How I Broke the Start & Stop Cycle: 4 Easy Steps

If you’ve been going to church, reading your bible, praying and fasting, but still asking, “Why can’t I move forward?” this episode is for you!

The steps I share will help you break patterns you've struggled with for years, overcome self-sabotage, and align your beliefs with God’s plan for your life.

If you are a faithful Christian, but feel stuck in a start–stop cycle, you MUST watch!

We talk candidly about childhood beliefs, trauma, people-pleasing, and how your inner world shapes your outer world. 

You’ll learn my simple 4-step framework—Catch, Challenge, Collect, Conform— to spot confirmation bias, challenge the story that has put the breaks on your success for so long.

This is practical discipleship for believers who want lasting change: less shame, more clarity, and momentum with God

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:00)
Hey guys, welcome to the I Am The Possible Podcast Experience. This is the place where possibilities become perspective. Welcome once again into the space and into the place this day. Whenever you're listening, whenever you're watching, I want to welcome you into the I Am The Possible universe. I want to first off thank you so much for just being who you are.

for showing up once again, for joining once again, for listening, for watching, for supporting this platform and all that it stands for. I wanna acknowledge you just as you are, no additives, no preservatives, right? Just you, just as you are in the present moment with any failures or flaws, with anything that you might even consider good or positive, right? ⁓ I just wanna thank you and I wanna celebrate you.

just as you are, and not have to add anything to you and not have to subtract anything from you. I just think that's really important for us to continue to pause and to acknowledge that we are God's creation, we are God's workmanship, we are good. God said that he looked over everything that he created and it was good. So I just want you to hear that right out the gate. You are good and I celebrate your goodness.

So guys, today I want to talk about, and this episode is tailored toward, as many of these episodes will continue to be tailored toward, ⁓ those of us who are carrying some sort of baggage or block, some sort of underlining and undermining ⁓ challenge to the idea and the goal, the dream.

the ambition, the promise, however you name it, however you frame it, that God's given you. In other words, let me just make it simple. God's whispered something in your ear. God's placed something in your heart. It's a business. It's an idea. It's a product. It's a service. It's a ministry. It's something that is in your heart.

You desire to bring it to past. You desire to create it. You desire to see it flourish. You want to be a part of it. It might be a cause. It might be a non-profit.

There's something that you feel called to, connected to, but there's something that you're unaware of that continues to get in the way, to trip you up, to undermine the progress of that thing. Now, before I go into this, right, if that sounds like you, you're going in some sort of cycle that you can't seem to get out of. You take two steps forward and three steps back.

You make a little progress, but then somehow you just sabotage yourself. You're climbing up the mountain, but at some point you stop, you rest, and you just go back down before ever reaching the top. I'm just throwing out some analogies and some examples to just help you to understand whether or not this episode is for you. But if you're in that space, if you're in that place where you desire to create and bring something to pass, to just...

just to do something for God, to do something for the kingdom, to do something that you feel that you should be doing, but somehow some way you just keep finding a way not to do it, then I want to come alongside more and more with intention to assist you to share stories out of my own life, to share strategies and tools, things that I've learned over time that may assist you, that may offer some insight into what you may be dealing with.

so that you can make the kind of progress that you desire to make. All right, that sound good? So if that's you, then this is for you today. So today, I wanna talk about something very, very specific. And that is something called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, the best way and the easiest way that I can explain it without getting too technical.

Too esoteric, too weird, too deep. Just to keep it a book. It's a process in the mind, in the brain.

that continues to draw attention to things in the world that confirm what you already believe. The mind is set up in a way that it wants to continue to point out to you evidence of what you already believe. And in just a moment, I'm gonna get into more specifically how this is undermining

the dream, the goal, the vision, the thing that God has entrusted you with. It's fascinating. This is why I'm so dedicated and I'm so committed to this, this what I would consider a beautiful merge, a beautiful combination, a beautiful synchronization, I can get my words out, right? But you guys know what I'm talking about. This beautiful synergy of theology and psychology. It's a beautiful marriage.

