Well if I just pick any thought to think, I'll be delusional and yet we all love an underdog story like J.K Rowling. You know, Harry Potter was rejected from however many publishers and when it comes to us, we give up so quickly on our dreams.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. I am actually on vacation this week. I will be, I'm recording this a couple of weeks earlier and I have to tell you the thing I'm most proud of. When I started out this year, I had a revenue goal for my business but I also had a bigger goal than that. Like the revenue is great, but for me, part of the reason that I did any of this is so that I can create a life that I want, that, you know, is successful in my eyes and I constantly have to recalibrate because it's very easy to get caught up in what everybody else considers successful. And it's very easy to get caught in just the revenue goal and to basically create your own prison and create a business that you're constantly killing yourself for. And I've wanted to be very conscious from when I started my photobooth business, that the reason I'm doing all of this is because I want to have time with my family and be around when my kids are young and be able to relax. So this year when I started the year, my big goal was to be able to take one week off every quarter. Now for my non-American friends who listen, taking off four weeks in a year seems pretty par for the course, right? It's pretty standard. For my American friends, it's like what kind of pipe dream are you talking about? Right. Like two weeks is insane. You know, we have maybe two weeks but most of us don't take it. I had many years where I didn't take any vacation. And so getting myself reacquainted with the idea of taking time off every quarter has been really important.
Now I'm here to report that I haven't been perfect at this. I did miss Q3. So I did not take a whole week off in Q3. I think I took a day off here and there but my whole goal is to take a whole week at a time to really reconnect to with whatever it is, my family and myself, just to stop. And so this week, me and the fam, uh, went to New York. So I’m certain I'm having a fantabulous time. I'm super excited about this trip. Uh, it's the first trip to like a city with the kids. So that'll be fun, but I'm just more proud of myself that this is the third week off that I'm taking this year. And I do plan to take time off around the holidays, around Christmas. So I will probably end the year with four weeks. It just didn't happen in every quarter but that's fine. I am okay with this. And the fact that I've gotten to take three weeks off, really just solidifies why I did this and also helps me re-imagine what else I want to do, right? What do I want to do next year? What do I want to do in the coming years? Money is great. And like it's the metric for business. You have to know how much money you're going to make, right? If you're not making money, then it's a hobby. So I understand and I have a lot of money goals but that's not my main concern with this career that I'm creating for myself. And I have a lot of big other goals. Like I think more now like what else can I dream up? Can I take like a month off at a time? Can I take a couple months off in the year? Can I only work 20 hours a week, 15 hours a week? Can I work three days a week? How is this going to work? I don't know. We'll see what I dream up next year but it's been super fun to just think of something and trust me, when I thought of it I'm like that's crazy. I'm not gonna take that much time off. And I have to recalibrate like why is that crazy? Why can't it be like this? Right? Why can't I decide how much I want to work? You know, why don't I have the thoughts that this is absolutely doable? And that's wha- really I want to lead into what I want to talk to you about today because it's about being delusional, right? Thinking things that other people would tell you is not possible and you deciding to do it anyways. Before I do that, I jumped in and completely went off my notes and didn't even tell you what I was supposed to tell you. So I want to tell you that I am doing a free class on November 3rd, which is a Wednesday at 4:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. That doesn't actually matter because you will get a replay of it, but it's Bridging the Gap. I'm going to tell you how to go from the career that you have to the career you want. And I think that it's really important because I want you guys to all figure out where you are in this journey right now, what you need to do, kind of the steps that you need to be focusing on in the coming year. If you want to join me for this free class and I don't see why you would not want to because it's going to be super fun, go to quitterclub.com/gap. Okay. quitterclub.com/gap G-A-P and sign up and come hang out with me on November 3rd.

