"How Do I Stop Fearing Failure?"

0:00before. I've a massive problem with optimizer paralysis, all right? Uh I delay execution because my ego is tied to the outcome. So, any chance of failure feels like an identity death. Okay. I was reinforced as a child to never fail and always win at school because top grades were the only thing that got me attention. Okay. It was literally the only reason other kids my age ever talked to me. As a result, I unconsciously only get into things where I have high certainty of winning. How do I kill this optimizer mindset?

0:24Um I love the first response, don't kill it, use it. Um but you've created a lot of labels for yourself, which is that this optimizer paralysis, that you delay execution because your your ego is tied to the outcome, and if there's any chance of failure, you don't do it. But, the reality is that you are in a path that is guaranteed for failure. Because you decided to ask this question. So, you already feel like you're not succeeding.

0:51So, you're not leaving success and and and chancing failure. You're already in failure. What you're doing is whether you want to roll the dice at success. Think about that. But, the plight that you're dealing with was the exact same one that I was dealing with. So, I know this very well, which is I was, you know, I was magna [ __ ] laude, finished in 3 years, top of my class, blah blah blah blah blah.

1:17But, the thing that got me to get out of the comfortable thing was the realization that when I am 85 years old, I will regret if I was if I behaved cowardly throughout the entire period of my life when I could have taken risks. And the reality of a guaranteed regret at a delay versus a shot not the guarantee, but a shot at getting what I wanted.

1:44And so, if you have no chance of what you want and a chance of what you want, which door do you go to? So, you're telling me I've got a chance. And fundamentally, that's what you do. And if you are the type of person that likes to win, then go into that arena and win. Cuz the thing is is and I love this Jocko quote, but all failure besides death is psychological. It's literally rules that we make for ourselves that we then draw a line in the sand and then compare ourselves to it and say as a result of me being far away from this line, I am a failure.

2:13But the thing is is that it's a fake game with fake rules that didn't matter to begin with. You made it up. And so you can just choose to change the rules of the game. It's your game. It's your game. And you're never going to win in other people's eyes anyways, cuz they don't give a [ __ ] When Leila and I get on the Forbes list, eventually, I know what's going to happen. We're going to have a post. People going to be like, "Oh wow, he actually did it."

2:40I'm going to get 30 or 40 texts. And then I'm going to [ __ ] get then the next day everyone's going to move on. Like nothing's going to happen. There's There's no mariachi band that comes in in in 2 years from now and says congra- you know, plays you a song for for the the reason that you're telling yourself that you can't do it. Like there's Let me say this differently. There's a reason that you haven't taken action and that that action is serving you.

3:08You have to figure out what that reason is. Like you think that because you're an optimizer and that you have a a track record of success, that if you fail, you're going to no longer have that identity. But as far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve that identity to begin with. Hm? Now, I'm just doing this to to to poke buttons, right? To push you a little bit. But the reality is, you can redefine your identity based on whatever label you want, whenever you want.

3:43We could say that you doing what you're doing now is being a failure and you taking a chance is being a success. You define the label. If you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it.

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