Itamar’s Insecurity and How He Overcame It | Elite Performance Podcast #17

Itamar Marani 0:00
Hey guys, today I want to do something a bit different. We're going to be talking about an insecurity recently that I discovered that I have that was pulling me in the wrong direction. And I'm going to share first off how I came to recognize that it is what it is, and what I did to overcome it and the outcome of it. This was a podcast that I was considering even doing as a solo podcast, but I thought it'd be really, really valuable to have a meal here. So we can basically just make sure that I'm speaking in a way that people can understand, and I'm making any jumps that aren't clear. So we are thank you for joining. It's an absolute pleasure. And you know, more than, you know, making it clear and not making jumps, it's, obviously you're in your own heads. And, yeah, there's things which you assumed to be true, because they've always been true, which don't necessarily come out. So by not having me here live, as it were, if something doesn't link up, I can jump in and ask about it. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Great. Okay, so here's the deal. About a month and a half ago, I was at a conference. And at the mainstage. In the morning, there are three different speakers. And they all talked about the journey, complete different businesses, they're all either seven or eight figure businesses, about their journey, how they did it, and so on, and so on. They said a lot of different things. But in reality, they were all saying the exact same thing. From my viewpoint, they were all saying do the simple things that you know, you should be doing.

And that was my takeaway from all three of those talks. And I was walking to lunch, and I was thinking to myself, why do we need to be reminded of people? Why do we need to be reminded, do the simple things that we know we should be doing? Why does this happen? And then I thought to myself, well, why did I also need to be reminded right now. And I was thinking about it. And I kind of walked by myself a little bit in the hallway is trying to process it. And I was like, why don't I do that? Why do I add complexity to the business? Sometimes it's not rational. It's not logical. I was like, Oh, okay. It's because I'm impatient. That's my issue. It's my impatience. And then I felt okay with that. And I kind of put it to bed when join a couple people for lunch had a good time. But it didn't really feel right still. So I went to sleep that night, I woke up the next morning, went for a swim in the pool. And I sat on the sun a little bit, that said, meditate, meditating and thinking. And I realized, I saw that I'm impatient. It said, evidence security, it's causing this impatience. And that's really what's going on. And it was a really weird realization to have. But it was very clear that that's what was going on. And I realized that a lot of the times I do things in the business that aren't strategic long term thinking, because evidence security of where it is right now. I feel an X quality of person and the business, isn't that. So what's wrong here? Why is the business not already eight figures. Because I have lunch, a lot of time, I go to events with eight, nine figure entrepreneurs, and we're talking on the same level. So what's going on here? Maybe I'm actually not as good as I think I am. Or something else. And that insecurity creates a compulsion which creates that that impatience, which is causing me to do a lot of things just don't serve me, don't serve the business. And me realizing that was very, very interesting. Because then I could ask, well, is this actually true? Should I be should I feel insecure about this? Is this a valid, maybe there is an issue here, maybe I'm not as good as I think I am, or whatever it may be. And the main thing that popped up was context, that a lot of these entrepreneurs, especially those that were on the main stage that day, they've been doing this for almost a decade. I've been in business for three years. And what was more interesting than I had a bunch of people come up to me during that effect, and say, you know, how we literally built all this in three years, which was exactly the opposite of how I was thinking about myself in that moment, that I should have done more in these three years. And recognizing that, for me was a really, really big shift. Because all of a sudden, it took off a lot of pressure that I didn't know I was putting on myself was all unconscious, and removing that pressure, allow me to do the right things. And I want to kind of go more into depth about that. But just from the get go, Emil, do you have any thoughts? Anything to say or any questions, man?

Dr. Emil 4:22
Yeah, this is a really, really interesting topic. So two things which comes to mind. One, I have some insights into the business back end, given my position, I can see sometimes where you overcomplicate things. Yeah. And we have conversations where I'm like, bro, I don't think that needs to happen. I mean, I have no sway, but let me just give you my opinion. And so I see it, I see it happen. And the other thing is, I also see in kind of my area of health coaching where people are desperate to overcomplicate things, where the goal where the magic is simple things apply. consistently for long enough to see an effect. So I'd be interested, at some point to explore that as a facet of this as well, because I didn't

Itamar Marani 5:10
go on. It's part of my notes like this specific thing, what I forgot about myself.

Dr. Emil 5:14
Yeah. So that those are my two points, and I'll tag you back in.

