Life Is Full Of If's Conquering the What If? Syndrome 188

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference that concluded with a powerful speech. The motivational message can be summed up with a simple saying life is full of ifs. Today, we tackle the ifs that fill our life, the ones that cause anxiety and hold us back. Let me tell you something Everybody struggles. The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it. The choice is completely yours. Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life. If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you. You have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. Challenge you, humble you and they build you. When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense. Most disagreements they stem from our own insecurities. You are right where you need to be. Ooh ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. How tickety damn, am I so excited to be back with you. How do you do? My fellow loud, proud Americans, welcome back to the glorious podcast Properly precisely, perfectly beautifully named share the struggle, because everybody struggles and there is strength in our struggles as long as we are willing to be vulnerable enough, transparent enough, to share our struggles with each other. You know it to be true. If you didn't think it was true, you wouldn't be back here again. So, because you are, I want to say thank you. Welcome to episode 188. Hot, tickety, damn, am I feeling great. If this is your first episode of Share the Struggle Podcast, we welcome you and we encourage you to head on over to wwwsharethestrugglepodcast to find all things podcast related, links to merchandise, places for reviews, to say, how do you do's all those good things, but if you've been tuning in since day one, get your ones up. Welcome back to all my day ones. I love and appreciate all y'all Speaking of love, speaking of love. If you abuse it, you're going to lose it, and if you lose it, you're going to abuse it. If you abuse it you're going to lose it. And if you lose it you're going to abuse. And if you abuse, you're not going to be able to choose Because you're not going to have it further on down the line. Things are not going to be going over so fine. Little Jiggy House for y'all out there, any Jiggy House fans out there, anybody. This Lovers Day that this episode will be dropping on. It's got me thinking about Jiggy House band. It's got me thinking about L-O-V-E. Love comes once and when it comes you've got to grab it fast, because sometimes love you're going to grab it on the last and I believe I muster. You know I muster.

You know, baby, I muster, I muster got lost Somewhere down the line. Muster got lost, muster got lost Somewhere down the line. Little Jiggy House band, baby, you kidding me.

Hot dick of the damn For all you young ins out there in the crowd. That's the intro to a little Jiggy House band muster got lost. Funny story actually went to that concert when I was in high school. Sir Steve Clancy, great friend, legend and mentor Steve Clancy, brought me and some classmates, his son Chris Clancy, up to the Cumberland County Civic Center and we check out Jiggy House band. And it's for the main story. For you it's kind of crazy because Steve's played a big role in my life. This is kind of random, but he was a cool dad growing up right and here he is now just being such an influential part of my life. He DJed my wedding. He was one of the singers and guitar players in a band I put together. Continues to represent my brand even to this day with his band, actually has me fill in for him for DJ gigs and stuff. So pretty cool man. Was that my dad's service? Just a nice, well-rounded connection there. I've actually become closer to him than I have his kids that I've grown up with. So kind of a weird connection. Shout out, steve Clancy. Shout out, sir Steve Clancy. Right there, love you, brother. I guess I got motivated by LVLove because if you're listening to this episode on a winning Wednesday, on the day that this episode drops episode 188, you're feeling oh so great because it's Lovers Day baby. Oh, you listening to this baby on Lovers Day. Happy Valentine's Day y'all. Hopefully y'all got some proudly made in America merchandise for Valentine's Day, because the best gifts to get, the ones that express the most love, are the ones that love and support your country and my family. That's a bonus right there. So if you didn't get anything from Live Proud American for Valentine's Day, then treat yourself, make up for it. Head on over to the WWW Live Proud American Dice Shop and treat yourself. It's important to love ourselves as well, Seeing how I'm off on a little tangent here and I'm already using a bunch of accents and I've pulled out some random song lyrics from I don't know 40 years ago or whatever the hell it is now. Over the weekend I was driving around with the wife just to bring in some more obscure song lyrics. But we were driving around and I don't know what brought it up, but I just started saying you blot a well, right you?

do you blot a well right.