One is not better than the other. And one, in my opinion, doesn't override the other. Like, you can't just have all theology, just all God, all Bible, and no awareness of how you work within. And you can't have all, you know, knowledge about psychology, right? Just how the brain works, the mind works, the nervous system works, ⁓ emotional intelligence, Intrapersonal communication. You can't just all be about what's within.

without the spiritual component. I think the two are to be married. But what I don't see is enough creators and enough Christians really zeroing in, really targeting this marriage. And I think it's because that's a part of my assignment. That's a part of the work that I've been given to do. Because I see so many Christians struggling with wanting to do something great, having an idea.

and then finding a way to fail, wanting to launch out, finding a way to stay stuck, to shrink back, to give themselves some excuse why it's not gonna work for them, right? Finding ways to fail, as I like to put it. And so with that being said, let's get into this. This concept of this confirmation bias and how it can undermine, how it can truly trip you up as a Christian looking to do things for God.

So confirmation bias basically says that, hey, I'm going to find in every circumstance and situation evidence of what I already believe. So let's just say, for example, one of your beliefs is ⁓ that you are a failure. Let's just call that your belief. As a child, things happened to you, things were said to you, done to you.

that formed that belief. As a child, you did not have the cognitive skill sets, you did not have the cognitive capacity to rightfully interpret the events and the experiences that you were a part of. And so all you had was your emotions and those emotions were triggered within you and they were stamped in the brain.

and it told you, they said this, they did this, I felt this, so I believe this, right? In a nutshell, without getting too deep into it. So as a child, over time, you've developed belief systems, beliefs about you, beliefs about others, beliefs about God. And those have been your beliefs and they'll continue to be your beliefs until they're challenged, until they are... ⁓

until there's a more powerful, more influential ⁓ belief that overrides them or you experience something traumatic enough or powerful enough or transformative enough to directly challenge and directly, in a sense, void that current belief. So until that happens, unless we're consciously challenging those beliefs, unless something dramatic happens that, you know, tells you otherwise,

then you'll just continue to hold on to those beliefs. So that's the setup. You have a belief that ⁓ you're a failure for whatever reason, again, things that happened in the past. So now you're walking around life as a failure in your own mind. Others may not see you that way. God certainly doesn't see you that way, but none of those things matter. All that matters is the way that you see yourself, right? So you see yourself as a failure. So for example, you go into a situation, let's say,

And I'm just giving you an example to kind of paint a picture here. ⁓ You believe that you're a failure. And so you, ⁓ for some reason, let's say some friends were gonna go on, let's say a 10K run, right? They're gonna do a 10K this weekend. And ⁓ you guys, hey, let's get together as a group. Let's do this 10K. And our goal, our goal is to finish this 10K in, let's say, an hour, right?

So you all line up, you all at the 10K, boom, you head out the gate, you go. And so as you're running, you're a few miles out and the clock is ticking. you know, it's starting to get closer and closer and closer to that hour. And finally it hits the hour and you go over your hour, but you cross that finish line.

Your confirmation of bias, it's not going to look for the fact that you signed up for something that you normally wouldn't do. It's not going to point out the fact that you were courageous enough to line up on the starting line. It's not going to care anything about the fact that you crossed the finish line. It's not going to care anything about the fact that you gave it your best.

It's not going to care about the fact that other people behind you took twice as long to do what you just did. You know what it's going to do? It's going to point out the fact that you failed to finish that 10K in an hour. It's going to look for the evidence. It's going to weed out. It's going to filter out anything that says anything good about that moment. It's going to filter out anything.

that says that you're a winner for just signing up. You're a winner for following through and completing it. You're a winner because you went through it and you did it. Was it under the time that you desired, that the group desired? No. In fact, maybe you didn't even make up that time. Maybe somebody else in the group made up that time and you're not even a runner. it doesn't even really apply to you, but you were going along with it and you signed up for it.

And now the results come in and all you can focus on is I failed. I failed at getting across the line in an hour. Now that's more of a extreme example where all you see is that. Another example could be you feel pretty good about yourself, right? You're like, ⁓ man, I did it. I finished. But then you use that word, but.

Yeah, I finished it. Yeah, high five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did it. did it. Man, but I didn't finish it in 60 minutes. I didn't finish it in an hour. It's like halfway acknowledging the good. It's like halfway acknowledging that you made progress, but still making sure that you include the fact that, yep, I have to prove that I'm a failure. That's one example of many.

