, and didn't look the part, he was determined he would be the best real estate agent ever. Not long after his resolution, an international client approached Ryan. Ryan pushed aside his self-doubt, learned from his failure, and performed the role of the successful broker. He sold the client a $2.1 million apartment,

making over $24,000 in commission. More importantly, the experience confirmed for Ryan Serhant that he could accomplish his real estate dreams if he was willing to learn from his failures. Now, let me be clear. Breaking up with the fear of failure, as Sarah Jakes Roberts puts it, it isn't easy. And breaking up with the fear doesn't mean you won't experience that fear going forward. As she says, faith makes a demand on courage. It can be difficult to make that kind of leap from total doubt to courageous faith. to make that kind of leap from total doubt to courageous faith. It is understandable that we may feel indecisive when choosing between two such extremes. It can be tempting to procrastinate making that leap. But if we want to become a master, we have to do what Sarah says.

We have to come to a place where we realize that not everything you do is going to win. It's like you're going to suck sometimes. When your goal is mastery, you recognize that failure is going to be a part of the process. But because you want to be a master, you dissect that failure, extract the wisdom from it, and apply it to the next try. Because at the end of the day, I'm going for mastery. I believe that when we allow ourselves to stay in that relationship with the fear of failure, or any fear for that matter, what we are really afraid of is that we might discover we are not enough. Sarah describes it as the fear that this will become the evidence that my insecurities need to keep me from being who I'm supposed to be. The problem with thinking this way is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our fear of falling short causes us to remain frozen and ensures we will never fulfill our meaningful mission. Your risk-taking equation. Failure is so dependable that the only way to avoid it is to never try anything at all. The people we see as the best, the greatest athletes, the most successful entrepreneurs, or the people making the most impact in the world are all continuously failing. Priyanka Chopra Jonas, an Indian actress, model, singer,

and winner of the Miss World 2000 pageant is someone who realizes it is futile to try to avoid failure. When you want to create a legacy, she told me, it's what you do after failure that matters. As she describes it, when you first attempt something new,

failures are inevitable. But if you never try anything new, you'll never evolve. And that is a much greater risk. When you make a habit of trying new things, you diversify, increasing your chances of success. If you only stick with what you know, you put your fate in only a few skills and opportunities. And I love this powerful point she makes. Every successful person has failed along the way to their success. So why should you be any different?

Sometimes the only way to find success is to admit your current state of failure. Actor Ethan Suplee has an inspirational story of weight loss, a journey that saw him lose more than 250 pounds. But before he could begin that journey, he had to first come to the realization that he needed to change. After entering a romantic relationship with a woman who enjoyed physical activities, Ethan realized he would have to get healthy if he wanted to sustain the relationship. His first step to a healthy lifestyle was to voice his intentions to his girlfriend. According to Ethan, that conversation was scary because it felt like, in doing so, he was revealing that his life was a failure.

By voicing his intentions to his girlfriend and feeling the risk of embarrassment if he failed to follow through with his intentions, Ethan leveraged his fear of failure to motivate him to better health and an amazing physical transformation. Instead of letting that fear paralyze him, he looked ahead and realized the price of inactivity, a lost romantic relationship, was greater than the price of standing still. To overcome paralysis from fear, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy recommends a similar technique called the risk-taking equation. She recommends playing out in your mind the decisions you are afraid to make.

By running these scenarios, says Sukhinder, you find there are very few decisions you cannot recover from if they fail. She says we need to let go of the myth of the single choice and stop believing our choices are either or. Taking a big risk does not necessarily mean the only two possible outcomes are either a big reward or a major loss. This kind of thinking puts too much pressure on the first choice. There are many possible journeys, and with every choice we discover opportunities to orient ourselves towards success. As she told me, the people she knows who are successful are measured by small and big acts of possibility. They are masters at the process of risk-taking and constantly choosing. Pain points the way.

