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Episode 720 · Feb 1, 2023

How to Face Your Greatest Fears and Build Real Confidence

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George Wright III opens this episode of The Daily Mastermind with a Walt Disney quote that frames everything: "All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." Courage, he argues, is not the absence of fear; it is what you build by facing fear directly, again and again.

If you have been feeling stuck halfway through the year, losing momentum on your goals, or quietly avoiding the things that matter most to you, this episode is for you. George makes the case that what holds most people back is not a lack of skill or strategy. It is a lack of genuine, deep-down confidence, and that confidence only grows one way.

The Three Fears Holding You Back

Referencing a conversation he heard on Andy Frisella's podcast featuring Lewis Howes, George identifies three fears that stop most people from achieving their potential:

1. Fear of failure. You avoid attempting something because you might not succeed. 2. Fear of success. Success carries responsibility and weight, and some people unconsciously resist it. 3. Fear of judgment. Right now, George believes this is the most common one: worrying about what others will think, how you will look, whether you are good enough.

He invites you to ask yourself honestly which of these is running your life. It may be one, or a mixture of all three. Naming it is the first step.

Why Failure Is Not the Enemy You Think It Is

George makes a point that shifts how you see setbacks: it is only through failure that you create success. When you learn to reframe failure as a necessary part of the process, you can step into action without waiting until everything feels safe.

It is only through failure that you create success. So when you learn to reframe your failure, that is when you can go to the next level.

Most of us already know what we need to do. We have the knowledge. We tell ourselves we are not prepared yet, not confident enough, not ready. But preparation and readiness are often just a more comfortable name for fear.

What Happens When You Step Up Unprepared

George shares a defining moment from his career. At a multi-city event in Canada, his hired professional speaker refused to come down from his hotel room on the third day, devastated by a poor performance the day before. With a room full of attendees waiting and no one else to step in, George walked up to the stage himself.

He was not prepared. He had no presentation of his own. He read slides from a screen and worked through every anxious thought in real time. By his own account, he did not hit a home run.

I just said, you know, F it, we're going, let's go.

But here is what happened next. His staff was amazed. Attendees asked thoughtful questions and left with genuine value. And George walked away with something he had not expected: confidence. Not because he succeeded, but because he did it at all.

How You Gain Confidence Without Winning

This is the core insight of the episode. You do not have to win when you face your fear. You do not have to perform well, close the deal, or impress anyone. The reward of confidence comes from the act of facing fear itself.

You don't have to be successful in facing your fears to gain the confidence. And that's the goal. The goal is to get confidence through facing your fears.

George draws a parallel to physical training: going to the gym once will not build strength. It is the consistency and discipline over time that creates results. The same is true for courage. Face your fears regularly, and the confidence builds whether or not each individual attempt goes the way you hoped.

The Difference Between Compensating and Growing

George raises an honest self-check. For years, he hired world-class professional speakers for his events rather than developing his own speaking skills. It was a smart business move, but it was also a way of compensating for fear rather than facing it. He is not condemning that approach; sometimes leveraging others' strengths is wise. But he invites you to notice when you are working around a fear instead of through it, and to ask whether the avoidance is costing you something.

Action Steps

  • Write down your greatest fears. Be specific and honest with yourself.
  • Pick one fear from that list, any one, and commit to facing it this week.
  • Do it anyway, even without full preparation or confidence. Make the cold call, have the hard conversation, step up to speak.
  • Do it often. Repetition is what builds belief, not single heroic moments.
  • Shift your focus from the outcome to the reward: knowing you did it. That feeling is where real confidence lives.

