The One Belief That Almost Destroyed My Comeback

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross talks about the belief that quietly held him back for years: the idea that he wasn’t good enough.

After losing everything—including his reputation—Adam found himself stuck waiting for someone else to believe in him before he could believe in himself. He shares what it’s like to rebuild when your confidence is gone, when people around you question whether you can start again, and when your own mind keeps reminding you of past failures.

The conversation explores the dangers of relying on outside validation, the impact of the people and environments you surround yourself with, and how learning to spend time alone can force you to confront the story you’re telling yourself.

Adam also explains how his relationship with failure has changed—from something he once feared to something he now sees as a necessary part of growth—and why learning to forgive yourself is often the first step toward moving forward again.

Socials:

IG: @adamross_online
TikTok: @adamross_online
LinkedIn: Adam Ross

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Fuck It Chip Podcast. I'm Adam, joined by Jay, the producer as always. And Jay, you're going to hit me off with a question to get things started.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Adam, what belief kept you motivated for a long time before you understood it was actually preventing growth? And what woke you up to it?

SPEAKER_01 0:17

You probably believe when you're going through something that's not rolling in your favor, you believe you're not good enough. I think during that time, during rebuilding, uh, I really did believe that I wasn't good enough. And it was it was a loud voice in my head, probably like the one you have now, that constantly pops up and tells you, you shouldn't try that. It won't work. You can't do that yet. Now's not the good time. You're not ready. And that belief that I had at the beginning that driving in my car, going to a job interview, trying to rebuild, trying to get put food on the quote unquote table for my family was always that I wasn't good enough. I'd already lost everything before. Who's going to believe in me? And if someone else won't believe in me, and this is very important, if someone else won't believe in me, why should I believe in myself? And you got to flip that script completely. When I started to figure it out or rebuild, I had to realize that I needed to believe in myself. And so in that question, when you said, like, what was the belief or what did I have in my head? I believed that I wasn't good enough. And until, and I needed someone to tell me that I was good enough. And that's a huge trap. It comes from childhood where you want your parents to tell you that you're good. You want your teachers to say good things about you. You want your sports teams to think you're the best, and you need that validation. And when you hit rock bottom and shit's not going your way and everything slides sideways, it's you that has to do the work. It's you that has to pick it up. It's you that has to believe. In our company, we talk a lot about how important it is believe, we believe, because everything outside of your world will tell you that it's not going to happen, that it's not going to work. It doesn't work out for guys like you, Jay. And if you buy into that and you listen to that, it'll become your everyday way of life. It'll be the only thing that you accept and you'll move through life looking for proof or examples that you don't measure up. And this world right now is full of examples that you don't measure up to somebody on social media. You don't have the same wealth or income as someone else that you're watching, viewing. And you got to cut that shit out. You'll never get there by buying into the belief that you're not good enough. You only get there by getting quiet and taking time to believe new thoughts, new feelings, new things about yourself and look for the good inside you to grow you, or you never get to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

When you talk about the work that you had to do to start believing in yourself, do you have any specific examples of some things you might have done to kind of flip that script to start the belief?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah, you know, to be honest, I had to burn it all down. That means old friends have to go. That means old relationships and situations have to change. You cannot grow. You're the sum of the five people that you hang out with, you spend your most time to and listen to, or watch whatever you're feeding into your system. And if you let the negativity be part of the reason they keep you down, or stop you and say, hey, you know, I had people say to me, hey, you slow down. You know, you lost everything. You lost the business. You can't just do it again. You should probably just forget about that idea. You should probably just go get a job. You'll never be successful again. You had your shot. What a sad way to live life. And yet you're doing it right now. People do it every day. They look for validation or somewhere in their circle to tell them not to try. And that is one of the things that I had to break away from. I had to get quiet. I had to stop listening to everybody, and I had to basically be alone. And I suck at being alone. That is not, I've never been good at being alone until that moment in my life where I had to make changes. I had to grow. And the only way to do that was to go through a long season of tilling up the soil, putting new soil down and planting new seeds and waiting for that to grow.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So talking about the circle that you had yourself in with your friends and whatnot, is do you feel like it might may have changed a little bit and flipped the script again now to today, where a lot of people's circles are digital? Is that good or bad for these young kids? I see a lot of young kids who don't socialize as much as I say I would, maybe you would, so-called networking in quotes. Should those kids get out? Is it okay to have a digital circle? How does how does all that work? Because I know I learn a lot from digitally YouTube podcasts and whatnot, but should we also be seeking uh personal kind of relationships with people as well?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, your digital circle is not killing you, but it's also holding you back. I see this a lot with young people. I see it in my own kids. I've got one that's very digital, has a digital network of friends. If it wasn't for school, going to see those friends, I don't know how much social interaction or outside world he would enjoy. Where I have another son who is very much in the middle. He has some social, some social skills, or he has social skills part of meaning. He prefers that, but he also has a digital circle. So look, everything's good in moderation. And that is the thing that we get completely, you know, painted with all the time that it's too much of one thing, it's too much of the other. You have to make that choice for yourself. If you're living in a completely digital world, it's not reality and it's probably not healthy. You do need to get out, meet people, see people. When I hire somebody new in a company that's young, the very first thing I watch them struggle with is they very find it very difficult to communicate without texting. If you're talking to somebody that's in their 50s or 60s and text is the communication you choose because you're so digital and so comfortable digitally, probably don't do a lot of business because you still need to be able to communicate with those who are older than you who choose to meet, talk, be on the telephone. And I think that um there's so much pressure to pull children off screens. There's so much pressure to, you know, a screen time and screen time calculators and how much is too much and how what's happening to their eyesight because they're always looking at a screen. And I can see some of those real world effects in my own family, but we all also have to realize that digital is not going anywhere. So I would preach balance. I would talk about, and I'm terrible at it. We are we struggle with it in our in our home. Balance is very difficult in today's day and age, and the digital circle and friends, and now you have that trap of the digital person that you're speaking to may not be the person that you really think he or she is, and how emotionally and mentally that can hurt you when you discover that it's not the person you thought they were. So it's all in moderation, Jay. It's all about teaching our kids and us as well, being mindful of if we're saying don't be on your screens and we're on our screens, it's a mixed message for children. If you're finding yourself spending hours and hours, seven, ten hours a day on your screen, and it's it's probably not healthy for you. It's not helping your brain think outside of whatever you're feeding it. And I've told you this before what you're consuming nine times out of ten is a dopamine hit that's negative and you're not even paying attention to it. When you're on the phone in your social circle and who you're communicating with, your guard is down because it's not face-to-face. It's not a real interaction. And that's the trap.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

