There’s an old saying, “What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?”  If you’ve heard that quote before, it has undoubtedly provided a bit of inspiration at times by sparking the belief that you can do anything and achieve anything – and nothing is going to stop you.  This phrase allows you to dream big, plan big, and (potentially) take big steps towards your goal.

But there’s a big part of us that calls bullshit on this quote, because in this little thing we like to call “reality,” we do fail.  A lot. And most of the time, failure scares the holy hell out of us.  But it didn’t used to.  Here’s the scoop.

When You Were Little, You Ate Failure For Breakfast

You were too young to remember, but at one time you didn’t give a rat’s ass about failure.  You tried to walk and fell flat on your face?  You may have cried, but you kept at it, because you wanted to walk/run/jump/rock/etc.. You tried to learn to talk, but all that came out was stutters, lisps and nonsense – and you knew it – but you kept at it.  You tried to ride a bike, you fell over constantly, and you decided you’d never learn.  But then someone bigger than you told you to suck it up and voila, you got the hang of it.

When you’re a kid, failure can infuriate you, but you manage to push past it.  You see everyone around you walking, talking, and riding their bikes and figure, “Hell, I guess everyone can do this.”  And you hammer at it and don’t quit.  It’s like being naive, only in a useful way.

The bottom line is yes, failure pissed you off, but you didn’t cop out.  You kept at it because the eventual success was worth all the failures along the way. You remembered that everyone was doing these things, and so you knew on some level that eventually you’d get there, and that your skinned knees would heal.  You were a blank slate, with nothing to lose, so you didn’t feel like you were risking anything except for some short term pain.  And that’s why you racked up win after win.

Success. It was sweet.  The training wheels came off, and you had a lot to be proud of.

But Then It All Went Wrong

Somewhere along the line you fell off your bike or you stuttered, or tripped in front of a group of people, and they laughed at you.  Suddenly you felt less-than-successful, and that sudden status drop scared you.  Or maybe it happened to someone else, and you started asking yourself “What if it happened to me?”  Gradually, you started backing off, stopped taking risks, held yourself back, all because you didn’t want to risk the sting of the F Word:  Failure.

It’s not that you became a wuss.  You just looked around and saw that society showers limitless rewards on perfect beautiful people and crushes anything less than that under its merciless heels.  So woe to you if you show weakness, frailty, or anything less than what magazine covers and television shows taught you that you were supposed to look like and act like.  Nevermind that you know full well that reality is different than that – enough people go along with the fairy tale that the pressure to not screw up seems all too real.

The Irony Of It All

Unexpectedly, your success became a liability.  You became afraid of losing what you had, risking what you’d worked hard for, “looking stupid,” and you limited yourself.  You told yourself not to go for it, not to push yourself, not to position yourself where you might fall flat. You took the “acceptable risks,” and you played it safe.  Sure, you might have continued to eat failure for breakfast in your professional life, but on personal levels you still held back. We all do it, myself included, so we can be honest here.

In reality, we always, always, always fail our way to success.   We try things, see if they work or not, and adjust how we’re doing things until they work out, whether it’s building a business or raising kids.  But somewhere along the line, the resource that earn us our success – the ability to take risks – becomes something we’re afraid of tapping into again.  And so we hold back, hoping that we don’t jeopardize our success, and we miss the chance to grow further.  We cling to our current “success” in one area or another, at the expense of truly getting more of something that really matters.

How To Start Successfully Failing Again

To tap back into the power we had as little kids, we have to do three things:

• First, step back and ask yourself, what’s the real risk of failure?  What’s the worst-case scenario? That you might look stupid?  (Who cares?)  That you might lose money?  (You can replace it.)  That someone might reject you?  (If you don’t approach them, what’s the difference?).  Consider that for most things, the worst-case scenario generally isn’t fatal.  You can move on. People have hit that worst-case scenario and survived (and often times, thrived).

