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Ep. 137 How to Overcome Fear of Failure

by Torie Mathis | Smart AF Show

How to Overcome Fear of Failure

How many things have you talked yourself out of because you were afraid you might fail? This fear of failure can become so ingrained in you, like a bad habit, that you continually downplay what you can actually accomplish. I’m here to tell you that you can do SO much more than you could imagine. So how do you push through this fear?

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean, talk about how they’ve overcome the fear to start new businesses, move across the country and take on their fair share of risk. Because with no risk, comes no reward. And it’s not about how to stop fear of failure, because the fear is always there. It’s more about how to deal with the fear of failure and how to work through it. You’ll find on the other side of every uncomfortable, challenging situation, you know, the ones you’ve talked yourself out of, is a stronger, more confident you.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –
(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 137

[00:00:00] Sean: I didn’t wanna do it at all. Initially, not one bit.

[00:00:03] Torie: Sean came home and said, oh my gosh, you’re not gonna believe this. This is horrible. And I was like, this is great. He’s like, no, no, it’s bad. I’m like, no, no, this is great.

[00:00:13] Sean: But you know that again, that was, you know, my first reaction was, unfortunately, negative.

[00:00:25] Torie: Hey, what’s up? Its Torie Mathis, your host. And I am here with the one and only Sean Mathis, Founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

[00:00:33] Sean: What’s going on?

[00:00:34] Torie: So I was listening to this podcast the other day, and it was talking about the season of sacrifice. We’ve talked about this before. And I think that it’s something that a lot of people that maybe want to do things are super scared of the ramifications and what they might be missing. If they actually take the leap of starting a business, maybe moving all things that we’ve done. And we actually just talked about it with your new business.

[00:01:09] Sean: The sacrifice.

[00:01:10] Torie: The season of sacrifice.

[00:01:12] Sean: That took me forever to even quit corporate and come to you because of that normal paycheck.

[00:01:17] Torie: Paycheck and benefits.

It was scary.

[00:01:19] Sean: It was hard to, you know, not that I didn’t want to, and not that it really even made that big of a difference when it was all said and done, but it, there was something about that not having that consistency anymore. Was it hard to get over that hump and actually go for it?

[00:01:37] Torie: But since that time we have done this sacrifice thing quite a few times. And I think I’ve noticed that the season is a little bit shorter than you’d think. And the sacrifices aren’t as bad. It seems so scary. but then once we like worked through it, things kind of start to work themselves out a little bit quicker than I think you anticipate.

[00:02:03] Sean: Well, one thing I experienced was you’ve got, you’ve got this fear right. Of sacrificing and, and the fear of the unknown in everything. And you, and you don’t know what’s going to happen if you make the decision or if you make the wrong decision or anything, anything like that. But personally, what I have found is you figure this shit out, and it happens.

Super quick.

[00:02:25] Torie: Well, and the thing is, is that there really, you said wrong, or right there really is no wrong, or right. It’s just kind of like how you work through it. Right. And as long, long as

[00:02:32] Sean: you can, right? Is before it’s like, before you, you know, what the wrong is or right. Is, you know, you’re thinking of it. And you’re like, what if I do this? Or what if I do that? Like, it doesn’t matter either way. No, because once you don’t have a choice, Then literally all it is just moving forward. Like you can do no wrong other than just keep going forward. Well, the only way you would really screw up is if you did nothing and

[00:02:53] Torie: really, and that’s kinda what I mean, there isn’t a wrong, right.

There’s not an answer to that. Right. And so once you, you decide that this is what you’re gonna do. And like I said, we’ve done it a couple of times. I didn’t even think about you leaving corporate. That is a really big one. We’ve moved quite a few times, moved across the country. You know, left jobs to move left clients. And I think once we decided to do that, like, we’re pretty good at like shit or get off the pot. If we’re gonna talk about it, let’s talk about it and then make a decision and then let’s move on it rather than dwell on things or let years go by before you ever make a decision on things. But once we’ve decided to do things, we’re pretty good about making it and turning it into action.

