As you go through this course, it's natural to be scared. Sometimes you might be very scared. I mean, you're only chasing your dream. That's a major shift in your lifestyle and getting used to that is hard and scary. This requires a lot of sacrifices and putting your ego on the line each and every single day and to the uninitiated, it can get very exhausting. So, how do you get over this?
I remember the time that I quit my job and started freelancing online. That was a very scary time for me. Every day, I had to get on the phone with clients. I had to pitch potential clients and get rejected multiple times per day by multiple different people. I'm an introvert and I like to people-please so this was quite difficult, you know. It scared me to turn work into clients. It scared me to get rejected. It scared me to hop on a live call, knowing that if it went south, then I would be stuck with nothing and I'd be in a terrible financial situation.
But, you know, this helped me grow. I promise that doing stuff that scares you is always horrible in the moment. There's no getting around that. You know, you feel unnatural, you feel weird, you feel out of your element, like a fish out of water. But just trust me that these feelings are good feelings to have. It means you're growing. So how do you face your fears? To start, we need to flip our perspective on fear. Most people wake up, do what's expected of them, and then come back home to their castle of comfort at the end of the day.
And guess what? That's a completely fine life to live. I don't have any problem with that lifestyle at all. Comfort is complicated. On one hand, comfort does not lead to growth. But on the other hand, comfort, well it's comfortable. You did not take this course to feel comfortable, though. You took this course to make a change in your life and making a change in your life requires you to step out of your comfort zone. It's a prerequisite. Let's get to the core of this.
Perhaps the biggest roadblock to overcoming our fears is wondering what people are going to think of us. For instance, if I decide to do karaoke at a bar in front of 50 strangers, that's quite a significant hurdle to get over because I'm basically trying to get over my fear of what other people will think of me. I think that's the root of most fears in life. Most people cannot get over that simple fact. They get sort of lost in that they think, "Oh, what are people gonna think of me for doing this?" And so they never try anything that's out of the ordinary or anything that they want to do because they're so scared of what other people will think of them. So how do we get over this innate fear?
This is something that I've tried to do. You need to see people for what they actually are. Most people are just as cowardly as we are. They hide it and dress it up very, very well, but they are cowardly. And that doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't mean that we should be condescending to them. That's just how it is. Most people are just as scared as we are. Therefore, their opinion does not need to matter about what you are doing for your life when you're facing your own fears. I'll tell you a crazy story.
I kept my girlfriend here in the Philippines a secret for months and months just to protect her own privacy. One day my girlfriend started crying and I asked her, I said, "Laura, what's wrong? What's the problem here? What's the issue?" She asked me why I haven't told anyone about her yet. I can tell that this aspect of my life needed to change and that it was time. The first time that I posted about her on Instagram, 80% of the comments were very nice, very thoughtful, but 20% of the comments were just hateful, disgusting, low blow comments about how she looked.
I really couldn't believe it. Like, why would someone say something like that to somebody else? I couldn't wrap my head around it. I realized then that most people buy into very flawed ways of thinking about the world. You know, you need to date the most handsome person you can find, you need to have the coolest sports car ever, you need to have the biggest house. Like, a lot of people still think that. But let me break something to you.
You are not most people. You're taking this course. You've decided to spend money to make a change in your life. You halted in the middle of the street, realized that everybody was going in one direction, and decided to go in the opposite direction. My parents thought I was crazy to start freelancing. You know, my friends did too. Heck, even I thought I was a little crazy when I quit my job and started to make money on the internet. I thought that was impossible. But guess what?
Everybody was wrong. I made it work. I made it happen. I surprised myself. My parents to this day still do not have a single clue what I do for a living. They have no idea how it works. They are surprised I make as much money as I do per month. They have no idea. It is as if I found the fountain of youth or something. One time I drove past the bar with my brother on St. Patrick's Day. The line to get into the bar wrapped around the building.
My brother was sitting right next to me and I told him, "If you want to be different than everybody else, you need to make different decisions." It's just that simple. I told you earlier that you should not look down your nose at anybody and I stand by that. But there should be a part of you that discredits their opinion immediately. What they think of you or what you're doing does not matter because they're not in the fighting pits, because they're not even in the race. They didn't even sign up to be in the race because the truth is they just don't have the courage to do what you're doing. They don't.
And once you realize that you're truly something special, it should be easier to live with the decisions that you make on a day in and day out basis. It should be easier to face your fears and go after what you want. Because it does not matter what anybody else thinks. Mic drop. That's all I got to say.
