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What's up, what's up everybody? I am back. You probably didn't even realize I was gone though. That's the funny thing about this whole podcasting business. If you do a podcast but you don't tell anybody about it, is it really a podcast?
Y'all, it is Friday, February 21st. I'm your host, Nick DiStefano of the Chasing the Awesome Life podcast. I am excited to be back. Again, though, you didn't realize I'm gone because the last time I created an episode, really the second only episode that I ever created of this wonderful podcast, was on November 19th of 2019.
Y'all, it's been four months since I've done this. And today we're going to talk about the idea and the concept of believing in yourself. Something I did not do when it came to podcasting over the last four months. Let's jump into it.
Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life just a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but y'all, the struggle is real. So take a little time today to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be more awesome in all aspects of your life.
There's no topic I won't cover. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it can all be awesome if you just choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and then, more importantly, take some awesome action because this is Chasing the Awesome Life. So here we are. It is...
Four months since I last have recorded a podcast. So let me just do a quick little recap for those of you who may be just tuning in for the very first time. Or for those of you who just forgot because it's been four damn long months and shoot, hell, it's a new decade. So...
These podcasts will serve for you as a quick guide, a weekly guide, as I like to say, to how you can be chasing the awesome life. You are now part of my fam because all of these will be 15 awesome minutes or less because y'all, you got a life. You got shit to do. We all do. So let's jump in and start talking about believing in yourself. Y'all ever feel like
Things kind of just come together in the world. It feels like the universe is conspiring, sometimes in your favor, other times against you. Well, the past couple days and really week, it's felt like, leading up to me actually recording this, truly, it has felt like things have come together and have told me, hey, dumbass, record the podcast. You'd be good at it, okay? But
Before all that happened, let's talk about why it even took me so long. Why has it been four months since I've even done this? What caused me to do this? Well, tell me if these emotions sound familiar. Fear, uncertainty, doubt, anxiety.
Lack of intentionality in daily life, that's not an emotion. That's just how sometimes the world works and sometimes we live our lives. We get this wonderful B word, busy. It's awful and we all are busy, but yet here we are. That's why these podcast segments are 15 minutes or less. That was my intention from the beginning.
So what conspired in the universe that got me to this point? Well, y'all, last night I sat in on a mastermind class. It's a group of people that one of my...
I don't even know what to call this guy. Someone that I've looked up to for a while. I can't call him a mentor. We don't have that type of relationship. He's on the speaking roster at the agency that I used to be a part of. He's doing awesome things and he's got a whole group of people that get together pretty regularly and they share stuff on social media in terms of tips to be better speakers and
And he offered us a free training last night for people in this mastermind that said to us, we are here to teach you, to show you some ways, both myself and all the rest of them, right? So this gentleman, Odell, who put this together and...
his buddy Stan are both fantastic speakers. They put together a whole session on how to get rebooked, how to be a better speaker that people will bring back. And it was fantastic content. But y'all, you know when you go to a training and there's like that one key nugget, you're like, ooh, that's the good stuff. You know, like...
that piece of meat that you're like, "Yes, this is it right there. Like, this is the juicy stuff that I want to take home. Like, this is it." Y'all, there was one specific thing that they said to me and I thought, "Damn, that's so true and I'm seeing it happen." And they said, "People are always watching you and people see you. You might not realize it, but people see you. They know what you're doing." I thought, "Shoot."
I literally just saw this happen to me about a week ago. So about a week ago, my little buddy Cooper was sick again. We'll talk about how he's taught me the importance of resiliency and grit and determination in another episode. But he was sick with the flu for the second time in this flu season. Yes, you can get the flu twice. People ask me. That is actually a thing. So...
