The difference between success and failure often comes down to how long you keep looking for answers.

You will always have problems. And it will always take you time to find answers.

So it is only natural that you grow weary of the constant churn. It is natural that you grow annoyed at your own inadequacies.

But without problems or the relentless search for answers, you won’t find breakthrough.

Like a butterfly emerging from its captivity, your struggle is what builds beauty.  What you think is pain is really just life making you tougher. Making you smarter. Crafting you into the type of leader who is worthy of the task at hand.

So, regardless of the problems you are facing right now or how slow you seem to be as finding answers, find inspiration in the simplicity of knowing that what you’re doing isn’t just learning but making something beautiful for everyone around you to see some day.

And that is probably worth the frustration you feel.

Nothing illustrates the complexity of our individual differences more than politics or religion.

While it is easy to assemble under a common banner for overall purposes, each of us has a different perspective. That perspective is uniquely shaped (and ever evolving) by years of experience, personal pain and fear, and goals that we set for ourselves.

So while we can operate under a common label, organization, group, or association, it is a mistake to assume that black-and-white perspectives held by groups of which we are a part are our own positions.

They are usually applicable. Mostly believed.

But universally abdicated in certain circumstances.

Which is important to remember when it comes to business strategy. The most effective message is one of commonality — but yet individuality.  You must speak to a group but message to the individual.

Think about the last time you left a group with which you willingly associate yourself where you found yourself in distinct disagreement with the policy or perspective of the group .

The fallacy of ubiquitous group perspective is what makes a television news show appear to deliver biased information, marketing messages to seem shady and insincere, and lead consumers to believe that the organization they’re buying from “just doesn’t get it”.

It’s because life is gray. And if your strategy for marketing is black-and-white, you’re not speaking to most people.

You’re really just talking to yourself.

Do you ever feel like the day won and you lost?  That your busyness got the best of you.  That what you thought you wanted for you you didn’t spend any time working on.

Today passed and you aren’t a better person.  Today came and went and nothing changed for you.

You feel like a loser. Like you failed.

And you aren’t sure if it’s ever going to change.

You aren’t sure if you can grow your sales, if your marketing will ever start connecting, and if you business is going to start leading your industry.

And those are the easy problems.  It’s your personal fears and pain and doubts that make you feel like a loser most days

It’s being physically fit and mentally fit and financially fit that drive you sideways.

Today changes all that.  Tomorrow too.

It’s all new today.  Each moment is an opportunity to win back the day.

You still have baggage from yesterday — unfinished dreams and lasting consequences – but right now is an opportunity to move a little bit closer to where you want to be.

And just knowing that might be enough to fuel a little extra effort and emotion.  It might the difference between you winning the day today and feeling like you did yesterday.

Business strategy is a gritty conquest.  Fixing problems with sales and marketing and engagement isn’t easy or fast.

That’s why each day matters.  Why today matters.

Because it’s a craft of “inches”.  You fix failing by winning.  And that begins with what you do right now.

This moment.  And the ones that follow.

You don’t need to forget about the past.  You just need to do something (and that’s hard).

So take a deep breath and then go be awesome.  

But not both at the same time .

Every day you will hear a good idea about how to make more money, how to get back in shape a little more quickly, or some ideas on how to invest for greater success. In one day you’ll hear a great idea — maybe two. In a week even more. In a month quite a few more.

Over a year you will hear hundreds of amazing ideas from credible people. Ideas that you think are worth pursuing. Ideas that are good.

Just remember that you only have so much of “you”. And you can use all of that up spending a little bit on a lot of ideas or you can choose to spend everything you have on one big idea.

You can do everything just not all the same time.

Think about that the next time you are tempted to chase another “life changing opportunity”.

There’s a certain beauty in constraint. You don’t get unlimited choices. You don’t get unlimited funds, energy, or insight. What you have — who you are — is a precious commodity.

Forget about the fact that if it’s “too good to be true it probably isn’t true”. Forget about the fact that there are no true “get rich schemes” in life . Forget about the fact that doing anything right requires massive amounts of mind blowing effort, pain, and agony. Forget about all of that.

Simply remember that you are in limited supply. You can spend that supply chasing 1,000 different ideas that will end up half finished or you can decide that you want one big thing from life.

And when you make that decision, life starts to get a lot simpler . All of your effort and energy and experience is focused on helping you achieve your goal. That means your chance of success just got a whole lot better.

Stop chasing. Start saying “NO”. Fight fearlessly for your one big deal.

