Overcoming Fear with Morry Rothberg
Overcoming Fear with Morry Rothberg
Overcoming Fear with Morry Rothberg
FEAR…..what is the actual thing you are afraid of? Morry and Karla talk about this and how you can overcome your fear by identifying what that fear is.
Morry is a successful entrepreneur specializing in the security business. He is also a published author (under the pen name of M. David) who has two best sellers, “The Chase” and “The Ghost of Sheppard’s Inn”. His third book, “Cosmo”, is now under review to be made into a major motion picture. Currently, Morry he is developing a series of TV shows in which he and his co-host will address issues including “The Makeup of an Entrepreneur”, “Teenage Bullying”, and “Dealing with Dementia”. He is a firm believer that the fear of failure should never interfere with pursuing a dream.
Facebook: M. David
Amazon: “The Chase”
Listen to the podcast here:
Read Along as Karla and Morry discuss Overcoming Fear
Karla Nelson: And welcome to the People Catalysts’ Podcast, Morry Rothberg.
Morry: Hi Karla, how are you? It’s so nice to join you in our little talk. I’ve been looking forward to this and I can’t wait to be able to be part of your conversation.
Karla Nelson: That’s absolutely fantastic, Morry. Tell us, how did you get from doing security basically, that’s your background to this two-time bestselling author of The Chase and The Ghost of Sheppard’s Inn. And so you’ve got to share with us what that transition looked like.
Morry: Well, my story is kind of odd, but I guess it’ll be interesting. I’ve been working since I was 13 years old in various businesses. I learned how to play the piano. I played cocktail parties. I had a music school. I taught piano. I had a recording studio. I can just go up the ladder and a lot of people say, “Whoa, what’s what’s going on with you.” But the reason that I was able to do these things is at a very young age I’ve learned not to fear my progress.
Karla Nelson: Oh, I love that. Don’t fear your progress.
Morry: I never worried about things that could go wrong. I only thought about what could go right. And what drove me in business, and I’ve allowed me to live my dreams. Some people didn’t understand them. And that was okay. There are many times you see different people in life who I call naysayers. They can’t imagine that you could be successful in different areas. Not that you don’t have the ability it’s because they don’t have the ability, and they can’t picture someone else with that ability. And they look at someone progressing as actually showing them their own failures. You see if one person progresses and the other person doesn’t, the person that doesn’t progress, they look at that and say, “Well, what am I doing wrong?” So, if they can actually prevent somebody from becoming successful in their own little way, they prefer to do that because they don’t want to show that they can’t do it. They don’t want to be on the bottom rung of the ladder while someone is at the top. They want to keep you at the bottom rung just with them. And I’ve learned not to listen to those people.
Karla Nelson: What are your best strategies that you can share with listeners in regard to, “You know what? I’m not going to go down that road. I’m going to do something a little bit different.”
Morry: Well, first, you have to have confidence in yourself. Some people find that they don’t feel that they’re smart enough, they’re educated enough. They have these abilities but they’re not quite sure they can do it. Well, certainly a person that doesn’t have confidence in themselves, they’re afraid to take the step. Now, there are people that are overly confident, and they take steps all over the place and they trip over their own feet. So, you have to find that happy medium of knowing your ability, gathering the knowledge to help you, and then proceed. Not blindly, you proceed cautiously, but you always take the step forward. You never retreat. Now, certainly different things in life you will come up against where you say, “I don’t have the experience. Like I can’t keep this up.” And you have to know, like the old card, you have to know when to fold them. Just because you fold them doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play the next hand.
Karla Nelson: So, having that confidence in yourself, overcoming being afraid, but not retreating absolutely is a piece of that. So, share with us a little bit about your strategy associated with the underlining tone with those books.
Morry: Well, first of all, the interesting thing about it. When I started writing it wasn’t because I wanted to be a bestselling author. I started writing because I recognize my children at a younger age, didn’t have the type of books to read that I thought were appropriate. When I was growing up, I read problem solving books, which is what made me into what I am today. Those books were mysteries, were perhaps The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew-
Karla Nelson: Yeah. There was something to solve for sure. I loved Nancy Drew when I was a kid. There was always something you were looking for.
Morry: Those books actually showed me that with the proper direction, you can solve a problem. So I learned that at a very young age and thank God I had those books to help me along. Now, what had happened was when my kids were growing up, those books weren’t available. There were some wonderful books, Goosebumps, Harry Potter, certainly wonderful books, but they have the problem-solving aspects that I thought were necessary. They had excitement. And in some respects, they scared the kids to death was kids thought they liked that until they had nightmares when we went to sleep.
So, I recognized that maybe I can write The Hardy boys, Nancy Drew, those types of books, but modernize them. But I had to make it that kid today, who is so used to seeing these video games and there’s smart and they have smart phones, you can’t fool them. If you want to get their attention, you have to do it in a way that they would recognize that, “Wow, this is great.” And I wanted to show children that no matter how bad their lives are, if they read my books, they would see the lives of the children in my books and say, “Well, if he figured things out, then maybe I can.” The same thing happened to me with Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
If you like, I can tell you, for instance, The Chase. When I wrote that it started out as a 13-year-old boy, who’s woken up in the middle of the night by his father. And the father says, “Son, you’re going to have to leave.” And of course, the son is like, “Dad, what’s going on?” And when he’s going to goes to turn on his light, and the father yanks the cord out of the socket. And he says, “Don’t turn on any lights.” And the son’s looking at his father like his father went crazy. His father dumps out his son’s hockey bag, dumps out all the equipment, starts loading clothing into the bag, hands it to his son. He says, “And you have to leave now.” And he literally opens up the bedroom window and tells the son, “And you have to go out the bedroom window.”
