Choose to Live The Fear.Less Lifestyle

Fear is scary. What an interesting opinion.

Fear is exciting. What an empowering opinion.

I Was Afraid of Change

Change is at an all-time high. We live in a world where Twitter can overthrow a government and we can stream video from Mars. It’s weird, but I feel like most of us are completely afraid of change. I used to be.

The conversations I had with Jordan over 3 years ago still echo in my head. I can recall the tone so clear. I felt like he wanted me to tear down every part of my life just so I could stop farting, pooping and feeling like crap every time I ate. The problem was I didn’t feel like it was a sure thing.

Little did I know, he was offering me the golden ticket and all I could think about were the changes I would have to make…

… how I would totally lose all my friends

… destroy everything I knew

… and kill everything fun I did.

He was still telling me about the great Specific Carbohydrate Diet, but my mind was years ahead of him projecting how this simple change, what I ate, would tear down everything in my life.

Changing My Diet Was Easy Compared To…

It turned out changing my diet wasn’t that hard. And all those nightmare scenarios of my life changing for the worse never came true. In fact, the opposite of what I imagined came true.

Instead of less friends, less fun and less foods, I have more of everything. But what I didn’t realize was that I had started walking down a road of change that I wasn’t even aware of.  By changing what I ate, what I thought, what I did… I started to take full responsibility of my health.

I was promoted from janitor of my body to CEO in a few short months and didn’t even know it.

For better or worse, with no prior training, I was now making daily decisions about my health. And let me tell you a secret about CEOs: they aren’t always right.

Most Decisions Lead to Failure

Well, at first but they also lead directly to success.

CEOs don’t get to the top by being right more often than the others around them. They get there by making more decisions and changes than those around them. From those I’ve read about and talked to, I’ve learned that everyone fails at the same rate.

The CEO makes 100 changes to the janitor’s 3 over the course of a year. They both succeed at a 33% rate and at the end of the year the CEO had made 33 successful changes and learned important lessons from the other 67. The janitor is still afraid as ever because he’s failed twice and succeeded only once. The CEO sees the trends and is reinforced by the failures. He/She knows that to succeed means to fail.

After all, they won 33 times in a year.

Failure Leads to Confidence

The best part of becoming CEO of my health and failing over and over was the confidence I’ve developed. Once I accepted complete responsibility for the outcomes of my health, my failures rose, but so did my success.

Learning to pick myself up after many weekends lost to “Google Death Spirals,” $1,000’s spent on miracle pills, and the latest health theory has been invaluable as I go forward.  I’ve tried so many things, been swindled, and tricked myself. I am beginning to see the trends.

I’m a much wiser CEO of my body these days.

Fear Is a Future Indicator of Confidence

As long as you go for it.

The new Steve has a much different opinion of fear. No longer is it a paralyzing feeling that locks me into my current ways.

Now when I feel the gripping emotion build up within me I know it’s a great indictor that I need to explore it and to do whatever I’m afraid of. Because once I bust through it, I will find more success, more confidence.

It’s an indicator of the right path.

Here’s an Interview I Did for FEAR.LESS

Ever been interviewed by someone for an hour straight about your health? Spotlight on you only for the world? I hadn’t. Another fear erased!

Here’s my interview about what it was like to face my fears and change my lifestyle to support health. Huge thanks to our new friend Ishta!

For the record, the fear is still here and I still make plenty of mistakes. But instead of the fear holding me at gun point, frozen in time, now I sprint it down and make it say “Uncle.”

Remember fear is a good indicator you’re on to something good.

-Steve