The Hidden Addiction Holding People Back

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross talks about the hidden pattern that keeps many people stuck: becoming comfortable with failure and avoiding risk.

Adam explains how fear and overthinking often stop people from taking chances, while others unknowingly sabotage their own progress by searching for proof that something won’t work. Instead of practicing new skills or committing to opportunities, they protect themselves by staying safe and never taking the risk that could actually move their life forward.

The conversation also explores the negative internal voice most people carry and how learning to recognize it can help you challenge your doubts, take smarter risks, and finally start making real progress.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So when we're talking about if you're at rock bottom and and taking a risk and whether knowing you should do it or not, is a telltale sign that maybe you should go for it. Is if you fail at what you're trying to do, your life won't change at all. Is that a way to say, like, okay, this is worth the risk to try it? Versus there are people in positions, let's say parents, if you have kids, maybe it's not always worth the risk because if you lose, you might lose your life. I do you understand what I'm trying to say? Is there kind of a formula to say whether we should go for it or not? Or should you always take that risk?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Your failure is fucking with you telling you not to do it and not to take the chance and not to take the leap, and now's not the right time because you're afraid. And so when you ask me that question all surrounding failure, is it worth it to do it or not? How will you know when to take a chance? The question is, you're never gonna take a chance because you're overthinking it. And a previous podcast I said, what's the worst that can happen? You don't make it, you fail, it doesn't change your, it doesn't move the needle, it doesn't change your life. So what? There are countless stories of how many times Henry Ford, you know, failed at making the Ford. Yet you're driving one. People are driving them today because he kept trying. The light bulb, he'd never said it was failure. Edison, he said, Well, uh, you know, I learned uh a hundred different ways not how not to make a light bulb. But he kept he kept trying, he kept failing, he kept trying because nothing changed. Change happens, and your life happens to grow or take a step forward because you took the chance. So here's what I can guarantee you if you don't take a chance and you worry about failure and you let that keep a lid on your life, you're gonna go nowhere. If you want to get somewhere, you gotta take a leap, you gotta try, you gotta take a chance. So take the chance. You might be surprised what's on the other side of winning instead of nothing changes when you fail.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

What if the worst is actually losing your house, possibly even losing possession of your children if you take that risk? Is that still worth it? Or is is there a line where maybe you shouldn't sometimes, or am I just that overthinker still?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

You can't gamble your life, your house, your family for a business opportunity to take a chance. That's a bad idea. But there has to be some sort of calculation, some sort of self-regulation that you have that you can determine what's a good risk and what's a bad risk. If I'm looking at it from uh something common today, I'm gonna start a meet a social media channel, I'm gonna do content. Well, the failure is nobody might fucking watch it. Nobody might engage with it, nobody might not like it or share it. So what? That's not a life or a life or death situation. If you came to me and said that you're gonna open up the next uh left-handed store only and put your house on the line and your kids on the line, I'm gonna tell you it's probably not a good idea. Watch The Simpsons, it's a failure. But there's this barometer that you have to have, and everybody's barometer is slightly different. What I'm trying to push you away from is everybody's, oh, your own barometer is gonna say, no, don't do that, don't try that, don't put yourself on social media, they're gonna laugh at you, they're gonna make fun of you. That's a risk worth taking. You might open up a new door and a new venture. It's you do you have the ability to look at, take inventory, and figure out what a good risk is? Do you have somebody you can bounce it off of if you're not sure? You have to be able to self-regulate when it comes to failure or taking a risk. You can't be addicted to failing. You have to be able to know what you're risking to make it a good bet. And that's the secret.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

What do you mean by addicted to failing?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

