Harnessing Optimism for Personal Success

Ever feel like you're standing still while everyone else races ahead? Join me Michael Kane, as we unpack the fascinating dynamics of risk-taking and opportunity-seizing, exploring why some of us feel perpetually stuck. By sharing personal stories and insights, I'll reveal how fear and a lack of confidence often hold us back from grabbing life by the horns. Together, we'll explore how learning from past mistakes and understanding the finite nature of time can be the keys to unlocking personal and professional growth.

But life isn't just about taking risks—it's also about finding the silver linings in everyday challenges. Let's shift gears and uncover the hidden blessings that can transform how we experience the world. With a focus on optimism and resilience, I'll share motivational stories and discuss my book, "Laying Your Dragons: Living a Life You Always Wanted." Plus, there's an invitation for you to join my newsletter, Catalyst, where the journey of personal growth never ends. Tune in for an engaging and uplifting conversation designed to inspire you to embrace life's opportunities with renewed confidence.

Chapters

• 0:00 Taking Risks and Pursuing Opportunities
• 16:27 Finding Blessings in Daily Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello there, this is Living your Success 24-7 with Michael Caine. Living your Success wow, big phrase there. You better believe it. Have you wondered why your friends or people around you, strangers or whoever you may read them in a magazine, see them on TV or people you know grew up with, etc. Why they seem to be more ahead than you, to more advanced? Not that you should necessarily compare yourself with others, but you know what I mean. You see two or three other people in your environment move ahead. You say wow, man, I'm, I'm just as smart as they are, I'm just as talented or expertised, or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1: 0:57

But you still seem in like in a rut, standing in one place and just not going anywhere or going as fast as you would like. So let's talk about that. Why? Yes, and that's the million-dollar question. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you some. It may not pertain to you or maybe it will, maybe all of them or none of them, but anyway seems stuck at square one. Let's say you're playing Monopoly and you're still on just a little bit past the starting line go and you just say well, and you're the other people's pieces, game pieces. They're already three quarters around the monopoly table game board and you're still like my god, you know you're rolling the dice, getting ones, onesies, twosies, everybody else is getting fives and sixes. They're basically about to lap you. Why Is it possible that you could be risk adverse, meaning you don't want to take risks?

Speaker 1: 2:19

Yeah, you could be brilliant Harvard potential yeah, maybe you are, but still stuck. And this may go beyond just making money. Maybe it is about all the money. People just make more than you or have fancy titles, fancier than yours. And going back to risk averse, is that your? Maybe could it be you're running away or walking away from taking risks. Let me tell you something, and I learned this personally too when you're, when you don't put yourself out there and we don't take a risk not necessarily a gamble, but maybe call it for whatever you want Calculated risk, maybe still a gamble.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Lack of confidence equals risk adverse, not willing to go for the promotion. I've coached many people and that's one of them. They're scared, they don't think they can do it for a variety of reasons. They have no confidence in themselves, no belief system that they can attach on, and they're stuck, feel underachieved, unaccomplished, and everyone is moving past them. So are you avoiding opportunities. I need you to really look deep in yourself. Are you not taking advantage of when a door of opportunity comes your way and do you look the other way? Are you too slow and make excuses why you didn't go for it? Oh, that's not for me, that's not for me. Oh, I better not do that. Maybe next year, maybe next time I'll go after that promotion or go for that project.

Speaker 1: 4:29

That would be high profile, that put you on a map to show people you're willing, able, able and willing to go to the mile, to the next level level. Do you lack ambition or just a fear of ambition? What it will put you into this role where you don't feel competent? What is it? Risk adverse? Why? No confidence, no belief? Or you just the fear? Four-letter word fear has stopped me definitely from being greater than I am now. That was my past. Um, I've overcome that. Chiefly. I still got one or two areas to work on, but I'm seeing movement. So in order to see movement, you've got to put yourself out there, you've got to be able to risk.

Speaker 1: 5:28

Now some people have risked it all and lost it all. I've made major risks where one risk cost me $110,000. $110,000 wiped out just like that $110,000. Another, opportunities loss that I didn't have the vision, didn't see it. Opportunities lost that I didn't have the vision, didn't see it. And I relied on experts. I relied on people you know, coaches and advisors and they don't have all the answers. You know I lost a lot of money using people like that. So you can't just run to people that you think are smarter than you, brighter than you have all the answers. At the end of the day, it's up to you. Who do you listen to? Who do you select what you do, why you do it, your motivation, how far you go?

Speaker 1: 6:35

Some people put, liquidated their retirement account or sold a house or put it all on the line. Some of them lost it all and then a lot of them lost money, lost, went out of business. They tried again. You say are they out of their mind? You just lost everything and do it again. You know what? If you learn lessons, learn what to do and what not to do, and you do it before you, you know you're too settled in with family, have kids and marry, let's say, and too encumbered, do it while you and do it young enough, while you can have time to recover, like if you do that when you're 70 years old, 75,. It may not be recoverable because there's lack of time, but not that you should try to risk it all when you're 20, 30 years old either.

Speaker 1: 7:32

But I'm telling you, I put a lot of money, put my money where my mouth is, and it's not about the the money, it's about your time. What can't you produce or create, what can't you buy or sell? Time, once time is gone, it is gone forever. That moment is gone. So I risk time and money and, uh, smartly and foolishly, so you can't just put it in one bucket, say, oh, you know, yeah, there's risks, calculated risks is what you need to be at, and risks that.

