Dan Cumberland TheMeaningMovement.com

Transcription

1 Dan Cumberland TheMeaningMovement.com Are you afraid of failure? Are you afraid of success? Dan Cumberland, founder of The Meaning Movement, can help you with both. He does not blog about resumes or moneymaking opportunities. Dan counsels people on how to blast through both personal fears and societal expectations to truly claim your destiny authentic, fulfilling experiences in life and career. Unlike some programs out there, Dan will work one-onone with people in the fearless pursuit of work that moves you. Caitlin: Well, hey, everybody! Welcome back to the Work-At-Home Summit. I m your host, Caitlin Pyle, and I m here with Dan Cumberland. Now, after a dead-end job left him stuck, Dan set out to learn everything there is to learn about meaning, purpose, and work. A master s degree and a few twists and turns later, he s on a mission to help you find and do your best work. He s been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, Career Builder, blah, blah, blah. All good stuff, but more importantly, Dan won t rest until you are doing work you love. You can find his blog and podcast at TheMeaningMovement.com. That s TheMeaningMovement.com. Dan, thanks for being here today. Dan: Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I m so excited to be here. Caitlin: Yeah. Well, I m excited to have you talk to us about finding what we really want out of work and, of course, out of our lives. But before we dive in, I want you to tell us a little bit about your search for finding what you love in life and how that ended up becoming part of The Meaning Movement because I hear it was quite the journey. Dan: It was quite the journey. The question is how far back do I go. So I think the best I have to start with my family, and I am the youngest of two. My brother is a computer programmer, very, quite successful in what he s done. My dad is an aerospace engineer. My mother s an accountant. And I m a creative. I m an artist. I didn t fit the family mold in a lot of ways, and I think that s the root of where a lot of my struggles in finding the right fit for me came from, but also in my motivation and passion behind this project. I just never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. My older brother had this very clear trajectory, and I was kind of pushed along in his footsteps, maybe towards computer science or something in that direction which was fine. I didn t hate it, but I didn t love it. Going into college, two things really spoke to me which was music and ministry. So I studied both of those things, went to a ministry specific school and ended up graduating, taking a job as a youth pastor. And pretty quickly thereafter, something was wrong, and I didn t know what, but it seemed like nothing was working for me. I think at this point I could say I was getting pretty depressed. I didn t know what depression was at that point in my life, but I was just really struggling. I went through a few years of just really this it s so hard to articulate, but I know that

2 some listeners will be able to relate to this kind of space where it feels like you re you think you re doing the right thing. Like all the choices that I made leading up to that point were based on the best information that I had and the best influences in my life that really led me to this direction. So on paper, I can look at all these checkboxes like, okay, I m doing these right, these things that were good. I m doing, you know, ministry is a good thing to pursue. It was helping people, and just going down this list. But then, my experience was something very different than all these checked boxes. And it just left me really confused, really wondering what I was doing, what I should be doing. What s wrong with me is really kind of how that question articulated itself, at least in my mind. I just really struggled, spent a lot of time in therapy, spent a lot of time talking to mentors, to anyone who had ever said anything about vocation or calling or purpose. I would just perk up and want to have more conversation. And slowly I began to unravel this my life, I guess, in some ways and began to see that there are a few things going on for me. One is the loudest voices in my life had always told me that ministry was the most valuable pursuit, the best thing that you can do. And so, what at some point, at some level I had thought maybe God was calling me to ministry or that my calling was ministry, it might have been more that my youth pastor told me I should go into ministry. Caitlin: I can really relate to that. I grew up in youth group as well and it was kind of funny. It s almost like a peer pressure environment when you re sitting in an audience, and there are tons of people that are saying, Is there anybody else who would like to dedicate their life to this out there? And you re like 14, so you find yourself wanting to fit in and you declare that you re going to bible college and all this stuff. And it s just like, I m not that person at all anymore. And so, man, it is definitely a peer pressure environment. So I m glad that you got out of that. Dan: Absolutely. I think there s nothing absolutely wrong with that, but it s that the way that someone s voice and in my particular story, my youth pastor s voice, can carry so much power. And I think that my youth pastor was a great person and it was a really good influence on me in so many ways, but I was at a place where I really needed someone to speak truth into my life about who I was and what I was made for, and that just wasn t quite the truth that I personally needed to hear. So as I unraveled that portion of my story, then the question became, so what do I do? If that one thing that I thought was the thing isn t it, then what is it? I think we all get to these points in our lives and I, again, think that people listening, watching can relate. Like where you had a plan and then that plan kind of falls apart, whether it be at the end of a job, whether it be at some sort of existential crisis like I had, or maybe a divorce. I don't know what it is, but when we have this plan that we had a particular vision for our life and then all of a sudden, that vision is shifting. That was the space I found myself in.