Another example that might even be a better example is let's say you have the idea that, you know, ⁓ people are mean. And again, you name it, you frame it, you put it into your context. I'm just off the cuff in a conversation forum just coming up with stuff off the dome, right? This is not pre-planned. I like to just talk to you. ⁓ But let's say you feel like everybody is bad. People are bad.

People are out to get you for some reason, maybe as a child. People abused you like me. They betrayed you, backstabbed you like me, let you down, disappointed you like me, took you for granted like me, took advantage of you like me. That's a part of my story, right? And so that for me was easily a part of my story. People are gonna let me down. They're gonna disappoint me. ⁓ They're gonna backstab me at some point.

they're going to take advantage of me at some point. And I can't tell you how many business deals have fallen through for me, how many times I've started to partner with somebody and backed out. I can't tell you how many programs I've started and stopped or completed on my own when I should have been completing it as a group because I had this underlining confirmation bias to the idea that people are going to fail me. And so what happened was I found any little thing.

any little thing to point to. They say, see, they didn't communicate the way I wanted them to. They're about to betray me. Let me back out. ⁓ they didn't say that the way I wanted them to say that. See, it's about to happen again. Let me back out before they abuse me. Let me back out before they take advantage of me. I cannot tell you how many times this happened to me, whether it's been on LinkedIn, whether it's been just business meetings, business calls, even in ministry, right?

It's like you and somebody else, you guys want to do ministry together and you start this thing. And for me, the minute I saw anything that felt like even looked like somebody was going to get over on me, I was out of there. So I've had a long, long history of backing out of things and finding a way to disconnect, finding a way to not answer the phone call, finding ways to not reply to the text message.

finding so many ways not to answer the email because I felt like something they did or said either was at that time or was about to be another example of someone taking advantage of me. Right? And that was all because as a child, so many people took advantage of me. I was abused sexually, psychologically for sure, mentally. ⁓

And, you know, I mean, even financially, I mean, people stole things from me and robbed me and did different things over time. So ⁓ I've been through a lot. And so I've learned to not trust people as much as maybe I could or should. And so I just wanted to share that with you just to let you know that I've, you know, I've been there and done that. Right. So ⁓ I totally get it how this how this all works. Let's just say, for example, back to my example, and then I'll start breaking this down.

You don't believe people are good, that they're out to get you. People are mean. And so you get invited to a party, right? You go into a party and let's say, I don't know, there's 30 people in the party and 28 of them are, hey, how you doing? Welcome to the party. Hey, what's your name? What's good? Hey, what's going on? And then there's like two people out of the 30.

There's 28 people that's like, yo, what's good? What's happening? Hey, welcome to the party. Two people are in the corner, for whatever reason, not happy. Maybe they just lost their jobs or maybe they just got into an argument. You don't even know why they look the way they look. Maybe they're tired. But your cognitive, or not cognitive, well, it is cognitive, but your confirmation bias.

looks beyond those 28 people, it filters out the 28 welcoming people and it zero-ins on those two people, zeroes in on those two people that look grumpy and you say, ⁓ okay, see, people ain't, nah, I gotta go. See, they look shady. I knew people wasn't right. Yeah, 28 other examples of people welcoming you in, but you zero in on the two and you.

confirm your bias, your pre-existing belief. So, hopefully those examples made enough sense to kind of get us to the point where now I can make the connection between how that's undermining or how that could be, it could be undermining the things that you want to do for God. And let me just say one last thing before I do that. I'm going to continue to break down concepts like this.

One, because I find it fascinating, but two, more than anything, I find it absolutely necessary that we as Christians begin to understand these things and integrate these things into our overall theology, our overall way of doing life in and through Christ. Okay? Because God gave us a physical brain and a mind and a nervous system and emotions.

and a inner world in which to a large degree dictates and produces the outer world.

Okay, so let's break this down. How do we connect the confirmation bias, the thing that God's given you to do, and how it's undermining really you moving forward and being able to give yourself the green light to pursue those things?

When you have a confirmation bias, the mind is set on what it already believes. Many times when God gives us an assignment, it represents something that is new.

The mind is looking for what it already knows, what it already thinks, what it already believes. And here's God giving you something new. The new thing is not the old thing that we already believe. So if God says to you,

You who believe that you are a failure, I need you to start a business. Can you already start to see how I'm going to look for ways through my confirmation bias for evidence that I'm going to fail, evidence that I'm failing, evidence that I'm a failure. The things that God calls us to, he wants us to succeed in.

