When Your Ego Protects You from Success

This week we were on a group coaching call for one of our products and one of our members was explaining how she has a ton of opportunity. She's been reviewing this opportunity for a couple of years. She's got all these things going on that could be happening and it's been so hard for her to select which one to go all in on. So she's been working on a bunch of different opportunities all at once. This is a condition I see in the entrepreneurial space all the time. Entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by opportunity, but really haven't dug in on anything to make it work. Here's what I see in this dynamic. Your ego is protecting you from success and you need to help it get out of the way. I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to.

We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum. So we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

If I caught you off guard with the introduction, with the ending there, I meant to. What I see when entrepreneurs are stuck in a place of opportunity, when I see when entrepreneurs aren't proactively moving forward. What I see when entrepreneurs haven't actually selected what they're going to do and gone after it with everything they have is that entrepreneurs are letting their ego keep them stuck and keep them in place and keep them from doing anything. Here's what I mean by that. When you're in this realm of opportunity and let's go to The Billionaire Code for a second, those of you who aren't familiar with The Billionaire Code, it's a framework that we created on our team that is the nine levels that entrepreneurs go through in order to go from startup, like just having the thought of a business to creating a 100 million dollar business and the first level is seeker.

Seeker is that zero to $40,000 business. It's when you're figuring things out, you're determining who you're going to work with. It's the most opportune time in an entrepreneur's career. Here's why, when you're a seeker, before you've chosen a market, before you've chosen a product, before you've chosen a strategy to go after, you have nothing but opportunity. In fact, when you are just evaluating opportunities, you know what? There is no chance of failure. There's no chance of failure in evaluation. There's no chance of failure in thinking about it. There's no chance of failure in reviewing opportunities infinitum until... I don't even think that's a word, in viewing infinite opportunities until you literally overwhelm yourself with them.

And here's the issue with being a seeker, someone who's in those early stages, even a seeker or starter, you might be over $40,000 and still really in this place because the issue is, when you're in this realm of opportunity, like I can choose this, I can choose that, I can go in any direction. You haven't taken any risk and you haven't committed to anything. And as evolutionary hunters, that is who we are and so here's what's happening. There is some defensive mechanism inside you that is reaching up and stopping you from declaring where you are going and what you will do. That defensive mechanism is the fear of exposure. It's the fear of going on a hunt, where we might not make a kill because we are evolutionary hunters. You know this about yourself.

If you're not oriented at an outcome, if you're not chasing something down, if you're not going after something, we don't feel alive. When we are in momentum, making things happen, moving forward, that is when we feel that energy, that connection, that source energy. That's when we feel like who we should be and the challenge of being the seeker or the starter that hasn't made a commitment, is that when we are in that place of opportunity and evaluating opportunity and figuring things out and we haven't taken a risk, we haven't actually declared what we're going to do, that can feel like false momentum. It can feel like progress. That endless analysis and research and looking at things can feel like we're actually on a hunt, but we really aren't. See, people like us learn very little by infinite analysis.

People like us really learn once we commit to something, put our full energy, our heart, our soul into it, go after it. That is when, whether we succeed or fail, we create massive outcomes for ourselves and again, whether we succeed or fail, when we commit to something and go after it, all out, and when we make it our mission and when we commit to it and we say this is going to happen, that is when we learn the most in the our entire lives. The challenge with being the seeker is that when you live in this world of opportunity, seekers are also some of the most dangerous people at every event. When you go to an event, here's what you will find quickly with the people who don't have a business, who don't really have a lot going on and are just getting started.

They're open, they're open to everybody, they're open to opportunity, they're open to hearing, they're open to ideas, they're open to strategy because there's nothing at risk. There's nothing in place, there's nothing they're exchanging, they're helpful like crazy. Seekers, people who are just starting out are so helpful because they believe they can help anybody. They don't have perspective as to what type of help you really need when you're creating something real. Seekers are confident. There's a principle, I can't remember what it is right now. There's a principal that the person that knows the least is usually the most confident. Well when you look at most events, seekers show up that way. They're incredibly confident because there's no challenge in front of them right now. When you haven't committed to something, when you're not going after something, when you haven't named your outcome, of course you're confident.

