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This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
Glenn Mattson:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to Building Blocks of Success. We're in Season 7, Episode 3. Good times to be here. As we're taking a look at today's topic, it's astounding to me that people will have unbelievable goals, unbelievable aspirations, things that they want to accomplish in life, yet unfortunately, they become the biggest roadblock that they have. Let me explain something to you.
We all have two parts of us. We have an inside part. We have an outside part, right? Outside parts are roles. Those are things that we do. R-O-L-E-S, right? So you're a dad, you're a brother, you're a sister, you're a business owner, you're a prospector, you're a golfer, you play pickleball, whatever it is. Some of those things that when we do well in those areas, we feel great about ourselves. And when we don't do well, we don't feel good about ourselves. So there's even a direct proportion, a connection through society that has taught us that if you do well, you feel great about yourself. But the reality is, is that our self-esteem really dictates our success, meaning our self-perception, the inside of us is the one that kind of dictates the outside.
And today I want to talk to you about whenever you have to do something at work or at home, but right now we're talking about work and it's going to ask you to do things that aren't really in your comfort zone. it's maybe where you don't have the highest level of confidence. Maybe it's things that you're going to have to do, but they're new to you, right? So your comfort zone are things that you have to do that are anxiety-free. Your heart doesn't beat any faster. It's super easy to do. It's mindless, as I call it, anxiety-free. It's kind of like a set and forget. You don't have to think about it to do it. That's your comfort zone.
But anytime that you make objectives or goals or things you want to accomplish in life, they are 100% of the time outside your comfort zone. So, they're going to be asking you to take risks. Your goals are going to be asking you to learn new things. Your goals are going to be asking you to confront your fears and also get excited and be challenged and be comfortable being uncomfortable because that's the stretch zone. The stretch zone is when you try something different and new, you're expected to be uncomfortable. You're expected to have some level of anxiety. You're going to have to take some risks, but here's the part that stinks.
When you're in the comfort zone, the comfort zone does not care about your goals. It doesn't care about your dreams. It doesn't care about the things that you maybe sit in bed and look up at the ceiling at nighttime and share with your partner on all the great ideas and things you want to accomplish in life and things you want to have. Your brain and body is designed to protect you, in air quotes. It seeks comfort. It doesn't care about how much money you make. It doesn't care about the goals you have. It doesn't care about any of that. Quite honestly, your comfort zone kills your potential. Every time you go outside your comfort zone, your body is going to try to convince you cognitively and physically going to try to convince you to stay the way you are. That's why this first time you hit a road block, your brain says, what are you doing this for? You don't need this. Go back to the way it used to be.
Glenn Mattson:
So you have to realize when you're in your stretch zone, everything's screaming for you to go back to the way you used to be. So because of that, more times than not, we, us, the people who want the goals, the people who want the outcomes, we become the biggest adversity to our own ability to achieve it. We're like our own roadblocks. We say we want to do it, and all of a sudden, the shadow part of you runs in front of you and stands in front of you and says, no, you can't get there. It's just crazy sauce.
So at Mattson Enterprises, we've had this growth curve. We've been doing it for 30 years, and I want to share with you the four steps. We're going to go through all four steps in the next three or four sessions. And you have to realize when you're about to do something that's new, it will be uncomfortable.
So the first phase is being aware of the uncomfortability. The second phase is literally when you jump into the water, imagine you're standing behind a pool or next to a pool, the pool is your goals. And before you jump in, that's the uncomfortability phase. The resistance phase is the second you hit that water. What happens? And once you've been in the water for a while, adaptation happens, which is really cool when you start to enjoy the water. And then ultimately jumping into a colder pool eventually becomes warm. And then you have your comfort zone back again. So, let's go through these four stages together.
Let me share with you a few things that I think are pretty critical. So let's jump into it. The very first phase is the uncomfortability or being aware of uncomfortability. And it's important because as we start to get prepared for this, you have to realize what's coming your way. And what's coming your way, you got to be prepared for it.
Now, you heard me a couple episodes before talk about goals and the importance of goal setting and why you really want to have the right type of goals. And the necessity of having those so you don’t have excuse making. So the very first step of comfortable or being uncomfortable is owning your why. And it's really important to understand what your why is.