Ray Dalio is another person who embraced failure and learned that pain, not pleasure, is what makes us wise. Ray is the founder, co-chairman, and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the fifth most important private company in the U.S., according to Fortune magazine. He is the 69th richest person in the world at the time of this writing and worth over $20 billion. He has been called the Steve Jobs of investing by Wired magazine and named one of the top 100 most influential people by Time magazine. In other words, if anyone should know something about success, it would be Ray. And yet he told me he learned more from his failures than from his successes. One of Ray's greatest losses occurred early in his investing career. In 1981, he had predicted that America would experience an economic crisis

as a result of the loans American banks had made to countries Ray didn't think were capable of repaying. As it turned out, Mexico defaulted in 1982, proving Ray's prediction true and gaining him a lot of attention. So he made a second prediction of a depression on the horizon. Instead of a debt crisis, though, the stock market turned around. The point Ray predicted to be the beginning of a downward spiral for the market turned out to be only the dip before the rise. Because of his miscalculation, Ray lost not only his money, but also that of his clients. He had to borrow $4,000 from his father just to pay the bills. Surprisingly, Ray calls this failure the best thing to happen to him. He says it taught

him to balance boldness with caution. As he reflected on his failure, he evolved. He began seeking intelligent people with different opinions from his own. As a result, he learned to test his theories more thoroughly before risking everything on a prediction. Since he made these changes, he has seen great success. This success was only possible because he learned he could not know everything and that he needed to lean on a team of diverse thinkers. According to Ray, reality doesn't care if you accept it in the face of failure. The world will keep turning regardless of your actions. All we can do is try to understand reality and learn how to approach it when failure happens. Emergency reserves.

So if failure is inevitable, why should we fear it? What if instead we gave ourselves permission to fail on the journey to greatness? Marissa Sharif, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, was inspired when she observed that many people, herself included, failed to meet goals in their lives because of what she called, what the hell moments. These moments come when someone has a small backslide from a healthy direction, which can tempt them to totally abandon their greater goal. For example, someone might set a goal to consume a total of 1,500 calories a day. They might meet that goal Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but then Thursday morning, donuts at the office. Then the small failure of one donut cascades into pizza and potato chips for dinner for the rest of the week

because what the I've already failed. To attempt to solve this issue, Marissa set the goal to work out every day of the week but allowed herself two emergency reserves, days when life might get in the way and make working out impossible. This structure lets her relax in those moments of tension. Instead of giving up on her bigger goal and not working out the rest of the week, she can tap into her reserves and know she is still acting with integrity towards her goal. Just having the knowledge that emergency reserves exist tends to motivate people and keep them on track to reaching the bigger goal. Katie Milkman told me she sees this sort of failure recovery technique as a way of forgiving ourselves. She says to avoid permanent failure, we have to arrange a backup plan,

and a backup plan to that backup plan. The fear of failure does not have to derail your journey to greatness. But perhaps it is not the fear of failure, but just the opposite that holds you back. Engaging Greatness. I'll provide you with a comprehensive fear conversion toolkit at the end of this section to help you take action to overcome the barriers of greatness. For now, ask yourself some simple questions. To what extent do you struggle to overcome the fear of failure? How has this fear held you back from wholeheartedly pursuing your meaningful mission. List any failure fears you have while they are fresh in your mind. You can use the exercises in the Fear Conversion Toolkit

at the end of this section to further identify and find help to overcome them. Chapter 5. Fear Number 2, Success. Even as a little girl, Jamie Kern Lima loved the beauty industry. She would pore over magazines and admire the models who, with their even complexions and slender forms, represented the American ideal. forms represented the American ideal. Jamie got the message. She would have to look like that, too, if the world was to love her. But it wasn't long before Jamie's love for stories called her into the public eye and in front of cameras. She thought she had arrived when she landed a job as a news anchor. Then, just when she thought she had finally achieved that ideal image, her skin developed unusual red, rash-like bumps.