[00:03:34] Sean: I think that’s key, though. Like so many people, I mean, things change obviously. So you may not, you know, if, if you set out this goal to go do something and you, you waited too long, you know, that goal may not be relevant anymore and you, and you don’t do it. The thing is, is. You never know where that path leads you unless you jump on it.

You know, I went to Afghanistan and came back a few months later, and we were like, all right, we don’t wanna raise our kid in California. And we left, you know, it was just, it was one of those things that this is what we wanna do and let’s just go do it in it. I mean, if you slowed down and took the time to really be like, well, what, where are we gonna live?

What jobs are we gonna get? Where. Kid at the time, just one. Where is he gonna go to school? You know, all these different things that I think what happens is you, people psych themselves out, and the level of sickness might vary. But ultimately, what happens is the same thing. It’s you, you get overwhelmed by all these things that you’ve got to, to consider and take into account and figure out and, and blah, blah, blah.

And really all you gotta do is like, what is it you wanna do? Is it a move then? Just move. you know, and once you, and you commit to going and doing that, everything else falls in place, you’ll figure all this stuff out.

[00:04:55] Torie: Right. I think that it’s easier. To figure things out when you have pressure applied.

[00:05:02] Sean: Right?

You, when you have no choice, it’s like, you’re either gonna figure it out, or you’re homeless,

[00:05:06] Torie: you know? Right, right. It when you’re super comfortable, there are reasons not to figure these things out, you know, it’s easier to make excuses. That’s why people say like burn the boats. Like I can understand.

Why people do say burn the boats, because once you have nothing to fall back on, then it really does force you to be more resourceful. Well, you think of it, that’s when the best things happen. You can do things so much faster and figure things out so much better when you have a little pressure.

[00:05:33] Sean: Right. I, I think of say you work for somebody, right? And you really like the place you work, your boss is fantastic. Maybe they’re the owner and all this kind of stuff, but you really deep down, you wanna go out on yours. And so you finally work up the courage, and you’re you go, and you talk to your boss, and you’re like, I love it here.

I love you. You’re great. But I just, I have this urge. I want to go do my own thing, and your boss says, great, I’m behind you 100%. But if you ever want to come back, you’ve always got a job here. I think psychologically, that would screw that person up so bad because they would know if it fails, they could just go back versus.

You know, going out there and giving it them all, knowing there is no going back, that’s not even an option. You wanted to go out on your own and be your own boss. That is what you need to go. Do not have this fake sense of security that, well, if I fail, I can go back because of the odds. You think you fail and you actually failing or not the odds, but the difference between the two, I think that’s a big difference too.

The people where people, you know, where, where, where people think that they, that it’s a complete loss and they failed may not be the end. They need, need to figure out that hurdle and get past it. And then the light at the end of the Timmo was there, where if they’re like, oh, that’s the end. And they think they hit the brick wall.

And they. You know, and really all they had to do was get a slug hammer and bust through it and get to the next level.

[00:06:58] Torie: I think that’s why joining the military is a good thing because they force you to stay. There is no, well, you know, I don’t really wanna do this.

[00:07:07] Sean: Right. People would, people would quit the minute they got off the bus.

[00:07:10] Torie: Right. Because I don’t wanna get y’all that. Right. The minute you feel uncomfortable. I mean, everybody has those urges to quit. And so if they allowed people to quit, yeah. People would be quitting all the time. Oh. But because they force you to get uncomfortable and go through uncomfortable situations.

Once you get to the other side of that uncomfortable situation, you’re like, that isn’t so bad. Then you start to kind of get a little momentum of what else can I do? Man, I can do all kinds of things if I did that.

[00:07:37] Sean: Well, and the actual accomplishment of those things is kind of a better suite, you know, cuz it’s the challenge of figuring those things out and working through it and knowing that you’re doing it is what’s super neat.

And then once you’ve done it now, now it’s just its history. You’ve done it. And so you gotta keep looking for that next challenge and just keep going forward and forward. And that was the problem I had working for corporate, you know, there were no challenges like that. You just go whatever your shift is, and then you go home for the day.

