Episode 12 - The Fear of Success

Raising Your Thermostat: Overcoming the Fear of Success

Episode Overview

In this episode, Dr. Jonathan Wade and Joel Malin, LPC/LMHC explore a rarely discussed but highly destructive entrepreneurial obstacle: The Fear of Success. While most business owners focus heavily on avoiding failure, this discussion unpacks the way we self-sabotage, procrastinate, and battle imposter syndrome when things actually start going right. Through deeply personal identity stories, they break down the psychological and spiritual adjustments required to sustain high-level growth.

📈 Weekly Wins & Losses

Joel Malin

• The Win: Celebrating his very first Father's Day. Joel shared a touching realization at church watching his three-month-old son, Gideon, mirror his parent's calm, smiling expressions to regulate his own fear of the loud environment.
• The Loss / Phase Change: Learning to manage a rapid new pace. With a high volume of new opportunities pulling his brain in "ten different directions at once," Joel is focusing on utilizing fitness and healthy coping mechanisms to stay anchored.

Dr. Jonathan Wade

• The Win: Successfully listing, booking, and receiving a five-star review for their third short-term rental property, bringing immense peace of mind to his wife, Candace.
• The Loss / Learning: Transitioning from "finding time" to actively making time. After finally cleaning out the dusty home gym, Jonathan's focus is building the immediate discipline to work out right when getting home rather than sitting down to recount the day.

🧠 Core Themes & Key Takeaways

1. The Firehose Effect: When Success Brings Sovereign Pressure

Jonathan shares a transparent look back at his direct primary care practice in 2020. After steadily growing to a stable 500-patient baseline, they absorbed a massive local employer with 1,000 employees overnight.

• The Reality Shock: The massive dopamine hit of landing a major client was instantly followed by the stark reality of immense responsibility and localized visibility.
• The Reaction: Fearing the spotlight and questioning if the scale was sustainable led to subconscious procrastination—an effort to "kick the can down the road" to avoid the immediate weight of the spotlight.

2. The 90% Done Sabotage

Joel highlights a classic psychological trap: self-sabotaging right on the precipice of crossing your major threshold.

• Looking back at his early mental health career, the grueling timeline toward licensure and the crushing disconnect of working in fast-paced inpatient hospitals caused him to heavily question his path.
• The Solution: It takes radical humility to lean on an outside anchor. A dedicated clinical supervisor stepped into Joel's life, listened to his fears, helped pivot his environment, and provided the outside belief necessary to push past the final 10% hump.

3. Relational Drift & The "Upper Limit Problem"

Success inevitably introduces friction to our existing environments, a concept known as the Upper Limit Problem.

• The Thermostat Metaphor: Everyone possesses an internal "thermostat" dictating how much joy, wealth, or success they feel entitled to experience—often programmed by our family of origin or hometown.
• Breaking the Ceiling: As first-generation degree holders who advanced past their childhood economic baseline, Joel and his brother Steven had to intentionally reset their internal thermostats to overcome residual guilt and discomfort with their achievements.

🛑 The Reality of Outgrowing Status Quo "There is a relational drift where you realize: 'Crap, I don’t fit in with the people I’m used to fitting in with.' If someone is threatened by your success or wants to impede it, they are not a good friend. Don't let other people set your internal thermostat." — Joel Malin

4. Incremental Identity: Faking It Until You Become It

Jonathan counters imposter syndrome by framing business maturity as an incremental progression.

• You cannot always expect to feel fully equipped for the room you are stepping into.
• By executing consistently and handling challenges "one bite of the elephant at a time," you organically grow into the leader capable of managing what used to terrify you.

🎯 Mindset Anchors & Quotes

"Your nervous system will take the hell it understands over the peace it doesn't."

