Erik + Emily Orton (00:00.746)
recording. That's recording.
Erik + Emily Orton (00:10.89)
The scariest stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. Happy Halloween and welcome to the What Could Go Right? podcast where we talk about personal growth, family connection, and parenting adult kids. I'm Erik Orton. And I'm Emily Orton. And I want to just talk real quick before we get into scary stories. I want to talk about these Discovery Calls that you've heard us mention.
And that is because they tie directly to these scary stories that we tell ourselves. First of all, the things that are possible in your life, one of the main obstacles to making them happen is whatever scary story you're telling yourself. And we're going to dive into that today. When we get on these calls, the whole point is to try and get over these speed bumps or roadblocks of fear that are holding you back. And they're not, they're not big, they're not insurmountable, but they just take a little finesse. And so with a couple of great...
A couple of questions and some insights from you, we're gonna blow past those. And specifically with regard to some kind of adventure that you might want to do with your family. If you wanna do a road trip or any, whatever it is, you wanna go for more than just a vacation, maybe a few weeks, maybe a month, maybe a little bit longer. If we can get on the phone and talk through these points, you will be able to get to a place where you're gonna see how this can work for you. And so.
That's why we do these. We do these for free because you deserve to know what's possible in your life. And I just wanna say that also when this episode airs, I will be heading out for a couple of weeks to take some people sailing. And so I won't even be available to do these for a couple of weeks. But if you wanna get on a Discovery Call before Thanksgiving, go there now. Go to theawesomefactory.nyc/discovery
There's a few dates left before Thanksgiving. It's a great time to kind of reset as you head into the holidays and get clear on some things. We'd love to help you make your family adventure of your dreams happen. So anyway, theawesomefactory.nyc/discovery Back to you, Emily. I love what you said and I just want to clarify because we had somebody sign up for a call thinking that it was gonna be some group video, some group webinar or group coaching kind of thing. No.
Erik + Emily Orton (02:27.854)
We're literally gonna get eyeball to eyeball with you on video chat and hear about your plans and what you're excited about. And I know Erik said the fears are small, but they don't feel that way. I know for me, when I came through this process, I thought those fears were like part of my identity. I had felt that way for decades. And then when I actually kicked the tires on those fears, they just popped. So we hope that will happen for you as well.
And as we talk about these fears that are the scariest stories are the ones that we tell ourselves. And we know this from personal experience and from all the people that we've worked with and talked to. In fact, just the other day, our daughter was saying, 'Oh, I want to try this thing, but I'm scared.' Yeah, well, we all feel scared. And I told her, 'You can never be brave if you aren't scared. It's only brave when you do something that you're a little bit
nervous about and afraid of.' So one of the scary monsters in our heads, I like to call the Three- Headed Resource Monster. It's saying to you, 'I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough skills.' And so that's one where sequence really matters in defeating this fear because you're going to be slow. Those are words saying again. Okay. Let's say it again. The Resource Monster. I don't have enough.
I don't have enough money. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough skill. Or like, I'll do it when I have more money. Or I'll do it when I have more time. I'll do it when I have more skills. I still feel so enlightened on this. I mean, I'm only halfway through life and already I know. There's never been a case where I have more money, more time. Sometimes I get more skills.
When I just start moving in that direction, that's when my skills accumulate. I don't get the skills first. I get the skills while I'm going after it. I'm gonna tangent here for a second. And if you're coaching, if you ever coach with us or if you come to one of our seminars, one of the things that we teach that I still love so much is the idea that there's never enough time and there's never enough money. Because even now I use those excuses for myself. And so I love it because it keeps calling me out.
Erik + Emily Orton (04:50.074)
and just the Three-Headed Resource Monster and skills as well. Oftentimes we might feel like we have the skill but we don't have the other two. But the three of them together are vicious and it's worth figuring out how to kind of take the teeth out of that monster. Well, one of the ways that we like to- You like the Halloween theme? Yeah, I like it. One of the ways that we take the teeth, as you said, out of that monster is by the sequence that we approach
our goals with or our dreams or our big ideas, whatever it might be. And the problem that most people run into and most people that we talk to run into and we see this in ourselves as well is starting with how. Like almost immediately up on the heels of having an idea comes the how. And I hear something like, how? How am I gonna do it? How will this happen? How will it work?
