BELIEVE IT. Sean's Success Formula Step 2
“Overcoming little fears are going to be critical. But if you haven’t dealt with the big stuff, the little things are going to be daunting. What I always tell myself is I don’t have it today, so I can’t make it worse.”
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast! Are you ready to start taking your American Dream to the next level through passive investing? The hosts, Sean and Abigail, are a father-daughter duo, trying to accomplish their goal of financial freedom through multifamily real estate. Over the next month, we will be discussing Sean’s ‘Success Formula’. Each week, we will break down one of the 5 phases of this formula: Dream It, Believe It, Learn It, Plan It, and Do It. We are very excited to share this insightful information and hope to help you integrate this Success Formula into your life and business.
Takeaways
Believing in yourself is the first true hurdle when turning your dreams into reality
Your limiting beliefs could be what is preventing you from getting to the next level
You need to learn how to turn your fears into knowledge and something that drives you forward
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
fears, overcome, accomplish, believing, talking, dreams, heading, american dream, formula, feeling, success, life, phone call, worse, phase, belief, deal, learn, struggle, uncomfortable
SPEAKERS
Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson
Abigail Thomson 00:01
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean will discuss how you can take your American dream to the next level through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish their goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream. This month we are doing something special. First, please subscribe if you have not already. We also love getting your feedback through likes, comments, ratings and reviews. Over the next month we will be discussing Shawn's success formula. Each week, we'll break down one of the five phases of this formula, dream it, believe it, learn it, plan it and do it. We are very excited to share this insightful information and hopefully help you integrate this success formula into your life and business. If you found any value from today's episode, then please share it with a friend and help us grow. For more information on our sponsor, visit Thompson multifamily group.com to start taking your American dream to the next level through passive investing. Welcome back, everybody. We're here with me and my dad. We're talking about his success formula. And today we're talking about the believe it phase if you didn't hear already, we talked last week about the his Dream It phase, which is the first phase of the success formula. So if you haven't listened to that episode, yet, I highly encourage you to go back and give that a quick listen, and then come back to us here. But today we're gonna be talking about the believe it phase. So Hi, Dad, how are you? Let's start there.
Sean Thomson 01:49
Hi, Abigail, how you doing?
Abigail Thomson 01:51
I'm doing good. I'm excited to talk to you again. Today, you talk a lot about the believer phase and how this is one of the most crucial steps in your success formula. Why do you say that what is so important about this space specifically was
Sean Thomson 02:09
the first phase that that will trip you up, right. So you know, I talked about it in the previous episode, but we you know, dreams, all of us have dreams. And the bigger your dreams are, the more you have to believe in yourself right and more than you have to believe that you can accomplish those things. So if you're trying to have big dreams, and accomplish big things, you have to have big confidence. And not just that, you know, it's I'm a pretty confident guy. But when you when you start something new and you start heading into different things that you're don't understand or you don't you know, you're not fully educated on or whatever it is, you there's a lot of doubt that you have to overcome and fear that you have to overcome. And so believing in you is really the first stumbling block, I think that most people will have from taking a big dream that they have and making it real, right. So purpose of the formula that I have, in my mind anyway. And the reason that the reason it came into my life is that I was trying to figure out how to take my dreams and make them reality no longer dreams. Right? Right. And when you're trying to take big, big dreams and business and move your your life up a level, you know, you have to really believe in yourself to accomplish those things. And so I think believing is really the first hurdle and it's the first wall that everybody's gonna run into. And it's it's the thing that stops most people from getting beyond the dream phase is just believing that you can make it happen.
Abigail Thomson 03:30
Yeah, how was some of that kind of how do I say this? How did some of that express itself in the way you were trying to create your dream? So how did some of that outwardly be shown to you that you were thinking to yourself, Wow, I don't think I've I'm believing in myself, I don't feel the most confident right now. Or some of those things, or some of those moments or experiences that you had that you're like, I need to feel more confident and you push through this.
Sean Thomson 03:59
I have it all the time. So believing I can do this. So in my life, I'm always accomplishing trying to accomplish next level stuff, right? So I'm always I'm always building on what I'm doing today to do something larger tomorrow, right? So for me, belief is a massive issue because it's constant, because I'm always pushing to do more. As long as you're taking your dreams and leveling them up constantly, you're gonna have a belief issue pretty much constantly. The thing about the made me realize this was an issue at all. And it was part of what I was trying to do. Part of the struggle I was trying to go through to be successful is I was just living my life, right. And for most of my life, I worked for other people. And I didn't really have to I mean, I believed in what I was doing because I was successful. And I know people, you get that feedback from other people at work and things like that. But when you're doing something on your own, and it's pretty much up to you to accomplish, you don't get that same feedback. So it's hard to have that beliefs. And like I said it's always being challenged because you're Always leveling up. And what happened to me in my business is I hit, I believed in what I could accomplish, and I believed in certain things. And then as my business grew, I started to hit my limiting beliefs, right, I started to hit those limits in what I thought I could accomplish. And once I hit those, those limiting beliefs, my business sort of stalled, right. So I got to where it's, I wasn't, I wasn't accomplishing more I wasn't, I wasn't getting to where I wanted to be as quickly as I thought I could and, and I just couldn't figure out what it was I thought maybe I didn't know something I thought maybe I wasn't, you know, moving fast enough. I didn't have enough money. I couldn't, I couldn't figure out what the issue was. And a lot of it was just that I was, I was self sabotaging my success. Because I didn't think that I could do it. Right? Yeah, I was in a conference with Gary Harper. And Susan Harper, they have a CEO conference here in Dallas. And Gary said, you all you need to come to this conference. And Keith cowling was, was a speaker there. He's a he's a great counselor and stuff. He's a great friends with Gary, a super nice guy, and a very, very smart guy. And he was giving this talk about fear. And I I never thought about fear, I just you know, I'm a regular guy, I just I just went through life, you know, I'm afraid of snakes and flying and a couple of things like that. But I never thought of fear on this level. And what his talk was, was about fear and anxiety and how we how we carry it around and some of the symptoms of it. And I was sitting here listening to him talk. And I realized, you know, I have that problem, I have this problem when I started, you know, as he was talking. And what happened was they had an exercise where they you're supposed to list out your fears, and I just couldn't, I could list all my fears out, I couldn't write them down, they were so sort of heavy, right. And then what had happened was I've just been carrying these fears around forever. Various fears, you know, we have all these fears in our lives, you have to kind of have to purge those things, otherwise, you just continue to carry them around. And those fears were creating this environment in my mind, that was holding me back, that was keeping me keeping me within my limiting beliefs and keeping me from hitting the next level of my success, right. And so for me, I had to overcome that in order to move to the next level. And to get to where I wanted to go, I had to overcome that lack of belief in what I could accomplish. And I had to overcome those limiting beliefs and all those fears that I have I had to deal with, right. It's
Abigail Thomson 07:26
such a powerful story. And there's so much to unpack and all of that. And really the core, from what I'm hearing the core of it is really just like those fears and overcoming some of those, or even just simply identifying them and understanding what they are.
Sean Thomson 07:46
Yeah, and I think everybody has fears, we all have fears on certain levels. Just like with dreams, we all have dreams on certain levels, and you know, big dreams, little dreams, and you have fears on the same way. And as you're trying to accomplish things in life, you have to deal with those things. And if you're if you're not, if you're not figuring out ways to change those fears into something that drives you, and informs you and things like that you're going to struggle, right. So I sought after an understanding of what fear means, right. And so I read Feuerbach, I talked to Gary and I've talked to Keith since then too. And I started I what I started to figure out is that I had to deal with those fears and find ways to use those fears as catalysts in my life as opposed to walls that are slowing me down. And so you change fear from you change it from a fear and create information, right? Do you know the fear is really kind of a lack of understanding or knowledge of what you're dealing with. And so that creates a fear, right? So anytime you go into a situation that you don't understand, you don't or you don't, you don't know anything about it, you know, you're new to that situation, you have fear. And so the way you overcome that is you learn about the situation you're in you learn, you know, what you're trying to accomplish, you learn those things, and then now it's just information that you can then utilize to, to either, you know, go through that process or not, right, you can you can choose to address that fear and, and be successful there. Or you can maybe go a different direction, right. So if you replace your fears with knowledge, first step is you know, that that'll help you kind of overcome those things. And then now, when I when I get a fear, I learn as much as I can about my situations. And then now that I once I have a fear, I started I started to realize that the fear is essentially a guide. Right? So if I'm not scared, I'm probably heading towards a comfort zone and success and growth are always outside of your comfort zone. If you're comfortable, you're not pushing your limits or trying to you're not really accomplishing anything big, right? So, if I'm outside my comfort zone, if I'm feeling that fear, then that means I'm heading in the right direction. If I'm trying to accomplish something, I have to be scared, right? It's not an option. You You have to be afraid. At some point, you get good enough at whatever it is you're trying to accomplish that those fears go away. Because you're informed, you're practiced at it, you know, you've got, you know, you've done it enough times, like I have, I don't like to talk in front of groups, you know, I get up on stage. And I, it's hard for me, I struggle with it, but I do it all the time. The reason I do it as much as I can, is because I want to overcome that fear. And the way you do that is you replace that fear with experience knowledge, you know, practice all those things. So for me, it's just a matter of utilizing fear as a way to guide me to success now, right, I've taken fear as something that holds me back. And now I think of fear as something that that I go towards, right. I that's, that's where I want to be is in that fear. And I've just gotten comfortable with being in my uncomfortable, right. So if I'm not uncomfortable, pretty much all the time when I'm doing business, I kind of think, well, we're not we're not making progress, right. So I started to look for things that are challenges.
