Breaking Through the Mental Barriers to Success

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets and in today’s episode, we’re talking about mindset. But before we get into it, just a quick reminder that we recently started experimenting with this artificial intelligence voice that sounds just like me, all the feedback I got so far says that you guys actually like it. By the way, thank you for taking the time to write to me about it. But for those of you who missed the previous episodes, and are hearing it for the first time, I’d love to hear your opinion as well. So just head over to Igor dot top slash voice and let me know what you think. Again, that’s Igor dot top slash voice. Now back to today’s topic, which is such an important yet under looked topic when it comes to business and success. When most people talk about the issues they are facing with their business or whatever is blocking them from achieving what they want in life. They often point fingers at things like the lack of experience, or the lack of technical knowledge and such, those are the usual suspects. However, I’d say in more cases than not, it actually comes down to mindset more than anything else. It comes down to these negative beliefs people hold about themselves, or let’s say limiting beliefs that are somehow telling them, they’re still not good enough to do this or lack the authority to do that. And oftentimes, this will carry on with them presenting itself in different forms of self-doubt and self-sabotage, no matter how much knowledge they gathered, or how much experience they had. So in today’s episode, I want to address this topic and my own experience with it. And don’t worry, I’m not just going to tell you to believe in yourself and have faith or just magically manifest whatever you want, like the law of attraction gurus do, I will instead share with you the actions that you can take to overcome the blockage you have. I’ll tell you about the things that I did, which allowed me to gradually shift my mindset, and eventually get to a point where I no longer needed any sort of external permission to do the things I wanted to do, or to do things I didn’t even know I could enjoy.

01:47

I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process. This podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