You blot a well right. And I just kept exploring my accent further and further you blot a well right. And she started asking when I was saying, and I was like you blot a well right, you blot a well right, you know. And she was like what are you talking about? So at that point I had to make my accent even worse so it was more difficult for her to catch on to it. So there was a lot of you blot a well right, you blot a well right. Anyways, those of you that don't know, my wife thinks that I'm absolutely ridiculously crazy and insane and made things up. And for those of you that are listening, that are agreeing with her, shame on you, shame, shame, shame on you. It's actually a super tramp song from long before I was born, I believe. You blot a well right, super tramp. Well, seeing Sao Weave got our rambling out the way. I vowed to myself today that I wouldn't start the episode on some wild turkey tangent. But here we are, y'all We've gotten Jay Giles, sir Steve Clancy and Super Trap and we're just under seven minutes, I believe.

Ha ha, hot damn, that's gonna be special. Look at him. Oh, he is special. Oh, yes, he really is. He's a special, special boy. Look at him, little biceps. He's bulging little biceps. Oh yeah, he is projection.

We're off the wagon.

Rafiq margins for all. I told you. So you're the thing. Just make it bleed and I hear the same. I told you. So All right, all right, all right.

You might've thought that that gut check that I just put in there might've been a little early. You might've thought that that gut check might've been a little unnecessary, but I don't believe it was. I believe it was properly placed because I needed to reorganize my thoughts and try to rein in that. What is it? Add? Is that what it is? Ocd, bvds I don't know, man. My DVDs, I got them all mixed up, but you know the one that makes me wonder and say ridiculous shit, that one, whatever you wanna put it on, whatever syndrome you wanna identify. Speaking of syndromes, we're going to tackle a new one today, one that I didn't even know was a syndrome. Today it is called the what if? Syndrome. So, to start off today's show, when you heard the B-roll, the credits coming into the show, when we're talking about just what it is we're gonna talk about today, I mentioned to you guys that I was recently at a conference and it was a fantastic conference that ended with a very powerful speech. Now, I already mentioned this conference a few weeks ago. It's a previous episode. It was a main agricultural association conference that I went to. I attended it with Matt, and Sarah from Ledgerway Farms was able to connect with a lot of great fairs further, a great connection or relationship with the Windsor Fair. So it was a great time. You guys already heard me discuss this conference and all the magical, wonderful things that might have come from this conference or may potentially come from this conference. Well, one of the things that happened on this conference was a speech, was a powerful speech that I was fortunate enough to be in the room for, and I didn't mention this speech on that particular episode because I felt like this message and meaning needed the opportunity to breathe and needed the opportunity for me to explore it and add a little more thought into it, but also, I think it needed its own episode to really kind of drill into it. Now here's the bummer in this scenario, and that's that I cannot remember the name of the lady that gave the speech and where exactly she was from. And as I'm recording this, I should have been smarter about this and reached out to Matt and Sarah, because I know Sarah has the business card. But we're already rocking a roll on and, if you know my mind, because I've already shown you a clear cut example of trying to keep me on the right road here, you don't want me to get distracted, because this episode might not make the cut if I pick up the phone and then get distracted. So we're just gonna roll on with it. If I can figure who the lady is, at a later date I will add it into the show notes to the best I can to get that out there to you. But the point that we are here to make is one from a very positive message. So the speech that this woman had delivered was a great speech, and the thing that really resonated with me was she mentioned that she's a big fan of reading the newspaper. God bless her. I don't know why anybody would do that, but she'll read the newspaper. But her favorite section of the newspaper is the comics and she mentioned that many, many moons ago, many years ago. She was reading the comics and she found this one comic strip. I can't remember which comic she said it was, but she found this one comic strip and she cut it out and she saved it. She kept it with her for a really long time and she kept photocopying that comic strip so that it wouldn't just fade away and disappear into oblivion. And the message in the comic strip was life is full of ifs. And she had a powerful message that went on to describe ifs and all these ifs that we have in our hearts, our thoughts and our minds, those ifs that can consume us, that can take control and redirect our lives. And she had some great, powerful stories. I can't remember all them, nor do I wanna steal those stories, but as you hear me start to outline this and I'm really kind of trying to throw in some of the tips and talking points that she mentioned, pretty easy to draw a connection with