WHEW!

For all of those sleepless nights that you and I face at the thought of doing something that scares the crap out of us, have either of us ever experienced a time where, on the other side of that fear, we find that that thing wasn’t worth doing, or it confirmed our fears and we wish we hadn’t done it?

In my case, to answer my own question, it’s been a whole week since I released the first episode of my brand new podcast, and no one has yet called, text, emailed, or come up to me and laughed in my face, saying things like “you sounded so retarded,” or “nothing you said made any sense at all,” or even worse, “I hope you realize how bad that was and never do it again!” The lies that the devil (and our own mind) tells us are some of the harshest things you’ll ever hear! But it’s true… Those thoughts were bouncing around in my head for several weeks, if not a month or so! Most of us are guilty of doing this from time to time, and I’m learning to be okay with it, while at the same time learning how to tune those thoughts out more effectively.

I wanted to make sure that I published a post this week so I could take a moment to fill in some gaps there may be in your understanding of where this is all going. Because of many factors, I’ve decided to stick with my Plan B, which is to release a podcast episode every other Monday, so you will see Episode 2 on Apple’s Podcast app, as well as the Overcast app, Pocket Cast, and the Anchor app. In addition, like last week, I’ll have a blog post here containing the “Show Notes,” which will have links to the things discussed in that episode for you to easily find!

A necessary evil that comes with producing any type of content on a major platform is for me to ask that you, in whatever podcast medium you use, PLEASE, PLEASE RATE AND REVIEW my podcast. Doing so will decrease the likelihood that my podcast will get lost in the crowd, and instead keep it higher up in the search results. To give you a better idea, you can search in Apple’s Podcast app, typing the word “Trials & Triumph” <<<(exactly like that) and the first three or four results don’t even have those words in their title OR subtitle! Then you see mine at number five or later, which, to my understanding, is not the formal ranking, but just how the search results appear. With more and more ratings and reviews, however, you can search “Trials & Triumph” and I will get closer and closer to the first search result in the list!

While I’m asking for things, I’ll go ahead and say that I know we all have the best intentions and if you’re saying to yourself, “sure, I’ll do that for you, Michael!” and then you tell yourself you’ll do it before you go to bed, and then, not surprisingly, two weeks or two months go by, and,… you know the rest. I assure you it will only take 2-3 minutes and a sliver of brainpower for you to think of a couple sentences to write and pick a ⭐️ to click! The podcast quality, as well as the content within, will dramatically improve over time. I have to ask that you understand, I’m allowing you to see much more of the learning process that I’m going through as I go along, because a big part of the podcast theme is to help you understand that we all go through hard times, or trials,… we all have to do uncomfortable things, and I want you to see me do those same things and allow you the opportunity to witness my introverted nature to be peeled back, layer by layer, until I’m much more of a natural at speaking and presenting topics and ideas, as well as leading conversations with others.

Think of it this way: I’m offering myself as a human guinea pig to show you that anything is possible!

Thank you for all of those that listened, rated, reviewed and contacted me to give your feedback (all of which was very encouraging and positive!) Episode 2 will be released next Monday, in time for your morning commute! Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful week and definitely leave a comment below if you have anything you want to say! I’d love to connect with you further!

Talk soon!