Okay, now that I got that out of the way, back to talking about being delusional and if you follow me on Instagram, the reason this even podcast episode came to my mind is because I talked about this on my Instagram. Um I saw a uh like meme or an image going around that was talking about the popular show on Netflix, if you haven't heard of the show, Squid Game, it's by a Korean creator who created the show in 2009. Okay. And has been rejected for about 10 years, shopped this around for 10 years. And at one point he had to stop writing the script and sell his $675 laptop due to his money struggles. Right. And today it's the number one show in over 90 countries. And it's set to become the most watched show in Netflix history. I'm sure you've heard about it because it is all the rage. Okay and people are sharing this meme and it's so amazing. And everybody loves these stories. And I've talked about this a lot before like we all love an underdog story, right? We love hearing about people like J.K. Rowling. You know, Harry Potter was rejected from however many publishers and like certain people that kept pushing and finally got to their dream. We love seeing that. And yet when it comes to us, right, like we give up so quickly on our dreams. And I always hear from people when I talk to them about thought work. And I talk about like picking thoughts that are going to serve you and finding thoughts that, you know, um even if you don't have the evidence yet, right? You don't have any evidence showing you the thing you want to believe, you're still allowed to believe it. And like what is the thing that is going to help you? And then biggest objection I hear is well, if I just pick any thought to think I'll be delusional. I don't want to be delusional. If I think I'm good at something when I'm not, then I'm delusional. Right. And whenever stories like this come up, I always like like to just point out, do you think that this man thought he was delusional? I'm sure certain people around him did. When you're shopping something for 10 years and you're consistently getting no, isn't that kind of the definition of delusion, right? You're refusing to see the evidence that's in front of you, that people don't want this. Now was he delusional? Obviously not because it's the number one rated show. Clearly people liked it. Clearly he knew he had something there and other people weren't seeing that vision. So what does it even mean to be delusional, right? How do we decide who's delusional? Because he had to work based off, without any evidence, he had to believe in himself. We love sharing these stories. And yet I asked people like what would you do in that scenario? How many of you would continue for 10 years something that you love, that you know, that you have this belief that you're holding that belief, that it is good. It is worthy but other people can't see it. Not a lot of us to be honest. I mean, I honestly don't even know if I would. It's just such a great reminder to me. Like what does this mean to be delusional? And how do I incorporate that in my life? I love that we like we love underdog stories. We love people that have courage, the courage to go after their dreams, the courage to face that fear, the courage to face the rejection.

And yet, as soon as like there is any inkling of hardship or obstacle in our way, it's like well, can't do it. Who did I think I was? I'm not built for this. I can't have that dream. If I were to believe in myself when other people tell me I shouldn't, then I'm going to look crazy. I'm going to look delusional. And God forbid that happens. So I'm just gonna give it up. I'm gonna conform. I'm going to just do what everybody else tells me I should do. And my real message for you today, my friend, is that you're already delusional. I am sorry if I am the bearer of this bad news, but we are all delusional. Okay. It's going to break it down for you real quick. We just don't think of it that way. We don't we don't put those terms on it but I want you to think about this because we actually have like fancy terms for this, we don't call it delusional. We call it imposter syndrome. What do you think that is? Right. We all throw it around. Everybody accepts it like oh yeah, I have imposter syndrome. And it's more prevalent the more intelligent you are, the more um you've accomplished in your life. Isn't that amazing? And what is imposter syndrome, right? It's doubting your own abilities and your skills and accomplishments. It's feeling like a fraud, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, right? Like you actually have evidence of how smart you are and how much you've accomplished and all the amazing things you've done. And you just ignore it all. And you just decide I'm going to believe the thought that I have no idea what I'm doing and that I don't belong here and that I'm a fraud and everyone's going to find out that I'm terrible. That's quite literally being delusional. I have so many clients I deal with this with, right. They are so accomplished. They are PhDs, academics, partners in law firms, right? Like lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers. It doesn't matter. People that have clearly like so much evidence, they've worked in their jobs for 7 years, 10 years, 15 years, like obviously they know what they're doing or they would have been fired. Like they get great reviews, all of this stuff. And yet, they're constantly telling me about how I don't get it because they really have no idea what they're doing. And I'm like really? That's that's the thought out of all of the thoughts that you could have, out of all the thoughts you could think about yourself. That's the one you're going to go with? And I just want you to think about it like notice how none of us say like oh my God, look at all these delusional people walking around. Imposter syndrome should be a mental illness, right. We should all be like hey, there's something wrong with you because there's all this evidence that you're choosing to ignore and you're just choosing to think these horrible things about yourself. And yet we don't, we're just like oh yeah, totally normal. Yeah, the smarter you are, you're just a bigger asshole to yourself for some reason. Let's just accept that. And even if you don't have imposter syndrome, okay. Let's say like you're like meh, I feel pretty good about my abilities. I'm pretty like an honest judge, which none of us are by the way but let's just say you do. We still do this all the time with other things. Right. I want you to think about how many times you have anxiety or you've worried about something that has never come to pass, right? Like let's say you are certain you're going to get fired.