one thing that she said that I wanna share with you so that you guys can kind of start to wrap your mind around this. Think about being held back by ifs and think about what we just went through just a few years ago with 2020, with those COVID restrictions, the pandemic years, the social uprising, the craziness that happened in this country, the election, all those things. There was a lot of ifs during that time, right, there was a lot of things that if you let ifs overtake your mind and your life, you would lose your life. You wouldn't continue to live your life, because if you think about those times and we've said it many times, many ways, and there's many different examples of those times that we could really pull from. But if you start thinking about all the mixed messages that were coming out during those times from mainstream media, social media, friends, relatives, acquaintances, strangers, whoever you did not know what was right, what was wrong, what was truth, what was lies. Think about all the mandates, right, all the mass mandates, the restrictions on where you can go, who you can be with all these things right. We were being told so many things and then it seemed like whatever you were being told was changing from week to week. So if you lived with ifs, like the what if? The potential of COVID and the pandemic and all the things that were going on, if you continued to be overrun by ifs, you might still be in your house, you might still be locked up because life is full of ifs and you think about it. If I go to the store, I could get COVID. If I wipe my ass, I could get COVID. If I eat a snack, I could get COVID. Here's the thing don't go to the store, buy snacks, wipe your ass all at the same time. That might not be COVID, that might be like salmonella or something okay, or like what is that Thing you get in daycares? What is it? Foot and mouth disease or something? Or the cows get that. That cow does it Anyways hand, foot and mouth. Is that a thing? The point I'm awkwardly trying to make here is the what ifs took over our life. Those what if statements began to paralyze our lives. What if I get the virus? What if I give the virus to somebody that I care about? All these different things, what if my kid goes to school and gets the virus? All these crazy what ifs? They're paralyzing and they can literally control your entire life. And if you start thinking about that entire timeframe, you start thinking about all the uprising, the looting, all the rioting, all the things that were happening. So many people, I'm sure their what ifs were. What if I'm in the store and this happens? What if I'm in traffic and I get hijacked? What if I get a gun pulled on me? What if this happens? What if that happens during the election? What if this person wins? What if that person doesn't win? All those things, all those what ifs. They are paralyzing. If you focus on 2020 alone, you might be paralyzed, traumatized, demoralized by what ifs. Right. Think about those times, as confident as you are in yourself and your own convictions, as steadfast your beliefs are, all those things as confident of an individual as you are, I'm sure some what ifs creeped into your mind. I'm sure some what ifs created doubt. No matter what it is, no matter how strong and steadfast you are, there was a what if that applied to you. Now, if we take 2020 and we start just advancing that thought process to this day and age, to 2024, and here you are, it's a new year and you're looking for more, I am willing to bet you have some what ifs behind closed doors. I'm willing to bet there's some what ifs that are holding you back from believing, achieving and attaining so much more. So this speech that I was able to witness was a powerful speech. It was a moving speech and it motivated me to really ask myself about what ifs that I have that I'm possibly holding on to, that are keeping me from advancing myself, that are keeping me from living all the dreams that I have for myself. And it doesn't take me very long to start to identify some of the what if situations in my life that might be holding me back. So, an effort to better understand these things and to better recognize some of these things. I do what I always do, and I spent a little time researching what ifs and really thinking about what ifs. So since the conference I've been able to compile a few articles that I wanna get into. So the first one here was something that I found surprising, because I started Googling what if and living with ifs and I quickly found that spoiler alert, it's a fucking syndrome. I mean, do we just put syndromes on everything or have we identified something here? So what ifs syndrome is that gnawing, nagging, often unnecessary feeling that, if left to run wild, can turn into a raging torrent of fear paralyzing us from action. If we're honest with ourselves, we all experienced it at some point. That is the best definition that I could find in my research for what ifs syndrome that gnawing, nagging, often unnecessary feeling that, if left to run wild, can turn into a raging torrent of fear paralyzing us from action. If we're honest with ourselves, we have all experienced it at some point. I'm very confident, I'm 100% certain. I don't care how much of a Billy badass you are, a Britney Bad bitch you might be, you have all. We have all suffered, dealt with that. What ifs syndrome? Digging through my what ifs syndrome