3 And so, again, just started taking in all the information I could around how do we help people figure out what to do with their lives and just I loved it. And I think that s the part that is so important to note is that it all comes back to passion and to energy. What s confusing about my story is I thought I was trying to figure it out for myself, but maybe the question that I had for myself was also the question that I had when I wanted to help other people with, and that s another big part of my story. I don t want to take too much time there, but to go from maybe my calling, maybe my work in the world is actually helping others figure out their work. It took a few people saying, You re kind of like the way that you get excited about these conversations is different than I ve ever seen anyone else get excited about it. And it took that kind of noticing for me to really say, Okay, I m going to do this. I m going to pursue it. Then I went to grad school, and then I started The Meaning Movement where I help people answer these kinds of questions. Caitlin: Well, it s clear that your pain, your previous past-life struggles have become your passion, and I think that s really, really exciting. You mentioned something about everything checked all the boxes and then just fell apart, and it reminded me of how we, as humans, have this tendency to try to fit ourselves into boxes. You went through that as well. You were trying to fit yourself into the ministry box because that s the box that everybody said, Hey, jump in this box. You should fit in this box. And they do it with such a good intention that they don t realize that they re hurting people when that happens or that it can end up making somebody depressed or whatever. They have no idea and we can t blame them for that, but it definitely I think still that negative things that happen to us, I don t consider them it s like, I don t believe in failure, right? I don t believe if it doesn t work out that you can look at it as a failure. I look at the things that I ve failed at in my past. I got fired in Well, hey, if I look at that as a failure, that s the place where I learned how to proofread which is where I got my start as a freelance proofreader. Without that job, without getting fired, I wouldn t be where I am right now, today, which I love where I am right now. I m doing what I love and that I m passionate about, but I had to kiss a few frogs before I found the prince. And so, if we refuse to get started because we re waiting on the thing that we re passionate about, we re waiting at the bus stop for what I like to call the ready bus, right? You re just waiting, waiting, waiting. My advice for people is to always just get on a bus that s moving and go, and then you can always jump off and get on another bus. If it doesn t work out, so to speak, or it doesn t pan out, at least you re moving. But if you re standing there waiting, then nothing s going to happen. So I want to jump back then. So now your mission is to help people find and do what matters most to them. Where do you even start with that though because that is such a huge thing? What is step one to figuring out what your life goals should be? Dan: Yeah. That is the question and it s a big question. I like to think of it as you re trying to find your way on a map, but the map is blank, and you don t know anything that goes on the map. You don t know where you re trying to get to, and you don t know where you are. You think of when you go to an amusement park or a mall and you see the maps there. They always start

