If you’ve been feeling frozen or you’re scared of making mistakes, failing again, doing yourself wrong or setting yourself back – today’s episode is for you.
Today I’m helping you explore the areas in your business where you feel like you have your hands tied behind your back.
These are the areas in your business where you have a deep desire to take action but aren’t letting yourself – either because of a past decision you made, a rule you unconsciously adopted or an expectation you’re placing on yourself.
Then I’m walking you through how to untie your hands from behind your back, update your decisions and let yourself freely create.
It’s an important lesson for all entrepreneurs, especially those who have been getting in their own way. Tune in today.
Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode483.
What To Do Next:
If you’re ready to get out of your own way in your business, you want to check out my program Perfectionists Getting Shit Done. Click here to sign up today: samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project, a podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionist Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business. You can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Sam Laura Brown
Today I want to talk to you about letting yourself create trust in yourself to be seen, and untying your hands from behind your back. And I’m just, I’ve got no notes. I’m just talking to you from the heart, from sharing what I’ve been thinking about and working on and helping clients with inside perfectionist getting shit done. This is a lot of the work that we do in the program, and really just bringing a few things together. And I hope that hearing this today is going to be helpful for you, especially if you’ve just been in a period where you have felt frozen. You felt scared of making mistakes or making a mistake again, scared of failing or failing again, and just scared to actually make decisions and move yourself forward, because you don’t want to do yourself wrong. You want to do right by yourself. And that makes you freeze and feel scared and stop taking action or over action and try and do all the things and be super rushed about it, and I can just, I’ve been in that deeply, and I’m coming out on the other side of that, and I just want to share something I’ve been thinking about as it relates to those things.
So I’ll start with untying your hands from behind your back. So what I have experienced, and this is just an analogy I’ve had with myself as a way to think about it and just notice what is going on. And I want you to think about this for you is, where do you feel like in your business, you have your hands tied behind your back? IE, you know what you want to do, you feel compelled to do it, but you won’t let yourself do it. Or you know that it’s a decision that needs to be made, even though you don’t want to make it, but you’re not letting yourself make it. Essentially, it’s you stopping yourself from doing something, whether it’s a joyful thing, a hard thing, a tedious thing, but you have set up for yourself parameters, rules, constraints that are actually making it feel like you can’t do something that does feel very important to you and does feel like it matters.
I’ve had this show up in lots of different ways. And the more that I can be like, Oh, I feel like right now I have my hands tied behind my back in a certain way. It really helps me to allow myself to untie my hands, and to just see that there is power in having constraints and all of that kind of thing. Also, there is power in letting yourself choose or update your decision, in letting yourself move forward and make decisions and try things. And I know that when I have been in periods of feeling like I’m failing and I don’t know what I’m doing, particularly last year 2023 I spent, I would say, a lot of the year. Well, first of all, I had the twins in February, and was just in the thick of postpartum, very sleep deprived, massive identity crisis, navigating, going from a mum of one to a mum of three and just being in the same home with the same clothes and all the same things, and yet feeling completely different and just navigating that transition, which I feel like and have just turned 18 months a couple weeks ago, I feel like I have really found myself and not like my past self, but my new self, and I feel very grounded in that I’m still reinventing myself and having it all come together, but I feel like I have really popped out on the other side of that, so to speak, and transformed.
And now my life, in some ways, is catching up to that. But anyway, I have in the last year, or in 2023 particularly, and in the beginning, I would say, of this year, but particularly 2023 just feeling like I’m failing. I should be doing better. I should be a better leader. And I mentioned a lot of this in a recent episode I did on lessons from the last 18 months. I think it’s maybe like six episodes ago at this point, if you want to hear more about that, and starting a new chapter, which I definitely feel like that was the start of a new chapter. I called it in, and I’m in that new chapter, but I felt like I had set up certain constraints for myself that didn’t allow me to create.
So one of those was doing our pgsd launches quarterly, and having to do it that way, and that was how I chose to do it in 2022 and I love doing that. We’re actually returning to doing that. But when those launches, we weren’t achieving the number of signups that we needed to to be profitable as a business that. But there were certain decisions that needed to be made as well, in terms of expenses and things like that, that I wasn’t letting myself make because I was telling myself I should be able to figure this out, and also, I didn’t let myself make money in other ways or change the plans. I just kept telling myself I should be able to figure this out and I should be a better leader, and I shouldn’t spend my time creating content or even like coaching as much I should be thinking about being a CEO and a leader and just really going into the entrepreneur side, which is important, but not letting myself be in the coach side and in the creating and like what I’m doing right now, just sharing what’s top of mind for me and trusting that is going to be so helpful for you the day that you decide to listen to this episode, whether it’s the day it’s released, or whether it’s two years after that, the day you feel called by the title to hit play. This will be the exact message that you need to hear.