See how The howl-o-ween. Yeah, we're like, it's The HOWling, right? It's The HOWling. And we do not wanna do the HOWling. We need to think about what. Don't let the HOW come in right away. You want to just get really clear on what. Spend some time there, linger. Like it's a good date, a date that's going well. So you're just gonna stay with it and get more and more specific about WHAT
it is that you hope to achieve, experience, contribute. How it will look. Well, that sounds like a HOW. But it's like, what is it going to look like? What is it going to feel like? What is the impact of it going to be in your life or the lives of others? Get really clear on the what. Then you're gonna think about maybe the WHY. Why do I wanna do this? Even WHO you could bring in, like who is this for?
And then once that is, yeah, or who can help you. And once that is really clear and solid in your mind, and you might even wanna do a little vision board or look at some pictures online for what that might look like. Then the HOW is going to start to emerge. But most people think of the WHAT, then HOWling starts.
Erik + Emily Orton (07:11.77)
and the WHAT disappears. For example, like, oh, I maybe wanna start working from home and I could do this specific job. But HOW am I gonna do that? I would probably need a more updated computer and HOW am I gonna afford that? And suddenly you don't even Google about the at home remote work that you were looking into. So it can be something super basic. So don't let The HOWling begin.
So that's for defeating that monster of like saying, I don't have the money. I don't have the time. I don't have the skill. Those are all HOW questions. We want to just on the what is it that you are hoping to do? And for some thoughts on how to get to your what? Go back to the previous episode, three questions to discover what you really want, because sometimes we, sometimes you have a hard time getting to your what?
And so that episode is a good help there, I think. Yeah, I love that. It takes a little focus. And you have to know that the hows are coming and so you can block them out. That's just one of the big ones. Some of the questions that come up are just like, maybe it'll be just thinking about yourself and what you believe you're actually capable of. And that can be a big problem as well.
Erik was telling me a story about a man who has no fear. In fact, one of the questions we like to ask is: What if you weren't afraid? What if you literally didn't experience fear? We like to call it like having an awareness, like being aware that the stove is hot and knowing, and then you act in accordance with that information so that you don't get burned. But most of the time,
the anxiety, the worry, that isn't beneficial to us or anybody else around us. So maybe you could tell us a story about someone who has that superpower. Yeah, so regardless of what you think of Elon Musk, I'm reading his biography because he is shaping our time, the time in which we live. And so I want to understand him. And so I'm reading this new biography that's out by Walter Isaacson, who wrote
Erik + Emily Orton (09:40.202)
what I consider the definitive biography on Steve Jobs. Both really fascinating and complex and in lots of ways controversial characters. But I was reading, I'm still in the very beginning of the book, I haven't finished it. In the beginning of the book, it's talking about his childhood. And he grew up in a very violent environment. In South Africa, there was violence in his community, certainly with apartheid and other things.
And there was also violence in his own home. He had a very violent father, and there was just sort of fighting and punching and shouting was just very normal. And it's not part of my, I don't think I've ever punched my brother or... Anyway, the story that his cousin was telling was they were going to some concert in South Africa on a train and...
as the train doors open, somebody gets stabbed in the head right in front of them. And then the train doors close and then they just keep going and it was like, what the heck was that? And so the level of violence is what I would consider extreme, like I've never witnessed anything like that. And then also the kinds of things that he experienced in his own home with his father. And yet his cousin said, Elon was fearless. They would go to a movie...
he was still a kid. There would be big guys that would be making noise and he would be the one to go over and say, 'Hey, you guys, shut up.' You know, I'm putting words in, he was actually very rude. He was very, one of the reasons he got so picked on and beat up all the time was because he was not afraid to call people idiots or stupid, which never goes well. So that's not what I recommend, but it was interesting that he just said, 'Look.'
