Dr. John Maurice, M.C., C.T.C., M.M.C. Blog #110
I Hit A Ceiling I Couldn’t See
There was a time when I was doing everything. Every post. Every stage I could get in front of. Every early morning and every late night trying to build this thing with my own two hands. And I still hit a ceiling that I couldn’t explain and couldn’t break through on my own.
That’s a specific kind of frustrating. Not failing. Working. Working hard, working consistently, and still hitting a wall you can’t even name, because you’re too close to it to see what it’s made of.
So after years of doing it alone I hired a coach. Somebody who could see further up the mountainside than I could, because they’d actually been further along the journey than I had.
The Fear Wasn’t About The Money
If I’m honest, the money wasn’t the hardest part, it took a while to save it because it was over ten thousand dollars, but the hardest part was everything underneath the decision to spend it.
I had fear of not being enough. There was fear of being taken advantage of, because of past people who have not done the right thing by me. There was fear of not knowing enough. Three different fears, all showing up at once, all wearing the same disguise: caution. Common sense. Being smart with your money. That’s the trick fear plays. It rarely announces itself as fear. It shows up dressed as wisdom.
What I Actually Signed Up For
It took me almost a year of looking before I signed up for anything. I researched program after program, bought a few, sat through pitches, listened to promises, and tried to figure out who actually had something real and who just knew how to make something sound real.
I wasn’t looking for more information. I already had information. I wasn’t looking for somebody to tell me I needed to believe in myself more. I had already done a lot of believing, building, posting, speaking, praying, working, and trying.
What I needed was somebody who could see what I could not see, because I was standing too close to my own mountain.
What I finally chose was the Stage Accelerator, a done-with-you speaker launch system designed to help me clarify my positioning, strengthen how I showed up as a speaker, and deliver a keynote on a real stage.
But the program itself is not really the point of this story. The point is that I had reached a place where doing everything myself was no longer proof of strength. It was becoming the very thing keeping me at the same level. There comes a moment when your next level will require something your current level did not require. More humility. More trust. More investment. More willingness to admit that being capable does not mean you have to do everything alone.
I wasn’t just investing in a program. I was investing in the possibility that somebody else could help me see farther than I could see by myself. And for somebody who had learned to protect himself by relying on himself, that cost far more than money.
Letting Go Isn’t A Feeling. It’s A Decision You Make While The Fear Is Still Talking
Here’s what nobody tells you about letting go. It does not always feel like peace. It does not always feel like clarity arriving at your door and telling you everything is going to work out. Sometimes letting go feels like fear still sitting right beside you, still presenting every argument it has, while you make a different decision anyway.
I did not stop being afraid before I signed up. I was afraid while I did it.
That’s the part of “Let Go. Lead Forward.” I think people get backwards. We imagine that first we let go, then we feel free, then we become confident, and then we finally move. That is not what happened to me. I moved before the relief came. I opened my hand before I knew exactly what would happen to the seed once I released it.
Maybe that’s what letting go really is. Not the moment fear disappears, but the moment you stop squeezing something so tightly that nothing new has room to grow.
Applying The Five Moves To The Moment I Almost Talked Myself Out Of
Diagnose. I named the actual fears instead of letting them stay as one big cloud of hesitation. Not enough. Taken advantage of. Don’t know enough. A cloud can surround you. A list can be confronted.
Decode. I asked whether those fears were telling me the truth about this decision, or the truth about my past. The fear of being taken advantage of wasn’t about this coach. It was an old experience recognizing a familiar shape and trying to protect me from ever feeling that pain again.
Disrupt. I stopped letting old evidence make a new decision. Somebody else’s past behavior toward me does not get a vote on whether I invest in myself today.
Declare. I decided that investing in guidance from somebody who’d already climbed further than me wasn’t weakness, it was strategy.
Deploy. I signed up. Not once the fear left. While it was still standing right there next to me.
Knowledge Creates Possibility. Applied Knowledge Creates Change That Gives You The Power.
