This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat – founder of wanderlustworker.com, the premier online destination for all things inspirational and transformational.
Today I wanted to talk to you about something that has impacted me in the past. Probably sometimes still impacts me, maybe not as much anymore. That is fear, anxiety and negativity. There’s this swirl of thoughts that goes on in our mind when we start thinking these fear based thoughts. We begin attracting the things that we’re thinking about.
The whole law of attraction, just understand that I’m a big proponent of it. Everything is energy, all thoughts are energy. Everything around you is created with energy – some force of energy. It binds all of the matter, all of our thoughts and consciousness – everything together. It’s all energy. Everything is energy based. I know that in modern society we get away from that. But everything is literally based on energy.
If you are thinking negative thoughts, and if you’re thinking fear based thoughts – your business is going to suffer. You’ve probably felt this before, where – you always say like bad things happen in threes. Well it’s just a matter of building momentum. It’s like the micro commitments that I talked about. Getting somebody to commit to three small things. The fourth one being almost an instant “yes.”
When bad things are happening, you are literally attracting more bad things into your life by having more fear based and negative thoughts. Negative people are attracted into your life. Negative events and negative situations. The same thing holds true when – for example, you’re on a winning streak and everything seems to be going good. It’s just the power of momentum, that’s all based on energy.
With so many thoughts in our mind every single day – 60 to 80,000 thoughts happening in our mind every single day. You are unaware of the deep level of thoughts that are going on in your subconscious mind. You are simply unaware of it. You have to think about that, and you have to think about the power that you hold yourself to impact your own life and your own business.
I talk about this, because this is really important to scaling a business, or growing a business to literally any size. Because in the very beginning, you are the business. You are the entrepreneur. You are responsible for that business. Growing it requires that you be in the right state of mind. When you’re in the right state of mind – you are attracting the right things, the right people, the right situations to you.
I talk about this because I know I’ve struggled with it in the past. I know that I shared the story with you when – in 2011, pretty much everything fell apart. I have to believe that a little bit of that, I brought on myself. It was almost as if – when a bad thing happened, I felt more useless. I felt powerless. I felt like people didn’t care about me. I felt like people didn’t want to speak to me. Whereas probably it was me shutting off the world a little bit as well.
When you start to think negative thoughts – and I know that I got into my own mind thinking negative thoughts. When you start to think negative and fear based thoughts – you start to attract those things into your life, and more of those things start happening. If you want to get away from that, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about this – but there’s an acronym called “AWARE.”
When you have an anxious thought, you shouldn’t try to fight it. You have to kind of watch it wash over you. Just like a wave would wash over the shore, and then crawl back into the far reaches of the ocean. Just like that. When you have a fear based or anxiety based thought – number one is to accept that it’s occurring. You cannot deny that it’s occurring. It is occurring, you have to accept it.
By accepting it, you’re being honest with yourself. But you have to also watch it come over like a wave in you. You know when they always say like, “You shouldn’t make a decision when you’re angry,” it’s because you make an impulsive decision. You should allow that anger to wash over you and to go away, even if it takes a day or two before reacting – you have to.
Because then you start thinking more logically. As opposed to an instant emotional reaction. You don’t want to do that. Watch that feeling as it comes, watch it wash over you. Start to breathe normally. Just watch it and just witness it. It’s okay to watch and witness it. In fact this helps you much more.
This has helped me a lot, and I know that any business has a lot to do with the entrepreneur. If as an entrepreneur you are experiencing some growing pains, or you are experiencing some hardship, or you’re in a little bit of a struggle right now – it’s okay, it’s normal – it’s part of the journey. That pain will allow you to grow.
You just repeat these steps until it’s necessary. But you also have to kind of expect the best. AWARE is – “A” – accept it. “W” is watch it. Then the next “A” is to act kind of normally or as if – not to have a major emotional swing towards it. “R” is to just repeat those steps, and “E” is just to expect the best thing. But it’s not just about expecting. You don’t want to just sit around your entire business career and expect good things to happen. You have to actually take action. By expecting the best things, you have to be acting towards the best things.