• On Growth: "If I just eat this elephant one bite at a time, I can become that person. I can be in the rooms I want to be in." — Dr. Jonathan Wade
• On Alignment: "I need to be intimately aware of what my motivation is... Is this a selfish choice, or is this a humble choice to be a better father, a better husband, or a better impact on people's lives?" — Joel Malin
• On Divine Perspective: In the same way an infant blindly fights a parent who is actively trying to feed or change them, our resistance to painful life trials often blinds us to the ways we are being shaped for the next level.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hey everybody, welcome back to the next episode of the Longburn Podcast. This is Dr. Jonathan Wade.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

This is Joel Mallon. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hey, Joel. All right. So on today's podcast, kind of gonna hit you with something different. We're gonna do a little two-part series here. Um the first one is gonna be the fear of success, kind of taking a different approach as to maybe uh what normal entrepreneurs, anybody else typically thinks where we worry about failure or not making it. And and this is a a different way of the way we self-sabotage or can get in our own heads uh when it looks like things may be going well or are already going well. And then we'll follow that up with a part two um uh a topic more about kind of how how you sustain that um uh avoidance, overcoming of that fear. Uh so it should be a really good show, a little different. Um I'm pumped about it. I think we both have some some identity stories here that we've been through and and and can talk from a first person standpoint about these topics. Uh but before we get into that, let's do wins and losses. So, Joel, what are you doing? Wins and losses. Yeah, here we need a theme song.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Wins and losses. When uh so this what this past Sunday was the first uh Father's Day. So this was my first Father's Day. Um we were able to go to church that morning. Gideon came with us, and he was hilarious because he's not used to loud noises yet, and church music's kind of loud sometimes, and his face was absolutely hilarious. But I thought it was so interesting how you mirror an emotion to a child and that normalizes the experience to them. So the whole time we were just smiling at him and acting like everything was okay, and the next thing you knew, he was smiling and laughing too. And so it's man, don't you wish it was that easy as an adult? Someone just smiles at you like, Jonathan, everything's gonna be okay. Like, wow, okay. You know, like, man, I wish that still worked as an adult. That's a heck of a lot harder when you got a lot of facts that are staring you in the face. But um, overall, that was a it was a good day, good experience. So that was a win. Um, as far as a loss and everything, um, I don't have anything specific on a loss. It's just a lot of it's just um just learning to manage the new pace of everything. Um, just a lot of irons in the fire and a lot of opportunities and possibilities and stuff like that. And it just makes my brain feel like it's in 10 different places at once. Um, obviously, we talk about that on this podcast. So I am trying to cope with it in my own way through fitness and and healthy coping mechanisms most of the time, you know. So um, yeah, not really a loss, just a phase change or something like that. And I think that's normal. Absolutely. I don't know, that's wonderful. How about you? Wins and losses for dirty Dr. Wade.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, man. I I think uh from a win perspective, we got our our third short-term rental listed and booked, had our first guests uh over the weekend, five-star review, can't complain about that. It's always kind of trepidation when you get the first folks in there to make sure everything's working right and the internet doesn't shut down or, you know, I don't know, whatever. The lights actually work. So that was that was good and reassuring. Uh makes Candace feel at ease when all that goes well. Um, and then I think from a lost learning perspective, I'm I'm kind of like you. It's it's it's actually a little bit difficult right now. Things are going well, which is great. Um, but I do think we have got when you talk about working out, we have got our home gym ready to go. Uh and so I think the learning is going to be actually making time, not finding, making time when I get home to immediately hit the gym, not sit down, not take a break, not recount the day, but just just do it, as they would say. And and so I can start to work on the the physical component of of improving my day.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Uh just a word of advice. Don't put a beer fridge in your home gym. Like that's a bad idea. Just keep that somewhere else in the house, or don't keep them in there, you know, find a different way to avoid that.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

It's a it's no fee in receipts in there either. Yeah, it's not good.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

I mean, 12-ounce curls are a thing, but it just doesn't get you where you want to be. That's right. So those aren't the goals. Stay away from that.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Do you see in your gym? It's a lovely museum. It is, it's collecting the equipment. Right, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

You could hang clothes all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So usually it's just a bunch of cats in there.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

No, no, we've got rid of the cats. Cats are gone. That was the cleanup process. We're up, yes, we're we're we're done running an animal shelter for cats that roam into our yard. So that's good.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Now it's just feral kids running around the house.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah, yeah, that's always fun too. So all right, where do you want to start with this? Do you want to you want to kind of lead off with the the fear of success, or you mean to kind of uh you know picked the topic for this week.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

