This is “Your Impact: The Podcast” Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”, and I’m April.
Today I’m diving into Chin-Ning Chu's book “Thick Face, Black Heart: The warrior philosophy for conquering the challenges of business and life”. Chin-Ning Chu is an internationally renowned speaker and bestselling author of business psychology, and champion of universal truths about the nature of effort, success, detachment and “creating luck”.
There are many key insights condensed into this book, so this title will appear a few times this season. But for today, we will focus on the concept of: being a coward.
Chin Ning-Chu explains, “before we can succeed, we must clearly understand that success means change and the risk of failure.” When you are letting years pass chasing approval or fulfilling the expectations of others, or neglecting your dreams, or being nice for the sake of appearing virtuous - you are acting out of fear and as a coward.
I was pretty gutsy as a kid - I didn’t care so much about others’ opinions, at least I don’t remember caring, but as I grew older I started to become more careful. When someone told me I looked like a marshmallow in a winter jacket, I refused to wear a winter jacket Mid-January in Canada for the next 10 years. Or that one time I got an answer wrong in class and heard snickering laughter around me, and because I feared feeling that embarrassment again, I became reluctant to speak up in class, and swore to my peers that I was just better at writing than I was at public speaking. Or more recently, when I left a safe and well-paid job to pursue a dream that failed, and I kicked and screamed and cried, and tried to blame others, or timing, or my stupidity for months - and the fear of failing again stunned me so much that I did almost nothing for what felt like i really long time.
It was only until I went through a deep reflection to understand where my fears were coming from, as well as my self-destructive patterns, when I knew I had to stop allowing fear - and my emotions - to control my life. It is accepting life’s harsh lessons and learning from them, rather than to be destroyed by them. Understand yourself so that you will know what to do in any given situation.
Fear, instead of filling us with agitation, is energy that can lead us to a state of exhilaration, or intense concentration, or love. So focus your attention on your goals and ignore the costs.
One of the core ideas to being someone with a Thick Face, Black Heart, is to be able to put self-doubt aside and refuse to accept the limitations that others have tried to impose on you, and to hold strong your inner sense of worth. There is a power in detachment and dispassion that will enable you to face life’s challenges with calm and grace. When you succeed in detaching yourself from the misery of your experience, you will see with complete clarity, the real nature of your situation.
Remember: extraordinary people don’t care what others think of them. And, the more fear you confront and conquer, the greater courage you will possess.
You just listened to: Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”. I’ll be back with new episodes every Sunday so I’ll see you there with more thoughts on how to live better and find your impact. Be well.
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This is “Your Impact: The Podcast” Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”, and I’m April.
Today I’m diving into Chin-Ning Chu's book “Thick Face, Black Heart: The warrior philosophy for conquering the challenges of business and life”. Chin-Ning Chu is an internationally renowned speaker and bestselling author of business psychology, and champion of universal truths about the nature of effort, success, detachment and “creating luck”.
There are many key insights condensed into this book, so this title will appear a few times this season. But for today, we will focus on the concept of: being a coward.
Chin Ning-Chu explains, “before we can succeed, we must clearly understand that success means change and the risk of failure.” When you are letting years pass chasing approval or fulfilling the expectations of others, or neglecting your dreams, or being nice for the sake of appearing virtuous - you are acting out of fear and as a coward.
I was pretty gutsy as a kid - I didn’t care so much about others’ opinions, at least I don’t remember caring, but as I grew older I started to become more careful. When someone told me I looked like a marshmallow in a winter jacket, I refused to wear a winter jacket Mid-January in Canada for the next 10 years. Or that one time I got an answer wrong in class and heard snickering laughter around me, and because I feared feeling that embarrassment again, I became reluctant to speak up in class, and swore to my peers that I was just better at writing than I was at public speaking. Or more recently, when I left a safe and well-paid job to pursue a dream that failed, and I kicked and screamed and cried, and tried to blame others, or timing, or my stupidity for months - and the fear of failing again stunned me so much that I did almost nothing for what felt like i really long time.
It was only until I went through a deep reflection to understand where my fears were coming from, as well as my self-destructive patterns, when I knew I had to stop allowing fear - and my emotions - to control my life. It is accepting life’s harsh lessons and learning from them, rather than to be destroyed by them. Understand yourself so that you will know what to do in any given situation.
Fear, instead of filling us with agitation, is energy that can lead us to a state of exhilaration, or intense concentration, or love. So focus your attention on your goals and ignore the costs.
One of the core ideas to being someone with a Thick Face, Black Heart, is to be able to put self-doubt aside and refuse to accept the limitations that others have tried to impose on you, and to hold strong your inner sense of worth. There is a power in detachment and dispassion that will enable you to face life’s challenges with calm and grace. When you succeed in detaching yourself from the misery of your experience, you will see with complete clarity, the real nature of your situation.
Remember: extraordinary people don’t care what others think of them. And, the more fear you confront and conquer, the greater courage you will possess.
You just listened to: Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”. I’ll be back with new episodes every Sunday so I’ll see you there with more thoughts on how to live better and find your impact. Be well.
Episode 4: Why being busy is the reason why you're stuck
Your Impact: The Podcast
5 minutes 1 second
4 years ago
Episode 4: Why being busy is the reason why you're stuck
Today I’m diving into Greg McKeown's book “Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less”...