So I just in my mind, had set up this constraint that I shouldn’t basically, I shouldn’t be doing the things that I do best, and those things were also very important things for the growth of the business as well, but I shouldn’t be doing them. And if we aren’t like, if we aren’t achieving our goals that we have, then I should just be able to figure it out, and we should just be able to do it next time, versus being able to be like, Okay, I can actually choose to do a different PGSD launch or do one on one coaching, or something like, I can allow myself to offer something different. I can allow myself to change the time frame. I can allow myself to make decisions about my team and different expenses that we have and how I’m operating and the tasks that I’m focusing on. I just was in my mind very much like I have to do. I have to be the CEO. I have to be doing bigger things and better things and figuring this out. And I should figure it out.
And I know if you’re the kind of person I help, you can relate to those thought patterns of I should just be able to figure it out, and then not allowing yourself to untie your hands from behind your back and figure it out. And I have created and rebuilt, or built so much self trust with myself by allowing myself to make decisions that were needed to be made, allowing myself to change plans that needed to be changed, allowing myself to just really it is like, ultimately stepping into being the CEO, which that is part of it. But when I was in this perfectionist mindset about it, of like, there’s this right way to do it, and I should just be able to figure out the right way, so I’m not going to let myself have any other option, because this is how I should be able to do it, and if I can’t, I’m not good enough, and so I need to prove myself to myself, and just all of that that I really just had this experience of having the hands or my hands tied behind my back, and feeling so frustrated by that, because I was the one tying my head behind my back, and I wanted to have them untied.
And I feel like it’s from this very protective place that we do it. We have good intentions. Our brain does. It doesn’t want us to be unsafe, to be harmed, to be in shame, to be killed and dead and all of that. Like, our brain is wired for survival, and particularly, and I want to mention the personal life aspect, because I’ve coached a lot of PGSDer and this as well, when you were having a change of some sort, some kind of life transition or uncertainty in your personal life, when we’re in this mindset of like I should be able to operate the same in my business, as if that wasn’t going on. Doesn’t make sense to think that way, and yet our brains do. But also to just know and notice that if you are going through a period of greater levels of uncertainty, newness, unfamiliarity, even if it’s really positive change, like you’ve moved country because you want to, and you’ve bought a house because you want to, or you have a new relationship and you want to do that, our brain still sees that as uncertainty unsafe and we could die.
So if you were navigating periods of uncertainty in your personal life, like I was then, it makes sense that our brains want higher degrees of certainty in our business, because if you think about your capacity that you have for uncertainty, and this is something like in pgsd you are working on is increasing your capacity for uncertainty and your relationship with uncertainty, so that you can navigate higher levels of uncertainty in your business and have them not freak you out or freeze you, and also in your personal life too, because you are also a human as well as an entrepreneur. So when you have a certain capacity for uncertainty, then it’s like if we have high levels somewhere, we need to lower the uncertainty somewhere else, and we will then try and get everything right. Never make a mistake, do what’s guaranteed, because that creates the illusion of certainty, even though, through my experience, when I am so focused on trying to create certainty, I actually stopped doing the things that really create the most amount of certainty, which is trusting myself, allowing myself to create, letting myself be seen, letting myself be visible, letting myself be known.
My brain is like, No, we can’t do that. We have to follow formulas and get it right. And that actually creates more uncertainty, ultimately, because I’m not able to produce at the same level create the same results, and my relationship with myself is definitely not as connected and supportive when that’s happening. So something to notice as well on this, and I actually coach one of our PGSDers on this the other day, like when your self image is not in alignment with having a large capacity for uncertainty, you might actually be able to handle a lot of uncertainty. You might actually even enjoy uncertainty. And I love it because uncertainty creates possibility. My brain is also like, yeah, yeah, but we want certainty, but intellectually at least, I love uncertainty because of the possibility that creates.
But what happened is that this person actually has a large, high, whatever capacity for uncertainty, but her self image was that she is someone who doesn’t like uncertainty and doesn’t do well in uncertainty. I was like, hang on, is that actually true? Is that actually true that you can’t handle uncertainty, that you don’t like uncertainty, because the way that she said it was just like, it’s a fact, like, the sky is blue, I can’t handle uncertainty. And a lot of times we like the perfectionism is us having this fear of not having enough capacity to handle a negative outcome, to handle failure, but ultimately, it can be success as well that we’re scared about handling because we’re not sure of our ability and the ability of our future self to handle uncertainty, to handle rejection, to handle shame, to handle abandonment, to handle whatever we fear might come.
