MYPROTEIN Deals – Help me release UNIGAINS Apparel!

 

We live in a world of fear.

 

For most of us, every decision we make is based on fear. Now I don’t mean the fear of getting stabbed randomly at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, but the sort of kind which makes you not want to eat that new food because you’re scared you will not like it, or not starting a conversation with a person because you’re scared that they do not want to talk to you.

 

“Stop living in fear and more in a world of opportunity”

 

Recently I have truly realised just how much fear plays a role in our lives, even for me, however slowly over the past few months I have slowly started to stop living in fear and more in a world of opportunity.

 

2 major things happened to me:

 

1. UNIGAINS

 

I have tried and failed with making blogs since last year. There were reasons why they failed, and I will talk about that in another article.

 

UNIGAINS was my third attempt at making a successful blog. For those who don’t know, this is how it started:

 

 

 

Yeah, I know, it’s fucking awful.

 

After getting some opinions from friends and Reddit, I came to the conclusion that it was absolute dog-shit – the website needed to be completely redesigned.

 

I knew that if I really wanted to have a change at UNIGAINS becoming successful I needed to invest some money into a site – this is where the fear kicked in.

 

• ‘What if I invest money into this and it becomes unsuccessful?’

 

• ‘What if I try really hard and people tell me it sucks?’

 

• ‘What if I spend money on hiring a designer and he makes everything terrible?’

 

These were some of the thoughts that I just could not get out of my head, and it stopped me from redeveloping the site for a few weeks until I tackled my thought process from a different angle:

 

• ‘What if this guy makes an amazing website which will help build a really solid foundation from which UNIGAINS can grow!?’

 

• ‘What if people really like my content and value it!?’

 

• ‘Sure it costs some money, but this could help generate a career which could make that money back!

 

• ‘What is the worst that could happen? I lose some money which I could have spent on clothes. Big deal.’

 

and most importantly…

 

• ‘What if I could make a true difference to the world. What if I can help young people realise their full potential and transform their lives!?’

 

It was this slight change in thought process which made me look at the positive ‘what ifs’ instead of the negative ones. I also thought about the worst case scenario and it was not that bad… at all.

 

This helped me make the plunge in helping myself invest in a developer to make UNIGAINS the awesome site which it is today. Sure I haven’t made my money back (made £2.70 for those who are interested), but it is by far the best decision I have ever made in my life, and I do not regret it for one second.

 

I have realised the potential of what I could do. Sure the odds may not be in my favour, but I’m no longer scared of that; the fact that I can potentially help transform the life of one person out there is all I need to keep on being persistent with UNIGAINS.

 

2. Breakup

 

About a month or so my long-term girlfriend of 3.5 years (at the time) broke up with me *cue sobbing and weeping*.

 

Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘wtf has this got to do with living in fear?’… well, everything.

 

I’ll keep it 100 with you, I didn’t want her to leave me. The relationship was kind of fizzling out a little bit, and to be honest we were getting bored of each other, but I didn’t want to end it… because I was scared.

 

I was scared because for the past 3.5 years this is all I knew. In fact, as soon I was ever interested in girls this is all I have ever known – I was in my comfort zone.

 

Going out drinking and partying with mates was way out of my comfort zone (I was strange I know), so I always copped out and chilled with my gf instead – I never really needed to go out of my comfort-zone.

 

When I moved up to London for work and my then-gf went to uni in South England, I always still had that one constant in my life which made things that little easier. Again, sure I made some new friends, but I always had that security of someone who was with me along my journey.

 

The accumulation of the above reasons resulted in me being comfortable and secure. Sure, deep inside I had doubts about the relationship, but the fear paired with the fact that we still quite liked each other still (it wasn’t an angry breakup) made me want to stay in it.

 

Again, not going to lie to you, the night of the break up I was a mess. I had a solid 3-hour weeping session.  However, afterwards I really started to think about it all and how I was feeling; I was just so scared: 

 

• ‘What if I can never find someone as good as her again?’

