Fear & Foundations

Why do some people achieve while others struggle to gain ground? 

I have coached for many years and have had many amazing experiences. One that really stands out is an especially successful client who was a particular pleasure to coach. To say he was coachable would be an understatement. I loved to coach him because he was so committed to improving himself.  

He had already done all the foundational work; he had done the deep dives required to understand and analyze his beliefs, and he knew how to change them when they needed a refresh. He had discovered his highest values and where his motivation came from. Since he’d built his foundation, coaching him was truly about getting to the next level. There was no “deferred maintenance” (as a realtor might say), no remedial work he’d put off. 

And so, although he was already very successful by any measure, with a sense of purpose, a close, happy family, and a roster of clients that any company of any size would be proud to have, he still came to each workshop ready to stretch, discover, learn, and change his mind—as long as it helped him to grow personally and professionally. 

One day, during a workshop, I gave the group 20 minutes so they could fill in their binders for a new concept about getting to the next level of success. After about 10 minutes into their work time, I noticed my special client hadn't even started filling out the concept. Everyone else was making progress on the form. 

I knew he was there to work, so I became very curious about what was holding him up. As I worked my way over to him I saw that he was focused on that form like his life depended on it. I wondered if something was wrong. I asked him how it was going and what he was thinking about. 

He blinked a few times and shook his head. “Dave,” he said, “this is really something. You’ve asked me to do this exercise, but you don’t know what you’ve asked.” 

“I don’t?” I asked, surprised.  

“No. You don’t know how my brain works,” he said, still looking at the page. 

“I don’t?”

He turned to face me. “No. You see, whatever I write here? I’m going to do it.” He set his pencil down. 

I felt a big smile stretching across my face. He went on. 

“And that means I’ll make the investment. I’ll pay the price. So I have to think about what it’s actually going to take. Because once I write that goal down it will become real. And once it’s real, I’m committed. I won’t stop until that goal has been achieved. I’ll get new credentials, more education, I’ll move my family to be where we need to be. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

I think about this person and this conversation often. He helped me understand something that day about why people do and don’t keep achieving. Two things, really. One about foundations, and one about the wisdom of our instincts. 

1. If you want to build big, you must build a strong foundation. 

You can build on a weak foundation but don’t expect it to be stable. Which means, don’t expect it to be big for long. 

For many people, the foundational work either doesn’t interest them or, more often, challenges them so much that they move on before it’s been done. This makes it hard to find your motivation and impossible to set goals that you will be interested in enough to achieve. I think most people reading this are well beyond the “need” stage of building their career and income streams. For us, if the only reason we have to do something is so that we will earn more money, it won’t necessarily be enough to make us do it. It has to be connected to the bigger picture: the lives we are trying to build, the people we are trying to be. 

And this is to say nothing about rooting out and replacing erroneous assumptions, crippling attitudes, and limiting beliefs. There is no way to skip this work if you want to keep growing. Doing this—and doing it again whenever necessary is the only way. Why? Because life has a funny way of holding us up until we learn certain lessons. Plenty of people know that this is why their growth never really starts, but it’s also the hidden reason behind many reversals and setbacks. 

We’ve all heard of or known people whose success collapsed. If we knew those people well we would see that this was because their success was built beyond their foundations.  

For each of us, our success can only be as stable as the foundation supporting it.  

If there are issues we know make us unstable by any measure, we need to work on those. Insecurities, sensitivities, habits, tendencies, and issues from the past all must be understood and accounted for. We don’t necessarily fix these things, but we become aware of them and able to work with them. Once we’ve done some real work, they no longer undermine or surprise us.

Beyond this, if we are truly going to be more successful, we will be exposed to more of the forces moving the world. More risk, more influence, more responsibility, more time pressure. Beyond a certain point, no individual person can handle these forces. This is why so much of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur is about building a structure that can handle these forces. Your roots must dig deeper. Your access to resources must be secure. This doesn’t happen without real work. 

Think back to building your companies. Think of all the advisors you needed to connect to, the people you needed to build your teams, the clients & customers, and everything else. Think of the processes and rules you needed to create. Think of the way your family had to evolve and develop. The things you needed to learn about and cultivate within yourself. These all make up the structure you needed to get to where you are. 

 And you have to do this kind of work every time you plan to grow more. 

2. Strong foundations are an investment, but they come at a cost. 

My client was extraordinarily driven. He had a no-holds-barred approach to achieving goals. To him, the only way he knew how to get things done was to clear the decks completely so he could do whatever was necessary. If he set a goal to grow his business by 30% this year and this meant he’d need to move his family across the country, he’d do it. If he needed to borrow money, he’d borrow, if he needed to train or hire more staff, he would.  

