Ep. 12 - Face Your Fears

This week, I'm talking about facing your fears. We've chatted about goals, laid out plans, but here's the real deal: in life, at some point, we've got to tackle our fears head-on. So, today on the show, I'm laying bare one of my own fears, live, and delving into what it's like confronting fears daily and the positivity it can bring.

Consistency has been my mantra this year – mastering the mundane, especially on Mondays. This is the day I tackle tasks I'd otherwise procrastinate on – content creation, meetings, and confronting the things I'd rather avoid later in the week.

Earlier, my awesome producer Taylor, the producer behind the Trash Talk Business Podcast, pitched an idea for the week: a poem. Instantly, fear and anxiety hit me. Reading? Not my forte. Dyslexia made my school years challenging, and even now, reading someone else's work without adding my own twist feels foreign. Add in my struggle with reading aloud, and you've got a real challenge.

But here's the thing – facing fears is my jam. Today, I'm reading a poem Taylor shared – "If" by Rudyard Kipling. Fun fact: he wrote The Jungle Book, later Disney-fied. Here we go:

If you can keep your head when all about you

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

After reading this, I want to nitpick at words like 'if' and 'just' and 'but,' but the bigger picture here is the duality of life. Dreams are great, but they shouldn't rule us. Thinking is essential, but aimless pondering won't move the needle. The struggle is real, and it's in facing it that we grow.

Let me share a personal story: I was at a retreat recently and attended a team-building exercise with a moon and strings. I fixated on the strings, missing the moon – the ultimate goal. This poem echoes that lesson – focus on the big picture.

My challenge for you this week? Identify your fear, write it down, share it with someone. Trust me, writing increases your likelihood of doing it by 42%, and sharing it with someone bumps it up to 78%. I bare my journey weekly not out of arrogance but to remind myself – and you – that we're on this journey together.

So, what's holding you back? What's your fear? Write it down, share it, and let's conquer it together. The three steps of life are simple: Do the fucking thing, tell the fucking world, and show the fuck up.