…Enough people will try and beat you and here you are beating yourself before you even start.

This is an all so common mindset.

It was the central theme to three conversations I have had over the last couple of days.

‘I am not good at this’….. ‘I don’t think I can’… ‘if only I had the time’… ‘I don’t have the knowledge’…. blah, blah, blah…!!

Each person who was saying this stuff back to me is incredibly talented in their own right. They have got more than enough of the skills they need in order to be successful in what it was they were trying to achieve, but, and it is a big but, they were pegging themselves back before they even started.

It was instinctual and they are all so natural with it. It was parroted out with out a thought.

When you tune into this way of limited thinking it is everywhere. It most likely goes back to the hunter-gatherer days of self preservation and in taking the path of least resistance, the path of safety.

‘I’ll give you the my reasons for me to be defeated, before I even get started, if that’s ok with you… because it is ok with me’

That was me.

WAS me… I don’t give a sh*t now.

I start and keep going and if I don’t know what I am doing (which is often), I find out how to change that, I seek out how to get that knowledge or find someone that can help me.

I have no idea what changed in me. I think I heard something on a podcast by a guy called Eric Thomas where he said something like…

“So many people are waiting for you to fail, hoping that you screw up, see you miss the opportunity and come crawling back after you make a mess of it….

…So many people want to kick you in the balls and here you are kicking yourself in the balls first.

It. Just. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.”

Not sure if it was Eric Thomas or I am getting my podcasts and YouTube videos mixed up.

It might have been Will Smith!!

But hey, that is how it works with me, bits go into my head and over time come back out, but not always with the right credits or all the detail.

Like I said, I don’t give a sh*t now, none of us are perfect.

I am sure whoever said is proud of the fact that it got in someone’s head and it made a difference to them and that they decided to pass it on.

The fact is that none of us know everything.

So many people just bullsh*t it and they wing it through the days, so why not you?

Because you doubt yourself?

I still hear myself discourage myself. My inner voice questioning me, doubting me and even telling me over and over again that the easiest thing is to quit or to not even start.

The difference is that I now recognise it and chase it away by changing the statements that I tell myself into questions that I ask myself.

When I hear myself say ‘I can’t do that’ I change it to ‘Can I do that if I do this…’ or ‘how can I get that done?’…. or ‘What do I need to do to achieve that?’… ‘How can I learn this?’…

It is what they call an abundance mindset or something like that,

The common framing of an abundance mindset:

• Thinking Big versus Thinking Small
• Seeing Plenty of Opportunity rather than a Lack of Opportunity
• Embracing Change versus fearing change
• Being Proactive versus Reactive
• Having Happiness and not Resentment
• Learning Constantly versus Thinking that you Know it all
• Focusing on What is Working versus Concentrating on What is Not Working.

To me… I frame it as;

I am not beating myself before I even start.

Or even better…

‘I am not kicking myself in the balls’

It’s too painful.