Itamar Marani 5:18
Cool. So I think the reason things were able to change, and we keep talking about this in a bunch of podcast, it's that performance pressure bell curve. What the way I look at it, when you have an internal purpose that you actually want, you want something you're excited about something you're interested in, but you're playing a game for you, without a negative association for it. That's when a certain amount of pressure or purpose, it creates positive performance. And again, for anyone who doesn't know the performance, pressure, Bokor, but we talked about, imagine on the bottom, there's pressure, and on the top, on the other side, there's performance, it gets a certain peak. And then when there's too much pressure, the performance dips. So it goes to a positive level, when there's a purpose, saying, I want something I'm excited about it, this would be really cool. This is interesting, but I'm doing it for me in a positive way. What happened to me is that I started to dip in the other place of that bell curve, because I had an external pressure or an internal pressure put upon this, is this feeling that I should? Or if I don't, what does this actually mean about me? That was what I was putting on myself? If it's not at eight figures right now, and it's very profitable. What does that mean about me? Am I actually not good enough? For me, it was very internal for a lot of people, it's What will others think of me? If I fail? Will they not love me? Will they judge me abandoned me? And so on and so on. But for me, it was a very internal thing. Like, am I actually not as good as I thought it was.

Dr. Emil 6:41
But that comes from external comparison. But what same

Itamar Marani 6:45
thing, it comes from external comparison. So it comes from external comparison, but it wasn't looking for somebody else's approval, it was looking for my own to judge myself in comparison to other people. So that makes sense.

Dr. Emil 6:55
It does. There's still a definite external components to it. So even say that eight figures means anything, why not? Nine? Why not? Seven? You know, you've got no,

Itamar Marani 7:05
I was just using it as a benchmark to say if I if I think Itamar is of this quality of a human being this intelligent than he should have been able to accomplish by in comparison to

Dr. Emil 7:14
other people. Yes. Yeah. That's fair.

Itamar Marani 7:17
Yeah, that's fair. But I wasn't seeking their approval. I was just using that as a comparison for myself. So

Dr. Emil 7:22
I agree. I agree. That distinction for sure. Yeah. Cool. So

Itamar Marani 7:25
once I did that, that was the big thing. Because that insecurity that I wasn't aware of was pulling me in the wrong direction. And this is a big thing, we keep coming back to not being aware of what's pulling at you. It was causing me to try, like you said, to do a lot of things. Because I feel like I had to prove that I can get to a highly profitable eight figure business now. Instead of being calm and poised and thinking strategically. And once I realized that, it really relieves a lot of that pressure, that performance pressure bell curve, my performance is able to go back up. And then I was able to raise himself. Okay, let's get focused. And let's go to the next level. Let's do this correctly.

Dr. Emil 8:07
I like this a lot.

Itamar Marani 8:09
I like to go ahead.

Dr. Emil 8:11
Let me just kind of summarize this because I like this a lot. So what you're saying is, you were overcomplicating things in your business, because of an that was related or a symptom of impatience, which was related to or a symptom of insecurity, which came from a core fear. Yeah, and as long as you couldn't see what was going on deeper, this over complication, and impatience was taking you too far down the pressure curve, which was causing your performance to drop and actually for you to fulfill this prophecy that you weren't performing at your

Itamar Marani 8:47
at your I didn't think about it there. But it definitely creates a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah.

Dr. Emil 8:51
And then when you go upstream back to okay, this is actually an insecurity, this is a fear by removing the pressure you then jack up your performance. So where people fuck up with this is that it's part of my language is that they, they're dealing with the superficial symptoms and trying to over deal with tactics. They're trying to do things at the top end, they're trying to send you I need to overcomplicated, we need to simplify, and they're trying to figure out the top instead of going deeper, and solving this at the roots.

Itamar Marani 9:22
Yeah, so I think if, for example, so let's say I'd only stop that impatience. Oh, this happened to me because I'm impatient, then I might have tried to say logically, less than only figured out these couple rocks for the year or whatever. But subconsciously, there would have still been that voice saying, Oh, well, that'd be enough to prove that you're good enough. And that's what can mess with you. And me being able to realize that voice and really understand if it's actually a valid voice or not, if it's truthful, if I should listen to it, it sets you free, and it's part of that process.

Dr. Emil 9:55
And to add to that, if you dealt with It tactically by having fewer rocks in your business, then I would have

Itamar Marani 10:04
added more rocks afterwards, I would have started like, and then I would have

Dr. Emil 10:07
put one, Shore, one for sure. The other danger here is that maybe you would have hit eight figures, but still had this insecurity still fear niggling at you and thinking, okay, so I hit eight figures, but I'm still insecure. And I still feel like shit, maybe I need nine figures. And yes, I see so often is people trying to fix an internal problem with external things. And for entrepreneurs, that's money.

