I got the following story in an email from a blogger (Ramit Sethi) that I sometimes follow, and I thought I’d pass it along. Let me know if you get anything out of it. The content is exactly as I recieved it, with the exception of some very slight editing to remove profanities. There’s a Doink Moment in here if you pay attention ;o)
Hey, John
As I go deeper and deeper into behavioral change, I have learned some really interesting insights along the way. For example, people who ask question after question are usually not ready to change — they’re simply looking for one answer to justify doing nothing. (Examples: “Will this program work with ostrich hunters? What if I don’t have 2 legs? What about a 1-legged, Australian ostrich hunter…who only likes cheeseburgers? Can you help ME???) No, I can’t, because you don’t want help, you want an excuse.
What holds people back from achieving their goals of losing weight, or personal finance, or relationships? Once you get beyond a certain point, it’s almost never tactical — it’s psychological. When I asked one group of people why they didn’t join Earn1k, one of them told me this hauntingly honest answer: “Because if I join the course and don’t succeed, it’ll be like every other course I’ve tried and failed…and I just can’t take that psychological trauma.”
Today, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, Chris Guillebeau, who’s made it his mission to visit every country by the age of 35. If you like my stuff and Tim Ferriss‘s stuff, you’ll love Chris.
He recently published a book, The Art of Non Conformity, And to give you a sense of what kind of guy he is, he organized his own book tour to every one of the 50 states.
Below, I’m excerpting one of my favorite parts of his book — 2 stories of people who both “claimed” they wanted to take action…but only one did.
[Enter Chris Guillebeau]
Overcoming Fear: The Twin Stories of Sean and Aaron
Story #1: Sean
Typically, the people who are ready to change want the change more than almost anything. They want a way out of their current situation, and could we do it yesterday, please? One of the people I’ve met that fit this description was Sean Ogle. Just 23 years old, Sean had been working his first major job as a financial analyst for just over a year. Due to a combination of intelligence, diligence, and being in the right place at the right time, the job was a cut above the usual entry-level position most college grads receive.
Sean was making more money than most of his peers, and after starting work he made the first big purchase of his life: a 2005 Subaru Legacy GT. There was just one problem: he hated the job. Every day he sat in a small office, staring at the walls and wishing he was anywhere but there. With the remaining funds in his savings account, Sean took a trip to Brazil with a friend. That’s when the big shift came. Brazil, and what it represented, was good. The desk job at home was bad. “Basically,” he told me with a look of resolve during our first meeting, “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get out of this situation.”
We talked for a while and I gave him a long list of resources. “Will you have time to look at these things soon?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” he replied. “I’ll be going on this stuff for the rest of the afternoon. Then if I have to, I’ll stay up until midnight.”
On the way out of the coffee shop we passed by his Subaru. “Nice car,” I said.
“It’s nice,” Sean agreed. “But I’m going to sell it. This car will not take me where I want to go in life.”
Sean sounded pretty serious, and I was almost convinced. The only thing that kept me from being fully persuaded was the reminder in the back of my head that I had heard this story before. We’ll come back to Sean’s story in a moment–but first, let me tell you about Aaron.
Story #2: Aaron
When Jolie and I lived in West Africa, we returned to the U.S. once a year to visit family and friends. During that time, we would also speak at various events to raise money and awareness for the work we were doing overseas. After the last talk during our first year back, a guy approached me in the back of the room. He was interested in volunteering, and wanted to talk with me later that evening.
To be honest, I didn’t want to continue the conversation that night. We were getting ready to fly to Amsterdam the next morning, we needed to say goodbye to our families, and we still hadn’t packed. Aaron was desperate, though–in a good way. It sounded like he was pretty serious, so I looked at Jolie, she nodded, and we said yes.
At 10:30 that night, Aaron came over and we talked for an hour in between packing the bags. We told him all about Africa, what our organization was doing, and how he could help. Aaron was eager and asked lots of good questions. After an hour, we really had to finish getting ready to leave in the morning. I kept looking at my watch, and he finally got the hint. We said goodbye, and Aaron said he would be in touch.
Jolie and I flew to Europe and met up with our friends before continuing on to West Africa. In the hustle of the work, I forgot about Aaron, and he never got in touch. One year later, we visited the U.S. again and spoke at another event. Guess what? Aaron was sitting in the front row. He came up to me afterwards looking a little sheepish. He said he had intended to follow-up, but a number of other things had happened. He began a new relationship that he thought would lead to something serious, for example, and so he put the plans on hold.