Now, I'm not going to spend the next 12 minutes going through goal setting. That's two sessions before this. But there are some rules you got to make sure that your why has. The first thing is, is that you got to realize and come to grips with the fact that if you're going to try something new, the second you try it, you're going to get knocked down. It's going to be tough. You're going to have failure. So when all these things kick in, you're going to have, unfortunately, sometimes a little bit of doubt. Like, what am I doing this for? Well, when doubt and fatigue kick in, man, that's a tough recipe. Because when doubt and fatigue kicks in, that's when your broken records start to pop into your head because you're vulnerable to listening.
Glenn Mattson:
And your broken records are things that, quite honestly, are telling you to be the way that you’ve always been, not the way you want to be. So, your broken records will say things like, hey, making $80,000 or making $50,000, making 100, making a million. That's just good enough. You don’t really need more money. Maybe your other broken record is, you know, the people who you're dealing with are just good enough. You don't really need to go upstream. Why do you need to increase your average case size? You don't really need to talk about that product. What you've been doing is just fine. So, your body will start to say things and leak things into your brain starting to create and emphasize the doubt and fatigue. And what it's really doing is it's trying to push you back into comfort. And I want you to realize something.
This is super important, man. When you start having all this negative crap pop back into your head and all that negative crap’s coming from you, you got to realize something really fast. When all that negative stuff's popping in your head, that means you're doing something right. It means that you're pointing in the right direction. It means that your buddy who's supposed to be you, the inside of you, isn't happy. So, the louder they get, the more they talk. These negative beliefs realize you're doing something right. You're not going to stop what they say in the beginning of your career, but you definitely can stop listening to what they say. And if you stop listening to what they say over time, it'll stop saying it. But in the beginning, you can't just say, well, I'm not going to hear it anymore. It's going to be coming out of your head, these negative beliefs. The question is, do you act on it?
So, when we look at our why, it's okay if your negative, broken records want to say something negative to you in your head and try to convince you to go back to where you are. Don't be surprised by it. Actually look for it. And the louder it is, the more it tells you you're doing a good thing. You know, when you're in these areas, you got to have the ability to pull you through some pretty dark times. times. So, here's a couple of things I would tell you to get it right down for your why.
The first is it's got to be personal. Your why cannot be something given to you. It can't be given to you by your boss. It can't be given to you by the company. Hell, it can't even be given to you by your spouse. Your why has to be something that's really personal. And the why doesn't have to be very, very complicated either. And the second rule for your why is besides being personal, it has to have no wishy-washy words. Wishy-washy words are words that have multiple meanings. That's the opening, the crack in the armor, if you want to call it that, where people get out. So, it's not that I'm going to try to. Let's see what happens. I'm looking to gain a little bit of. No, those are all gray words. Wishy-washy words are words that have multiple meanings. Black and white words are I will, I am, right? Those are very black and white. So, make sure no wishy-washy words, and it has to be personal.
Third thing I would tell you that's absolute for your goals, because dreaming and goal setting is two different things. Goals have due dates. Goals have a plan. Dreams are just in your head when you're sitting there and you feel melancholy or you're feeling good. You can say, you know, I really want to dream about this. But going from where you are to where your dream is, is a plan. That's called goals. So, when we look at goals, not only does it have to be personal and have no wishy-washy words, but the other thing with goals is it has to answer the magic question. And you've heard me say this millions of times if you listen to the podcast. And that magic question is, are you willing to do whatever it takes legally, morally, and ethically to get there? That means that are you willing to put whatever cross you’re bearing on the altar? Are you ready just to lay down whatever is the roadblock that you have to get to where you want to go?
Glenn Mattson:
Being successful isn't necessarily that hard for many people. You know what's really hard? Letting go and being truly committed to your plan. So, you got to sit back and ask yourself, am I really willing to fight for these goals? And if you're not, change them, right? It's not the time to ask if you have the commitment in the middle of a battle. You got to make sure you have the commitment before the battle starts. So have a good why; that’s really important.