The horror of her new reality struck her during a live report when the producer told her about some kind of substance on her face. Wipe your face, her earpiece repeated. Wipe it off. But no matter how hard she rubbed, it would not wipe it off. To her dismay, Jamie learned she had developed a skin condition called rosacea. She searched the spectrum from the cheapest to the most expensive cosmetics available, but nothing masked the red, bumpy patches on her face. She wondered how long it would be before her viewers left her, and she lost her job. As she reflected on that trying season,

Jamie shared with me her perspective now. Although she had no idea at the time, her setback was a set up. As she grappled with every brand of cosmetics letting her down, her mindset began to change. She wondered, why aren't there any products for me? Why don't any of these models look like me? What came next was one of the bravest moves a person could make. Jamie left her dream

job in pursuit of a new vision. She developed a business plan to meet the need for rosacea-friendly cosmetics. As she acted on her plan, she developed a new company called It Cosmetics and a product specifically made for sufferers of rosacea. Despite its proven effectiveness, all the beauty retailers she admired, Sephora, Ulta, QVC, rejected her product. At one point, she had less than $1,000 in her personal and company bank accounts combined, but she was undeterred. At what felt like a particularly great pitch to a private equity firm, Jamie presented her business plan, product, budget, and entire vision. At the end, as she stood before the panel, she felt certain she was about to finally receive the financial backing she needed to properly market her product. she needed to properly market her product.

We want to congratulate you on your product, the head investor began. She saw her dream manifesting as she heard, we think that it's awesome. And then came the unexpected. We want to wish you the best, but we're going to pass on investing in IT Cosmetics. She could hardly believe it. If she wasn't going to walk away with funding, then she at least wanted some feedback. She held her composure, took a deep breath, and asked the burning question, can you tell me why? He looked her over, just three feet away from where she stood.

Do you really want me to be honest with you? With trepidation, Jamie nodded her head. I just don't think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. Jamie walked away from that interaction numb and shocked. While crying in her car, she remembered the motivation behind her efforts and realized this man, the one who saw her appearance as a hindrance, was exactly why her business had to work. He is just as much impacted by the definition of beauty as everyone else out there. Finally, all her past experiences and countless hours comparing herself to unrealistic standards, her fears about her skin condition, and her self-doubt all culminated into an undeniable need. Her meaningful mission

became clear. She needed to create a beauty brand for the people. Her ads would show people of all ages, skin types, and gender expressions. She set out to change the culture of beauty for every little girl out there who's about to start doubting herself and every grown person who still does. More motivated than ever, Jamie poured her heart and soul into IT Cosmetics, and she achieved incredible success. But with the success came even more challenges, the kind of challenges many people fear so much that they don't even try to succeed. She spent nearly 10 years working 100-hour weeks, rarely seeing friends or family. She had finally found success, but success had become unhealthy and unsustainable. Jamie

attempted to work at an unrealistic pace because no matter how much success she had, each one could be her last, and she had to strike while the iron was hot. It was at this point that the cosmetics giant, L'Oreal, recognized the revolutionary brand that Jamie had built. They offered her $1.2 billion for IT Cosmetics. Suddenly, she was faced with a choice. Accept L'Oreal's offer or go public? By accepting the offer, she'd make more money than she could have imagined during all those years struggling to get her idea off the ground. And by going public and maintaining control over the company, she'd probably continue working herself to exhaustion. But just like when she left her job as a news anchor, Jamie again felt that she needed to leave her comfort zone to pursue something new. She chose to stop chasing success and being constantly afraid of losing it.

Jamie sold IT Cosmetics and stepped down as the CEO. Since then, she has maintained a happier 20-hour workweek pursuing other greatness opportunities. For example, in 2021, she published Believe It! How to Go from underestimated to unstoppable. Now, a New York Times bestseller. From setback to setup. It seems logical that people would fear failure because no one wants to fail. Failure seems to be the antithesis to greatness.

But there's a second fear in the doubt diagram that is less intuitive. The fear of success. This one may seem illogical at first. After all, isn't success what we all want? When success is the finish line, it can be easy to run the race. But what happens after you cross the finish line? How will you lead a growing organization? What if you have to deal with the press or the public spotlight? What if people take advantage of you and you lose money and you look stupid doing it? That's where doubt can creep in and hold you back from even attempting to succeed.

How will I keep up this pace? Will I be able to withstand the pressure or the spotlight? What if I achieve it and I still don't feel fulfilled? What if I'm not good enough to succeed again? Let's be honest, there is some validity to these questions, but you can't let them stifle you. If they do, the world will miss out on your greatness and never see the unique value only you can provide. I've asked a handful of people who have recently had a rise of success, massive growth of followers online, more fame, and more money and opportunities coming their way than they had before. To rate themselves on the self-love scale from 1 to 10.