• Second, look around you for people who are already successful doing what you want to do, whether it’s working for yourself, opening up to someone emotionally, conquering a long-time fear – whatever it is you’re nervous about tackling.  Look closely at their history and notice that they screwed up plenty of times and had more than their share of failures – and that the secret of their success was that they kept at it. Don’t put them on a pedestal of ‘natural talent’ or ‘luck’ – they worked for it, and so can you.

• Third, view your actions moving forward as learning experiences, not as pass/fail tests that reflect your worth as a person.  Don’t sweat getting it perfect the first time, or even close to the first time.  Take a chance.  See what happens.  Adjust your strategy.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  And suck it up – you’ll get to where you want to be eventually.

A Better Way To Look At That Quote

Forget “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”  Instead, ask yourself, “What could I do if I didn’t give up trying, damnit?”  Because that’s the secret.  People don’t fail.  They stop trying.  They call it quits.  But that’s not you.  You’re better than that.  Fail ’till it doesn’t hurt anymore, until you fully acknowledge it as part of the learning process.

I’d like to thank some of the people who have challenged me to fail early and fail often by laying the smackdown on me anytime I started feeling sorry for myself (whether in person or via blog posts) – most notably James & Harry, Naomi Dunford, and Christine O’Kelly.  And most of all, I thank my wife, who has shown me more courage and determination than I can even put into words, and who challenges me constantly to stop using fear as an excuse to take action.

So now it’s your turn – ask yourself what you’re going to fail forward in – and use the steps above to start moving along.  You’ll thank yourself for it.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

If you’ve never heard of this malady, it boils down to this – you don’t consider yourself expert in an area because there are so many people more experty than you are. This usually happens because you dabble in a skill that other people devote their full attention to. So on a scale of 1 to 10 those “A-listers” are 10s in their field while you clock in at about a 5.

And because the gap between 5 to 10 is indescribably gigantic, it’s easy to feel like there’s no reason for you to market your services as a 5. After all, why would someone pay for a freaking 5 when they can get a 10? Well, as Naomi Dunford so eloquently pointed out, there’s a huge-a$$ market in the 0 to 4 range.

Excellence is highly overrated. The vast majority of clients do not want excellent or amazing or The Best Ever or Jesus Himself Couldn’t Have Written It This Good. They can’t afford Jesus. They can afford Better Than They Could Do Themselves. This means they can afford you.

Well said. And that’s the foundation of building the kind of confidence that bring home the bacon.

Now On To How I Boosted My Confidence (And How You’re Going To Do It Too)

A few years back I decided to take the plunge and become a business coach, helping people get organized, focused, and motivated to kick some serious a$$. I had the background, I had the experience, but I was missing one thing: the clients. I’d spent my life being the go-to guy for fixing people’s problems fast, but I’d never done it for money. So how did I go about getting clients when I didn’t have any “case studies” or testimonials to speak for me?

The answer is simple. I didn’t. I frigging choked. For two months I did nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. I was very active on some of the bigger self-improvement forums out there, answering people’s questions, helping them out … but never asking for the sale. I was terrified, which wasn’t my usual demeanor. You see the problem is, I had looked at my competition’s rates and seen that they started at $600 a month and shot straight up to the five-figure-a-month range. All I could think about was “Why would somebody be willing to pay me $600 a month when I don’t have any past clients to use as references?”

On top of that, the competition had a few other “advantages” over me.

• The high-priced coaches were part of the Big Fancy Coaching Associations and had Big Fancy Coaching Certifications. I had nothing.
• The high-priced coaches were graduates of impressive sounding schools with impressive sounding majors. I ditched college after 3 semesters (I didn’t flunk out, I just jumped on the dot-com boom when it was happening and don’t regret it a damned bit).
• The high-priced coaches had pages and pages of customer references. I didn’t.

Finally I got the guts to put up a pricing page and offered my services for … here it comes … $99 a month. I figured “I’ll just do this ’till I get my feet wet and get a stream of customers.” And the money just rolled in. And by “rolled in,” I mean I had two customers. TWO. One pre-paid for a year (which was nice until I did the per-hour math!), the other just for a few months. It was depressing. And by “depressing,” I mean totally frigging depressing.