I took him to Target after the doctors to pick up a prescription. And I'm in the Target and I run into a former coworker who works there. And I haven't seen this lady in years, right? At least five years. I haven't seen her since before she had cancer.
her two kids and she's got kids the same age as me. I was like, yo, how are you? What's up? You know, when you get excited and you see somebody I haven't seen in a long time, it was pretty excited. But obviously we follow each other. It's 2020 on social media. We're friends, right? She follows me on Instagram. She sees what I'm doing. And you know what she said? She says, Nick,
it's so cool to watch you do all these huge things. Like you're doing big things. I see you're writing a book. And I, my immediate thought was big things. And I didn't say, I didn't say like, what are you talking about? I mean, obviously I said, yeah, I'm just, I'm doing my best. I'm just trying to chase the awesome life. Cause really that's what I'm doing. I don't think of
Any of the things that I'm doing, whether it's a podcast, I'm trying to write a book, speaking for people, consulting, coaching, whatever it might be, even just raising my family and living my life. That's what it is. I'm just trying to be the best version of myself. So I didn't think of it as doing big things. But what it made me realize was people have perceptions of you that might be different than you have of yourself. They see what you're doing and think, wow, wow.
That's really cool. That's amazing. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could do that. And then last night, I'm in this session, and they say, people see you. And it made me think, shoot.
People do see what I'm doing whether I know it or not, right? It's not about the likes and the comments and the retweets and the reposts and all the things that in this digital age everyone thinks it's all about. It's not about that. Really, it's about the relationships you've got. And we talked about that in this mastermind class last night. And then I went to lunch today.
I went to lunch with a gentleman, and I'll share his podcast in the segments of this. His name is Arcadio. Arcadio works at Coastal Carolina University with me. Shout out to Arcadio. Y'all, he's the reason that we're sitting here. You're
I'm sitting here recording this and that you'll be hopefully and eventually listening to this. And I went to lunch with him because Arcadia has participated in a lot of our programs and I've developed a pretty good relationship with him. We catch up every now and again and do lunch, just talk about life. Never any agenda, just two guys on campus.
getting together and having lunch. Just a cool dude. And he does a whole podcast on gamification. It's pretty awesome. And I learned things from it, and I know absolutely nothing about the gaming world. So again, I'll link his stuff in here so you all can take a look at it. But we just got to chatting, and we were talking about podcasts.
I told him just randomly, I said, I always wanted to do a podcast. He was like, well, you should. And I said, well, I kind of did. He said, you did? What do you mean you did? I said, well, I did. Like back at the end of last year, I started one, but I didn't really publish it. So then he started getting into details. Where do you host it? What's it look like? And asked me all these questions because he's in the podcast world, like full on in it now and does doing an awesome, awesome work and awesome things. And I thought,
I don't know man. He was like, no, like tell me what it is. So I shared it with him, right? And he was like, I'm gonna go check it out. That's really cool. I didn't think he was gonna go back and see it and think anything of it. But you know what? I shared it with him because somewhere deep down inside, I had this spark and this belief in myself.
And I think so many of us have that, right? When you have a goal, it's usually from some belief in yourself. Whether that belief is strong or not doesn't really matter at the end of the day. It comes from somewhere. You wouldn't try it at all if you didn't think you could succeed, okay? So I shared that goal with him. I started a podcast, but I haven't really done much with it. He goes and listens to it.
Fast forward maybe 40 minutes later. Y'all, I got to read you this email that I got from him. This is probably one of the coolest emails I've ever received from a co-worker or someone who I've ever provided work for or spoken for. And it really, honestly, it truly touched me. It was something that, I mean, one, it's the reason that I'm doing this right now, but also it's
it kind of fueled my fire, right? It was, I felt like I had this spark and you know what Arcadio did for me with this email was he kind of poured some gasoline on it and said, yo, like I believe in you too. So here's what he said. He said, Nick, I just had a chance to listen and I really think you should continue to do this podcast. I believe that the recording will be an excellent stepping stone if you truly are writing a book about
In your trainings, you taught me something I've carried with me that is that we all right at this very moment have what we need to do amazing things. That's so true. Like that's what I want people to realize. Like we're not talking about the email. He didn't say this, but I really do y'all. I want people to realize that they do have within them right now everything they need to succeed. It doesn't mean you can't learn, but ultimately what you have inside of you is what you need to make a difference.