You don’t just have to “get it out there”.  Sometimes that decision impacts your ability to be successful for the rest of your life.

Over the last few years a dangerous culture has arisen in content creation where imperfection is accepted as collateral damage for immediacy.

Whether you are creating a YouTube video with just a webcam on your laptop or whipping together e-learning material that is nothing more than of few words on a hastily designed power point, you have heard from a wide range of experts that you just need to “get it out there”.

Seth Godin famously talks about the need to ship your art to the world. Since the release of his many popular manifestos it’s difficult to sit in a seminar without him being referenced as credence for you to to ship your products — to just “get it out there”.

On the heels of Seth’s line in the sand came a new generation of cewebrities who were masters at turning web events and online relationships into big business — lots of commerce from people all over the world. Along with that came a mindset off generating lots of content that someone could buy. Just “getting it out there”.

The reality is that this model doesn’t work. Not for you at least.

Whether you are a one-man business or a multi-billion dollar marketing department, just “getting it out there” isn’t a viable strategy.

You can’t just keep pushing out content and hope that will build advocacy and nurture relationships.

1. Consumers want quality more importantly than quantity. —  It’s important to remember. Just “getting it out there” can do irreversible damage to how people view you, your product, and your company overall. The best content is memorable. It’s not something that you just push out there. It’s well thought out. You have to plan and strategize ways you can stand out from everyone else and their content. Beauty works. Beautiful videos and books and any other content that you create. A great way to stand out to make what you create beautiful. Not just the words, but how it looks sounds and feels. All of that matters.
2. If it didn’t cost you much to make it’s not valuable to consumers. — Consumers don’t put a lot of value on half-baked marketing. The times where you just flip open your webcam and start talking into the camera about where you are and how you miss the rest of the Internet. That’s great if you’re a cewebrity, but if you’re trying to build value for your business or your product,s that’s just tomfoolery. Impactful marketing costs you time and focus and sometimes lots of money. But thats why its impactful, because it creates powerful imagery and proactively creates curiosity from your ideal customer.
3. You attract the type of customers that you market toward. — Think about that for a moment. Unprepared, half-baked marketing most easily appeals to those who appreciate unprepared, half baked content. That is a group so dangerously at risk of drowning that it doesn’t know the difference between valuable content and anything else. Don’t complain later when that group doesn’t have budget to buy your products. Don’t be annoyed or frustrated when you find out that this type of potential customers has a lot of problems that make them difficult to do business with. You could be dealing with different prospects with a little more effort.

There are a million opinions about marketing.

But don’t let outdated marketing philosophy make your business stupid.

The next time you’re tempted to just “get it out there”, stop and ask yourself if that will get you closer to your goals.  It’s probably faster and easier and cheaper — but those have never been the ingredients for long term success. Why you you expect them to yield effective marketing?

Stop “getting it out there” and start putting in the hard work success demands.

Sometimes everybody around you is wrong.  Frightfully, horrifically mistaken.  That’s important to remember.

One of the things business experts tell you when you are considering changes to your sales strategy is the idea that you need to “listen to your marketplace”. That you need to take your idea and run it by the people around you to get some feedback.

These same experts will remind you that you need to “give your industry what they want”.  Telling you that giving your industry what they want you will grow your company more quickly than anyone around you.  More sales.  More effective marketing.

But there are a lot of problems with that line of thinking.

Most of the time people don’t know what they want. Business people. People who are husbands and wives. People who are athletes, politicians, and industry titans. They don’t know exactly what they want.

Big picture — they know what they want; but when it comes to the details, the exact way things are executed, there’s a lot of uncertainty. A lot still to be tried.

If you give people what they want, you are usually only giving them what they think they want. Which is likely to change tomorrow and the day after and the day after that too.

More importantly, sometimes people are wrong.

Two hundred years ago southern businessman thought that slavery was the best business strategy to drive economic gain.  It was “what they wanted”.  Besides the catastrophic personal impact on the slaves themselves, that line of thinking crippled the long term economic growth of the entire region.

Because slavery uniquely relied on unrealistically inexpensive labor, southern businesses were much slower to innovate than their northern counterparts.  If you were to ask a southern business leader what he wanted, he would give you religious and economic plausibility for more slaves.

And that very strategy was morally and economically flawed.

You don’t get bonus points for being abrasive, abusive, or obnoxious. And you don’t usually “win” by running around telling people how wrong they are. That doesn’t work.