But all these things would have a cost. He needed to think about whether he could truly afford them. Would his wife go along with it? Would the kids benefit from his—and the family’s—financial success more than they would suffer from taking up their roots? What would be at stake if he borrowed? Could he handle it? Would there be pressure he might not consider? When it came to training or hiring, which was right? Was he sure this was the right long-term direction to niche his team and his company into? Would more staff work in their current facilities? What would the tradeoffs be? Could he afford them?

His extreme approach made something clear we can all learn from. He stopped where we all stop. It’s just that he knew why he was stopping: he was weighing the cost of building new foundations. 

When the only course is to grow, the only course is to build foundations. And the cost of these can be very high. My client intentionally stopped to weigh them out. Many of us just stop without knowing what’s holding us up. What’s holding us up is the wisdom of our species, and instinct we are lucky to have, even though its job is to hold us back.

Unless we’re reckless and young and pure quickstart, nature has given most of us this wise internal sense that stops us from making blind leaps. It’s called fear. 

Specifically fear of the unknown. It’s a blessing. 

If you’re charging off into the unknown without real numbers and a plan, you’re unlikely to make it to where you’re headed. 

This fear feels bad because it’s meant to. It’s meant to stop you. Literally. It’s meant to take the blood from your body and move it to your head. It’s the opposite of the instincts that move blood to the limbs so we can move fast.

Fear is wise, but all it helps us do is stop. The thinking is up to us.  

The point isn’t to circumvent this powerful instinct. We must not think we can trick our fear. No, we must take our turn and give it what it wants: careful consideration and soulful attentiveness. Once it stops us, we do our part. We weigh out the costs. This is how we turn things around and ensure that fear is a blessing. 

When we are stuck and unmotivated to grow, even when we stand at a crossroads and see the decision that must be made, it’s the fear that eats up our motivation. Fear of the costs of the foundations we know deep down we must build. We don't fear failure. We fear building unwisely—which dooms us to fail, but only as a consequence of being unwise. At these moments remember how ancient fear is, how little it knows how to speak your language. Fear can only make you stop. What you do once you’re stopped is where the work starts. 

And as a bonus, here’s a third takeaway emerging from this one:

3. Take a moment to learn the difference between fear and intuition

We just discussed the blessing of fear and how it’s a necessary part of growth to confront fear with thinking and planning. Fear becomes very messy when we misunderstand its purpose and its nature. It’s particularly tricky when we think it’s our personal insight into the future and not just an instinct to stop. 

What so many people claim as their own personal intuition is an instinct everyone is blessed with. If you get nothing else from this article, know that what you might think of as an intuition that you, personally, should not proceed is actually a universal instinct telling all human beings to look before they leap. 

So much misery and wasted potential comes from taking fear personally. So much comes from the confusion between intuition and fear. 

When we understand it as an instinct, fear is a gift that stops us from wasting our lives. When we imagine the same feeling comes from a personal intuitive glimpse of the future warning us to stop, it’s the leading cause of wasted lives. What a valuable distinction to be able to make!

Here are some definitions that help me keep it clear: 

Fear: 

Fear is a universal, automatic response to perceived danger that triggers a "fight, flight, or freeze" reaction. In this article, we talked about the “freeze” response that comes from the fear that arises in planning. Instincts happen independently of individual experiences.

As an instinct, it compels us to act rapidly to avoid or escape risks without conscious thought. Fear keeps us safe by alerting us to threats, but it can also hinder growth if we don't examine it thoughtfully. 

Intuition:

Intuition is a personal insight or understanding that arrives without conscious reasoning but is based on pattern recognition, our experiences, and other personal factors. It informs rather than compels our choices.

I’d love to hear your reactions and responses to these. Cheers! 

Dave

Reflection questions

To what extent do you take fear personally, and to what extent have you learned that it’s an instinct you don’t choose to have?What have you learned about foundation-building in your life? What areas of your life or business do you feel need a stronger foundation for you to reach the next level of success? What specific steps can you take to build that foundation?What is one area of insecurity, sensitivity, or unresolved issues from your past that you feel may be limiting your growth and success today? What steps can you take to address this "deferred maintenance" and shore up your personal foundation?

Working on Ourselves Together

It’s the beginning of a new year. This is the one time each year where everyone seems to feel comfortable discussing their goals. Toward the end of the year and into January there’s a suspension of the usual rules of polite conversation. Personal development seems like an appropriate and welcome topic even with people you’ve just met. It's our go-to small talk for one shining mini-season.