And a lot of times it’s so interesting. I just I am so grateful as a coach that I get to witness this the number of PGSDers I have coached who it is clear have such levels of capacity and capability, but it is simply their self image around what they can handle that isn’t matching up. And therefore they have all this capacity to use but they’re not using it simply because they believe they’re not the person that has it, even though they do literally have it, and it’s very obvious to anyone on the outside that they do do really well in uncertainty, that they can handle a lot of it, that they can make decisions, that they can trust themselves. And yet, when our self image and self concept is I’m someone who makes mistakes and fails and I can’t be trusted, and therefore I need to do everything right, because that’s the only way that anything could work. I need to consume a lot of information because I don’t know enough, and someone else knows better than me.
When we’re in that kind of perfectionist mindset and our self image isn’t in alignment with the capacity and capability that we already have, we end up creating this experience where our hands are tied behind our back, because we don’t see ourselves as a person who can have those hands untied and handle it, or as a person who can untie our hands. And I hope that analogy is making sense, but I just noticed that, for example, like with the pgsd launches, and being like, No, we have to do a quarterly launch, and this is how we do it. I really then created a lot of stress and thoughts of financial insecurity for myself, and kind of like, backed myself into a corner that I didn’t need to be backed into and because it was done in almost like such an extreme way in my head that I froze, that I found it so hard to actually make decisions.
And like, if you looked at me from the outside, like I was still working my work days, I even worked more work days. During that time, like I was busy, so busy in my brain especially. But I wouldn’t let myself change a few circumstances that needed to be changed in order to be able to create the result that I wanted to create. I was just so set on I should be a better leader. So our team needs to stay the same. I just need to figure out my shit. I should be able to figure out how to have successful launches again, and so we have to keep similar launch dates, and I should just be able to figure it out. Versus, oh, I can actually see that like me being whether or not I’m a good leader or not, isn’t the only factor in how we operate as a team and the results that we’re creating and what’s going on or that the launch dates and having to stick to this launch plan that I made up. It’s not like anyone even told me, like you have to do it this way.
I decided in 2022 I want to do a quarterly launch because I just want to have a container for sales, and having the period where we’re building up to it, and then we have that period I can debrief and evaluate and then do it again. And I loved doing it that way, and I still do. I love having those parameters. But in 2023 I had a different thought pattern behind it, and it was, it should work. I should be able to figure it out. And I just didn’t let myself change the things that needed to be changed. I didn’t let myself update my decisions. I didn’t let myself move forward. I didn’t let myself risk another mistake, so to speak, especially with the launches, when we had in 2023 for each launch we did. We had less signups for each one.
And instead of and it’s so interesting to look at, and I wanted to mention about this because last year, when I did a debrief about the launches, or one of them in particular, I was saying, like the launch is, like we have a sufficient launch model, which we do, and we just need more leads. And what I have learned deeply through my mastermind, and just just really being able to see this through coaching PGSDers and so many other things, is, of course, we always as a business want to welcome in new people to our world. But how are you treating the people currently in your world? Are you showing up for them? Are you allowing yourself to be seen? Are you serving? Are you helping? Are you allowing yourself to try things and to potentially make mistakes and to fail and to try again and to do all of that, no matter if you have a business model that’s like mine or completely different, that what I know to be true now so deeply is that showing up for even if you have like 300 followers on your Instagram account, I’m like, Okay, I know that the people here aren’t gonna buy or aren’t my people.
So I need to find new people. When we are in that thought pattern, we are not in a place to even call in new people. We are not in the energy of service, and also in terms of our own relationship with ourself and our own willingness to be visible and to be seen and to show up and to do things, it’s really this mindset of, I like this kind of transactional mindset as well, in terms of, like, what can they give to me? And like, I don’t want to show up for the people who are currently in my world, and because there aren’t enough of them, and so I need more people like they’re not good enough, essentially, is what we’re thinking about our own people. And it’s so painful as a coach to say that, but also I want to say that because it’s so human for our brain to be thinking that way and to be as a business owner, trying to figure out the entrepreneurial side of the business and making money and all of that that it is easy at times, to focus on that a little too much, and the service side of the business a little too little.
And that’s normal, and I want to talk about it because I know, like there’s no entrepreneur I know that hasn’t experienced that many times, but it’s not something that a lot of people talk about, because it sounds not great to say there are sometimes I’m thinking more about the success of my business than your own success, and also deeply in every moment I am deeply believing in you in our PGSDers, and what’s possible, to the point that I could cry when I am thinking about that and connected to it, and sometimes my brain is like, hey, but we have to think about ourselves. We have to make sure we’re okay, and we’ve got to figure this out. And also, we want to have a business and all of this. So I just wanted to mention that because if you found yourself thinking a bit too much on the entrepreneur side, or a bit too much on the service side of your business, and not thinking about whether it’s commercial or not, it really is this beautiful mix that we want to find.