And I know we go to church, we read our Bibles, we have small group studies and et cetera, et cetera, that tell us walk by faith, not by sight. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean into God, give it to God. Let Jesus take the wheel. Let go and let God. We have all of these things which are all good.

But that's a very surface level cliche or affirmation or idea. What you're dealing with and what I was dealing with and what we all deal with when it comes to these confirmation biases, this is foundational to our inner world. This is bricks laid, cemented. If we don't go beyond the surface, we're not going to be able to override or to overcome.

these biases, God's gonna say, hey, I want you to launch out on that business. I want you to go and do that thing. Go in the strength that I've given you, even as I'm reminded of Gideon, right? The angel of the Lord came to Gideon and said, Gideon, you mighty warrior, this is what I'm gonna need for you to do. Gideon began to talk about all of his smallness.

I am the weakest of my clan. My clan is weak and I'm the weakest of the weak. There's no way I can do this. God wanted Gideon to become someone that would lead the people. He was in a wine press threshing wheat. He was failing at being what God was already calling him. And now he's face to face with this angel of the Lord and the angel is calling him something.

He's not saying, Gideon. He's saying mighty warrior. He's addressing him for what he is. Again, side note, why the what, what is so important? It's what you are, your function. That's where your value is. It's not in your name. All right, there's a lot of Donalds in the world. If I said, hey, Donald's coming over for dinner, you wouldn't care. If I said Donald Trump, our president is coming over for dinner, it's a whole different go-

a whole different ball game, whether you like them or dislike them. That's not what I'm getting into. I'm just saying that it's the title. It's the what you are that begins to change things. you who believe that you are a failure, God is saying, launch out for this business. If you are not aware that you have this bias about being a failure, then you can continue to undermine

You can continue to fail. You can continue to shrink back. You can continue to not do the thing that God's calling you to do and not be aware of why. This is the cycle continuing. This is the two steps forward, three steps back. This is why am I still stuck? This is what's going on. I'm going to church. I'm praying. I'm reading my Bibles. I'm going to small groups. I'm meditating. I'm fasting. What's going on? This is why I'm so passionate about this because this is the missing link. These little concepts.

about the inner world. What's going on within me is what's creating without me, right? It's the what's in is creating what is without, right? What is within is creating what is without. The outside of me, the life that I see on the outside is being created first and formulated first by what is within me. And many of us as Christians, we've not been taught, number one, what's going on on the inside, but number two, which is even more deadly,

We've not been taught to value even knowing what's going on on the inside. There's a whole world within you that you don't even know about. And then on top of that, you've never been told that it was valuable for you to understand it. So there's a whole like other half of you, 50 % of you that you're not even aware of, that you're not really in a healthy relationship with.

This is why this platform is built on the just the idea, the concept. Build a better relationship with yourself. Create a better life for yourself. The better you can relate with yourself, the better you can create for yourself and those around you. So the inside, that's the mind, the brain, the nervous system, the emotions. That's the inside stuff. So you can have this great assignment by God.

want to do great things for God, have a desire and a passion to do great things for God, and you can continue to always want, but never do it. Desire, but never do it. Think about it, kind of prepare, kind of plan, tell everybody about it, but never get around to actually doing it. Why? Because this is one of many that I'll be breaking down over time, one mental process that could totally be undermining.

the very thing that you want to see. Because your mind, although God's given you something new to do, right? A new thing he wants to do with you. A new life, a new family lineage, a new financial position, a new ministry, a new product, a new idea. This is why Myles Monroe talks about the graveyard being the richest place in the world. Because many dreams go there. I think this is my conviction.

I think one of the reasons for us as Christians why many of us go to the grave holding precious, precious visions, ideas, ⁓ products that were meant to be created and brought to the marketplace. I believe that we take so much to the grave because we do not understand the inner self, the inner world. We've not been given permission to understand it. We've not...

It's not been made popular in the church. It's not been preached and teached. I'm making my own word, teached in the church. And it's not that the church is bad. I just think the church just doesn't know. It's been made afraid because it's woo woo. It's esoteric. It's new age. It's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, it ain't none of those things. What it is, it's you. You are a person with an inner world.