So I mean, I'd love to hear what's your perspective on how is this a valid perspective or a valid way of thinking when it comes to managing a business or pursuing a goal or something like that. You know, kind of if if you're cool with it, talk about when did this first come up with you and uh or for you and what was that like?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I I I think probably six years ago or so, um, when when the tides of direct primary care here in South Georgia started started to grab hold. We had a lot of interest from families and businesses, and and we signed on a big local boat company. Um, I kind of I kind of got a little antsy and and nervous. And and again, not because I thought that, man, this practice isn't gonna work. We'd had several years under our belt, we'd grown to 500 patients, things were were looking pretty good for a small practice. And uh and then absorbing a thousand patients kind of overnight at the beginning of 2020, um I started to kind of see the writing on the wall and go, oh crap, we're we're building something um really, really good and something that is sustainable uh at these numbers. Um and so you know, I I I found myself afraid of what building that practice that quickly, that large was gonna be. The the increased responsibility to patients, to the employers, uh increased visibility. Um people kind of take notice uh locally and and and and within the the DPC space of a practice that is is thriving and doing well. Um, you know, and and so I I think then the sustainability we have to do right by these businesses, right by these patients, so that they can benefit from what we do and and and love what we do, kind of do that water cooler talk to get people interested. Uh in year one, this is a good example. In year one, we started out with about 88% of the employees out at Chaparral Boats, and and at the renewal, we jumped to 94. So I I think we were doing the right thing, but it was the process of of getting there to have a a sustainable kind of situation um that really kind of kept me up at night and and created issues. So, you know, I I found myself procrastinating, self-sabotaging, doing kind of things to get get in my own way um to almost kick the can down the road of those those increased fears that I was talking about.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

So I was there in 2020, I was working there with you and everything, and I remember um that that was a concerning factor for you. And I think as far as the idea of fearing success with that, I think sometimes that we have the fear that we start something and then we kind of peak too early. Like, what if this success is the last big success that I have? You know, I almost don't want to have that right now. You know, I'd like to maybe slow things down and have that down the road. But you can't put opportunity on your timeline. It's got to be something where you're able to respond when it's available because, you know, there's no guarantee it's gonna be available later on. And there's what different ways to look at it. Say, well, if the timing didn't work, well, maybe it wasn't meant to be. And that's a way of letting it go. But it's also that fear of like, I don't want to think that this is as good as it can get already, you know, because that in itself is kind of scary. Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

No, I I agree. I mean, I I think the the the dopamine rush from from a large employer signing on board was was fantastic. Um, but then the reality sets in. It it is not an easy task to onboard a thousand people trying to take care of acute things before you get them in for the new patient visit. Um, and so there were a lot of bells and whistles, and and we've we've got a great staff, and and they've been with us uh uh since you know, since that that that bringing on of the large employer. So, you know, they helped tremendously with that then, as well as kind of the the growth and whatnot we've had to now. But um yeah, it it it's super um maybe a downfall after the the dopamine hit, you know, when when reality set in and we had just it was like, man, I'm not sure if I want to sign on a bigger business, or or maybe these bigger employers are not all they're cooked up to be. And and it sounds good on paper and it looks good on a bank account, but you know, I the mom and pop places uh are are a lot easier to to onboard and and deal with versus kind of drinking from a fire hose is what it felt like a lot of 2020.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Well, and that's that's the hard part is like when you remain small, and whether you're small and succeed still succeeding on a small level or small and even struggling, um, there's not a spotlight involved. And so like nobody is observing or or in the audience of your failure, so to speak. But when you try to do something big and you become more embedded in the community, because I mean, at like what's the population there in Barry and County? Like, what 10,000? Am I being low with that estimate?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Uh is it bigger than that? Probably bigger than that for county, but yeah, I mean, I think that's a it's a three-traffic light town. There we go.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Right. And so, I mean, but if you're thinking about like the population of Nashville, I mean, you would I mean, I don't even know what the numbers are, but servicing 15% of the community? Yeah, I mean, is that certainly the largest employer?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, I mean, you know, by far the largest employer.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