The second one I want to share with you real fast is own your fear. Owning your fear is really, really important on the fact that when we own your fear, it’s literally understanding what's happening out there, what's occurring to you. We have a tendency to really quite honestly overexpose our weaknesses, meaning that we have a tendency to blow everything up. I mean, way to the 11th degree.
So, when we look at it, I want you to take a look at, got to own your fear. We have a tendency to make things way bigger than they are. We have a tendency to make things what's not reality. With all the coaching years that I've had, people will always tell me about the worst case scenario that's way out left field is normal when it's not. So, the first thing I do is own your fear and owning your fear also means you got to break it down. You got to break your fear down. So, what really is the fear coming from?
I had a client of mine who we were chit-chatting with, and he has two of his good friends who have been part of a company for a while, and he wants to be part of that firm. Now, he's been quite successful doing his own business venture for 15 years. Very successful guy, but he wants to join his two friends. And what he calls what they do is lowbrow, meaning it doesn't take a lot of cognitive intelligence to do it. But his biggest fear is that he has to do a fair amount of prospecting in the beginning. As I started to talk to him, he’s not, which is kind of interesting, he's not uncomfortable with fear of rejection. He's not uncomfortable talking to people he doesn't know and getting a no. He's not uncomfortable picking up the telephone and being rejected. I'm not uncomfortable with that at all, which is what most are. What he was really uncomfortable with is sitting in front of his buddies, who he's known forever.
And as he said to me, I kind of think what they do is lowbrow, but they're really good at it. And I'm not that good at it since I'm new. So, I'm going to feel like a loser. So, his big issue is what we call a reputation gap. His big issue is, is that he's going to have to practice and get good at a task that his friends are already good at. And it's not the outbound act of it. It's the perception of his friends. That's his issue. So, as we start to look at it and peel it back, that was really easy to understand what the real fear is and how to address it.
So, as you start to look at any task that you have, you better start asking yourself very easy, stoic questions about what your real fear is. Fear of embarrassment, fear of loss. What is the real fear? And then once you understand what that real fear is, then the question becomes is, can you break it down?
Glenn Mattson:
The second thing about your fears, which if you haven't learned yet, is dissociation. Dissociation is an awesome technique. Dissociation is when you actually name your fear. So, if you have, for instance, fear of rejection, and every time you have to go do something, you have that little part in your belly button and go, oh, don't do that. And that's because you don't want to be pushy or upset the apple cart or ask questions that may have people think of you differently. So, your fear of rejection kicks in. An easy thing to do to own your fear is you actually name the fear.
So, let's suppose you call the fear Buster. So, every time that you're getting nervous, you're getting uncomfortable, you can turn around and say, oh, Buster's here. And by actually naming your fear, you disassociate you as a person from that feeling. And when you start to disassociate yourself from that feeling, you start to have in your brain over time is the reality is that that feeling isn't you. So, dissociation is awesome.
So, first thing is you got to own your fear. You got to understand what it is. You got to break it down to bite-sized pieces and then you got to name it. The other piece is you got to be really clear about what your why is. Has to be personal. No wishy-washy words. It's got to pull you through dirt. And you also have to make sure that when you have the why. It answers the magic question, which is I'm willing to do whatever it takes legally, morally, and ethically to get there. Now, as we start to talk through this, there's a couple of other really neat techniques I want to share with you. The next two are called visualization.
Now, visualization is something that athletes and science have had for a very long time, which they understand that your brain doesn't know the difference between what you think in your head, what you sleep on, and what you do in the real world. Ie - it doesn't know the difference between dreams and real. So, you’ll have plenty of people. Visualization is a technique where you literally play a movie in your head of your sales call.
Now, you see athletes do it. You see motocross people, race cars, drivers. Have you ever seen that new movie, F1 Out? You can see that they have their headset on, they're down, their eyes are closed, and they're literally driving the track thousands of times before it's real. They know each turn, each curve, when they shift gears, when they downshift, when they turn the wheel. They do it so often as when they're flying down that course at a couple hundred miles an hour, they're not thinking. They've already done it a thousand times. Hell, 30 years ago, even back when I was playing lacrosse, well, 35 years ago, playing lacrosse, they even had someone come in and teach us about visualization and how to do self-meditation in preparation for games. And what they taught us to do is visualize every step, every move that the other person would make. What I was going to do is a counteractive move so that when it happened real, my body kicked into autopilot.
