Insecurity is an advantage

What if all your insecurities actually pointed you to your super powers? Well, they do. We live in a world of dichotomy and sometimes what we are scared of or ashamed of the most is actually a portal to a new level of understanding. When we own our insecurities and move forward understanding how and where and why they show up, we become infinitely more capable of making massive progress. Let’s let our insecurities spur us forward instead of hold us back.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Freak Show podcast, hosted by Sam Thurmond and Jacqueline Steele Thurmond. Sam is an Air Force Academy graduate and veteran who, after his service and two deployments, escaped the nine-to-five grind by building a real estate investing business that has, to date, accounted for over$50 million in real estate transactions. Jacqueline is an award-winning musician, former owner of boutique branding agency Steele International, and Real estate investor and designer for luxury multi-million dollar homes.

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We are so excited to welcome you to the Freak Show podcast, where we center our content around the frequency of belief.

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Why? Because when we overcome fear and self-doubt, basically by getting out of our own way, we can make the impossible possible.

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And in this podcast, we are going to share our favorite mindset tools and life lessons that have completely transformed our lives and businesses. So without further ado, let's get freaky.

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All right, welcome back to The Freak Show. I am Sam Thurmond. I'm here with my beautiful wife, Jacqueline Steele Thurmond, and we have a really cool topic that we're going to talk about today. Really super cool topic that we're going to

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talk about today. It's super prime.

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Yeah, yeah, it's super prime. So it's a little counterintuitive, but the title of today's episode is Insecurity is an Advantage. What do we mean by that?

SPEAKER_02: 1:26

Yeah, so... I think insecurity is an opportunity to see what needs to be healed within yourself. In my experience, the more that I heal, the more powerful I become as a human. I see it as a way to point to your pain points and get better. It's stronger. It's expanded.

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So it's a way to identify where there's opportunity in your life, whether that's personally in your business or whatever it is, where that insecurity lies so often is where we place our limitations and ultimately where our breakthroughs

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will be. Yeah, that's where we find our growth edge. And if we're willing to do the work that feels vulnerable and scary and confronting to face it, there's so much on the other side.

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So how would you define growth? insecurity as it pertains to our topic today?

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Yeah. Well, it's an area in our lives in which we feel fear or we feel a real lack of confidence. You can also define it as like something that makes you feel small.

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Yeah. So then how would you, what would you, how do you personally, one, do maybe a self-audit at times to kind of identify what those are. Because a lot of times I think it's one, you and I can kind of identify it in the other a lot of times. Yeah, we call each other out. And I think very often we, or I'll speak for myself, won't even see something as an insecurity or as holding myself back. And instead I just avoid it and don't, put any focus on it, but through avoiding, I lose that opportunity to break through or step through. And you so often are helpful in just identifying and saying, hey, you know you're doing this because you have some insecurity around that or you just don't have confidence in that, so forth and so on.

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I feel like my delivery is a little... gentler unless I'm football coach Jacqueline, which we talked about in another episode. Sometimes he needs very forceful feedback. Right.

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Yeah. Yeah. It's getting, getting knocked over the head is sometimes the, the only way for me to recognize it. But