You get called in, you got an email from your boss saying he needs to talk. And you're like well, this is it. They're going to fire me. And then you get called in and it's like good news. Or like they're going to praise you or something. Or they're just gonna tell you something. And you're like oh, why was I so worried? Right. I had a client who went to an interview for her job that she really desperately wanted. And I had a coaching call with her afterwards where she was crying, telling me how she had bombed the interview and that she was certain she wasn't gonna get it and how terrible she had done. And we kind of coached on it and then lo and behold, next week she gets the job. Right. And it's so funny because it's like not even missing a beat. It's like oh yeah, oh my God, how wonderful I did get the job not like let me go back and think about how delusional I was to think that I bombed that interview or to think I had any idea what was going on in someone else's brain when I was doing that interview. We all do this when we like are sure that somebody hates us, right. That coworker or my friend or boss or my partner, right. Like my boyfriend's gonna break up with me, whatever. We're like certain and then we find out like oh, they were, something happened like their mom got sick or something. It has nothing to do with you. And like they're in a bad mood because of something else. Every single one of us has had this happen and yet we don't go around being like oh my God, I was so delusional. We think it's like a totally rational way to live. Of course, I'm worried. Of course, I'm worried about the million possible things that could go wrong that have never actually gone wrong. That's just a normal ba- brain apparently. Right? I mean, it's so crazy when you start thinking about it and I want you to understand this like I've really been observing my clients and really seeing how this plays out. And it's like if it's a negative thought, we don't think it's being delusional. If it's a positive thought then we're delusional. Like God forbid, I just think something good's gonna happen. I can’t do that. I can sit and doomsday it all day. I can sit and think about how many terrible things are going to happen to make myself cry. That's normal. That's like an just another Tuesday. But if I think that maybe I'll be successful if I try this thing well then I'm just head in the clouds. Dumb. It's so insane to me now. And here, I mean, the reality is like you can pick whatever thoughts you want. I just wonder why we're choosing ones that don't serve us. Why we're like choosing on purpose to be delusional in a way that makes our life miserable. I mean, just to drive it home, I think like you probably get the picture that we are delusional but I want to think about like literally the world that we've created around ourselves is just one big delusion, right? Like we are all living in our own realities. I think that's no more apparent today than it is ever before. When you look at COVID, when you look at our political healthscape, facts don't matter because we will find the facts that support our view. Every one of us. We all live in our own little worlds. And then we wonder why everyone else doesn't see it the way that we do, but religion’s an interesting one for me to think about. I'm not a religious person, just as a caveat. I think it's great if you are but I want you to just think about your religion for a second if you are a religious person. Like you literally have to believe in something that you have no evidence of. You just have to take people's word for it and you have to go really full out with that belief basically. And I- I always think about this cause it's, you know, like fish don't know what water is. It's hard to see when you're in something. It's very difficult to have that objective view. And so it's always interesting like you know, have you ever like heard about a new religion like that you didn't know about? And sometimes like their practices can be very beautiful. You can like learn something like oh, that's really cool. And then you learn some things and you're like wait, what? Why would you do that? That's crazy pants. Why are you guys all, you know, subscribing to this? This is insanity. And it seems so beyond what you can even comprehend because that's not what you've been indoctrinated with, right. That's not the thing that you've chosen to believe. And yet for other people it's completely normal. And I think when you take a step back and you look at your own religion as well and the religions you were raised in, it's quite literally just believing in something that you have no evidence to believe in. And so it can be categorized as delusional. Now we don't think of it that way because we'd like to believe in faith. Like we call it faith and call it having a belief and that's fine. And I think religion helps a lot of people in a lot of ways. And that belief that hope gives us a lot of like uh comfort and grounds us in a way. That's great. But it's the same definition of delusional. All I'm saying is that if you can believe in an entire religious structure without evidence, you can also believe that your dreams are possible. And it's so funny to me to say this cause the people I work with, it's so amazing for me to watch. Like your dreams are not that crazy, right. I would say that this creator of like Squid Game like that's more of a crazy dream. Okay. Having like a number one, I mean, I'm sure he didn't set out to do this, but I'm saying if someone was to say like I want to have the number one show on Netflix in every country. You know, I want to make hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm not saying that's how much he makes. I'm just saying, if that was the dream, I'd be like all right um, you know, good for you like shoot for the stars. But like maybe we start a little bit smaller so that we can take some baby steps to get there. Like let's have some wins and then we'll work our way to that insane goal. But the funny thing is is that most of you guys have the most realistic, possible, non-delusional goals, right? There's things that other people are currently doing that like a lot of them there's a roadmap to, there is the how-to on YouTube, right? There is the example. You're not trying to go to Mars and yet, we're so convinced it's still delusional. Here's the thing: if there's someone doing what you want to do or that you think is cool, by definition it's not delusional. It's very much possible. And you might think me thinking I can do it is delusional. And again, you can keep that thought. I just want you to know that what you're doing there is just self-preservation. You're just trying to prevent feeling defeated or sad if it doesn't turn out the way you want. And again, I would