Episode #11
In this episode Tim & Doug discuss one of the most common questions asked by high achievers; If I become content in my life will I still be driven?
A lot of people fear what might happen if they achieve the things they really desire, they have a fear that they will no longer have something to aim for and this is a key reason as to why a lot of people if pushed by fear, hit the self destruct button and damage their lives and business.
Understanding how fear can hold you back is the key to getting past this block. It’s in our nature to think that once we have achieved our goals that we then reach the endpoint, and it’s also natural for us not to want to reach the end of our purpose because what would we do then?
Tim & Doug use first-hand examples to explain how you can 100% still be driven while being content and fulfilled with life. In fact, it can even make you more driven, more productive and things will come to you easily and seamlessly. You will begin to see things differently but it will give you the freedom to enjoy life with flow and ease.
What you will discover in this episode:
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- The main reasons people fear content life.
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- The difference in desire and fear can have on your life.
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- How your fear can push you to self destruct.
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- How to be driven by purpose and not fear.
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- How to live with flow and ease
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- The difference between ‘Get to do’ and ‘Have to do’ mentalities.
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- Understanding ‘hustle mode’ and it’s linked to fear.
- Immediately actionable tasks to lead you on the path to greatness.
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Episode Transcript
Doug Holt 0:00
What happens when you eliminate that fear, the drive doesn’t go away. The self-destruction does and allows you to keep stepping forward; it no longer becomes two steps forward, three steps back. But you’re moving forward, have a passion and purpose, and out of love.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man Show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim Matthews. Tim, how are you doing, man?
Tim Matthews 0:28
I’m doing very well. Thank you, sir. How are you?
Doug Holt 0:30
I’m doing excellent. I know you’re traveling right now, enjoying the beautiful countryside. But we got to meet to get into you today.
Tim Matthews 0:38
Yeah, we can just pause that a second. I just love that conviction that you had there; “I’m doing excellent!” All right, that was not an ounce of doubt in your mind about how you felt it was nice to hear.
Doug Holt 0:51
Thank you. So let’s rock and roll. I know you had a question that you want to bring to the table? It’s a question that comes up a lot with successful men looking at our program with The Activation Method. When they go through the process to let the listener know, there is a program called The Activation Method. And it is a very intense program for men, business owners in particular, or at least executives and those on their way to that path. And during this process, we’re very choosy about who we take in. And so they have to go through an application process to do so. So, Tim, you were saying right before we hit record, about a common question that comes up?
Tim Matthews 1:27
Yeah. Is, is even more than a question is fear, and that fear is if I become content and fulfill in my life, will I still be driven? Now, to put that another way, a lot of men we speak to, they have very much been driven by pain for most of their life, they are afraid if they overcome that, and allow themselves to be pulled by that pleasure, instead of being driven by pain, then they’re going to lose that drive. And they’re afraid, and that is a big holdup for a lot of guys.
Doug Holt 1:59
Yeah, this is so common. I’m glad you brought this topic up because you hear this a lot, not only just from the men that come through our program, but from people in general, especially high achievers. They have taught themselves to drive themselves out of fear and a common pattern that occurs here, and people listening to this, let me know if this strikes you as familiar. But what they’ll do is they’ll rise to a certain level, raise to a certain bar, and then get what we call up-leveling, they’ll hit their upper limit, they start to have everything crashed around them. They start to self destruct, implode, they start ruining their relationships, their business, and they get back to rock bottom now only when they hit rock bottom their backs against the wall, things are horrible, etc. Do they push through and build it back up again, to kind of name themselves as the hero. Of course, they only get to a certain level again, and then they repeat this cycle. It seems like a common cycle that many people go through, where they will get to a certain level of comfortability. And all of a sudden, XYZ happens. Of course, it’s not their fault, right? Which we all know it is, and subconsciously, they self-destruct, and when their backs against the wall, though, then they make the phone calls, then they’re able to drive home. That’s due to fear, right? They’re worried that the pain gets released, the actual pain gets released, that they won’t be able to rebuild the company, they won’t be able to push forward in the relationships, they won’t be able to break through the barrier.
The truth of it is they haven’t broken through the barrier with the pain. The pain is not the driving force; they may have waited till they got their back against the wall. But what if, like you said something very pointed here, be pulled by our dreams. Rather than pushed by our fear, and that’s a key distinction that you said, I recognize that right away. Being pulled by our dreams and our desires to drive us allows us to go to that next level, allows us to raise the thermostat, so to speak, where we can achieve more, the fear is gone. Now we can be driven by our passion, by our excitement, by our joys. The truth is we’re always going to want to grow; we’re always going to want to go to that next level. But the actual fear and pain is what’s keeping us down, and it is the crab in the pot, right? You know the crab in the pot story, whereas you start to come up with all the other crabs, what do they do? They grab the crab trying to get out of that pot, and they pull it right back down. That is your fear, and if you’re trying to get out of the pot, eliminating that fear is going to allow you to elevate, not keep you down.