Every preacher has an inner world. Every deacon has an inner world. Every prophetist has an inner world. Every evangelist has an inner world. We can pretend like it's not there. We can over-spiritualize it. We can do all of this other weird stuff. But the truth is, you and I, Christians, we wake up, non-Christians as well, but I'm speaking to my Christian audience this morning, or this afternoon, or this evening, whenever you're watching it, you have an inner life, an inner world.

that you don't currently understand. And what I have witnessed within the church, and this is not bashing the church, church is fine, church is doing its job. But God's given people like me an assignment as a part of the church to bring some awareness to this particular area. It's my soapbox, it's my passion, just like that person's soapbox or that person's passion is something else.

Mine's not better than theirs, theirs is not better than mine. Let me just make that super, super clear, right? I've been taught, don't worry about what I'm against. What am I for? I'm for Christians becoming more and more aware of what's going on within them so that they can take that theology, take those scriptures and actually make them, we're not making it, but.

Take those scriptures and actually see them come alive. Actually realize them. Have those Moses moments. Have those moments where the miraculous happens because we're able to navigate.

and not be tripped up and sabotaged by cognitive processes that we're just unaware of.

Does that make sense? The mind wants to find, identify, point out, magnify, prove that what you already believe is what you should continue to believe. And here comes God saying, I'm doing a new thing in you. And the mind says, I don't want what's new. I want what's familiar.

I don't want what's new. I want what I already know, what I already believe, what I've already seen, what I've already felt. Because even though those things keep you stuck, they're familiar. You're used to them. Even though they're painful and stressful, you know how to navigate that pain. You know how to navigate that stress.

You know how to medicate. You know how to numb it. You know how to ignore it. Just enough to function. And many of us, sadly, many of us, we are functioning. We're getting by. We're doing just enough to keep our heads above water. Spiritually. Emotionally.

And we've learned to believe that that's normal. We've learned to believe that that's okay. We've learned to believe that that's our lot in life. We've learned to believe that that's the cross that we bear. When the truth is, God has more, wants more for you, and God made the mind, made the nervous system, made the emotions for your s***.

service, to be of service to you as you serve others. And what's happened is we've religious-fied a lot of this stuff out of our church and out of our church circles and out of our Christian conversations so that we can continue to be so spiritual and not be very competent, not be very knowledgeable, not be very healthy.

when it comes to understanding and relating to ourselves. I hope and pray that that makes sense. So what do we do? What do we do? I've got some things here that I wanna just read a things that I wanted to share. And then I wanna give you some simple steps here, okay? Confirmation bias, when the mind only listens to what it already believes. ⁓

We're only listening to what we already believe.

That's all right.

So what happens when we are given something by God and we just continue to find ourselves starting and stopping? Well, I wanna give you four things. The first thing is I want you to practice this awareness by doing these four things, all right? I've got them on my screen and ⁓ I'll put them down in the show notes for you to refer to later on, okay? Number one.

Catch the story, okay? It's called catch, challenge, collect, okay? Catch, challenge, collect, and then I want you to ⁓ conform, okay? So those are my four that I have for you. Number one, catch the story. So there's always gonna be an underlining story. And whenever you say, okay, I'm gonna...

launch the business, you sit down at your computer and let's say you're looking for a domain name, let's just say. And the first one that you type in, you don't find it. Or, I'm sorry, someone's already taken it, right? So you can't use it. The underlining story kicks in. Yep, you're a failure. See, they already got your name. When the story kicks in, I want you to collect that, I mean, I want you to catch that story.

90 % of this is just awareness. Catch that story. Listen to what you're saying to yourself. Like pause. Whenever there is a pause in your progress, pause within and say, wait a minute, what's the story? What is this story that I'm telling myself? ⁓ I'm a failure. And right now, because I don't see the domain that I want being available, I'm a failure.

and this is not going to work. You caught that story. Now I want you to challenge that story. Is that story true? Or could it be that the initial name that you wanted is just taken and maybe you can just come up with a new one? See how simple that is? It's not that you're a failure. It's not that it's not going to work. If it's already been taken,