4 with You Are Here because you can t find your way to where you want to go until you understand where you are. It s like, if you were asking me, So how do you get to London? Well, what continent are you on? Let s start there because that s going to be important. What city are you in? And the same is true when it comes to purpose, when it comes to direction, and when it comes to meaning. You start with you. You start with your story. I think that s one of the big mistakes that we often make is we think that calling, that purpose, that passion is somewhere out there. Like we just have to keep searching, and we expect that we re going to arrive at some mountaintop experience, and the clouds are going to part, and this beam of light will shine down on us and tell us exactly what to do with our lives. And that s not, again I mean, maybe if someone watching this has had that experience, please contact me because I would love to hear it. But for most of us, it s very different than that and it s much simpler, almost too simple. So simple that we miss it. And you have to start close in. You have to start with who you are. You have to start with the things that you re so close to that you don t even realize that the phrase that you can t see the forest through the trees is that s what this work is about is start with the things that are stupid simple about you, like you just take it for granted. That s where you start. So the way we get to that is by telling stories. And so, I want to know, when I work with people you know, I work with people one-on-one around these themes and these ideas. We start with your story. What are the major events that have formed you? How have they formed you? What are the things the stories that you come back to when you think of what are the important moments in your life because all of those things tell us something about who you are? Another layer to that is what are the voices that have shaped you, like in my story with my youth pastor and growing up in an environment where ministry was the thing that you should do? What are the voices in your life that, for good and otherwise, have shaped your decisions up to this point, have affected the way you think about who you are and what you should do with your life, and that shape, that color of the lens through which you view your work and what might be next? The more that you put all these factors on the table, the more things begin to come into focus because the more you are aware of how these voices, how these people, how these institutions have shaped you, the more power you have and volition you have to choose whether or not you want to continue to live under those voices, or to live in that box maybe, that you were told that you should fit into. So that s the beginning, the beginning of the process. Caitlin: I think we can well, you mentioned that we can sometimes just sit and wait for those big mountaintop experience, so we know what we were put on earth to do. But I think that s another way that we put ourselves in a box, and we think that because we ve seen it on TV. We ve heard crazy stories, and that can happen sometimes. I don t want to discount people who do have those types of stories, but you re right. Most of the time, it s something that s so close to us, so just essential to who we are, that we don t even realize that s our thing.

5 And the same thing, I can tell you my story. That s exactly what happened. I thought nobody would want to learn how to proofread, nobody would want to learn from me. Proofreading is boring. It s nerdy. Everybody s going to laugh at me. They re going to think it s stupid. But for some reason I thought, when I started ProofreadAnywhere.com, like, Yeah, we ll see where this goes, and I clicked Buy The Domain Buy The Hostname, whatever. I was like, We ll give this six months. And I gave it six months and that was in November of Fast forward to May of 2015, I had done my first interview based on how well things had gone so far. I think we had done $100,000 in sales within six months and that s not Dan: Unreal. Caitlin: That s not a common, you know, your all of our mileages will vary, but I m using this to illustrate a point that I had a really terrible mindset about my thing, right? And it s been a core to who I am. It s been a natural thing. In high school, they called me a grammar nazi. I always was the one reading my friends papers, and I would catch all the mistakes that they didn t catch, and it s just something that was me and I thought that was normal. I thought, Oh, everybody knows how to be a proofreader. They don t need a course. And they re like, Figure that one out. You do need a course! I learned just how much more training I needed by teaching others. I was like, there s so much I don t know. So I learned all the time. I never used the Chicago Manual of Style and now I do. And so, it s like you learn more by teaching others. And do you have any specific stories? I mean, your story and figuring out what your passions are and the people that you worked with without naming names do you have a specific story that comes to mind that you want to share about helping them find their fit? Dan: Yeah. Yeah. That s a great question. One specific story that just jumps out, and I think this is a really interesting one because often, when we re in these conversations and people are thinking about, Well, so what does it mean? Do I need to change careers? Do I need to go back to school? all these things. And for some people, it does take them that direction. But it can go many different directions because it s all about what you personally find meaningful and fulfilling. And there s this one, it s actually funny because it s somewhat ministry related. A guy who was a manager at a company I don t want to go into too much detail about what the company did. It had a warehouse and he was in the office and he was really successful. The business was growing. He contributed in a lot of ways to that and very successful on the professional level, but always felt like maybe he should have been a pastor. Maybe he should have been or maybe it s a therapist. Something where he s really talking with people and really involved in people s growth and development. So there s always this disconnect in some of what brought him to the conversation and to asking these kinds of questions. It s like, maybe I missed it and even though I m finding success here, I think that maybe I need to either become a therapist or a pastor or some other kind of helping profession.