And I am still navigating that, as all entrepreneurs are, I love thinking about it like it’s not a matter of, okay, how do I balance that? And then I find the perfect balance, and that’s what I’m always in forever. It’s more this, like navigating it and a little bit too much on the entrepreneur side, and then a little too much on the coach side, and then a little too much on the entrepreneur side. And like, it balances out, but going a bit too far one way, and then a bit too far the other way is how to find the sweet spot and how to know, like I know what that sweet spot feels like in my body. It feels like what I’m doing right now, where I’m thinking about my business, and I’m thinking deeply about you, and I’m showing up and I’m sharing, and I’m letting myself be seen. And I’m thinking about also those who want to be in pgsd, who want to do this work. I’m thinking about welcoming you in, how to welcome you in and make sure you understand what’s on the line if you don’t get out of your own way in your business.
So I’m thinking about all of that, and holding all of that, but not been in this mindset of, I need to say it, right? I need to have this formula of like, this week I say this, this thing on the podcast, and then this week I say that thing. And whenever I’m in that mindset and everyone’s different, you got to look at the thoughts behind the actions and the feelings. But for me, and I’ve talked about this before, whenever I’m in that mindset of like, I need to have a content formula, and I need to figure out, like, Okay, on this day, it’s a testimonial that I share, and on this day it’s, you know, like, kind of like a pillars approach to social media, that even though I can create incredible content with that, and I can also still. Make a lot of money doing that, and welcome in a lot of PGSDers and help a lot of people with that. I know what feels truest and most magnetic for me as a creator is doing what I’m doing right now, which is, hey, this is top of mind for me. I’m just gonna share about it and trust myself to speak about it.
And even though in my brain, it feels like a big jumble I am trusting. And I know this from listening back, it feels like a big jumble in my brain because there are like, 20 tabs open of things I would love to say to you, and I know on the other end, it does make sense I would not be able to have a podcast with nearly 3 million downloads. We’re about to hit it without that being the case, so I can trust myself, even though my experience in the moment of creation isn’t of complete clarity and isn’t of complete confidence, so to speak, I can trust the feeling in my body that I have, that this is something worth doing, that this is important, that this is meaningful, and I know it just requires an extra level of vulnerability to allow myself to consistently show up in this way, and that is the work that I’m doing. And I just feel like with Instagram, for example, I talked about this a bit on the two most recent pgsd calls about my process with it and what I’m thinking about.
And I just feel like with Instagram, I have had my hands tied behind my back, even with the podcast, when I’m being like, I need to talk about this certain topic and then this one that I feel like I don’t get to share the best of what I have to offer, which is me being like. This topic feels really important and pressing, and I need to talk about it with you today, and with Instagram I and I was thinking about this morning as well, because I used to share a lot on stories and just sharing, like, here’s what I’m up to. Here’s kind of like, what my day looks like, here’s what’s up of mine, for me. And I then decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. And there are certain elements that I want to stand by, like, I don’t want to show a lot of my kids on social media. That’s just not something that I’m wanting to do personally and have my content be around my kids. Also, I do still want to show me on there, and because in my brain, the thought had been I don’t want to have to film every moment.
I don’t want to have to show up every day on social media, and so I can’t do it at all, and I want to figure out how to not have the business rely on me being on social media and me doing my stories that I think when I do them fully and let myself be seen, I think they are perfect for the person in pgsd is perfect for and that they are very powerful for the business, and very powerful for helping current PGSDers and future PGSDers create results in their business. But I have had my hands tied behind my back by myself because of this thought error about having to either document everything, and then, like, if I’m going for a walk, I’m like, Oh, should I fill myself a bit of this walk? And by the way, that’s for like, two seconds, like, or 30 seconds, or whatever the clip would be, but, and it’s really just a matter of finding systems that support it and allowing myself to solve for that.
But when I’ve been in that all or nothing perfectionist mindset about it, like I’m either sharing everything and every moment, I have to think about, like, Could this be content, or I’m not sharing it all, then I haven’t allowed myself to actually just show up. And also, social media, I don’t believe is essential for business, in the sense that there are so many ways you can build a successful business. Social media, you don’t have to be there, but I do want to be there. And the drama I’ve had over the years with it is I want to be there, but I won’t let myself be there fully. And that causes drama because my hands feel like they’re tied behind my back, but I’m like, but I don’t want to leave. Because I do want to be here, but I’m not going to let myself actually be here, because that’s scary to my brain also, a lot of it is it feels so easy to do that that my brain’s like, no, no. We must complicate this. We must figure out this perfect content plan and strategy and make sure it works and say the right things, versus like I could just show up and share and know that my deep belief in pgsd, my deep belief in you, my deep belief in Me, will call in the right people to pgsd that we can help get out of their own way.