But God's given you the core idea. Maybe the thing shouldn't be named what you thought it should have been named. Or maybe there is a version of it. So let's say for example you wanted to create, ⁓ I'm looking over here at my Beats headphones, you wanted to do Beats.com. And somebody already took Beats.com. Well, get creative. Put my in front of it. MyBeats.com.

that one's available. Move on. See, but the story tells you that the confirmation bias wants to point out, ⁓ see, you had a dope name. You were so married to that name and somebody already took it. See evidence. You're going to fail. Go ahead and wrap it up. Shrink back. No, no, that's no. How about I just try something different? Apply that however you need to apply that.

but I think you get the essence of what I'm saying. Number two, challenge it. Challenge that story with some truth, right? Bring in your identity in Christ, one of which is I'm more than a conqueror. Sometimes we just gotta like dig in, as they say, 10 toes down. Bring in what God says about you. Fearfully, wonderfully made, made in the image and likeness of God, God's workmanship, God's masterpiece, right?

made a little lower than the angels, right? What is man that you are mindful of him? Right, come on, guys, let's do this thing, Bring in your identity versus this, ⁓ trying to find the right word to say. Bring in your identity versus this indictment, okay? Because, you know, I'm a preacher, right? So I've got to bring in my words that start with the same letter, right? So not identity.

It's you know, know or not not the indictment. It's the identity Anyway, that's that's a poor as a poor preacher ⁓ example, but you get my heart right? ⁓ Yeah, man The indictment is ⁓ you're a failure. See here's the evidence No, it's not true. My identity is i'm i'm god's child god's creation god's contribution i'm created in purpose to succeed

Right? The other day I was coming home from church with my wife. hit, we're coming down the street and you know, we're just driving along, driving along. We see some cop cars a little further down, but we're just driving along. We are not aware of what we're driving into. We get a little closer and then we see it. The whole street is blocked off. We got detours. They have a car show. Well, are we going to still get home? Yeah. Do we have to take a different street? Yeah. But we're still getting home.

I just needed to take a detour. So guys, when you're challenged in the pursuit of your purpose and dreams and potential in Christ, just take the detour, man. Just be open to taking a detour. Everything doesn't mean stop. Everything doesn't mean retreat. Everything doesn't mean give up. Some of it just means take a different route, try a new path, do something different, do something new. You've heard it a million times to the person that wants to have something new, they got to do something new, right?

What they say, ⁓ you know, in order to get what you've never had, you've got to do what you've never done, right? Something to that effect. That's it. Take the detour. All right? So you're going to catch the story. You're going to challenge that story with your identity. Number three, you're going to collect some new evidence, right? Collect. Collect some new evidence, right? This is...

Everyone has testimonies and let me just show you this is so precious right here man. This dog going journal is it's the real deal. I didn't want to go into this but I'll just go ahead and mention it. Journaling is so important because it takes record of what has happened, what God's done, especially by dates. If you get into journaling, I got into it several years ago. My mentor got me into it because I wasn't someone who journal but my mentor kept.

advising me to and it's been a blessing. I've gone through so many journals, but I'm just taking note of what God does or says over time and I want you to collect the evidence man. Like take out a journal if you don't have a journal a piece of paper and I want you to go back to the day that you were saved and I want you to just recall three just three. You I know you got more but just three.

Three times when God did something that you didn't expect, it blessed you. Something good, a good outcome. You didn't have money, but the neighbor came over and gave you ⁓ dinner. Or you didn't have money for dinner, but a neighbor came over and gave you dinner. So the need was met. You didn't have money for your light bill. That's certainly me at one point. ⁓

But you went to church and someone walked up and said, hey, I feel like God's telling me to give you this check. And it was just enough to go pay your bill, right? Whatever it is for you, man, write down those testimonies. If you can, remember the dates. Remember where you were. Make it as vivid as you possibly can. Write your testimony out. Remember what God's already done. Why? You're collecting the evidence that what you are about to do is possible because you have evidence that what you once thought wasn't possible.

became possible. Sometimes you've got to remember how far God's brought you. Sometimes you've got to go back, recall ⁓ and remember, right? Bring into your remembrance what God has already done. This is the new evidence. You are now connecting and collecting new evidence because your confirmation bias wants to focus on

⁓ drawing your attention to any little thing that can confirm what you believe. But how you counterbalance that is, okay, yeah, you've already captured that story. You're already challenging it with who you and what you are in Christ that gives you permission to go forward with confidence and faith. And now you're piling on the goodness of God by recalling what he's already done.