6 And through the work, he began to really see that what made him successful in his job was that he was already doing that. And then, out of the work, instead of going back and making this massive shift, he began to see that having identified these are the places, these are the kind of conversations that I love to have, these are the kind of mentoring-like relationships that I want to be a part of, he allowed himself, gave himself the permission to approach his work in a completely different mindset. Instead of fitting the box of what a manager should look like, who stays in their office, he d spend an hour or two just going to the warehouse and hanging out with the guys that are there and getting to know them and, you could say, pastoring or mentoring those people. So instead of thinking of his work as, I have this one part of myself that s not a part of what I do and then I have my career, my job, and they re two separate things, they started to overlap and allowed him to lean into that overlap and find a lot more satisfaction, a lot more meaning, a lot more purpose, a lot more significance in the work that he was already doing because he was able to go about it in a whole new way. And it was already there. It s just he hadn t even considered the possibility. Caitlin: I love that you said he gave himself permission, and it made me think that we have this mindset. I mean, and I mentioned this a few times with some other speakers on the Summit, that there s no news broadcast that says, Hey, guess what? You get to make the decisions now in the broken system of the American school system. And that s, you know, we re not getting into politics here, but it s an antiquated system. There s standardized testing. It s not teaching kids. We re learning more about parallelograms than we are about doing our taxes, and that s going to come in handy in parallelograms. Just wait, it will be relevant one day. And so, it s an antiquated system, but we re taught to ask permission for everything. We have permission slips for that. Permission you can t even go take a pee without getting permission for that. And I resented that so much in high school that I had to ask somebody who was two years older than me for permission to go to the bathroom essentially, dumbest thing ever. And younger people, it s easier to become a teacher. In the school system, anybody with a bachelor s degree, in the state of Florida, at least, can become a teacher temporarily. So there are people who they don t even have a teaching degree, and they re a teacher just because they have a bachelor s degree and there s such a shortage and it s just such a shame. But, again, not getting into politics, we are conditioned to wait for permission, so we wait for somebody to give us permission to live the life that we want to live. So my next question for you is somebody who feels stuck and maybe is like we re going to talk about mindset for a second here. We ve kind of been talking about mindset all along, but somebody who feels stuck where they are in their 9 to 5, this is that s kind of the way I felt. I m like, I m going to be a proofreader until I m 80 because I can t really do anything else, and I thought I was going to make $40,000 for the rest of my life every year, and that was just where I was. What are some mindset shifts that people can make to stop thinking that they re stuck, to

7 stop thinking that they have to be where they are, and then to get them to a place where they believe that anything is possible because they have more control than they ever thought? Dan: Yeah. Such a good question, I love it. There are so many things. I think, first, I want to just touch on the idea that when we re talking about work, we re and I think this goes back to what you mentioned about education is that work is primarily it s about income, of course, but when it comes to purpose and meaning, it s about identity. And that s what, I think, that we often overlook, that work is a place where you get to say something. Whether you say it with a spreadsheet or by writing a blog or by conducting some experiment in a lab somewhere, you get to make a contribution. So the question at the core of work is what do you have to say, and what do you want to say? And that s what I think is often missed in the school system because it s just this moving walkway I like to think of it where you go from one grade to the next grade to the next grade to the next grade, and then you re into college, and then you re into the degree, into your field, whatever degree you got. But there s often not space for those larger questions of who am I and what do I want to say? And also, sometimes there s not the right support, the right voices along the way helping name those things in you to say, You re really good at proofreading and I think that could take you somewhere or whatever it might be. So I think that s just over this whole conversation, and when it comes to being stuck, it s often the places that get us stuck are when we re living into someone else s version of what we think we should be or who we think we should be, and some words that they ve spoken about their identity, and my own story of being, you know, that I needed to be a pastor or whatever it might be. A really important step is to and this is just to get super practical get a piece of paper and just write down every story, every voice, every idea around work and around what you should do with your life that you ve been told, that you ve kind of maybe just inherited from your family, from your culture, and just get it all out on paper. And after you get all that out, spend a few minutes just brainstorming it all, and then go through and just put names next to each of those. Like maybe my dad always told me that I had to work hard no matter how much I got paid. Just doing, you know, working hard is the highest value. That s a great message, but also maybe Caitlin: Toiling. Dan: Yeah. But maybe also there s a part of that where you re working hard just for the sake of working hard. Just go through all of those stories and put names next to them. Then go through and circle the ones that are positive and that feel like a reality that you want to live into, and then cross out the ones that feel really confining, that feel too small for you, and just cross those out. By doing so, you ll begin to clear up a little bit more space to even begin dreaming outside of some of those boxes because a lot of those voices are going to be in competition. Some people say it s wrong to earn. Maybe this is one, with my own story, with a background in ministry, to make a lot of money felt bad. Money is bad, but then on the flip side of that, you have to make money and provide for your family. So you have these two narratives that are in direct conflict to