There is something I understand much more deeply now. Knowledge matters. Wisdom matters. Information matters. But knowledge sitting still cannot create the life you keep saying you want.
You can know the winning numbers to tonight’s Powerball, but if you never buy the ticket and never play those numbers, you wake up tomorrow with the same information and the same financial reality. You knew something valuable. You never put action behind what you knew.
You can know what conversation you need to have and still avoid it. You can know what habit is hurting you and still keep doing it. You can know what door you need to walk through and spend another year standing outside of it.
At some point, knowledge has to become movement. I believe God always requires an action. Noah had to build. Moses had to go. Peter had to step out of the boat. There was movement connected to the miracle.
In order to receive a different harvest, something in the planting has to change. Your thought process may have to change. Your patterns may have to change. That is why I keep coming back to this truth: if you change your mind, you can change your life. Every decision moves you somewhere, closer to the reality you say you desire, or farther away from it. And no matter how many decisions brought you to where you are today, you still get to make another one.
You can spend your entire life holding a seed in your hand, protecting it because you are terrified of losing it. But a seed kept safely in your hand can never become the harvest it was created to produce. Eventually, you have to release it. Eventually, you have to trust the soil.
Knowledge creates possibility. Faith gives you courage. Action gives possibility somewhere to go. And I believe that ability to choose, move, plant, and become was given to me by the God who created me.
Spanish Word of the Day
Adelante (ah-deh-LAHN-teh)
Part of speech: Adverb / interjection
Pronunciation and stress: The word is pronounced ah-deh-LAHN-teh. The stress falls on the third syllable, LAHN, so let that middle sound carry the weight when you say it.
English Meaning: Forward. Onward. Also used as “come in” or “go ahead.”
Simple Definition: Adelante means forward. In the language of this lesson, adelante means moving forward is not something you wait to feel ready for, it’s something you say to yourself and then do, fear or no fear.
Examples:
El miedo habló, y yo seguí adelante.
Fear spoke, and I kept moving forward.
No esperé a sentirme listo. Fui adelante.
I didn’t wait to feel ready. I went forward.
Adelante, aunque las manos tiemblen.
Forward, even if the hands are shaking.
Reflection: Nobody tells you that forward can happen with shaking hands. Adelante isn’t a word for the moment fear leaves. It’s a word for the moment you decide fear doesn’t get the final say.
Today’s Takeaway: Letting go doesn’t remove the fear. It removes fear’s authority over your next decision.
Bridge Exercise
Think about one decision you are avoiding right now. Not something small. A coach. A course. A conversation. A move. Something that will cost you something real, whether that cost is money, comfort, pride, or control.
Write down the fears underneath your hesitation. Do not just write, I’m scared. Name them. Are you afraid of failing? Afraid of being taken advantage of? Afraid you are not enough?
Then ask yourself: is this fear telling me the truth about what is happening right now, or is it telling me the truth about something that happened to me before? What is this fear trying to protect me from, and does that danger actually belong to today?
Do not shame the fear. Understand it. Then decide whether it deserves authority over what happens next. You can hear it and still move. You can have shaking hands and still open them.
Then decide. Not once the fear disappears. While it is still talking.
Identity Affirmation
I do not wait for fear to leave the room before I make my next move. I can acknowledge fear without surrendering my authority to it. I can learn from my past without allowing my past to control my future. I can receive guidance without believing that needing help makes me weak.
Knowledge creates possibility, and I am willing to put action behind what I know. I can move with shaking hands. I can plant before I see the harvest. I can release what I have been gripping too tightly.
Letting go and leading forward are not two separate seasons of my life. They can happen in the same moment. Fear may speak. My past may speak. But they do not get the final word. And when it is time to move, I go adelante.
Dr. John Maurice Seal
Like always, you already know that I believe in you. But today I want you to believe something about yourself that may be even more important. You do not need to become fearless before you become faithful to your next step. You do not need your hands to stop shaking before you open them.
