I’m not saying that as a playground taunt. It’s a serious question.

Because as much as you say you want change, you want more, you want to go after your dream, there is generally some kind of fear that prevents you from going after it. From taking the leap of faith.

You can do this, though. So many before you have. I have.

I had been saying I wanted to be a full-time coach for years. But I didn’t actually do it until I lost my job. I was too afraid of giving up the job that I had, until I no longer had it.

What is the fear that is getting in the way of you going after the thing you really want?

—Fear of not being liked
—Fear of being laughed at
—Fear of financial uncertainty
—Fear of something else?

Look at that fear. Is it real?

I’ve worked with so many leaders who say they fear “losing everything” or “being out on the streets” or “having all their good people leave.”

I have never talked to a single leader who has actually had any of those experiences, as real as the fear seems.

You will figure it out. You have always figured it out.

Whether that is starting a new job or company, or taking the one you have to the next level.

You can do this because you already have.

What do you want most in your life? In business, in relationships, in finances?

Why? What is it that you think you will get from having it?

Go into your mind and FEEL what you would get—the emotions, the sensations, the pure joy and gratitude.

You can have all of those things right now. If you actually did the thought experiment that I just gave you, you just had the experience of having that thing.

It is that experience that will bring the thing to you. Not the other way around.

Try it and you’ll see.

This isn’t magic—you will still need to do things in the world. But the experience of already having it will help you know what it is you need to do to actually get it. And who you need to be in the process.

Comment or DM me with a story you have of this already working. That time that something happened because you just knew it would.

Yes, this is backwards from what most of us were taught. But that’s why most people aren’t very good at getting what they want.

Actually, that’s incorrect.

You are the potential to create anything. That potential is not a thing—it is the creator of things.

“You” are the consciousness that is creating your experience of everything in your life.

“You” are pure consciousness itself—whatever it is that is looking through your eyes and thinking your thoughts, among other things.

If your results are different than you would like, how are you creating that?

If the people in your life are different than you would like, how are you creating that?

If you are different than you would like, how are you creating that?

You are the infinite power to create any experience of your life.

How are you using that power?

It’s my 58th birthday today. And I want to reflect on how vastly different my life is today versus just a few years ago.

When I turned 52, I was still living in Bethesda, Maryland. Exactly six months before, I had lost my job. I was thinking about both becoming a full time coach and moving across the country. I had a coach of my own, but no paying clients. We had looked at houses in Carbondale, a mountain town near Aspen. but were struggling to find something in our price range. My severance was about to run out.

Yes, there was a lot of uncertainty.

Six years later, we are settled in Carbondale, I have a full time executive coaching practice, I am making more money than I did at my corporate job, and my business is still growing and evolving.

A lot of people ask me how I did that.

In a very real sense, the answer is because I had to.

I consciously chose to move to an area where there was no fallback. There were times where we thought we might have to give up the house and move to an area where there were jobs that were more like my old one.

To say that I was feeling like a failure at that point is an understatement. It was bleak.

What kept me going? The determination to succeed no matter what. And there was more to do than I ever thought when I started.

I had a TON of conversations to completely reeducate my network. I had to figure out what coaching was, how I was going to do it, whom I was going to help.

I had to develop my craft as a coach. I had to develop the confidence that I could help people. I had to get over my fear of saying things that someone might not like, that might even provoke them, in the name of serving them.

I wrote hundreds if not thousands of blog and LinkedIn posts. I posted videos. I got transparent with my struggles and my insights along the way. I constantly looked for things that made me uncomfortable and did them.

Most of the conversations I had went nowhere. Most of the proposals that I made were not accepted. The vast majority of emails I sent went unanswered.

But I kept going. I kept learning. I chose to think of those things not as failures, but as information. I evolved. I stretched. I grew.

And slowly but steadily the business grew.

Every situation presented a choice—to quit or to adapt. I chose the latter, over and over again.

I chose to learn from the failures and keep going. And that has made the difference.

I was listening to a podcast interview yesterday about how entrepreneurs often do better than established companies because they are willing to try over and over again in the face of failure.

That definitely rang true for me

I’m assuming this isn’t your birthday (though I do have one old Hewitt friend who shares my birthday).

But whenever you hit a particularly important milestone, ask yourself—

Where have you failed and then given up?

And where have you learned and kept moving forward?