just remind people, everybody that is touting this creator from Squid Game, like his accomplishment. I guarantee you that that man felt like a failure many a times in that 10 years like doubted whether it would be anything, you know, had the pain and the negative emotion of disappointment and rejection and failure and uh uncertainty and all of it. And we love to look at the end result and be like oh yeah, go for your dreams. It sounds it's such a wonderful, like you know, Instagrammable, meme and yet, the discomfort that it takes to believe in that dream for 10 years and to deal with that is what most of us are not willing to do. And so I just want you to know that it's not delusional to pick something that you see other people doing. And if you want to preserve yourself, you don't wanna get your hopes dashed fine. But, you know, I mean, we've all heard the quote like if you don't try, you're just failing ahead of time. I mean, the reality is is like so many of us, the reasoning is, well, I don't want to be disappointed so I'm just going to live an unfulfilled and disappointing life like knowing there's more for me just to possibly prevent some disappointment in the future. It doesn't make any sense. And so even if your brain is telling you like we're being delusional, be delusional. Be okay with that. Know that you're already delusional. Our whole lives, our whole realities are just made up in our brains. And I might as well pick some delusional thoughts that are going to serve me, right. If I'm going to constantly think that I'm not good enough and I made it here, you know, by some fluke and I'm a fraud, I might as well think like maybe I have what it takes. And of course my dreams are possible and why not go after this thing? And I think you can really anchor that by looking at people that do it. I think you can look at where you feel jealous as a arrow to what you want and really ask yourself like how is this person an example of what's possible for me? And why is it that if they can have it, I can't? I promise you, there's nothing special about the people that are doing, even this creator of Squid Games, I'm not saying, he's clearly very talented, but he's a human with a human brain, the same as the rest of us. He’s not some superhuman and we do a disservice when we think that other people have something special that we don't have. I promise you, you have it. You just have to be willing to be delusional. You have to be willing for other people not to understand you. You have to be willing to hold that belief, even when there isn't evidence for it. And the last thing I will say is that anything that is new, anything that you're going to do for the first time, even if other people have done it, anything that we're going to do for the first time as humans, that other people haven't done, anything we've ever done that was done for the first time had to come from a thought that is a little bit delusional because there is no evidence for it, right? Any new thing, I mean, think about like we talk about this like the new technologies, right? The people that started Uber had to be delusional to think that like a stranger can just come with their regular car and you'll get in it and they'll take you somewhere, right? Same thing with Airbnb saying that, whatever, like we know all the technologies now but I just think like in human history, anybody that did anything that was of any importance for the first time had to hold that belief when everybody else thought they were crazy. And even now with little things, you know, I talk to people and just about literally like resting, right. About working 15 hours a week or something, 20 hours a week. And it seems like oh, that's delusional. That's crazy. That can never happen. Like why? Why can that never happen? Who said? And now I see so many people doing it. And I realized like for myself, when I, and I have these same thoughts, like when I start, it's like well, I get caught in no, but you have to work, you know, 40 hours a week or whatever. You have to work every day. Only because that's what I've been told before. And I'm constantly now questioning like yeah, I have the career that I want. I have the business I'm doing. I want, what else do I want? Do I want to work less? Do I want to make more? Do I want to help more people? Can this be even a bigger scale than I originally thought? Why not let myself think that it can be? Because the worst thing that happens is that I feel a little disappointment and I can feel that. I'm a big girl. I can handle a feeling. It's a negative emotion. It'll vibrate through my body and then it'll pass. But that unfulfillment, right? That feeling of knowing there was more I could do, knowing that there's something that I wanted, but I was just too scared to try like I, that feeling. I mean, for some people would be regret and for others, it was just be like an unfulfilled potential. That's my biggest fear. Disappointment, sadness, I can handle that. But if I'm the one that's causing it for myself, if I'm the one that's stopping myself just because I'm scared, what a waste, right, of my life. What a waste of the one fact that I live in a time where I can be delusional and try a bunch of things. That I can create a 20 hour work week. That I can work online. That I can work for myself. That I have the rights to do a lot of things that a lot of people in history didn't have. And I'm scared that like people will think I'm delusional? So my friends, I hope you go after the biggest, most delusional, most insane version of your life. I hope you hold that vision and that you know it's possible. Even if there's no evidence, even if other people can't see it, even if you can't see it because I promise you, you will create a life that's bigger than your wildest dreams. So go out there and be delusional. And if you want help figuring out what that big delusional dream is, if you want help figuring out like how do I get from where I am to that dream career that I want in a couple of steps? What are the steps I need to take care of to start getting on that path? I want you to join me for this free Masterclass on November 3rd, it's called Bridging the Gap. And I'm going to show you how to go from where you are and not feel stuck and not feel overwhelmed and how to get to where you want to go. So you can sign up for that at quitterclub.com/gap. I hope to see you there. And if not, I will see you next week. All right, bye you guys.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with someone else. I promise you know somebody who also hates their job and wants to quit, so why not share the love? And if you want to come follow along for more, come join me on Instagram at LessonsFromAQuitter and make sure you say hi. I'll see you next week for another episode.