Try it because it’s difficult
Are there some things you’re not trying because you think they’re hard? Is it the fear of failure that holds you back, or something else. I think that the harder it is, the more rewarding it is when you succeed. So, what have you already done that you originally thought was hard? What’s on your to-do list that’s just not getting to-done?
Listen to this new 9-minute episode and find out how you can get past the “hard” and on to the “done”!
If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or visit my website www.AlanBerg.com
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com
– Ever say to yourself, I can’t do that, it’s too hard? Listen to this episode and maybe you’ll change your mind a little bit. I think many of us have come across an opportunity where we’ve said, you know what? That looks hard. I’m not even going to try that. That is a defeatist mentality that you’re really limiting yourself as to what you can achieve because you didn’t even try. There are times when you should be trying something because it’s hard. Push yourself past what you think you’re capable of doing and then, you see, you’ve moved the bar down. You’ve moved it down the road and now you can do even more and do even more.
I remember when my friends and I went skydiving and we got our t-shirts that say, “Skydiving, what’s the worst that could happen?” They actually do say that. You know, it changes your perspective on, well, if I can step out of a perfectly good airplane at 13,500 feet, what else can I do? And that’s just one example, but I think we’ve all come across some things and said, you know what, thanks, but I’m not going to even try this. I can’t do it. I learned back in my Taekwondo days that Taekwondo was mental training, not physical training, and I was puzzled by that when I first started because we were kicking and punching and breaking things, and why is this mental training if we’re doing all this stuff with our hands and our feet? And what it was, was showing you what you’re capable of beyond what you thought you might’ve been capable of before.
There are times when the Taekwondo master would hold up a board a certain way and he would ask us, this was the adult class, and this was really anybody from 16 and older, and we had people up into their fifties and sixties and we had people in their twenties and thirties, and he would say, “Who can break the board this way?” It’s a way that we had never seen before, and he didn’t show us, he didn’t do it, he held the board and said, “Who can break it this way?’ Without actually doing it and showing us. So I guess we weren’t even sure if he could do it, but we were pretty sure, because he was the master so he could do it. Well, what happened next was half the class would try it. They’d say, I can try this. And half the class wouldn’t even try, they said, “I can’t do that.” And he’d say, well, “I wouldn’t ask you to do something if I thought you might get hurt. So, now who wants to try?” And the same half of the class would say, “I’ll try”, and the other half still said, “I won’t try, I can’t do that.”
That was their attitude, it was, I can’t do that, and that was the mental training. Saying I can’t do something that I’ve never tried before means you’re already right, you can’t do it because you won’t even give yourself that chance. You won’t even try something. It was amazing, some of the ways that we pushed ourselves there, but I think the same thing applies to business, the same thing applies in your life. What else can you do that you’re not doing now? For me, I’ve chosen to learn new languages. It’s one of the hardest things to do they say, as an adult. And I remember I was in South America and somebody asked me, you know, so “Why did you decide to learn Spanish?” And there were many reasons but one of them is, “Porque es dificil”, We need to do things that are hard, to push ourselves, we don’t know what else we can do. So what else are you putting off because you think, oh, that’s hard, or I can’t do that? You know what?
We all stumble in the beginning. First time you try a new sport, right? What happens? You don’t do it well right out of the box or maybe you try something and you’re like, oh, that worked pretty well. That happened to me when I first tried, what was it? Axe throwing. After, I dunno, a bunch of them, I got this bullseye, I was like, whoa! It gave me a lot of confidence, but it was a long time after that till I hit another bulls-eye. An as a matter of fact, getting that hatchet to stick took a long time after that? So that one was just lucky, maybe just lucky there. But, you have to give yourself that opportunity to fail which lets you then succeed. It’s taking that chance. So, what are hard things that you’re putting off?
What’s something that you want to do, but you’re like, oh, “I can’t do that?” I was actually talking to Brandy Gaar, Brandy is going to be on the podcast, I’m not sure if this is coming out before or after that, and Brandy was talking about writing a book. I said, so do it. You know, you don’t write a book, you write words, words get edited into chapters, and then chapters become a book, and then formatting makes it look like a book, but you’re putting it off, why? Right? Is it too hard? Is it timing? And timing is certainly something for everybody, but why not? Like, why not try that? What’s the worst that happens? So, you don’t get there.
I’ve actually written a book that I decided not to publish, I decided I didn’t want to go in that direction. I started working on another one a similar way. I have my new book coming out, “Why are they ghosting me?”, and I was actually writing a website book before that and I had a lot of it done and decided that wasn’t the book I wanted to put out right now, so I switched to a different one. And that wasn’t because it was hard, it was because of my direction, I decided to go in a different direction. Regardless of the work that I put in, it wasn’t the right timing for that. But see, writing a book for me is easier now because this is my sixth book. I remember writing my first book, I reached out to authors that I knew, speakers and authors, and I said, “What do I need to know that I don’t know?”
And that’s the thing is, when you haven’t done it you just don’t know what you don’t know. And there were some things that required some work that I had to do, thinking about why I was writing a book and who is my audience and things like that. But the writing part, that wasn’t so hard for me because I was already writing, I was writing articles and things. But if you’re thinking about writing a book, think about who’s the audience, what value do you have to bring to them, and then just start writing. I think we get caught up in: “I’m writing a book”, no, no, no, you’re just writing words, words get formatted into that.
And then, what else in your life are you not doing? Are you not doing some sport? Are you not doing something in your personal life? Starting to work out? It’s hard because if you haven’t been working out and you’re probably going to be sore, but that’s what they call that good sore. But taking that first step, that first step- Who was it, Lao Tzu, who said that? “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”, right? It does. What’s that first step? For some people, we don’t do that because we perceive it to be harder than it is. Or maybe it is hard, but that’s okay. You know, porque es dificil, because it’s hard, that’s a good reason for doing some things, because they’re hard. Because that’ll make it easy for us to do other things because that balance, when you look, hey, I was able to do that, pfft, this is nothing over here. So, take a look at something that appears to be hard, take a good hard look and then take that first step, and please share your success stories with me. Thanks.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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