But Then Warren Buffet Kicked Me Between The Eyes

A few months into making almost no money whatsoever I picked up a copy of Fast Company and read an article about Warren Buffet that changed everything. I read perhaps the greatest quote ever about the irrelevance of buying stocks based on price alone. Old W.B. said:

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

Truer words have never been spoken. And finally, I had the “A-Ha Moment” that changed my confidence level forever. Instead of freaking out over what everyone else was charging and how super-damn-special they were, I thought to myself: What the hell is it that I do for people, and how much is it worth? And I began to think things like this:

• I’m good at taking people who are stuck in their business, and I help them find creative ways to get going again.
• I’m good at showing people ways to monetize their business that they hadn’t thought of yet.
• I’m good at showing people how to get a hell of a lot more done every day.
• I’m good at showing people how to kick procrastination’s ass and get focused.
• I’m good at getting people to believe in themselves and create a step-by-step plan to get what they want.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that those things were easily worth $600 a month – even without any Formal and Official Big Important Credentials. Hell, when I thought about it, I realized that I was damned good at talking people into overcoming fear and depression and doing what they needed to do to reach their goals. I thought about how people always came to me for answers, and I could almost always give them something they needed to take the very next step with confidence.

I even reflected upon two incredible times in my life when I was in the unique position to talk someone out of suicide – not because I’m some magically special person, but because I simply helped them reframe their focus so that they would feel good about taking constructive action instead of giving up.

Then I realized my “USP”: I was good at helping people figure out what the next step was, and how they could approach it. I didn’t have to worry about competing with established coaches at all. I just needed to present myself as someone who could help you get unstuck and moving forward.

The Next 30 Days: Hollywood Ending Included

After that revelation I said “Screw it, I’m raising my rates.” I raised them to about $500 a month and started putting the word out that if you were an entrepreneur who needed to get unstuck and moving forward, I could help you get going. With the confidence I had in my ability to do that, I was able to fill my coaching dance card to the tune of over $5000 in the next 30 days. I couldn’t believe it, because I’d never pulled in that much in my life, not by a longshot. But it made sense once I figured it out. And it will make sense to you when you do it as well.

Feel Confident: There’s Always A Market For Your Skill Level

Wherever you are, there are people who need your skill level. Focus on what you can deliver – not what other people are delivering – and your confidence will shine through. And your confidence is what people pay for – an implicit trust that you can deliver what you say you can. Like animals can smell fear, your potential clients can smell confidence. So put all your focus on what it is you do well and your confidence will shoot through the roof. And it will be authentic confidence that you can be proud of, without feeling like you’re being arrogant.

Moral O’ The Story: Take Your Eyes Off The People “Out Of Your League”

It’s always a good idea to ignore the A-List and other people more “established” than you as far as it hampers your ability to move forward (however, if someone from the A-List offers to help you to move forward, take advantage of it). Don’t let the the fact that other people have more experience / clients / whatever than you prevent you from getting more experience / clients / whatever for yourself, and on your terms.

Take a realistic assessment of yourself and charge accordingly. If you want to charge more, either boost your skill level or, better yet, learn to present and position yourself in better ways than you’re doing now. But whatever you do, don’t stall. Tap into the market that is currently available to you. If you’re a 5 and struggling, don’t stress yourself out trying to compete with the 10’s. Look for that 0 to 4 market and work the hell out of it.

I am. Starting with my foray into the world of freelance writing. For the first time I’m posting my rates (which I’m sure I’ll increase as I mull over the value proposition). Feel free to contact me for work.

Now It’s Your Turn: What’s Your Big Value?

Take a moment and think about the value you present to clients. Crystallize it and put it in the comments below, and let everyone know what you have to be confident about! (Then subscribe to this blog if you’ve liked what you’ve read so far.)

You know what to do,

Dave

It’s pretty likely your inbox/folders/(labels?) are hiding some pretty great emails in there …

• Emails where people have gushed about how you’ve helped them/the great job you did/how much they value you
• Emails telling a story that really inspires you or motivates you to take action
• Emails chock-full-o’ wins and victories (awards won, major sales, your first ‘You’ve got cash!’ from paypal

Those emails are probably just buried and doing you no good at the moment, buried under 100 urgencies that threaten to dominate your thinking.