02:32

I come from a world of military and a world absent of creative thinking, a world where you’re told what to do given instructions, and you just execute the orders. So I wasn’t exactly brought up to be an entrepreneur, I wasn’t exactly brought up to be an independent thinker. And I wasn’t exactly brought up to be someone who thrives on chaos. In fact, for most of my life, I moved away from chaos as much as I could, to an extent where we grew up. It’s a small town in Israel near the Dead Sea, the lowest place on Earth. So anyway, it wasn’t exactly the place with the hustle and bustle of New York City or anything like that. And so there was only one high school and there were issues. You know, it wasn’t exactly a great school. And there were no other options. And so I actually pushed my parents to get me into a boarding school in Haifa. And I actually passed the entry test. And then I decided not to go and instead went to a military academy in a different town into which I rode on the bus about an hour each way only so I don’t have to go to that high school. Now the point of this story is very simple. I went through great lengths to avoid that high school, even if it meant condemning myself to lots of commuting for the next six years, because of an underlying belief that it was a dangerous place. I was just afraid of being a loser and being bullied every single day. So you see, there is probably a belief of some kind that is making you avoid getting started in a similar way. So what I learned over the years about myself as I’ve only done things, especially the ones that were scary to me, I am a fear driven person. I’m a negatively driven person, I don’t get excited about things as much as I get scared of negative consequences. And I take action to avoid them. And so at some point, I got so scared of the consequences of living a mediocre life and being broke that I just pushed myself into action with online marketing, having no plan and no idea, no mentor and just ended up kind of struggling for the next three and a half years until I finally kind of bumped into what was working, which is something that happens naturally if you spend enough time right trying to do something. And I feel very lucky to have eventually moved out to Israel and eventually getting exposed to the Western world and being able to consume lots of Western media and information and especially books and knowledge and the self-development information to discover that you could get rich, you can help people you could be a good decent, honest person and still make a million dollars. So the moment that belief was embraced. That was the moment when I felt and I gave myself permission, you know to go for it. A big influence on my decision to get started was Robert Kiyosaki because I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Now for me what that book did, it made me completely redefine the paradigm of who the rich person is and how does one become rich because I genuinely thought for some reason that either had to be a criminal or you had to be born into a rich family. I don’t know why I really don’t. But when I distinctly remember reading the beginning of that book, Robert Kiyosaki gives this example of a jewelry store. And two people passing that store, one person is a poor person who passes the store and sees a Rolex watch in the window and says to himself, I’ll never be able to afford a watch like that. On the other hand, the rich person passes that window, and they’re like, Wow, what a nice watch. How can I afford that watch? So you know, that example alone made me be like, what, wait a second, you can become rich. And so that’s what led to me trying to figure out which business to get into, got me into network marketing, where it completely and utterly sucked, and then there moved into affiliate marketing, then list building, and then you know, the rest is history. So there is something that makes you feel that getting started will cause you bad feelings, it could be fear of success, could be fear failure could be you just like him to believe that you can even do it. This is a big one, it’s a pretty common one as well. A lot of people kind of cry to get into something or read about something or take interest in something, but never really get serious about it, I see it a lot. And I think a lot of that comes down to fear of failure. If deep down inside, you’re convinced you’re going to fail, then why get started, but at the same time, there’s a part of you that’s so excited about it. Here’s my thing, everyone should do coaching, here’s why I think everyone should, at least once every now and again, go to the bank, get a check for like a big amount of money and give it to someone who has the results that they want to have in life, you see one of the things that I’ve done to become a great copywriter. And again, I consider myself to be pretty good. I don’t think I’m like the greatest or anything, but I’m like, I’m good enough to be a professional editor. So one of the reasons why I think I became good at this is because at one point, I contacted a guy on the Warrior Forum, who published a report where he broke down his own sales letters. And I found it to be so eye opening and so clear that I contacted him and I asked him, Can you coach me?” The interesting thing is that he said, Yeah, and it’s going to cost you $3,000 a month for four hours of coaching. Now, I was already making some money, but I didn’t feel that I was making it happen. You know what I mean? Like things were kind of happening and sometimes money would appear in my clickbank account, which is a feeling, incidentally, that I do have today, which gives me a lot of confidence and feeling of control over my life. Like whenever I get fined or something, I used to really stress about that, because like I need to get extra money. Now. It’s like, oh, okay, it’s an extra 250 bucks, not a big deal. I know how to make an extra two or 50 bucks at Pier. But back then I didn’t have that field, I didn’t have that skill. And I really wanted it because of being someone who’s very paranoid and afraid of things. The other side of the coin is you want to be in control. And so the more control you have, the less paranoid you end up being about things. And so I contacted this guy, and I said, hey, your copy looks great. I would like to write a copy like that. And I already had an idea what I wanted to sell, I was already building my list. And then I gave this guy a lot of money over the course of the next 13 or 15 months. So every month, I would send them more money than I used to make in like four or five months working a day job. And so what ended up happening is that working with him like that, and writing copy, under his guidance almost gave me permission to write copy. All of a sudden, I found myself experimenting with copy more. I wrote better emails, and I started doing sales pages. I wasn’t afraid of doing a webinar anymore. The same thing happened. By the way, when I started working with a guy from the UK, I sent them $10,000. And on