Building a successful business can hinge on a variety of factors, such as exploiting a niche, creating an improved version of a much-used product, or seeing an opportunity first. There are many routes to success, but a large number of entrepreneurs find themselves going off course – often due to fear. By Ian Child.
What’s the difference between you and a billionaire?
My business is training people to be successful in property development, and I have hosted group training sessions where I’ve asked my students the following question: ‘My genetic profile is a 99.9% match with one of the world’s most famous celebrities – but can you guess which one?’. I’m a middle-aged white male, so suggestions were always famous, middle-aged white males. My answer raised a few eyebrows. ‘But you look nothing like Oprah Winfrey!’ they would say. At this point, I would reveal that it was, in fact, a trick question since every human shares 99.9% of their genetics with every other human. So, congratulations – you’re all as biologically similar to Oprah as I am.
The point of my question was to help establish an immutable law of success, ‘It’s not what you ARE that determines your success; it’s what you DO.’ Oprah is a successful billionaire broadcaster, businesswoman, and celebrity. But the tools she has in her armoury that led to her tremendous success are identical to your own. If you’re not currently as successful as Oprah is, it’s not because she’s different to you. It’s because she acted differently.
There are around 2,600 billionaires in the world, and close to 60 million millionaires. Why aren’t you in one of those clubs? Most people assume that billionaires are different to them in some way. The reality is you’re virtually identical, which means you have the potential to achieve the same level of success. In all likelihood, you haven’t reached millionaire status because of fear.
Know yourself
So, how come Oprah’s nailed it, and you haven’t (yet)? One of the problems that most people have is that they don’t understand how their brains work. Basically, the person you think of as ‘you’ is, in reality, just your conscious brain, which accounts for around 2-4% of your brain power. The other 96-98% of your brain power is owned by your subconscious mind, which operates beneath the surface of your awareness and is responsible for automatic processes, learned behaviours, and deeply ingrained patterns. It stores memories, emotions, habits, and beliefs that influence your actions without your direct knowledge. Unlike the conscious mind, the subconscious is not bound by logic or time; it processes emotional information quickly and is particularly attuned to survival-based instincts, like fear.
Your conscious and subconscious have different goals; conscious wants things like fame, fortune and success, and your subconscious simply wants you to stay alive.
Instinctively risk averse
Your subconscious hasn’t evolved much since our cave-dwelling days and it has a powerful self-preservation instinct. It doesn’t like it when you draw attention to yourself. And it worries a lot about what others think of you.
To see this in action, try making a speech in front of an audience of a few hundred people. I guarantee you’ll be able to make the same speech solo in front of the bathroom mirror without a hitch. But as soon as you even think about taking to the stage where people can see and judge you, your subconscious will start throwing emotions at your conscious mind to try and stop it. The emotion it uses in this scenario is fear. You’ll feel nervous, sweaty, and possibly even nauseous. It’s an entirely unpleasant feeling. And even though your conscious mind knows that public speaking can’t kill you, it dislikes the fear feeling so much that it usually prefers to skip public speaking altogether just to avoid it. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that your subconscious isn’t very discerning about the volume of the fear signals it throws at you. If you’ve ever been fearful of doing something and then found it went better than you expected, it’s because your subconscious exaggerated the fear tenfold.
Expanding comfort zones
I used public speaking as an example because it’s a very common thing for the subconscious to worry about, but the same rule applies to anything that sits outside your comfort zone – for example, pitching to investors. In fact, by definition, stuff that your subconscious is okay with is inside your comfort zone, and stuff it’s worried about lies outside. Remember, if you feel fear or any other emotion, it’s your subconscious that’s causing it, so make sure you understand why.
To be successful in business, you invariably have to do different things, such as take risks or sell yourself and your ideas to people you don’t know. These are all things that your subconscious dislikes, and so it sends your conscious mind fear signals. As a result, many people never properly leave their comfort zones and so never find true success. Successful people, on the other hand, recognise that the feelings of fear are just their subconscious minds worrying about things that aren’t actually going to materialise and so appreciate that feeling fear is a good thing – it shows they’re operating outside of their comfort zone and are therefore making progress. The good news is that comfort zones expand based on experience. If your subconscious sees you survive public speaking or pitching to investors often enough, it becomes more comfortable with it.
Taking control
We’ve established that, just like Oprah, you have the ability to be successful. So, if you’re not yet as successful as you want to be, something must be holding you back. Quite often, it’s simply a fear of putting your head above the parapet – or perhaps a touch of imposter syndrome that makes you think that you’re not cut out to be successful. Or a simple case of fearing that people will judge you as you take your first steps on a new path. Either way, it’s your subconscious that’s pulling the strings and preventing your conscious mind from taking action.
So, if you want to be successful, it’s time to give control back to your conscious brain. You won’t stop your unconscious from making you fearful, but now that you know it’s operating on a false premise, you’ve a fighting chance of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian Child is a former corporate leader, co-founder of the leading property development training company propertyCEO and the author of ‘Your Own Personal Time Machine, a guide to getting your life back’. www.propertyceo.co.uk
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