So why not apply a label to them (or put them in a folder, if you don’t have labels) like “MOTIVATION”, or “INSPIRATION”, or “KICK-ME-IN-THE-ASS” so that when you need a boost, you can jump right to them and spend 5 minutes reminding yourself why you rock (and you should know how important that is by now).

Don’t be cynical and dismiss this – you know how insanely powerful those emails made you feel in the past. Don’t leave that emotional money on the table. Spend 5 minutes slappin’ some labels, or re-foldering, and the next time you feel like it would be a good idea to wallow in feeling less than badass, you know just where to go.

Until next time, remember: It’s your life, so take total control of it!

- Dave Navarro

(PS – Don’t forget to leave a comment with your take on this, and pass the word to those who rock with you)

We all have days (weeks?) like this, and one of my top coaching clients this morning was no exception. I say “top” client because this person kicks ass. Six figure revenues. High consulting fees. An in-demand presentation speaker. Yet, like you and like me, still only human. A few particularly aggravating set backs and a week-long case of “where the hell did my motivation go?” was taking it’s toll.

I’ve known this all too well, and I’ve had to come up with some tactics to turn the tide when this happens. Here’s a few that I recommended to my client, and that I think can do the trick for you as well.

Tactic #1: Make A List Of Why You Rock
It’s a funny part of human psychology that we quickly forget the good and obsess over the bad. We remember failures from a decade ago and lose sight of recent successes. Well, no more of that crap. From now on it’s different.

You need to grab a pen and paper (or keyboard/whatever) and make a quick list of reasons that you, dear reader, rock (and rock hard). You need to make a list of your strengths, your skills, your competitive advantages, your greatest wins, everything you have going for you.

For bonus points include great things that people have said about you (and that isn’t limited to some big writeup – you could just as easily cut and paste “Thanks, you really saved my ass,” from a recent email. The point is that you remind yourself of why you make a worthwhile impact and that you write it down.

The reason it’s so important you write it down is because when you feel like crap, you won’t be able to recall all those items. You’ll be throwing a lavish pity party and inviting all of your favorite excuses to hang out and make themselves comfortable. This list is your way to pummel yourself with reasons that you should get out of your funk and do it now.

Start this list in the next sixty seconds. I’m serious. Grab something to write with and write down one reason you rock. Or email it to yourself. Or write it on your hand for now. Just take action instead of just thinking about it.

Tactic #2: Anchor That Rocking Feeling
Ok, now that you have that list of reasons you rock (or you’ve finished writing on your “Palm” pilot), you need to set up an anchor so you can feel rocking-powerful any time you want. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the 30 second explanation:

When you have a feeling and something specific/repeatable happens, that emotion becomes linked to the experience. If you get trash-talked every time you see a specific person, eventually the sight or the thought of them will be a downer. If someone is always building you up, eventually, you’ll feel good just thinking about them/seeing them.

Basic psychology. Pavlov’s dogs. Now let’s leverage that SOB.

Look at your list/single item and close your eyes for a moment. Think about how good it felt to accomplish that thing, or how good it feels to know you have that specific skill/quality/advantage/whatever. Create some emotion here (which, if you can’t, tells you that you need to refine your reason). Think of how good it made you feel to get that compliment, or earn that reward. Stand up straight and tall as you recall how rocking you really are/were in the moment.

Now, while you’re immersed in that feeling, do something unique. Bang your fists together. Do a judo chop. Yes, that sounds silly but it helps to do something “powerful”-oriented. Personally, I make a fist and do a quick double-tap in the center of my chest. You can do anything you want, just be consistent and make it something unique, that you wouldn’t otherwise do.

If you actually do this, if you get into the habit of reminding yourself why you rock and then doing an anchoring step, then here’s what’s going to happen. The next time you feel like crap, you’re going to do whatever move you came up with, and you are going to feel a sudden flow of “I rock!”-ness that will help to lift you out of your funk.