research, I had one article I believe it was on LinkedIn where this person was discussing for them what's the common what if issue, and I just wanna read this little excerpt for you. It says for me, it usually comes up around money issues what if I don't close that deal? What if I don't make that goal? Then what? How do I pay the mortgage, the car payment, the credit card bill? I think that's so true, right? I think the number one what if for Americans is probably financial. I deal with the financial what if all the time, especially trying to build this business, to launch this brand, as I've said many times before, right now is as tight financially as I have been as a person and as a business. Right, this is extremely tight for me. I'm not playing the woe is me card, but it's ironic that I'm coming out of this conference or they're talking about what ifs and then I could very quickly identify that what if for me and that big what if for me is financial and it's what if I can't pay the mortgage? What if I make this new product line? It doesn't sell? What if? What if? What if? I could list a million different what ifs that are holding me back financially. So I'm just kind of keeping that in mind as I further my research here on what ifs, so continuing that article. They say deeper than that, though. What if syndrome may lead to feelings of inadequacy that cause us to doubt and question our worth. Will I fail? Am I good enough? Or feelings of pride? What will others think? So here's that snowball effect that we talk about all the time. Right, we're starting this what if syndrome off with the biggest what if for Americans in my opinion, and the biggest what if I'm guilty of financial right, these money issues. What if I don't make that money? What if I can't pay that bill? Processing that fear of not being able to provide financially, not being able to make and to meet it's snowballs into a deeper what if syndrome that leads to these feelings of feeling inadequate. Those inadequacy feelings can cause us self doubt and lead to us questioning our own worth. It does not take long for me to question my fucking manhood and my ability to be a provider and a leader for my family when I can't pay bills based off of a financial what if? In a word, what if? Syndrome is worry At its root. Worry is a form of fear tied to our belief system and lack of trust. Worry is fear. If you really dig into worry, it's there to protect us, right? Worry is there and it triggers that fight or flight reaction. Worry is there to protect us. It's our mind trying to keep us out of trouble. It's our mind trying to keep our body away from hurt, or more or less, our heart away from hurt. I should say If we go back to cave mandays without worry, you're probably getting eaten up by a saber tooth fucking tiger or something right. In a sense, worry is a form of protection. It's trying to protect your heart from hurt. It's trying to protect you from risk, from potential death. The problem is it can become paralyzing. The problem is that worry can go from protection to paralysis and it can really just manifest itself in these massive forms of fear fear of rejection, fear of failure. I actually found this little cartoon from Charlie Brown and Charlie Brown sitting there with whatever the nappy head kid is. From Charlie Brown, yeah, lord. Anyways, the cartoon says worrying won't stop the bad stuff from happening. It just stops you from enjoying the good man. I think that's an underlying theme here. People Worrying about something is not going to prevent it from happening. Worrying about your test results. Worrying about potentially losing your job, worrying about your spouse, your partner, worrying about your kids those things aren't going to prevent the hurt. The hurt's going to come, the pain's going to come. What the worrying is going to do is stop you from enjoying the good. You're not going to have the ability to enjoy life, to live your life, to experience your life, if all you do is focus on the potential bad, the potential for that hurt. That's there. To continue our research here, I found myself on psychcentralcom. I found this article on what if, and it said wondering what if isn't always a problem, but sometimes you might follow these thoughts down an anxiety-filled rabbit hole. When this happens, it can be difficult to focus on daily life and task. You might even find these thoughts keep you up at night. What if thoughts can be about almost anything Common? What if thoughts often center on financial concerns, relationships, health or the future? Sometimes these thoughts can be about anxiety itself. Some examples are what if I lose my job? What if I can't pay my bills? What if my partner breaks up with me? What if my headache means I have cancer? What if I end up alone? What if I have a panic attack? What if I mess up at work or school, we think about what ifs on that simple level, right. What if I slip on the ice and bust my ass right now? Those are simple what if? Things that we can move on from. But a lot of these what if? Thoughts that we have this what if syndrome it leads us down that rabbit hole. That rabbit hole ends up with a paralyzing bout with anxiety that could really, if kept unchecked, could keep you in your damn house. Think back to that pandemic. I'm willing to bet that everybody listening right now knows someone that's still affected from 2020, from the things that we went