You want to find the person in the room that's pulling their hair out. Find the $20 million business owner that's just made a huge commitment to their quarterly goals or their quarterly targets and is now working with their team to chase them down and facing some resistance. Then you'll see what it really looks like to be an entrepreneur. You can be supremely confident when you don't have risk, when you're not chasing anything, when there was no scoreboard. And here's the scariest part about seekers, I just want you to know this upfront. They are the people who are most willing to give advice. They'll give advice they just heard, they'll give advice, they think they heard, they'll give advice, they think applies.

Why? Because when you are in that place of a seeker, when you are not on a hunt, when you're not clear on where you're going, you don't see risk. You don't feel the risk of giving somebody bad advice. When I'm at masterminds or events, I often sit at the audience and in the audience and I can tell energetically when somebody starts to talk, I can just feel that they are sharing information. They're regurgitating and it's not real. It's not experienced, they don't really understand what they're talking about. And every time that happens, I want to jump up with my entire body and say like, "Hey, don't share this. You don't know what you're talking about. Don't tell people what's going on."

My comment about masterminds is always, just because someone at a mastermind doesn't know an answer, doesn't mean they won't give you one and that is a huge risk. So when you're in that seeker place, your ego has protected you from everything and here's what will often happen. It shows up and says, "I'm winning." That's why seekers are so confident and helpful and willing to give advice and willing to jump in and say things and tell you things and move you in a direction because they are literally not focused on anything that is going to move forward or create traction or actually make something happen. Now, that's not all seekers. Some are working through the zero to $40,000 and making it happen. Then they go from 40 to 100, they're crushing it. Then they get into the promoter, 100 to 300, they're making it real. Then they get into builder 300 to a million and they're actually making things happen. They're moving forward, they're creating outcomes, they're creating a business.

But when you stay at seeker, when you stay in the place of opportunity and options, when you stay in the place of not selecting the outcome, when you stay in the place of not committing to a hunt, you as an entrepreneurial personality type are fundamentally stuck. But you may not feel it and that's what I want you to know, because if you're in that place where you've been evaluating options, maybe you're beyond seeker. Maybe you already have a business, maybe you have a significant business, but you're in that place where you're stuck evaluating options. You don't have clear outcomes right now. You don't know what you're hunting. You don't know what that prize is, you don't know what the target is. That is a dangerous place for entrepreneurs like us to be, and this is how you change this. In fact, this is how you teach your ego to create accomplishment.

This is how you reprogram your neurology to move towards accomplishment, to be excited about accomplishment, and to be allergic to being stuck. I want your skin to be crawling when you're stuck. I want you to be uncomfortable when you're stuck. I want you to be fighting for air when you're stuck, but the challenge is, that's just not how it is for most of us when we're stuck. A lot of us don't realize it and so here's the way you get out of this. If you've been in opportunity seeking for a long time, if you've been looking at options for a long time, if you feel overwhelmed by all the different directions you can go. Here's the process to drive forward, drive forward fast, change things, and actually start building the outcomes you want.

One, commit to an outcome. I think one of the biggest things for entrepreneurs is we feel like when we're committing to an outcome, we're giving something up and we are. When we say yes to something, we're saying no to everything else. But I want you to know something, as an evolutionary hunter, until you have committed to something, you are at risk. Evolutionary hunters who are not on the hunt, evolutionary hunters who are not oriented at an outcome, who are not chasing something down, are at risk. When we're not chasing something down is when we don't feel grounded. When we're not chasing something down is when we feel like we're up in the air. When we're not chasing something down is when we feel frustrated, and depressed, and irritated, and chemically off. When we are in momentum, making things happen and the world is following in our wake, you know what it feels like.