We can teach them power planning and self trust and aligned marketing and all the incredible things that you learn in pgsd and the results that you get. It’s lifetime access. It’s amazing. So I can trust myself to create top of mind, to share what’s going on, to talk about my business. I love the thought too, and I know that if you’re my person, you will deeply agree with this. There is nothing I could share about my business that for my best client, for the person I’m best positioned. To help. There is nothing I could share that would turn you away. The more I share, the more real I am, the more in terms of like I want to do an episode like sharing all the numbers and all the different things and that I hadn’t let myself do that when I wasn’t feeling as successful. And I mean, I shared my numbers way before I was ever feeling successful, but it was almost like once, like in 2022 we made 600 as a business had 300,000 profit.
And then it’s almost like at that point, my brain was like, Okay, this is the new bare minimum. This is the new like baseline. If it’s anything less than that, you are severely failing. And so last year, when we made 320,000 and then we had a $150,000 loss as a business. So our expenses were 320 plus 150 so 470,000 and a lot of that being in the team side of the business, that I just felt like I had my hands tied behind my back by myself, of like I can’t share the numbers anymore, and I love sharing the numbers. I love this being a place where you can come to hear what it’s actually like to be a real person building a business. I love that so much. And even last week, I was like, I want to start a podcast. Maybe I’ll do this in the future, but I want to start a podcast where it’s just like a weekly behind the scenes update of my business.
But that idea, I can see, is coming from me, not actually just letting myself share that as I used to on this podcast. Like no, I have to share whatever different topics and whatever different things. It’s not even like I have anyone specific telling me anything like that, my brain is just wanting to create certainty after what feels like making some big mistakes, which I’d always part of entrepreneurship, but they’re still painful, and having some big failures and just feeling like I knew what I was doing and I didn’t know what I was doing, and now I’ve returned to I do know what I’m doing, and I’m fine with feeling uncertain, and I can handle that. I have the capacity for that. I also have so much to learn, like I haven’t made it in the best sense, like not denying my own success, but like I am successful, and there are still so many skill sets that I am learning. There are so many skill sets within entrepreneurship.
It’s not just like, are you good at running a business or not? There’s finance, there’s HR, there’s leadership, there’s marketing, there’s sales, there’s operations, there’s so many different facets, plus whatever skill set you have. So for me, for coaching, there’s my skill as a coach, being able to hold space for someone and like be in the coaching to be able to take what I’ve coached on on the hundreds of coaching calls and distill that down into a process so that someone who can just watch a few 15 minute videos from me, can get the transformation that is part of my skill set as a coach. There are so many skill sets within coaching, and for you, whatever it is that you do, whether you’re a photographer or a naturopath or anything else, plus a skill set of entrepreneurship.
And in my brain, it was kind of like I’ve made it I figured it out, and now it’s just should be more of that, and I’ve just been like, Oh no, that’s I’m so glad that I got the lesson that that is not how it works, and that I can quote you now from such a deep place of knowing that and helping you when you are in a failure or in a mistake or a perceived failure or a perceived mistake, that you are able to regulate your nervous system, which I’ve been doing a lot of, build that self trust, untie your hands from behind your back by updating decisions or making hard decisions by changing circumstances, if you need to to allow yourself to show up and be seen and do what you do, and I just feel like it’s such important work.
And I just the number of people I’ve talked to recently as well who either want to start a business but haven’t yet, because they haven’t figured out the perfect niche or the perfect way to do it, or whatever, or they’re in their business and they’ve gotten started and these perfectionist thought patterns are making them stop themselves. I just I know the pain of stopping yourself and having your hands tied behind your back, and I know the power and the beauty of what the world is like when you have your hands untied from behind your back, and what you can create, and that is what I am here to do, and what I’m here to unlock for you.
So with that said, I just want to give you permission if you’ve been needing it to change any decisions or circumstances. Update any ideas you have that have you feeling like your hands are tied behind your back that, oh, I can’t do this. And even if you just want to write a list of here are the things I can’t do in my business, but I would actually love to do. Or here are the things I wish I could do. Or here are the things that no longer feel aligned with me, but I feel like I should do them and trusting yourself with what comes up. So something that was really interesting for me, and has been something that I’ve been thinking about a lot, also coaching on a lot as well, is when it comes to voices in your brain about, like, fear and doubt and like, Should we do this? Or I don’t think this will work. What I have really just thought about in the past is really creating belief of it can work, and all of this kind of thing, which is important.
And there’s definitely a time and a place for that, 100% and also lately, what I’ve been doing is when my brain offers me something like, I don’t think this will work. So like my brain was saying that yesterday, for example, it says it many days. My brain was saying that yesterday, that this won’t work. And I was thinking about my goal for a million dollars in this financial year. You can’t tell by the accent I’m Australian. I’m in Australia. So our financial year runs from first of July to 30 June. And my goal, our goal, as a business for that year, is a million Australian dollars. The like, when I was thinking about it, the doubt that I had of like, this plan I have isn’t going to work. Instead of being like, no, it can work. It can work.