through. Right, you probably know somebody that they just wouldn't leave their house. They were changing the way they live, living in fear, just maybe even still questioning everything about life and having an unwillingness to trust people. Pretty easy to kind of chase that rabbit hole that leads to anxiety here. Another article that I found was on psychology today. It started off with an actual Swedish proverb that I thought was kind of cool Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. So true, man, we can take the smallest of thoughts in our minds and just obsess over them and continue to worry about them. Something innocent have you ever been in a situation where an innocent joke from a friend to you is something that all of a sudden just hit a nerve with you stuck in the back of your mind and you have obsessed over it and obsessed over it and you begin to worry about it more and more and more until it became something. It's so true, man, you might have had a joke from a friend about your significant other and you just start focusing on that and obsessing over that. I can see you. Now you're accusing a significant other of cheating on you hooking up with your friend. I know I'm kind of drawing a crazy example here, but it's not hard to imagine that shit happens. I've been there, I've been through that. Worry gives a small thing a big shadow. A little Swedish proverb there. But to continue on the research that I found on psychology today, they also listed off a little statistics here and it says that one in four of us will suffer from an anxiety disorder in our lifetime and the rest of us will worry, fuss and fret far more than we need to. I love this. One in four Americans will suffer with an anxiety disorder. The fucking rest of us will worry, fuss and fret far more than we need to. It's so true, man, I might not have an anxiety disorder, you might not have an anxiety disorder, but I guarantee me and you, we stress way too much, we worry about the small stuff way too much. I love this description here on worry. Worry is like blood pressure you need a certain level to live, but too much can kill you. At its worst, worry is invisible. I relent the scavenger roaming in the corners of your mind, feeding on anything it finds. It sets upon you unwanted and unbidened, feasting on the infinite array of negative possibilities in life, diminishing your enjoyment of friends, family achievements and physical being all because you live in fear of what might go wrong. People who worry too much suffer. For all their hard work, for all their humor and willingness to laugh at themselves, for all their self-awareness, warriors just cannot achieve peace of mind. Damn, that is powerful. Worry is like blood pressure you need a certain level to live, but too much can kill you. Feasting on the infinite array of negative possibilities in life, warriors just cannot achieve peace of mind. We just talked about that fight or flight, that worry can be a sense of protection, that the fundamental function of worry is to protect you is to keep you from death. Defeat ameliation, heartbreak, worries like blood pressure. You need a certain level to live. You need a little bit of it to live right. Otherwise it would be eaten by saber-toothed tigers and would fall in thin ice and let ourselves on fire. We do a bunch of stupid shit because we're human. That's what we do. Worry is like blood pressure. You need a certain level to live. You don't have a certain level of worry, you wouldn't be here today, but too much can kill you. The fact that it says it feasts on the negative possibilities in life man that just stops me on my tracks to think about Feasts on the negative possibilities in life. That's what worry does. It highlights the negatives. The most ridiculous potential outcome possible becomes highly believable and achievable in your mind when you focus on that worry. To get back to our studies here what is worry? Worry is a special form of fear. It is what humans do with simple fear once it reaches the part of their brain called the cerebral cortex. We make fear complex, adding anticipation, memory, imagination and emotion. I think we were just trying to spell that out when we were talking about focus on the negative possibilities. We make fear complex, adding anticipation, memory, imagination and emotion. I can sit back and think about my what-ifs and how I worry about those and I can very quickly draw a connection between not selling enough t-shirts on a Sunday at a fair and losing my farm and my family. Having nothing, I can have a very visual, painted image in my mind of losing my house, my land, driving away from everything, selling cars you name it right Losing animals. I can let what-if in my mind take me from a slow day at the fair to a wide world of despair. So when I read, we make fear complex, adding anticipation, memory, imagination and emotion. It is so damn true. Worry takes many forms, but it almost always stems from an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and powerlessness. Many of us locate the source of worry outside ourselves, believing it is triggered purely by life experiences. What is going on in this world? Take me feel this way. Such thoughts only increase our feelings of vulnerability and, as anyone who has worried knows all too well, even when the world is right, worry surfaces. We all had those people during the pandemic that were freaking