Tim Matthews 4:43
Wow, so well said. Yeah, I mean, how much can you be driven when you push by pain, because ultimately, whenever you are pushed by pain, never feels like enough, does it? You always want to get that next thing. We talked about the men when they come into the program, having a cycle of creating, conquer, next, create conquer, is never-ending. As a result, as I said, no matter what you achieve, it never feels like enough. Therefore, you’re constantly on the hamster wheel of hustle, and ultimately, you burn out. So although a lot of men think that it’s a productive space for them to be in, it isn’t that productive because it goes in waves and cycles. And ultimately, it’s never very long-lasting, and also is not fulfilling, it isn’t fulfilling. So what would you rather do? We’d rather take the risk that you’re going to be content and fulfilled with your life. But you might have a different experience of your journey, you might experience your journey a different way, or you want to continue as you are, and actually never really experienced true contentment and fulfillment.
Doug Holt 5:54
It’s so true. If you think about motivating anybody, it is just talking outside of people, if you’re trying to motivate somebody if you’re motivating them out of fear. As soon as that fear right there, they’re not going to be pushed or pulled by desire. And if you’re motivating that person out of fear, they’re not actually really living life. They’re always in the state of a dark cloud chain feeling bound. They’re not enjoying the fruits of life, the things that we love, you, and I always commonly say that “You’re not practicing for life right now. You’re living life. So don’t act like this is your practice game here. This is game day; every single day is game day for your life.” Living in fear, and having that weigh you down, you’re not going to enjoy it.
So if anything, you want to enjoy life first and foremost. The second thing is you want that person to be driven by purpose. You and I run businesses, we run companies we go in, we consult at a very high level, when we see somebody who’s worked for a company who is driven by fear, they only produce as much as necessary period, right? Only enough not to be scared. Same thing with us. Now, when we go to that same company, we see somebody driven by purpose, by passion, they go above and beyond. And as a business owner, that’s what I look for, right? I want somebody on my team to constantly take that next step, what I call the and then some step, one step further. Now tie this all in together, this all happens with the inside of us as well. When we’re driven by fear, we only go as far as fear will take us; we only go as far as to be safe. So the fear doesn’t overcome us. The pain doesn’t overcome us when we’re driven by purpose, passion, excitement, the juices that flow through life. And we can do that. And then some and more importantly, we get to enjoy it.
Tim Matthews 7:58
So true. When you’ve got those new juices of life, as you said so well, you might get energized, you’re clearer, you’re more focused, you’ve got more enjoyment in your life, you’ve got more fun in your life, it’s happier, the journey is better, you naturally get up with a spring in your step, and you’re healthier. Now, stress, a lot of men we work with, when we first start working within the stress levels are through the roof; they are overwhelmed and pulled in a million different directions. They can’t sleep; they lie awake at night. It’s the crazy pace of life that they’re living with, and the truth is if you actually looked at the question of; if I become full content or fulfilled with my eyes, will I still be driven? Well, the reality is, and you said this at the beginning, Doug, for the most part, if you are listening to this podcast, if you’re a business owner, an entrepreneur, or a C suite executive, then usually by default, you just love to grow. You love to grow in the area of your health; you love to grow personally and professionally. It’s just who you are. In terms of still being driven, yes, in my opinion, you are still going to be driven because it’s just who you are. And you don’t have to have that driver of pain and fear of loss and fear of rejection behind you. Because when you shift it to allow yourself to be pulled by pleasure, your journey takes a completely different meaning. And this is what we speak about when we talk about there being one destination two paths. The first path is, we know we call it the average we’re done with because it is average; it is easy. It’s that the path of the hustle of grind and force of sacrifice is very easy to do. It doesn’t take you to know, a rocket scientist, if you will, to go out there and hustle. It’s very easy to hustle, but it’s a different ballgame when you choose to go into the other path. And that’s the path of flow and ease and abundance. And that is the path where you are content and fulfilled with your life while also being driven, pulled by a pleasure to experience even more joy and abundance in your life; it is just a choice. It is a choice.
