Welcome And The Core Idea

Yo, yo, yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast conversation on lifestyle, passions, and hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 252 today, and we're talking around this whole topic and premise of I guess uncharted waters equals new opportunity. But why is it that the unknown feels always so scary, even when it's exactly what we want, you know, when we think about our goals, our dreams and aspirations? I I find it super strange, and you might too humor me for a moment, that the things we say we want the most in life is often, you know, the places we're most afraid to go to. And this, you know, this is relevant to a new job, a relationship, a new business, a new challenge. All of it exists in uncharted waters. You know, if you think about when Christopher Columbus had to travel across the seas to go travel through uncharted waters, there's there's that's a scary feat, right? Now, we probably are not doing the exact same of that, but to us in the moment, it feels like that. And it's weird because there's so much opportunity, there's so many good things that can come from this, more positives and negatives, I think. Yet our brain often treats it like these are troubled times or we don't want to do this, this is going to be uncomfortable. So why does that happen? That's what we're talking about today. If this feels like a conversation that you need to have or someone else needs to have, then make sure you do subscribe. But most of all, please share it with someone else. And if you do want to continue the conversation, you can jump down below in the comments if you're here on the YouTube. And yeah, we can continue the conversation. Let's roll the intro and let's get straight into it. So, point number one that I want to kind of talk about is your brain is kind of designed to prefer the no, right? I mean, how how good is the feeling when you get into a comfort zone and you don't have to think about anything? However, on the contrary, you also can find yourself getting pretty bored, getting restless, and not feeling, you know, like you're growing or you're not feeling, you know, meaningful, you're not feeling purposeful. And the thing about the known environment is it's predictable. So it means that your brain can kind of be in control. You know, it's even if the day isn't running perfect, it knows that, hey, we've survived this yesterday, this is okay, we can do this again. We know how this works, we know how to handle it. Let's stay here because, you know, this is all good. Why would we go over there and ruin a good thing? Whereas the unknown environment is uncertainty. And our brain needs, well, reads it as, I guess, this is a risk, this is danger, this is unknown, I don't know what to do, how do I start to process this? Even, even if the opportunity is incredible. And I think it's really, really important that we need to think about, well, your brain isn't trying to stop you from growing, it's trying to stop you from dying. It's a survival instinct kind of, you know, step in kind of thing. So we're fighting against ourselves. But I feel, and this is point number two, is like every big opportunity lives in these unchadtered warriors. Yet if our brain does not want to go there, how do we go about doing it? Right. And think about any meaningful shift that you've done in your life, whether it's starting a business, whether it's changing careers, whether it's starting your career, whether it's moving cities, whether it's starting a creative pursuit or outlet, or you've said something, said yes to something that's bigger than you've ever done before. None of these come with guarantees. There's no guarantees that they're going to work out. And I can appreciate that, having now done a lot of those, but they come with possibility. They come with opportunity, they come with, you know, new outcomes that you've been desiring for a very, very long time. But they are unknown outcomes. And that's why opportunity and fear are often neighbors, is because the unknown triggers, I don't want to deal with this. Unless you're super ambitious, I feel like sometimes we can throw out any sense of logic and just dive straight in. But sometimes, I don't know, that might actually work out a little bit better. I do envy and admire those that are able to just move forward through these troubling times or unknown times and make it look easy. Now, whether that is actually how they feel, probably not the case. We're probably all feeling this in some way or another. Maybe their resilience is a little bit different, maybe their poker face is just a lot better than mine. But point number three in all of this is the unknown feels like a loss of control. Now, naturally, as humans and individuals, we we want to feel control. We want to be in control. We like the plan, we like the timeline, we like to know, okay, when's the outcome coming? But opportunity rarely comes like that. If you knew how all of these things were going to play out, you know, sure, you wouldn't have the feeling of fear and you know discomfort because you know what's going to happen. But the uncharted waters means you don't know what waves are coming, you don't know what challenges are coming, you don't know what path you're going to necessarily have to take, and you don't actually even know how capable you really are yet. And the gap between the certainty and the possibility is where that fear lies. And that's the fear that we have to get over. And moving to my next point is I think most people misread the signal. A lot of us, we when when she when she when fear shows up, we assume it means this is wrong, this is bad, we are not ready, this probably won't work. And that's just your brain trying to stop you from doing something as a protection plan. It's like uh building a defense mechanism into you. But often fear is simply saying, well, this does matter. This is important. That's why you're so serious about it. And I think it's really important that if you're feeling nervous, if you're feeling scared, if you're feeling excited, but you're also feeling a little bit weird about all of it, it's probably