When in Doubt, Stick it Out! How this weeks lessons resonates with my personal experience.

This week I learned that my brain is in control of everything I do…

No wonder my life isn’t perfect!

No wonder I made that awful stock investment in the now defunct Chinese Cowboy Hat and Western Wear Company. It was my brain advising me.

My brain has always led me to believe I’m a follower and not a leader. I’ve always been a bit of a shy person. With that comes the character flaw of people pleasing.

See when you people please, you always put everyone’s feeling before your own because you want to be liked by all. This can relate to business or personal life.

An example of this in business can be agreeing to a clients demands even though those demands are slighting you financially. Why agree? Because you are afraid of annoying the client and having them run off to someone else for their needs.

It’s really a terrible way to run a business plus it generates unwanted resentments.

A healthier way to approach this is not to agree to something you don’t want to agree to; within reason of course. I find most of the time the client agrees to a compromise and all the fears that I generate in my head (my brain working overtime again) don’t come to pass.

A friend of mine once told me…99% of all the things I worry about don’t ever hurt me, it’s the 1% of things I don’t worry about that do.

A personal life example is having an overly demanding girl / boyfriend / wife / mistress (hopefully not). You cave into the wants of this person because you are afraid of them disliking you and leaving. This can lead to terrible unhealthy relationships that are codependent. The healthy route is to stand your ground and hope that your partner loves you for you. If they don’t then they shouldn’t be your partner. Again, our brain generates fears and controls our actions.

In October of 2009, I decided I no longer wanted to be a follower. Leadership was in my sights.

I signed up for a 5 day personal development course in San Francisco and accomplished tasks I never thought possible.

I climbed up a half-foot wide, 100ft tall Redwood tree stump, turned around and jumped off , grabbing a trapeze without falling to the ground.

I made life long friendships with people I thought I had nothing in common with. Some of these people became my best business clients.

My most important breakthrough was during a task in which a 80 person team had to write a simple 1 page document. After 1 hour of seeing no progress, mainly because this document was so subjective, I stood up and took the stage.

My brain was fighting with this decision telling me how if I made a mistake, people wouldn’t like me anymore. I fought off my brain and attempted to lead the team through the 3 hour project. For this I received a “butt on the line” award.

I tell you this story not to brag, but rather to explain the power of the brain and how much influence it can have.

We can literally talk ourselves in and out of anything.

If you change your brain and your bad habits, I really do believe you can change your life.

Challenging situations will present themselves in both personal and business life but you stick them out and most importantly take action, good things will inevitably happen.

-Till next time

Laurence Samuels

Laurence Samuels is a blogger for the Online Marketing MBA. Follow my journey weekly and use the comments below to ask me questions. Visit Orlando Web Design to learn more about my business site.

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