Abigail Thomson 10:59
Yeah, so you might have touched on this, but I felt like we were talking more on how to tackle the real fear of just learning as much as you can and feeling uncomfortable. And that being okay, and realizing that that fear isn't something that should stop you. But you mentioned a little bit back that you kind of are always feeling this sense of this, I may not be super competent in what I'm doing, and you're in that uncomfortable all the time. So where's that balance? of, okay, this uncomfortable is good. This uncomfortable is bad. And we need to figure out what's what those two things are at play and how to tackle either.
Sean Thomson 11:43
Well, yeah, none of this is really I mean, there are some situations where you, you know, if you're scared, that's that's bad, right? I'm not talking about dangerous situations or things like that, I'm just talking about doing you're trying to carve a path in your life, and you're feeling some anxiety or fear about the direction you're headed. If, if you're confident that you're doing the right thing, the fear should be your guide post, if you if you think that hey, this might be this might be a bad direction, or this might be the wrong thing that you need to address that at a different level, right? You want to make sure that you're always heading towards your dream. If you're heading towards your dream and you're accomplishing things, and you're feeling fear, then you're probably headed in the right direction. But sometimes you can get off course you can be doing the wrong things, right? And you're going away from your dream, and you're feeling fear, that's something that you want to put the brakes on and say, Okay, wait a minute, maybe I'm doing this, maybe I'm heading in the wrong direction, or maybe I'm doing the wrong things. And those things do you need to those need to be course corrected? Right? Right. So it's not it's not an absolute, that fear is your guidepost for me, once I set my direction. I know that I need to have some fear as I'm going in that direction. Right. So the first step is really set your dream set your put your guideposts and then you'll feel those fears. It's hard to tell sometimes. Right? When you're when you're scared in certain situations, because you don't have enough information or knowledge or learning or practice in that in that particular arena. You may not necessarily know is this fear destructive? Or is it is it just fear that I'm feeling because I'm struggling to believe in what I'm trying to accomplish? Right, right. And there's a difference between I use the word belief and it's not it's not overcome fear, it's believe it right. So the the step to believing in yourself a lot of times is to overcome the the limiting beliefs and the fears that you have to accomplish things. But belief is that there's a couple of phases, right? So I, it's easy for me to believe that something can be accomplished, right? You can, you can see successful people, you know, Elon Musk has built these giant companies, Mark Cuban has done, you know, big, big deals and, and you can see these successful people. But believing that it's possible is easy, right? So I can I can see that they're doing it. Even on our level. We know several people that are very successful at you know, in apartment investing, and I can see that they're accomplishing it, I see the path that they're on, but then believing that I can do it is a whole other thing. Right? Game, right, I can see that it's possible. So I believe that it can be done. But believing that I can do it is really the hardest part. Absolutely. And if you're not addressing and overcoming those, those limiting beliefs, those fears to do that, you're never going to believe that you can do it. And that's the struggle really every day is that every time you're doing something you're like, I don't know, I don't know if I'm smart enough. I don't know if I'm fast enough. I don't know if I can do this. But you just have to kind of start to work through that understanding that fear is the direction you need to go in understand that you needed the knowledge and the practice to to overcome those fears. And then just continuing to challenge that belief. But you can do it right. So it's believing it's possible. It's just kind of the first phase of belief and then believe me, it's believing it's possible for you is really once you have that, then you can start just challenging change. challenging those next steps and getting action and being successful, more successful than you know, you could be right?
Abigail Thomson 15:06
Absolutely. And these are really massive mental hurdles or mental blocks to be overcoming. What are some of the ways that you specifically have done some strategies, some just really any form of tip you can give, how you're seeing this in your life, how some of that stuff is starting to be overcome by doing certain things?