10 meant they fully love and accept themselves and are fulfilled and peaceful inside. 1 means they hate themselves and don't accept anything about who they are. They all gave me a number of where they were. Then I asked them to go back the day before all the success and fame started and to give me a number from that day. The answers blew my mind. Even though from the outside looking in, their success looks amazing. They all scored themselves higher before the success. No wonder so many people are afraid. That's why the second fear you must break up with is the fear of success. Know when to walk away. When Jamie saw her business taking off, her imposter syndrome told her she couldn't handle it, that it was only a matter of time before her success spiraled out of her control.

She told me the only thing that kept her going in those times of self-doubt was her enduring belief in the mission, that her meaningful mission was bigger than herself. The point of success, though, isn't the end of self-doubt. It is normal to be tempted to fear you won't be able to keep up with the demands of your newfound success. This fear can cause you to self-sabotage, running yourself ragged to prove you're enough. That all-too-common imposter syndrome can convince you your success is a fluke, making you short-sighted. You might feel, like Jamie did, that you have to make the most of your success while it lasts. But that scarcity mindset is not a greatness mindset. You have a

plan for long-term success in pursuit of your meaningful mission, and part of that plan needs to include pacing yourself. Sometimes success can mean closing a comfortable chapter and beginning a new uncomfortable one. In other words, you may need to shift gears. Dr. Phil, a mental health professional and popular TV show host, shared his insights with me. The worst thing you could ever do is pursue the wrong dream, or if your dream changes and you don't change with it. Dr. Phil knows a little about shifting gears. Before he was a television star, he ran two successful psychology practices. he ran two successful psychology practices.

However, he told himself from the beginning that if he ever got to the point where the impact he was having on people's lives no longer fulfilled him, he would stop. That's exactly what happened when he returned to his practice after Christmas break one year. He saw his appointment book filled for the entire next year and thought,

I don't want to do this anymore. In what he calls his gut check moment, he was at risk of staying in a place of comfortable success that was not satisfying. Instead, he referred all his patients to others and shut down his practice. Why? Why would he do this? His view of success had changed. Phil has made shifting gears a habit on his path to greatness. He also started a company in trial sciences called CSI. The company helped with trial strategy, jury selection, mock trials, and shadow juries and trials, upon which the CBS television drama Bull is based.

Again, Phil was successful in this business. He even represented Oprah Winfrey in the Mad Cow case in Amarillo. Yet after about 15 years of success, he felt stuck again. I had done everything you could do. I represented every major airline in the world. I represented all the nine major film studios out here. I represented half of the Fortune 100. I was involved in tobacco litigation, breast implant litigation, and everything you could imagine.

I'd done virtually everything you can do in that profession. That's when he realized it was time to do something different. What he created was the now famous Dr. Phil television show. But he was only able to create that show because he didn't let a fear of what success might bring limit him. Instead, he took control of his own destiny. A mark of greatness is the understanding that success itself isn't the end game. Greatness is being willing to change your definition of success as you pursue your meaningful mission. One step at a time. Here's the thing about greatness. Greatness is not about being complete at the start, but it's about being enough even while you are still growing, developing, and changing.

And that's where the tension comes in. You already are enough where you are in this moment, and you are always becoming more. If you aren't willing to become more, then ultimately you aren't willing to grow into the evolution of your own greatness either. Greatness is a process that is best pursued one step at a time. As the CEO of Attack Athletics, Tim Grover, a businessman and personal trainer, is known around the world for his work with elite athletes across all sports, including the NBA, NFL, MLB, and even Olympic athletes. He was Michael Jordan's trainer when Jordan won multiple NBA World Championships, and Kobe Bryant's trainer, too.

He told me that everyone is always looking for a specific number of steps that lead to success. But the truth is, there are an infinite number of steps because there are an infinite number of definitions of success. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. Those steps are constantly shifting. Those steps never, never end. And you just can't climb steps. Sometimes you've got to crawl. And when you finally get to the top, everything shifts and you're at the bottom again. Wait, what? The top is the bottom again? You may get to the top and think you've made it. You look back at where you've come from and feel great. Then you immediately look forward

to whatever is next and realize you're back on step one. What you thought was the top is the beginning. And that's when most people just quit. The journey never ends. When we realize that truth, we can guard against giving into to the fear of success. When the questions start again and greatness seems to fade into the distance, we can remember that the goal is not passing specific success checkpoints, but pursuing greatness. I know what Tim meant. I spent so many years, my entire lifetime really, preparing to host the School of Greatness podcast. Yet after 10 years, at the time of this book launching, I feel like I'm just getting started.