What can you be doing to counteract those feelings? Often what happens is fear is a flag, a red flag in the mind. Telling us we have to pay attention to something. You can’t just hope that no bad things will happen. You have to pay attention to what is the mind telling you? What is this bad thing? What are you projecting into the future of your business, of your life that’s so bad that’s going to happen to you? You have to be aware of that.
By understanding that, you can address it. By addressing it, you’re taking action. It’s not just being AWARE – A-W-A-R-E, and the “E” standing for “expecting the best things to happen.” You have to actually act towards the best things happening. If it’s like – hey, there’s this big red flag – like I need to do something about it, then go do something about it.
Often it’s our gut telling us something. Have you ever met a person and you just kind of had this really bad feeling about them – then not too long afterwards, they did something bad? Your gut is more powerful. It’s the energy that somebody emits that you pick up on. If you’re attuned to that energy, then you can really understand people.
I think that this all comes back to – when I talk about energy, you’re picking up on subtle clues in the subconscious mind that you are not conscious of. We process way more in the subconscious mind than we do in the conscious mind. You have to pay attention to that. You can’t just ignore it. You have to absolutely pay attention to it. Do not try to reason too much about that. Just pay attention to it, and after you’ve listened to it – go and do the research, do the due diligence and take action. That’s all it is.
When that fear comes over you, just appreciate it. Because it is part of the journey. It’s going to help you to grow your business, to improve and change your life in great ways that you’re not aware of today. It’s going to take you down a path that maybe you don’t realize you’re just simply unaware of right now, in this moment.
Even if some pain is attributed to something – for example, let’s say you had to fire some employees because something bad happened. Or you were made aware of somebody taking money from you, stealing, cheating you – whatever the case might be. These are red flags, and these are all part of the journey of building a business, of being an entrepreneur. Bad things are going to happen. You cannot expect like it always to be good, and you cannot base your happiness – your state of happiness on bad things happening. It’s just going to happen, so you just have to deal with it when it actually happens.
Not to overthink it too much, and think like, “My life is worthless. My business is worthless. I’m amounting to nothing.” I know that these are all thoughts that sometimes go through our minds. It’s okay for that to happen. But you have to cultivate the right thoughts. Instead of cultivating those negative thoughts – when you expect the best and you take action towards it, you’re cultivating good thoughts.
What you can do is actually flip the script. By watching that wave of fear or anxiety wash over you, you could actually flip the script. Write down what you’re feeling, then write down the opposite of that. Then what you can actually learn from this, then go and take action towards it. Then your subconscious mind will be at rest. It’s just a clue of your subconscious mind telling you that you need to deal with something. It’s okay, it happens to all of us. Nobody is perfect. I’m certainly not perfect. I’ve failed numerous times.
But it doesn’t matter if you fail. It matters what you do after that. It matters if you pick yourself back up again. When I talk about failure, I’m not talking about a complete shutdown of your business. I’m talking about if one endeavor didn’t work, or you got cash strapped or sales were really slow or whatever the case might be.
Things happen. You can fail in certain aspects, but you can’t give up. You just can’t give up. Because it all boils down to what’s in your mind. You can do whatever you focus the mind on. Because the mind is really, really powerful. Stay attuned to that energy, stay attuned to what you’re thinking and what you’re cultivating in your mind. Be aware, if it’s fear based and anxiety based. If you have guilt or resentment or any of those things, like just watch it wash over you. Let it wash over you and wash away.
Because it’s just a thought. I know that thoughts are things, and we can take a thought and make them into more than they actually are. You’ve probably experienced before, so just be aware of that. You are unique, you are an individual, and you are going to experience certain things in your life – that are going to impact your business, that are going to impact your entrepreneurial pursuits.
Just be aware of it, and don’t allow it to deaden your spirit. Don’t allow it to take away your happiness. Just try and allow yourself to feel the emotion, and then let it go away. Just watch it go away like a wave retreating back into the ocean, or a hot air balloon flying up into the air. Whatever it is, however it is that you want to imagine it going away. Watch it as it comes, and then watch it as it goes away.
That’s what I had to talk to you guys about. This was something that I was thinking about, and I really wanted to share with you all. Because I know that it could impact your life and your business. Please like, comment and subscribe on iTunes. I would really appreciate it. Tell your friends about this podcast, and I will speak to you guys next time.