Jeff Howell: How to Build Confidence Through Challenges!

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Jeff coming at you with another mindset Monday. And today I want to talk a little bit about how commitment and challenge leads to confidence. So how does commitment and challenge lead to confidence? Well, the first thing is that once you set goals for yourself on the entrepreneurial journey and you see yourself sort of manifesting this vision that you have for your life from a personal or professional standpoint, you’re going to have to commit to that goal. You’re going to have to commit to taking action. And so once you’ve got that clarity and commitment in place that we’ve talked about over the course of the series and you start taking action, you’re going to uncover challenges that are going to meet you in your path along the path. And there’s either going to be external or internal challenges. You might have internal challenges, you might have your fears, you might have your perceived limitations, you might have the ideas that you don’t have enough resources, that you don’t have the right people in place, that you don’t have the right knowledge, that you don’t have the right skills, you don’t have the right tools, you don’t have any of the answers that you need. Those all might be challenges. External challenges might be logistical, logistical challenges, like you don’t have the right technology, you don’t have the right hardware, you don’t have any of the right things that you need to manifest this vision that you have for yourself.

So those are all challenges that you might have to overcome to continuously work towards and take action towards this vision and this goal that you have for yourself. But that commitment, that level of commitment is going to be critical because if you’re not as committed, then obviously you’re not going to have much motivation to overcome these challenges along the way and you’re going to give up much easier. And if you do have the commitment, the full 100%, 110% commitment, then you’re going to you’re not going to stop for anything before you find these solutions. You find the ways that are going to present themselves in front of you to overcome these challenges. So when you’re in this process and after going through this process, which you’re going to end up with is a little, little by little, just a little bit more confidence around your ability to solve problems around a particular skill set that you’ve built around, a particular topic of expertise around all of these things that you might be working with in the moment, in the in terms of this challenge in particular. So I’ve had this come up a couple of times in the last week actually, and one from a business standpoint and one from a personal standpoint. So first I’ll tell you the one from the business standpoint. So the business standpoint, I have several projects that I manage and I’ve took on a new one recently and I honestly had no idea how I was going to be able to find the right solutions or to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for me to solve this problem myself or to overcome this challenge myself.

So as I was thinking about it, sort of meditating on it and trying to determine what direction I’m going to take, I realized in that process that I was a little bit overwhelmed with all of the projects that I had on my plate and that ultimately the best decision I could possibly make would be to delegate this to someone else. So then it’s always the question of, well, who do I delegate this to? Is there anyone on my existing team that has the skill set, that has the bandwidth to take this on? And the answer to that question in this case was no. And so then you look externally and I start to see that there’s all these people who have the expertise, they have the bandwidth, but they require a great deal of my resources, like more money than I’m willing to pay to solve the problem. So that is the ultimate kind of balance that you have to strike is like, do am I solving this problem with the kinds of am I able to solve this problem with the resources that I have? If not, I might have to take up some of the slack myself.

In the meantime, that’s what startup life is all about. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. So ultimately, and just thinking through it multiple times and visioning the final goal of what I’d like this to look like and looking at it from the lens of the best possible outcome. Ultimately, the solution appeared before me and it was in the form of someone who could take this on for the amount of resources that a reasonable amount of resources that I have to expend on the project. So this is like a slam dunk solution for me because it takes all the pressure off of my plate. I can just manage it the project from a higher level to make sure that I get the outcome that I want, but I don’t have to dig into the. Weeds and into the trenches as much and build the skills along the way and make all the mistakes along the way. For the money it’s going to cost me to to overcome this challenge. It’s I’m going to prevent far more mistakes along the way that are going to cost me far more money. So in that terms, in terms of that equation, it’s well worth it for me to pay the money that I’m going to pay to solve the challenge, to overcome the challenge so and find the solution. So that’s how it worked out in the business sense. And so that was really an amazing thing and it made me feel so good to stick with the challenge that was in front of me and just think through it and and poke around into different potential solutions enough and not give up along the way and continue to put my brainpower towards it and think through it and, you know, to the level where eventually that solution did appear.

And and I trust that the universe is going to give me the right solutions at the right time. And this one, I have a lot of confidence and have a lot of excitement about solving this challenge with this particular person, because I think it’s going to end up the the end results are going to be ten times better than I could have ever envisioned or imagined or executed on my own. So I’m really hyped about that. And then on a personal standpoint, in a personal relationship, I had an issue come up that caused a lot of fear and sort of limitation in my system come up. It’s like I didn’t know how to deal with the challenge. It’s like I had never dealt with this particular type of challenge in any kind of relating that I have done before. And so that caused me to sort of freeze up. It’s like you have that flight fight freeze or FON and and I tend to freeze in these types of situations. So I froze and luckily the person I was dealing with had the skills to not shy away from it, to not turn away from that challenge in relating and communicating, but instead to step into it and challenge me, but at the same time encourage me and both of us really to step up to the plate and remind each other that we’re committed to this, to communicating and to the relationship in general, and that we want to move the relationship forward and and not abandon what the potential of the relationship that we have in front of us.

And this could be in a personal or romantic relationship, it could be in a familial relationship, it could be in a business relationship. Communication is key. And so in all of these scenarios, the real end result that you’re going to get by going through this cycle of making a commitment, having challenges come up, overcoming the challenges is that you’re going to end up with more confidence. And little by little, as you build that confidence over time, you’ll find yourself with much more excited sort of mentality and mindset about how you how you approach challenges that are inevitable, the challenges that come up and how you how you’re able to solve the challenges because you’ll start finding the similarities between different challenges that come up and the next phase or next chapter where you’re going, a challenge comes up, you’re like, Oh, I’ve dealt with something similar in the past. I’ve dealt with almost the exact thing in the past, and this is how I solved it.

I have the confidence that I can do that again. I can find the right people, I can say the right thing, I can ask the right questions, I can do whatever and get through this and find the solutions and move forward and continue on the entrepreneurial journey towards the goals that I have set for myself. So that is my mindset. Monday for today, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you are able to make a solid commitment toward your goals and to have enough commitment to overcome the challenges that are going to be in your path. Because that’s what the entrepreneurial journey in my mind is all about. And that’s how we learn and grow. Like this is a path. The entrepreneurial journey, in other words, is a path of growth, and it uncovers limitations in in my own and myself that then I’m able to overcome over time and continue to confront and overcome over time. And that’s where that growth comes from. So that’s why I get so excited about being an entrepreneur and why I would never go and work for someone else ever again, because it’s just a complacent place for me personally to be where, as with entrepreneurship, I’m continuing to learn and grow at all times. So I hope you enjoyed this one. Let me know what you think in the comments and I look forward to see you on the next one piece.