So that means that now everybody knows who you are, right? And so if something goes wrong, everybody's gonna find out about it because people like to talk and people also like to give bad reviews instead of good reviews. And you know, all those things, it makes you uh it it it forces you kind of suddenly into the spotlight. Um, and then it's also does the infrastructure support growth at this speed? You know, and those are all very real concerns, you know. Um, but it goes back to your your analogy of building the parachute as you go, and I and I got to observe you doing all that and kind of having to manage your fears along the way. Um, a way that I would say that I've experienced that fear of succeeding is this is way back before I started my master's program in counseling, I think it was about 2012, 2013, and trying to think about okay, what's this gonna look like? How much of a time commitment is this? Um, what's it gonna require? And I'll be honest, when I got started, it was way more involved than I realized. Like dummy me, ignorant me, like idealistic me, didn't realize that going into mental health was going into healthcare and you have to deal with insurance and everything else. Um, and I didn't realize that if if someone is starting, you know, their school to uh the school, a master's program for counseling, I mean, you're looking at six years almost before you're fully licensed and doing the work that maybe you actually want to be doing. Uh counseling is definitely one of those fields where fields where people have the mentality of you have to pay your dues, quote unquote, uh, where you do have to work unpaid as an intern, you do have to take, you know, community mental health jobs that put you really, you know, kind of in the trenches with some of those exposures to things. Um, but something I didn't realize at the time was how isolating that it could be of that, you know, there's people that if you see them as clients, even if you have a great personal connection with them, you know, you're not allowed to have an ongoing personal connect, personal relationship with them. And so it can be very lonely and isolating. And then when you are in public, if you're a therapist, I'm sure it's the same the idea of Jonathan versus Dr. Wade. You know, if you go out to a bar and you get schmammered on a Friday night and everybody in town sees that, they're like, well, don't go to him. He's the drunk in town, you know. So you're like, now I have to manage this persona, along with also, you know, riding along with this success and everything else. And it's like, holy crap, like these are like multiple levels that I'm gonna have to consider.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

