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iAlign #54 - Building in the Shadows Until You're Worthy · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the I Align podcast with Flint Mitchell, where I provide stories, resources, and tools for ambitious builders who are ready to gain control over procrastination, overthinking, and distraction.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that I fell behind in life was because I was ashamed and insecure about how much I had actually accomplished.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would try to work extra hard on my own, trying to prove myself or my work before I was willing to show it to anyone or ask questions.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And because I did this repeatedly, I lost years of my potential.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is Flint from Ironline.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I went from a life of stagnation, overthinking, procrastination, scrolling, and feeling behind to a life of consistent, clear, confident action and freedom.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I used to let hidden shame and insecurity hold me back.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a kind of a personal story that I think explains this obstacle fairly well.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite books growing up was The Count of Monte Cristo.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not because of the life spent plotting revenge or withering away on some Mediterranean rock prison with one friend, but the story arc appealed to something really deep in me about the hidden journey in the shadows.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're cooking now.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: There was something primal and masculine and deeply appealing about the idea of working in the shadows for years on end, and then showing up as some transformed man knowing many languages and the sciences and the literature and all these things, and of showing up as successful and finished.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I viewed this as honorable, as if it was the right way of pursuing life.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: To work hard in the shadows without seeking validation or recognition until I was proven and worthy and ready to kill my ex-lover's husband.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not really.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that desire is actually born out of insecurity and shame, not honor.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many work and personal projects in my past and in my life that if I had had a simple conversation, talking about a roadblock I was having, or an insecurity I was facing, or a fear I was holding, or some sort of obstacle, but I didn't because of the shame or insecurity that I felt about being blocked or about not being perfect, or the block of wanting to do it the hard way, otherwise it's not the worthy way.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It could have saved me weeks or months, or quite literally years.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll touch on the years concept in a minute.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have an example of that from one of my clients.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not to say that you should seek external validation or seek out the easy way.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's to say that usually a competent engineer or builder's greatest adversary is their insecurity or their shame or they're feeling like they're not enough that prevents them from asking for help through obstacles that they don't have to solve themselves or taking risks, or just otherwise shortening the loops of action required to build great monumental projects and lives.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Going about everything the hard way is not more honorable and it is not better.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is usually just avoidance masked as morality.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself: do you find yourself constantly telling yourself that if you don't do things the hard way, it's not as worthy?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are not as worthy.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't be acceptable for you to reach some opportunity or reward or promotion or salary if you didn't do all of the hard work underneath the surface that you know is required in order to get that thing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you don't deserve the possible reward because you haven't put in the time and the effort, you haven't done it the right way.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you recognize that voice, recognize it's complete and total bullshit.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not to say that doing hard things isn't important.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Doing hard things is important, but doing the right select few hard things that are actually important to you is important.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not just doing everything, just making your life as hard as possible.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's not moral.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not honorable.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's just you allowing your insecurity or your shame, or at least this is what I did with myself.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was me allowing my insecurity or my shame to hold me back from getting into the positions where I would actually be able to excel, where I would actually be able to get the reward or the outcome that I wanted.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that it's September now.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're coming up on the end of the year, and so many people will enter next year with tons of frustration over the lack of the opportunities that they successfully acquired.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: These are the promotions, these are the salaries, it's the career direction in general, it's the projects you wanted to lead, it's the projects you wanted to build yourself that have blocks right now that a very simple, albeit maybe uncomfortable, conversation right now could probably clear up and save you months of worrying about it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or months of frustration and anger going into the holidays that compound on top of the already stressful time period that it is.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you're angry at your boss, you're angry at yourself, you're angry at your colleagues, you're angry at some person who can't read your mind and know that you want something and can't see that you're putting in all this time and effort when the reality is like you're not telling them, you're not talking to them about it, or you're not identifying what the actual requirements are that are necessary for you to move forward.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I had a client that came in and just actually just graduated recently, and he was a software engineer who wanted to move into the hardware side of his business as a satellite technology company.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: He was already doing a master's degree when he came in, and he told me that he was thinking about pursuing another four-year degree or another degree in order to show expertise over hardware in order to get into this group.