Lead to Win is brought to you by LeaderBox, a monthly reading experience curated by leaders for leaders. Learn more at leaderbox.com.

Michael Hyatt: At one time, the name Kodak was synonymous with innovation. The Economist magazine even dubbed the company the “Google of its day.” And it was a long, long day. Founded in 1888, Kodak dominated the photography market for over a century, and in 1999 the company’s market cap was almost $21 billion.

But within a decade it was hemorrhaging cash, laying off thousands of employees, and selling off its most valuable assets. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. What went wrong? Well, start with digital cameras, add in websites like Flickr and Facebook, and then combine those in smartphones.

[Video]

Steve Jobs: And we are calling it iPhone.

[End of video]

The iPhone, for one example, launched in 2007, the very last year Kodak turned a profit. By 2012, there were over 120 million smartphone users in the US alone. Despite digital innovations of its own, Kodak bet the farm on film.

Megan Hyatt Miller: The digital revolution hit everybody in the photography space, but some fared better than others. In 2000, Fujifilm was just as dependent on film as Kodak, but by 2013, the same year Kodak emerged from bankruptcy, imaging was just 13 percent of Fuji’s total revenue. Rather than hold on to the film business, Fuji grew and innovated in different directions and thrived.

The difference in strategy didn’t go unnoticed. In the words of the Economist, Kodak acted like a stereotypical change-resistant Japanese firm while Fujifilm acted like a flexible American one. So why wasn’t Kodak flexible like Fuji? The answer, according to many, is complacency.

Michael: But I want to try a few more accurate terms. Let’s go with fear, uncertainty, and doubt instead. Many people don’t know that a Kodak engineer actually invented the digital camera back in 1975. Four years later, one of the company’s executives drafted a report detailing how the digital market would eclipse film by 2010, but instead of acting proactively and leading the transition, Kodak resisted.

Megan: Some of its boldest moves were undercut by a simultaneous effort to protect its film business. For instance, Kodak bought a photo-sharing site called Ofoto in 2001. With the right leadership it could have beaten Facebook to the punch. But no. As company president Philip Faraci admitted in 2008, Kodak was well aware of the transformational potential of digital imaging, but they didn’t seize the moment because the core business just kept growing.

Michael: That is, right up until it didn’t. Afraid the 1979 executive report was accurate and digital would eclipse film, Kodak slow-walked its innovation. Uncertain it could stay profitable without film, Kodak never took the necessary steps to reinvent itself like Fuji did. Doubtful it could change its core business, Kodak tried holding on to what it had and lost almost everything.

As the authors of the 2015 book Innovating in a Service-Driven Economy say, Kodak’s central challenge was that it was never willing to risk adjusting its business model to accommodate the very digital technologies it had invented.

Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael: And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast designed to help you win at work, succeed at life, and lead with confidence. In this episode we’re going to explore the emotions that are keeping you stuck and sabotaging your future. Kind of like Kodak.

Megan: You know, Dad, I am really excited about this episode today. I think this is going to be a powerful one.

Michael: Yeah, there’s something about Kodak that we can all relate to.

Megan: Or at least we’re afraid of.

Michael: Yeah, exactly. We’re kind of in this comfort zone, where we’ve had success, but we’re stuck in terms of trying to go farther. I think for most of us, we have this desire to go farther. We have big goals we still want to accomplish, but I talk to so many people who are stuck, and it’s usually something that’s emotional. It’s not the execution or the technology or anything else. It’s just these emotions that are keeping them stuck.

Megan: You mentioned in our opening dialogue fear, uncertainty, and doubt as the real culprits behind Kodak’s undoing. In our coaching, we see those three emotions as the same things that undermine leaders in every sphere of life over and over again, especially when it comes to setting and achieving goals.

Michael: Yeah, especially when it comes to that. You would think it would be something like execution or…

Megan: Strategy.

Michael: Yeah, or they don’t have the goal clearly framed up right, and that’s what’s keeping them back, but more often than not it’s emotional. So that’s what we want to talk about today. It’s almost like when you come to the edge of a cliff and you know you should jump.

Maybe there’s a business opportunity or a relationship you know you should pursue, but fear, uncertainty, and doubt rear their ugly heads and cause you to hesitate or at least distort your decisions, where you get fogged over and you’re not sure what to do. So what do you do? You hesitate. You just stay stuck. We’re going to confront those in this episode.