And that, I mean, I don’t care if it paid, you know, half a million dollars for what I did. It didn’t, it wasn’t fun. There was no challenge to it whatsoever. I can, I could make a, you know, let’s say I made half that but had my own schedule and more time with family, we’d go do things. The lower wage would be worth so much more to me just because of the lifestyle.

[00:08:28] Torie: But now you realize. Yeah.

[00:08:30] Sean: I mean, on the other side of it, trying to figure this stuff out, it was super hard to even fathom any of this. Well,

[00:08:37] Torie: I think that’s part of it, too, is that we all try to figure so many things out in our head, but you can’t like, you have to figure things out through actually doing them.

It is impossible. To figure these things out ahead of time or to work out these details. I mean, we’ve talked about that before, even starting a business, you starting Miles Through Time like you didn’t even know what details you needed to work out until you actually started the business and got in there and got your hands dirty and, and really started to do it.

If you would’ve said, I’m not gonna start this until I have every detail figured out, you would’ve never started. , but I think people think they have to figure it out. Like you said, with moving, like when we’ve moved, you can’t figure out every single detail beforehand, and some of those things, you just have to trust that you will figure them out eventually because you’re not gonna be homeless for long.

Yeah.

[00:09:30] Sean: No. And I think people they’ll, they’ll go around and they’ll try to ask their family and their friends and all this advice. And the thing is, is U unless those people have gone through the exact same thing and can give you their personal experience, their advice is about worthless and all, a lot of it is just going to be.

The wrong advice to deter you from doing what you’re doing, because you know, maybe they’re legitimately, legitimately, you know, worried and scared for you, or maybe they’re jealous, and they don’t want you to do that. And I know from my side of the family that we had, both of those kinds of things happen when it came to.

Doing what we wanted to do. You’ve got, you know, you got my mom, that’s like, no, I’m worried for you. And then you got other people in my family that I think they, they were jealous of what we were trying to go for. And that’s, I mean if I listened to them, we, we wouldn’t have done it. And that goes across the board for multiple things in our life of things that we’ve wanted to go do and have, have just gone out there and did it, you know, if we listened to people in our life that we would’ve never done that kind of stuff.

[00:10:32] Torie: I think we’ve always been good at talking with things together and figuring out as a team, is that how we wanna move forward? And then we high five and, and run towards it. And I think as long as you’re on board together, I think that’s been a great way that we’ve been able to go through any of these things.

And it really didn’t matter what anybody else said. We knew that those were gonna be good things for our family. Even if they suck right now. You know, taking on the new antique market when we talked about whether or not that was a good idea, like, what did I say four months?

Hopefully, it’s less than four months. I figured it’d suck for four months.

[00:11:07] Sean: I didn’t wanna do it at all. Initially. Not. One bit, Sean

[00:11:11] Torie: came home and said, oh my gosh, you’re not gonna believe this. This is horrible. And I was like, this is great. He’s like, no, no, it’s bad. I’m like, no, no, this is great.

[00:11:21] Sean: But you know that again, that was, you know, my first reaction was, was unfortunately negative about it.

I didn’t see the big picture. I do now. Man, it costs a lot more money than I initially planned. But we, you know, it’s crazy how stuff just happens, you know, when you need it, it’s there. If you just put it out there. Oh, it does. And this case has been absolutely no different. And in fact, it’s turned out to be an extremely awesome example of putting things out there and just going for it.

Cuz again, if like six months ago, if you would’ve told me, we were going to be doing all these things that we have done across the board and, and every, everything that we’ve built and remodeled there physically at the brick and mortar location that there’s no way we, I would’ve said we were doing it, and yet somehow we pulled it out and, and it’s been getting done, and it’s, it’s crazy.

And It’s just one of those things. That’s like, you know, I came home, talked to Torie I’m like, this sucks, but she’s like, this is what we need to do. I’m like, okay, let’s do it. And that was, that was the end goal. That was okay, this is what we need to do. We didn’t have a plan for everything else. It’s just, it’s all been falling into, you know, into the right position.