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked him a simple question, have you talked to them about it?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, I haven't done enough yet in order to prove that.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And to that I said, I understand that you don't feel like it is appropriate for you right now with whatever foundation or lack of foundation you have in hardware is right now.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a couple questions you have to ask.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: First and foremost, you don't even know if you would enjoy this other team or this other project.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you're almost willing to dedicate years of your life trying to figure that out.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are deriving your next actions through thinking instead of through action, through evidence.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And two, you don't even know what is required of you to get into this next group.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I supported him to identify some of the limiting beliefs that were preventing him from having this conversation and identifying a better frame that he could use going into this conversation that made him more comfortable asking questions about new roles or new salaries, new projects that he wasn't necessarily prepared for in this moment or didn't think that he was.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And what ended up happening was that he identified a couple high-leverage conversations that he could have, both with people who had made similar transitions or people who were in the roles that he wanted to pursue, or people that led the teams that were in the roles that he wanted to pursue, and identified that the actual barrier of entry into this place that he wanted to get to was substantially lower and just different than he originally thought.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is they were just looking for capable or competent engineers, which he already was, with some foundation or understanding of some of these topics.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that won't always be true for every group, but the reality is if you are making decisions based off of your overthinking that lead to long-term time commitments like courses and degrees and anything else that will require you to spend months of time reading books and completing all these things because of your feeling of insecurity over what you could potentially offer right now, you are allowing overthinking to dictate your life.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, for that specific example, by talking to the right people over the course of just a month or two, he was actually able to start the process, he's about to right now, I believe, of taking a ticket in this other team that is in the mixture between where his current work is and where their work is, so he can support this team, get some hands-on experience, identify if he would even enjoy this kind of work, identify if he would enjoy the team, the type of people, all these different things that he wasn't even qualifying himself as worthy of getting to ask questions about.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in doing so, likely shortened the loop that could have taken him a year or multiple years of just in the background, in his mind, these open loops, just I need to grind harder, do more projects, I need to learn more things, read more books, take more courses before I can even start the conversation of this next opportunity that I want.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that's bullshit because you don't know what is required in order to get to the next place.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there are very likely, once again, very simple, high-leverage conversations that might be a bit uncomfortable, but that you could have right now that would clarify the next path that you need to take infinitely better than you would be able to do in your own mind.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't let your overthinking dictate your actions, otherwise, you will waste your life taking the wrong actions or just waiting, waiting for permission, waiting for you to be worthy, waiting for the insecurity or the shame to go away.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is if you don't attack those things on their own, they're never gonna go away.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it will just be a life spent waiting.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're not avoiding the conversation because you don't know how to have it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're avoiding it because it means having to say out loud where you are in this moment.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you're insecure and you have some level of shame over where you actually are or who you actually are.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with you for that.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But the more you allow that emotion or that feeling to push you to go build more in the dark, take more courses, take more degrees, read more books in order to prove that you are worthy, then the longer you spend in the dark and the more time there is for the shame to latch on.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that is how you, likely, as a completely competent person, have lost years of your massive potential and life that you will never get back, waiting for the right time to take action, waiting for the right time where you will be worthy or you will be good enough.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But you already are.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to start the conversation now.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, I am Flint from Ioline.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you follow and subscribe for more resources and content on building a life full of confidence and authenticity and freedom.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Peace.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been told your entire life that you're smart and you have potential, but you continue to see yourself not do what you said you would do again, and it's made you stop trusting in yourself or that you will ever achieve that potential, I want to help you.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Together, you and I will implement a core value-based system that will help you become decisive and focused.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to feel the relief from the weight on your shoulders because of the decreased noise in your head.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Strength each morning because you trust yourself to turn lost avoidant hours of your life into forward progress.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Peace when you no longer have to hide how you actually spend your time.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And pride in yourself when you close your eyes to go to sleep.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: If that's of interest to you, click the first link in the show notes, fill out the 30 second application, and grab a time on my calendar.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Spots are obviously limited because of my time and availability, but if they fill up and you're a good fit, I'll make sure you get on the wait list.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I look forward to speaking with you.