The need for approval
My brother, Adam, is a year older than me and he’s been my best friend for all 34 years of my life.
He’s also the reason why it’s so painfully hard to be myself.
Adam has always been my biggest influence in my life. Before I can even remember, I have wanted what he had. The first day I learned to crawl was the first day I began stealing Adam’s teddy bear, Chewy, until eventually on my first birthday, my mom got me my own teddy bear, Henry (the exact same one because I wouldn’t have accepted a different looking bear than what Adam had).
Wouldn’t you know it, Adam had a mullet long before I did
4 years later, my dad, Adam and I were hitting some golf balls outside our childhood home in Connecticut. This was a typical day for our family. If we weren’t chipping golf balls into a hat, we were playing a game of around-the-world under the basketball hoop, running football routes with my dad as the all-time QB, or my dad would serve 90mph tennis balls as my brother and I dove in the grass making Sports Center top 10 catches.
Adam and I did everything together.
Here’s a photo my mom took of one of those early days. I am around 5-years-old here.
Damn, we look good
Take a look at my right arm in the photo above (I’m the boy on the left).
If you think I was scratching my cute little butt, you’d be wrong (about the scratching, not the fact that I have a cute little butt 😉).
As you can see, Adam and my dad each held one club, but I was holding two. At 5-years-old I couldn’t imagine a more devastating experience than to be different than the two people I looked up to most. So I hid the second club behind my back in an attempt to fit in.
This was the story of my life. I looked up to my older brother and he always had my back.
Through our adolescent years, if Adam was going to Peter’s house to play basketball, I was invited along. Not as his annoying younger brother, but as a friend, part of the group.
When I was 14 I remember committing to being the guy who would remain sober for his whole life. My friends began drinking, and I would only watch.
Then one day at 15, my parents took an overnight trip and left Adam and I home alone. We had some friends over and, down in the basement, I watched as Adam cracked a beer. I decided then, drinking could be pretty fun. So I cracked one too.
Throughout my entire life Adam has had a huge influence on me. I look up to him and crave his approval. When I don’t get it. It hurts. It feels like abandonment and that’s painful.
The Ask
In 2022 I made a reel about certain topic and got a lot of backlash from this community I was apart of. I responded to this backlash with a post sharing that, “I won’t let people on the internet steal my power. You aren’t on my coaching calls, you don’t know the full extent of my business and the depths at which I support others. You don’t really know me and you’ll never really know me through Instagram alone, but you’ll judge me anyway. I know who I am, what I have accomplished, what I can help with and I will speak my truth on those topics. I refuse to let you, a stranger on the internet, steal my power.”
It wasn’t a reactive post. It was an offering to others who may be experience backlash online.
Exactly one week later I was on the phone with my brother. At the time, my business wasn’t doing as well as I wanted and he suggested I get on LinkedIn and promote myself there. He was giving me incredible advice. “These companies have a budget to spend and want to invest in continued education. It’s an easy sell. You can speak about communication and leadership,” which he went on to share from his experience, “is greatly needed in the corporate space,” and it was a topic I was making content about frequently at that time.
I explained to him that it wasn’t that easy. I would have to rebuild my reputation on LinkedIn with a whole new audience—compared to all the work I’ve put in on Instagram and the community I have already built with online coaches. Most of all, I wasn’t interested in the corporate space. My true mission was to help coaches reach more people and change the world. Not to help some big corporation improve their team culture so they could spread a mission I didn’t care about just to make money.
Uh… except… I didn’t say any of that to him.
I couldn’t. I didn’t have the confidence to speak my truth to my brother. I’ve looked up to him for so long. I didn’t want to upset him or argue. I didn’t want him to abandon me.
I love my brother for how committed he was to this plan. I love my brother for how much he loves me and wants me to succeed. I sat there on a park bench, quietly nodding. I told him I’d look into it.
I hung up feeling sad, confused and lost. Like I didn’t now what the hell I was doing. Growing on LinkedIn isn’t as easy as reposting Instagram content. I know that. This would take a lot of work for a result I wasn’t particularly excited about. But Adam’s right. If I’m not where I want to be by now, this seems like a great, and potentially easier, alternative.
I moped around for an hour stuck in deliberation.
Then it hit me…
I asked for this.
One week ago I told the internet, “I won’t let strangers steal my power! You don’t know me so fuck off!” (not in those words exactly)
Now here I am a week later, faced with the person who knows me the most, challenging my truth. Will I let my brother steal my power? Will I continue to be a slave to my brothers approval? I know the people I want to help and the change I want to make. If I want to continue to boldly pursue my truth than I am going to be challenged to become exactly who I say I am. This is not a painful and sad phone call with my brother telling me, “you’re doing it all wrong, you suck, listen to your brother!” but rather an opportunity to trust myself. To keep going.
When you ask for more patience, you don’t get more patience. You get stuck in traffic, long lines at the grocery store, and spill coffee on your shirt. You get the opportunity to become a patient person.
If I’m going to teach people to trust themselves and speak their truth online, I have to trust myself. And what better way to become that person than being challenge by the person who I have looked up to and has guided and supported me my whole life?
