Expanding Your Comfort Zone

What's happening? Good to have you. Come on in here. What is today? Oh, happy, happy, happy, happy Friday. That's the wording I have to say. Some people used to hit me up on Instagram at HeyScottSmith all the time and say happy, happy, happy Friday.

They'd guess how many times I'm going to say it, but they don't talk to me anymore. They're probably busy. Found another podcast to fall in love with.

All right, I got an opening. Hey, Scott Smith on Instagram, if you've got it. So today, are you burying the lead in your life? Do you know what burying the lead is?

If not, we'll talk about that in a second here. And how it's impacting you, I think, sometimes in your communication patterns. If you're not burying the lead, people know what you're talking about. Oh, man, I'm giving away already, aren't I?

Stop it, Scott. It is a daily boost from MotivationToMove.com, a positive boost you need every single day. It's me, Scott Smith. Good to have you today.

A little pumped up this week. I've got my... My school group cranking right now and slowly growing a little bit. I had a great call yesterday. Everybody's telling me, they said, man, I just kind of know, don't know what to do next.

Most of my guys are between 36 and 74 years old, big group in the like 40 to 50 range, but a wide range. And a lot of them have had some success and they're like, you know, I listen to you. I listen to lots of things. I just can't quite figure out what to do.

Guys, that's kind of my specialty. I do that every single day. So did a great call yesterday. It's been recorded. You'll get it. It's in replay if you couldn't make it live.

And if you're a member, you've also got the RSS podcast version of it as well. If you'd like to join me and be one of my founding members, I'd love to have you. It's half price. It's $49 a month.

It's going to be double that and maybe higher than that. And next week, I'll tell you why it may be a lot higher than that. You can join me now if you want to. Just go to skool.com slash faceyourpassion.

That's school.com slash faceyourpassion. You know, a long time ago, I used to ask a question on a Friday. It just popped into my head again. Can I ask it?

Can we do some homework today? The question is simple. How do you want to feel? And what I'd like you to do today is like you take a couple of minutes after this call is done, this call, this podcast thingy.

What is a podcast anymore? I mean, is it a video? Is it a call? Is it an audio book? It's a thingy. It's just anything nowadays. But if you sit down when this is over today and you just simply say, how do I want to feel?

And then give yourself a second just to let the answers flow into your mind. It's going to be different for everybody. Some will be about business. Some will be about relationships, depending on where you are.

But an answer will come to you and it will be your subconscious mind going, basically saying, hold it, wait a second. How do I? Oh, he's talking to me. Better listen.

Want. You want something. What's he want? To feel. Oh, so Scott is asking his subconscious mind, how do I want to feel? Okay, let me give him an answer.

Boom, here it comes. I'm telling you, man. Listen, you're an emotional critter. You are. You respond emotionally. Usually that's what gets you in trouble, right?

Just admit it. It does. So if we in advance say, how do I want to feel? It's not how am I supposed to feel. It's not how should I feel. It's not how should somebody else make me feel.

It's how do I want to feel. We at least have a chance to become intentional about going about doing things that make us feel that way, don't we? So in the old days, I would say, do your homework.

Sit down and write that answer down. How do I want to feel? It'll change your world. It will. It's simple. Listen, man, if it's your first time stopping by here, and I've been doing this 20 years, and I know I don't do all the fancy words and the crazy stuff, the tips and tricks you get on Reddit and all these other places, I take you right between the lines to the wisdom.

And if you have the patience to listen to it, you're going to get so much learning out of this. And if not, I'll see you in a couple of years when you figure out you need it.

Hey, I found yourself out on a big mission, but can't figure out what you want. Happens, doesn't it? When I was young, I was trained in journalism. That happened at the point of my broadcast career.

I could care less about that. I said, I just want to be big time radio DJ. And they said, you have to learn journalism. Evidently, radio stations sent you to local town meetings and political events and things like that.

And they didn't care if you just wanted t-shirts, girls and pizza. They said, you're a journalist today. Go write a story. I didn't send you anything newsworthy.

My job is to write the story and deliver it on the air. And I thought I was doing a pretty good job. My boss called me into his office. I'm trying to remember how many times I got called into the office.

Yeah. Way more times than you can imagine, but you can also imagine it was a lot. If you've listened to me a little bit, I got called in all the time. It's just kind of what I was known for.

You said what? He wanted to know why I wasn't getting to the critical part of the story faster. He said I was distracting from what was important. So in my mind, I was doing no such thing.

I told the story about how it sounded best in my mind, but nobody's listening long enough to kind of hear what I had to say. And now all these years later, I've learned this.

I want to get more out of life, and the crowd wants to do the same thing. I've learned these things, right? So a little sidebar here as I'm going through this process here, because this has been a story. This was when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, right?

A long time ago. Boy, these days, if you bury the lead these days with the very short intention spans, if you don't get to the point quickly, you don't get anybody's attention. And I am so guilty of it because as you might tell, and this is a very conscious decision, for many, many years, maybe three years, I was leading with the story constantly. I was hooking right in.