I think some people love the story or to play the victim role when they fail. They love to tell everybody their long stories about how they tried something, it didn't work out. Sales was tough for me, I couldn't make it work. Uh, I tried this, I tried that, and it didn't work. Or worse, you get trained on something brand new and you're so addicted to finding the fault in it that you don't put it, you don't put all your love and effort into it just so you can quick quickly say, I tried that, it doesn't work. I tried that, hey, stop telling me that it doesn't work. That's kind of like addicted to failure. It's like you're trying to find the evidence that it doesn't work. Rather than trying to create the situations and the framework to give it a chance to work. Everything fails if you suck at it, if you don't try and you don't buy in and you don't put any effort into it. You can fail at any relationship, any job, any new skill. You can talk yourself into being the worst skater that ever lived. Just don't try. Tell me it's too cold to skate. Or you can create a framework and kind of take small wins and measures as you're moving along to learn it and really try. One of the things that drives me crazy is that people don't practice new skills. They're given something. They buy an online course. It's my favorite. You buy a fucking online course, you pay$50 for it, and then you spend all of your time telling everybody it never worked. And I would say you probably tried what you learned in the online course three times tops. It didn't work. It maybe worked one out of the three times. The other two times are good enough to tell you that it didn't work. You are so addicted to failing and so addicted to negativity and the dopamine rush you've tra you've trained yourself to get from failing, that you look for every reason to make something not work or why it doesn't work. So you can tell as many people who will listen to you why it doesn't work. That's a sad existence because you can easily, what's drives me crazy is you can easily switch that to the positivity channel by telling everybody at work one time. So that's a small sample size. So if I try it 15, 20 times and I practice it and I get really good at saying or following the framework of this new course I brought, I can't wait to see what happens. The whole industry of sales training and online courses is a trap because they know you're never going to do it. And so you're gonna buy the updated course because we found new things you could do, a new way of doing it we didn't have in course number one. Just give us another 50 bucks because they know you won't action it. They're giving away knowledge, framework, and proven success because they know you won't follow it. Does that make any sense? What are you doing? Buy in, practice, and get better at it instead of looking for ways to shit talk it.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I'm sure you know a lot of people like you just described. I'm sure you also know a lot of people that use failure as data and keep going forward. For people listening, how does somebody become self-aware at which person they are?

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Well, if you pay attention to the words that are coming out of your mouth, you'll really, it won't take long for you to realize what team you're on. You're on the positive team or the negativity team. And most of you're on the negativity team, especially when it comes to yourself or anything new. So when you're trying a new course, you're trying a new skill, you look. You will train yourself to find the negatives and the ways to tell everybody it won't work. And you should be paying attention to the words that are coming out of your mouth. What's coming out of your mouth is what you think and feel about yourself. You just put it in the third person or blame it on another situation, but it's really your belief system about yourself. You all have, we all have, including me. I'm not an anomaly. I have a negative voice and a positive voice. I just got lucky to learn how to identify it, which I try to share with you that the loudest voice in your head is a negative voice. And when you can start calling that voice out and putting it on blast and not paying attention to it and switching to the positivity channel, you will then find other ways to make things work. You just don't, because the easiest, comfortable way to do things is to be negative and bring everything and everything around you down so you feel safe.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

When you say you got lucky that you have the ability to understand or know when that voice is talking, is it luck, or did you have to kind of build it up? And then were there steps that you took to recognize that?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Maybe luck's the wrong word. I would say I'm grateful for the negative voice in my head because I was able to figure it out, identify it, and then put it in a box. How did I do it? I got quiet. I've said this before. If you don't want to improve, you don't want to grow, continue letting all the noise in your life make up all the reasons and the excuses why you'll never reach A, B, or C. If you have the guts, and it's scary, but if you have the guts to actually get quiet, you will hear the negative stuff you say about yourself, your spouse, your job. And uh here's a really quick trick. If you really want to just set aside 20 minutes of your time alone and get out your phone and don't put it on social media and open up your notes section, and every thought that comes into your head without a filter, simply just write it out and spend the time putting everything that comes into your head, even if it's silly, you write it down and then really take the time to analyze it after the 20 minutes to a half an hour. If you can do it for an hour, you'll get great data points, and you'll be able to look at yourself and be like, wow, 80% of this is negative. And then I would say, how much of what you said that was negative is actually true? And then you would see that you really all have a quiet monologue. We all have this quiet monologue in our head that just pumps negativity from our surroundings, from the things we let into our own personal space, from the situations in our life. And we just let that feed negativity. It raises anxiety, it lowers self esteem, and it allows you to remain the same and never grow. And that's the biggest point that you should be hanging on to. You don't grow because you're allowing negativity to hold you back.