Itamar Marani 10:32
It's, it's interesting, because it would have been a lose, lose on both ends. Here's what I mean by that. I think a lot of what you're saying is absolutely true. It wouldn't have resolved that but be also it would have actually taken me longer to get there.

Dr. Emil 10:44
Yeah, harder, more income 100%

Itamar Marani 10:47
Not even more uncomfortable, just be more difficult, that would have created technical complexity to avoid the emotional difficulty that you don't want to face. And that's exactly what I was doing, or you were seeing it from the sidelines as a part of the business. So can I move forward? This was a sparkler. No, no,

Dr. Emil 11:02
this is great. This is what?

Itamar Marani 11:04
So the first thing I decided to do was like, Okay, I need to get more strategic. So I need to carve out some deep work time. So at the beginning of each day, I put in some deep work slots for about two hours and figure out what is the right thing that we should be focusing on. And this was the classic mistake, I tried to add something when there was already complexity, I literally just tried to add, let me do work the work here, and hopefully it could solve it, it was a classic mistake of trying to add instead of initially subtracting, and things obviously didn't improve drastically or anything like that, because of that. And it actually made me more time because I was putting more on my plate. And I was pretty close to burnout. And because it was also a pretty hectic quarter before that we had a big launch, and so on and so on. And honestly, my wife, we had a conversation, she checked me on it. And she forced me to accept that listen, we have to subtract, we have to let something burn one of these projects we have to let burn for now. And at first when she said that I was resistant. I was like, what if we just add more divorce time and focus on that we could just do that. No sick? No. What if we just burn this little thing and just subtract was No. And he was very insistent about it. But I knew it was coming from a great place. And she was honestly she was very tough with me. She's also for context. She's the CFO of the business. So she knows a lot of what's going on. And at the end of it, I resisted and resisted and resisted but I had to secede because logically I knew she was right. Emotionally, it was not comfortable for me. And that's why I kept trying to find a way say maybe we just do this thing or that thing instead or add this just to practice little thing. Because emotionally was difficult for me. Yeah, I didn't want to slow down on scrap projects.

Dr. Emil 12:44
That's ego talking 100%. Right?

Itamar Marani 12:48
Get Yes. And no, honestly, when I looked at it, the paradox here is like, it's hard to sacrifice your pawn. If you don't believe you can really win the end game. And this specific insecurity was saying, Am I good enough to win at the end game? Yeah, so it was a very interwoven kind of thing. And I had to accept that. Logically, if I know this is right, I need to do it, regardless of how it feels in the moment. And I literally asked him that conversation, we've had this podcast before about the conversation I asked for my wife asked my wife, I'm going to do this. I know what you're saying is the right thing right now. I'm going to ask for you to be patient. And especially if I'm a little bit more edgy, these next couple days until it sinks in, because this is difficult for me. So please, like try to be more caring for me as a partner, as I'm going through this because this is difficult for me. And we made that decision. We said, Okay, we're going to scrap a bunch of things. And the shocking part was after like two days, I was great. I was so happy we did that. This was the exact right decision, I thought it would take me a lot longer to make peace with that, which was very interesting to me. I made peace with that I was super happy about it. I was very excited about what's going to be the result of scrapping these things within a couple days, which to me was was very surprising. Honestly, I thought it would take me longer to kind of accept this. Be okay with it, whatever it may be, but it was the exact right thing to do. And I'm going to talk next about what we decided to scrap. But when asked if you have anything here,

Dr. Emil 14:20
yeah, just to jump in there so that that that loop is awesome. You know, you've made the decision to remove stuff instead of adding stuff you identified the core, the core thing now an observation is that that core fear that insecurity isn't going to disappear just because you've identified it and taken action. And it will under correct me if I'm wrong, but it will continue to throw off symptoms and thoughts towards the old way of thinking towards over complication. Gone.

Itamar Marani 14:54
It will continue to try. It will continue to do exactly that's a really important thing for me. went to listen, there's that old expression and stand guard at the door of your mind, you can stand guard, if you don't see the enemy. Speak, if you can just slip it through because you don't know what's going on. Yeah, now I have that awareness that I can recognize. This is one of those things I need to be watching out. This is one of my biases, you know, some people are overly optimistic. They have to be well, they have to be cautious of that some people over pessimistic that's because I have to be aware that I have an insecurity that causes me to over overextend myself. And I measure myself against this thing I said, I figures or whatever it may be, and I need to be very cautious of that. And when I'm making decisions, I always have to have that as part of my decision making framework. Yeah. Is this coming from a logical place? Or is it getting dictated by this insecurity? And knowing that and being aware of that now, it's extremely powerful?