Hook, story, close. I was doing all the same stuff everybody else was doing. I finally got tired of it. I said, listen, if you like me enough, if you think I can help you enough, if you value the stories I tell and the learning I put in the stories, you'll stick around.

Let's see if we can make it pleasurable, right? So I stopped doing that crap. But I'm telling you what, you've got to pay attention to it because when it comes to sales, when it comes to running my business, you better believe I don't bury the lead. You better believe I'm right the route from.

I'm selling the outcome, as they say. So popular these days. So the reason I spoke with the client, and I realized that she was very good at shifting to the unimportant, finding more time, learning more, getting more advice, all that kind of stuff. A lot of people do that.

Even cleaning the garage was more important than almost anything else. But in the middle, she was kind of wandering her way through a story that we were talking about. And I asked her, I said, so why are you avoiding what is the most important to you?

Just cut to the chase. Do what you want and go for it. And she was doing it. By the way, this is a regular conversation for me. It happens all the time.

I almost had this conversation this morning in the sauna. And the conversation was about, is it lack of patience? Is it a lack of patience? So I've done this a long time.

So if you're avoiding what is important to you and you're asking me to help you with what's important to you, but you're avoiding talking about what's important to you,

Am I just losing patience by making you get to the point? Or are you disrespecting me by meandering all over the place? And the conversation today was, you know, we've just done this a long time. We just want to fix it and move on.

That's all. And maybe a little more patience is involved and is required. I don't know. But her response, by the way, came with tears. It really did. And this is not the only time I've had this and had it really shatter people, really smart people, people that are so mature and have done so many cool things in their life.

When I say mature, old, you know, not that old, but, you know, maybe as old as well. Nobody's as old as me, that's for sure. I've seen them rattled. I've seen their body language just crash.

I've seen them cry. I've seen them lose their composure. When they realize they're avoiding talking about what's important to themselves. Because they're caught up in this trap of saying what everybody else needs to hear.

They think anyway. But she told me, she said, you know, I thought I was talking about what was important. Now I realize I'm just telling myself a story that is comforting. It sounds good in my mind.

Uh-oh. Telling yourself a story that's comfortable and sounds good in her own mind? Have you ever done that? We all do it. We do. Is it called justifying?

Is that what it is? That's really a shame when you really want something, when something is important, when you've decided what it's supposed to be. Maybe you're one of the lucky few who have finally figured out what the next step is.

When I said lucky few, I'm not condescending at that. I'm just being honest. Most people are confused. And what a freeing feeling it is when you get freed up and you say, I know what I'm going to do, and you go after it.

She was bearing the lead, to use a journalistic term, visiting yourself with secondary details, and she was frustrating herself. And other people are frustrated around her. Listen, if you come to me and you bury the lead, Scott, jump on a call with me. I hope we figure things out.

Say, yep, I got 20 minutes. Let's get on the call. And you waste 20 minutes talking about everything that you think is important, but I can't hear a damn thing you're saying.

And you blame it on me? No. So how does it relate to improving life? Do you say, I can't focus? You're burying the lead, guys. You're focusing on the wrong things.

Do you say, I can't get myself moving? Truth, you are moving. Wrong direction. Do you say, I don't have enough money? Wrong again, bucko. What you need is more money.

You're bearing the lead. A lot of people say the nice things, don't hurt anybody else's feelings. I say, well, don't hurt their feelings, but don't worry about stepping on their toes if they put their toes under your foot.

It's a busy world. It's a crazy world. I'm the first one that wants to be nice and wants to be friendly and want to treat everybody nice. And I'm not rude to people.

However, at some point, you got to kind of control your trajectory as well. And if you're consistently kind of changing your communication style and your actions to appease everybody else, you will never get what you want. And it'd be very frustrating to you. That's why therapy is going through the roof these days.

People are so frustrated. All I have to do is just say, well, this is what's important to me and I'm going to communicate this in a proper way. I'm not going to step on anybody's toes, but I'm going to honor it.

I'm going to respect it. I'm going to give it the focus it deserves. I'm going to lose the drama. I'm going to get to the point. I'm going to start getting what I want right now.

And as a guy that does this for a living and professionally does this, never expected to do this. Now I've got decades of experience doing this, so I guess it's what I do, right?

But I never understood that when I give a client permission, Just to say, you know what? Stop focusing on that other stuff. Just focus on yourself and just get to what's important.

Be clear about it and let's go from there. That's what brings on the tears. Every single time. I didn't invent that. I just had enough time in the seat to realize they just needed permission.

So I'm giving you permission right now, okay? Stop burying what's important. Start focusing on it instead of making it happen. And yes, crass commercial interruption.

We do that in my Face Your Passion community. That's kind of what it's for. S-K-O-L dot com slash Face Your Passion. I'll see you over there. That's some big plans next week, but you should join now so you get the deal.