See, you're dealing with what you already believe. You're combating that with what God's already done. So yeah, I believe I'm a failure, but the truth is, in Christ, I'm a winner. And here's where, and here's why, right? It's not relying on my strength and my grace and my mercy and my power. It's the grace, the mercy, the power, and just the goodness of God that is operating in my life that makes it so that regardless of what they ever said or did to me that I called

and created as evidence of who and what I thought I was. Look at what God has done in spite of that, which proves to me that I'm what God says I am, not what my experience is, not what my environment say that I am. Hope and pray that that makes sense. And then number four, I want you to conform. Okay? I want you to conform to progress. Conform to it, right? I want you to...

Bring it all together and I want you to, without thinking too much, literally take the next step. Like just take the next step. Let me give you a story real quick. Man, man, I don't wanna make this a long story, but I'm in the process of renewing the I Am The Possible trademark. Years ago, I got the trademark. And if you know anything about

registering for a trademark, ⁓ my gosh. ⁓ my goodness. It is so cryptic. It is so wordy. is so the website, the process, it would discourage anybody. That's why I think so many lawyers and these law firms that handle trademark and patents are making a killing ⁓ because the process is expensive and so much of it is so

cryptic and so hard to understand that I believe that most people throw their hands up and say, I'll give it to a lawyer. Okay. But nevertheless, your boy, ⁓ just cause I believe in myself and I believe, you know, a lot of this stuff that I'm, I'm teaching you right now, I've gone through enough of it where I get on the website and say, no, this thing right here works pretty well. I can learn this and I can understand this and I could discern whether or not I need a lawyer or not. And I just, I never felt like I needed one. So I read through it.

I click, submit it, did all the process, did all the process. So this is years ago and I secured the I am the possible trademark. I secured it. No problem. Boom. They issued it. Well, little did I know, maybe I just didn't read the fine print once I actually got it. They said every so many years they're going to send a email that's going to pretty much say I need to do a few things to just keep it going. It's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just

part of the process. Well, don't you know it, I missed that email and I didn't do what I needed to do to keep it going. And so it got what they call abandoned. And so when it got abandoned, it just went into a ⁓ closed status. Not that someone else took it or they sold it off, it just kind of went into a dormant position, but it wasn't alive. It wasn't ⁓ on record.

as being a current live working trademark. So when I got wind of that, I wanted to re-register. So I re-registered. And so when I re-registered, we're talking about a whole new cryptic website, a whole new cryptic process and, you know, X, Y, and Z. So I went through all of that. And then just the other day, I'm sitting in prayer. Don't you know it? Spirit of God says,

check your email, something about your trademark. I wasn't thinking nothing about no trademark. To this moment, I still don't understand why my mind, well, I just told you. The spirit reminded me, look at your trademark, okay? So I look at it, I look at my email, I find trademark for whatever, again, for whatever reason. I find it and it says, it's pending my action. They haven't approved it. ⁓

This is me resubmitting it for renewal. It says pending ⁓ applicant's action. And I'm like, okay, what do I need to do? I submitted it, I'm waiting on you guys. So I thought, well, the truth is back on August 28th, they sent another email to me this time saying there's two companies. One is called I'm Possible. It's a nonprofit.

for those with cancer and some other ⁓ medical issues. And then there's another one called, I am possible, I am possible, something to that effect. And that's like a sports, like a youth sports camp for playing basketball. So one is for, you know, physical needs, ⁓ cancer, you know, health.

Another one is for youth sports. Neither one is for me. Like I'm for motivational speaking, content creation, coaching, speaking services. But what they said was that I am the possible is too close. The names are too similar. So right now the lawyer for the trademark company that's been assigned to my case wants to refuse my application. That's what they want to do. But they're saying I'll give you a chance to

like submit information to us, evidence to us that will allow us to reconsider refusing it. So basically convince us why we shouldn't refuse your trademark. I think 99 % of people would back off at that point because it's so cryptic. Like you're like, well, what can I say? What should I do? How do I get around this? Well, without going all the way into it, cause I've already made this short story long already.

