Chapter 3

Millionaires Have Fears, Make Excuses, and Have Confidence Issues

We are separated by forces in society that give us the idea that we all have to appear totally competent, totally on top of things, totally together, as if fear doesn’t factor into our lives.

—Tim Hamilton, millionaire and owner of Astonished Designs

It’s time to break down those forces. You see, it’s easy to compare our internal thoughts of fear, lack of confidence, and struggle to the external images of amazingly successful people. Let’s put millionaires and all successful people on a level playing field.

Do you want to hear that millionaires have “the exact same doubts” as you do? If you have fear, think about what your brain is doing to you. Your resistance to doing something uncomfortable or that scares you is running your life. ALL of us have fears. To be human is to fear. The difference between being successful or not is how you respond to those fears. So let’s learn what fears millionaires have and how they’ve responded. Then you will see that they are very similar to yours.

That’s good to hear, isn’t it? The successful aren’t immune to thoughts of fear and confidence issues. It’s normal to have these thoughts and issues. But I’ve found out how millionaires recognize these issues and move past them anyway.

For example, fear pushes us to make excuses. Excuses like, “I don’t have enough time,” “I don’t have enough money,” or “I’m not good enough” will stop you from achieving anything. They hold you ...

Get The Eventual Millionaire: How Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur and Successfully Grow Their Startup now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.