Now, certainly, if your parents did that, you would think that they went off the deep end, but also you want to listen to them. So, the son climbs out the window and the father knows that the son could walk across the roof and climb down the tree because he’s seen the son do this in the past. So, he says to the son, “I know you can do it, just do it.” And the son does it. He climbs down the window. It’s dark outside and he’s waiting for his father to join him. He doesn’t know what to expect and his father’s waving him away. So, the son is now at the edge of his property, keeps on walking to the edge. And he’s like “What’s happening?” And he hears a noise. He turns around his house blows up. He has no parents. He has no home.
It’s two o’clock in the morning. All he has is a hockey bag full of clothing and he doesn’t know what happened. So here we have a child that I think that’s about a nightmare if you think about it. And basically, he can’t imagine he’s grieving that his parents just died. He doesn’t even know where to go. So, somebody reading this story will say, “Gee, this kid’s got a real problem on his hands.” And that’s the first two pages of the book. And it basically draws you in, the little boy that’s 13-year-old, his friends are being kidnapped he has no idea why. People are after him he has no idea why. And he has to work through the problems and deal with the grief.
Karla Nelson: So, share with us, Morry, share with us a little bit about the history and why. The book is absolutely fantastic. Share with us a little bit about why you wrote that.
Morry: Well, I realized I had to compete with the video games. I had to find some common elements that the kid would read the first two pages and say, “All right, I’ll read this.” So, I had to quickly get into the story and quickly grab the attention of not just the younger readers, but it’s appropriate for parents as well. And I had to say, “Okay, watch what happens here.” And each chapter actually, there’s a cliffhanger which forces you to read the next chapter, and the next chapter, and the next chapter. So I recognize that if I’m going to compete against video games and against television movies, I have to make the book just as exciting as anything they would play on a video game.
Karla Nelson: Well, I just love that. We could probably leave it on a cliffhanger.
Morry: Well, if you like, we can perhaps talk about where I’m heading now, or we can do that another time. That’s totally up to you. But I do appreciate being on the show. I don’t know how much time we have left, but if you’d like me to discuss my projects that I’m doing now, I’d be happy to do that.
Karla Nelson: Well, let’s roll. Go ahead.
Morry: Well, currently, because I’m isolated in my home like everyone else, I have reached out to many people trying to show them about problem solving, about how to address their fears. And I recognize that the books that I have written were basically for the younger generation and the movie is a family movie. But now maybe I should also address the entrepreneurs, the millennials, people who want to take the first step, but they don’t know how. And although I may not be an expert, I certainly have had many experiences that worked out well. So, I’ll just play up one of the experiences. I’m writing a book now called, Breaking The Rules, which talks about how we all have certain rules and regulations and beliefs which surround us. And some of the people, entrepreneurs especially, have learned how to break out of the box that enclose them.
They were able to step outside the box and say, “Why do I have to do it this way? I can do it this way.” And the interesting thing about it is those people seem to progress in life at a different pace because they recognize that yes, there are reasons for certain rules, but once they understand what they can and cannot do and once they understand their fears, they can master those fears and step away. And one example would be … my wife laughs at me all the time, I always said to her I had a fear of Heights and she would look in our garage and she saw four ladders. And she says, “How can a person with a fear of what heights own four ladders? It doesn’t make sense.” And what I learned was, when I would climb a ladder because of a particular job I had to do, I was afraid.
I said, “Gee, this is dangerous.” But I managed to climb up the ladder and do whatever I had to do and then climb down the ladder. And I said to myself, “If every time I climbed up and climbed down the ladder, I did the job, then why am I afraid of Heights?” And I analyzed my fear and I recognized that it wasn’t the height that I was afraid of, it was the stability of the ladder. It was the only thing I couldn’t control. When I climbed up that ladder, I couldn’t control whether that ladder would be stable enough to allow me to do my job. And when I recognized that it wasn’t heights it was the ladder, I went and bought heavy duty fiberglass ladders. And then I was able to work without fear because I knew the ladder wasn’t going to fall or collapse. And that is a lesson in life about stability.
It wasn’t a fear of Heights, it was a fear because I was afraid of stability. And that I try to teach people when I mentor them, that your fears of moving on, of becoming successful, you must first make your life stable. Once your life is stable, you can step outside the box and do whatever you want. But if you’re going to be worried about how am I going to make money? How am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? Those fears of never being able to stabilize your life will prevent you from living your dreams. So, the first thing you must do is create a stable environment for your life, but not at the purpose of destroying your dreams. You must position yourself and say, “All right, I’m going to spend half of my time, a third of my time, whatever you think is necessary, to make my life stable.” And that will give me the other percentage of my time to live by dreams.
Karla Nelson: Love that. Love that. So, what do I need to be stable in order to focus on my dreams? So that is absolutely fantastic. So how can our listeners get ahold of you, Morry?
Morry: They can always go to Facebook … I don’t know if I want to give that my cell phone number. But they can go to Facebook on the M. David – Best Selling author, M. David’s is my pen name. They can also reach me at M-O-R-R-Y-D-A-V@yahoo.com. And I take all of my readers seriously if they have suggestions for me, even if they have a question for me, I certainly respond. But I’ve been spending a lot of time mentoring people and I have to tell you that this virus has worked out to be a blessing for me because it allows me to do things that I normally wouldn’t have time to do.
Karla Nelson: Because everyone’s reaching out. And yeah, I totally understand that. So Morry, thank you so much for your time today. You’re an absolute blessing.
Morry: And I Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to you. I’ve learned so much about you and it’s been my absolute pleasure and honor to be on your show.
Karla Nelson: Thank you, sir.