And so like you get to the point that you I remember I was um there, there's this thing, it's it's the 90% done sabotage. So the thing I was mentioning about, you know, how success can isolate you from people, it's called relational drift. That maybe your success puts you in a different income bracket. And then maybe the people that knew you from your hometown are like, oh, you think you're better than all of us now, don't you, hoss? You know, like just kind of silly stereotypical stuff, but people do respond that way because they they see success and maybe they're jealous, or they see you having a higher level of operating and think you're you know, highfalutin or hoity toity or whatever you want to say. It's all my Tennessee words coming out right now. But there's a relational drift there where you realize, like, crap, I don't fit in with the people I'm used to fitting in, or the things they talk about is things that I just can't connect to anymore. Like I just don't have interest in, you know, talking about sports over the weekend or anything like that. And some people maintain that, but I just don't have time to focus on that. And I remember getting to the point, you know, that this is called they call it the 90% done sabotage. Like you're at that point, you're about to cross the threshold, you're about to do the thing you've been planning to do, and you're afraid to finish that last little piece, you know. And I remember um there was a time where I was so just disenfranchised by working in an inpatient hospital and seeing how people were treated at times, and just the the revolving door of the average day was anywhere from three to five days. And by the time you actually get to know somebody, remember their name, they're gone. And that was so hard for me to feel like I was doing something meaningful because I'm like, I don't even know who these people are because this is so fast. Right. And and I realized I had to realize that that was not the environment that I would thrive in. But I remember at that point, I was like, you know, I don't even know if I still want to do therapy or be a therapist. And I had a um a supervisor and um trying to get her to come on the podcast. Uh, I know she's very busy, but I had a clinical supervisor um that didn't know me from anybody else in the world and um had like a two-hour phone call with me, um, just listening to my fears and my concerns and my worry about stuff. And actually, she helped me to get hired on in a different facility that had better practices and um really just helped me to believe back in myself and what I started doing and helped me to get over that hump. And I mean, she was my clinical supervisor all the way through to licensure and everything else. And um, I do think that having somebody, sometimes somebody you don't expect, who can, you know, pop out of the woodwork and be that extra push that you need, I think that's so helpful in actually kind of closing the deal on something you started maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, whatever it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Well, I I don't think we give ourselves enough credit. I mean, when I think about the the fear of success and kind of going going through those things and facing those battles, you know, it's it's almost like imposter syndrome. You know, I know I know for me it was well, who am I, you know, uh roughly two years into into our direct primary care journey to have uh a a patient panel that I think most would would you know really, really want, though I'm not sure it it it is the best. I I think some micro practices probably have a better, a bet a better uh work uh life balance. But you know, it's what we set out to do when we started it. And and I think that that kind of quote unquote overnight success maybe got, you know, I I'm I'm still green behind the ears with this. I don't really know, you know, how to how to truly run the practice. I didn't have a lot of of business background, it just kind of happened. And so I felt like I was playing catch up. Once I realized what it was, named it for what it was. I I think one of the best things, and I think the the rudimentary way to word it is sort of fake it till you make it, but but you start acting like that person who's already achieved that, you know, because uh if if I look back let's just say eight years, I couldn't handle what what we handle now. But I've I've grown incrementally during that time to to to rise the occasion or learn from from setbacks to to handle the practice, to handle um you know, people management within the within our employees and and and things that come up and and and how to run a work on the business as well as in the business. And and I think it's it's it's nice when you can kind of look back and you can connect the dots uh in hindsight. And so then trying to do that moving forward is sort of the goal to realize, hey, if I just eat this elephant one bite at a time, I can become that person. I can be in the rooms that I want to be in and not just be low man on the totem pole but work my way up to where man, now I'm looking for a bigger room to get in because I've I've kind of I I'm top dog in this room. And so, you know, I think all eating elephants makes you the person you want to be. That's right. So everybody go to the That's the moral of the story. That's right. Oh man, everybody eat an elephant. Yeah, that's right. But