Megan: We are. That’s why we’re also going to talk about three steps leaders can take to overcome those emotions so they can be successful.

Michael: The first step is to recognize it. As I mentioned before, anytime we pursue something big we tend to get hit with these three seemingly (that’s an important word) negative emotions. If we don’t have a plan to process them, they’re going to keep us stuck for sure.

Megan: Let’s talk about fear first. Let’s be honest. We’ve all felt it. Anytime we’re facing a decision we think is risky or out of our comfort zone, that risk tolerance issue comes up time and time again. Research by psychologists like Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman show that we overvalue what we might lose compared to what we might gain. That’s really interesting.

Michael: It’s almost like a self-protective thing. In fact, this happened to me last night. I was lying in bed, and this is when I experience the most fear. It’s like in the middle of the night, the lights are off, the gremlins are out, and I start thinking about the future. We’re in the middle of several big projects, including renovating some office space, and I’m thinking to myself, “This feels risky. Should we really do it? Should we really go forward with it? Maybe we ought to dial it back.” All of those kinds of things. Then I wake up, the sun is out, and I feel great about it, but in the middle of the night, not so much.

Megan: It’s like you could just set your alarm to 9:00 p.m. and say anything that comes in your mind after that point you can just dismiss. I think this goes back to our evolutionary biology. It’s just part of how we’re wired with our fight or flight instincts. They don’t always have a lot of utility in today’s world.

Michael: True.

Megan: Kent Berridge, a neuroscientist from the University of Michigan, says desire and dread are both produced in the same part of the brain called…wait for it…the nucleus accumbens.

Michael: I think mine itches.

Megan: Can’t help you with that. It can produce either emotion or both simultaneously. This helps explain why when we stop to think about the things we desire it can quickly trigger fear. That’s so interesting.

Michael: Yeah, it is interesting, and I think it’s true, at least true to my experience.

Megan: Me too.

Michael: In his best-selling book, The Gift of Fear (which, by the way, I read probably 15, maybe 20 years ago), Gavin de Becker explains the difference between helpful and unhelpful fear. He asserts that our intuition and gut instincts actually stem from complex cognitive processes. Those fear responses are enormously helpful in life-threatening situations, but honestly, we’re not in those life-threatening situations very often.

When the threat isn’t real, say, when you feel fearful about asking for a promotion at work, those instincts actually hinder our success. I had an interesting experience, Meg. As you know, I journal, and I’ve been doing this now for about seven years. One of the things I love about the journal I use, which is Day One, is I can go back and look at journal entries I made on this same day years ago.

Megan: Kind of like the Facebook Memories.

Michael: Exactly, but a little less automated. What’s fascinating about it is I find that I’m wrestling with certain things in those journal entries that are just laughable, because now I know the end of the story. I know they turned out. The thing I’ve come to the conclusion of is that I have a 100 percent success track record in working through stuff, and so do you, and so does everybody in this room, and so does everybody listening to this podcast.

A hundred percent of the time you get through it. You may feel the fear on the front end, but you work through it and get to the other side. So why do we face the same fear over and over again? I don’t know, but it’s not that helpful unless the threat is actually real, which very rarely happens.

Megan: That’s right. There’s somebody who has a quote that says something like, “You’ve made it through 100 percent of your hard days,” and it’s a great point to remember, because it’s easy to think, “Oh, I can’t do this. I’ll never make it.” If you’re still standing, you have made it over and over and over again.

Michael: The thing to remember when you’re facing something new that looks challenging is to remember your track record. You have a 100 percent track record of overcoming these things, so buck up and step into it, because you’re probably going to overcome this one too.

Megan: That’s right. I’m going to have to check out that journal app. You know how sometimes you just start to worry, and the thoughts start going in your mind, like, the doom loop reel starts to roll… “I’m not sure how I’m going to get there,” and you feel paralyzed. Well, that was Kodak’s problem. The path only becomes clear when we’re in motion.

I kind of hate this about life. I really wish I could reverse this, but it’s true. You don’t have confidence or clarity until you get moving. You have to start before you know the whole picture. I’m sure that’s how Fuji felt. The restructuring Fuji did was totally risky and uncertain, but they made the move anyway, even though they probably felt all that uncertainty at the time.

