I read an article that said one in five CEOs are psychopaths. This is not a lesson in becoming a psychopath, but I did notice something that my competitors have in common with them. The top CEOs and my top competitors are absolutely shameless. Getting rid of shame allows you to go in a straight line towards your goal.
Unconscious shame often shows up as indifference, indecision, doubt, worry, over-caution, procrastination, lack of ambition, jealousy, lack of motivation, and in a myriad of other ways. Personally, I’ll start to get bored with a project and realize I’m hitting a wall because I’m uncomfortable with something about that project. Not because it’s unethical, but because it’s beyond my comfort zone.
Seeing someone else’s shame makes us feel our own, and most of us will distance ourselves from that person in order to not feel the same. An exception to this is if we’re full of shame, we might only associate with people who have shame. On the flip side, human beings are attracted to people with no shame.
If you have no shame and run a new ad campaign that bombs, you’ll learn something and try to do better next time. People with shame will quit because they can’t handle the uncomfortable feelings that happen from failure.
When somebody calls you a scam without knowing much about your business and what you do, it’s usually because they don’t believe in their own value. People who are secure will not hate on you; only insecure ones will. The things that we hate in other people are things that we are unable to accept within ourselves.
Every new level you ascend requires you to work around your inner demons. You’ll feel shame at every new stage, and you must learn to work through that. The bigger you get, the more practice you’ll have working through shame, and the easier it will be to recognize.
If you need a community to support you in building your online business, visit https://www.digitalnomad.com/Podcast/