One of the major themes of Elon's life is that he is fearless. And if you look at his entrepreneurial track record, he puts it all on the line constantly. And he self describes as having Asperger's. And if you don't know what that is, it's a neurological condition on the autism spectrum where you just have some neural connections that don't.
Erik + Emily Orton (12:03.786)
allow you to register other people's feelings. And that has a lot of negatives to it. Like he does not experience empathy for other people. That's why he doesn't care. You know, he can say, he says whatever he wants to them because he doesn't care what they think about it. And sometimes that can come across as very cruel and it is. But in other ways, it can be a superpower where he doesn't care what other people think...
and makes decisions accordingly. And I think that the fears that we're talking about, what are times, money, skills? Just feeling like maybe I, 'Who am I to go for something like this? People like us don't do things like this. I don't know anybody who's done this. I don't deserve this. It's too good for me. I probably can't figure it out or that's for other people.' All of those kind of.
And like, 'I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time, I don't have the skills, and I can't figure it out, and it's not going to work.' Like all these things that we tell ourselves. So the point being that all these fears that we're talking about right now, none of them are physical harm or danger. I think that's an important kind of fear to have, the kind that prevents you from accidentally stepping in front of a train or, you know, falling off a cliff or something. Those kinds of fears are...
they're designed to preserve us. These other kinds of fears of what other people think, there's no actual danger, but we create so much danger around it. And just imagine if you didn't care what other people think, not in a heartless way, not in a cruel way, but just other people... We call it a friendly disregard. If you can have a friendly disregard for what other people think
it will change so much. At least to the extent that I've been able to get there and stay there, it's changed a lot for me. So anyway, that's a long version of the story. It might require a little bravery and maybe this story is more relatable than hearing about Elon Musk, but it is cool to imagine like what if you could have empathy, but also not be so fearful, like recognize those thoughts as they come up and set them aside and move forward?
Erik + Emily Orton (14:29.49)
And so this happened with some of our clients recently and- Coaching clients. Yeah, coaching clients. And they want to build community and address the problem of loneliness that's so rampant in our country and in our communities right now. And so one of the things they were going to do is host a community event at their home and they were nervous that nobody would come.
Based on what they had seen in their community, there was no evidence that people would come. It might've been in a park, I can't remember. Wherever it was, yeah, that people would come. But then the day arrived and people came and they came bearing food and they came happy and they were excited to be there. And so I wanted to share something that she said, "they walked down the street holding something to share and they came.
Isn't that always the fear that no one will come? And we met tons of new people and we had lots of conversations that all ended the same way. I'm so glad you did this. We've been wanting to meet people." And so whatever it is that you are fearful of, maybe someone is waiting for you to lead out and show the way or create the situation. And I always think any time that you overcome your fear and someone else...
gets to witness that and learn from what you experienced, it makes it more likely that they will overcome their fears. That's why we're here. And I actually wanna share this quote from Maxwell Maltz. We love his book, it's called Psycho-Cybernetics, which when you translate it out means mental steering. It's like, who's at the wheel in your brain? And mental navigation. And mental, yeah, mental navigation. And so,
Here's the quote from him about fear. "Fear originates from your own mind. Fears mean only that you are underestimating your own abilities, overestimating and exaggerating the nature of the difficulty before you, and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes." I'm just gonna read it one more time. Do it, so good. Love this guy. "Fear originates from your own mind.
Erik + Emily Orton (16:52.686)
Fear means only that you are underestimating your own abilities, overestimating and exaggerating the nature of the difficulty before you, and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes." So in this Halloween episode talking about how the scariest stories are the ones that we tell ourselves, I know that if you can set aside the how and set aside the fears,
then life will be a treat. Ooh, I see what you did there. That's so... Okay, if you want to treat yourself. Treat yourself. Go to theawesomfactory.nyc/discovery and you'll discover the treat waiting for you. Let's get on the phone for 20 or 30 minutes. Let's get you over some of your fears that you can go out there and have the wonderful kind of adventure that you want to have with your family, the people you care about. Anything else before we wrap up, Miss Emily? I'm good.
Thanks for listening to the What Could Go Right podcast. See you again soon.