Too many people think that constant pursuit of greatness sounds exhausting, so they quit before they begin. In reality, I find it comforting because it means I don't have to have all the skills to get started. With the reassurance that I don't have to have it all figured out, every step I make becomes sort of a self-contained success. I don't need to have answers for what comes after I achieve success. I just need to push past my fears right now and move forward one step at a time. Here's the truth. You can and will become who and what you need to be on the journey to greatness. In fact, that's the only way to do it. That is why Amy Cuddy rejects the idea of fake it till you make it. She has her own version of the saying, fake it till you become it.

Fake it till you make it means you're never authentic, never actually good enough. Fake it till you become it means you anticipate growing and becoming the version of yourself you're practicing. Amy calls this tricking yourself into believing in yourself. I call it a cool tool for use in cultivating the greatness mindset. We must be willing to face the things we fear by going all in on them until those fears disappear and we come out the other side with a new set of skills and inner beliefs. This reframing practice comes back to defeating that imposter syndrome. Even if you aren't everything you need to be for success right now, you are enough to start right now. Only when you pursue growth, push past the fear, and become authentic can you

begin to position yourself to enjoy success on the journey? Think different. It is those long stretches of smooth sailing that are actually the most dangerous. Because too much success can cause you to let your guard down. And that's when failure can hit you the hardest. To avoid that, you have to think differently. From 1997 to 2002, Apple ran an ad campaign called Think Different. In it, they shared powerful black and white photographs of creative visionaries, ranging from Albert Einstein to Bob

Dylan, Amelia Earhart to Jane Goodall, Martin Luther King Jr. to Muhammad Ali, Jim Henson with Kermit the Frog to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Frank Lloyd Wright to Pablo Picasso. All these people choose to think different. To overcome the fear of success, you may need to do the same thing. Think differently. Let's return to Jamie's story. As her success snowballed, it became a threat to her quality of life because of self-doubt. The more she succeeded, the more she feared losing it all and began to reject the constant struggle to keep up the pace. That is when she had to think differently. Once she believed in her own success and saw it was not a temporary thing, she realized she couldn't keep working 100-hour weeks.

She began to learn to have faith in the process, trusting that some things could wait for the next day. As she told me, I did not need to work 100-hour weeks to build a billion-dollar company. According to Tim Grover, we should embrace the change that success can bring as a way out of our routines and see the wins in that opportunity. As Tim and I talked, he suggested we move forward on the journey and experience things that might cause us to fear and convert them to opportunities by choosing to see them through that lens. Count them as wins, he suggested, not as losses or negatives. It's a

simple but critical mindset shift. You can't let the fear of actually getting what you want inhibit you. Keep your perspective. Yes, sometimes winning can feel like losing. We can grow to hate the very situation we once longed for. When you find yourself afraid of success or maybe resenting the success you've recently achieved, remember that change is uncomfortable but inevitable. You can't choose whether change happens, but you can choose how you change. Remember, your role models have insecurities too. Whoever they are, I guarantee they had to face the same fears and struggles. When you're tempted to believe you aren't good enough or aren't prepared enough to take on the responsibility of greatness, just take the next easy step and know you are enough and you are becoming more.

Engaging Greatness As I mentioned, I'll provide you with a comprehensive fear conversion toolkit at the end of this section to help you take action to overcome the barriers of greatness. For now, ask yourself some simple questions. To what extent do you struggle to overcome the fear of success? How has this fear held you back from wholeheartedly pursuing your meaningful mission? Note any success fears you have while they are fresh in your mind. Chapter 6. Fear Number 3. Judgment.