The Challenges
You won’t get your next level goal if you can’t handle your current level problem.
Let’s say you want 100,000 followers.
Well, 100,000 followers comes with hundreds of haters. If one hateful comment ruins your day, then you can’t handle the hate that comes with 100,000 followers.
By asking for 100,000 followers you must first prove to yourself/the universe/god that you can handle 1 hateful comment.
The goal with my emails is to help you stand out and build raving fans by speaking your truth. Give them something to rave about. Most of you already know that speaking your truth online will attract raving fans, but you wait to feel safe in your body or more confident before speaking your truth.
Challenge #1 – Waiting to Feel Confident
The first challenge is to know you will never feel confident to speak your truth without first speaking your truth. The same way you won’t feel confident on a bike without first getting on the bike and trying to ride it.
You must get on the bike and prove to yourself that you can handle the consequences.
Challenge #2 – Fearing the Unknown
You don’t know what the consequences are.
Consequence sounds like a negative word, but it’s only the “result of an action.”
Will you fall off the bike? How will you fall? Will you run into a mailbox? Where will the mailbox hit you? Will you absolutely nail it and go so fast but you don’t know how to handle the speed? Maybe it’s the turn 2 miles down the road you’re unsure about.
If we knew and could plan for every outcome, we would already have the confidence we so badly desire.
I had no idea I had to break the spell my brother (and other superiors) had over me until I was faced with it (and probably not for the first time).
The Call
What do you really want?
Who do you need to become to have that?
Have you boldly declared your desire for becoming that person and having those things?
The more clear you can get on what you really want, the more you will see how everything is an opportunity to become the person who has those things.
“If focusing on our problems was the way we solved problems, then nobody would have any problems.”
To be the most powerful version of yourself, it’s not about focusing on the problems. It’s about:
- Getting clear on what you want
- Boldly declare who you want to become and what you want
- Answer the call to become that person
This is why I love content. It one of the boldest ways I ask for what I want and then, I find, I immediately get challenged to become that person who has those things.
It’s immediate because I might get a hate comment that causes me to question my message. Or the reel isn’t doing as well as the last one even though I thought this one was way better. Do I actually know what I’m doing? What about a reel that does great? Do I panic and freeze and not make content?
Lots of things come up when you hit that post button.
I recently made a reel about my desire to make deep friendships in the new city I moved to. I can fill an entire email about the challenges I’ve been presented with to become the man who can hold space for more meaningful friendships. I have not responded to those challenges well. Therefore, here I am, still desiring those deeper relationships.
The Reward
One hour after that phone call with my brother I chose to stay true to my mission and not get on LinkedIn and change my strategy. Two months later, I was fully booked with 1:1 clients and making over $15k a month for the first time ever.
But it gets better than that.
As I became more of my own man, quit corporate, left NYC for Colorado, pursued entrepreneurship, and some may even say, became a little woo-woo, it has only strengthened my bond with my brother.
My work into mindset, psychology, therapy and internal family systems have opened the door for us to talk about childhood, our desires, the inner game of tennis and golf and our relationships with our parents.
Despite Adam working in corporate, we chat about leadership, managing others, and sales through the lens of both feminine and masculine energy (though I’m not sure that’s the language he would use ☺️)
He listens to me for advise as much as I listen to him.
We have never been closer.
The only thing we have to fear is to keep living in a way that doesn’t serve our most true and free selves. We already know what this life is like and if we want change we must be willing to take bold action to change.
In Summary
We all seek approval. It’s our very nature, for survival, to belong and be accepted whether that’s by your older sibling, parents, grandparents, mentor, boss, peers or even strangers on the internet. Nobody wants to be abandoned by those they love and respect.
Each time we carve out a new path in an effort to be our fullest and truest selves, we must break free from the approval of those we once sought acceptance from.
This requires us to boldly own who we want to become and what we want to have by sharing it with the world so that we can answer the call in becoming that person.
When we answer the call, we get rewarded.
So…
You are reading this newsletter to learn how to tell your story and speak your truth so you can build raving fans.
What stops you from stepping more fully into that journey today?
What do you want?
Who do you want to become?
Are you willing to share that with your audience?
When you do, will you answer the call?
A note about storytelling
You may not have an older brother whose love dictates the decisions you make, but you may know what it is like to lack trust in yourself. To always be looking outward for answers.
If that’s true then you found yourself in my story. It’s what we do as human beings in our attempt to access more safety and belonging. You WANT to resonate with me at a deep unconscious level.
If you don’t resonate because your life is so different from mine, then that is you denying my truth so that you can belong to another group who believes something different. That’s fine. In order to create the change you seek to make, you need to feel safe and relaxed with the person who is helping you create that change. If you are resistant and have constricted energy, you will never create the change you wish to make.
However, if you do resonate and you feel seen in my story, you will relax and feel safe with me. In this state you have a greater chance at transforming into someone who takes bolder action than they would have 10 minutes ago.
Storytelling not only brings us closer together, but as a coach, it’s what will offer faster results in your clients journey.
Thanks for being here.
I love you, Matt
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