Michael: And it paid off. I like what George Kurian says. He became the CEO of the company NetApp in 2015, but his background, curiously, wasn’t leadership; it was engineering. Let’s be honest. A lot of leaders don’t come from the field of engineering. Well, that was a drawback at first. Why? Because with engineering there’s often a black or white answer, but as an executive that’s much rarer.

If you wait for certainty, you’re almost always too late. I learned this the hard way as the CEO of a major corporation, because the more I ascended through the ranks, the more and more things were gray, the less access I had to data that would give me a sense of certainty. In fact, I got to the place where I thought the point of absolute certainty never comes.

Megan: That reminds me of an article I read this year in Harvard Business Review. It was something about the successful traits of CEOs.

Michael: I remember you passing that on to me.

Megan: It was probably the best article I’ve read in the last year. In fact, I think it’s even becoming a book. One of the CEOs they interviewed in that talked about how he feels like he needs to go ahead and make decisions when he has only about 65 percent certainty that those are the right ones, which is kind of an astonishingly low percentage.

I think most of us would think you need to be at least 80-plus percent, if not 90 percent sure. Sixty-five percent is only barely over the 50/50 mark, and that’s when he feels like he needs to make those calls. That’s a good lesson for all of us, that we have to lean into this uncertainty and that we actually need less certainty than we think to make good decisions.

Michael: We can make those first steps without a lot of certainty or even a lot of clarity. The best way to get clarity is to start moving toward the object you’re pursuing. This is particularly relevant when it comes to setting goals and achieving them. People are kind of waiting on the precipice, waiting for absolute clarity, absolute certainty, before they begin to pursue it.

That’s not going to happen. If it’s a goal that’s in your discomfort zone, you’re not going to know the path clearly. You’re going to have to take a step in the right direction. It sounds a little bit mystical, but the path does become clear and begins to open up as you begin to move in the direction in the pursuit of the goal.

Megan: The truth is it’s not really mystical. We know this from driving. You can only see as far as your headlights shine at night, so you have to keep moving to get to the next place to see the next bit of road ahead of you. I also think this happens because people confuse strategy with goal setting, and those are really two different things. The goal is about the outcome, and the strategy is about how you’re going to get there. If you try to do both at the same time with absolute certainty you’re really going to be paralyzed, I think, is probably the best way to say it.

Michael: It’s like you have to be committed to the goal, but the strategy can flex or adjust.

Megan: And it will. It doesn’t even matter if you want it to. It’s just going to happen, because the conditions of the environment you’re stepping into are unknown. There’s no way you can know those, and they’re changing in their dynamic all the time.

Michael: So true.

Megan: Have you had a recent example when these emotions were triggered for you around setting goals?

Michael: Yeah. Like, almost always.

Megan: Like every day?

Michael: I mean, seriously. Any goal I take on… Like, for this year we did so many things. We introduced our Full Focus Planner. We introduced LeaderBox. We introduced several new products. Of course, a new better iteration of our Best Year Ever course. All of those things always… I don’t care if it’s in creating the product or launching it. I always have that fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The good news is I’ve become comfortable with those uncomfortable emotions.

Megan: They’re sort of like familiar uncomfortable friends.

Michael: It’s a little bit like signs or lights on your dashboard when they go on. It kind of indicates to me that I’m on the right path if I’m feeling that. With regard to confusion, I love this quote from my friend Andy Andrews. He says you’re always confused right up until the point you’re not, which is true. You have to fight through the confusion to get to the point of clarity, and don’t be surprised if you’re not clear at the beginning. It’s a process. That was definitely the case for one of our Best Year Ever alumni. Listen to what he had to say.

[Steve Anderson]

Megan: We’ve talked about fear, we’ve talked about uncertainty, and now we’re going to talk about doubt. Specifically, I’m talking about self-doubt here.

Michael: You think, “I’m not sure I have the resources.” You’re facing this daunting goal, and you think, “Do I have what it takes? Do I have the capability? Do I have the money? Do I have the time? Whatever it takes, do I have the ability to achieve this goal and to succeed?”

Megan: By the way, I think of the three of these emotions we’re talking about, this one is the most deadly, as my kids would say with a kind of “dun, dun, dun” sort of voice. This is the one that can bring you to your knees and that really shows up after 9:00 p.m., and, man, it sounds so true. If you don’t have somebody there or a lot of self-awareness to challenge it, it can level you if you’re not careful.