It may take a while to build up a really strong anchor, but once you do, it’s golden. Make it a point to spend at least 60 seconds every day reinforcing that anchor by remembering why you rock, doing that move, and really staying immersed in that experience.

Tactic #3 – Have a Rocking Soundtrack
One place where you make anchors all the time is with music. You have certain music that you’ve already anchor-linked to emotions. Music that relaxes you. Music that makes you sad. Music that makes you want to go out and kick the world’s ass. That last kind is what you’re after.

Invest a minute and think of songs that help get you juiced up and ready to rock and have them at the ready to help kick you back into gear. My personal favorites: Track 3 and 10 on the Gladiator soundtrack. And Billy Joel’s “You’re Only Human (Second Wind)” is a great one to snap you out of that felling-sorry-for-yourself crap that drains you.

So try all three things out, leave some comment love below and let’s see where it gets you. If you haven’t started with Tactic #1, do it right now. Invest 60 seconds and increase your Rocking Quotient (RQ). Do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

But when somebody is so financially successful that there is only one person on the planet with more money than him … well, then I really listen.

Warren Buffet, the second richest person on the planet, once said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” This is the ultimate statement on leverage. It proposes that how much something costs is irrelevant. How much you get in return, well … that’s everything. But it’s not how we tend to think…

We tend to look at things strictly from a cost perspective, because we live in a world that conditions us to focus on scarcity. Just think of the last few products you’ve seen that made you say “Wow, I’d really like that … but it just costs too much.” Or think of the life-changing project you’d love to pursue … if it only didn’t require so much time, or so much effort ….

Sound familiar? We all think like this from time to time (some much more than others). But it’s a mindset that does nothing but hold you back. It’s opposite of the way Warren Buffet advises, the way that made him wealthier than anyone (Well, there is that one guy).

When I decided to break myself of the scarcity mindset – the idea that I had to think about cost rather than value – I came up with a saying I’d repeat to myself: “Would I trade a dime for a dollar?” In other words …

• Would I spend ten hours developing a skill that could save me 100 hours over the course of a year?
• Would I spend a hundred dollars learning something that could net me a thousand dollars (or more)?
• Would I spend ten times more effort developing the one contact who could increase my network a hundred fold?

This “dime for a dollar” thinking is what moved me out of the scarcity mentality and into the “leverage mentality.” Once I made that shift, things began to open up for me and my life at a rate much faster than it had ever before. I saw opportunities that had been staring me in the face … but until now only looked like “costs.”

Now I invite you to take the leap with me. Decide that you’re going to abandon the scarcity mentality and embrace the leverage mentality. When confronted with something you know you need to do in order to accelerate your journey towards success – whether personal or professional – decide that you’re going to look at things from a benefits perspective rather than a cost perspective.

Give it a shot for just three days straight – as your own personal experiment – and let me know what results you experience. Shoot me an email at dave@davenavarro.com – I’d love to hear from you.

And if doing this simple 3-day experiment seems like too much work to you, ask yourself …

Would you trade a dime for a dollar?

Here’s why: If you don’t give yourself permission to be imperfect, you’re setting yourself up in a position of weakness. You’re starting out with the “I’m so screwed up” or “My situation is so bad” perspective, which doesn’t do anything to help you overcome things. In fact, it just keeps you there longer, because you get depressed about how many problems there are with you and your circumstances. Your ability to take action to change things dissolves.

The way to successfuly work on overcoming your “imperfectons” is to use a different strategy – the triple tactic of honesty, realism, and action.

How The Truth Sets You Free
Instead of hiding from the truth, admit your shortcoming – but at the same time admit that it’s not the end of the world. All too often, we have this idea that a personal weakness invalidates us as a person, or condemns our whole future forever. But this just isn’t the case. Let’s say you’re demonstrating zero willpower – you just don’t follow through on the things you need to. Instead of getting depressed about it, admit that this is where you are, and you’re not going to hide from it anymore or pretend that it doesn’t matter.