the fuck out, right? Well, covid's over America, it's behind us. I mean, we all still get sick, right? I know a few of you are listening that just battled COVID. I'm happy you're here and you're healthy. But what it was meant to do to this country, what we were believed it would do to us, and how we have overcome all those things, I think we're living in two total different worlds now than we were in 2020. But y'all know those people that it was the end of the world then, and now they believe that. You know COVID may be over, but they're on to the next thing, right, they're on to the next thing in this world. That's holding them down, the next thing outside of their control that's holding them back. I love this one gnawing old bones. One of the original meaning of worry is to gnaw, like a dog or the bone the worry you choose all day long, and sometimes it is a very old bone, the worry a gnaws. The bone gets buried and dug up. Buried and dug up again as the same old pain gets re worried. The only way to let go of that bone once and for all is to feel the original pain through and through. So true, man, and the words of Randy Travis digging up bones right, we, we tend to dig up old bones and just chew on them all over again. Man, those past failures, fuck ups and experiences in our lives, those previous hurts, we chew on mills. We dig those bones up and we just don't let them go. I love that. It says the only way to let go of that bone once and for all is to feel the original pain through and through. We feel like the only way to process that and move on is to just wallow and self pity when that's not the truth. Man, you're here now. You've made it through. Whatever that experience is, you're better for going through that experience, for growing through that experience. This article goes on to say that you can train your brain to learn effective ways of dealing with situations that arise again and again, such as financial worries or fears of failure. There's a window of opportunity that lasts about a minute during which you can sever the tentacle of a toxic worry Before it grips you totally. Your brain has not yet gone into spasm. That is the time to diffuse the worry. Listen here, folks. You can train your brain, you can learn effective ways to to stop these situations, to limit this. What if worry situation? They're literally telling us there is a window of opportunity that lasts about a minute. During that 60 seconds you can sever the tentacle of a toxic worry before it grips you totally. Your brain has not yet gone into a spasm. That is the time to diffuse the worry. During this time, that minute, that 60 seconds, you want to talk to yourself in a useful way. Most worriers talk to themselves and have phrases and imagine doom. So so true. I don't need a drawn-out sentence or paragraph to tell me that my life sucks and I'm failing when I'm in that mode. Right, you actually talk to yourself on these little punches and jabs of negativity. Try to erase those old automatic patterns by deliberately distracting yourself. That's when you begin to whistle or sing. I gave you all some great lyrics already today. Feel free to jump on the Jay Giles. Feel free if you want to get lost. L O V E, I must have been lost. So here a puzzle. I have a beautiful, the beautiful little that all your love. That's pretty distracting, isn't it? What about supertramp there? Yeah, well, right, well right, the next time that my mind is going into a what if? And I'm starting to spiral, wanting to sever that tentacle of toxic worry. I'm gonna hit him right there with shibla a. Well right, you can't beat yourself up when you're using an awful British slash Australian accent. Oh no, you can't. That's when you just got to shake it. You're gonna shake it. Shake it off, said Taylor Swift. I've had enough, taylor Swift, for a week. I don't know about you. So you're gonna try to erase those old automatic patterns by deliberately distracting yourself and whistle or sing, snap your fingers. Answer to positive thought. One positive thought at a time can gradually shift the balance of your thinking from negative to positive. So you start to go down that tailspin, man, that toxic tentacles starting to wrap its arms around you. You need to sever it. You need to cut it off right there. Hit some lyrics, do some jumping jacks, do something stupid. You got 60 seconds to think it's something positive, to change your way of thinking, to put positive in, to get positive out. All right, I found awesome article from a site it's the what if syndrome on peaked P, a, k and D. I found an awesome article on it. I'm just gonna crash through most of it for you real quick, right here. What if syndrome has robbed so many people of their happiness, hended so many people from taking opportunities, unstable so many lives? Now Let me ask you what if you succeeded? What if you are accepted? What if the job comes through? What if it works out? What if they love the write-up? What if it fails? What if you don't succeed? What if you flopped the interview? How will you know? Well, you can never find out unless you try. I Discovered that life is not a constant but a variable, and your action Determines what the outcome will be. The only constant thing there is is change. How can you determine how far you would have come if you haven't taken any steps? But we care about so many things that don't matter. Same way, we ignore the