And kind of like hyping myself up, I was like, hmm, okay, does my brain or my body know something about this that I need to know? Like, is there some wisdom to that? And not in a sense of, okay, it’s not going to work, so I shouldn’t do it, that all or nothing mindset is either going to work and I should do it, won’t work, and I shouldn’t do it, but Okay, what about this plan is feeling off. What about this plan isn’t in alignment with my million dollar goal, because my brain and my body, I can like feel that in my body, my body is telling me that this plan isn’t going to get the business to a million dollars in a year, and within the parameters that I have, so three work days per week, selling it in a way that’s in alignment with my values, which means selling to people that I deeply believe we can help, like just the values we have as a business, our integrity, like being your word, is a very important value, all the that kind of thing.
So it’s not just like a million dollars for the sake of it, or a million dollars any which way, but a million dollars in my ideal work hours in alignment with our values, serving the people. So that’s 200 PGSDers serving the people that we’re going to serve, calling them in, having that be aligned, and all of that. And so I was like, hey, brain, I hear you saying this isn’t going to work. Tell me more about that. What specifically isn’t going to work. And when I dived into it, it was simply like the plans we have for pgsd launches and things we’re doing with our email list and different things like that. It’s like the plan in terms of dates and like, logistics works. But what was off was my energy and my thinking about it, that kind of thinking I mentioned, of like, what’s in it for me, and not wanting to show up and be seen unless it’s like, I’m just wanting to have safety, essentially, wanting to have, like, Okay, if we post this kind of thing on this day and all of that, then we like, I could just feel like I have my hands tied behind my back, and it’s going to stop us from getting to that goal.
And it’s not because, oh, we’re doing the launch for pgsd starting on, I think it’s the 18th of October. Sign up for the wait list. But we’re doing the launch PGSD on the 18th doctor. It’s not like, okay, but that actually needs to start on a Friday instead of a Wednesday or whatever. None of that. That doesn’t matter. It’s the energy that I’m in. It’s what I’m believing about myself, about my business, about my program, about you, about what’s possible, about my relationship with marketing and sales, about my relationship with money as well, like, it’s all of that, and I could just feel that my energy was off. And that doesn’t mean like, Okay, now go away to a cave and get yourself in perfect energy and then come out again. But for me, I know the way.
And I’ve now been in business for more than 10 years, I know the way to have myself be in that energy is to just untie my hands from behind my back and do the thing. And in that case, that’s like this, me just saying to myself, Oh, I just want to record an episode about untying your hands from behind your back, and I didn’t even plan to have that be a main topic in this episode. It was just trusting yourself to create and be seen. And I’m just going to trust myself to create and be seen with this episode and in 2022 for those listeners who’ve been around since then, I talked about, like with needle movers, that’s something we talk about figuring out what’s essential to achieve your goals and what isn’t, because our perfectionist brains love productive procrastination and just being busy with things that don’t matter.
So identifying your needle movers is something you learn how to do inside pgsd. I just actually created a new bonus that’s in pgsd, a needle mover masterclass with a needle mover matrix to help you. So if you’re in pgsc, definitely check that out. Really excited for that. But in 2022 I was saying that the like, I was spending a lot of time on Instagram, yes, also scrolling and distracting myself, but I was spending a lot of time creating, but it would just take me one to two hours to create a post. And you wouldn’t know it from the outside, like you can see some people’s reels and things like that. We like, oh my god, especially fashion creators, where you’re like, oh my god, that would 100% take a lot of time you like, in 10 different styles outfits, like I saw this one the other day, that this fashion creator. I don’t even know who is, but he was dressing up as different fonts, and had, like, styled an outfit for, like, Times New Roman and like, all these different things. I was like, holy shit.
Like that is a production piece to do that. But for these posts I was doing, it wasn’t like that. It was a simple graphic and a caption. And I was telling myself, like, that’s not a needle mover. I shouldn’t be spending time on Instagram. And this is something that came up on this week’s PGSD call as well. Like, making yourself wrong for doing the right thing and being all or nothing in that sense, instead of being like, Okay, this actually is a really important activity for the business. Also, like, not because I have to be on Instagram, but as a creator and a coach, having interactions with people really fuels me and getting to just like, throw out my ideas and hear what comes back. Like, that’s how I have been able to create a lot of things that I have created, because someone’s been like, Hey, can you talk more about this? Or a lot of people, like, with power planning, it was something that I didn’t even talk about a lot for a long time, because I didn’t even think people would be interested. And then I started talking about on Instagram, and was like, Tell me more. Like, okay, I didn’t realize everyone was so interested in this thing.