It feels like euphoria and incredible and unstoppable and it feels like we are alive because that is who we are and in order to have that feeling, you must have a clear outcome. So choose one. If you've been stuck in the place of opportunity, I want you to know something. Choosing any outcome is better than staying in a place where you haven't made a choice because you will start learning and you will go on the hunt. You will get into momentum and your life will shift. When we are in momentum, that's when we make those huge forward gains. That's when we change things in our life. That's when we change behavior permanently, when we have epiphanies, new beliefs are developed, it's from being in momentum. So commit to an outcome. Number two, get a scoreboard in place. When we're evaluating opportunities, we're not doing anything wrong.

We literally can't, you can't fail at evaluating an opportunity, there's no outcome. You can't fail at looking at a bunch of different stuff. You can't fail at looking at options. That's just something you're doing. But once you create an outcome and then pick a scoreboard, now we've actually created a place where you can make progress, where you can be on the hunt, you can know you are gaining on your prey. You know you're moving forward. You know you're making things happen. When you have a scoreboard, that perspective will help you confirm the momentum that you're in and you will let go of that false momentum of staying safe. And jump into the real momentum of creating real progress, driving a scoreboard upwards, making sure you're actually achieving your hunt and you're going to make things happen. And then third, create accountability and get help. Here's what that means.

That means you need to know your role in whatever process you're going to move forward, and then you also have to understand where you have vulnerabilities, where you need help, and where you're going to have to have other people fill in and that may mean reading books. That may mean buying products. That may mean getting consulting. That may mean getting coaching. That may mean contractors, team members, of course, all of that. But get clear on what you need because here's what I want you to understand. When you stay in that world of evaluating opportunities, your ego is keeping you in a land of safety. But you're stuck and when you're willing to commit to an outcome, find a scoreboard, set it up so that you have perspective and get clear on what you're going to do and what help you need. You, as an evolutionary hunter, transform.

You, step into the reality of who you are. You start to pursue that outcome with the drive that has been installed and instilled with us for millennia. This is who we are. We get up every day, go into the future, create a new reality, come back to the present and insist it becomes real. And you can't do that when you're evaluating opportunities. You can only do that when you've committed to a future. So if your ego has been keeping you safe, if you've been staying out of the spotlight because you haven't chosen an outcome, if you haven't declared who you are and what you will do yet. I want to give you permission to do that now. I also want to confirm with you that after working with thousands of entrepreneurs, regardless what outcome you choose, your life is going to change far more significantly, in a greater way, in a much more productive way than it will if you stay evaluating outcomes.

So what are you waiting for? Choose something now, get clear on what it is, get perspective on your progress through a scoreboard. Understand what your role is and where you will need help and you will get into momentum. You will feel that life force of momentum. You know and I know that, that's what people like you and I live for. We live to achieve, to create forward progress, to make things happen, to make outcomes in the world, to help the people around us, to improve the world around us and make this place a better place. That is who we are. And if you stay in a place of letting your ego protect you, you are separating from your destiny. You are separating from your birth right. You are denying who you are and pretending it's okay.

And we all know that's just not how it works for people like us because for evolutionary hunters, when we get up in the morning, we need to know what we're chasing down. We need to understand that it's important, we need to have perspective as to what's going on. Know that we have a tribe around us, that's helping us and supporting us and that is when we become fully who we were meant to be, who we want to be, and let's get real, who we've always known we should be. Because I know you, just like me, for a long time, have had that voice in the back of your mind telling you, you're here to do more. You're here to be more. You're here to make things happen, leave something behind and make this world a better place. Stop denying it. Choose your outcome. Get on the hunt and go change the world because we need you to. Don't let your ego get in the way.

If you'd like to understand more about the entrepreneurial personality type that you and I both have and why we are so different than the rest of the world. But also, why we are the most important people in the world and the most consistent source of positive human evolution, and we always will be go to freemomentumbook.com, get a copy of The Entrepreneurial Personality Type shipped to you for free. Just pay for shipping and handling. Go to freemomentumbook.com, read The Entrepreneurial Personality type and it will tell you more about yourself than any book ever has. It will show you how to stop limiting behavior and get into momentum on demand and it's game changing, freemomentumbook.com, go out and change the world. We've got your back.