Category / fear

by Nathan Coumbe

Better to try and fail? (Or never try at all?)

In the movie Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford’s character asks his professor a poignant question:

“Is there any difference in trying but failing, and simply failing to try—if you end up in the same place anyway?”

Of course there is. 

If you try to do something, you at least have a chance at succeeding, however small it may be. 

But if you don’t try because you’re too scared of failing… Then you’ve already failed. In that scenario, you’ve guaranteed your failure. You’ve taken possibility and luck out of the equation.

If everyone adopted that nihilistic attitude, then nothing would ever happen. Our lives, businesses, relationships—literally everything—would come to a screeching halt. We’d be living in entropy, slowly withering away to nothing. 

Our lives are built on failure. The striving for worthwhile goals is what helps us grow, not the achievement of those goals. 

So if you have a choice between trying and failing, or not trying because you’ll end up in the same place either way, make the choice to try. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Is your frying pan too small?

If you ever go fishing, it’s probably not too much of a stretch to say that you’ll keep the big fish you catch and throw the little ones back…

But not for this one guy.

Zig Ziglar tells a story about a fisherman who was found throwing all his big fish back and only keeping the little ones. 

When asked why he was doing such a ridiculous thing, the man had this to say:

“Boy I sure hate to do it… But I’ve only got this itty bitty frying pan to cook ’em in!”

Now, you might laugh, but you and I CONSTANTLY do the same thing on a daily basis. 

Here’s what I mean:

We say we want big opportunities. We want to achieve big goals and leave our mark. 

We want more responsibility at work, a chance to prove (or practice) our skills, and the chance to make “the big bucks” (or a big difference). 

We pray to God or ask the Universe to help us…

And we get an affirmative reply!

You get a huge opportunity to do everything you asked for…

Then what do you do?

You say, “Well… That’s too big. I don’t think I can’t handle that. I’m not [insert your adjective here] enough.”

We’re given the big fish… And we throw it back because we don’t think we have what it takes to cook it. 

My advice?

Buy a bigger frying pan. 

In other words, take the opportunity and run with it! The worst thing that’ll happen is you’ll fail. 

But failure isn’t fatal in most cases. You’ll be alright. 

And you’ll learn and do it better the next time you have a big opportunity come your way.

by Nathan Coumbe

Start with a rough draft

It’s much easier to make your work better if you have something to work with.

You can’t edit your blog post if you haven’t written it yet.

You can’t make your new song swing if you don’t record the demo.

You can’t grow your business if you don’t start by landing one paying customer.

Trying to make things perfect before you put the work down on paper is futile.

Get the rough draft finished. Then go back and make it better.

by Nathan Coumbe

Are you scared?

…Or just excited? 

Fear and excitement create a lot of the same physiological reactions in your body.

Jittery hands.

Feeling clammy. 

Elevated heart rate. 

We’ve got this little thing in our brain (the amygdala) that did a great job keeping us safe on the savannah and in the jungles thousands of years ago… But now it’s keeping us from bravely shipping our art… or leading other people.

The problem is it can’t tell the difference between a saber tooth tiger (real danger) and the not-so-dangerous act of publishing your work. 

It FEELS dangerous… But it’s not. And yet we get the same physiological reaction. 

So maybe you aren’t scared. Maybe you’re just feeling excited about possibilities instead. So when you feel those feelings, you should ask yourself, “What am I excited about?”

Is this the kind of fear that is keeping me safe from harm? 

Or is this the kind of fear that is keeping me from being at my best?

by Nathan Coumbe

“Form” follows “function” for a reason

Anyone who’s creative will tell you they often get lost in the weeds of their project. But the “why” and the “what” behind your work are much more important than the “how”.

And yet, we often get stuck trying to fit our message into a medium that it might not be well-suited for.

“I’m a writer,” we say to ourselves. So when we get to a piece of content that might better serve our audience in a video format, we balk. Or we turn a blog post into a book…

“I’m a drummer,” a musician might say, so she believes it’s the only way she can create music… No need to pick up that guitar or try to pluck out a melody on the piano, thank you very much!

The form doesn’t matter as long as it serves the content and the audience. That means you don’t have to be a blogger, a writer, a podcaster, or a coach forever.

As long as you are doing something to spread your message, how you do it is irrelevant.

by Nathan Coumbe

You’re an imposter! (And so am I)

When you feel your imposter syndrome kick in, run towards it. Don’t run away from it.

That feeling means you’re doing something right—something worthwhile.

By definition, we are all imposters when we do something new. Because we’ve never done it before…

Of course we’re imposters!

A growth mindset requires us to embrace imposter syndrome. The only way we can grow is to put ourselves in situations that we’ve never been in.

But it hurts! A life full of growth will naturally have some pain points, just like the growing pains a child feels in her growing body.

It’ll hurt a little bit to reach our full potential. But there’s no better way to live.

by Nathan Coumbe

Anything you do will be criticized

Creators will be judged no matter what they do. 

Writers…

Musicians…

Entrepreneurs…

Anyone who creates anything for a living faces judgement. And usually criticism. 

But you’ll also get judged for doing nothing. 

“If you could have, why didn’t you?” is the other question we all face. 

You’ll get judged for doing nothing. You’ll get judged for doing something. 

So you might as well do SOMETHING.

by Nathan Coumbe

Judgement is the enemy of creativity

We kill most of our great, wonderful, creative ideas before they’re ever born.

We write them off, dismiss them out of hand, smother them…

But we can’t know if our ideas are good—if they’ll work or cause the change we seek to make in the world—until we publish them.

Only by letting our ideas engage with the market, the world, or our audience can we know if it’s good.

If you judge every idea before you try it out, you’ll never be creative.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Infinity makes your career difficult

“Infinity” overwhelms us. We aren’t wired to understand or cope with it.

When we humans are faced with a seemingly infinite number of choices, most of the time we make no choice at all.

We freeze up, afraid to make the wrong one…

Or we just walk away…

Or, sometimes, we just go with whoever or whatever happens to be #1 that day—the “industry leader”.

And today, we have an infinite number of career choices. We grow up being told we can be anything… and in many cases that’s true. Most of the gatekeepers are gone.

But we’re also pushed to develop competence in many areas, rather than expertise or remarkability in just one or a few. We have to get Bs in everything, rather than an A+ in our favorite area and some Cs in the others.

This need to be good at everything, combined with too many choices, paralyzes us. Because we don’t want to pick the “wrong thing”. We don’t want to dedicate years of our lives and massive amounts of money to something that might not be a good fit.

So we don’t pick at all… Or we just pick the one that has the highest possible salary, the best job prospects, or the most security.

We don’t consider who we are, how we’re wired, what we love, what changes we’d like to see in the world…

We just go with whatever comes our way… but we can do so much better than that. We can contribute so much more.

But we have to choose what we’re going to focus on… and what we’re going to quit.

So what do you do? How do you overcome the paralysis of analysis? The overwhelm we experience when faced with too many choices?

Tell me your thoughts in the comments.

(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post)

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by Nathan Coumbe

Action brings clarity (not thinking)

You can sit and think all you want… Contemplating your next step, figuring out all the possible outcomes, anticipating roadblocks.

But eventually, you’ll have to do something.

And most of the time, that sort of thinking is just procrastination. And it usually happens because we’re scared to take action.

Ideas aren’t eggs. Sitting on them doesn’t help them hatch.

If you want to figure out if something is right or possible or good for you, try it and see what happens.

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