You may or may not know this yet, but I studied psychology in college.
Specifically, I probably fit somewhere in the Human Potential Movement.
I didn’t care so much about how to fix people.
Or really, understanding all the psychoses and neuroses humans face.
I was most interested in how peak performers got that way…
And, true to stereotype, I wanted to figure myself out…
And see if I, too, could become a peak performer! To see if I could reach “The Farther Reaches of Human Nature” that Maslow wrote about in his book.
But at the same time, I was an awkward, geeky college kid.
Yeah, I had my music, and my own circle of friends…
But I’d also failed some classes for who-knows-what-reason…
(I’d later learn it was attention-related — aka I tuned out in classes that made me bored — and that I was diagnosable as ADHD:Inattentive.)
I was socially awkward…
Nervous around the opposite sex…
Not always confident speaking up in class…
The works…
While I’d watch the confident, successful students around me, I couldn’t help but feel broken and insecure…
EVERYONE feels this way somewhere deep inside… Never forget it.
An outcast…
An outsider…
And I was sure that in the long run, that doomed me to a life of middling existence…
A cog in the machine…
Remember that Starbucks commercial? The one where Survivor played Eye of the Tiger in the background, except they rewrote all the lyrics to glorify Glenn’s rise to middle management? And then, at the end, Glenn walks away and Roy walks up… And they start again?
“ROY! Roy, Roy, Roy…”
Well, I thought I’d end up as that Roy…
Well on my way to a middle-of-the-road supervisory position in some big company…
Even though I’d decided early on — probably by 16 — that I had no taste for the cubicle-dweller lifestyle…
I didn’t know any better.
And frankly, because I was so sure I was just broken and insecure (and nobody else was) that my path was pretty much laid out before me…
And yet, something in me wouldn’t let that be…
I kept searching (even after I got that psychology degree and decided I wasn’t cut out to be a psychologist, so I better find something else)…
Trying to understand…
Not just myself, but others…
Trying to figure out how broken I really was…
And how broken everybody else wasn’t…
And I discovered that may absolutely fascinate you.
We’re ALL broken and insecure!
From the most highly-successful… To the most downtrodden…
In fact, sometimes the most successful people you’ll meet — by material standards, at least — are the most broken…
It’s not how you feel that determines your level of success in getting what you want out of life…
It’s what you do with those feelings.
Do you let them control you? Hold you back?
Or do you see them as a challenge to be overcome?
The truth is, most people will be held back by these feelings…
But you don’t have to be.
Feel the fear, the sense of being under-qualified to take on life’s great challenges…
And then take them on anyway!
And knowing that everyone else — to the person — feels much the same way…
Help others do the same…
Help others face their fears…
Help others feel understood in their brokenness and insecurity, and succeed all the same…
(This is a very powerful tool in marketing — and should ONLY be used with the best intentions.)
And mostly, take a deep breath, and realize…
You are not alone.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