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you asked me how I identify that in myself. And I, you know, I am a big fan of self reflection. I forget who said it, but they said something along the lines of a heart unexamined is a dangerous one. And for myself specifically, I ask myself a lot of questions. And so I'll ask myself like, well, this feels kind of sticky right here. Why does this feel sticky? Or that comment that somebody just said to me felt very triggering. Why did it feel triggering? And so I generally identify my own insecurities through asking myself questions. And You're able to do that through self-awareness, but specifically being aware of how you're feeling in a moment when something happens. Or let's say an opportunity is brought to you. What reaction are you having? Are you having like a visceral reaction in your body? And if so, is that because it's a reaction that says, this is not a good opportunity and I really don't want to do it? Or are you having a reaction because it scares you a little bit, but it actually will lead to something really awesome? And being able to delineate between the two is very important. And I think one is able to do that through asking a lot of questions. And I have an example of this. So maybe, I don't remember what year it was, but I was given... When I was a full-time musician, I was given an opportunity to have a private audition for The Voice. And this was maybe in like season four or five of The Voice when it was still like a pretty big show. And maybe it still is a pretty big show. I have no idea. But somebody sent my demo in. I think it was your brother who sent my demo in. And I was told through production that I could have a private audition for The Voice. And initially I was like, this is awesome. And then they sent me the contract and within the contract were several things but one of them was you cannot perform any of your own material and I'm a songwriter that's like the joy for me of music is actually creating it and being in the studio. and I was not allowed to perform my own songs. And then there was several other caveats, but the other one that really struck me was that they own all of the material and they have the rights to do with the material, whatever they want to do. And I felt in essence, I was trading my ability to be an artist for the opportunity to be seen on TV. And I had such a visceral or physical reaction. My body started shaking. I wouldn't have called it convulsing, but it was like on the verge of convulsing. And I realized this opportunity is not one that I want to walk down because it's stripping away what I love so much about being a musician, which is the creation aspect. What I'm allowed to do on that show is simply to sing other people's music and then potentially be a puppet for this machine. And I didn't want to do that. And so I was accused in that situation of being insecure and not wanting to go on the show because I was afraid of going on the show. But it wasn't that I was afraid of going on the show and not being in the public, it was that I felt like my autonomy as an artist would be taken away. And that felt like it was selling my soul for me specifically.

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Okay. So that's an example of, that's an example of being accused of being insecure, but it was not you. It was not insecurity or something.

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And of knowing yourself well enough to know that, I can identify this as being an insecurity and something I can work on, or I can identify this as it's just really not aligned with where I want to go in my career.

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Okay.

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Does that make sense? Because you asked me, how do you identify within yourself an insecurity?

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Right. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So had that not, had it not been the, had your reasoning not been the limitations that are placed within were going to be placed on you contractually and that sort of thing. And it was something where you were not wanting to just expose yourself or put yourself out there because

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you

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were nervous of how you would be received or whatever it is, then that would be limiting yourself

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based

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on insecurity. So what's a way to... define, well, I shouldn't even say a way to define. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. What's a way to define insecurity that makes it easy to look at and what does it call it? Diffuse the word. Because I feel like when we say I'm insecure about something or whatever. It's, it has like this whole fear context, but if there's a way to define it.

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Yeah. What if we rephrase it to, this is an opportunity for growth?

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Yeah, it's an opportunity for growth. Certainly. But I think I was leaning more towards here what we have in our notes where it's a lack of knowledge or experience, and then knowledge is something that you can only attain by starting. Or experience is only something that you can attain by starting. And again, if you're insecure about your looks, if you're insecure about things that in a lot of ways are out

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of your control. That everybody is insecure about.

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That's right. That's one thing. I think we're talking more about like... experiential type of insecurity where maybe you don't have the knowledge or you don't have the experience and those sorts of things. And when you're holding yourself back from pursuing something, but for those reasons, when literally the only way to get past that insecurity is Yeah. And look, we're

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all human. We all are beginners. We all... learn to walk through moving around on our hands and knees, and then we progress and we get better, and then we learn how to run eventually. None of us knows everything. Even savants don't know everything in the beginning. So it's so important to give ourselves a very wide breadth of grace to be beginners. And something my dad has said to me so many times and something I've already shared on this podcast is competence breeds confidence. Competence breeds confidence. And what that means is as you become more competent in something, you will naturally become more confident. So let's say you want to Start a podcast. But you start feeling insecure about starting this podcast. And there are several opportunities for growth. The way to get to the other side and become confident about podcasting is simply to do it and not allow those fears, fears of what you'll look like or if you sound stupid or if you have a weird voice or blah, blah, blah, whatever your poison is. The way to get to the other side is simply step by step. doing it and not allowing those insecurities, those opportunities for growth to thwart you or create a situation in which you self-sabotage.