Dr. Emil 15:46
Yep, that's exactly my point, awareness and tools to overcome it. So you have, you know, you make it part of your decision matrix. So that's the thing, because other people will often think, you know, I expected this to disappear, I expected to no longer have this feeling, or these things to note not come up, and therefore I'm a failure. It's like, No, it's not about that. It's about having the awareness and the tools exactly like you described. Yeah,

Itamar Marani 16:12
I do think that that emotion gets minimized. As soon as you're aware of it, it doesn't have a strong of a pool. But it's absolutely that, in my opinion, a man who knows his insecurities is very powerful, man. Yeah, because he's a man that doesn't behave irrationally. And that's, that's powerful. So I think this is a big thing. And I also now notice or an indicator that if I ever get told by anybody, you, my wife, anybody else in the business, says, Hey, I think we're over complicating things here. There might be something there because I know this is an issue of mine. For example, how I know that I'm not a visual person with aesthetics. So when someone says, That's me, he's laughing, because he knows how bad this is. But I know that if somebody says to me, this doesn't look right. I'm like, okay, that may I know, I have an issue here. It's the same thing with this, that anybody says to me, you're overcomplicating something here. I can immediately take a backseat and be like, okay, there might be something here. Let me listen. Let me think about this. Yeah. Because of awareness. This awareness is crucial.

Dr. Emil 17:13
Yeah. Yeah. And then what you've built there is a mental SOP. When mental model mental model idea, yeah. The when a trigger happens that you recognize and identify, this is the normal action that you take, and this is the new action that you're going to take. Yeah,

Itamar Marani 17:30
yeah. 100%. Cool. Is this part clear? Yeah. Great. So then we decided, okay, we do need to let things burn. So what are the big things that we got to say we don't need right now? And what are we open to sacrificing for the long run, and we kind of came up with the with the model, that slow is smooth, smooth is fast. That needs to be the theme for the next couple quarters. Because we want to do things the right way. If we really want to go fast in the long run and get to our goals and have everything that we want, then you slow down now. So during the right way. So basically, we had and you know about this, we had a big launch plan for the Rena 2.0 in January. And we wanted to capitalize on the whole new year new me, all that kind of jazz. And it was going to be very lucrative. There's no way around it. But we decided, You know what, we don't need this cash right now. But actually, we needed to slow things down so we can go fast. So that's scrapped. And it's hard, it was hard, because we're saying no to a lot of money, honestly. And I'm still, like I said, this business is pretty new for context. I wasn't making as much money as I am now three years ago. And sometimes I have to remind myself, this isn't money that's actually crucial to Itamar, and his family of today. So we don't need this. But it still requires effort to remind myself that. And on top of that, we also delayed the book project. We scheduled a call with the editor, we told him this was going on, we need to delay it. And it's very tough. It's also tough, because I made in a lot of ways a public commitment, or whatever they call it. And I told people, we're going to try to launch this next year by q3, whatever it may be. And especially honestly, that I know people look at me sometimes in a certain way, like Itamar is not supposed to have days off. He's this mindset guy or whatever. And they put that kind of pressure on me, and sometimes I take it. So that was also important for me to recognize that I feel this pressure to do that. But I don't have to. That's on them. Go for it.

Dr. Emil 19:19
Yeah, just semantics thing. You said they put that pressure on you. You put that pressure on you.

Itamar Marani 19:26
That's what I say. They know I disagree. I think people put that pressure on you there that expectation of you. It's my choice, whether it's accepted or not. That's the pressure.

Dr. Emil 19:35
I think people have an image in their head of you. Which one you don't know what that is, and you're creating what you think that image is. And then that is what you're using to put pressure on yourself. Because the image that you think of I don't think of what you're saying what you're describing yourself as I didn't think of you as that.

Itamar Marani 19:54
So I have been told that those specific things by various people, I agree with you on a principle level also to say from personal experiences, literally people have said this to me,

Dr. Emil 20:02
for sure. And you know, what if you also said, Hey, I've made a decision to not launch at this time, I imagine those same people will be like, entirely understood. I'm sure it was the best decision.