but you know, I mean, I I think that but part of that's the consistency, right? You know, it's it's it's like you haven't seen somebody in years and they've changed so much over that time period because it's been you know two, three years since you've seen them, but to them, they don't really notice a difference. They don't notice the gray hair, they don't notice the the weight gain or loss or or whatever the case is because they're with themselves. That's right. So many colonoscopies. So many, you know. So so I I I think, you know, not giving up. Like we've like we've said before, you you can't lose if you don't quit. Doing that consistently on on a daily basis, and then yeah, I mean, almost kind of uh faking it till you make it. Learn learning from from the good, the bad, and the ugly to become that person that you want to be six months or a year from now.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Well, part of it that plays into that is this idea of the upper limit problem. Okay, the uh upper limit problem basically suggests that we all have this thermostat for how much joy or success or happiness or abundance or something like that that we're supposed to have. Now, this is obviously an assumption, and the assumption is you know derived from the family we grew up in, our family of origin, our culture, the town we grew up in, and stuff like that. And, you know, coming from um the family I grew up in, my brother and I were the first in our family to get our bachelor's degree. You know, our parents made some sacrifices to make sure we did that. And then, you know, I went on to go and get a master's degree. And and so doing that, you're kind of like you're you almost feel guilty. You're like, well, am I stepping away? Am I stepping out of that? Like, am I supposed to be like where I'm at at 40 years old is in way better financial position than my parents probably ever were whenever I was growing up. Sure. And so then it's like you have this doubt and this despair or this guilt over the success because you've you've exceeded what your thermostat was supposed to be based on all of your environmental pressures and everything else. And so the question is like, how do you turn the thermostat up? How do you figure out how can I be comfortable with this level of responsibility or this level of success? Um I think part of it is you've got to recognize if you have outgrown a relationship, if you've outgrown a friendship. Because if somebody is threatened by your success or wants to impede your success, like that does not sound like a good friend to me unless they're pointing out aspects where maybe you're unhealthy due to the success that you're pursuing. You know, I think that's a good friend that points out the hardship that it creates. But I think that to allow somebody else to criticize what you're doing, how you're doing, or something just for because they're seeing you pull away from status quo, um, that's a limiting factor. Sure. And so, you know, we allow other people to set our thermostat for us, essentially. Um, and that's that's a a huge um a huge problem because I would like to think that I know my potential better than anybody else. Now, everybody has periods where we may don't live into that or we may doubt it or something like that. But at the end of the day, don't tell me what I can or can't do. Sure. You know, like give me the challenge and allow me to succeed or fail, and I'll be accountable for either one of those outcomes. But I don't I and I still have a chip on my shoulder, you know, as an adult about that because of some of my experiences as a kid. And there's times where that's gotten me in trouble because it's like one of those things, oh, you can't do that. Well, hold my beer, you know. Like, you know, you don't want to have that, like, oh, I'll stick it to them. I'll show them. That's a reactive response. Um, obviously not very healthy. You know, we want to make sure that the only person I have anything to prove something to is going to be myself at the end of the day. Absolutely. Um, I'm already loved by my wife. Um I'm assuming I'm loved by my son. He hasn't really told me that yet, which is so rude of him at three and a half months old. That's right. But I'm I'm operating on the belief that I'm already loved. I'm operating on the belief that I can continue to succeed. Um, and so some of that is that period of like, okay, I want to succeed, but nothing's clicking yet. That doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. Right. Um, that could just mean that this is a formative period of time. Um, this is maybe this is a little bit off topic, but um, I was thinking about this the other day of uh, you know, feeding Gideon, changing his diaper and all this other stuff. And I swear that little kid fights me. Every time you try to do something positive for a baby, they do not help. At all. And so I was thinking about what is that like from God's perspective, whenever He's doing something in our lives, that we have a trial or something and we have a bad attitude, or we say, I hate this and I'm so mad this is happening. You know, and God's like, I'm trying to grow you. Yeah. You know, he starts fussing and crying and he starts shaking his head around to where I can't even get the bottle in his mouth. And I'm trying to tell him, I'm like, Gideon, I'm trying to feed you.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