The path forward is not waiting until fear disappears. Fear may never fully go away. But when you face it with consistency and discipline, you build the self-confidence that opens every door. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I'm your host, and if this is the first time you're listening to the show, every weekday we want to provide you with what you need in order to create your best life, and that's battling your mind. A lot of times it takes not just the skills and strategies, but it takes that mindset, that inspiration, motivation, education. So we're doing these five to 10-minute episodes during the week, but we really want you to understand that there are a lot of other resources available to you through the Daily Mastermind. We've got the Daily Mastermind mobile app, which is free. We're going to be doing weekly interviews that we drop, as you notice occasionally about once a week, where we interview thought leaders, experts, everyone from celebrities, authors, successful business individuals in order to give you the strategies the ideas what they've had to overcome ways they've done that what to do in the current marketplace and so our goal here my goal with the daily mastermind is to help you to create your best life it's really unleash the potential that you you you have deep inside you but maybe you need that additional help the idea of having a mastermind is two or more minds working together in common purpose towards a common goal and your best life is our common goal. So let me get you started with the quote of the day. The quote of the day from Walt Disney is, all our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them. If we have the courage to pursue them. I really love that because I do believe that, you know, we all have inside of us what we need to be able to be successful, but it just takes the courage. It takes overcoming your fears, which is a little about what we're going to talk about today. But before I get into that, I want to remind you that the prosperity pillar of the week that we're focused on throughout the week is I focus on solutions. I focus on solutions. So that's a great segment into this topic of fear today because one of the problems most of us face is fear and fear of all kinds of different things we're going to talk about throughout the podcast, but it takes courage to overcome those fears. I was listening to an episode of Andy Frisella's podcast this morning, and he was interviewing Lewis Howes. Lewis Howes, if many of you haven't tune into his podcast or his programs through the School of Greatness. I'd encourage you to do that. But they were talking about the idea because Lewis has a new book coming out. What is it that stops most entrepreneurs from achieving their dreams? What is it? And this, I believe, can translate to any area of your life. What's keeping you from doing what you need to in your life? And it really, I agree wholeheartedly, it comes down to a lack of confidence. Most of the time, it is a lack of confidence. And I don't mean artificial. I mean really deep down your self-esteem and confidence. And the reason we lack that confidence and what holds us back is these fears, these fears that you are facing. And there's really three fears that he talks about and that I 100% believe are what's holding us back. First, it's the fear of failure. Second, it would be the fear of success. And third, the fear of judgment. I mean, think about that for a minute. Obviously, many of us fear failure. We don't want to attempt something because we might fail at it. But the more and more I go throughout life, and the more and more you going to realize if you look back it only through failure that you create success So when you learn to reframe your failure then that when you can go to the next level And fear of success you may not think that a real deal, but success carries with it weight. The weight of success and responsibility and things that come with that, we may get into a different episode into this. But fear of success might be something. I want you to ask yourself if that's a problem for you. And then I think right now, most people, the majority of people, they fear judgment. They fear what other people are going to think, how they're going to look, what people will think of them. So I want to ask you what you really suffer from. What is it? I mean, it could be a mixture of all three, or is there one that's really, really plaguing you? And I want you to think about that today because the solution, obviously, is going to be to face your fears. It's going to be to hit them straight on because the only way you truly develop belief and self-confidence is by facing your fears. And bottom line is that requires discipline. It requires consistency. That's why we talk about these daily rituals and the importance of having daily rituals because you can't just hit your fear. It's like going into the gym one time and expecting to get a result. It's the consistency and discipline over time. And I promise you when you face your fears with consistency and discipline, you're going to build self-confidence whether or not you're successful because you're going to have that feeling that you did what it took and you're going to feel that confidence. It's going to increase your belief. In fact, I was thinking about it the other day because there's so many things over the years that I've feared. Believe it or not, even public speaking. Public speaking is something that I've had a fear of. I've always kind of suffered myself from that fear of judgment or failure. And it's surprising, I know, because a lot of people are like, what do you mean, man? you've got all these levels of success. You've done all these things in your life. You've met all these successful people, lived a great lifestyle. But that doesn't mean you don't have fears. It may be that certain successful people just face their fears. And so why is it that we feel, like even myself, I'm thinking, why is it that you face this fear of failure and judgment? And it boils down to all kinds of things, insecurities, wondering what you look like, What will happen if you do the wrong thing? And over time, I've learned. I've learned to actually just overcome those fears. Not so much destroy them, but overcome them by learning skills that help me, by repetition, by doing it anyway. And so you get a little more comfortable with it. But the fears don't necessarily go away. In fact, I remember one time I had this fear, because I've had this fear of public speaking, especially in the early days, I don't so much anymore. but I fear the you know the speaking in public because like many of us is like man what are they going to think what's you know am I good enough you have self-confidence issues and things and you know I will note by the way over time I learned to compensate for my weaknesses by sort of hiring other people like I would hire professional speakers because as many of you know I've done events all over the world for financial education groups and business development companies and asset protection, but I've always hired world-class professional speakers so I didn't have to. And that's interesting because how many of you compensate for your weakness and your fears rather than face it? That's kind of one of the things that I did quite a bit that helped me to create success by just compensating for my fears But I remember an event I was doing in Canada one time We were in gosh I can remember exactly where it was in Canada but we were doing a series of events on stock investor education And the goal was to sell a stock investor workshop. And, you know, I remember that the speaker got up the first day and he did kind of okay. And then on the second day, because we'd usually go to four different cities in four different days. On the second day, you know, he got up and he just did horrible. Now, he might have had the best presentation of his life, but didn't sell anything, felt bad, really lost a lot of opportunity. And when you're a world-class professional stage speaker like a Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, these guys, when you don't do well, people do judge you because that's your job. And I remember it really bothered him. And so we get to the third day and we're getting ready to start. All the people are funneling in. We got this room full of people. And I said to our road crew director, I said, where's the speaker? Where are you going to get started? And he says, oh, he's not coming down. And I'm like, what? I mean, what are you talking about? There's a lot of people here. Oh, he's in bed. He's not coming down. He's just distraught. And what had happened was this speaker had had his ego and his confidence tied so much to his performance that he literally was in bed with the covers over his head so he didn't want to go down. And it was partly because he knew we were going to have another speaker come in and kind of replace him. And so he just had this whole thing. And I'm like, bro, you got to get down there, man. What's going to happen? And I could sense pretty quickly it wasn't going to happen. He wasn't coming down. So it was kind of a moment of truth for me. I'm thinking, whoa, all right, I'm faced with my fear. Do I cancel this event, tell all the people to go home, or do I step up? Do I just step in? And I didn't have any preparation. I was not. I mean, I'm not a professional speaker, definitely didn't have the confidence at the time. But guess what? You know, I did have the knowledge. You know, how many of us have the knowledge to do what we want to do, but we put it off because we pretend we're not prepared, or we don't have the confidence, or we're not ready, or we got to get prepped. And in that moment, and this happened many, many times in my life, I just said, you know, F it, we're going, let's go. And so I went to the room and imagine, imagine not knowing up until five minutes ahead of time that you're going to speak, but now you're going into a room and you normally hire a professional, high-end, extremely high-paid. I mean, these guys are making a half million to a million dollars a year and I'm going to go in and replace him, right? So I'm walking up. I mean, you could just imagine like the sweat is starting to build and people are staring at me and I know what they were thinking. They're thinking, who is this guy? Like, that can't be the speaker. There's no way. And obviously, like I'm dressed nice and I play the part. I was the CEO of the company. I own the company. So it's not like, it's not like I didn't, you know, look professional, but this is what's going through my mind, right? People can sense I wasn't the speaker. They're all sitting there with their arms folded, judging, no one's talking. It's quiet as a freaking library. You could hear a pin drop and I'm just up there like, you know, I don't, I don't even know what, you know, I did. And so I'm going through this slide presentation. I'm literally reading the slides that the speaker had, like reading them from the screen and only looking back once in a while. And I told myself, look, just talk fast, sound confident, you know, all the skills that I had learned, work the room, move around, all the stuff that I actually trained speakers to do. And I struggled through it and I finally finished. And guess what No I didn do very well You know you might think oh yeah great success story No I didn hit a home run In fact I don think I sold anything Maybe you know one or two people I don't know. It's not the point. But let me tell you another version of this story. Because at the end of the day, my mind had done all these things. But there was really only about 12 people at the event. Even though I thought it was like, can you imagine like your fears? You just quadruple everything out there. but guess what those people they had questions at the end they gave great feedback they were amazed and they they were like wow i didn't know all these principles of how to invest and that was thank you so much and you know even our you know our crew and staff at the time were like wow man you just you got up at the last minute how did you do that you know and i'm thinking i just completely blew it right and you know obviously i got a new speaker to come out the next day i mean that that's not really the point. But here's the point I want to make for you. Did I overcome my fear of speaking? No, not at that time. Not at that point. But I did learn a couple of things from facing my fear. I gained confidence because I was like, I could do that. Like by doing it, I was like, that was not so bad. And I learned three other things. Number one, facing your fears head on, Facing your fears head on was something you can do. And second, there were strategies that I learned to be able to deal with my fear. Work in the room, talking faster, being more prepared. When you prepare, preparation can take away those fears. But the most important thing that I found is I figured out that I can gain the reward of confidence just by facing the fear. You don't have to be successful in facing your fears to gain the confidence. And that's the goal. The goal is to get confidence through facing your fears. So what I want you to do this week is this. We're a little over on time, but I want you to do a couple things for me. Number one, I want you to write down some of your greatest fears. And I want you to pick one of them. Just any one of them. It might be making a cold phone call. It might be speaking. It might be talking to somebody you never knew. It might be approaching somebody. Pick one of those and just hit it this week. Do it anyway. And do it often. Do it often. Face your fears often. And look and see what happens with that. Look at the confidence that will build. And if you focus on, rather than focusing on whether you're going to be good or whether you're going to get a success, focus on the reward of knowing that you did it. Knowing that you created the ability and the courage to punch through your fear regardless. and I promise you that road leads you to confidence and that confidence leads you to success and ironically, the more you do it, the better you're going to get anyway. And that's my message for this episode. I hope that's something that'll help you. I hope you'll do me a favor and share the show. If you'll share the show, it really helps us to kind of grow our show, grow our influence and help other people. So if you've learned something today, share the show and hit me up on The Daily Mastermind at The Daily Mastermind on Instagram or Facebook. obviously you can contact me directly on our website Daily Mastermind I even do some free strategy sessions once in a while on there so look forward to talking with you more tomorrow I hope you have an amazing day once again this is the Daily Mastermind we'll talk with you soon

About the host
George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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