It does matter. A lot. It’s messing with your life and your goals. But be honest and realize that this is just where you are right now, and it doesn’t have to be this way forever. Tell yourself that it’s okay for the moment that you have this shortcoming, because you’re not going to let yourself stay that way.

Most people will never get past this step. Perhaps that’s because they don’t realize the second tactic:

Getting Real About How Life Works
Human beings tend to trust emotion over reality. We can take a few negative references and treat them as absolute fact, even if they have no basis in reality. We fail a few times and feel like a failure. We stop and start on goals and feel like we have no willpower. We feel like we can’t change a situation. We feel these things, and we imagine that they are real.

The thing is, they aren’t. Just because you’ve failed over and over again in the past, doesn’t mean that your future is doomed. That’s an emotional feeling that doesn’t reflect objective reality. Unless you’re an extrordinarily unique case, no one is holding a gun to your head, preventing you from taking action on your goals. The key you need is to find the appropriate leverage to take action.

That’s a big enough topic that it needs to be another article (which, fortunately, it is.) People don’t need a magic formula to succeed as much as they need a little bit of reality therapy – the understanding that there is nothing in the world that has to block you from making some progress on your goal, skill, or strength every single day.

We tend to worry about our imperfections as if they are some insurmountable obstacles when they aren’t. They are brick walls that can be chipped away, in some cases only one brick at a time. The fact that there are a lot of bricks has nothing to do with the fact that you can take out a few of them right now if you just follow through.

The reality is that anything you want to change, you can. It just takes consistent work. Most people never get past this step, either, because they’re too turned off by “work” to do it consistently (but don’t let yourself be one of them).

Nothing Happens Until You Make It Happen
Ah, work – the four letter word. This is the place where the magic happens – or, in a lot of cases, doesn’t. If you want to make your goals happen, you’ve got to show up, every day, and hammer at it. You can’t just expect it to all fall together.

So decide that you’re going to get to work, right now. If you need some motivation find some here and here. And get to it now so you can start getting some peace of mind towards yourself – imperfections and all. Do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

One day, my bus driver Mike (not his real name) decided that he was going to taste a little bit of freedom and figured out how to disable the governor on his bus. Being one of the kids in the back, I wasn’t in a position to see the spedometer, but I’m guessing he had that bus going about sixty miles an hour at the top of his game.

It’s amazing how bumpy (and terrifying) the ride in a school bus gets when it’s rolling along almost twice as fast as it normally goes. We all got to school early that day. Mike ended his day early as well – permanently. He was fired on the spot. And though we were all a little shaken up at the dangerously wild ride, we all secretly thought it was a little cool that Mike had figured out a way to unlock the governor and make the bus go as fast as he wanted it to go.

Years later, I still vividly remember that day because it opened my eyes to the reality that in life, there are a lot of things that enforce limits on what we can and can’t do. Some of them, like the governor, are external to us – and are there for a very good reason. But the ones that tend to limit us the most, the ones that hold us back – they’re generally internal governors. You may have heard of them talked about before as “limiting beliefs.” But like the governor in the school bus, they can be unlocked – one by one – so you can start going as fast as you want to go.

Beliefs Are Everything
Your beliefs – limiting and otherwise – are everything. They’re the core factor in determining what you can and can’t do, and the level of success you have in your life. But if you don’t pay close attention to them and manage them ahead of time, they will essentially dominate you instead of freeing you. You;ll be intimidated by all the things you believe you cannot do rather than fueled by the ideas of all the things you can do.

If you’re like most people, you didn’t consciously choose your beliefs. Someone pushed them upon you, or they just came together as a result of how you interpreted the things going on around you throughout your life.

If you grew up being the best at something, you might have pretty strong beliefs of what you are capable of in that area. But if you were second best – or you weren’t above average at all – you might go through your whole life feeling inferior, always focusing on how much better other people are than you. Or perhaps someone gave you some rough criticism and said you weren’t good at something. regardless of whether that’s true or not, that could be limiting you by supporting a belief that you just don’t measure up.

