# 16 - 7 Reasons to Get in Over Your Head
Episode 16
Follow Through Formula Podcast Episode 16
Seven Reasons to Get in Over Your Head
Welcome back once again to the Follow Through Formula Podcast. My name is Rick Lewis. This is Episode 16 and I am working my way up to 21 consecutive episodes. Today an idea popped into my mind just a few minutes ago for what to talk about.
All along here I'm attempting to be an example of what it is I'm recommending to you around the subject of follow through. And the title of today's episode that popped into my mind was: Seven Reasons to Get in Over Your Head.
So, rather than think it through ahead of time, I thought I would just hop right in, because then what I'm actually doing is getting in over my head. I don't even know what the seven reasons are! But because I think about this all day long, about growth and personal evolution, about personal and professional development, seven reasons to get in over your head should be a no brainer! If I can't come up with seven reasons, then that gives me something to think about.
Reason #1 to get in Over Your Head: Necessity
The first reason is that it's just human nature that you're not going to start to swim until your toes can't touch the ground in the swimming hole that you're in. By nature of our neurology and the way we think as human beings, until we get in we are going to cling to the side, we're just going to stay in familiar territory until we're in a situation where we absolutely have to make a shift.
When you get in over your head, automatically your body is going to start trying a whole bunch of things that you've never tried before to keep yourself afloat. If you've never swum before, you're putting yourself in a situation where you have to reinvent yourself in order to stay afloat, in order to survive, in order to find your way in that new atmosphere. That’s called necessity.
Getting in over your head doesn't mean to take a step that's not an intelligent one. You wouldn't want to take out a $500,000 loan if your income is $1000 a month. This doesn't mean doing something dumb. It doesn't mean to risk yourself at a level that is life-threatening, either emotionally or physically or financially.
But sometimes it's worthwhile taking a big risk. Sometimes we just feel it in our bones. It's the right time to take a risk that maybe does put us in a degree of potential for a big downside. But our risks shouldn't be completely uncalculated. We need to know that we can handle and digest the consequences of that particular risk. And the way you gain the data that you need for this is by starting small and working your way up to taking bigger and bigger risks as you go.
The game of growth and the game of following through on who we actually are has to do with taking small steps at first and gradually increasing our capacity to take larger and larger risks and be able to follow through because we have experience in taking risks.
On my Games for Confidence website I've got a free trial set of games that you can hop on and try for free. I've been creating these Games for years. They are all about increasing your capacity to get outside your comfort zone and be successful in navigating through new and unfamiliar situations so you actually can grow your capacity to risk successfully.
The way we grow our capacity to risk successfully is we have to be willing to be unsuccessful on our way to developing that ability. And the games are just very small, simple ways that you could take the risk of being more of who you are: more expressive, more authentic, more open in relationship to other people and in relationship to yourself so that you gain that capacity.
Reason #2 to get in Over Your Head: Interdependence
The second good reason for getting in over your head is that it invokes help.
When you get in over your head, it often forces you to rely on the fact that you are interdependent with others. We actually don't do anything on our own, in a vacuum. Even if we want to argue and say, “Oh, but I did this all by myself.” There are people and circumstances that taught us and supported us in the past. In some form our parents or others raised us, we were given education, inspiration, guidance, encouragement along the way.
We're always in an interdependent position. We are woven into the fabric of humanity. Not only does it behoove us to open up to help, but we actually are giving a gift to others when we ask for help. Especially when you're making a life leap in the realm of bettering yourself or growing internally, if you're taking a real risk to get closer to who you really are, to be more expressive of who you really are and live your purpose, people love to help in that situation because this is everybody's story.
There is no one who isn't in the situation that secretly inside they want to pursue their highest and best version of themselves and offer their very best to the world they live in. We all want that, and when someone is moving in that direction, it's actually a gift to let other people in and let other people help you and support you. We want to do that. We want to be heroes for each other, and we want to support each other on that hero's journey.
Reason #3 to get in Over Your Head: Getting Real with Resources
Good reason number three for getting in over your head: It forces you to look at your relationship to personal resources.
What I mean by that is the entire construct of habits that you are and that you've created for yourself, including what you do with your time, your energy, your attention, your relationships, your money. All of that deserves to be cherished and nurtured and managed in a way that treats those things as precious, because those resources are how we live, and what we do with them determines the shape our lives take.
We have a limited amount of time here on the planet. We have a limited amount of energy and attention that we can extend to the things that really matter. And if we don't get in over our head it is far too easy to forget that we need every bit of those resources. We think we can afford to waste them. We think we can afford to just sit and surf on the internet and watch random things and wake up a half hour or even hours later and go, “Oh, I guess I should get to work.” Meanwhile, what we want in the depth of our hearts may remain ignored.
When you get in over your head and you need every bit of those resources, then you start looking at what you are doing in a different way. What are my habits? How do I use my time? Are there places where I could redirect my attention to things that matter more? Are there places that I'm wasting my energy in unnecessary cogitation or worry or overthinking things? Do I engage in gossip with other people? Do I engage in negativity in my mind?