So with all that said, I was in the all or nothing mindset about like, this thing either is helpful or isn’t helpful, and I should do it, or I shouldn’t versus this is really helpful. And the way I’m going about it, I feel like I could get a better return on investment for my time, like I’m feeling like I’m overthinking it and trying to perfect it and polish it, and I would like to be more self trusting with my Instagram content, but it’s still a helpful thing for me to be doing, and even in terms and this is going to be different for everyone. You might not even be on Instagram as a business, that’s totally okay. Just apply this to whatever is relevant for you. So for myself, when I have thought about Instagram just being like repurposing podcast episodes and emails, I can do that, and that’s great. And there are times that I definitely do that kind of thing, and I repurpose all posts and things like that. There’s so many options, but what actually is most fueling to my creative process is sharing my ideas and really thinking almost like specifically for someone on Instagram and also sharing other stuff as well, but just allowing myself time to create directly for Instagram.
And it’s not because I should do it. And when I’m in this mindset of like, I have to do this kind of post and that kind of post, it’s not as powerful as when I’m like, I’m just gonna let myself share. I’m gonna let myself create, and I do really well with having flexible structure. So when it’s just like, okay, wake up today and post something, it’s almost like too much of a blank canvas for my brain that I find it really challenging. I can coach myself on that and figure that out. But what has worked so well for me, for the podcast and for emails as well, is I know I have decided. That’s why I know, because I have decided how often we do a podcast episode and what the format is. And I know like I’m not starting with a blank slate, I know that we do a podcast episode every week. Again, I know that because I decided that.
So if you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s just because you haven’t decided what you’re doing. The knowing comes from deciding, and you have to decide instead of expecting to know before you decide. So I decided we do an episode a week. We used to do two episodes a week when I wanted to create a higher volume, just because my brain was like, Oh my God, if I do a weekly episode, they have to be really good. If I do two a week, it’s okay if it’s shit, because that other one coming in three days or four days. So having that higher volume really helped me develop experience like twice as fast in podcasting. It just helped me release that perfectionism handbrake, quantity over quality. Can really help with that, and helps you to create high quality. Because if we do such a low volume of work, it’s really hard to get enough practice to create high quality, and it might feel perfect to us, but it’s not actually going to be high quality if we haven’t done much practice at it.
So now we do one episode a week, and I know what time that’s released, and I’ve just decided like the format is like this. It’s chatty. I’m sharing what’s top of mind for me, something that I either self coach on or coach a client on, and episodes like this I love the most. I don’t have any notes. I’m just talking to you. And I also do love episodes with some notes to it, but trusting myself today is this an episode where I want to have a few notes or no notes, and I know the realms of what I’m talking about, perfectionism, business productivity, because it has such a big impact on your productivity as a business owner. So that’s the realm, and my own personal development mindset, self coaching those topics. So that’s all decided, and that allows me a blank slate, but not too blank.
So when I have been like, okay, and I need to figure out, like, the next 15 episodes, I’ll do one on self trust, and then I’ll do one on overthinking, and then I’ll do one on procrastination, and I’ll do one on whatever I can do that, and it would be really helpful for you. And also, I just end up feeling like I’ve got my hands tied behind my back, and I am now locked into saying things that I don’t feel compelled to share, instead of trusting myself, that, like naturally, as I coach and self coach all of those topics, there will be a moment for each of those topics where I have a moment that I’m like, I have to talk about this today. Like I am with this today. I’m like, I have to talk about this.
And even this week, I just want to wrap up by this thought we can have of I’m going to do wrong by myself, or I might make the same mistake again, and that fear and that like freezing that comes from that, or over actioning and just being so busy and trying to do all the things and get it all just right, and all just polished and all just perfect. That earlier this week, I was deciding about the podcast episode for next week, and I was like, okay, I can feel that I have some resistance to doing a best of the podcast episode where I share. I’ve got nearly 500 episodes where I share an episode that I don’t want to get lost in the archives, that I reference to people a lot, and I want to have it be available to everyone to listen. And I felt like I had this, just this feeling of like I can’t trust myself to do that, because when I was doing that in 2023 it wasn’t from a great place.
And so it’s not whether doing that is right or wrong or anything like that, but what are the thoughts behind it? And I could just feel like it was a bit off the way I was thinking about it. So I did some self coaching on it, and I looked at, what are the thoughts that I’m having about repurposing an episode? And it was kind of this idea of like, oh, I should be doing new things, and I should be creating again. And it also feels like having my hands tied behind my back to not allow myself to do a best of the podcast episode and have that be shared. And a lot of them are really popular, because I’m sharing episodes that have been really popular. People haven’t listened since the beginning, people who have want to listen again.