8 each other. And just to get it out on paper, just realize, okay, this is some of the crazy going on inside of me around work is profoundly liberating. And the next thing, oh Caitlin: Yeah, I think sorry, go ahead. Dan: I was just going to say, then the next thing is to begin taking steps towards your curiosity, and I think that s something you ve already said a number of times which I just totally agree with. You just have to take some action. Just buy the domain name like you did, or join some club related to something that you re interested in and just give yourself the permission to start experimenting, even in just super simple ways, towards the things that you really enjoy. Take a class, you know, whatever it might be because once you re starting to get in motion, to get moving, it s much easier to change your course and make corrections than if you re just totally allow yourself to be totally stuck and not able to take a step at all. Caitlin: Yeah. It comes back to giving yourself permission. And the worst thing sometimes we re going to talk about fear in just a second, but sometimes the worst just thinking about the absolute worst thing that could happen say you take that course, and the worst thing you could do is learn something! You have to start looking at things as stepping stones and not like, if this isn t it, I ve failed. There s so much value in learning what you don t want to do, just as much value as there is in what you do want to do. This is not a new story, but I spent $7,000 going to personal training school, and while I didn t hate the work, it wasn t for me. I didn t like the lifestyle that it set me up for, being at the gym a certain time all the time, never having Thursday night to myself because I taught back-to-back spinning classes, and it s always having to say no to my friends. It s like, this is not what I I loved teaching classes. I loved the people I met, but it s not the lifestyle that I wanted. And so just realizing that but I don t regret going to personal training school. I don t regret spending $7,000 because it was a stepping stone opportunity to realize, hey, this is not the lifestyle I want. This is what I thought I wanted, but this is not what I want. And that has been very, very valuable because had I not done that, I wouldn t be able to tell the story over and over again. I tell it a lot. Dan: It s such a good story. Well, and I think, you know I heard Seth Godin, who I m sure you re familiar with, many people are familiar with. He s an amazing blogger and marketer and he blogs every day, and you should read everything he s ever written which is quite a lot because he blogs every day. But I heard him in an interview. Someone asked him about when people are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, trying to figure out what problem to solve, thinking in those terms of problem. There are so many big problems in the world; it s overwhelming. And I think it ties into the conversation here. His response was so the question is, So what do you do in light of so many problems and so many things that could take a lifetime of work? And he said that you have to forgive yourself for not doing the perfect thing in order to free yourself to do the good thing.