Just remember that what people want isn’t always what’s best for them or for everyone else around them. Sometimes what they want turns out to be a horrific human tragedy.  Along the way, you’ll hear all the reasons why what they want is right, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the person who gives it to them.

Instead, blaze a new trail. Think about where you want to lead your market. Your industry. The people around you. Think about where you want to go and then lead. Shepherd. Protect your vision.

Martin Luther didn’t ask for anyone else’s opinions when he nailed his religious thesis on the door of All Saint’s Church in 1517 and began a religious reformation that is felt all over the world to this day. Five hundred years later, Steve Jobs never asked you what you wanted in a better phone when he announced the first iPhone on June 29, 2007.  They didn’t care about “what you wanted”.

They didn’t ask permission. They lead with purpose. And passion.

And we all followed.

Because that’s what we do when people take us to where we want to be. Not just lead us where we think we want to go.

It’s something to think about the next time you feel like you need permission to try something awesome.  Just do it.

Cold calling gets a bad rap.

Over the past few years, as technology has exploded onto the sales scene, experts are quick to tell you that “cold calling is ineffective and a waste of your time”.

You’re told that instead of cold calling you need to ask for referrals, mine information from social channels, and use drip email marketing to nurture relationships until they are ready to buy something from you. You’ve been told that the last thing you should be doing is picking up the phone and talking to somebody you don’t know.

No matter what business you are in, some of that advice is true.

You do need to be mining information about your industry, prospects you are not doing business with yet, and your existing customers.  You do need to do amazing work so that your customers recommend and refer you to other potential clients. You should be using technology that allows you to work smarter and deliver your message with more impact.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be cold calling.

Think about any other time in your life when you had something important to say — when you first found out that you were going to get married or when you found out that a new baby was on the way. What about the time you went on a vacation and saw a celebrity? Think about how you last responded when one of your friends made you angry.

In any to those cases, you probably did the same thing — you picked up the phone and talked about it. That was your first reaction. You called a person and talked about it.

It wasn’t awkward. You didn’t need a script. And it didn’t matter that you were interrupting them from what they were doing.  What you had to say was important enough.

That’s the same essential philosophy behind you making “cold calls” in business. You’re excited by what you have to say and reaching out to people who should be interested in your story.

At a high level, that’s a workable strategy. A good strategy.

If you are not excited about your message, maybe you should be working for a different company. If you are not excited to tell people in need how you can help them feel better, then maybe you need a different message.

Cold calling isn’t your problem. A lack of ambition is your problem. Lack of creativity too.

There will always be new ways to deliver your message to more people with less effort. Email and text messages and social media are all great ways to reach potential customers. But nothing can replace your passion and zeal for what you are selling .

No sales tool can do a better job than you of making people feel like buying from you is the right decision. That requires human interaction. Not a machine. Not a button in a marketing program. Not an email server.

It requires you picking up the phone, calling people, and sharing what you’re passionate about.

And that’s where there’s a scary truth about this whole discussion.

If you’re not passionate, maybe you’re doing the wrong thing with your day. Maybe you shouldn’t be working where you’re working right now.

The expert will tell you that you should be doing just about anything else. Anything but making cold calls.

Perhaps on a spreadsheet that adds up to more efficiency in how you spend your day.

And, in a certain sense, the experts are right. You should be focused on effective ways to deliver your message.

But don’t mistake better tools with being a better person.

Not cold calling doesn’t solve your lack of creativity or your lack of ambition or your lack of confidence. Not cold calling doesn’t fix the fact that you’re not happy doing what you’re doing. Not cold calling does it make your fear and pain go away.

Its just a distraction from you doing what really matters.

So stop blaming cold calling for all of your business problems.

If you’re not passionate enough to spread good news, you have to question what type of person you are.

You have to question if you’re ever going to be successful doing anything.

Not cold calling can’t fix that.

It’s hard to be bold when you are scared out of your mind. When you’re brain is panicking and you aren’t sure if you are  going to make it this time.

You’ve been there before.

It might have been a bad late-night experience, an unexpected call about the health of a family member, or a Tuesday morning business meeting where you found out you might not have a job for much longer.

It’s hard to catch your breath. Your mouth feels dry.  You need some space.  The walls feel like they’re closing in on you. And you just want to stop being confused and frightened.

You want things to be alright again.

And you’re not sure it’s even possible.  Or how it could even happen.