And so it felt like having my hands tied behind my back not to share it, but also having to record felt like having my hands tied behind my back, like just basically all these different ways. Felt like I’m having my hands tied behind my back. So I did some self coaching on it, and was like able to tell myself on how it’s really valuable for you as a listener. And then today, when I was thinking about it, it was and what had me pick up my microphone and record this, even though I’ve already recorded an intro for that other episode, like it’s with our Podcast Producer, and that can be a future episode that we pull out. But I think the reason that I was feeling out of alignment, whatever you want to say, with doing that, was simply because of the way I was thinking about myself in relation to like, choosing to do that last year and not really understanding where that thought pattern was coming from.
But essentially, last year, a lot of the times that we did that, and it still is so helpful to you, but I hope it’s helpful to hear me sharing about this as well. In hindsight, I can see that I was thinking like, I shouldn’t be creating. I should be being a CEO. I should be leading, I should be hiring, I should be focusing on the launches, and I shouldn’t be doing the podcast episodes, which is such a big driver as well of the business, to say, with Instagram and email. But I was like, I shouldn’t do that. So I was making myself wrong for doing the right thing, and that makes it very hard to have great ideas and share them as well. So I had less ideas, because I just shoot them down before they even became conscious. And if they became conscious, I’d shoot them down, or I’d spend, like a whole day recording an episode, because I had to get the writiing just right. And it was very frustrating.
So when I was looking at it this week, I was like, oh, it’s actually just trusting myself to record and record episodes like this. It’s trusting myself to do the best of the podcast episode. If that feels aligned, it’s just trusting myself. And I hadn’t been trusting myself as well, because when I made that decision last year, it was from a place of not trusting myself. I can’t trust myself to create I can’t trust myself to spend time on that, because I’m doing wrong by myself. And just be paying attention to when you are making yourself wrong for doing the right thing, which is the equivalent of having your hands tied behind your back, like when I’m making myself wrong for going on stories, or I’m making myself wrong for changing the pgst launch schedule, or I’m making myself wrong for letting go of a team member when it no longer works for the team and the vision of the Business or the profitability of the business, and so let yourself, untie your hands, update your decisions, move forward.
And it’s all in trusting that you will support yourself no matter the outcome, and yes, also in enjoying the process too, but trusting yourself to support yourself and get support when you are in failure, because you will be again when you are in a mistake, because you will be again, because that is the nature of trying and going for it and being all in. There is no being all in without mistakes. And so I feel like I’ve had one foot in, one foot out, and I’ve just been like frustrated at myself as well because of that. And it’s just, I think, that perfectionist entitlement to of like wanting, like just wanting a result, frustration coming from wanting to have this result that you’re not working to achieve. And you know, deep down, you’re not working to achieve it and doing the things, even if you’re going through the motions and, like, posting because like posting consistently, like you know you’re not all in on it, you don’t have a burning desire to do it. Doesn’t mean to burn yourself out.
Does not mean that you need to hustle, but this deep desire and allowing yourself to live that out that I just feel. Like I haven’t been all in because of the fear of making mistakes, and also in my brain, like associating the personal life challenges I was going through, of like navigating such sleep deprivation and like a big life transition that is almost like all tangled up with that as well, and just allowing myself to update my decisions to be like I actually do want to create on stories again, specifically for stories. And I do want to be on Instagram, specifically for Instagram. And I do want to do episodes like this, and I trust and I’m so glad that I’ve allowed myself to do this in the past, because in 2022 when we had a very successful year in the business, the most successful one to date in terms of revenue that I worked three days a week.
I had a lot of weeks off to I was pregnant with the twins. I had a six month old at the beginning of that year, and I got married that year. We had just moved into our house the December before, and we were just getting settled in. We’d just done a big renovation. I just trusted myself, because I allowed myself to. And in the past, I’ve been like, because I didn’t have much time, or whatever I had. And I think it is something to say for like, there was uncertainty in my personal life, but I also had other things. I had going on in my personal life. I was like, Okay, it’s business. Let’s just get to work.
So not to say that I haven’t had things going on as well in my personal life, but it just in the last 18 months, because for sure, I have, but when it became too much for my brain to handle, just because of my self image around what I can handle, that I wanted to just be in the business and be where certainty and familiarity was, but then didn’t want to make any mistakes or do anything wrong, and so I’ve just been building that self trust, regulating my nervous system, untying my hands from behind my back, noticing where I have that feeling in my business, where I feel like I’m stopping myself from doing the right thing just because of some rule or decision I made, and not wanting to make my past self wrong.
Updating a decision doesn’t make your past self wrong, and it is such a relief when I’ve made a decision that is an update of a past decision, it has been such a relief and has just reconnected me with myself, because then it allows me to feel safe making decisions today, because I know my future self can update them without making me wrong and coming back here and being like you shouldn’t have ever decided that. So notice that for yourself, where are your hands? Tie behind your back. What simple things can you do to untie your hands? Trust yourself again and create I hope you’re having a beautiful day, and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the wait list for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today. Go to SamLaurabrown.com/pgsd.