9 And I think that I just love that in so many ways, that concept of forgiving yourself for not doing the perfect thing, and I think it applies here because there really isn t a perfect next step. There are many good next steps. And to just start by saying you re not whatever your next step is, whether you re going to personal training school, it might not be the perfect next step, but it s a good next step. And so, to forgive yourself, just say I m probably going to make a mistake. I m probably going to let s just start with the assumption that my next step is not going to be the perfect next step. If my next job is not going to be the dream job, but it s going to be a job that s going to give me more clarity around who I am and what I want to do in the world, and by allowing, by forgiving yourself and I think that s also an interesting way to think about permission; maybe permission starts with forgiving yourself forgiving yourself for not being able to make the perfect choice in order to have that freedom to just make a good choice, I think, is a really great concept. Caitlin: I agree. I agree. And it really just comes back down to that permission thing. And when we re talking about writing down the stories that we heard and putting the names and, I think, just going through and looking at, okay, asking is this true or is this not true? Is this something I ve chosen to believe, or is this something that is actually true? I think that s really instrumental as well. And then, so we talked about I think I did mention the ready bus, right? So you have to get on a bus. There s not a perfect bus either, so we re sitting waiting on the perfect thing or for our thing to be perfect before we get on the bus and go with it, take it somewhere. We re going to be waiting for a really long time. And I know, even as we re doing the Summit this week and into the weekend, there s going to be some mistakes. And I had to come to terms with it when I was planning things that, hey, this is not going to be perfect. I had to let go of some things knowing that there s going to be glitches. There s going to be things we need to fix on the fly, problems to solve, fires to put out, whatever. But I know that I ve grown a lot since the first time I brought a product into the world, and that one turned out pretty good, I would say. Proofread Anywhere was my first product and it was terrible. The very first version I put out was terrible, but I think back to that person. She put it out there, and I don t know who that person is anymore. I remember her, but I don t know her. She s not me; she has changed. And so, if she could put something out there when it was less than perfect, not even knowing that it wasn t perfect I mean, she didn t think it was perfect, but she put it out there and didn t care. She put it out there then I can do it, too. I m still that person at my core and I can do that. So I want to shift gears for my final thing that we want to talk about here and that is fear. And a lot of times people fear failure and we said, Hey, there s no such thing as failure. The worst thing that could happen is you re going to learn something and then move on to the next thing. They say a lot of people say, What if it doesn t work out? and worried about it, and we re just like, Get on the bus and go. But then there s another side of that coin where people are afraid of success. What happens if it does work out? So we try to compartmentalize ourselves, put

10 ourselves in boxes there as well. Say, Hey, what happens if I earn a lot of money. What s my family going to think? things like that. How do you help, Dan, people overcome a fear of success? Dan: That s a super, super interesting question. I think so first, I want to just talk about fear and our understanding of fear, so we re all on the same page about it. That fear there are many different kinds of fear, but the kind of fear that we re talking about here, especially when it comes to success, especially when it comes to any sort of using your voice let s put it in those terms. We ve used that term already, creating something that matters to you that we often, we typically will experience a lot of fear anytime we get close to creating something that matters to us because there s a lot of desire at play. There s something that we want in the world and when we get close to stepping toward something that we want, then we have to face the possibility that we might not get it. For some people, it s a lot easier not to take a step forward, not to risk because by even taking a step toward something, they have to face the reality that they might not actually get it. So it s better not to play the game at all than to risk striking out, if that makes sense, because it s something that matters so much to you. So fear in a lot of ways is a really important indicator of work that matters to you, of something that s speaking to you, something that s calling to you. It s something that you re afraid of, but not in a way that like I d be afraid of jumping off the top of a building because I would die, right? That s not the kind of fear we re talking about here, but the kind of fear that like, I m really afraid of public speaking, but I really want to be a keynote speaker at a conference or whatever it might be. That kind of fear where there s also like it pushes you away and part of you, something in your body says that s scary, but then another part of you says that s really alluring. I really want to be a part of it. You have to pay attention to that fear because that fear can guide you to those places where there s something in it for you, something that has to do with who you are, with who you re becoming, and what your work in the world might be. When it comes to that fear of success, I think the way that it plays out, and I m trying to think of exactly how to articulate this, is that it s another way or a really subversive way that a worstcase of a worst-case scenario. A subversive version of a worst-case scenario, let s put it that way. I think it s a good way to say because what your fear is doing is giving you an excuse, and this is what fear does. I love talking about fear. I could talk about fear all day. I lead this community experiment called Fearless February where we put the month of February aside specifically to tackle fears in our lives. So you re asking me a question that s right up my alley. But fear will always try to find a way to keep you from taking action, and I think that fear of success is one of those really subversive ways because you re like, Well, I m not afraid of failure. I m afraid of actually succeeding and being judged by people in my life. People say, Oh, you can t go. You can t succeed in those ways or whatever it is. What will people think of me? A really helpful way to get at that is to start to really spend some time imagining what is actually realistic. What are people actually going to say? How much of this fear is real, and how much is just an inflated emotional response?