Sean Thomson 15:32
Yeah, it's hard initially, initially, I struggled with it, because I had so many, like I told you I had, I couldn't even write them down, there were so many fears that I hadn't addressed or hadn't looked into. And it was just brought to my attention by my friends, right. And, and so what I had to do is work out those initial fears and overcome those things and sort of get get comfortable with those fears that I had initially. So there's exercises you can do like Gary, that I mentioned before, he has an exercise where you write you write down the, the fears you have, and then you prioritize them. And you want us to sort of work your way through them. I read a lot of stoic philosophy and stoic philosophy that this is like step one, in sort of overcoming your limiting beliefs and stoic philosophy is dealing with your fears and setting your fears out and overcoming them in terms of a plan for something or, you know, so what you would do is write down a fear. And if it's something that you can fix, you would fix it right to take an action to repair it or, or deal with it, if you can't fix it, then you maybe you create a plan for why if it does something, you know, something does happen. You know, like, let's say you lose a loved one, like, that's a fear you may have losing a loved one. So what you would do is write that down, and then how are you going to deal with that? When it happens? Right? If it does happen, how am I going to overcome this? Because you know, you're going to be here still in life, and you still have to persevere, right? And so are you know, are you going to be whatever steps you're going to take to be happy or able to persevere through that, how you deal with that. And right, so one of the things you can do is write those things down, come up with solutions, or plans to solve them, what if they occur, and then you know, kind of, it kind of helps you have a mental map for all your fears, right? So then now your fears are identified, you have a plan of action to deal with them, you know, so they're not as daunting, right? So a lot of times, it's just I haven't identified these fears, I don't know where they are, what they aren't. And if, if that ever happened, what would I do, and a lot of it is not knowing how you would react to those fears. And so once you kind of get that all out of your mind, and sort of do that, that data dump of fears and come up with plans for them, it's much easier to start to pick through your fears that you come up with on a daily basis on the you know, for new stuff, right? So it's, it's so you can clear the old fears out and deal with them. It's hard to take on new fears, right? Because you're just you're just filling up with fears. And so I think that's the first step anybody wouldn't have to go through is kind of deal with the fears you have write them down come up with a plan to either deal with them or, or create a plan that case they happen to deal with them and, and that sort of thing. And there's there's there's all kinds of like Tim Ferriss talks about fear setting, he has a TED talk about fear setting, you can find it on YouTube, that's a great way to do it. But there's, there's several different methods for doing that. And there's a like fear Vana. The book has a way of doing, you know, dealing with your fears and stuff, too. So great book. Yeah. And so I think that's step one, getting getting all those fears that you've been carrying around forever, that you don't even know you have getting those kinds of out is probably the the most critical phase. And once you do that, you can start to work on the new stuff that's going to come up.
Abigail Thomson 18:47
Yeah, so those are the big, big fears. What about some of the daily things, some of the daily things that can help you feel more confident and feel less overwhelmed by the feeling of being uncomfortable? What are some of those strategies?
Sean Thomson 19:04
Yeah, so there's a little stuff too, like, I don't want to make this phone call, you know, you have a phone call to make to someone a business associate or someone you're like, you want to make a sales call or something, you know, and I've got to call it, you can't you can't sell anything if you don't talk to people, right. So a lot of people, they hold themselves back, because they don't want to do those little actions that they need to do that they know they have to do to be successful. So overcoming those little fears, and those those, those things are going to be critical as well. But if you haven't dealt with the big stuff, the little things are going to be daunting. And what I always tell myself now is I don't have it today, right? So you can't make it worse. Right? So I see a lot of times people don't want it. They don't want to bother somebody or they don't want it. They don't want to impose on somebody. And the reason you're making that phone call is to make a sale, and you don't have the sale right now. So what do you what's going to be the worst case scenario if you make the call and someone says no to you, you're still in the same place, right? So if you make a phone call Most people don't want to make the phone call and be rejected, right? But you have to make sales. And so if you don't make the phone call, you're never gonna get the sale, and you want to get the sale. So you got to make the phone call. So just make the call. And the fear of making the situation worse, shouldn't be there, because you're not you're not gonna get the sale. Unless you make the call. Right, right. So I, I always, you know, you'll always find myself with, I don't want to make this phone call. And then I realize, what's the worst thing that can happen, I'm just going to be right back where I started, if I if I blow the phone call, what you know, I'm just gonna be right here, you know, so it doesn't really matter. So might as well make the call, right? You might as well just go ahead and do it, you might as well go go to that conference, or, or make the call or make that connection or whatever it is you're afraid of, or are putting off. Because you don't want to rock the boat or you're free to make the situation worse. You know, if your goal is to move forward, you're not going to ever move forward unless you let you do those actions. And you're not going to make it worse because you don't have what you're trying to attain now. So that's the worst case scenario is not being not having what you want, right? So don't worry about it, you're not gonna make it worse because you're there is no worse you're at zero now.
Abigail Thomson 21:18
Wow, that was really amazing information. It's all I learned some just in talking to you and I we talked about this pretty frequently. But hearing in a different way is always helpful. So we're gonna actually conclude our believing it series with that and some strategies on how to overcome some of your fears and daily uncomfortable feelings. And hopefully at the end of doing some of those strategies, you feel more confident and feel more comfortable in the uncomfortable. But that was the second phase of our success formula. And we'll be talking about the learning phase in the next episode. See you guys next week. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today. Want to contact the team directly or interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room. Head over to our website at ww.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com Before you go please leave a review your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.