 

• ‘What if no other girls like me?’

 

• ‘How on earth do I hit on girls? I’ve never had to do that before?’

 

• ‘How do I  go out and make new non-work friends in a new city?’

 

• ‘What if I get all lonely because I don’t have someone in my life?’

 

Yes, this is the sort of shit that was going through my head. Luckily, I have worked on really being rational and in-tune with my thoughts and emotions, enabling me to identify that I was scared, logically think about why the breakup happened, why it was the right choice, and how I can positively move on from it.

 

The whole experience was great for me; it helped me identified my flaws and insecurities, allowing me to slowly take steps to helping myself become more confident and secure of myself.

 

I identified that whilst I was quite sure of myself when it came to my career and life choices, I was quite insecure when it came to myself in terms of girls – this is expected after 3.5 years with one person.

 

So what did I do? I read some books about it all and realised that the core fundamental issue was not even to do with girls, but more with always trying to impress, living in fear, and not naturally expressing myself; this led to me overthinking things and becoming insecure in some aspects of my life.

 

This realisation allowed me to put steps in place to slowly work on this, such as being aware when I was actively trying to impress, such as hitting heavier weights when I know people are watching.

 

It also enabled me to take steps to understand when I was fearful of making a decision. For example, last week on Tuesday I was on the train heading to a client for work when a mid-20’s women sat across from me. She asked me a question about the next stop, and I kindly answered. Normally that would be it; I wouldn’t even bother to think about trying to have a conversation – ‘who would want to talk to a random person on a train?’.

 

However, I thought to myself, ‘what if I could have an amazing conversation right now? And what’s the worst that could happen, she ignores me or the conversation fizzles out? I can handle that’.

 

So I went fuck it and asked her a question about her nationality (she was foreign) and then she went on to say how she was from Holland. We ended up having a really interesting conversation and I learnt a lot about photography (she was a photographer) and about Holland – fuck fear.

 

This was a huge moment for me, as I felt like I’m slowly allowing myself to not fear the fear, but embrace and understand it instead.

 

“Do not fear the fear, but embrace, understand, and accept it”

 

This happened again on Saturday, where my cousin and I went to a business convention. I arrived about half an hour earlier than him, signed up, and was just standing there. I picked up my phone to pretend I was busy or whatever, went to the toilet to waste some time, then thought to myself:

 

• ‘Yo, go and talk to someone! Look around, everyone is on their phone copping out of interacting just like you are because they’re scared. They probably want to socialise and meet new people, so just approach someone and ask them a question about the event – what’s the worst that could happen? They ignore you or don’t want to talk. You’re not getting rejected because you’re just inviting people to a conversation. If they don’t want to talk then so be it’

 

This helped convince me to walk up to a woman and ask her about why she was at the event. Again, we ended up having a nice conversation about graphic design and broadcasting.

 

At the event, I had a few more conversations with people, by just starting conversations with the people I was sitting next to. Some lasted longer than others, some fizzled out whilst others were really interesting. The point is that I have no regrets, whilst I would have if I let fear take control and not trying at all.

 

I’m not saying that I’m now some sociable god, but allowing myself to rationally realise when I was thinking irrationally in fear has led to me really being able to take steps to embrace and accept it.

 

Woah I’ve written a lot…

 

Closing thoughts

 

Fear is a prick. Fear is stopping us from looking at all the positive aspects which a decision can bring, and amplifies all the negative ones which could potentially happen. The thing is, most of the time the negative things that could happen are not even that bad.

 

When you start to take steps to stop living in fear and live in a world or opportunity you will truly allow yourself to develop as a person and be able to do and accomplish things which you may have never thought you could.

 

-Mike

 

P.S. MYPROTEIN OFFERS

Offer: 50% off our BESTSELLING Weight Loss Bundle!
Code: no code required
How: add product to basket
Valid: until midnight 30^th May 2016
URL: CLICK HERE 

(If offer expires click here for up to date offers)