So, visualization is having the ability to see the good in what you're trying to accomplish. When you're getting into your stretch zone, visualization is I don't want you to visualize the awful stuff. I don't want you to visualize all the fears that you have. I want visualization as visualizing all the good stuff. What's going to happen to you, your practice, your clients, your family? What's the outcome of reaching your objectives? What's the feelings that you have when you get to those objectives? What is everyone else is going to think of you when you get to those objectives? So, you have to visualize the parade after the race, not just the agony of getting prepared for the race.
Now, visualization also is about your dream board or your storyboard. And I know most of you know what the heck that is. The storyboard is you have all your goals and aspirations in pictorial form because 70% of us are visually based. So having pictures of what you want in life is very powerful and you have it up in your office. But how many of you actually put what your goals are on your refrigerator? How many of you put what your goals are pictorial in your car, on your refrigerator, on your mirror, in your bathroom, in the closet, walking into your, from your bedroom. You got to put up what your goals are everywhere. So, when you're walking around, you're constantly reminded that’s visualization also. So, it's just not having it in your head and visualizing it as a dream, but it’s also seeing it everywhere. Visualization is exceedingly powerful process.
Glenn Mattson:
If you look at professional athletes, you have tennis players, you have golfers, you have basketball players. I don't know if any of you play hoops or follow hoops. There used to be a person named Kobe Bryant. And Kobe, way back in his freshman year, he was really touted as the second coming. He was really expected to be something special, which obviously he was. But what made it interesting is Kobe's first championship game. I think it was a quarterfinals. And he missed three shots that if he made it, they would have moved on. And he didn't make any of the three. And they missed it by literally a couple of points. After the game, everyone's kind of walking off the area. And you can see Kobe sitting there with his head between his hands. He's just sitting there rocking back and forth. And the coach came over and goes, don't worry about it, kid. You'll be okay next time.
In essence, they were thinking that he was feeling bad about the misses. What was interesting is that when he was asked about it, he kind of looked at the reporter peculiarly and said, I wasn't spending any time trying to figure out that at all. What he was trying to figure out in his brain is exactly the reason he missed it so he can remember exactly what never to do again. He wasn't feeling bad about himself. What he was doing is micromanaging everything he did up to that shot to figure out why it missed so he would never do it again. Now, he also visualizes his games up front a lot if you ever heard any of his interviews.
So, visualization is a very, very powerful technique. So, you got to understand your why, so you understand what you're fighting for. Along with understanding your why is you got to understand what's going to be in front of you that's going to hold you back, which is your fears. And within that, you got to make sure you visualize not only the process but more importantly the results. What are the feelings you want to have? What do you want to see? What's the celebrations? What are you going to be doing or driving or whatever? What does it look like that gets us into our buddy systems?
Now a buddy system is, again, before you jump into the pool, you can't be in the water looking around for a buddy. Before you jump into the pool you got to go find your buddy. Remember when you were a kid in elementary school you had a buddy and you go to the cafeteria when it was time to eat? You grab your buddy, you walk down the hallway together. Maybe you're going outside for recess, right? You always brought your buddy out. You always had to make sure your buddy's coming back in so he wasn't left out in the woods, right? Make sure everyone got back in. You have fire alarms. Oh my gosh, everyone had to hold hands back in the day. Remember you hold hands to make sure everyone gets out? And of course, if you're walking the hallways and you’re in elementary school and a sixth grader walks by, you better know where your buddy is because back in the day, those people were huge.
So, we learned very early on a buddy system is important. It's important for protection, but it's also important for assistance. So, in a buddy system, what we want to take a look at is really two things. Those are peers and mentors. But there's a couple of rules to a buddy system. You can't have a buddy who you are convincing every single day to do their job. It's not what a buddy system is. A buddy system is you have like-minded people, like-minded commitment of people, like-minded individuals that want to have the same level of compassion, same level of commitment, same level of dedication as you do.