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Yeah. And I also think one aspect that's really important to point out is so often we create these insecurities because we feel like for whatever reason, It's like a disconnect in your mind where when you feel like you should already be an expert at something that you've literally never done before. I'm

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guilty of that for sure. And

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we allow that to prevent us from trying because we think we're going to embarrass ourselves when really, one, nobody's paying attention to what you're doing for the most part. And two, even if they are, they're not going to expect you to be an expert when you're just starting out. And those people that are willing to push that aside as ridiculous as a concept or perspective as that is, like literally imagine thinking that you should be good at something that you've never done before. But those people that push that aside and are willing to accept people beginning and accept being new and having to literally learn everything, those are the people that really progress quickly because they don't slow themselves down by this unrealistic expectation that they've put on themselves.

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Yeah. I remember when I first started working with my songwriting mentor, And he said something to me that at the time, it kind of made me feel stupid, but he did not mean, his intention was very pure. But he said, you know, Jacqueline, something I admire about you is that you're not afraid to ask dumb questions. And the insecure part of me was like, oh my gosh, I'm asking dumb questions. That did come up. But on the other side of that, I realized what he meant was you are willing to be a beginner and to learn every aspect of this craft as you go. And you care about it so much that you are willing to ask all of these questions that other people may fear asking because they might feel stupid so that you can get great information and use it. And since then, I think I have taken that to heart and gone, I would rather ask the question and appear like I don't know what I'm talking about than not ask the question and lose an opportunity to learn what I really want to learn in that moment.

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Right. And the people who you hear it said a lot, like you're never the people who are where you want to be or who are. ahead of you in whatever facet aren't going to look down on you or make fun of you for anything. It's only the people who are right there at your same level or below you who are going to judge you and judge things that you do in a harsh way. Anybody who's already done it is going to look back and see the effort, see the willingness, the vulnerability to try and applaud that And here's the other side effect that you don't think of. When you're willing to put yourself out there and you're willing to ask those quote unquote stupid questions, the people... that are further along than you are going to recognize that and they're going to want to help

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you. They eat it up. And we naturally want to help each other. Humans very naturally want to help each other. And I completely agree with you. Those who are further along, when you are willing to be vulnerable and you're willing to show that you really want to learn something or you really want to do something, it's so easy to want to help that person versus somebody who's arrogant and pretends like they know what what they're doing, even if they don't.

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I think that so often now people want to project themselves as an authority on certain things, whatever it is they're doing. I want to project as an authority that knows it all but haven't put in the time or the effort to actually become that. And so it becomes more of a projection. People get caught up in this, in the ego and the idea of how they are projecting themselves. And look, I'm guilty of it too at times. I've been guilty of it because you want to, you know, you hear fake it till you make it. You want to feel like, you know, you know something. And you do. Because it feels good, but... that can't be to the detriment of the overall progress and the overall journey that you're on and you can't let that be something that holds you back because the reality is people know. Like if you're Trying to pretend, to project, to be something that you're

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not. Oh, people can feel it. But also I would say it goes in stages. Something that people say to me fairly regularly is, you're so comfortable in front of the camera on your Instagram stories. You're so authentic and you speak so easily. But here's the deal. I wasn't always like that. I started doing this a decade ago. And if you were to see, I don't even know if they're still up, my original YouTube channel... With my first pre-podcast episodes, they were little YouTube videos of concepts that I thought were really helpful to learn in the self-development world. And I was doing the work to learn the concepts, but I was so not confident in relaying and in teaching those concepts. And so I would get in front of the camera, I would have a script in front of me, and I would basically, with some intention with my voice, read these scripts into the camera because I was so afraid I was going to say something that wasn't right. And so over the past decade, I have gotten better and better and better and better and better. But I started with just the absolute basics. And we have to, and I can be such a perfectionist. I can be so hard on myself, but we have to give ourselves time to become really good at our craft. We have to give ourselves time and we have to give ourselves space to not be so good and maybe to fail a little bit or flub up the line or flub up the word or whatever.

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Mm-hmm.

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It's all okay because it's pointing us in the right direction. Just like the title of this episode says, insecurity is an advantage. Failure is also an advantage because it gets you to where you want to go faster by redirecting you and teaching you. Yeah. Right?

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Yeah. Yeah. So how would you sum all of that up? How would you sum up insecurity as an advantage? And what question can people ask themselves?

