There’s a devil in your home tonight.
This devil is invisible. And at night, it creeps into your mind, slaughtering your dreams and aspirations.
The worst part of all is no matter how many times you beat it down, a new one pops up to replace it.
That devil is fear.
Different Levels, Different Devils
As you move forward and progress towards the most confident version of yourself, you’re going to have different obstacles pop up internally, that continuously try to tell you that you’re not good enough.
And it’s something you’ll have to face at various points along your journey.
Now your first reaction might be “Oh my God. Devils. Why is he talking like that?”
And while that might seem extreme, this fear and this resistance is literally killing your dreams. It’s stopping you from doing the thing you deep down REALLY want to do.
Plus, viewing fear as an external, tangible thing makes it easier to identify and deal with.
That’s why you have to view it as a devil; a monster for you to defeat.
It all begins with the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, and the fear of embarrassing yourself.
When you first start, you’ll encounter these three hurdles, and the question you have to ask yourself is,
“How do I get myself to move forward?”
You see, the key is to focus on progression (no matter how small) rather than dwelling on your fears.
Once you overcome those initial hurdles, you’ve built your foundation. You’re moving forward, you’re starting to see some success, and you’re slowly building momentum as you work towards bigger and bigger goals.
Let’s use public speaking skills as an example. What would that look like?
Well, you start getting comfortable speaking in front of 10 people, then 30, then 50 people.
And you’re like “Okay. This is good. I’m getting better.”
The fear of failure, rejection and embarrassing yourself goes out the window.
But as soon as you get in front of an audience of say 500, boom – a whole new wave of fears start coming up.
Instead of fearing rejection, failure and embarrassing yourself, you start to fear whether you can keep this all up. Whether you can consistently achieve the success that you’ve been achieving.
Like every night, can you go up on stage and be on fire? Can you consistently go up, have a great talk, give a great keynote and have people love you every time? Is everyone going to like you? Are you going to start getting more critics and haters?
As the stages get bigger and bigger, and you become more and more well known, there’s going to be more pressure. New things are going to pop up.
I’ve seen this happen countless times – to myself, and to all my clients, especially those in my Thought Leadership Mastermind Program – as they’re moving forward to become thought leaders in their industries, new obstacles keep coming up.
And the big mistake that I see is people freak out. Because they expect the fear to disappear the more they succeed.
But nope. It’ll still be there.
It’s just going to conjure itself again in a different shape and form.
So what can you do about this?
It’s simple.
You just have to embrace that once you’re at the stage where you’re starting to elevate your career, new obstacles are gonna come up.
So instead of reacting to them, simply observe them.
This Is All Just Practice – A Mindset Shift
I recently had a client of mine that was stepping up in a big way, doing a conference in front of 300 people.
He was good with 30, but now it was 300, and he’s thinking, “oh my God, what’s wrong with me? I don’t want to screw up. I don’t want to ruin my reputation”.
He was putting so much pressure on himself, so I told him “Look, this is practice, not a test.”
Projecting it out to the next 20-30 years of his career, all of a sudden his mindset shifted – In the grand scheme of things, this IS practice. Not a test.
There are going to be times when you’re gonna be on fire and absolutely amazing, but there are also gonna be times when you’re average and suboptimal.
It’s all part of this journey. It’s all about practice because as you keep moving forward, you’re building that skill set.
So take that pressure off yourself. It’s just a talk. It’s all practice.
It’s not a test. You don’t get a grade that’s final and tells you you’re good enough not. You don’t get a pass or a fail.
So as you’re progressing through your career and your journey to become your most competent version of yourself, expect obstacles to keep following you. Because that’s part of the work.
And every time you do come across one, just sit back, observe it instead of reacting to it, see it as practice for the next thing and take action to move yourself forward.
You Don’t Have To Fight Alone
Regardless of what level you’re currently at, you’ll have your own devils to face.
I’m on a mission to help people like you break the shackles of anxiety and become fully expressed, so if you want someone in your corner to guide you through this journey as you start hitting new levels and fighting new devils, I’d love to be that person for you.
Just fill out your application form here, and either myself or one of my team members will get on a call with you to figure out if we’re a good fit.
I’ll see you on the other side.
Lucas Mattiello,
Level Up Living
P.S. Want to learn more about how to deal with the different devils that appear as you level up?
I cover this is much more detail in my short guide ‘Speak With Confidence’: