How to Succeed by Giving Up

Today I'm going to show you how you can overcome any limiting belief by quitting.

But the kind of quitting I'm about to describe may be a bit different from what you have in mind right now.

What I'm talking about is strategic quitting.

By learning when you need to "let it go, and let it flow" you'll be able to overcome almost any overthinking-based obstacle you might encounter in your business-building journey.

If you don't, you're going to find yourself forever stuck, never achieving the hopes and dreams that you have for yourself.

If you want to pull yourself out of your endless, internal feedback loop and finally start making consistent progress toward your goals, keep reading.

Thinking does more to harm your business than it does to help it.

We all have times when we fall into the overthinking trap, but this seems to be a particular problem for those who are more introspective.

We believe the way to solve our problems is to:

• rationalize them

• think through them

• think of a plan and a process

• create the process

• work through the process

...and voila! Problem solved, right?

Yeah...we all know how well that generally works.

What we fail is in thinking that the problem is logical.

It's not.

It's almost always an emotional problem instead.

Despite what old-school psychology might have you believe, emotional problems are quite simple to solve.

But keep in mind that simple doesn't always mean easy.

And never has that been more true than here.

Below is a 5-step process for learning how to solve these emotional problems by quitting.

Or as it's better known - "letting go" or "surrender".

Step 1: Identify the Problem

To start, determine what it is that's stopping you or holding you back from making progress.

It's important here that you identify a very specific problem. We're not zoomed out here. Instead, we want to identify where you are, what the very next step is in the process, and what exactly is preventing you from taking the next step.

Using myself as an example, my progress in building my brand and my business stopped dead-cold due to my inability to sit down and write in a format that I would consider to be newsletter-worthy.

Twitter? No problem.

LinkedIn? Easy.

But anything longer than about 1,500 characters has proven to be a huge problem for me.

(There are other roadblocks on my path, but they're further up the road. A key piece of this process is to ignore everything except the one roadblock that's right in front of you.)

Once you've identified the immediate roadblock, it's time to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Visualize the Problem and Identify the Fear

Despite what the next three steps look like, this is actually the most challenging one.

Most of us don't even like to admit that we're afraid, much less go looking for fear and pointing it out once we find it.

But if you want to move forward, you have to. You must.

This is the decision point. Do you want to build an online business or not?

I'm sure you've said at some point in the past that you'll "do whatever it takes to succeed".

But will you?

This is how you find out.

Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for 5-15 minutes. Find a comfortable place to sit, close your eyes, and allow yourself to relax.

At this point, imagine yourself a few steps back from the obstacle. Imagine or visualize yourself getting things done - right up to the roadblock.

Once you hit the roadblock, you'll almost certainly FEEL something - most likely in your gut.

Stop here. Let yourself feel this feeling, even though it's uncomfortable. Remember, you can open your eyes and walk away from this at any time. You aren't stuck here.

Just remember if you do, you'll likely never get past this obstacle, and your business building dreams will stay stuck in neutral.

Still with me then? Good, let's continue...

Sit with that feeling for a moment. What does it feel like?

For the vast majority of people I've talked with and worked with over the past 25 years, it's simply...

...fear.

For now, you don't need to determine what the fear is, or what it's about. (We'll do that in the next step.) For now, just confirm that this discomfort you're feeling is in fact, some sort of fear at some level.

When you've clearly identified this feeling as some type of fear, you can open your eyes.

(By the way, I recommend that you complete this entire process in a single session. You can break it up, but doing so can leave you feeling less than ideal, and reduces much of the power of the process.)

With the problem identified as a "fear", we can move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Have a Conversation With Your Fear

With one exception, Steps 3 and 4 should be done consecutively in the same visualization. We'll talk about that exception at the beginning of Step 4.

For Step 3, you'll once again want to find a comfortable place to sit or lie down, where you won't be disturbed for about 10 minutes or so.

Once settled in, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a place where you feel happy, relaxed, comfortable and at ease - a place where you really feel like you're in your element.

Once there, imagine a couple of places to sit. This can be a park bench, a couple of lunge chair, a sofa - anything the process a couple of places where you can sit and have a conversation...

...because that's exactly what we're going to do.

Once you've imagined being at your comfortable location, with a couple of places to sit, recall that feeling of fear you had. Let yourself (briefly) feel it once again.

Once you feel it, I'd like you to invite that fear to take some sort of physical form, and come have a seat with you, so you can talk.

Note: it's important here that you invite the fear to show up in a physical form that is non-threatening to you. I usually ask mine to show up in a three-dimensional physical form, with no other features other than the ability to talk. It may help to remind your fear that it is a part of you, and that any attempt to harm you, also harms itself.

