Not long ago a guy on my list told me of his inferiority complex.
Like, for example:
* He has never had a single significant win in his life, achieved nothing noteworthy
* Even when giving it his all he always is beat by people who half assed it or didn’t work as hard as he did
* He was haunted by this as a student and it has crawled into his professional life
* He watched it developing into a negative cycle of self-loathing in “real time” now
* He feels like he will never be good enough
* He thinks he is always looked down upon by people
* He thinks he will never achieve great things
* He is at a point where he has no confidence in his ability to achieve goals, which leads him to quitting early things he really wants to do (he ended up quitting Email Players too, I will add… despite telling me how much he loved it, benefited from the info… and is one of the reasons I have my No Coming Back policy: I can’t fix one’s desire to self-sabotage and am a meat ‘n potatoes guy… not a dancing monkey for those who can’t function in life without something ‘new’ to stimulate their dopamine production when they haven’t even implemented the ‘old’ stuff yet…)
* His “dumb brain” (his description) is always whispering in his ear, “why try if I can’t hit that mark I set for myself?”
* He has tried many mindset “hacks”, tried working harder than he usually does but to no effect.
Okay, you get the picture.
Fortunately, there IS a cure for this phantom problem, for those plagued by it.
I know this first hand because I was once in an even worse state.
However, to explain this cure I have no choice but to tell you about an obscure audio cassette tape I listened to waaaay back circa 1998 or 1999 when I, too, had zero confidence, was riddled with anxiety, plagued with imposter syndrome, and had all the marks of a self-loathing & self-sabotaging wretch who despite having decent looks and a higher status friend group than most… couldn’t get a date with a pocketful of $100 bills.
The MLM company I was in at the time sent the tape out.
And the speaker was one of the company’s co-founders:
Tom “Big Al” Schreiter.
And I remember him talking about the idea of how we all have a sort of internal “thermostat” that dictates how successful we are in any aspect of our lives. There is nothing bat shyt woo-woo about this. It’s all very practical. And basically what it means as far as business is, we all have a certain psychological comfort zone with how successful we will get. Just like a thermostat in your house will raise or lower the heat based on the temperature you set it at, so it does not get any cooler or hotter… so it is with human beings when it comes to things like money, status, success, skill mastery, whatever it is they want.
Some people have very high thermostats.
Most have very low thermostats.
So, for example:
If you are used to and are therefore comfortable making $25k per year then, no matter how hard you work, you will very likely never do better than that. In fact, if you do somehow go higher than $25k, you will subconsciously sabotage yourself somehow… probably to the astonishment of those watching… to make sure you get back to that $25,000 where you are psychologically comfortable. Same if you make less one year… you will somehow find the ambition, opportunities, energy, and means to get back UP to that $25k where you are comfortable.
Same with other aspects of one’s life.
I remember hearing a Dan Kennedy bit on this a few years ago, too.
He said he knew a salesman who made something like $5,000 each month, on the dot, like clockwork. And during months where he did exceptionally well for whatever reason… he would get VERY creative about getting back to that $5,000 the next month. Gary Halbert wrote about the woman he was with for seven years doing something similar. When they were together he said she would not let them ever get “too” successful… blaming it on her money guilt-ridden upbringing or something like that.
You can witness it in the news on the regular:
* Athlete or actor gets big overnight.
* They go from making hardly anything to multiple millions.
* Somehow, someway…. they lose it all.
Happens to lottery winners, too, and it’s all do to that thermostat.
So it ain’t just some isolated thing you hear on motivational tapes. And once you stop listening to the crowd, stop listening to the herd, and stop following the so-called experts off the cliff they are marching towards… it all can turn around quickly.
When in doubt take Earl Nightingale’s advice:
(paraphrased)
“If you ever wonder what you should do, look around at what everyone else around you is doing, and then do the opposite and you’ll probably never make another mistake for as long as you live.”
Frankly, the hard part is dealing with rank ‘n file people afterwards.
For example:
Many years ago I was dating a woman who had her MBA and was successful “on paper” I guess. And she would get irritated with me because I did not interact much with her friends the (few) times we hung out with them. I’d rather have been waterboarded than hang with these people, but made an appearance every now and then. And all these people would talk about was office gossip, complaining about their bosses, not making enough salary, what insignificant comment this guy or that girl office politician said… bragging about their jobs which were not all that impressive, but I guess was to the boomers they were trying to impress… while I’d be sitting there thinking about my next email campaign or info product I was about to launch or event I was set to speak at. Just totally (and, admittedly, rudely) zoned out, ignoring all the boring normie talk, wondering why the hell these people didn’t do something to improve their miserable lives instead of complaining about them?
The reason?
Because they LIKE where they are, and are there by choice.
Ain’t nobody can change that part but you.
Anyway, enough of that.
To check out the Email Players newsletter go here:
Ben Settle