Greg McKeown explains an Essentialist as someone who knows that they have limits; someone that sees boundaries as liberating; someone who sets rules in advance; and someone who is comfortable with cutting losses. The multi-hyphenate movement, and the North American standard achievement metric of level of “busy-ness”, and our de facto participation in it, seems, to me, to be one of the biggest roadblocks to an essentialist lifestyle.
I did have a lot of pride in “doing so much” or “working so hard”. Back in 2013 I had enrolled in full-time university, was living on my own an 1h30 min away from campus, and holding down 2 or 3 jobs at a time. It went like this throughout my 6 years there, and what ended up happening every year were barely passing grades, rotating burnout jobs, starting a website, sporadically starting and ending small business ideas, and the blowing up of a chunk of my income socializing and shopping because it was where I winded down and received approval and praise for the things I was doing. Even at my last years of university, when I was finally able to get a student loan to support me and my grades spiked up dramatically, I still did not learn to slow down, and still felt the need to fill up my schedule to prove my worth to the world.
Greg explains the “Sunk-Cost Bias” as the tendency to continue to invest time, money, or energy into something we know is a losing proposition simply because we have already incurred, or sunk, at a cost that cannot be recouped. But of course this can easily become a vicious cycle: the more we invest, the more determined we become to see it through and see our investment pay off. The more we invest in something, the harder it is to let go.
Reflecting, I can see that I operated under the sunk-cost bias for over 10 years, during my time at University, at certain jobs, and other educational pursuits. I continued to put time and money into a University degree despite constantly changing my major, failing grades, and no clear end goal. I stayed at abusive jobs because I felt like it would be more of a headache to apply, interview and train for a new job during the madness of everything else going on. I was a YES-Man and committed to events, workshops, speaking opportunities, project opportunities even if I was exhausted by Day 2 of each of one. Mind you, everything I said yes to and pursued I had originally shown interest in and enjoyed, but that was the problem. I was interested in so many things! And they were all overlapping! Everything was made to be a priority.
What ended up happening was that I was decent at many things but nothing really pushed me towards a singular direction - it instead spread me too thin, and that investment of time and money didn’t end up paying off the way I thought it would.
...
Towards the end of 2020 I went from doing too much, to a grand halt. In these last couple months I have trained myself to reflect on old jobs and opportunities to research their underlying patterns, what i liked about them, and to remember when i did feel that spark and ask myself why. After that I researched jobs and careers that are in demand in the market, in depth, until I find that “aha” - that oh yes, this is the one - and then commit to that, and that alone.
Now my time is more relaxed, more open to small hobbies, and more dedicated to a singular goal and constantly asking myself as opportunities come up - if they will add a stepping stone to the direction I want to go. Don’t get me wrong, I still need to work multiple part-time and freelance jobs to get by with bill payments, but I no longer give them as much investment - 90% of my energy is towards a now clear singular end goal. The result, I suspect, is a more rewarding path and quicker progression.
Your Impact: The Podcast
This is “Your Impact: The Podcast” Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”, and I’m April.
Today I’m diving into Chin-Ning Chu's book “Thick Face, Black Heart: The warrior philosophy for conquering the challenges of business and life”. Chin-Ning Chu is an internationally renowned speaker and bestselling author of business psychology, and champion of universal truths about the nature of effort, success, detachment and “creating luck”.
There are many key insights condensed into this book, so this title will appear a few times this season. But for today, we will focus on the concept of: being a coward.
Chin Ning-Chu explains, “before we can succeed, we must clearly understand that success means change and the risk of failure.” When you are letting years pass chasing approval or fulfilling the expectations of others, or neglecting your dreams, or being nice for the sake of appearing virtuous - you are acting out of fear and as a coward.
I was pretty gutsy as a kid - I didn’t care so much about others’ opinions, at least I don’t remember caring, but as I grew older I started to become more careful. When someone told me I looked like a marshmallow in a winter jacket, I refused to wear a winter jacket Mid-January in Canada for the next 10 years. Or that one time I got an answer wrong in class and heard snickering laughter around me, and because I feared feeling that embarrassment again, I became reluctant to speak up in class, and swore to my peers that I was just better at writing than I was at public speaking. Or more recently, when I left a safe and well-paid job to pursue a dream that failed, and I kicked and screamed and cried, and tried to blame others, or timing, or my stupidity for months - and the fear of failing again stunned me so much that I did almost nothing for what felt like i really long time.
It was only until I went through a deep reflection to understand where my fears were coming from, as well as my self-destructive patterns, when I knew I had to stop allowing fear - and my emotions - to control my life. It is accepting life’s harsh lessons and learning from them, rather than to be destroyed by them. Understand yourself so that you will know what to do in any given situation.
Fear, instead of filling us with agitation, is energy that can lead us to a state of exhilaration, or intense concentration, or love. So focus your attention on your goals and ignore the costs.
One of the core ideas to being someone with a Thick Face, Black Heart, is to be able to put self-doubt aside and refuse to accept the limitations that others have tried to impose on you, and to hold strong your inner sense of worth. There is a power in detachment and dispassion that will enable you to face life’s challenges with calm and grace. When you succeed in detaching yourself from the misery of your experience, you will see with complete clarity, the real nature of your situation.
Remember: extraordinary people don’t care what others think of them. And, the more fear you confront and conquer, the greater courage you will possess.
You just listened to: Episode 8: Take advantage of fear”. I’ll be back with new episodes every Sunday so I’ll see you there with more thoughts on how to live better and find your impact. Be well.
