I’m yet to meet someone who doesn’t suffer from fears or insecurities or worries, or what not.
We often think it’s just us, when as far as I can tell, it’s nearly all of us, if only we had a way to talk about it.
We all have thoughts in our heads and feelings in our bodies that hold us back; it’s just a matter of whether we let them.
Last week one of my friends opened up to me on some things he was embarrassed to talk about.
He’s a great guy. Really optimistic. Fun. A dreamer. A visionary. Business builder.
But he’s got some cats running around in his head.
Like most of us who’ve lived long enough, he’s had some bad stuff happen in his life.
His father passed away. He went through a tough time in his business. Other things happened that have been weighing him down.
He’s had a heaviness to his days.
A lethargy. Trouble getting focused on topics that matter. Some days struggling to get motivated.
“It’s Not Just You…”
I told him.
Now, while I won’t speak for all 7+ billion of us humans, I will say, if it’s not “all of us,” it’s certainly many of us.
A number of my clients I used to think were 100% confident, charismatic, secure, all-powerful leaders…
Then I got into their heads and saw, hmm, it looks good on the outside, but inside they’re holding it together with rubber bands and duct tape.
That didn’t make me respect them any less, but much more.
I saw they didn’t have some magical gift that made it easy for them to be amazing—they worked at it, doing their best to be their best, sometimes really struggling through it.
Most people who know them would never imagine that, but after years of being deep in the heads of successful people, I imagine this is true of most everyone.
A reason I know this is because I’m a pro, and it’s certainly true for me.
I Turned Pro Because of This
I said to my friend—
“All this stuff is normal, and what’s not normal is that the two of us are sitting here working through it.”
That’s the truth. All of us humans come out of the factory with the same mental “defects,” but few of us grow up enough to address them.
As you guys know, I don’t do this work because I dreamed to become a master of the mind, but because first and foremost, I needed to master my own mind.
But that doesn’t mean I have it figured out. I’ve just built the best tools I can imagine for wrangling those cats. (some are included in this free e-book for Building Your Limitless Mind)
“Do you think I built The Cure, The House of Flow, The Formula, and, literally, hundreds of tools like these for the fun of it?” I asked my friend.
I built these tools because I needed them, and still do.
I still have days when I sit down to write and would prefer to put Hemingway’s shotgun in my mouth.
But that’s why I built tools like the House of Flow—The brain often resists doing things it perceives “hard,” so you want a tool to change it.
We shouldn’t expect our heads to always be thinking just right, but to equip ourselves with tools so, when it’s not, you can get it right!
Your Head Dictates Your Life
Universally, the biggest “mental problem” for all of us is that our minds get in the way of doing the things we want to be doing.
One of my clients, who is mostly excellent at managing his time, over the last few months developed a bad habit with Twitter.
Like many people who are addicted to the noise, he found himself waking in the morning just flicking the junk food in the Twitter feed, instead of bouncing out of bed and doing something valuable.
He could have kept indulging that utter waste of time, but he raised it with me and we zapped it from his brain.
One of my clients finds himself sitting back too often during the day worrying about those things that might go wrong in his business.
90% of his day he’s got right, but this 30 minutes ruins his “state,” and gets in the way of taking actions that make his business go right.
Another client had serious cats in her head.
She’s had serious therapy.
And serious pill popping.
And serious time (i.e. years) with some of the best “doctors” in the world who still convince themselves that they actually understand the mind.
Some of them told her that she’d need to “accept it” and deal with those crazy cats for the rest of her life, but in a couple of hours I helped her put those losers behind her.
Now she’s learning to make her mind the most amazing it can be.
The Difference Is Will and Skill
I told my friend, “See, we all have this stuff in our heads, but there’s a big difference between you and most people… you’re sitting here changing it.”
It was embarrassing for him. He felt stupid “pretending he was all that.” He felt vulnerable with me, admitting he wasn’t some super-hero of the mind.
That’s normal.
You don’t think I sometimes feel like a loon sitting here running the House of Flow just to get myself to write my next book?
But that’s the difference.
We all have cats running around in our heads. It’s the monkey mind. It’s the human condition.
The difference is between those who let it hold them back, and those who develop the will and skill to change it.