Michael: Probably most of us can go back into our experience and hear the voice of somebody who was significant in our life who challenged our ability. They might have said, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” or “Do you really have the money to do that?” or “Do you really have the time or the talent or the education or the age or the experience?” or whatever it is. They challenge this, and it really strikes to the core of who we are, and like you said, at 9:00 p.m. or later that thing resurfaces, and it can really keep us stuck.

Megan: It can lead to the forming of limiting beliefs. It happens so fast. Before you know it, you have these almost unconscious beliefs that drive your life about yourself and what you can or can’t do and how the world works or doesn’t work to your benefit, and those things can almost feel like absolute truths, even though they are the very opposite of that.

Michael: That’s the problem with beliefs. We often confuse them with objective truth. I think we need to distinguish those two things. You and I are pretty good at catching each other in these things, and our team is good about this because we teach this in the Best Year Ever course, but limiting beliefs show up as though they were the truth. I can think of somebody I knew who was trying to get a job and felt like he was too old.

For him, that was an objective fact that was keeping him from getting hired, and he was stuck because of this self-doubt. Or another person who felt like he couldn’t get hired because he was overeducated. But I could also point out examples on the other end of the spectrum, people who thought they couldn’t get hired because they were too young or didn’t have enough education. Those are rarely the real problems. The problem is the belief that forms or kind of calcifies around that fact.

Megan: Absolutely. This is only made worse if we are setting goals outside of our comfort zone, because then what happens very often is we develop something called the imposter syndrome.

Michael: I felt this again back when… I’ve actually felt it several times, but I felt it most pronounced when I made the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, and I thought to myself… I literally had this thought running through my head. “It’s only a matter of time before they figure out I don’t know what I’m doing, and then they’re going to show up with boxes in my office and say, ‘It’s time to pack. You clearly don’t know what you’re doing.’”

Many days I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing. I was trying to do the best I could. To go back to your 65 percent number, I was making decisions based on the best I could do, the best information I could get, but there wasn’t that absolute certainty, and that created that sense of doubt in my mind, and it often kept me stuck.

Megan: Me too. I’ve certainly been there. It’s amazing how much this comes up. Again, that 9:00 p.m. number. I think I need to make a little frame that sits by my bed that reminds me about that, because at night it comes up, and Joel, my husband, will often say, “Okay, you’re going into the doom loop. Let’s not do that.” I’m like, “Oh yeah.” Sometimes I say that. Sometimes I just continue on and go right over the edge of the cliff.

Michael: Gail says that to me too. A lot of times it’s exacerbated by the fact that you’re tired. You’re not the best version of yourself, and your resources are at their lowest. Sometimes Gail will say to me, “You know, honey, you’re probably not at your most resourceful right now. Why don’t you get a good night’s sleep and tackle this in the morning?”

That is absolutely the best universal advice, because that problem that seems so daunting, so impossible at 9:00 or 10:00 at night, the next morning at 5:00 or 6:00…totally doable. Okay, once you recognize those three emotions, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, it’s time to go to step two, which is to reframe.

Megan: These emotions are actually positive indicators, as you said a minute ago. They seem really negative, and we often don’t exactly welcome them with open arms.

Michael: To say the least.

Megan: But if we shift our perspective, they can indicate that we’re on the right path and headed in the right direction, even though it may seem that it’s the very opposite of that.

Michael: The reason for that is because they indicate that we’re in a very important zone, a very important piece of real estate, which is the discomfort zone. One of the things I teach is that there are three possible zones in which you can set your goals. The one most people do, if they think about goal setting, is the comfort zone because that seems the most doable.

In fact, the way SMART goals are usually taught, the R for SMART means realistic. We have turned that on its head, and in our framework, the SMARTER goals, it means risky. But for most people, they want it in that comfort zone where it looks absolutely doable. The problem with goals in your comfort zone, though, is that they don’t end up being challenging enough to really captivate your imagination or compel your best execution.

Megan: They don’t drive innovation at all.

Michael: They definitely don’t drive innovation, so we just don’t even accomplish them. Then there’s the discomfort zone. Now the reason it’s called the discomfort zone is because we’re uncomfortable. We feel fear, uncertainty, and doubt because they’re dialed up a little bit from the comfort zone to the point where it’s a little bit scary (fear), we’re not quite sure we can accomplish it (uncertainty), and we’re not quite sure we have the resources to pull it off, which is the self-doubt.