Because remember I told you that sometimes you're going to have doubt. Sometimes you're going to have fatigue. Sometimes you're going to sit there saying, what the hell am I doing this for? In those hours is when a buddy pops up. They're the ones that pull you through the mud sometimes. So, you cannot have a buddy where you're 99% in and they're 10% in. You and your buddy have to be 100 % in. So, when one of you waver 10%, the other one pulls you up in two seconds. So, a buddy's huge.
Glenn Mattson:
I don't know if you've ever been down to Maryland, but in the Inner Harbor, they used to have two or three restaurants. And one of them, I forgot the name of it, outside they had 50-gallon big wooden buckets, huge, almost like a... something you, you cook whiskey, you know, whiskey in or wine in, right. Big, big barrels, wooden barrels. And inside of there were blue claws. Now blue claw is a large, um, crab and they look blue underneath. And so, there's probably 50, 60, 70s blue claws inside this big bucket.
Now they don't have a top on it by the way. And the blue claws are not underneath by eight or nine inches. So, they can't get out. They're literally sitting on top. It's like sprinkles on top of a of a cupcake for goodness sakes. They’re just sitting right on top. And there's not one crab running around the hallways, not one. The reason being is that when you see a crab start to walk towards the edge of the container, and of course it ain't walking, it’s kind of doing his left to right thing right? Right before it goes off the edge right, right before it's free, right before it's jumping ship, one of his buddies will take his claw, bam! Grab them right in the tail, grab them right on the foot, and they keep them in. So, you don’t want a blue claw as your buddy. See, because whenever you're going in out, you want to stretch out, you want to get out of it, right? They pull you back in.
So, you want to make sure you have somebody who, when you have doubt, when you have, they're there for you. They're the kind of person when you wake up in the middle of the morning and say, you know what? I don't want to go to the gym today. You text your buddy or call him up and say, I'm not into it. You know, I'm just not feeling it today. I'm not feeling in the mood today. They look at you like, I don't care what you just said. I'm in your driveway. Get the hell your shorts on. Let's go. We’re going to the gym. So, they're the ones who quote unquote, don't listen to you. I hear what you’re saying, but I'm still coming over, right? I can hear what you're saying, but you're still going to make the dials. So, a peer of yours will pull you through.
Hell, I had a buddy of mine who had a lot of doubt. He was a triathlete and he looked like him. And he was working out with another one of my friends who does not look like a triathlete. I mean, hell he doesn't look like an athlete, never-mind a triathlete. But the reality is Paul has probably the most dedication I've ever met in my entire life with someone regarding sports. The guy is just built differently. And he’s the one that's done a lot of tries. Stephen, first time he's doing it, they had to go outside and it's freezing water out. They have life preservers on. He has, wants nothing to do with it. And Paul looks at him, knocks on his window and goes, what are you doing? Thinking about it is not going to make it better. Let's go. And Paul walked right onto the beach, walked right into the water and started swimming. I still remember Steven. He was on the phone with me. All he said before he hung up is thinking about it doesn't make it any easier. Click. It's true.
Hell, I even had one of my buddies when he's in the IT world. And his company got bought and sold. He was a walking unicorn. He had the unique ability of being exceedingly good specialist, but he was also amazing at communication. Asked the right questions. You could give information the right way. He was just gifted. And when a new company came in and bought out the other company, they were quote unquote doing evaluations to figure out the value of people. And he's just like, you know what? I'm too old for this. I'm done. I don't have to prove to people I'm worthy. It only took me 15 minutes or 20 minutes of asking the right questions to have him not necessarily get him through the grind. That's not the issue. The issue is I just needed to ask a few questions for him to remember who he was.
So, your buddies are the ones that will get you through the grind and your buddies are the ones that won't let you forget who you are. So, as we start to look at getting uncomfortable, realize before you jump in the pool, you better have your four things ready and solid. You got to know your why. You got to be ready to understand what your fears are going to be and own them. Understand how to visualize everything you're trying to accomplish and have pictures for it. And be prepared when you do get sideways that you have a buddy who's going to learn how to get you straight. Four keys that you need to have to get ready to jump into the uncomfortable stretch zone.
Next time when we talk, we're going to jump into how to deal with resistance and how to break resistance on the next episode of Building Blocks of Success.
So, until we talk, keep stretching, keep pushing, keep being uncomfortable. Talk to you soon.
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
