How my fear of fire will allow me to quit my day job

I am deathly afraid of fire due to two defining moments that occurred within a 48 hour period in my early childhood. When I was twelve years old I saw the movie the Towering Inferno.

The movie scared me so bad that I left halfway through the movie and called my mother to come pick me up. My family has given me the nickname of “the cavalry” because I would always be the one that would come in and solve any problem. The movie scared me so bad because I was just sitting there unable to help all the people from the fire.

The very next day I am playing in the front yard of our neighbor’s across the street from our house. All of the sudden there is the most ghostly scream I have ever heard (and can still hear to this day in my mind) from my neighbor’s mother. She was cooking with her gas stove and her un-tucked shirt caught on fire from the flames on the stove. In a matter of seconds her entire torso and hair were on fire. She screams and comes running out the front door of the house toward us. If you have never seen a human being on fire, trust me it is an experience that not only changes you but will live with you for the rest of your life.

Because of these two back-to-back events I have been scared of fire. In fact this fear has morphed into surreal proportions in that now microwaves and electrical outlets scare me. In the 21 years of being a homeowner, my fireplace has been used once and I paid to swap out my gas stove for an electric stove. A candle has never been lit in my house.

How I Met My Coach Before He Became My Coach

In 2006 my cousin and I attended Tony Robbins “Unleash the Power Within” seminar in Atlanta, GA. At the end of the first evening we participated in the firewalk. Yes that means we walked across fire. The experience honestly scared the shit out of me. My cousin is a Navy SEAL and knows how to blow up anything and it did not help hearing him say that this is going to hurt as we were preparing to walk. The good news is that I did walk across that fire. Of course the lane leader did tell me to go five times and I froze every time but did go on the 6^th time.

The reason I bring up this event is because at the start of UPW you had an opportunity to go out to the parking lot where the fire was burning. You wrote down your biggest fear on a piece of paper and tossed it into the fire. I remember very clearly the gentleman that spoke to the audience. Two things stood out about him. First, he was an amazing speaker and I thought I would pay to hear this man speak. Second I thought he was full of himself because here was this middle aged man wearing boots, military camouflage pants and a very tight short sleeve black shirt to show off his muscles.

Five years after attending UPW I decided to “crew” at a UPW event in Orlando, FL. “Crew” is a bourgeois term for volunteer. Tony Robbins will usually have between 350 and 500 crew members helping out at every UPW event. I volunteered to be on the Fire Team because I wanted to learn the secret behind the firewalk. Guess who was the captain of the Fire Team? It was the same middle aged man that talked at the event in Atlanta! His name is Bill Keefe.

Shortly after this Tony Robbins actually hires Bill to run his 5 star resort in Fiji called Namale. He packs up his family and moves from Bimini to Fiji. When Tony Robbins hires you to run one of his businesses then you have to be an outstanding manager. From my experience on the Fire Team I will always agree that Bill is an excellent manager.

Changing My Life

On May 29, 2012 I started a new job. That same day I emailed Bill and asked him to coach me. Bill is Tony Robbins right hand man so I wanted to set my sights high to get the best quality coach. On Friday June 1^st I called Bill in Fiji to talk to him about becoming my coach. To the best of my knowledge Bill does not coach people but I was not going to let that stop me from trying.

During our phone call Bill started to direct me toward a program called the Unbeatable Mind Academy. He was trying to direct me to that year long program as a polite way of saying NO to coaching. I told him that I was familiar with UMA and Coach Mark Divine because my cousin teaches at his academy. (This is the same cousin that went to UPW with me in 2006.) I told him who my cousin was and Bill said that he reads my cousins website. Well I am the person that created my cousin’s website and help to maintain it. Since I did build the website I have to plug it which is www.sealgrinderpt.com. Bill then told me about meeting Coach Mark Divine in a bagel shop in San Diego where he had to spend the night waiting for the next flight back to Fiji. When Bill returns to Fiji there is my email waiting for him asking him to be my coach. Due to the abundance of synergy, I go Bill Keefe to become my personal coach.

Bill has been my coach since September 1, 2012. At the end of 2012 he taught me how to successfully plan goals using a different strategy than just making a simple to-do list. This has allowed me to focus on my goals and why I want to accomplish them. As I mentioned in a previous post my ultimate financial goal is to quit my day job on August 31, 2013. I am halfway to reaching this goal.

Get a Big Enough Why

The one area that Bill has helped me to work on is to get a big enough why. In simple terms this means I have to have a compelling enough reason WHY I want to accomplish a goal so that I will never give up on it. For example having a goal of earning $200 a day by August 31, 2013 is a great goal to have but there is no WHY.

When I initially wrote my goals for 2013 Bill basically shredded them to pieces and said that the way they were written would not allow me to accomplish them. So we spent almost a month go through them so I could create the reason WHY behind my goals.

So my initial goal of earning $200/day by August 31, 2013 became “Earn $200/day by August 31, 2013 so that I can enjoy experiences that most people will never have in their lives.” For example I want to be able to high five the Pope as he drives by in his Popemobile. Or attend Easter Services at Windsor Castle with the Queen of England. Or spend a week in communist Czechoslovakia staying in the home of a dissident that would later become the Vice President of that country when they overthrew communism. Or visit the only Buddhist Kingdom in the world that by decree only allows 6,000 visitors annually and only opened up its borders for foreigners to enter just 14 years ago.

All of these events that I have listed above are events that have occurred in my life. I want to be able to experience more of this amazing adventures but having a day job with a two week vacation limit is holding me back. That is why I work so hard with improving my internet marketing income. When I accomplish my goal with online income then I will be free to have these experiences.

What is your reason WHY?

Take a minute and ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing with internet marketing? Do you have a big enough why that drives you daily? If you don’t then you will never be able to accomplish your goals. Take time to write down the reason why you want to accomplish your goals. Keep changing it until you have a reason that speaks to your soul. Once you have that reason then you need to do whatever it takes to make that goal a reality.

When I started working with Bill he recommended that I have a morning ritual. A morning ritual is something you complete every day. It is designed to put your mind and body in a peak state that will carry you throughout the day.

His recommendation for a morning ritual was for me to get every morning at 5 AM and do yoga, breathing exercises and meditation. Now I am not a morning person but a 10AM to 10PM person. I knew that when my alarm would go off at 5 AM I would roll over and go back to sleep. So I was smart enough to set a second alarm that went off at 5:05 AM.

The first morning the alarm goes off at 5 AM and I am lying in bed thinking this was crazy. So for five minutes I laid in bed and started to cuss out my coach. Using language that would make a drunken sailor sound like a choir girl, I said out loud what I thought of my coach, his idea for a morning ritual, what he could with his idea, what I would do with his idea next time I see him etc, etc etc.

At 5:05 AM my second alarm would go off and I would get out of bed and do my yoga, breathing exercises and meditation. Then for the next hour I would work on my online income by writing articles, creating backlinks, or posting on other blogs. I changed my outlook and started doing things differently because I know WHY I want to increase my online income.

My New Adventure

Tomorrow I will start learning how to do solo ads. I will be sharing my experiences with solo ads over the next few months. Keep reading my blog for a front row seat of how I do in this new endeavor.