Some of us have spent years asking God for a harvest while still gripping the seed. Sometimes the wall in front of you is not there because you are incapable. Sometimes you have simply reached the limit of what you were supposed to do alone. And sometimes the door to the next version of your life is not locked. Your hand is just still wrapped around what you are afraid to release.
The seed was never going to become anything while I was protecting it in my hand. It had to leave the safety of my grip before it could enter the possibility of the ground.
Maybe there is something in your hand right now that has been waiting for the same thing. When you know, move. Not because you are fearless. Because you are ready to stop letting fear make decisions that belong to you.
You are so much closer than you know. And sometimes the next level is not behind a wall you have to break through. Sometimes it is inside the hand you finally have the courage to open.
Until next time,
Love Always,
Dr. John Maurice
M.C., C.T.C., M.M.C.
Decoding With Dr. John Maurice™
This is the section where I tell you what I am actually saying in this blog.
The fear that showed up around that decision wasn’t really just about money. It was about safety. It was about trusting again after being let down before. The decision was happening in the present, but some of the fear was coming from the past.
That’s what I call your Fear Filter, my language for the way old experiences can influence how we interpret what is happening in front of us now. The amygdala is the Fear Filter. The prefrontal cortex, what a lot of people call the Third Eye, and the Warrior of Obedience, and Connection Frequency, are my own teaching language, metaphors for patterns of human experience, not scientific names for individual brain structures. Threat detection isn’t controlled by one little “fear button.” It involves interacting systems, including the amygdala, prefrontal regions, and other networks involved in emotion, memory, and decision-making.
Sometimes something can feel familiar without being the same. My fear wasn’t necessarily proving the new opportunity was dangerous. Part of it was recognizing the shape of an old experience and trying to protect me from ever feeling that pain again. Protection is useful when there is real danger in front of you. But protection becomes a prison when yesterday’s pain is allowed to make every decision about tomorrow’s possibilities.
That’s where the prefrontal cortex, what I call the Third Eye, comes in, the ability to step outside the immediate emotional reaction long enough to examine what is actually true right now. That’s why naming my fears mattered. Before I named them, they were one enormous feeling telling me, don’t do it. After I named them, I could question them. A cloud can surround you. A list can be confronted.
Then came the anterior midcingulate cortex, the aMCC, what I call the Warrior of Obedience, the part of this process where understanding has to become movement. Eventually, you can diagnose, decode, journal, pray, and understand something so thoroughly that understanding itself becomes another hiding place. For me, signing up was the action. The fear didn’t disappear first. My hands didn’t suddenly stop shaking. I simply decided fear could speak without being given the authority to decide.
And when those things begin working together, the honest diagnosis, the willingness to separate yesterday from today, the decision to move anyway, that is what I call the Connection Frequency, that moment when what you know, what you believe, and what you actually do stop fighting one another and begin moving in the same direction.
You do not have to eliminate fear to eliminate fear’s authority. Your past deserves to be acknowledged. It deserves to be healed. But it does not automatically deserve a vote in your future. That’s the work. That’s the Clear Mind Connection.
If what you just read in this Decoding section changed something in how you see yourself and how your brain actually works, I want you to know this is just the beginning of what is available to you. The Clear Mind Connection trilogy was built specifically for this moment in your life. Book One, If You Change Your Mind, You Can Change Your Life, gives you the foundation. Book Two, Delay Does Not Mean Denial, heals the places where waiting almost broke you. And Book Three, SHINE, is the book you are holding when you finally stop hiding and start living like who you actually are.
All three books are available right now on Amazon.com. And every Sunday at 9AM PST a new teaching is waiting for you only at www.iamjohnmaurice.com.
If you liked this blog and would like to go deeper, check out my books on Amazon.com.
You have the system now. You know how to catch it, stop, breathe, regroup, and keep moving forward. The only question left is whether you are going to use it.
I believe you will. I always have and I always will. Because I understand that the only thing missing is the right thinking operating system to reach your desired reality. And now you have it.
Until next time,
Love Always,
Dr. John Maurice
M.C., C.T.C., M.M.C.