Doug Holt 10:25
It is a choice. Gosh, we talked about this for so long, but that brought up memory, and I remember being with you, and someone asked you a question. Tim, this was about hustle, which is similar to fear, right? Sometimes hustle and fear can go hand in hand, the way hustle is talked about, and popular business culture right now. It’s a phenomenon. It’s a new phenomenon, by the way, for the people that are really into this whole, you got a hustle, grind it out, you know, 16 hours a day, seven days a week that’s being pushed right now on the internet, but somebody asked you to sit and said; “How can I have flow and ease and also get a bunch of stuff done?” And I’m going to paraphrase your response, and you come and clean it up. So I’m sure I’m going to miss this one up. But it struck me because I thought it was really profound. And you said, “Look, no, no, no, it doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. It doesn’t mean you don’t bust your ass, essentially. The way that we used to think of that, but you do so with passion, you do so with flow and ease.” And as soon as you said that, it really just snapped into my mind, the flow state that we’ve all experienced. When you’re in a state of flow, when you sit down, you’re doing something you love, and you look up, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s been 15 minutes,” and you’re like, “Holy cow, it’s been two hours,” we’ve all been there that flow state. And that’s what I thought you were talking about. There’s the side hustle, you’re getting things done, there’s work to be done, but you’re driven, you’re being pulled by your purpose and by what you want to do, rather than push by the; “Oh, my to-do list and all these things I have to do,” it’s a difference in a distinction between get to do and have to do. Get to do is by flowing ease, pushed by your dreams. To do is fear; you have to do it or something else.
Tim Matthews 12:12
Yeah, there’s a consequence to your action. If you do not, then something bad will happen. You’re totally right; a lot of men that I have worked with, through The Powerful Man that we work for together, Doug, how they have chosen to define what flow and ease means to them. It’s often one whereby they choose it to mean a lack of action. It doesn’t have to be that all you can still mean that you get shit done; it can still mean that you are very productive is simply the energy behind your action. And that’s the difference, whether it’s pushed by pain or pulled by pleasure. In my opinion, well we do, I was going to say, in my opinion, if you become content and fulfill your life, you will still be driven, you can still be driven. The reason why I said that was so convincing is that you do, your content, and fulfill your life. And you are still driven because it’s who you are, you love to grow. Now when you see the man when they come through The Activation Method on the other side of it, they are content and fulfilled with their life. And they are still driven, they’ve just got a completely different rhythm to their life, and different bounce to life because they see things differently. One destination, two paths, they’ve chosen to get off the average path and move across to the new way, the way that you know suits them better. They do mean forging ahead, and kind of sticking two fingers will put the hustle if you will, and really finding what the hustle means to them. I think that’s the key thing, redefining what it means to them. But you know, to have to link this back to the initial point, to hear men thinking about coming into The Activation Method and have this be one of the common fears that our sales team overcome with them. It’s profound, and it’s really profound to hear this come up time and time again. What I personally and I’ll speak for you too, Doug, we want you to know that if you become content and fulfilled with your life, you can still have the drive. You will still have the drive if you want to have it, as simple as that. It’s so simple as well when we choose to let it be simple. Will the drive to die? Well, do you want it to be there?
Doug Holt 14:48
Hey guys, I wanted to interrupt this episode because I wanted to talk to you about how almost 300 men are already taking control of their lives, their 4X their business revenues, and they’re having more connected intimate sex using The Activation Method, all without sacrificing their relationships, or their health. Now, this is only an 11-minute case study we put together just based on all the feedback we’ve gotten from your listeners. To get the case study, all you have to do is go over to https://www.thepowerfulman.com/bonus/. So that’s https://www.thepowerfulman.com/bonus/, you can get that case study right now. It’s short, and it’s right to the point it’s going to give you actionable points that you can take, right today. All right, let’s get back to the episode.
I think about this and my personal experience, and I’ll just share that with everybody. And a couple of other analogies is, when I was in hustle mode, I was grinding it out, I got done with the work. Then I would have to have a couple of cocktails to calm down, wake up in the morning, slam coffee, back at it. I wasn’t living, I live by the beach, but I didn’t step foot on the sand. I knew the beach was there, and I could see people going to the beach to have fun. But I was hustling because I was in fear. Now when I broke that cycle, and I broke that cycle through a lot of tools. When I broke that cycle, I was able to become successful without that fear driving me. What happened for me was more things opened up. Which made me want to do more; I was driven by so much more energy, purpose. When you think about things that you want to do, right now, everybody thinks about doing your taxes.
Filling out tax forms, everybody gets tired. I’ve never met one person, including accountants who are friends of mine who specialized in this, that don’t go; “Oh, man, I am going to do my taxes,” got to fill out these forms or driving forms, whatever it may be. It’s the same idea. It’s an energy sap, fears energy sap, being pulled away from fear, you’re going to have more energy. I can tell you, and you’ll be more vibrant, you’d be working with so much more clarity. Your eyes are wide open in such a bigger way than you’ll actually want to do the things that you’re doing; you’ll actually be driven by purpose. That opens you up to more possibilities, which for me in the marketplace, the big things are marketing and innovation, right? If you look at any business, marketing and innovation drive a company. Now, what does innovation come from? Innovation comes from new ideas. You don’t get new ideas from a state of fear. You get them from a state of openness, and that’s what a lot of these men typically see once they remove the fear. The drive doesn’t go away. In fact, a lot of times, it increases quite a bit. Now they may pivot but now all of a sudden, what was previously impossible becomes possible. And that’s a huge difference that most people aren’t that aren’t seeing.