But, he said, the relationship had ended, he was ready to make a new start, and wanted to meet again with more questions. I met with Aaron in a coffee shop this time and we talked for 45 minutes. Many of the questions he asked were the same ones from the year before. My answers hadn’t really changed: here’s the brochure, this is who you talk to, this is what you need to know, you just need to get started. Aaron kept saying, “I really want to do this,” but always with a trace of hesitation. When we said goodbye he promised to follow-up again.
Another year went by, and I never heard from Aaron. We flew home from Africa again, and one day at the same coffee shop, I ran into Aaron again for the third time. We had virtually the same conversation we had already fully explored twice, although this time my answers were a bit shorter. The whole time I was thinking, “What is it with this guy? He wants this so bad, but he isn’t willing to do anything to get it.” I ran into Aaron one final time the last year we were back, and I wasn’t surprised to hear he was doing the same thing he was when we first met.
Perhaps Aaron just wasn’t ready, and his time will still come. But every year as I saw him in that coffee shop, I always felt sad for him. I felt like Aaron wanted someone to take him by the hand and make decisions for him–something that wasn’t likely to happen.
***
Meanwhile, Sean didn’t wait for the opportunity to come to him. Sean followed Andy Warhol’s advice, “They say time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.” I met with him again a month after our first meeting. He had a legal pad full of notes, tasks, and questions. I asked how things were going at work, and he smiled while telling me, “The good news is that I’m even more miserable than before.” Things were so tense at the office that he had to tell his boss he was going to a doctor’s appointment in order to meet me at the coffee shop that afternoon. On the bright side, he now spent several hours a day working on a new blog about his aspirations for change.
Being miserable in the day job had motivated Sean to get even more serious about doing something different. Over the next six months, Sean kept plugging along, paying off his debt and planning for a new life. He slowly built a small clothing business. He structured his life in a way that allowed him the freedom he craved. He sold the car. It wasn’t always easy, but Sean made it work.
On September 15, Sean met with his boss to say that his “release date,” as he put it, was drawing near. Sean offered to continue working for the company, but only if he could do it from on-location somewhere far away from Portland. “Being willing to walk away from a job that most people thought was great felt scary and exciting at the same time,” he told me. Two weeks later, his boss came back with an answer: thanks, but no thanks. Sean kept his part of the deal; he packed his bags, including the laptop he would use to create his own small business, and headed out for a new adventure in Bangkok, Thailand.
…
On the other hand, despite a stated desire for change and the ability to do basic research, Aaron remained stuck behind the wall of fear. He lived a life of quiet desperation, peeking through to the other side but failing to dismantle the bricks. Meanwhile, Sean wasn’t that different from Aaron… at first. He had different goals, but the same desire to escape what he knew was an unsatisfactory life path.
I don’t think Sean is a better person than Aaron. They are both smart, ambitious guys who studied and worked hard. The difference was that Sean was able to conquer his fears and Aaron wasn’t. For both Sean and Sloane, the process of fear-conquering was never easy, but it was definitely worth it.
Most of us are like some combination of Sloane, Sean, and Aaron. We have big dreams and ideas, but we also have big fears. The quest to overcome fear is lifelong, and almost no one is truly fearless. Instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, you have to be willing to smash through the brick wall of fear. You won’t be the first to do it, and what you find on the other side might surprise you.
What’s waiting for you on the other side of the wall?
Remember This:
Fear is normal! The goal is to conquer the fear, not to avoid it or pretend it doesn’t exist
The pain of making a change must become less than the pain of staying in the current situation
Most remarkable people are not remarkable by nature. Instead, they made a few key choices along the way that helped them overcome their fears
Asking yourself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” helps to put big decisions in perspective
***
Pick up a copy of Chris’s book, “The Art of Non-Conformity“. It’s well worth the $10, and I want you to start focusing on investing in yourself.
2 Questions for you:
What are your 3 implicit fears? When I asked this to some students recently, the overwhelming response was “failure.” But be specific — what kind of failure? Go deeper.
What’s ONE thing you’re doing this week to overcome one of those fears?
Tell me about it. I read every email…and respond to the best ones.
- Ramit
P.S. NEWSFLASH: In my book, I showed you how automatically saving/investing even just $100/month would result in huge savings over the long term. That’s because small changes, compounded over time, add up to dramatic results.
Fear works the same way. The biggest mistakes people make with fear can seem like small things on a day-to-day basis. But insidiously, they drag out over a lifetime and ruin your chances of earning more. In fact, most of these “little things” are so simple and easy to overcome that you could fix them RIGHT NOW and change your life forever. If you want to learn more about getting out of your own way and confronting your own barriers, sign up for free psychological strategies and specific tactics to apply to your own life and stop cutting costs and focus on big wins.
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