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Yeah. Insecurity is an opportunity. And I would encourage you in this moment to know that all of us experience insecurity. I experience insecurity. Sam experiences insecurity. It's part of the human experience. It's totally normal. Just recognize your insecurity. Recognize how it presents itself. Is it, I'm not wealthy enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good looking enough, I'm not thin enough, I'm not capable enough. Insecurity is simply rooted in lack and insecurity is rooted in fear. So if you feel a sense of lack or fear around moving forward in something, chances are that is your insecurity speaking. And that is where opportunity is laying in wait. So if you want to find your growth edge and expand beyond your wildest dreams and become the biggest, boldest, most badass version of yourself, understanding how your insecurity works, how it disguises itself, how it presents itself. And then looking at that instead of as something, oh, I just got to fix this about myself, looking at it as an opportunity to go, huh, this is an area I really could create some growth in. This is actually incredibly exciting. I'm going to become a bigger, better version of myself through this portal of insecurity. It is... Such a giant advantage in life.

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Perfectly said.

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Thank you. Do you have anything you want to add to that? What question should we leave everybody with?

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Well, I think that it will be, I think it'd be a good practice to take a minute, sit in quiet and think about, try to just come up with one thing that you know that you are insecure about. And then how could you frame that as an opportunity moving forward?

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I love that. And I think honestly, we should get super vulnerable and share our insecurities and what we're doing about them. Like the first insecurity that comes to your mind.

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Right. Oh, okay. I thought that was the closing question.

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I know. Well, I think that was a really good closing question, but I think it's also an opportunity to pivot and for us to get vulnerable and to say how we are redirecting that insecurity into an opportunity for growth. Do you want me to go first?

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Sure.

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Okay. So ladies, I know so many of you can relate to this, but post baby, um, my body has not been what it was pre-baby. And there is an area on my stomach that is slightly bigger than it used to be. And I'm carrying a little bit more weight in my legs than I used to. And for the last, I don't know, year, I have felt the not hugely insecure about it, but a little bit insecure. Like when is my body going to snap back? And the opportunity for me in this is, it's two things that I think of right off the bat. One is to love myself so deeply that I can look at my thighs and I can look at my stomach and say, you know what? You created the biggest blessing of my life. I cannot imagine my life without my son. He is my joy. He injects so much beauty and purpose and meaning into my life and he wouldn't be there, he wouldn't be here had my body not changed to allow him to develop, right? And then the second thing is, okay, what can I take action on here to improve myself and put myself in a position to feel confident about my body and confident in who I am. And what I decided was I'm gonna start lifting weights. And so since February, I have been lifting weights three times a week, and getting heavier and heavier and being really consistent. And while my body is not exactly what I want right now, while I was on the treadmill yesterday, I saw some definition in my arms coming through. And I don't think I've ever seen that before in my life. And so the opportunity that I found from this feeling of insecurity was, I have power over this. I can change my body. I'm already... eating well, I'm already doing some movement, but I can do something I'm a little scared of, which is lifting heavy weights and get really consistent with it and see how my body changes through that process. And it's also a mental game when you lift heavy weights. And so that for me is, that was the first insecurity that came to mind that created such an opportunity for growth in the area of self-love, but also for physical strength and challenging myself physically.

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Yeah.

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And I'm not where I want to be yet, but I feel like there's been so much improvement.

SPEAKER_03: 25:55

Yeah. Yeah. Well, just the progress along the way and the, how do I describe this? When you're letting an insecurity hold you back, there's an internal battle because you're preventing yourself from moving forward and growing and truly answering the question of do you have what it takes based on whatever the insecurity is. So there's always that question in the back of your mind, and I think that that eats at you, that as you progress, even if you're like, oh, shit, I do kind of suck at this. I'm not really good. Even just knowing that and having that baseline and having that courage just to start.

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Are you saying I'm not very good at witnessing? No,

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that's not what I'm saying whatsoever. I'm just saying that that progress is not even just the competence that brings confidence. The fact that you're able to overcome that initial fear and be starting that journey to... That also builds confidence. It's like, this is where I'm at. At least I know where I'm at. At least I started.

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Yeah, that's a powerful position. And it also gives you the opportunity to not take yourself so seriously.

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And

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when you refuse to take yourself so seriously, it also makes accomplishing things and moving forward and taking the next step a lot easier.