The truth is that you aren’t as powerless as you feel.  You don’t need to be as scared and hopeless as you think you are:

1. Breathe.  Take a deep breath and hold it. — Before you do something stupid, you need to get back in control of the nonsense going on in your head. The same strategy that helps a mom deliver a baby can help you manage the pain and fear going on in your head.  Breathe.
2. Stop reacting and start planning. — Don’t do anything just yet.  Even if the house is on fire around you, a smart plan is better than unfocused, frantic behavior.  No matter how bad things are force yourself to stop and think through what you “could” do next.
3. Get going and stay going. — Once you have a plan in place, don’t look back. Start executing the details of your plan with the passion of a person possessed. You know how important every moment is so work smart and hard.  You can fix what’s broken if you make every moment count.
4. Get angry. Take time for physical activity. — There is something “healing” about breaking a sweat.  It’s something that is in your control.  It makes you strong — not forever, but for long enough to remember what it’s like to conquer again.

Fear isn’t forever. It just feels that way.

What you’re going through – what you’re feeling – is just the nastiness of life.  It’s what happens sometimes.  Good people get bad news.

But you don’t have to live skittish, nervous, and scared out of your mind.  Life isn’t evil.  Or out to get you.

So be fearless. Get back up when you get knocked down. Go the distance.

Look failure and doubt in the eye and try again.

Today is a new day.

You can’t do anything about your failed marketing strategy until you “try” something different.

Trying often gets a bad rap. Experts will tell you that there is no need to “try” anything. Just go “do it”.

And that’s a great attitude to have.

Your goal should be to do whatever it takes in order to be successful.

What makes a great attitude makes for frustrating results.

If you aren’t willing to try something new then you aren’t going to get unstuck from your problems.

That’s the biggest danger with confusing “doing” and “trying”. You just aren’t flexible enough to find success in new places.

That’s the challenge when trying to fix failed marketing strategy.

Reality is you already have a pretty good strategy on paper. It’s probably all on a Power Point too. Moving from slide to slide you can show how you’re going to capture the right data, engage with the right people, and turn “likes” and “tweets” into the attention you need to drive new revenue growth.

That’s what you’re going to “do”.

But when your budget gets cut or when you have a bad quarter or when the CEO says that you need to “change things fast”, you find yourself frozen because of what you’re gonna “do”. Not try. Do.

Usually you’re tempted to double down on executing your existing strategy.

You look at what you have in your strategy plan and attempt to do more of it. But if one valiant attempt did not work, another big one hardly seems like the answer.  It’s not.

The secret is to look at your marketing strategy in a whole new way.

That’s where EDGY becomes a powerful tool for you.

Instead of feeding you more tactics that might (or might not) work for you, EDGY is a philosophy — a fresh way to execute your strategy.

After looking at 1,000 high-performing individuals and companies in math, sports, business, politics, and science, the evidence is clear that extreme behavior, disciplined activity, giving more value than people pay for, and emotional intelligence are all differentiators. Big differentiators.

Think about that as you work to fix your failed marketing strategy.

Sometimes, the difference between the wrong message and the right message is just how extreme you are or how many times you say it.

Are you giving more value than people pay for?

Is your marketing about features and functions are you talking about the human side of life that we all experience?

Maybe it’s time to try something new. Instead of “doing” more, you need to “try” something new.

Remember, goals are just dreams until you try something different.

The unsexy secret about achieving big results is that it takes time.

It takes a lot of time to do big things.

You don’t just try one time and get lucky. In fact, just trying a few times barely makes a difference.

Big success comes from steady effort delivered with focus and unbridled passion, dispensed with daily vigor.

Sadly, we’ve made success about attempting one-shot wonders. And it cripples results.

We emphasize “videos going viral” rather than measuring relationship strength or client engagement, being memorable or client loyalty. We fight for instant results and  overlook the key elements that build sustainable domination over the long run.

We forget that anything worth doing is worth doing a lot of times.

Because that’s what it takes to do something right.

Lots of effort on lots of days where you don’t feel like doing anything at all.

The truth is that success is supposed to hurt. You’re supposed to sweat. You’re supposed to feel tired and sore, get sick, and wonder if you can make it.  That’s natural.

Big things take lots of time to achieve. There is no shortcut or cheat code that allows you to skip the harsh realities of being successful. It takes lots of time.

And you need to be tough.

You need to be tough enough to try today and try again tomorrow and keep trying for the rest of your life. Frankly, that’s scary.

There’s nothing glamorous about getting the wind knocked out of you every day until you don’t. There’s nothing sexy about losing every day until you stop.