You know, and like it does God struggle, or God doesn't struggle like we do. But does that, I wonder if God ever has that same thought of like, hey, I'm literally trying to do something in your best interest. It does not help you to succeed right now. You're not ready. Right. And I'm impatient. I'll I'll own it. I'll admit it. I want the I want the answer now because I want the the confidence and stability of what the outcome is going to be, but that doesn't help me grow. Yeah. That doesn't help me to deal with the the milieu of you know indifference, uh, of knowing like, hey, I'm working on this to happen, but it's it's not happened yet. You know, so we're waiting in that that yet period. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Well, you know, I I think you're you're right exactly there with the uh I mean, I think God is is part of maybe that that fear of success, right? Any any time that we are ready to to level up or become a a new, better version of ourself, you know, I I think that he he is preparing us for that journey, and and we stand at the precipice or in that threshold, like you said, of of of being the new person that we are, uh raising our standards, raising the room that we're in. And and whether it's fear of success, fear of failure, fear of rejection, yeah, losing relationships that maybe you've outgrown, I think a lot of that's part of that challenge, part of that that mountain that he wants us to climb to become that identity that we need to be to persevere and to to function and and survive and thrive at that new level.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

You know, I part of it too is the motivation behind it, you know, because I've I've heard people use saying, well, God wants me to be rich. I'm like, well, no, I don't know about that, you know. Um, but if if it says, hey, I'm trying to have financial resources so I can be like a benefit to my community, I'm like, I don't know. It sounds like something that's pretty in line with you know what I think, you know, spiritually we're called to do, you know. But people either use that, well, God doesn't want me to have that right now. Well, how do you know that? Just because it didn't happen, right? You know, like maybe there's things that are being constructed to allow that to happen. It just hasn't happened yet, you know? Or, well, uh God told me that I should do this. Really? No. Because man, like I don't know that I've ever heard that specific voice, you know, like more than anything, it's like I make a decision, I need to be intimately aware of what my motivation is for making that decision and decide: is this an ethical choice? Is this a selfish choice? Is this a prideful choice, or is this a humble choice to be a better father and a better husband or a better impact on people in my life? I think it's the motivation behind the action that's more important than the action itself. And I think that there's a lot of psychological and spiritual principles that support that.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah. No, I agree. Well, and I I think also uh to go back to what I was saying about connecting the dots, looking backwards, you know, uh, we we we've mentioned it on on other episodes where I can kind of see where where God had his hand and and and has got me to where I'm supposed to be in life. And maybe that took some weird twists and turns and different things, but um, you know, everything has has worked out as it should. And I I didn't know that at the time, and and maybe maybe fought trials and tribulations and didn't want to go down certain roads, felt it maybe was a dead end. But now looking back, I'm like, yeah, that's that's why I went through that, that's why I met that person, that's that's why I was put in this situation or sent to that place. Um, and it's all part of the the growth that he wants us to be to take those steps forward and and and achieve what we're destined to do.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

But but that's the belief of well, what I'm succeeding and I don't really deserve to be this successful. Right. And then finding ways to unintentionally sabotage the situation. Um, you know, I think I I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but the idea of like, okay, if you like, well, I don't feel like I deserve my family. Well, you'd have your family, they do love you. Are you willing to receive that? You know, are you willing to lean into success or are you gonna doubt it the entire time? Yeah. And and being able to be self-aware on those things, I think takes a lot of people don't spend time in personal reflection. I mean, this is why I have a job because people need to verbalize this stuff out loud to somebody who's gonna listen, hopefully not interrupt, you know, give some probing questions to kind of develop the topic and help people to reach their own conclusions. Like I don't tell anybody anything, I help them reach their own conclusions. Um, and and they get to decide whether that's healthy or unhealthy for them. That's not my call to make. Like, I may have an opinion on how someone parents their child, but that's all it is is an opinion because I've not met that child. I've not been around that child for 14 years. I don't know how they respond to the ins and outs of these circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Um, I may find out what's the motivator there, or is this teaching your child discipline, or is this teaching your child how to be a responsible, independent adult? You know, and so what's the outcome of the behavior? Not actually criticizing the behavior. Yeah. And so the same thing is true about how you manage your personal and private life, or excuse me, your professional and your private life are both aligned to support success. Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

I mean I think you gotta have both, certainly. Because you could have a fantastic, you know, situation where you're you're pursuing the success and maybe you don't doubt it, but then you're you're not investing enough time in your family, and then you go through a divorce and half your company's gone.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Well, there's a fear of that level.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah, that goes back to the priority problem that we've talked about. Right? You know, yeah, you're you're killing a job, you're climbing that corporate ladder, but at home, your wife, your kids don't want to be around you, they don't, they don't live with you, they've kicked you out, you've left, whatever the case is, you know, you've you've got to make sure that you you you kind of uh feed all those wells and and and and distribute your time and and energy across all the the important things, the priorities in life.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Because I mean you may feel like, well, I've got more to lose if I succeed. True. But you're gonna be operating with less if you don't. Right. And and so it's like, you know, no no amount of money is ever enough money. Um, I think that's pretty much proven with anyone who's had a significant amount of wealth. But I will say that if you have half of a million dollars, that's way easier to live on than half of ten thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Um, and so the fear of it going away needs to be called out and addressed. That yeah, you could you could win big and you could lose big. Both are are 50-50 options in every scenario.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Sure. Well, you know, and I think you look at a lot of of successful business folks out there, and and and there's a great, great number that have have filed for bankruptcy, lost it all, rebuilt it. You know, I I I hear it a lot on podcasts that I listen to, or within the the real estate sector where where deals didn't work out and and people lost everything and and managed to slowly build that back up. And and I I think that takes a lot to pick yourself up and do that. But it's it's naming that fear, it, it's it's changing that identity. And and like you said, it's it's that environment too, that thermostat. You you've got to figure out a way to tap into that to raise it up so that you can increase your environment, increase the rooms you're in, um, and and eventually get to that identity of the person you want to be across the board, professionally and and personally.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Well, it makes me think about I I can't remember the exact terminology, but it was talking about the elements of story and how every story has some kind of hero or anti-hero or something that's the focus of the story. And you also have the villain, and you also have the muse, which is the passion behind the action or the motivation, but then you also have the challenge or the struggle. You know, if you go back all the way to like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and you you talk about um Odysseus, and he's got all these different challenges, you know. Some of them were specifically villains or bad guys or whatever, and some of them were just challenges. Like telling him to go get the golden fleece, that was a challenge. The fact that Medusa was there, that was a villain, you know, and so going in those situations. Imagine if it was Odysseus is like, I got the golden fleece, I got the golden fleece, you know, was it like Charlie and Chocolate? I gotta go, no, it was uh Johnny Depp, I got a journey, I got a journey, whatever it was. It's not a good story. Yeah. If there's no challenge, like we as human beings, we want to be inspired by someone overcoming a challenge and overcoming a struggle. And so if we stop short of success, we've never finished the story. Yeah. We just stop. We were stuck in the land of sirens.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah. I mean, I I think every entrepreneur, everybody that's trying to build a better life or or or whatnot for themselves or family, you know, they've they've got to have that why. They've got to have that that motivating factor. And along that line, that why is what's going to push you, push you past those challenges, push you past the the times when you feel like this roadblock is impassable or there's there's there's no doors that are opening despite all everything closing, you know, that that that that why, that passion is is what sticks with you, helps you pull through. And then that creates the story. You know, and and I and I think that's that's what everybody I think is is looking for. Um but but but starting with that that why is is where I think you'll you'll get your your compass, we'll get your direction and and allow you to to persevere.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