Speaker 1: 8:14

Can I survive this if all goes wrong? If I lose everything of this, all my investment, all my time, energy, money can I recover? Do I have time to recover? How would I see later in life? I realize, okay, I have to have a plan if all goes south. This is how I'm going to get out of this, this, and I'm not putting 100% at risk anymore. Maybe 25%, 30%, 50% maybe. But like I did before, 100%, boom gone, all or nothing.

Speaker 1: 8:46

I wouldn't suggest that. But so I know what loss is and I know we're going after opportunities or whether it's investments or employment prospects, and no two people are alike. So it's good to identify with other people and learn from their mistakes and learn what you can do better, improve, but every circumstances is not the same. So when opportunity, opportunities come your way, you need to be ready to strike, because you may lose that window or that door of opportunity. That's why it's good to know who you are, what are you looking for, what are your goals, what are your vision, what are you pursuing, and so, when it happens, you can go after it. Because, guess what, you're not the only person going after that opportunity, whether it's a job or an investment or whatever it is. Investment or whatever it is, and, uh, and it could be just on a personal level where you benefit from.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Let me give you an example. My wife and I, sandra, were in italy. We're in venice, we're walking around, and we went up to the this one church um, they have tours. And they said, oh, we're sold out, sorry, they have tours. And he said, oh, we're sold out, sorry, just trying to get tickets to this thing could not do it. I said you know what? Never say die. I didn't give up. I just was scouting the the line going through.

Speaker 1: 10:31

The line stood in line like if we had tickets. And just you know, just like, oh man, we may have to miss this one, we don't have tickets, you don't have a ticket, you have a ticket. Came all this way to europe and not just to go to this one event, this one church, but this cathedral. But, um, we said, hey, let's stand in line anyway, like we have a ticket. So guess what? This lady, two people ahead of us, turned around and told us one couple hey, you know what? We have two tickets, you guys can go. Because they didn't have tickets either and can't judge a book by its cover, right, they didn't have tickets either. So they're hoping, like us, to miraculously get tickets by the time we get up to the front to enter the cathedral. And the other couple it's like they didn't trust. The lady said no, no, no, we don't want none of that, we don't. But then she came to us and said I looked at the ticket, look legit. The worst case can happen is we don't go in, right, or maybe get arrested too, I guess, for scalping tickets. But anyway, anyway, lady says, now you can have our tickets, just like that. And we look, I say, are you serious? Well, okay, we felt blessed. We went up there, let us in, boom, wow, just like that.

Speaker 1: 12:05

So what led up to our being blessed like that and getting that opportunity? First of all, we could have. Before we even got in the area said, eh, we don't have no tickets, it's not too, the time is running out, let's just go back and do something else. But we really wanted to see it. Someone told us about it, someone told us about it in our tour group. Then we all split up in venice. At the time everybody went their own way and you know, um, and so we said, man really would like to. So we pursued our burning desire to do that and we attempted to get tickets. You know, buy tickets online. It just didn't work out. And then we said, hey, just stay in line and maybe something will happen. But if we didn't take the initiative to go through all that, we wouldn't have got blessed with those tickets.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Free tickets, free, free. So things happen and set in motion in your life that will benefit you. But you have to be able and willing. It can be against your free will. So if you're not willing to take the leap, the jump, the time, the money. If you're not, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities.

Speaker 1: 13:29

Remember, let's talk money, let's talk stocks. Amazoncom oh no, no one's going to buy books online. Nah, nah, nah, nah, no one's going to do that. You know how that ended out turned out. My god, if you put $10,000 in Amazon stock, it'd be $1.8 million today, most likely something like that. What about Netflix, bam, if you did that? How about Walmart? How about Microsoft? $2. When I was in school, microsoft was $2 a share. Never forget that. Man missed that opportunity. Missed that opportunity. Look what happened to Blockbuster. Had opportunity to buy Netflix. Stupid Didn't do it. Stupid had opportunity. I think the same thing with Yahoo. Had opportunity to get Google. Other opportunities out there, and I can go on about stocks. If these, you know, didn't take the opportunity.

Speaker 1: 14:43

And you can relate that to health If you don't exercise, maybe gym membership, or take care of yourself, you won't be alive and well or able to benefit from financial prosperity. If you're all broken up, can't walk talk and not making the right decisions. The thing is we say I don't know what the right decision is. You sure know what a bad decision is right on this. As far as health, eating fried stuff, stuff, eating lard or whatever you eat, not exercising you know that's not working. How's that working out? Not.

Speaker 1: 15:16

So it's important that when that door flies open, that you're ready and able and you are can go. You can go for it because, again, a lot of us we're not ready when that door opens and we have to miss it because we're not prepared. You have to be prepared. So it's important that you ready yourself first, have a plan. What do you want to do in life? What do you want to do? I want to make money. How you want to have fun, who you want to marry? Have, have some ideas. So when the opportunity avails itself, you feel confident enough to pursue it and to latch on Like your hook, like a hook catches a fish, right the bait. So I think you get the idea Ready yourself and then aim and then shoot for that target. Ready yourself, aim in the right direction and shoot at the target.

Speaker 1: 16:27

It not everyone. Everything will work out, but more so than not you'll benefit some kind of way. Some kind of way, there's some blessings out there. So that's it, my friends. Please, um, sign up, uh, on my podcast here, and thank you to Apple, spotify, I heard radio and Amazon and the rest of the platforms I'm on, and please share it as a gift and buy my books laying your dragons living a life you always wanted. It's motivational, has anecdotes, little stories, so sign up for my newsletter, catalyst on my website, livingyoursuccesscom, and sign up and so promise to put more articles on there. Getting that together still 24-7, right, that's all we got. So that's it, my friends. Until next time, live your success 24 7 with michael kane.