Life is at its simplest what you make it. And nothing more. You can chase what is easy or you can set your sights on immortal greatness.

You might have to toughen up a little bit.

You might have to “talk yourself up” a few more days.

But if you can stay impassioned and on-point today, tomorrow, and the next days; you stand positioned to do what few others will do in a life time — change the world.

Is what you are doing worth it?

Knowing more doesn’t make you more.

Let’s face it, your obsession with learning every new sales tactic isn’t getting you that far.

If you are like just about everyone else in business, it’s something you’ve been thinking about for some time now.

You are frustrated, angry, and confused about this idea of learning to build more revenue.

Here are a few things you ought to know.

1. Style is just as important as substance.

Details matter when it comes to negotiation and sales. What you do is important, but how you do that is even more important.

You can negotiate in a away that follows exactly what you learned in a classroom and offend long time relationships and destroy opportunities for success  – simply because your style doesn’t work.  What you did was right.  How you did it was awful.

Frequently sales people will make the comment that if a prospect doesn’t get it: “that’s not my fault”.  Which really means they lack style.  Reality is that with the right style, patience, and empathy pretty much everybody “gets it” — whether  you are selling peanut butter sandwiches or cancer drugs.

Style matters. So don’t just spend time learning your seven step sales program.  Take the time to practice so that you are smooth and polished when it comes to presentation. And get a therapist if you have a lot going on in your life. You can’t have a smooth and polished style when you’re walking head case.

2. Anything works if you do it long enough.

When it comes to talk to tactics everything works some of the time. Nothing works all the time.

Obviously, there are some things that are more likely to work then others. Those things are are what you hear in your sales training seminars.

But the problem is that everything you hear is historic. It work for somebody else. It’s not the future.  It is the past. Which means the moment you heard it, it is outdated.

Some of the greatest sales success stories of all time have started with people doing things differently. The reason that matters is that when you do things differently you stick out and get noticed. And you do it long enough and with enough class then people automatically want to do business with you.

It’s less about the tactic and more about your persistence and creativity. Remember that the next time you get told to follow the plan. Maybe what you just learned is just a really good history lesson waiting for you to take it a new direction.

3. Gray is the new black-and-white.

Not everything you hear is true despite the fact that every sale lesson you hear comes packed with examples of wild success and glory. That’s just smart business on the part of the trainer.

There is a lot that is gray in business. People have access to more information now than they have ever had. The smartphone in your prospect’s pocket is smarter than the entire set of encyclopedias your grandparents had on their bookshelf. There’s not just more data out there, there are more types of data. More opinions.

More access to information means that your prospects can Google and find any opinion they want to find. If they want to disagree with you then they can find a thousand people on the internet to back up their gut instinct.

Just because your sales process makes it sound like success from buying your product is a black-and-white issue, your prospects know differently.  They don’t always make rational choices.

No  amount of training will help you be successful if you aren’t good at navigating through the grayness of life. This isn’t about morals, this is about different perspectives. Sadly, your training usually only has one perspective —  yours. And that’s just not good enough.

Success doesn’t have to be a painful process of learning from one bad mistake to the next.

Learning from what you don’t know and adding new skills is a noble effort. What you don’t know can hurt you.

Just remember that there are a lot of “know-it-alls” who are broke, miserable, and determined to make your life that way to.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about sales skills a little differently. Maybe it’s time to stop focusing on “get rich quick” strategies.

Maybe it’s time to “be” amazing instead of learning the next amazing tip or trick.

It’s that time, isn’t it?

Ideas aren’t good enough. Good ideas are overrated.

As business executives we spend a lot of time strategizing to find that one “killer idea” that sets us apart from the rest of our industry.

All we want is breakthrough. We are looking desperately for inspiration. Something that distracts our customers from everything else and convinces them we are the right choice.

We often fail to realize that ideas only work as well as we work.

Strategy isn’t enough to yield success.

One big idea isn’t the answer to your problems.  Execution is the key to your success.

Getting things done. Measuring the performance of what you just did. Improving the effectiveness of your business.

That’s the secret to turning any idea into success. Executing. Not fantasizing.

The truth is that you already know what to do.

You already have a keen idea of the big picture.

But even though you know what to do, you probably struggle with knowing what to do next.

Let’s be honest, you don’t execute because you aren’t confident in what you should be doing.

What you should be doing is “something”. If you aren’t, your good ideas aren’t doing to end up good.

They are out there waiting to be heard.

Waiting for you to listen.  They customers, prospects, friends, and people in pain.