[00:12:39] Torie: You can’t plan it all. It’s impossible. So when you said that, though, like I thought, okay, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Okay. So we have to do a three year lease. well, I mean, if we had no money and we had to somehow get out of the lease, that would suck, but we could probably figure that out.

[00:12:55] Sean: There’s a shower in the men’s bathroom that if we had to move there and live there, you know, we could shower. There’s a microwave.

[00:13:03] Torie: What else? We may have a bad experience. Some customers get mad at us. Some vendors get mad at. People get mad at people all the time. I couldn’t think of anything that would be so disastrous that we couldn’t figure out that that would make it.

And then all the positives. Well, We would have total control of things, everything that in the last couple of years you have said, man, things would be better. If I had this, I had had this, like all, it was every single problem you had, this was the solution. And that’s gonna be a little bit of a rough journey.

[00:13:34] Sean: That’s been the problem since 2017. Yes. So it, it hasn’t been until just, just recently that, you know, we’ve been able to take complete control over everything and again, couldn’t have planned it. This.

[00:13:47] Torie: No, no. And it is amazing how things work out. You put things out there, and people appear, money appears as things appear like how it’s supposed to, and things work out. And it’s never how you could have imagined or how you thought or how you planned. Like you could spend all this time with this super meticulous plan. Life doesn’t work that way. Like you gotta, you gotta get in there, and you do such a good job. You figure this stuff out. Well,

[00:14:13] Sean: I, some people like you figure all this stuff out, but the thing is, is they’re they’re not leaving their room. You know, the plan never leaves the notebook. It never gets off the computer screen. You know, the, the big difference when, when things start to come together and happen, it’s not because we wrote it down as a, a. Goal ambition or, or whatever the case may be. It’s cuz we got out there and.

Did some, I mean, we’re, we’re making connections with people and, and physically doing things that’s where all that magic starts to happen.

[00:14:44] Torie: Well, I think that people, no matter who they are, I think they have opportunities that come life happens, and you have these opportunities. And I think so many people either they’re so focused on what they’re doing.

And it’s that’s not part of my plan because they have this like imaginary, like superstructure or whatever that they don’t allow those opportunities to happen. Or people poo opportunity. I could never do that. I could never have my own business. I could never move across the country. And, and so they poo all these opportunities that come in, and I think that’s the difference with us.

A lot of times is we’re like, let’s do it. Let’s grab it. What’s the worst that can happen? The benefits could outweigh it. That why not take the chance?

[00:15:23] Sean: Yeah. I mean, you, you go out there and volunteer for different things. Join different organizations, just get out there and start meeting different people. you know, you don’t go out there and you don’t give ’em your elevator speech.

[00:15:36] Torie: A good example to have conversations with him. A good example is the Tesla world record. Sean just wanted to do a world record. He said that would be the coolest thing to have a world record. So he went online and started searching, defined world records that we could do.

We’re not competitive eat no, you know, what are we gonna do? And so, you know, finding that there was a record for getting the most Teslas in a parade, you know, in a line of cars was something that that’s kind of related to things we have, Sean didn’t know how to do it. Sean just got his Tesla. You had never done a world record before you had never planned an event that big, there was, we had no idea how to do any of that.

[00:16:16] Sean: No, it would’ve been really, really easy to have. Okay. That was a great idea. Moving on without doing anything but like

[00:16:24] Torie: that, we were like, Hmm, we could figure this out. Like we have some skills we’re bringing. we’ve done a car show before. Very small. That’s not super big, like this, you know we know a couple people.

I’m sure we could. I mean, you’re really good at like you just put it out there and found like, once you put it out there, all these people came like people Sean didn’t even know to come and help them. And how many people did you meet to make that event happen? You know, Sean didn’t know those people before.

[00:16:54] Sean: No, I didn’t know any of them before. No, I know a whole bunch of people.