Then there’s the zone called the delusional zone, and we don’t want to be there. This is where we have these crazy, grandiose ideas about what we could accomplish. We talked about those on a previous episode, where I talked about a friend of mine who had set this goal to 10x his income and unfortunately told his wife about it, and that was not a good thing. So that’s the delusional zone. A delusional zone goal for me would be to play in the senior PGA tour. As much as I would enjoy that, anybody who has ever played golf with me knows that’s in the delusional zone.

Megan: You’re pretty good, but you’re not that good.

Michael: I’m not that good. I’m not even pretty good. On a good day, if there’s no wind, I’m okay, but I’m definitely not PGA material. So that’s the delusional zone. When I think about setting goals, I like to think in terms of going right up to the delusional zone and then dialing it back a few clicks, because I want it in the discomfort zone. The truth is nothing great ever happens in the comfort zone. These emotions of fear, uncertainty, and doubt are sort of like the welcoming committee of the discomfort zone, so embrace them. Hug them.

Megan: It all really goes back to frustration tolerance, like we mentioned in episode 3. You have to persist in spite of these emotions.

Michael: Exactly. They validate the importance of what you’re pursuing. If it was insignificant you wouldn’t care. You wouldn’t feel these emotions. Right? If you talk about a comfort zone kind of goal, where you’re just dialing it up incrementally…eh. It’s not that exciting. You don’t really care, and the reason you don’t care is it’s probably not that significant. It doesn’t really matter if you accomplish it or don’t accomplish it. But when it’s in the discomfort zone, you’re emotionally invested because it matters.

Megan: That’s absolutely true. Okay, here’s a question for you. How important is it to tap into the other side of our emotions? Not just the fear we’re going to fail but what we have to look forward to if we win.

Michael: I think it’s very important. I think feelings are underrated when it comes to goal setting, and some would argue… In fact, I think that book The Desire Map… She talks about imagining the feeling you’ll feel when you accomplish the goal. In other words, that positive feeling becomes the positive driver for achieving the goal.

Megan: It’s like a little carrot.

Michael: Right. I’m pursuing a feeling I want to feel, not just the result of the goal, but it’s a different way I want to feel. I think there’s some real validity to that.

Megan: That’s a really important point. One of the things you have said often to me is that these emotions are preparing us for peak performance. It reminds me of a little story you have about that, kind of getting ready for speaking publicly.

Michael: Well, now I love to speak publicly. I enjoy it, but there was a time when I dreaded it. You probably know this, but most people say they’d rather die than give a speech. In fact, Jerry Seinfeld has a very funny bit about this, where he says for most people at a funeral they’d rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.

Years ago I had this experience where I was about to speak to a bunch of speech coaches. I can’t imagine anything more terrifying, and I was terrified. I called Gail and talked to her about it. She had to talk me off the ledge. But then something shifted for me when I began to focus on the audience. That was first. The second thing is I reframed those emotions, and instead of seeing them as something that kept me stuck, I said, “This is how my body prepares itself for peak performance.”

In other words, when I’m a little bit anxious, that’s a good thing. The adrenaline coursing through my body gets my brain functioning better. I can recall stories. I can remember points. I can make points that maybe I didn’t even consider in my preparation. I’m much better because of that adrenaline rather than if I didn’t have it. So reframing those emotions is important.

Megan: It turns out that adrenaline is your friend.

Michael: It is. It can be for sure.

Megan: Okay, Dad. I want to take a short break from our conversation, because this is actually a really exciting day around here. Do you want to tell us why?

Michael: Absolutely. Today is really exciting because we just opened public registration for my goal-setting course 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever. We’ve mentioned it a couple of times in this episode. It’s based on a proven framework that can help you set up your entire year for success in just five days or even as little as five hours. Basically, five sessions. My team and I have built in the latest goal-setting research, and we’ve revamped and reshot all the material for 2018. Let me tell you, this process works. We’ve been doing this for several years now. We’ve had over 25,000 people go through the course with amazing results.

Megan: It really is. Over 25,000 people. That’s like filling up Madison Square Garden.

Michael: Hey, that’s 10 times the size of the town I was born in.

Megan: Oh my gosh. That’s a lot of people having their best year ever.