So I think the cool thing about this podcast is we like to get sidetracked a lot from the original questions and have nowhere idea where it's going to go. And so to bring this back to the original question, can I ask something kind of personal? Sure. So the reason why I want to ask this is because I think if people can relate to a situation, they can understand it more clearly and they can understand that things can change. Do you know why you didn't believe in yourself?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Why didn't I believe in myself? Well, I think I had first hand experience of failure. So that was that was kind of reinforcing me, or the reinforcement I had that I I didn't measure up, I wasn't good enough, I couldn't keep it together, I lost everything. I had, I said to somebody once before, and we were having this conversation, I said, How would you react if you lost your name? You can lose your bank account, you can lose relationships, you can lose friendships, you can lose monetary items, but if you lost your name. And what I mean by that is I lost my reputation. I lost when somebody said my name, something negative was slapped on it right away. You lose that ability to have pride in your name, that takes a long time to get that back. And that's it's a really tough road. And if you're going through that now, I feel for you because it's lonely. And I said that to that that person, you know, would you be able to, are you willing to, it's a game, right? Would you will you be willing to lose absolutely everything you have in your life right now, your car, place you live, your friends, your family, your bank account, and your last name. You no longer nobody knows you. If they do speak of you, it's it's ill-willed intended. Would you be able to get up every day? Would you be able to rebuild every day? Would you be able to chase it? I can tell you firsthand there's days you don't feel like doing anything. You're lucky if you get out of bed. But I can encourage you that you're more than your name and you need to spend time earning it back, and that's okay. But I was it was reinforced to me because I lost everything. There was nothing good to believe about me until I had to learn and start doing things, doing good things to earn that back. And I had people who love me and tell me that it's okay and it's gonna be all right. But when you're in that moment, it does not feel all right. And if you could function and really rebuild at any age your name and your then your family, then your resources in today's day and age, then you actually really accomplish something.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

You mentioned that failure was the driving force that made you not believe in yourself. But I, from knowing you now, I could very well say that failure now has a different definition than it did back then. How would you have defined it back then versus defining what failure is now?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Well, see, now I chase failure because I have a level of success. Now I'm willing to try things that won't work out. I'm not so guarded, I'm willing to roll the dice. But when you have fucking nothing, you need that thing you're gonna go chase. It feels you have a desperation that it has to hit. And that's a that's holding you back. If I could only have what I have today, mindset-wise, kill the negative voice and be able to just go out there full guns, blazing, and be positive, I probably would have rebuilt a lot faster. But I get where you're at when you're struggling right now and you're in this situation, you feel like nothing's gonna work out. So when you say, what's the different definition of failure now? Today, it's for me, failure is a chance that I took to make to grow. Back then, failure was a chance or the failure I was afraid of is because I had to hit it. I had to make it. Now I've rebuilt it, I've made it again. And so now failure becomes something that I'm almost in love with. I want to, I'm people, I want to do what I've taught you to do. Write down all the things that would be a 100% failure if I rolled a dice on this, put a line down the page, and do all the opposite to make sure that it doesn't fail. But I didn't think like that back then. I was praying that I was gonna make it, I was gonna do this one thing that was gonna level me up just a little bit so I could get out of the hole I was in. But now I have a love affair with failure. I want, I don't want to fail, but I'm also not afraid of it like I used to be because I realized that failure is growth. And had I not gone through all of that, I would have never realized that the failure that I experienced would be something now, 10, 12 years later, that I'm so grateful for. It didn't humble me, it changed me, and it helped me grow.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

So I think we'll end the podcast on this question. For somebody who's listening right now, who doesn't believe in them themselves, let's say because they've had so many failures, give them one piece of advice that they can start with today going forward to flip that script.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

First of all, I know where you are, because I've been I've been there, and I wish somebody had told me that the failure is acceptable. Because once you come at come to peace with whatever it is you've done that you failed at, that's only when real growth starts. If you're always hanging on to it. And I hung on to mine for probably four or five years until somebody challenged me to let it go. And I was a messed up person for four or five years. I looked like I was doing every doing well, but in reality, alone at home, I had a really tough time with, and I relive the failure over and over and over again. So if the one piece of advice I could give you right now, if you're going through it, is cut the shit, accept the fact that it failed, pack it up, figure out what you're gonna learn from it, and move forward. The sooner you can learn to forgive yourself and say it out loud, that you forgive yourself for the failure, the sooner you can journal it, write it down, and burn it ceremoniously that it's over, the better off you'll grow. And I didn't do that for four years, man. I wasted so much time. So if I can encourage you to stop wasting time and forgive yourself for the failure, you'll be able to start the growth a lot faster. That's gonna do it for this episode of the Fuck It Shift Podcast. Thanks, Jay, as always. Until next time.