11 And I ll wrap up here in just a second, but I just think this is a super helpful parallel. If you ever watch a really great suspense movie I think of M. Night Shyamalan s old stuff like The Village and Signs he does such a good job. I loved those movies; I still do. I don t watch them currently, but I remember watching them in high school and college and just being you re so freaked out, but you never actually see the monster. Then when you do, it s kind of corny a little bit, but and what he does so well, and I think all great directors do this is, the scariest things are the things that are not on screen because in your mind they can be so much bigger, so much scarier, so much more vicious than they actually are. Then when you actually see it, it s like, Oh, it s just an alien in Signs or whatever it is. And it s like, Oh, that s just kind of weird looking. And our fear, it operates in exactly the same way. As long as it s offscreen, as long as you re not exploring it, as long as you haven t explored it and haven t articulated it, it has a lot more power over us than if you actually get it down on paper and start digging into so what s actually beneath this fear, and what are the ways that what s real here and what s imaginary? Then, for even the stuff that you feel is real, is it really as bad as you think it s going to be? And usually, it s not. Usually our emotional response to it is so much greater than the actual reality would be if we were in that situation. Caitlin: Yeah. And I think there are probably a bunch of people sitting at the bus stop waiting for the fear bus to or the not-being-afraid bus, I guess, to come by, right? They don t want to start until the fear is gone. And I have to say, in my experience, fear never goes away. It just changes its face, so I ve learned over the years to just be comfortable with having fear there. I was scared to death to put out Work-At-Home School and the idea and start talking to potential partners about it and start looking for contributors, thinking, Oh my God, they re not going to get it. They re not going to see my vision. They re not going to help me out. And now, it s turned into this really big thing that a lot of people are involved in and it s just like, holy smokes. So now, I look back at who I was three years ago, and I look back at every single project I ve started, and there was always fear there, but I did it anyway. So, if there isn t fear there, then you re not supposed to be doing it. If you re not scared of it, then it s not going to grow you. So just getting comfortable with the fear being there is, I think, a really key point for people that are watching this to get. So, Dan, I just want to say thank you. I can definitely relate to all these things, and I could talk about fear all day long as well. My journey started with a lot of fear. It has a lot of fear in it right now but learning to work with the fear and allow it to guide you instead of hold you back and using it as a tool, I think is super key. And my need to overcome the fear of, what if I fail? What if I look stupid? That s what I dealt with, but I know a lot of people are dealing with the what if I succeed? I mean, you don t have to tell anybody you succeeded, right? So, if that s really your fear, then don t tell anybody until you feel comfortable. And a lot of that fear, a lot of that confidence I think fears can sometimes stem from not feeling confident, but the confidence is going to come when you know what you re doing. And that s exactly what Work-At-Home

12 School is all about is helping you learn how to do what to do to have a work-at-home lifestyle that you actually want. So, guys, if this talk with Dan has motivated you to find your meaning, to learn about what passion and strength you have in your life, then you need to snatch up a free copy of his minicourse called Five Clues to Your Calling. It s going to help you clarify your life s work through five action-oriented concepts. That s free just for tuning in to the free Work-At-Home Summit. Dan is also an instructor at Work-At-Home School, so you re going to get his Job Fit Crash Course inside the Committed-level Curriculum Package. And inside Job Fit Crash Course, Dan will let lay out a framework for understanding what exactly you want from your work, how your current work stacks up against that ideal, and what to look for in your next career move, and a customized action plan to get you there. The links for both of those are below this video. Thanks again for being here on the Work-At-Home Summit, Dan. Dan: Thank you so much for having me. It s so fun to connect with you. I ve just really enjoyed it.