⁓ I pretty much stood on the basis that you've already pre-approved it, that you've already approved it before. These companies that you're mentioning, they were already existing as well. If it was approved before, it can be approved again. And there's no evidence that any of us have been in conflict. I've not lost business because of their names. Their businesses have not lost business because of my name. There's no problem.

We can all coexist. We're not stepping on each other's toes. There's no conflict of interest. And that was pretty much my write-up and what I submitted. Why do I share that? I share that because the conformity was back to step number four. There were some check boxes and there was some submit here and don't submit here and don't backspace here and don't enter your name. It was so many little itty-ditty

details that would scare you because the language on the website is saying if you do it wrong everything could be erased if you do it wrong you could miss out on your ability to to resubmit it's very fear-based and if you read it wrong you can do the wrong thing and you'll never get your trademark approved well what I meant by conforming to progress I read it I didn't overthink it I clicked what made sense

and I hit the submit button and the screen came up and it said submission successful. Next steps. You'll be hearing from us in a couple of days on whether or not we're gonna move forward, blah, blah, blah. And so now I wait. Why did I share all of that? I didn't have to know that it was gonna work out. I still don't know if they're going to approve it or not. Would I know?

is that I'm not gonna stop. What I know is that I don't quit. What I know is that if God gives it to me, only God can take it away. Only God can take it away. So I conform to the progress. I conform to the potential. I conform to the possibilities. You see? Only God can take away what God gives you. No man can take this from me.

I Am The Possible was given to me and trusted to me. So I will continue in this path. This will continue to be the I Am The Possible podcast experience. My clothing line will continue to say I Am The Possible. My website, I Am The Possible. My social media handles, I Am The Possible. My email addresses, I Am The Possible. Everything that I create, it will continue to be what it is because I am committed to conforming to the path.

to the progress, to the potential, to the possibilities.

10 toes down. I'm being what I'm.

encouraging you to be.

I believe that's the greatest thing that I can be is the example.

I won't continue to go any further into that. That's just what it is. So let me summarize again, one of many, many, many cognitive processes, the one that we talked about today, confirmation bias. Please look it up, Google it, chat GPT it, read a book on it, do something, read more into it. You deep dive, you collect more information about it.

You understand it for yourself what's going on here and what's going on here. But again, in summary, you have beliefs that have been built over time and your mind is structured for survival, not for thriving. It wants to survive, not thrive. The brain wants to keep you alive, right? In the most efficient way possible.

And sometimes when God says, this thing, the mind says that's dangerous. That's scary. That's the unknown. That's unfamiliar. And anything that is scary, unknown, unfamiliar, the brain doesn't know how to, the mind doesn't know how to separate. That's God's ⁓ amazing ⁓ plan for your life versus that's a dog that's about to attack. Fear is fear.

The unknown is the unknown, right? The mystery is the mystery. But through awareness, you can step back and say, hey, God wants me to do something great for his kingdom. ⁓ I'm a God-fearing person. I want to do great things. I want to contribute to society. So therefore, because I understand that I've got this thing called this bias, this confirmation bias, perhaps that's at work. So no.

self. This is not danger. This is not imminent danger. I'm not going to die doing this. I'm not going to be, you know, ripped to shreds. This is not danger. You can calm down. I can give myself permission to proceed. And by doing that, having that awareness and that, competence with relating to yourself, see how further you can go in life, see how you can get over some of these stumbling blocks, because now you're operating from a position of,

a position of understanding and you're not going through the cycle and you're not taking two steps forward and then three steps back anymore. So by default, you've got beliefs, you wanna hold on to those beliefs so the mind helps you by identifying evidence, evidence to prove what you already believe to be true. God comes with a vision, a goal, a dream, a product, something.

that he's called you to do that appears to be dangerous. The mind says, won't do that because that's unfamiliar. That does not confirm what I already believe. So now you have this moment where you can now institute the very things that I just shared with you. You can take those four steps and you can get better and better at better at navigating in and through those challenges. All right.

Yeah, yep. That's it, all right? I've spoken long enough. I hope and pray that you grab hold of it, all right? I'm praying for your best. I desire your best. I desire your possible, right? I'm praying for your possible, yeah. All right, guys, that's it. This has been another episode of the I Am The Possible Podcast.

Experience the place where possibilities become perspective.