Can I be really honest with you? There is one fear I have struggled with more than others. It isn't the fear of failure, although I've had my issues with that, just like all of us. And it isn't the fear of success. Although there have been growth challenges I've encountered on the journey, and I'm not minimizing those fears at all, but they weren't the things that held me back

from creating and going after what I wanted in my life. The one I have wrestled with the most, especially in my early years, has been the fear of judgment by others. See, I really like making people happy. I want to please them, not create more tension in their lives, and that can be a good thing in many ways. But when out of control, it can also lead to detrimental fears that do a lot of damage, both to myself and others. For many years, in my most intimate relationships, my fear of judgment and disappointing the other person led to my abandoning myself, going against my core values, and crossing

boundaries I didn't want to cross in order to please them. At least, that's what I told myself as I did whatever it took to make it work. Let's face it, the idea of love can cloud our own judgment because we're such chemically connected beings. But when we are not aligned with someone emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Trying to make it work is not the best path. My mistake was to try to fix it, rather than realize that I simply was not in alignment with the other person. That is not intended to be a judgment of the other person, but a candid assessment of how I let this fear keep me in certain relationships

long after it was time to walk away. As I have worked with my therapist to understand the relational dynamics, and most importantly, to see my own shortcomings, I realized I felt pressured to stay silent or to compromise boundaries. I was afraid of the relationship not working out and then being judged for it not working out. I didn't want people to think I was a jerk or to see working out and then being judged for it not working out. I didn't want people to think I was a jerk or to see me as the guy who breaks hearts, so I stayed in the relationships, even though I knew deep down that something was off. Plus, I didn't want people I care about being angry with me or disappointed in me,

so I just gave in constantly in relationships. My therapist says I was always trying to buy peace. I would get flowers or a special gift to do something to try to buy peace in the relationship. But you can't buy peace. You have to be peace. To do that, you have to set boundaries that align with your values and vision. And that is true in any relationship, whether it be with your business relationships, family, friends, or loved ones. At the core, my fear of judgment prevented me from doing the right things and being 100% authentic in who I was. As a result, I felt like I was out of integrity with myself. Here I was, not being authentic in these most intimate relationships,

when my entire mission was to encourage people around the world to be authentic in the pursuit of greatness. The lack of integrity began to diminish my self-confidence, which made me feel like I was living life at level 6 as opposed to 10. The self-doubt began to creep back in around the edges of my being, which only made it all worse because I knew I was allowing it to happen. This is all to say, I get it. It's really hard when you're in the moment of stress, breakup, or being

fired from your job because it feels like such a big deal. It's messy. It's painful. When you're in it, it's hard to think outside of that moment. You think people are judging you, and they may very well be. You see, at these pivotal moments, the ego tells you you're not enough because someone hurt you. You'll never amount to anything. You're not worthy. You're afraid of failure. You're afraid of success. You're afraid of other people's opinions.

But the ego is what can block you from the flow of abundance. What I learned to do in those moments is to keep telling myself, soon I'm going to have hindsight. A year from now, I will have learned a lesson from this experience. I will be stronger. I will have more humility. And in six months, a year, or two years, I will be on to something else. People will either move on with me or move out of my life. My friend Robin Sharma says, A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul, because the ego needs to die at different times in our life

so we can purge what is holding us back. Certain parts of the ego can be powerful and positive, but sometimes we need to purge that part that holds us back and limits us to break the invisible chains forged by the judgment of others. Our invisible chains. So many people are hindered by the fear of judgment by other people, their opinions, the embarrassment, what people will think about them, what they'll say about them. Why is that? Why do so many people wait decades to start a creative endeavor

they've been dreaming about for so long because they are insecure about someone else's opinion? When I asked Dan Millman, he observed that many people feel their identity is on the line with the opinions of others, or even their actual self-worth. We both agreed letting our identity be defined by the opinions of others was a mistake. But he made the point that if we focus more on how we can serve others, rather than what they think of us, it's all about me. How do I look? Do they like me? How do I sound? We can move past the anxiety about their opinions. In fact, Dan calls this the God of opinion. And I think he is right. We might as well create a little idol called other people's opinions and worship it at an altar every day. Because that is how so many people live their lives, all because they need the approval of others to define their

identity. Dan Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard, makes the distinction between bumblers and pointers. Bumblers are the ones in the ring on the field, doing their best to keep moving forward even though they fail often. They keep getting back up, learning and trying. Meanwhile, the pointers sit in the stands and ridicule the ones on the field. They don't actually achieve anything, but they do their best to look good. They've got all the fan bling and the most comfortable seats from which they make fun of all the people who are truly trying. They're not bumbling, like the folks on the field, because they aren't doing anything of significance at all.