[00:16:58] Torie: That you wouldn’t have known if we wouldn’t have been like, hell yeah, let’s do

[00:17:01] Sean: it. Mm-hmm . And some of those people have been, you know, they’ve been people like the commissioner, Tim eels, who, you know, from that was then able to make some phone calls and do whatever he does magic wise and, and get some other things, you know, rolling for things that I’ve needed at the museum for years now.

Tim was able to just get it done. And that was all stemming from the Tesla event, which is, again, just one of those things. It’s, it didn’t have anything directly to do with Miles Through Time and any of the missions that we were doing there. But it, it, it totally, you know, just kind of encompassed everything and, you know, It, it also served a purpose for one of the other things we like to do is just, you know, doing things for charity, you know? And that, that enabled us to do things that again, that we wouldn’t have been able to raise over $10,000, just because, Hey, we want to, you know, but doing something cool like that, you know, being able to raise the money as we did, and then having the add-on bonuses that come with it. That’s awesome. You know, and I think that that would happen all the time. And if it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter because you still get the win of, you know, having something fun to do. And, you know, especially if it’s something for charity and, and making a difference in that way.

[00:18:19] Torie: Well, and looking at the Tesla world record, what would’ve been the worst that could have happened?

We wouldn’t have got the record, maybe. I, I don’t know. There wasn’t anything that would’ve been so horrible.

[00:18:30] Sean: that well, and technically we didn’t get the Guinness record because they wouldn’t give it to us because Guinness wants you to pay them for it. And I chose to give all the money we raised to charity instead of Guinness so that we could use their name.

Now we slaughtered the record by over 200. But Guinness won’t let us use the name. It, you know, in that case, you know, I got people that are like, oh, it sucks, but really who it’s just a word. I mean, it’s just the name. It doesn’t matter. We still did it. Right. And so, yeah, I, who cares really? You know, and maybe we’ll, we’ll we got a lot of people that want us to do it again.

And, and if we do, and we most likely will, it’ll be a lot easier.

[00:19:08] Torie: Well, we bring a lot new of new skills. to the table now, because it’s something that we’ve gone through. Like every time you try something new, like the skills that you gain, that you had no idea that you were going to gain, like, it’s that much more in your, you know, a bag of resources now that you bring to, you know, what you’re doing now. You know, and, and used doing the antique store, we talked about the four months. So I said, I I’m sure it’s gonna suck for four months. Maybe financially. You’re probably gonna have to be there a lot. And I think something that’s super important that we discussed in the ness of it is that. I can’t be there because somebody has, we have kids, like we can’t leave them at home for a week.

[00:19:52] Sean: And we live an hour away from this place.

[00:19:54] Torie: So I physically cannot be there. You physically have to be there. So in that, like, you can’t get mad at me. Like you’re not helping. And I can’t get mad at myself. Like you’re never home. Do you know what I mean? You can’t get mad at you I can’t get mad at you. Yeah. And say you are never home. You know what I mean?

It’s Christmas, you’re never home. We knew that we were gonna have to go through these things. And I think that once you decide that you want to do something, whether it’s, you know, starting a new business or taking on a new project or something like that, you can’t move forward and then get mad at the other person because you’re in the sacrifice season.

Do you know what I mean? For sure. But I could see that happening. And I think that you gotta, I think you have to put that kind of stuff out there so that you’re both on the same table.

[00:20:47] Sean: Luckily I’ve been for the last month or so up there every day, leaving for a sick in the morning coming home seven 30 o’clock at night 7 30 at night. I don’t think. That’s gonna last much longer, cuz luckily we got, we got pretty good with the manager we hired there, and I think if it wasn’t for the Expansion part of Miles Through Time that we’re doing, that requires me to be there. I don’t need to be there anymore for any of the antique stuff.

[00:21:13] Torie: Well, no, but we knew that there were multiple times that you had to be there. So you have to be there for the newness of the antique store to get everything going and vendors going. And so that’s pretty much taken care of. Yeah. Then you had to be there for the museum expansion and setting up new exhibits.