the first call, he said, tell me about what you’re doing. I explained to him that I already had my solo ads agency there. And he said, the next step for you would be to offer some coaching to me like eBooks. It’s like no, no, no, it’s like when people pay you a large amount of money for you to actually coach them one on one. And I was like, but no one’s gonna pay me like you didn’t know my name. If you Googled me, you couldn’t really find much information about me. I wasn’t endorsed by every guru in the industry. I didn’t have a track record of being a great list builder. And so he said, No, you should join coaching. I mean, that’s really how he said it. And he’s like, here is how we do it. And he sends me a Word document with like, 10 questions. And these are just interview style questions that you ask when somebody wants coaching from you. And so I remember when I got off that call I stepped outside and I went for like a two hour walk and all I was doing in a weird state sort of be like No, no, what No. And so when that passed, I put together a coaching offer and the first coaching offer put together was a $300 offer. And I think within a week I had four students. I was like, wow, people are willing to give me money for coaching. And eventually over the course of the next I believe 18 months or so I ended up moving up from $300 One time to getting people to pay $6,000 for six months moving it from one on one coaching to group coaching and basically ended up feeling really, really cool and a really lucrative coaching income stream. And again, stepping into it, I didn’t have any more credentials, like I didn’t go and get certified as a coach, it’s not about someone giving you, you know, written permission, it’s about you giving yourself permission. So that’s why I’m saying everyone should do some kind of high ticket coaching with an individual that has the results or list the kind of life that they want, be it in the scope of personal stuff, professional stuff, or anything else. Because when you give someone a lot of money, and they sit down with you, and they say, Yeah, you should do this, or you can do this, or here’s, you should do it like this, you internally give yourself permission to do whatever the hell that you wanted to do, because you just put a lot of money on the line, and you really don’t have any other choice. So again, it could be any number of things as to why you’re procrastinating. But what I can assure you, it’s not because you haven’t found the right technique, it’s not because you haven’t found the right system. And it’s not because you have these other 13 things on your agenda that you have to finish. First, it’s not about that. It’s about a belief that you have about yourself, or about the way the world works that is causing you to simply not get involved for real, not get serious, right. And so if you want to influence the action that you are trying to take, then you better look at the underlying layer of that, because our beliefs form our thoughts. And our thoughts form the actions, right. So there’s like these levels. And this is, by the way, what the whole law of attraction communities missing, they’re missing the action part, they just think they can sort of shout positive things in the air and things will change, but they can’t seem to be getting results they’re missing is they’re not really addressing the deep rooted beliefs that drive their actions every single day. So now the default behavior has led me to actually follow the guidance of somebody who did because it’s a certain guaranteed outcome. Now, does that remind you of anyone at all, that’s like I just described to you guys 99% of people who are trying to build an online business, they’re going around looking for the exact step by step follow along blueprint that they can follow. So they don’t have to invest any creative thought or do any guesswork. Okay, guys, so try to think of a time in your life when you either get inspired by someone or you learned or studied under someone who taught you a skill or who taught you something, maybe a behavior and maybe an attitude, maybe a skill that allowed you to make an impact on your life in some meaningful way. And this person, before you met this person, you were yourself a different person. But after you met this person, you became a different person. So kind of like, you know, when your life sort of splits before, to before and after, right? So for me, one such person is my good friend who started back in Israel. He’s very upbeat, sort of this really happy personality. Now, when I met her, I was the sort of person who was always down. And so meeting him taught me that I could be a more enthusiastic, friendlier and more smiling person. And so kind of being around status really gave me that permission to be a little bit more like him. I think we all had a person like this in our lives. And so what I think is missing for this industry is to be able to get into a physical presence with a person who can do that for them. Because that is way more likely to allow you to give yourself that internal permission to become something more to become different than what you are right now and to as we’ve been speaking about, give yourself permission to become successful. Because until that happens, you can go through a million different blueprints and systems, it’s actually not going to work again, that’s why going back to my example, everybody should at least once in a while, if they’re stepping into a new industry area, endeavor, hobby, whatever, they should find someone they can give a lot of money to, to really, really make it count to really make it serious to really make it be like, Wow, okay, now I have to get serious. Now I have to really implement it. I have to really execute. Because without doing that, it’s really hard to even get started. I mean, he kind of just finds himself running around in circles a lot. And so this is what we know that we don’t want you to just be running around in circles. So again, if you can really take a minute to go back in your lifetime, your memory and remember that one person who allowed you to make the change, Who allowed you to change your personality a little bit Who allowed you to become a little bit different than this is the sort of experience you want to transfer over to right now to this moment and follow this exact path like follow this path into allowing yourself right if I was able to change in this way back then it means I can change means I can give myself permission it means I can learn a new skill. Therefore today, I can do the same. So what if I’m 10 years older, it means I’m 10 years wiser. So what if you know I’m no longer living in Germany and I moved to the States so why there’s more opportunities here and so on and so forth. If you could do it back then you can do it today.

14:47

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to click in your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files and traffic booklets go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package.