As President Teddy Roosevelt put it, it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms,

the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. The reality is, each of us can be a combination of critic and bumbler at times. But criticism is not deadly, even though it can feel like it at times. I'm not minimizing the emotional impact. But getting criticized on the Internet or having someone laugh at you doesn't have to determine your life direction.

Those people only have power over us when we let them. So don't let them. Take your power back. For too many years, my fear of judgment drove me to want to succeed in order to prove the critics wrong. But that type of fuel and energy is not sustainable because the accomplishment of my goals then came from a place of insecurity as opposed to doing it because I loved it, because I wanted to inspire and lift others up. Instead of feeling proud after five or ten years of trying to accomplish something and then finally doing it, I would still be depressed 30 minutes later.

We run from our fears, which is why we often distract ourselves or make creative excuses without taking action. For example, one person I was coaching told me they just keep taking courses and going back to school to learn more, but never actually took action because they felt they weren't ready to pursue their goals. But no matter how much schooling and degrees or certifications they received, they would never be ready. They were distracting themselves, feeling like they needed more something. But the reality was they were afraid of failing and being judged for it. In my conversation with Dr. Ellen Vora, author of The Anatomy of Anxiety, we discussed what it feels like when we worry about pleasing others and aren't true to ourselves. She called it

giving a false yes. Here's an example she used. Imagine running into someone you haven't seen for 15 years in a store. You chit-chat for a minute, and they suggest getting together next week for coffee. Inside, you immediately run through all you have to do next week and think, I don't have time to do that. It's nothing against that person, but it's a low priority for you. But instead of politely declining, you worry about that fear of judgment and hear yourself say, sure, let's do it. While your brain is screaming, say no, say no. And according to Dr. Vora, that's a false yes. When next week rolls around, you either flake out and don't go, or you go out of guilt and are thinking about all the other things you could be doing. You end up low-key resenting the person because

you gave a false yes instead of an authentic no. As Dr. Vora said succinctly, it's a little betrayal of the self. That was my pattern for years. But breaking that pattern has freed me to enjoy better relationships and live with confidence knowing I am pursuing a life of significance and service that is true to my values. The truth about critics. Here's the truth. People will judge you no matter what you do. Truth. People will judge you no matter what you do. If you sit on the couch and do nothing, people will criticize you. If you chase your dreams, people will judge you. Either way, you are being judged. So you might as well go for your dreams and do the things you love the most.

When you look in the mirror, you should at least be proud that you gave your all on the field, no matter what the critics may say. Be true to you. One question retired Navy SEAL Commander Rich Deviney posed to me was, how do you really know what people are thinking? Usually, you don't. You only think you do. The reality is, you usually don't have a clue.

Rich suggests we tend to obsess over the negative things people might be thinking because of the way the brain works. We consciously lodge a question into our forebrain. Our brain immediately begins to come up with answers. I do this experiment with people in classes I teach. I say, just take a moment. I'll give you 30 seconds to answer this question. How could I double my income in the next 30 days? Anything that pops into your head, write down on a piece of paper. They generate a little list. Then I say, I don't care what the answers are. I only care how ridiculous the answers are. How many answers did you come up with? I usually get three, four, five, and sometimes even seven or eight answers. Why? Because they launched a question to their forebrain. Whatever question we lodge in our forebrain, our brains will begin to answer.

But often we do this the wrong way. We ask, why am I so bad at this? Why does this stuff always happen to me? Why are these people out to get me? When that happens, our brains begin to answer those questions, and some of those answers are as ridiculous as the answers that someone raised about doubling their income. In other words, our default answers often come from a place of weakness and fear. Our brains easily turn to survival mode, which is a fight-or-flight response that assumes the worst.