They are people like you.  People who don’t know you.  People all around you.

People waiting to be heard.

The secret to great marketing isn’t irony, wit, sarcasm, or charm — although those help.  The secret to effective marketing is to give an audience to those waiting to be heard.

To listen. To feel what they feel. To embrace the pain and frustration that you hear from that other person.  That’s how you generate content and messages that move people in their soul.

For too long we’ve measured marketing by what other people do for us. By how much they “like” us. Or share us. The number of people on an email list. Or subscribed to our “coupon club”.

We measure the strength of our community by how easy it is to have them do what we want them to do.

And that’s not completely wrong.

Your goal as a marketer is to drive results. To get things done. To turn ideas and messages into more revenue and wider adoption.

But if that is all you attempt, you are missing out on delivering amazing results.  You are missing out an awareness of what your community wants.

Not more surveys or polls or third party question-and-answer emails. Not more going through the motions. Not doing what you hear you should be doing. But listening to those who are waiting to be heard.

That changes everything.

What you’ll hear is transformational.

You’ll empower new ideas and messages that have long been stale and boring.  You’ll create a connection with your community that can’t be severed by competitor’s lower prices or one time witty advertising campaigns.

They are waiting to be heard.  And you want better results.

Start caring more. Listening more.

There are no absolutes in life.

There are a lot of things that seem absolute.

The sun rises every morning and sets every evening. But even that process has its nuances. The time of the sunrise and sunset changes every day.

The same is true with dozens of personal and professional activities that you experience each day. It is different all the time. Even if just by a little bit.

The truth is that change is hard. It’s uncomfortable to change too much. There is safety in not changing. It just feels awkward and crude.

Changes necessary if you’re going to evolve and achieve new success.

Whether it is developing new selling skills, new tactics for marketing, or overall business strategy; fixing, tweaking, and bettering your situation only comes via change.

It might feel frightening, but it’s an important part of your evolution.

Learn. Learn from everything. From what you like and from what frustrates you.

The key to adopting is to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Look internally at yourself.

Ask what skills you need to make a change easier.

Look at those around you. Ask yourself if they’re the best people to have in your life. Are you changing for the worse just so you don’t stand out?

Each day, you are forced to accept change or fight against it.

Whatever you choose, keep learning.

Remember the last time you were really afraid?

Maybe it was a health scare the last time you visited the doctor.  Or a job scare when your boss looked at you and said “you need to turn things around right now”.

All of a sudden your heart starts beating faster. Your hands feel sweaty. It seems hard to breathe. Without planning for it to happen, your body feels frozen in time. Paralyzed. Terrified.

The truth is that fear paralyzes you without even giving you a chance to react.  It’s part of your brain’s built-in defense mechanism.

A way of thinking your brain learned from caveman days.

A way of thinking about the world that hasn’t evolved much since then.

Your brain controls and automates all of your body’s response systems. Most of those controls happened subconsciously. Without you even thinking much about them.

The instant your brain feels fearful it takes over active control of your nervous response system. Your adrenaline attaches to your muscles, giving you extra strength and energy. Your brain tell your digestive system to stop working so you have a little extra energy to get out of trouble if you need it. Your saliva glands are shut off to save you that much more energy as well.

Your whole body is on high alert to keep you alive.

Which is an amazing response if you’re facing a life-or-death possibility. If you’re stuck in a blizzard or stuck in a burning car, your brain’s protection is what gives you that extra edge. But if you’re sitting in a doctor’s office or in a conference room, your brain’s over-protection contributes to the exact same reaction.

When you hear words you don’t understand your brain’s survival protection can turn on. That fear can cripple you. It can leave you speechless when you so desperately want to have the right words to say.

Your fear could make you destroy valuable relationships, because you think you’re dying — when you are really only hurting and scared.

Fear makes you a little more crazy than you already are.

Fear shackles your ambitious and undermines your motivation to achieve greatness. Fear distorts a world of opportunity. It turns challenge and conquest into an arena where failure seems like the only likely outcome.

The truth is that fear isn’t reality. Its just a nightmare. A nightmare that will keep you sweating, tossing, and turning until you tell yourself it’s time to wake up.

It’s time to start dreaming good dreams. And fighting through the fear that will otherwise destroy everything good in your life.

From time to time, it bears remembering that no good thing is ever made  better by the worst nightmares living in your brain.

Holds tightly to your dreams.

Refuse to let them go. Live mightily.

Resolve to push through the fear making you a little bit more crazy than you already are.