Yeah. So I think you still have some of that, but I think that’s gonna be in January that you’re gonna have to go up there more. So it’s gonna be split up a little bit, like the suck season isn’t fully over, but I think you’re over the hump.

[00:21:39] Sean: Definitely way over the hump at this point. Now I wasn’t sure if we were, I was gonna have to still be dealing with, you know, actually running the antique part.

Mm-hmm I was one of those things. Like I had no idea how involved I was going to have to be if I was going to have to work the manager’s weekends or any of that kind of stuff. And it, it all, it all has worked out, you know, and it hasn’t been completely smooth. Right. And I, whatever, you know, it’s still going forward.

[00:22:05] Torie: I think that’s part of it, too, is that you never know what parts aren’t going to be smooth, like who would’ve known that you were gonna have to buy multiple printers and not be able to print receipts. And how weird is that? That was like something that was an ongoing issue. You can’t plan for that stuff.

[00:22:21] Sean: I got one too. I’m not gonna be able to return no way. Yeah. Cuz it wasn’t prime. I was looking at their whole thing. They’re like, if you’ve used it, you’re not gonna get your money back. And even if you haven’t used it, they’re only gonna give you a portion of the money back.

Not like you suck.

[00:22:35] Torie: Man. I just did a podcast on review things too, because I had issues with reviews. I don’t know if prime has made it so that we’re so used to being able to return things because I, too, bought stuff online that the people weren’t, weren’t gonna let me return. And some of these things, like you don’t know if they’re gonna work perfectly, there’s no way to know unless you physically have it too. So that’s a bummer that you can’t.

[00:23:03] Sean: Yeah, but ultimately again, it’s one of those things that I chalk all this stuff up to cost of doing business. Even though the manager, she’s like, ah, I need this and this is it. Okay. If you know, we get all this, I’m like, get whatever you need, like get at this. I don’t know.

So if it, we need it, get it and deal with it later. I mean, because if I’m gonna sit here and. Worry about all this stuff. It’s not one. It’s not gonna do me any good. And two it’s gonna stress me the hell out. And I just recently have been able to sleep in until six 30 because of stress. Yeah.

[00:23:36] Torie: Yeah, it definitely is. So do you think past wise, like that whole leaving corporate and leaving insurance and benefits were the hardest one?

[00:23:48] Sean: Oh yeah. By far, I think it’s like a bandaid. You rip that bandaid off real slow, or you can just rip it off real fast. And you know, leaving corporate was, was to rip it off real fast. There was just, you know, now what is it we do. And then going forward, it’s just, it’s more of the same in a sense. It’s just like, okay, this is what we wanna do. Let’s go do it. This is what we wanna do. Let’s go do it. You know, I really don’t like talking about stuff that we have no intention. Of doing, because I think it’s a waste of energy all around.

Like why would we, why would we talk about all these things that we theoretically wanna do, but then, you know, deep down, no, we’ll never do it. That’s a horrible way to live. Like if we figure we talk about it, you know, cuz we, we talk about it to see if it makes sense, but then it’s like, we’re either doing it or we’re dropping it and moving on from there.

Right. You know? And. That process should not take long. I spend way more time just researching cars online. I’ll never buy, you know, I can, I can use enough time for that kind of stuff. But when it comes down to what we’re going to do for our, our lifestyle, let’s figure it out and then let’s implement some stuff and, and do it.

[00:25:03] Torie: And it gets easier.

[00:25:04] Sean: It’s super, every time, super easy. I mean, cuz it, it literally is like, okay. You know, we wanted to live on a lake, there’s a house on the lake. Let’s move to it, you know, and just, and that’s what we did. And then once we found the house, you know, and we were like, okay, we’re actually moving into it. Then it was okay. Now let’s, now let’s figure out how we’re gonna actually move all our stuff there and figure out, you know, what we’re gonna do for internet and where all the kids are going. We already made the decision that we were doing it. Everything else, you know, It’s just, it details Don’s fall follow. That will fall. Yeah. It’ll happen no matter what.

[00:25:43] Torie: Yeah. Rip that bandaid off.