The answers our brains generate about others may be ridiculous, but they can feel pretty real in the moment. A lot of our fears of the perceptions of others are imaginary, but some are real. People do judge you and often do so in hurtful ways, and that's okay too. I asked Joel Osteen, pastor of the largest congregation in America, televangelist and author based in Houston, Texas, how he overcomes the tendency to feel insecure about what others think. When he started, everyone was supportive of him, but as his ministry grew, so did the critics. As he says, you can't reach your destiny without people being against you. Some people are not going to understand you. They don't want to

understand you. Sometimes we spend time and energy trying to convince somebody to like us, and they're never going to like us. And that's okay. Stay focused on your race. And so what I've been good at, and I encourage other people to do, is to tune out the negativity and run your race. I believe we only have so much emotional energy each day. It's not unlimited.

How much am I spending for negativity, for unforgiveness, for what that guy said, for the guy that cut me off in traffic, or for a co-worker who played politics? That's energy that I don't have for my dreams and my goals. Life is just too short to waste any of our emotional energy on things that don't matter. Make no mistake, you will have critics. Everyone who is pursuing greatness does. It's what you do after you realize you have critics that counts. It's in those moments that you have to make a decision to shrink back or to stand up, get out on the field, and give it all you've got.

Practical insights. Everyone has an opinion, but not all of them are worth addressing. I like what Priyanka Chopra Jonas told me about cultivating happiness for yourself. This is your journey and yours only. That means it's up to you to decide how that journey unfolds. If you rely on the opinions of others or their validation, it's going to be a long and bumpy ride. As she continued, if we're expecting someone else to contribute to your trajectory, it's going to be skewed. She added that if you're receiving validation from others,

instead of having it within yourself or creating your own validation through the things that matter most to you, then you are always going to be subject to the judgment of others. She chooses to focus on the love, affection, and support from her family and friends and ignore the trolls. Taking pride in who we are, she noted, and what we bring to the table is the greatest joy of them all. This was eye-opening for me. Rich Deviney suggests another way to push past fear and change our trajectory. The quality of our lives are directly proportional to the quality of our questions. We ask ourselves questions on a consistent basis. If they are negative, our life is going to suffer. Conversely, if we ask ourselves better questions, our life

improves. And the first thing he asks himself is, what's a better question here? It sounds counterintuitive or even sarcastic, but asking a better question halts the negative thought process and creates a new trajectory. And whether it's comparing yourself to others, why are they so much more or better than me, complaining about circumstances, why does this bad thing keep happening to me, or wondering about the future, when is this ever going to change? The answer is to ask a better question. To counteract negativity and stop worrying about what people think of her, Dr. Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the New York

University Center for Neuroscience, has a process she calls joy conditioning. Based on her 25 years of studying how memory works and applying all of her knowledge to addressing anxiety, the process is a direct antidote to fear conditioning, which she says we all experience by default. Joy conditioning takes no training at all, simply a willingness to look back on your life. a willingness to look back on your life. As she describes it, joy conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous, funny, or any of your favorite positive emotional events in your life and consciously bring them up and relive them. In essence, it's all about mining your life for positive emotions and flooding your mind with them. Dr. Suzuki says the secret to doing this is to think of a memory with a scent component, a smell that sticks in your mind. She gave me the example of a particular time she attended a yoga class.

It was an invigorating experience. yoga class. It was an invigorating experience, but the best part came when the instructor put lavender lotion on her hands, waved them in front of Wendy's face, and gave her a short but relaxing neck massage. It stuck with her so much that Wendy now carries a small bottle of lavender essence and uses it for a pick-me-up. It's a simple way to condition herself to joy and push past the negativity. You can do this for yourself. Think about a joyful memory and bonus points if there are good smells involved and use that to combat the negative thoughts. Whether it's drowning out the negative opinions of others with positive opinions from those you trust, asking better questions that pull you out of the negative spin cycle,

or joy conditioning so you stop living fearfully, you can and must make the decision to step past the fear of judgment. You only get one shot on your quest to greatness. Don't let the negativity of others derail you. Engaging Greatness. Before you engage with the activities in the Fear Conversion Toolkit at the end of this section, ask yourself some simple questions. To what extent do you struggle to overcome the fear of the judgment of others? How has this fear held you back from wholeheartedly pursuing your meaningful mission? Note any fears of what others think while they are fresh in your mind. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description

for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast

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and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.