You Can Change Beliefs At Any Time
But as I said – just like my bus driver Mike discovered how to disable the thing that was limiting his ability to “make progress faster,” you can dismantle the things that are holding you back as well. In reality, there’s absolutely nothing preventing you from breaking past any limiting belief that currently dominates your life.

When I coach people on breaking past limiting beliefs, they are always surprised at how many beliefs they’ve been holding on to that are holding them back. Most of them they weren’t even aware of – but these beliefs were driving their everyday actions and emotions nonetheless. It can easily be an overwhelming experience to come fact-to-face with fifty or sixty limiting beliefs that are keeping you down – but if you have the courage to acknowledge them, you can find the strength to defeat them with what end up being some pretty simple strategies.

Now, if these strategies are so simple, why don’t you see people making radical changes in their lives by shattering all of their limiting beliefs? Well, it really all comes down to courage. It’s not an easy task to sit down with a pen and paper and write out all your insecurities, all your emotional baggage, and all your shortcomings (real and imagined). It’s can be not only scary but downright demoralizing to see so many things that need “fixing.”

The First Step
But like anything else, acknowledging a problem exists is the mandatory first step in overcoming it. And while it’s challenging to face up to your issues, it’s also liberating – because now you’re not hiding the truth from yourself, and you’re laying it all out in the open. And that’s how you can start making progress on it.

Soon I’ll be writing a series of articles about overcoming your own limiting beliefs, based on the strategies I’ve used to dismantle mine, one at at time (which, naturally, is still a work in progress). So bookmark this article and check back later on and you’ll find the links to these articles as I write them.

For now though, you have to face the question – will you have the courage to face up to your limiting beliefs and take them out of the dark? The ironic thing is that when you do, you’ll find they’re not as scary as you might have expected. But this is the all important first step. If you want to become a stronger person, you have to face the things that are holding you back and decide to wage battle against them.

Get To It
So set aside thirty minutes or so and begin listing out all the reasons you feel you can’t have the things you want in life and why you can’t be the kind of person you wish you were. These are your limiting beliefs. When you’ve written them all out, look over them again, but this time tell yourself that you’re going to start shattering them, one by one.

So get to it now. Acknowledge your limiting beliefs, and take that powerful first step to becoming a stronger person today. Do it now. You’ll thank yourself for it.

This expectation of success is critical because if you allow self-doubt (the expectation of failure) to creep in, you erode your chances of actually taking action on a consistent basis. That lack of action, rather than any setbacks in particular, is what keeps you from making progress on your goals.

Life’s too short to let that happen, so let’s look at the reason people struggle with self-doubt and some quick steps you can take in the next ten minutes to make sure you don’t get derailed from the things you want to accomplish.

Where does self-doubt come from?
Well, it basically comes from two levels of negative expectation – first, an expectation that the goal itself might not be possible, and second from an expectation that even if the goal is possible, it likely won’t be possible for you in particular.

Everybody thinks thoughts like these to some level on a daily basis. Let’s focus an effective, two step process on how to defuse their power to create self-doubt in the first place.

Step 1 – Remind yourself that the goal itself is not impossible for someone to accomplish.

There’s a lot of silent “self-talk” that goes on in your head on a daily basis. There’s a part of you that looks at the unlimited possibilities in front of you … and then there’s that other part of you that tells you to be “reasonable,” that the bar is set too high, that the goal just isn’t really achievable.

Now, the problem most people face is that they aren’t even aware that this conversation is occurring. They’ll just go through the motions and wonder why sometimes they’re motivated to take action, and sometimes they aren’t. That may describe you (and I know that it has described me at many times in my life, so I’m speaking from personal experience here).

The key to preventing self-doubt, though, is to take immediate and total control of that conversation. To learn to actively listen in to the quality of conversation going on in your head and to take command when it’s not going the way it needs to be.

The way to start doing this is to decide to look at the situation objectively – that is, to take yourself out of the equation. Instead of thinking about what you can or can’t do, look at the goal and remind yourself that it isn’t impossible for a human being to accomplish. Surely someone on Earth could do it (or has done it already).