If you're unable to do this; if the fear is too big, too scary, too overwhelming for you, I highly recommend that you stop right here, and look for a Clinical Hypnotherapist or Psychologist who can help you work through things. Mental health is no joke, and while I am a Certifed Clinical Hypnotherapist with an undergrad degree in Psychology, there is no replacement for a professional who can work one-on-one with you to navigate these types of challenges.

(I'm of the strong belief that everyone should have a trained certified or licensed mental health professional available to them for regular conversations, but that's a newsletter for another day.)

Onward...

Visualize the fear, in physical form, sitting down with you.

Thank the fear for having the courage and the trust to sit down with you and have a conversation.

Let the fear know that the two of you are not adversaries. In fact, you want to thank the fear for doing what it feels is best - trying to protect you.

Acknowledge the fear. Let it know that you see it, hear it, feel it, and appreciate it for what it's trying to do.

With this acknowledgement, it is likely that your fear will be comfortable enough to share more details with you.

At this point, calmly and quietly invite the fear to tell you more about itself. Ask it gently - what is it that you are trying to protect me from?

(The wording here matters. If you ask you're fear what it's afraid of, the response will likely veer off into anxiety and irrationality. Instead, be very clear about asking the fear what it's trying to protect you from. You're much more likely to get a clear, useful answer this way.)

If you don't get a clear, useful answer on the first try, don't despair! There are two important points to keep in mind here:

1. Like most things in life, this is a skill that can be developed and improved with time. In other words, the more you do this, the more effective and better you'll get at it.

2. If you don't get a clear answer at first, don't get frustrated. Instead, think of this conversation with your fear as if you were having a conversation with your closest friend who is having a tough time at the moment. Would you be patient with them? Would you give them space to figure out what they're trying to say? Would you give them encouragement and support? Do all of those things here, with your fear, and eventually, you will get to the root of the problem.

Once your fear has identified what it's trying to protect you from, you can proceed to Step 4.

Step 4: Make Peace With Your Fear

Once your fear has identified what it's trying to protect you from, you have an incredibly valuable piece of insight about, not just the obstacle your facing, but about yourself and how you operate in the world.

This is a big deal, with potentially big ramifications for your life.

Because of this, your fear deserves a great deal of thanks.

It worked to protect you (even if that work was misguided) and when asked, it told you what you needed to know to move beyond it.

So thank it. Genuinely and profusely. This is important because (believe it or not) this won't be the last time fear prevents you from moving forward. So make sure to treat this representation of your current fear with the kindness and respect it deserves.

Once you've done this, you can reassure your fear that it's been heard, and that it don't have to carry this burden any longer. Now that the fear has made you aware, you will take it on at a conscious level and work through a solution.

With that, the representation of your fear can get up and leave the scene.

And with that, you can open your eyes.

Step 5: Let It Go

You now know what specific fear is holding you back from making progress.

Great. Now what?

This will depend largely on whether or not the fear is a practical problem that legitimately needs to be dealt with, or if the fear is more of a mental construct or a "theoretical" problem.

An example of the first item would be, "my next step is to build a website and set up my mailing list software, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to afford it".

That's a practical problem that requires a practical solution, like taking on a part-time job, or doing some driving for Uber.

But the key part is, you're now aware of the exact fear at a conscious level. By knowing exactly what the problem is, you can construct a solution.

The second type of fear, the theoretical one, requires a very different type of solution.

(In my experience, I have found that well over 90% of people's biggest fears fall into this second category - theoretical fears that aren't an immediate problem, and in fact, likely never will become an acute problem. They are - by definition - theoretical.

To resolve these types of fears, I'm going to propose a radical solution.

Give up. Quit. Stop trying to fight them.

Now don't worry. I'm not suggesting that you give up and walk away from your actual work.

Instead, I'm going to walk you through one last visualization.

This one should take 5-10 minutes.

Find a comfortable spot again (or use the same one if you're doing this all at once) and close your eyes.

Imagine or visualize this problem. Bring it to the forefront, imagine it sitting there in front of you, blocking your progress.

And then...

...let it go.

You can have some fun with this if you'd like.

Allowing it to begin to dissolve, to disintegrate, to vanish and to fade away works extremely well.

But so does using heavy winds to blow it away, or (my favorite) having a big cartoon foot come in to stomp on it works just as well.

Find the type of "removal" that works best for you, and repeat it several times.

Once you've done that, let the image go, and see how you feel.

Ideally, that feeling in the pit of your stomach is gone.

If a remnant of it is still there, continue to imagine letting it go, gently in the breeze, through a tidal wave of water, whatever works best for you, then check in with yourself again.

By "quitting" your fear, by feeling it, communicating with it, identifying it, and letting it go, you'll feel the pull of progress begin to build up in you, moving you past the former obstacle, and on to bigger and better things.

If you give this a try, let me know how it goes for you. It's one of the most effective tools for removing blocks that I've ever used, and I hope it works every bit as well for you as it has for me.