Tim Matthews 17:53
Yeah, it’s huge. This is absolutely huge, being able to become aware of where you’re operating from first and foremost. Then have the tools to choose something different and change it is everything, isn’t it? Because what happens if you don’t? What happens if you choose not to take control of your life in that way? What do you do? Do you just continue to be a victim of the journey? Do you just continue to tell yourself, “Oh, that’s just the way it is.”? No, it’s just the way you choose it to be the way you’re letting it be.
Doug Holt 18:34
You become average, average sucks. Nobody listening to this wants to be average—none of the men that are either coming through the program or apply and don’t make it. None of them want to be average; nobody does. But many of them are too afraid to step into their greatness. Now we talked about, and you said earlier, there are two paths along with the trail success. Path one is hustle, right? You’re hustling your butt off, and you’re trying to fill your life with cars, with women, drugs, alcohol, sedation, all these things that don’t get you there. You keep self-destructing, and then you see on the other path, the lucky guy that we talked about, who doesn’t really talk about it, but it seems to happen easily to him.
The truth is, he’s not lucky. He just figured it out, and part of that is stepping into your fears, stepping into them, and not being actually pulled or pushed by fear but being pulled by your destiny. That’s why we look at these two paths and Tim, you do an excellent diagram of these, and we should get that out so the listeners can see. But on these paths, the person the lucky guy will we call the lucky guy, or a lot of us do. Really what that person has done is put in the work on their own mental fortitude. They are the kingdom within the king inside themselves, and they are pulling forward in a way towards their purpose towards success. That is what happens when you eliminate that fear; the drive doesn’t go away. The self-destruction does and allows you to keep stepping forward; it no longer becomes two steps forward three steps back. That’s what a lot of us have experienced. I know, I have done that in business. I did so much in my early 20s. Now it becomes one step forward, two steps forward, and three steps forward, one step forward, etc. But you’re moving forward at a passion, purpose, and out of love. And I tell you right now, it is such a better way of living, and take this from someone who’s done both. I can tell you, it’s like they say; “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, and the rich is better” I just can tell you that right now. I’ll deal with those problems any day.
Tim Matthews 20:48
Yeah, you say it so well. So Doug, was one thing that the list can take away from this and do immediately to help you get off that path of the hustle and on to the better path?
Doug Holt 21:03
I think the first thing to do right here is, to be honest with yourself and identify your fear. Identify that pain, “The pain is driving me,” why is it driving you? What is that story that you’ve created, about this pain or about this fear that it’s going to drive you, and I want you to write it down, write it down like you’re writing a novel? It should be at least two pages, probably more. We are looking at this, what I want you to do is look at that story, and I’m kind of giving you the punch line ahead of time. We’ve talked about this before, but it’s the same exercise that highlights the undeniable facts to that story. I mean, if lawyers are sitting there, your front of the United States Supreme Court or whatever. What are the undeniable facts that nobody could deny? Highlight those, and my guess is you’re going to end up with two or three lines of the facts. The rest of that is some bs story that’s pulling you down, causing you to not get to your dreams; it’s going to keep you away from what you truly want. You deserve to be happy; you deserve to be great. You were born that way. That is your destiny; if you are feeling at all average, and not great at all, this is time to step up and make a change. Make that change, reach out to me, to Tim, to anybody on our team will be happy to point you in the right direction. I will be perfectly honest with you. Most people are not a good fit for our program. We don’t accept everybody. This is an elite group. But we’re happy to point you in a direction that might be good for you. So take that first step if you aren’t willing to take the first step and do the work and the exercise that we just gave you and then enjoy the average.
Tim Matthews 22:50
Well, yeah, it’s a complete trip. So yeah, let’s say, awesome. Well, Doug, I have loved, loved this conversation. So many great points. I just love being in this conversation with you. And I will often speak about it long, teach a lot, and we live it a lot as well. But it’s always so fascinating to hear what is going on in the mind that is looking to join the program and then discussing it with the rest of the listeners; it’s phenomenal. So thank you so much for being on here with me and sharing your wisdom with these guys. It’s profound.
Doug Holt 23:27
Yeah, thank you, man. Enjoy your trip. You’re having a great time as and you are living The Powerful Man lifestyle. I think it’s important for people that are listening to this that probably don’t know you as well, as I do is, as I say, we eat our own cooking. We actually do the things that we talked about, and you’re traveling in the countryside with your beautiful lady. So, enjoy your time. Thanks for taking the time to spread this message. To a lot of men. We’re getting great feedback from the listeners and your listeners. Let us know what you think and topics that you’d like us to cover. We’re doing this for you. So until next time, have an amazing, amazing week. And yeah, don’t be average, be great. Talk to you guys later.