The way to make this work is to simply rehearse a statement that you can use to interrupt the pattern of thinking that’s holding you back from feeling 100% confident that you can achieve your goal. Let’s say that your goal is to become completely financially independent in the next 12 months.

While that can appear to be a daunting task to many, it’s certainly not imposible. People do it all the time. So perhaps your statement would be something like this: “It’s not impossible to become financially independent in 12 months or less. It’s been done over and over again.”

Now, why did I choose to say “It’s not impossible …” rather than the more positive sounding “It’s possible …”? The answer is because I don’t want to give you a chance to make excuses to use the word “but.” You see, we often think “Sure, it’s possible, but .”

When you say “It’s not impossible …”, you subtly prevent yourself from the opportunity to come up with a good excuse to doubt your ability to make it happen. You’re forced to admit that there’s not some immovable, unstoppable force that’s preventing you from ever accomplishing your goal. Your focus is on the fact that the potential exists, regardless of how you “feel” about it at any given time.

Don’t make the mistake of taking this step for granted, because it’s absolutely essential. The generalized beliefs you have about life – what’s possible and what isn’t – completely drive your actions on a day to day basis. Like a puppet’s strings, they dictate where you can go. So you have to be sure and get them right and never lose sight of the fact that you can do almost anything.

Sidebar: Just to clarify things, this isn’t positive thinking I’m talking about here. I’m not saying you’ll succeed because you’re saying “I think I can.” What I’m talking about is realistic thinking – focusing on facts, not emotions. Looking at things objectively. Taking the personal fear out of the picture and acknowledging your potential as a human being – not as the collection of skills and experiences you call “you.”

So to sum up this first step, you need to have a strong statement (or a set of them) that you can focus on to keep your mind firmly rooted in reality – the reality that your goal is by no means impossible. It may be hard, and it may demand more out of yourself than you’ve ever given, but it’s not impossible. In fact, with the right effort and strategies, it’s actually inevitable.
Once you’ve objectively framed the goal in your mind this way, and you are utterly convinced that your goal isn’t impossible to achieve, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

Step 2 – Remind yourself that the goal itself is not impossible for you – in particular – to accomplish.

This is where a lot of people get in trouble. We say, “Sure, it’s possible, but not for me.” This is where we move into the magical world of excuses, where every obstacle seems permanent and much too hard to overcome. We view ourselves as relatively powerless to change the situation:

In reality, though, we have an enormous amount of power. When we focus on our limitations, whether it be time, money, talent, whatever – that’s when we hand that power over to the side of us that says “you just can’t do it.” That part of us that focuses on what we can’t do has a long list of all the reasons why we’re not up to the task, and it’s pretty hard to refute it. You know the feeling I’m talking about.

So the trick of it all is to turn the tables and create a solid list of all the reasons you can do it – and why you, in particular, are just the person to get it done. It’s not unlike writing a resume. When you want to apply for a new position, you think long and hard about how you are going to verbalize why you are more than qualified to do the job. You list your skills, your education, your resources, and most importantly, your experience and successes.

When you hand that resume to a hiring manager, your expectation is that they will look at it and say, “Wow, this person is just the one to get the job done.” You can create that same feeling of confidence by writing a resume for yourself.

To do this and do it right, you really need to set aside some time and do some hard thinking. You need to brag on yourself and remind yourself of all the skills you have that you’ve taken for granted. All the resources you have that you can leverage. All the experience you have that you can draw from.

There’s so much more than you acknowledge right now, because you’ve let the challenges of your goals turn your focus to your shortcomings and limitations. But now it’s time to strike back.

Now you have to actually do this.
This is the important part, if you really want to overcome self-doubt forever. You have to take this advice and actually put it into action. Read over this post and do the work, and you’ll start seeing results immediately. And if you don’t feel like doing it now, or you’re saying to yourself, “That may be possible for you, but it’s not for me,” book mark this post and read it every day. Eventually you’ll get fed up with the excuses and decide to take action.

When you do take action, please send me an email at dave@davenavarro.com and let me know how it’s working out. So don’t lose the momentum – go ahead and start working on this now. You’ll thank yourself for it.