Michael: It is, and I’m blown away by it. What’s even more incredible is what people have been able to accomplish. We have a VIP Facebook group that’s filled with pictures of people who are capturing their biggest wins, making progress, getting encouragement from other people. What’s really special about this course is you don’t have to do it alone. You can get access to that great community and find the accountability to achieve your dreams.

Megan: That community is so powerful. The students of this program have really inspiring stories. I love learning from them. Speaking of students, who should be signing up for 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever?

Michael: This course is truly for anyone with important things to achieve in the upcoming year. Maybe you’re an executive or an entrepreneur, a pastor, a stay-at-home parent, even a student, but you’ve struggled to reach your goals in the past or you just know you don’t want to do it alone. You’ll love this course. It’s super practical, very straightforward. It’s fantastic for couples, and I’ve even heard of parents who are doing it together with their kids.

Megan: Yeah, me too. I think I might want to try that this year.

Michael: I’d love to see what happens with that. All you need to do is go to bestyearever.me/register to sign up right away. You do want to do it quickly, because we’re closing public registration at midnight Pacific on December 19, 2017. You can get the independent study version, which is self-guided, the VIP version, which comes with the Facebook community and some really cool bonuses, or you can even attend our live event (and I would encourage you to consider this), January 2-4, right here in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m really looking forward to that.

Megan: It’s almost like the insurance plan to make sure you’ll accomplish your goals. I love that. All right. All you need to do to sign up is to go to bestyearever.me/register, and make sure you do it soon while enrollment is still open. Now let’s get back to our discussion on how to overcome the emotions that keep us stuck.

Michael: Okay, we covered step one, which was to recognize these emotions, step two, to reframe them, and now step three: resume.

Megan: At the end of the day, you just have to do it afraid. I don’t really like this point either. There are a couple things here, honestly, but we have to just do it scared. We can’t wait until we feel confident. That would just be a mistake.

Michael: So many people do that. They kind of keep waiting until the fear abates and they feel this sudden rush of confidence, and then they’ll do it.

Megan: P.S. That never happens.

Michael: Never happens. You’re going to be waiting a long time if that happens. Dan Sullivan has this thing where he talks about the 4 C’s of how you get anything done. One great insight from that concept is that courage always precedes confidence. I don’t like that either, but people usually have this exactly backward. “Once I’m confident, I’ll be courageous.” Dan says they look the same on the outside. Courage and confidence look exactly the same on the outside, but they feel very different on the inside. Right?

When you’re being courageous, you’re doing it scared. You’re doing it in spite of the fear. But when you’re confident, it’s usually the result of having done it scared, and you’ve done it enough that now you know the outcome and feel a little bit more confident. So that’s the order. If you feel scared and you feel like you have to muster courage, that’s okay. Don’t wait for the confidence to show up. That’ll come later.

Megan: It’s kind of reassuring, actually, that you don’t have to gin up the courage, or what we think of as courage but is really, in your example from Dan, about confidence. We don’t have to gin up confidence that we don’t feel. We can feel the fear, notice it, and keep moving forward. That’s honestly kind of freeing. It means we can do a whole lot of things we would have maybe previously felt like were unavailable to us or just inaccessible, because we can just push through that fear and do it anyway.

Michael: Someone who’s very familiar with this “courage before confidence” thing is our friend and best-selling author Jon Acuff. Listen to what he had to say.

Jon Acuff: I think the funny thing is people ask me, “When did you stop being afraid or when did you conquer fear?” I think that’s hilarious. I think you’re always afraid. I think it was Hemingway who said… (and I want to drop a Hemingway quote so I seem smart). I think it was Hemingway who said, “You’re always afraid because, just when you figure out a certain opportunity, you take a larger opportunity. Like the goal isn’t—I figure out how to make widget a or I figure out how to speak to 100 people and I stay at 100 people until I am dead. No, the goal is you get really good at a hundred, and then you help 200, and then you help a thousand. Just when you figure out a fear level for 100, you double that and go to 200. You double that and go to 400. So for me, I just get used to that.

The arrival of fear isn’t an indication it’s time to stop, it’s usually an indication to keep going. Fear doesn’t bother you with easy stuff. Stephen Pressfield would call that the resistance. The resistance never bothers you when you’re doing something that’s of a lower form. Fear will never bother you when you binge watch Netflix. Fear will never bother you when you over eat food or you don’t get enough sleep or you’re a workaholic. It’s only when you do something that matters that fear gets loud, so, often the fear is an indication that you’re on the right path. Waiting for fear is kind of the reverse of waiting for inspiration. I think waiting in general is an amazing hiding place.