For those of us who work on ourselves all year, this can feel like a magic time where suddenly one of our favorite topics is no longer niche or private. For those of us who belong to groups like The Comma Club, we have seen firsthand the benefit of sharing and hearing others share notes and reflections on setting goals, making changes, and building new habits. I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks it’s too bad that this stuff is a welcome topic for general conversation less than 4 weeks out of every 52.

But it makes sense. I found it interesting to think about why that might be and what happens as a result. This reflection also reinforced why I’m a believer in investing in your growth and development with membership in like-minded groups.

Before I was a coach, I wanted to be around people who talked about growth and development, so I sought them out. It was one of the best instincts I’ve ever had. We’re wired for community. A deep part of us responds instinctually when we choose to stand in the mutual gaze and accountability of others we respect.

Because we're wired for this connection, in its absence working on yourself can become lonely and self-absorbed if we aren’t careful. "Wanting to improve” can boil down to “hating how things are,” which can trigger off a spiral of shame and alienation that gets you nowhere but deep inside your head, armored with rants and dismissive reactions to what comes from the outside. It's better to build some daylight, fresh air, and camaraderie to your development structure.

So, groups are immensely powerful for working on yourself but it’s not really polite conversation. We know this, but let’s talk about it functionally so we can see what it is we need—and what we get—from others when we work on ourselves with the support of a group.

First, discussing what we want and need can feel vulnerable. It’s just one of those things we keep private or discuss only with people who we know and who know us well. If you have trust issues, you won’t take this tactical risk. Even if you don’t have those issues, there’s just basic impression management at stake; we don’t like to give confusing information to people—we want to know how we’re likely to be seen as a result of what we say and do. Unless we know we’re talking to someone who can relate to our situation, we may find ourselves guarded. And this may be wise. Although they may develop, we don't need to have intimate relationships to feel comfortable discussing our development in a group that exists for that purpose. The trust is implicit in the shared purpose and reinforced as it is maintained.

Second, unless we are already committed to a change, sharing our wants, needs, and plans with others represents too much accountability for something we subconsciously want to back out on. If you tell a coworker you see every week about a plan, they will probably follow up on it. If you don’t want to have to speak to your follow-through, keeping your plan a secret is the only course of action. And some self-work involves giving yourself plenty of time and patience that someone who doesn’t care about you can’t be expected to provide.

Unless we have a chosen circle of people we elect to serve as our community for both accountability and support, we might reasonably decide we have no one else to share our development with. As discussed above, that's not an ideal situation.

Third, sometimes what we know and feel has nothing to do with what we say when we try to explain it to others. The subjective just doesn’t condense well into words until the time is ripe and we are inspired. Even with an open heart and every intention to communicate honestly—which is basically a best-case scenario—we can find ourselves misunderstood when we share our early-and-mid-stage developmental thoughts and plans.

But, even After we’ve talked our foibles to death with our partners or spouses, our closest friends, our therapist… we still want to know that who we are makes sense to someone. When we commit to ongoing development, though we remain ourselves the whole time, to some degree we have committed to being a permanent work-in-progress, and that only makes sense to other works-in-progress. The alienation of success is assuaged only by connecting with others who can relate to what it takes to succeed—what it takes to overcome. And that means someone who understands what it’s like to be a work in progress.

There are more reasons than these, but these are enough to make it clear why it takes special circumstances for us to be open about our development. And even these three are enough to make it clear why we all benefit from a chosen community like The Comma Club, where everything that’s needed to support our development is always in place to draw on.

The habit of reflection is priceless, but sometimes we can get stuck in introspection when the decisions are complex, the emotions are conflicting, or our confidence is down. Having a community to run things by—or even just to be a part of—can help. Sometimes just repeating our thoughts in front of others brings new awareness of “how they sound.” New perspective turns walls into windows and windows into doors.

Being clear on your values so you can align your actions with them is the key to motivation, but sometimes we find ourselves unmotivated to do something we want—or at least thought we wanted—to do. Regular contact listening to others going through their discoveries can arm us with insights to catch when our complexes interfere with our intentions. When others say things that sound like our thoughts we can hear the wisdom—and the folly—in them. How many times has someone else’s story of dwelling in confusion and finding clarity triggered off an insight for you? How often has someone else’s confusion made you aware of your own?

So although it’s nice to hear everyone talk about their goals this time every year, it makes sense why it’s not year-round polite conversation (though I still wish it was!), and I’m glad to know that we have a community in place to help us all do what it takes for each of us to live the life we want.

Let me know if there's anything I can do.

Cheers and Happy New Year,

Dave