things that matter the fear of the pain that it may cause us if we fail. The pain is inevitable. We must go through it at one point or another, so we should let go of trying to resist them. The more we try to resist them, the more pain we can cause ourselves. Regret is one big form of pain. They regret looking back years from now and wondering why you didn't take an action or while you didn't take that first step, the guilt of not starting. This is a guilt we have to live through when we realize how far time has gone, how good we would have become only if we started then, only if we had learned that skill, only if we had listened. We sometimes fail to see how our input of today will become our output of tomorrow. When we see other people's journeys, we always see their progress, but we fail to see their trial and error, their tears, their pain, their all-night practices and their sacrifice. At a high time we stop imagining our progress. But yet, when we don't want to wear the shoe, not the talk of taking a first step, success will always be on the other side of progress. So stand up and start. Whatever dream you have had for the longest time now, only when you start, when you progress, create a routine that works best for you. When I say best and must not be comfortable, but it will help you practice. If need be, cut off anything distracting. Man, there's so much awesome to unpack there. I'm just gonna go back to a couple of lines that really punch me between the blinkers. The first one is what if you succeed? What if you are accepted? What if the job comes through? We always think about the negative. What if we always look at the? What if I fail? What if I fuck up? What if I lose everything? We don't always look at what if I win everything? What if I get everything? What if I succeed and achieve beyond my wildest imagination? What's crazy is I've been on the other side, kind of somewhere in the middle of this road, where I've said, what if this hits and I'm really successful? But I can't keep up with it. I have to take myself, start singing that on myself and think, well, that's a great problem to have there shit brick, let's go ahead and get so wildly successful. We can't keep up with it. I'll worry about that one when it happens. But it's true, I often hold myself back from watching certain things or doing certain things because I don't feel like I'm prepared for the level of success that it's going to bring. Is that crazy to you guys? You're like, hey, imagine thinking this I have this design that's so amazing. I'm going to need to make 200 of these because they're just going to sell that crazy and I can't afford the 200. So I hold back until I have 200. And then maybe you don't have the right size mix, or you're doing all these things but you keep telling yourself when I launch this, I'm going to sell so fucking many. I need to capitalize on the success of that initial launch on this. So I can't do it yet. What if I sell out in minutes? I had this conversation with myself. So what happens? You don't put the things out, you don't sell the things. So eventually you bring yourself to doing it and you put them out there. What happens? You sell 10 and you wasted all the money you invested. But if I had just released it when I wanted to, what have I experienced? The success that I thought I would? I don't know Something to think about. But what if you succeed? What if you were accepted? What if the job comes through? We have so many negative, what ifs? Can we sprinkle in some positive ones? The other line I want to drill in on here is we sometimes fail to see how our input of today will become our output of tomorrow. We get lost and beat down by our to-do list and how far we are off on whatever this imaginary checklist, bucket list, dream list or calendar we have for ourselves. When we're falling short on our hopes and dreams, we lose sight of the fact that what we are doing today can be putting us closer to those dreams tomorrow. The last line I'm going to use here is when we see other people's journeys, we always see their progress, but we fail to see their trial and error, their tears, their pain, their all night practices and their sacrifices, man, that's one of the reasons why we have the podcast. That's one of the reasons why we have shared the struggle podcast because, as I've said many times, many ways, this is a raw, real-time response to life. It's a transparent story of me and my brand, because I continue to tell myself whenever I have these moments of doubt, these what ifs, these financial tailspins, when these talked tentacles are wrapped around me seemingly hold me down. I think about the reason, or one of the reasons for the podcast is the fact that my beliefs are steadfast, bound and determined that my brand will be successful, that my brand will achieve things far beyond my imagination. This could be a very clear roadmap to my success, that this could be a tell-all memoir to an amazing company. How powerful would it be if we had the journey and the story for some of our favorite brands. How powerful would that be for you. Whatever career it is that you're chasing, whatever dream it is that you hold inside, you probably have some brand, some business that you use as inspiration, that you are driving towards, that you're competing with, that you're striving for, and if you knew every single ounce of their story, if you had a transparent tell-all