AJ (00:06): Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is the place where we help mission-driven messengers, just like you learn how to build and monetize your personal brand. My name is Rory Vaden, and I’m the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a hall of fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And this show is to help experts learn how to become more wealthy and well-known. I know you’re gonna love it. Thanks for being here. Let’s get started. AJ(00:34): You wanna know what the number one thing is that’s holding you back from what you want most? Well, I know what it is, uh, because it’s no different for you than it is for me or anyone else in the world. And the number one thing for all of us that is holding us back from success, and that could be success in business or finance or health or, uh, relationships, uh, we’ll just call it success in general, however you wanna define success. If you, if you don’t have what you consider successful or if you’re not where you thought you would be or if you’re not doing what you wanna be doing. For most of us, it’s just one thing. There’s just this one thing that’s in the way and not one thing is fear. Not one thing for all of us is an emotion. It’s fear, right? AJ (01:28): It’s, it’s telling yourself this won’t work and, uh, I’m not capable. Um, it’s, well, I can’t do this because what if it doesn’t work out and I wasted all this time or money or effort or resources, or, um, you know what, what if I do this and, and I do fail? Like, what are people gonna think about me? Or, uh, it’s, you know, what if I, I try to do it and I lose all this money, or I lose all my friends, or I lose my business, or I lose my marriage, or what they, it could be a hundred different things and I could go through and list out all the reasons why, but ultimately, they could all be summed up into one four letter word fear. If we don’t have what we want most often, it’s because we didn’t take the chance on ourselves. AJ (02:15): We didn’t take that leap of faith. We didn’t believe in ourselves enough to do the thing. We didn’t believe that we’d have the, the courage or the endurance, or the persistence or persistence or the resources, um, or we just didn’t even believe in our own ability to go out and learn and do the thing. There is a fear element to all of us that is holding us back from where we are to where we wanna be and from what we have versus what we want most. And it’s like, relationally speaking, it’s perhaps it’s like you’re too afraid to be fully known, and so you don’t have the marriage, um, that you want because well, you, you won’t be real and honest because you think to yourself, well, if I was really honest about who I, I really am, but they really love me. Like, if they knew who I really was, deep down, if they knew these crazy thoughts I really had, but they actually still love me. AJ03:10): And I, I bet that for many of us, we don’t have the health and the, you know, longevity plan that we really want because there’s some fear of, uh, missing out of like, man, if I really decided to give up alcohol and get healthy, like, would I even be any fun ? Like, would I get invited places? And man, if I, if I really start eating the way that I know I should and not eating on the go and eating fast food and eating a lot of processed foods, it’s like, um, would I really enjoy it? like, it’s like you, you tell yourself like, oh man, my life’s just gonna be a whole bunch of lettuce and salads and vegetables. And that’s not true, but it’s like, WI don’t, well, I even enjoy that. Like, w will it even work? Is it even worth it? All, right? AJ (03:56): It’s like there’s all these things and it’s like, man, it’s like I really wanna, I really wanna try to write this book, but what if it sucks? Like, what if no one buys it? What if I do all this? And it’s, it’s not for anything, right? Fear, fear is the thing that is holding almost all of us back from whatever it is that we want. And I think there’s a couple of things I just wanna mention about this. I just finished reading a book called Living Fearless. And, um, Jamie Winship is the author, living Fearless is the book. And one of the things that he says in the book, and it’s probably not my only takeaway, but it’s my biggest takeaway, I know it’s not my only takeaway, but what I loved, and he said, this was towards the very end of the book, he said, you can only become fearless when you walk through fear filled situations.