But I it sucks because whenever the challenge hits, we're like, well, I didn't see that coming, and we didn't know that we needed it. Yeah, right at the time. Yeah, like you you need the challenge to complete the story, you know, because otherwise you overcame nothing, you know, if you weren't able to overcome the challenge. Just I mean, it's just if someone's like, Yeah, I just started this one day and it just worked.

unknown 32:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Dude, that story sucks. Like, that's boring. Like you didn't have to sacrifice anything, it didn't cost you anything. Like, gross. Like everybody likes like a rags to riches type story where there was some actual thing to overcome. You know, I think we relate more to that. We've got we've got everyday struggles, we've got yearly stuff struggles, we've got phases of life struggles, family struggles, you know, and those are the things that that make us human because perfection is never existent in our in our existence. No, I absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, it like hopefully this is not a gloom and doom uh podcast uh topic, but you know, we wanted to first of all just start off by identifying the reality of and and validating the emotion of the fear of success. You know, this is something that people absolutely struggle with. Jonathan and I, you know, have both struggled with this at periods of time. Um, even fear of success in a relationship, you know, that's even a reality. You know, what if this is really good and then I lose everything, you know, and I or I lose this connection or this person or this relationship. You know, these are all realistic things. And so, you know, we simply wanted to address the topic and some of the different uh aspects of it today, but uh stick with us for the next time. And we want to go into some specific ways of how do you cope with this? How do you identify when you are being stuck um in this fear of success?

unknown 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

To the next episode. That's it. The long burn uh was not that long today. We did pretty good. We kept it right closer to 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

It's because it's a two-parter. That's why.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

It's a two-parter. We're splitting it up. Y'all need intermission. Y'all pee break. So go pee break and then come back for the next episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

But that'll be next week. So take your time going to the bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

That's right. That's right. You got plenty of time. You got all week to go to the bathroom. That's right. All right. Well, thank you guys uh for sticking with us. Uh, you are you do deserve success um based on your your desire to earn it. You got to be willing to do the work. No one's gonna hand it to you. But if you can confidently say you've done the work, lean into that success, accept it, and enjoy it. Um, and allow the people that care about you and that you care about to benefit the uh reap the benefits of that success. So until next time, this is Joel Mallon signing off, along with Dr. Jonathan Wade. Yeah, yeah, I caught you off guard on that one, didn't I? He did, yeah. All right. All right, you guys. Y'all have a fantastic week. We'll catch you on the next episode. Bye. Bye.