Why do leaders hide from funding their vision?
I think it's fear. It's fear of failure, fear of being judged.
That takes a lot of guts to get out there. Not only to put yourself out there and say,
this is my idea. Here's how I want to change the world. But then, and will you give me some
money to do that? Because the answer could be no. And it could be a big laugh or it could be on
an eye roll. And that's hard to deal with. It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. And you don't want
to do that. There's an actual self-preservation part of the brain that doesn't want you to do that,
doesn't want pain, doesn't want hurt. And, you know, of course, as we grow up and school and
bullies and we've been hurt before, we don't want to experience it again. And so there's actually a
part of the brain, of the subconscious brain, that keeps you from moving into pain. And it's that
thing that, and we want it. We don't want to walk down that dark alley at midnight because it's a
shortcut home. We want to take the lighted streets where there's people around. It's safer. We don't
want to stand too close to the edge of the Grand Canyon. We don't want, or the edge of the Empire
State Building. We don't want to pet the rattlesnake in the middle of the trail. We don't want to touch
the hot pot on the stove. So there's a self-preservation that keeps us alive, obviously.
But there's also, what about the emotional hurt and pain we've had in the past? And so
your subconscious mind wants to keep you from that too. And by putting yourself too far out there,
one of the options is you may get hurt again. And so I think there's some fear of embarrassment,
of fear of failure, fear of being judged, certainly. And in terms of, of course you want to
hide. I mean, when there's a threat, when there's a tornado coming at you, when there's a fight in
the bar or in the street or wherever you want to hide, you want to make yourself smaller. And to a
certain extent, this is where procrastination comes from. Even though the benefit of doing the
project or whatever is doing the report, doing the social media marketing is going to be beneficial
to you, there's some pain to it. Sitting there for a couple of hours, coming up with Instagram
reels or whatever it is. And so you end up with procrastination because it's funner to maybe read
a book or watch TV or go on a walk or something than doing it and sitting in front of the computer
all day long. And so in terms of hiding, there's just a certain amount of self-preservation.
And yes, it is to your benefit to go out there and give your message and even fund your message.
But there's also some pain involved with that because there will be people who will say no.
I mean, look at great example, some of your listeners would probably be familiar with is
the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books that were written by Jack Canfield and Mark
Victor Hansen. It's a big phenomenon in the 90s or early 2000s, whenever that was. And they were
rejected by 157 publishers. And that's got to be painful. You know, that they kept going and they
didn't hide because they believed in what they were working on. It was finally some medical
textbook publisher who was going bankrupt decided to take a shot at it. And they ended up selling
millions upon millions of books. A best-selling book is 100,000 copies. You know, that's a
best-selling book. If you sell 100,000 copies, if you sell 20,000 copies, you'll probably get
another book out of your publisher. You'll get to write another book, let alone 100,000 copies. So
when you're a Stephen King or a J.K. Rowling or something, you're selling millions of books, let
alone, you know, this probably without exaggeration, at least 50, if not 60 volumes of this Chicken Soup
for the Soul series of books, you're selling tens of millions of copies over a decade. But look at
all the failure they had to go through. And once it was, once the publishing deal was set up, it
still took them a year before they started selling books with all the marketing they had to do. They
had their specific five things every day. They did five things every day. And back then they didn't
have podcasts and things like that. They were writing articles and blog posts and interviews
on radio shows and things like that. But between the two of them, they did five things every day
to promote the book. So that's 10 things between the two of them. And it still took some 360
days before the book started selling. And so in terms of hiding, it's a lot of work. It's, and
it's a lot of putting yourself out there. And it's a lot of maybe a lot of notes and a lot of doors
shut in your face. And that's got to work. And you don't want that. So in terms of hiding, in terms
of how to go about doing it anyway, you know, again, I think it's doing the work every day to
put yourself in state, just like an actor before they go out on stage or an athlete before they
walk up to the starting line or up to home plate or whatever. You want to put yourself into the
zone, so to speak. And, and if need be, pretend you are that person already. And if you need to
armor yourself or put on the mask, then you need to do that if you need to make that cold call.
But you can do that. You're allowed to do that. I think there's even still a certain authenticity
to putting on a mask or an armor because it's a mask you develop. It's still part of you if you
want to go through the whole Joseph Campbell archetypes and things like that. You're just
putting on the warrior mask, or you're putting on the success mask or the power, empowerment mask
or whatever, whatever mask you're putting on. It's still a part of you. It's just your version of
that. And so I think in terms of the word mask, maybe that's even a misnomer because mask implies
you're hiding your identity. I think it's just another part of your identity, the warrior
identity or the empowerment identity that you're now putting out there, which maybe is new,
or needs to be tested off. But I think it's that idea of if you need to become, oops, I'm sorry,
if you need to become that warrior personality, take 10 minutes, 15 minutes before you make that
series of calls, phone calls or the presentation before the board of directors or the investors,
whether that's sitting in your car or if there's a room you could go to before you do it or maybe
you're doing it on a Zoom call or something, take 15 minutes and put yourself in state, put yourself
in the shoes of the person who's going to be successful in making that presentation.
And the more you practice that, the better you get at it. And when do you stop practicing being
that person? You never look at the Dalai Lama. Ask the Dalai Lama when you stop practicing this
stuff. You just keep going. And you can become, like I say, you can become the person you want to
be. Look at, again, Tony Robbins. When you hear his story at the very beginning, he doesn't sound
like a very confident person or somebody who's even very comfortable in his own shoes or even
in his own skin. And yet look at him even just several years later when he decided to turn his
life around. But that required a lot of work on his part and a certain relentlessness. And even
if you look at his documentary that came out a few years ago, I'm Not Your Guru, that Tony Robbins
documentary, basically just follows him through one of those week-long events in the arenas when
he's talking to 10,000 people. But it shows him in his morning getting up out of bed and he's doing
the cold plunge and he's jumping on a little trampoline to wake up his adrenal glands. And then
he's doing his meditation work. Then he goes to the event center and talks to his staff and what's
going on and the accountants and the producers who are doing next year's events. And then he goes out
on stage and inspires 10,000 people. And even right before he goes out on stage, he still puts
himself in state. And this guy's been doing it for 40 years. The man started in 1980. And he still,
not only does his meditation work and his physical work in the mornings, he still puts himself in
state before he walks out on stage. Just as I'm sure Yo-Yo Ma does, just as any athlete does or
any actor or any musician, you're going to put yourself in state. So what about doing that before
you walk into that investment meeting or the board of directors or the Zoom call? What if you spent
10 minutes, 15 minutes doing some sort of meditation work or visualization work or
whatever it is for you? And there's all sorts of different ways of doing it. But finding that way
that where you put yourself into the zone and then walk out on stage or walk into the meeting or the
investment group meeting and then see how well you do. But again, there's that certain
relentlessness. Don't wait until it's five minutes before the meeting to decide you're going to do
something about it. You want to practice, just like any athlete's going to practice before they get
to the actual event. You want to practice for the marathon or the 10K or whatever. So practicing
leading up to any sort of event you're doing is going to put you in a more comfortable place,
reduce that fear, reduce that anxiety because you feel more comfortable doing it. And so again,
there's a, like I said a couple of times already, there's a certain relentlessness to this work.
You don't get to just decide one day that, yeah, I'm going to go in front of an investment group
and ask for a million dollars for my great idea and hope that it goes well. You need to lead up
to that and practice for that, maybe in front of a group of people. So I think it can be done.
And if you need to put yourself in the warrior mode, put yourself in the archetype of your warrior
and empower yourself in that way.