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Yeah.

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Okay, so what's your example? The

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first one is the hardest. Yeah.

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Okay.

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What's your insecurity that comes to mind? I know what you're going to say.

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What?

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I'm not insecure about anything.

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No, that's definitely not the case. That's definitely not the case. I think that there are a lot of things, but I think right now what's most prevalent is, from a business perspective, is... an ability to continue to, in effort to build consistency in our business, you have to continuously bring in opportunity. And you and I have talked about this a lot. One of my hangups is I'm not afraid to take a risk or multiple risks, but what happens and what can oftentimes lead to failure peaks and valleys as far as business goes, is I'll speed and I'll take a lot of risks and generate a lot of opportunity. And then all of the crap that comes along with that opportunity that you have to take care of and wade through in order to get the payoff starts to pile up. And my mindset shifts and focuses on all of that stuff. And it forgets or doesn't forget. It becomes insecure about generating more opportunity because I'm, I am fearful of adding additional weight or additional

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insecurity is around your capacity.

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Insecurity is yeah. Around capacity because I, it's, I don't know that it's capacity. It's insecurity about around being able to accomplish what's in front of me. Um, And then the thought of adding to that, it's like I have to prove to myself that I can handle what's here right now before I can take on more or before I even want to introduce more. Deep down, I know that I can handle it, but there's a level of fear there. There's a level of fear there that prevents me from... moving forward. And I'm not doing a great job of explaining this. I

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put you on the spot. Huh? I put you on the spot.

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Yeah. But it's what the insecurity causes me to do is to slow down when I actually need to speed up. And it feels it's scary because it feels counterintuitive because what I naturally want to do is buckle down and take care of everything that I feel is right in front of me before I can move on to creating new opportunity. But what happens in that is I get so bogged down in it.

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Trying to push everything through.

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Right. That's a really good point. A lot of it is just stuff that is just going to take time to play out and it will play out on itself. But I'm trying to fight against time And resolve everything.

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Which is always a losing

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battle. Yeah, you're not going to win that fight. But I'm trying to fight against the time that it just is going to take for that to run its course in order to feel comfortable to take on more risk. So I think that's one thing that I'm dealing with now. And really, I think it just comes down to it's just a matter of doing it.

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Yeah, what's the growth edge there? What's the growth edge that you're looking for? Do you know what I'm saying?

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Because

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I think this is really important, not only for us to understand for each other, but for people listening. Within that scenario that you just described, your growth edge is learning what?

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Learning to... This is, again, one of those instances where I know you know what you want me to say, but I think the... Sorry, hit the mic. The growth edge is allowing... Is stop trying to force... Stop trying to control things that are out of my control. You tell me what my growth

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edge is. And sometimes, hey, this is why we need partnership. And maybe it's not romantic partnership, but accountability partners. The growth edge is moving forward anyway and generating opportunity anyway. Even though the tendency is to want to buckle down and push all of this stuff through, the growth edge is going, yep. That is the tendency of past Sam, but future Sam still seeks these opportunities.

SPEAKER_03: 32:57

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's what I meant by just moving forward. He already knew. I already said that. I already said that. I

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don't

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even know why you

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asked me. I feel like these examples were really... good though for us to talk about so we know but also to be vulnerable in front of our audience and let them know exactly you know some of the things that we struggle with most okay how should we what question do you want to ask everybody to end with I

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thought that you already did it before you wanted to do the examples

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what was the question I don't remember now

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I don't remember either

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I don't think I did so

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did I do it

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I don't know but how about we end with this What insecurity are you coming up against that is an opportunity for growth? What insecurity are you coming up against that is an opportunity for growth? Thank you for sticking with us. I hope that you have an amazing day. We hope that you have an amazing day and we cannot wait to connect with you next Tuesday. Thanks for listening to The Freak Show. Thank you so much for listening to The Freak Show with Sam Thurmond and me, Jacqueline Steele Thurmond. We would love to connect with you via our website, beckonliving.com and on social media.

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You can find us on Instagram and TikTok at Beckon Living, and you can join our email list to receive uplifting messages, podcast and business updates, and discounts on high-frequency products just for our freaky community. Cheers to high-frequency living.