So then he says, if you don't pursue this, then you're failing to see the very thing in yourself that you're teaching others to see in themselves. And that would possibly rob this world of something it so desperately needs to hear. That, my friend, would be a terrible thing. Plus, if you don't do this, I don't get to be a part of the fam. That's the truth, man. So there is also that. But let's not make this about me. I appreciate that selflessness there, Arcadio.
Nick, if you had to start down this road now, Nick, if you start down this road now, by the time your boys are old enough to remember, they'll be able to look back on this with you and see not only how awesome their dad is, but also how awesome they are. Y'all, damn, yo, that's it. Like, man, Arcadio, come on. That's like, that just like ripped my heart out, put it on the table. Man, that was...
That's so true, though. That's what I need to hear. Right. He goes on to finish and say, y'all, if you won't do it for yourself, if you won't do it for your listeners, then do it for Megan and the boys. I believe in you. And whether you realize it or not, you already believe in yourself. You've done the hardest part. Just continue forward, my friend. Yo, this this man is legit. That's it right there.
If you don't believe in yourself, but you already do, whether you realize it or not, like that's how many of us, for real, you might be listening to this right now, are saying you don't believe in yourself, but ultimately you do. The spark is there, but you've got to have fuel. That email, my lunch with Arcadio, my mastermind last night,
All of it was the fuel saying, look, you can do this thing. There is potential. This thing is going to be good. That's it. That's what it's all about. Okay. All right, y'all. So let's put this whole story into a gift bag that you can walk out of here. And I say gift bag because gift bags are cooler than water.
Wrapping paper, we'll come back to that on another podcast and I'll explain to you my logic behind why gift bags are so much better than wrapping paper. Anyways, here's your gift bag with some awesome tools that you can walk out of here and use to start believing in yourself or improve your belief in yourself. So if you're struggling to believe in yourself, tell someone about your goal. You can't fuel the fire if nobody knows where the spark is.
You have to be willing to share your goal. Arcadia fueled my fire. My friend at Target, this mastermind, all of it was kindling. It was fuel. It was gasoline. It was the air that I desperately needed to get this thing up and going again. And I'm going to need that again. I'm going to need somebody in the future to say, yo, this is really cool. I believe in what you're doing.
But if I'm never willing to actually take the chance, which is another piece of this gift for you, right? Take the chance. See what happens. If I'm never willing to do that, then I'm never going to learn to believe in myself. Because belief is something that you can learn, y'all. It's something you can practice. It's honestly also something that you can schedule. That's another piece of belief and something that I'm going to be doing with this podcast.
I'm going to be intentionally scheduling for myself when I will work on this podcast. Because if not, that dreaded B word of busy, busy, busy is going to get in the way. And then if I'm busy, I can't believe. Because what happens is you're afraid to take the chance. You're waiting for the right moment. You're searching for the right moment. And you're searching, you're searching, you're searching. You never find it. Take a chance. Trust your cape. Jump. See if you can fly.
You'll never know if you don't actually jump. All right, some other key things you can do if you're going to be better at believing in yourself. Find some friends who also believe in themselves. Y'all, belief is contagious. Belief, this shit is like the coronavirus, right? Or whatever that thing is now. Maybe that's too soon. It's not like a virus, right? It's a good thing, obviously. But belief is something that really, y'all...
When other people believe in themselves, you see other people then doing cool things and making changes. And you think, I can do that too. They believe in themselves. They've picked themselves up off the mat when things went poorly because they believe that they're doing something awesome. And then the last piece of this, y'all, is don't ever forget that others believe in you. And even if you don't know who that is,
And that's what's so cool, right? I didn't realize Arcadio believed in me in this way. I didn't know that other people were watching what I was doing. I never thought about that. I thought that the belief had to come from within. And it does. But it grows when other people pour into you. So don't forget that others believe in you. Because, y'all, as we talk about belief, I will leave you with this. If you say...
You want to start believing in yourself. You also have to start and you better be living for yourself because the word literally tells you what to do. Belief is nothing if it's not an action. You have to be living if you're gonna be believing. Y'all, that's what I got for you today. Get out there. Keep chasing the awesome life. I'll see you next time.