One of the chapters in my new book, Finish, was about hiding places and noble obstacles. These are fancy excuses we use to not do our work. And one of them a hiding place would be that fear of “what if it doesn’t work? What if it’s not good?” And I’ll take one particular fear because I know there other writers that listen to this. Writer’s fear customer reviews. I would say a really easy way to get over that fear or deal with that fear is to call them what they are—they are customer opinions. They are not reviews. A review is something serious and critical and educated and well informed. An opinion is something your neighbor has. Or a random person on the highway. So call them what they are. Call them customer opinions.

And so for me I don’t get over fear and then I beat it completely. I deal with it and then the next day I wake up and there’s a new one to deal with and that’s okay too.

Megan: That reminds me of the LEAP principle you often talk about. Will you explain that a little bit?

Michael: Jim Rohn has this principle he calls the law of diminishing intent. Basically, you get all amped up, you get excited about accomplishing things, but if you don’t take the initiative right then, over time that intention will wane. This is why you’re so excited when you leave a conference, but if you don’t take action immediately the chances are progressively less each day that passes. Why? Because the law of diminishing intent. Over time it wanes.

The corrective to that, the antidote to that is the LEAP acronym, which means you lean (this is the L) into that change with expectancy. In other words, don’t lean away from it on your heels, but on your toes lean into it. The E is for engage. Engage with the concept or with the issue or with the circumstance until you achieve clarity.

The A is for activate. Do something…anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you have to take action. It may be a phone call. It may be an email message. It may be somebody you need to talk to face-to-face, but activate and do something. Then the P is for pounce. When’s the best time to do it? Now. Or as my friend Robert Smith likes to say, “When would now be a good time to do that?”

Megan: I love that. The big idea here is don’t wait. Waiting feels safe, but it kills your dreams. Oh my goodness. Nothing will undermine your dreams like waiting…waiting for certainty, waiting for all these emotions to go away.

Michael: The good news is once you start taking initiative, once you take that first step, those emotions lose their power over you and begin to wane, and before long you’re right into it. In fact, how many of us have had this experience, where you tackle something big and get into it and you look back and go, “Why was I so scared of this? This is not that big a deal.” We made it bigger in our minds.

Megan: Today we’ve covered three steps to overcome the emotions that are keeping us stuck: first, recognize; second, reframe; and third, resume. As we come in for a landing today, I want you to consider what’s waiting for you on the other side of your discomfort. Imagine where Kodak might be today if they’d taken that complete leap into digital photography instead of trying to hedge their bets with film. They were positioned for greatness, but they hesitated when it counted.

We don’t want the same thing to happen to you. So the next time you confront fear, doubt, or uncertainty, those friendly uncomfortable emotions we’ve been talking about, we want you to leverage the steps we talked about today. If you can persist through the discomfort, the reward will be worth it. Dad, do you have any final thoughts today?

Michael: Yeah, just to underscore that. These are not negative emotions. They seem to be negative…

Megan: They’re uncomfortable but not negative.

Michael: They’re uncomfortable, but if you can learn to embrace these and let them be your friends, let them work for you, it’ll give you an edge, particularly against all of the other people who are trying to accomplish big things, because so many people get stuck. Your competitors are going to get stuck. If you can lean into them, make them your friends, embrace them, it can give you the edge you need to succeed and accomplish big things.

Megan: Love that. Before we close, I want to remind you about LeaderBox. It’s automated professional development in a box. Check it out at leaderbox.com. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, you can get the show notes and a full transcript online at leadto.win.

Michael: Thanks again for joining us on Lead to Win. If you like the show, please tell your friends and colleagues about it, and also please leave a review of the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Megan: This program is copyrighted by Michael Hyatt & Company. All rights reserved. Our producer is Nick Jaworski.

Michael: Our writers are Joel Miller, Mandi Rivieccio, and Jeremy Lott.

Megan: Our recording engineer is Matt Price.

Michael: Our production assistants are Mike Burns, Mike Boyer, and Aleshia Curry.

Megan: Our intern is Winston.

Michael: We invite you to join us for our next episode, where we’re going to be considering why generosity pays off, both at work and at home. Until then, lead to win.