Itamar Marani 20:13
They so the interesting thing is when I told a bunch of those people that they're like, man, that's, that's a boss move. Yeah. That's what I mean. It was. Yeah. And it was an interesting process, because they had their expectation, and then their question change. And it was an interesting thing in and of itself, honestly. There, that was a big part of it. And what we decided we we cancelled those two big things. And now we're only focusing on working on systems. And now again, how can we make things as smooth as possible for the inevitable journey upwards toward success, to not be a rough ride, and not sacrifice? A lot of our let's call it our bandwidth, our health, our enjoyment of life, things that are very crucial to us for things that are just nice to have, like more cash in the bank right now. Which again, Itamar three years ago, he needed that what Itamar have right? Now, it's not the important thing. So we have to recognize how can we close him down to make sure that we're not sacrificing what we actually is important to us for things that are nice to have more cash right now. And we basically said that, that's what we're going to do that January, I'm basically taking the whole month off, I don't know when this will come up is pre recorded. I'm taking the whole month off, except that for calls and in February, when I come back, we will have a really high vantage point to figure out once I'm fresh once things are smoother once the whole systems are better. Okay, what should we be going after? Or what should the project be? Because I recognize that that insecurity exhausted me in a lot of ways, and it causes me to do so much. And right now even after I've removed it, there's still some residue, there's After Effects, that behavior of what it created me, not just just fatigue. So if I can take a month off, and really just refresh, that I can come back from from and watch a much higher and like Let's call a wiser perspective of what should actually be the rocks, what do we actually want to accomplish. And I think none of this would have been possible if I didn't understand my own security that was pulling me. And the reason I wanted to make this podcast is to first off, just share this as a concept that knowing the power of your own insecurities is massive. It is so free. And as Emil is always saying, not just from a money place because you'll succeed more but from an internal place. Like I enjoy life more now. And I didn't have a bad life before I really enjoyed life. But now I can enjoy it even more because it's just one less thing pulling me in an unpleasant direction.

Dr. Emil 22:33
That's an interesting and valid point there is like an I think there's a lot of people can resonate like you enjoyed life before I enjoyed life before I did the arena life was great, particularly on paper, it can get better, and we have permission for it to get better. And we should expect and drive towards it getting better. Not just more money more time or everything. But yeah, those things as well. But also just a higher level of to use a roof raise alignment, a higher level of contentment of peace, which we almost think we don't deserve or doesn't exist.

Itamar Marani 23:09
Yeah, it's for me. It's it's, it's just more Yes. I like Novell said he said, he said happiness is peace and movement are something that is happiness, he was basically saying that in order to have real happiness, you have to have peace, that's a precursor to that. And removing a lot of these insecurities, it gives way to that, in my eyes, my experience what I've seen both in myself and other people. And that's why I wanted to share this also, just to also clarify that I still deal with this stuff as well. It's how I'm using it's it's an infinite game, so to speak. Yes, it does get infinitely easier. And I was able to actually realize myself what was going on with myself because I have so much experience with this. But if you're going through this stuff, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong, like me, I was just saying it's part of human nature. I also go through it, I have a very high level expertise in this, I also go through it. And that was a big reason. Also, I want to share this slide from that there anything you want to say as a closing note, I mean?

Dr. Emil 24:08
Yeah, there's this paradox where you need to keep growing and striving to get better while also being content in the moment. It's kind of the human paradox. Like there's always improvement to be made, but don't despair, because you can also be happy in the moments and content in the moment. This is what pieces pieces removing bullshit which is affecting you while also accepting and not beating yourself up because you're not perfect. That's peace. It's this duality.

Itamar Marani 24:38
Yeah, I guess I look at it as a simply wanting to do things from a positive place, not from a pressure of if I don't was mean or what people think. And that's that was the whole performance pressure velcro part that I was taught. Yeah, and that's how it fit in for me. Cool. So I want to leave with this one note. And again, a man who knows his insecurities The powerful man, because he's a man that doesn't behave rationally. And if you're not behaving rationally, you're employing your logic, you can achieve a lot. And beyond that, you can enjoy life. So if you don't know what your main insecurities are, it's dangerous, they will pull you in the wrong direction, just like somebody who's way overly optimistic, that's dangerous. It's the same thing here, it will pull you in the wrong direction, it will cause you to not get what you want in life and also not live the life that you really want. So if this is something that you've never figured out, and you don't know what maybe security is driving you, you need to spend the time and figure this out. Because everybody has insecurity. That's right. You don't have zero that I guarantee you. And that's what I would suggest. If you take anything from this conversation. Think about this would be if you can answer What's the main insecurity that I have is pulling me in the wrong direction. Your power goes up and up and up.

Dr. Emil 25:53
Remember that maybe this is a topic for another podcast that how, you know,

Itamar Marani 25:58
we should leave it at that topic for a different podcast, but it's a great topic. Yeah, we'll get into it. It's definitely something we can get into one

Dr. Emil 26:05
of the next spots. Amazing, great conversation. All right, man.

Itamar Marani 26:09
Appreciate you being on. See you guys next week. Bye. Bye.