to their journey, would that give you the confidence to hear stories of that business, that brand, that successful person struggling all along their way and not just recapping their journey? Sharing, expressing, living that journey together. That's what we're doing here, man. You guys are along the story of my life and we're sharing the story of each other's lives and our struggles, but we're also recounting the steps in living the brand and the task in hand. I've had stories on here of spending a summer living in an ambulance trying to make this brand. I've talked about trying to have product launches in the middle of COVID, where factories are shut down, where events are closed. I'm talking to you now about making difficult decisions to keep my brand alive because I'm financially fucked. These things are all raw and real in real time, because I'm confident that someday, some way, my brand is going to achieve all that I've ever believed for it and there's going to be amazing power in the story being recorded every step of the way. That's my sacrifice, those are my tears, those are my fears, my failures. My story is here. I'm sharing it because I am steadfast for my own success. The last article that I'm going to reference today, to wrap up our show today, is something that I got from LinkedIn. The sentiment on LinkedIn had a really cool article and it goes like this what if is a killer of dreams. It drains our minds in solving imaginary problems that may never occur in life. What if is a question that has stopped me and held me back so many times in life. I call the what if syndrome. It is this typical habit of creating specific scenarios in my mind on how things can possibly unfold if I took action in a certain direction. My tendency was to create as many scenarios in my mind as I could think of, and guess what? Most of them were negative scenarios based on my fears. Almost always, they were leading to thoughts and feelings about being rejected, cheated, humiliated, embarrassed, financially distressed or simply hurt, and almost every time, in case of new things and opportunities, it held me back from taking action. Man, what if is a killer of dreams. It drains our minds in solving imaginary problems that may never occur. It's so true, man. We waste our positive energy and our positive time. We just had an episode last week about how little time we have and how little time we have to spend with our families and our kids and our friends. Think about wasting that time on imaginary problems, on trying to solve imaginary problems, man. Almost every time it holds you back from new things and new opportunities. We talked about this before on some previous episodes, but our relationship with pain will be the biggest factor in our success. I believe it was Craig Groschell in one of his books and I highlighted that line Our relationship with pain will be our biggest factor in success. This really is a great task. In pain analysis, what's the pain that you want to choose? You want to choose the pain of what if? In the pain of what might happen. What if happens when I take this chance? What if I fail? What if I lose everything? What if I lose the one I love? Are you willing to risk the pain of what if? Or are you willing to deal with the pain of regret, the pain of knowing you didn't? You see, if we take on. What if there's a chance? I don't know if it's 50, 50. I don't know if it's 60, 40. I don't know if it's 80, 20, but there's always a fucking chance. If we take the what if? And we gamble on the if there's a chance, there's a chance. You're going to deal with some pain, but that pain might be far less than the guaranteed pain of regret. And not channeling that what if? Beating it, defeating it and chasing those dreams. Remember, folks, happiness is an inside job. If you want to be happy, it's on the inside. It doesn't matter how great you make yourself look, it doesn't matter how big your house is, it doesn't matter how big your pockets are, how fat the wallet is, how sweet the car is. Happiness is an inside job. The last thing I'm going to use today is a quote from the great Les Brown. He said the prosperous years you put in your pocket, the lean years you put in your heart, man, that sums up my life in a big, big fashion right now. I lived through some prosperous years and I put them in my pocket. Most pockets might be empty now, but the lean years that I'm learning through, that I'm growing through, those are going in my heart. This episode, this message, this will live in my heart and I hope it does in yours as well. Thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands, your filthy savage. That's it and that's all, biggie Smalls. If you're a loud, proud American and you find yourself just wanting more, find me on YouTube and Facebook. At Loud Proud American, put the face page, as my mama calls it. If you're a fan of the Graham Cracker, you want to find me on Instagram. Or all the kids by tickety talking on the tick tock. You can find me on both of those. At Loud Proud American. A big old thank you to the boys from the Gut Truckers for the background beats and the theme song to this year's podcast. If you are enjoying what you're hearing, you can track down the Gut Truckers on Facebook. Just search Gut Truckers. Give them, motherfuckers, a like too. I truly thank you for supporting my American dream. Now go wash your fucking hands, your filthy savage.