When we are in a situation in which we really need every kind of resource we can get our hands on, internally and externally, to accomplish a big life leap, then we'll start treating them more preciously and guarding how we spend those resources. For human beings in Western society today, attention is one of the most precious and yet most unguarded resources.
Think about the security and privacy protections that we put on our computers. We put up firewalls. We understand that if we allow outside influences to just come into our computer and mess with our machines, they're not going to function properly. The same should be true of our minds. How we think, how we perceive the narratives we hold, where we put our attention, all affect our mind and how it functions.
When we are in over our heads we protect our minds with that same vigilance. We know we need our time and energy and attention. We're not willing to look at every news story, social media feed, movie article, radio show. We're not willing to listen to things, look at things, digest conceptual impressions if they don’t serve the clean functioning of our mind toward the purpose we want to serve.
Reason #4 to get in Over Your Head: Discovery
The fourth really good reason for getting in over your head is because that's where the fun is.
When you get in over your head and things get messy and unpredictable and you can't control them, that's where some of the best stuff shows up. Many of the episodes I've done so far are an example of that. I start with an idea, and I feel nervous about it because I don't know if I'm going to be able to say anything of value on that topic. But when I start talking and I let things come out, it's a discovery process for me. I’ve learned to trust that.
I remember coming across a quote—I don't remember who the author of this quote is, but it was about writing. “One writes not to tell, but to find out.” The same is true of human life. We live not to prove to other people something that we already think we know about ourselves or about the world, we live to find out and to discover. We live to find out what the true laws of life and the magic of evolutionary possibility are. We do this by living into it and allowing ourselves to be at the effect of things that we don't fully understand, we can't control, we can't fully know. And that's where all the fun is.
That's where we get constantly surprised by what shows up. That's where we get confronted by our assumptions about who people are or how they work or what this type of person is like. It gets thrown into our face, and we have to actually cope with and adapt to the fact that things aren't exactly as we had assumed them to be.
When I actually get my hands dirty and I get down into the real work of being human and I'm willing to go to an area where I don't have total control, what shows up can be fascinating, surprising, fun, enjoyable. Yes, it can also be challenging and difficult and maybe sometimes scary. But living without a degree of surprise in your life is a life that is devoid of a fundamental ingredient for coming to life as a human being.
Reason #5 to get in Over Your Head: Authenticity
Number five is that when you get in over your head, you have no real recourse but to be authentic.
You cannot pretend that you are somebody other than who you are, that you've got some other wisdom than what you really have. You're just you and you are starting from there. When you get in over your head, that's all you've got and you've got to get real about that really fast. I'm just me. This is who I am. This is what I know, and this is what I'm working with.
The truth is that there is power in that. An imaginary car can’t drive anywhere. You have to get in the car as it actually is. Then you know exactly what you have to work with. The rubber can meet the road.
Reason #6 to get in Over Your Head: Internal Authority
Reason number six: It’s in that moment when you are over your head that you get pushed to the realization that you are the author of your life.
Think of the word authority. Everyone wants authority. What would it look like to have authority over your own life? What that means is you're the one who is writing the story. You're the one who is authoring it. I'm the one who made up this “seven reasons to get in over your head.” Since I'm the author, I can change it mid stride as the author of my story, my world, my life, the domain in which I want to provide value to others.
There’s a great joke about the three kinds of umpires in Major League Baseball. An interviewer is interviewing these three umpires. The newbie, the guy who's been around for a little while, and the master umpire.
The interviewer says to the first umpire, “So how do you know the difference between a ball and a strike?”
And the first umpire says, “I call it the way it is.”
The interviewer writes that down and he goes to the second umpire who's been around for a little while and says, “So how do you tell the difference between a ball and a strike?”
The umpire who has some experience under his belt gets a little twinkle in his eye, and he says, “I call it the way I see it.”
And then the interviewer goes to the third umpire, the master umpire who's been doing it forever. And he says, “How do you tell the difference between a ball and a strike?”
And the master umpire says, “It's nothing until I call it.”
Reason #7 to get in Over Your Head: It’s How Life Works!
Reason number seven for why you should get in over your head is that it is simply how life and growth works. We can't know everything before we take the leap. We leap first and we leap as intelligently as we can. But it's still gonna be a risk, always. Life throws us curve-balls all the time. It is unpredictable and not within our control. When we are willing to get in over our heads we are basically saying yes to life. We are meeting it as it is and as we are. Taking life leaps is itself the way to live on purpose.
So there you go. Seven reasons to get in over your head. That has been today's episode number 16 of the Follow Through Formula Podcast. Get in over your head today. Find some small way that you can get yourself into a situation where you don't know what you're going to do next or how you're going to handle it. It's worth it. It's totally worth it.
And if you want help with that, just go to my Games for Confidence website. Sign up for the free trial of the Games and I will push you a game that you can play right away that's will get you out of your comfort zone a little bit. That's what I love. That's how I love to help and support people. And I would love to help and support you.
So head on over, sign up and I'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening. This has been the Follow Through Formula Podcast and I’m Rick Lewis signing off.