because it's important to you. It's probably because it might even be the right thing to do. And that's that's because you know that you're going to have to be something that you've never been before in order to get a result that you've never gotten before as well. So it's a bigger opportunity, or sorry, I should say when it comes to a bigger opportunity, the more uncomfortable you'll probably feel. Now, sometimes we can't fathom some of this because we didn't expect to be in these situations. And that's why what happens, it's not just only the discomfort that you're feeling, there's there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of feeling there. And it's not because it's bad, it's because of new territory, and it might be actually something you've been trying to do for a very, very long time. So, how do we navigate this? How do we navigate into these unchattered waters? Well, one, you don't want to eliminate fear. Fear is good. It's a great way to kind of like have a sense of a goalpost of what's good, what's bad, and what's, you know, right. It's it's kind of like a grounding pole. But you need to change your relationship to it. You need to look at it from, you know, a broader perspective, or we can call this shrinking the horizon. You don't need to cross the whole ocean, you just need to sail to the next marker. What's the next point? What's the next milestone? What's the next step that we're taking? You then need to gather evidence so you can survey around and see, well, what's going on? What have we got? What's our situation? Remind yourself of other times where you've entered into unknown or uncharted waters. And what have you done to figure it out? And how have you figured it out? And you have figured it out because you've you've made it here, so you know what you're doing. You just don't know what you don't know, so therefore you've got to go do it again. And you should expect discomfort. You should go into this understanding that there's going to be some troubling times, there's going to be some challenges, there's going to be some things you're going to have to do that you didn't think you were going to have to do. That's that's how we manage it, right? And it's it's managing that feedback. But I think it's also trust yourself, back yourself. Trust your adaptability and your ability to be able to be an incredible problem solver. And also, you know, once you're in your flow, in your element, in your passion, you will thrive naturally because we find our vibe. And and I think it's really important that you realize this doesn't have to be like a full-on, like we can go through this for, you know, minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes, or, you know, for an hour or anything. It's short and sharp to the point, because I think a lot of the time we overthink this. And there's a couple of questions I want to leave with you before we wrap it up. Is what uncharted water are you currently avoiding? A lot of time the thing that we know we should be doing is the things that we're, you know, we keep pushing to the side because they're the big audacious goals or the big hairy things that we have to get uncomfortable to deal with. So what's yours? Second thing is, is the fear about the danger of it, or is it more so just because you just don't know what's going to happen? And then what might what opportunity might actually exist on the other side of this discomfort? I think these are really great questions to be asking yourself when you're about to make a decision. I've gone through some really big challenges. I've stepped into a warehouse a year ago, we were in that, I didn't know what it was going to do, and it's been the best thing I ever did. Since then, we've had some new challenges, we've got new deals, we've signed new contracts, we've entered into unknown areas of how I know how to manage. Like we've had some dips uh with the economy, with the sales and all that, and they're new challenges. I don't know how to handle them. But all I know is through this, there's going to be better opportunity from that because I'm going to learn to have better skills, better decision-making skills, resilience, and the ability to adapt and pivot. But it's scary. It is terrifyingly scary. So I'll leave you with this. The most exciting chapters of your life will always begin in places you've never been before. Right. And it's cliche of, you know, if you've always done what you've always done. So if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always gotten. But I think as you explore uncharted waters, that's where discovery happens. Right? I mean, in the it's if you open that door or that door, there's two different options you can go through. Sometimes if you don't know what's behind the doors, that's the exciting part. But it's scary, it's nerve-wracking because you're you're thinking it's going to define the rest of your life. It doesn't need to. Now, if anyone here is, you know, know me, I do play RuneScape, and Runescape recently released Salie, you know, and you have to go do new things, you have to try new skills, you have to discover new areas, you have to get new unlocks, you have to get new level of experience. This is exactly the same thing. So if you're feeling like maybe there's an opportunity sitting in front of you, you're a bit scared to go jump into it, see what's going to happen. Ask yourself those three questions that we went through. You know, what are you actually avoiding? Is the fear about danger of, you know, that you feel it's going to be dangerous, or is it just because you're just unknown about it? And, you know, think about what are the possible outcomes that you could get from this. Right. So take some time, do that. I'm going to leave it there, folks. Just short and sweet, keeping it easy for you. 10-minute bayer. Let me know in the comments those three questions, the answers to those three questions. I would love to know if you do want to communicate, uh, continue the conversation about anything else, more than happy to do so as well. Otherwise, we'll be back here again next week doing it all again. And I'll see you when I'm looking at you. Ciao