The Desert of Arizona
Rain 41 Degrees
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
-Joseph Campbell
Earlier in my business life, I developed a certain “skill” to an extremely high level of perfection.
I became an absolute expert in the ability to do just about anything and everything… except the thing that could actually lead to progress.
I became an expert in “getting ready for greatness.”
Now make no mistake, this is a lot of work! Because each and every day, you wake up on an emotional high, excited about getting ready to actually do something.
One of my most prolific periods of demonstrating this skill was during my first experience in the network marketing industry.
First of all, I was scared someone would call me out for participating in a “pyramid scheme” where the people at the top get the lion’s share of the loot and the people at the bottom don’t.
My brainwashing was so severe I walked around feeling like I was doing something wrong all the time.
For some reason, the irony was lost on me when I went to my day job, an average business… that was setup the very same way. The people at the top got the lion’s share of the loot and the people at the bottom didn’t.
But I digress…
I invested a lot of time and money getting ready.
I got a website.
I got a phone number. (If there was anyone calling me, I don’t even remember, but I doubt it.)
I listened to a bunch of conference calls. Those were always exciting. Instead of actually doing any real work myself, I could simply listen to the folks who were doing the work and live through them. Yay!
For goodness sake, I think I even made a bumper sticker or something for my car.
Oh, and I bought a lot of leads that I could barely bring myself to call.
I was ready.
(Somehow, my poor wife had the patience to go along with all of my antics. Sorry dear!)
And then, at some point, when I wasn’t seeing any real “results” (it’s embarrassing how out of touch I was with reality), I quit and moved onto something else.
Why does this happen?
I’ve thought about that a fair amount. And I created this little graphic that explains the journey we put ourselves on.
This is a chart I made to illustrate something I call, Course Correcting Ideas Syndrome.
This is when you get a great idea and then go and get ready. But somewhere along the way, before you actually do anything real out in the world, another idea comes up. So you make a correction and go do that. And the process continues.
If it’s not obvious from the picture, the end result is that you work hard without ever leaving the station!
All of this changed for me with a simple word called commitment.
Instead of trying to figure out “what works,” I committed to something and tried to figure out how to make THAT work.
This is an entirely different feeling.
All of a sudden, there was nothing more to “get ready.” There was no more searching to do. There was only the decision to do the work.
I left myself no way out, really. I call it, forcing yourself to grow up.
If you know the direction you should be going in your business, just go. Stop getting ready, stop dreaming. Do the work, focus on the work, get committed to the process, not the outcome.
There’s a reason we’re scared to do this.
What would happen if you found out your were far more powerful and far more capable than you ever believed possible?
At that point, there’d be no more room to hide. Your secret would be out. There’d be no more space for excuses. No one would believe them.
And then the world would discover the REAL you.
And that’s a fear that only a few are ready to confront.
But once you meet that fear, once you enter that “cave,” you’ll realize it’s exactly where you are meant to be.