Success from the INSIDE Out, Part 2: Getting Unstuck

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Welcome, welcome. Welcome to Episode 63. Today we are going to talk about part two of success from the inside out. Last week we talked about success. Success is starting to embody your expertise. So one of the keys to building success from the inside out is this making this shift from having expertise in your hand to literally being an expert to knowing your expertise, knowing the value of it. This week, we're going to talk about getting on stuck. This is another of the most important shifts that I made as a business owner what I made when I moved from teaching to business, when I moved, you know, through thinking myself thinking of myself, as an employee, as a teacher, as someone who, you know, someone else told me what to do, to being a leader in my own business to making my own decisions to knowing how to move forward. And the thing is, is, you know, it is inevitable in business, that something new is happening, and we get stuck just is like that's the truth of it. There is no world in which you build something new, you create a business, you take a new job, you have a new career, you do anything new, and you don't get stuck at least a handful probably a billion times, this is just part and parcel of what happens. And so there is this really key internal shift, because remember, these shifts, we're talking about these success from the inside out things are about internal shifts we can make inside of ourselves with that we don't need other people to do for us that other people honestly can't do for us, that are the the core of what it takes to have success for the long term. Because we can do things that create success, we can build habits, we can do these things, we can take actions to bring ourselves success. But it's really hard to hang on to unless we do the internal work to build success from the inside out. So this second shift is about moving from, I'm stuck from thinking like I'm stuck. And I don't know what to do from this sort of like, Oh, crap. Now what mindset to, I always know how to move forward to shifting into a place where it's like, always know what to do next. You know, it's funny, I saw this post on LinkedIn this morning. And the woman referred to herself as someone who, you know, learns a lot when she first started her business, she went and took all the courses. And then she finds herself always wanting to, like get the next qualification could get the next certification to get take the next course. And she refers to it as conscious incompetence. Like this idea that she thinks she's incompetent, she's stuck here, and she has to learn this next thing. And I think the first step of embodying your expertise helps you stay out of that unconscious incompetence. But also this second one, this thinking about moving from I am stuck, and I don't know what to do. And I need help. And I need somebody to fix it to I always know how to move forward. This is about really tuning into your own internal capability and resourcefulness. Because it's there. Like you're capable of you. You do a lot of things, you've accomplished all kinds of stuff, you have figured your way out of all kinds of things most people wouldn't even dream of. And yet you will allow yourself to get stuck here now in that. So for me the secret of moving from I'm stuck to I always know how to get unstuck is having a process in the process is about understanding why you're stuck. The thing that's really lovely here is that you already know how to do this. Like we all know how to do this. You don't need a new process. You don't have to learn anything new. You already have a process. You know what to do. You just don't know it yet. This is something I've had to figure out on my own. It has helped to have a coach in my corner who has said like, hey, you know, you know how to do this. When I say like bright but how does it work? They go like, Well, how do you want it to work? And I do this with clients all the time. I had a client recently say to me, you know, I need to build a process for prospecting for finding new clients. She owns a company that interfaces with corporate clients and she wants to build her pipeline and have more people coming to her. And I said okay, She's like, well, what? How do you think we make a process? And like, well, what's your process now? And she's like, well, I don't have one. Well, you have clients, and you have more clients every year. So you definitely have a process. She was like, Oh, crap. And once we really talked about it, her process was really straightforward and simple. It's just that she hadn't taken a moment to understand she had it. And so coaching really helps us to uncover that stuff, having a conversation about those things. But just in general, there's this process of understanding why you're stuck. And here's the thing, it's super simple, you're gonna be like, really. But, you know, sometimes the really simple things are the ones we overlook. So when you are stuck, the first thing you have to do is step back. And notice that you're stuck. When you're like, Oh, my God, what the heck is happening? I don't know what to do. You got to stop right there, you got to like, see the red flag that your brain just raised and step back and go, Wait, why am I stuck? Like what stuck here? Okay, so you just pause and you go like, Huh, what's happening? Take yourself out of yourself for a second. Like, imagine you're watching yourself from the outside, you know, like, out of body experience. And it's like, Well, what exactly is stuck here? Okay, so it's like, what's the problem? What's going on? Because if you can stop and know to ask yourself the question, it's like, Oh, wait. And actually, this is one of those things that we learn in coaching, we get this habit of noticing someone else helps us notice when we're doing things. And we get to build that habit ourselves. Like, I have clients that come to me now. And they'll be like, you know, I heard you in my head the other day, because I started to do this thing. And I started to get all tangled up in it. And I was like, Wait, hold on, what's happening? And they're like, and then I figured it out. So this is a process, right? So the first question is, why am I stuck? Like was happening right now? And then the second question is, why here? Like, why is this the place that I'm stuck? Because what's interesting about this question is I find with clients I find with myself, what we don't notice is the patterns and why we're stuck. But once we like, think to think about it, we see the same things happening over and over and over again, it's like, Oh, crap, you know, clients will say to me, you know, I have this plan for writing out content. And then every time I sit down, it's like, nothing is there. It's like, blank, my brain just goes like poof, gone. Or they'll say, you know, I go to make the offer, and I freeze, and then I can't tell them how much it costs, I get all this anxiety. Or they'll say, you know, I go to go to the networking event. And, you know, I sign up and everything's great. And then like, the day of I talked myself out of going time and time again. It's like, okay, wait, what's happening here? Why are you getting stuck at the same place over and over again? And noticing the patterns helps you go like, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, there's more to this. So then, once you know why you're stuck, like what stuck in why it's that place, then you get to be like, Okay, wait, so I know why I'm stuck. I know that it's happening in the same spot over and over again. So how do I want to move forward from here? Right? It's this like, Oh, now that I have a little bit of data that's like, I get stuck here over and over again. Now your brain can go into like, oh, gosh, there are options for me here. Let me try my options, right. So I find for me, for my clients. For my friends, I talk to people about this all the time, I find that we humans, particularly humans that used to teach or have a teaching degree, because we all struggle with the same stuff. Get stuck in the same places over and over and over again, for the same four reasons. There are four reasons we get stuck. Ready. The first most common reason of why we get stuck, I think, is we're waiting, and by waiting, I mean, no waiting, like for me, it tends to be waiting, you know, like it was in the last episode for somebody to come tap me on the shoulder and tell me it's my turn. I wait for permission. It's like, Am I allowed to do this? Like who said it's okay. I wait for somebody to come knock on the door and be like your turn. You're amazing. That's not gonna happen. So I wait for permission. Waiting can also take the form of like, well, but it's not quite the right time yet. You know, the timing isn't right. You're waiting for the right time. Which is quite honestly never coming. Or you're waiting for like a sigh, you're waiting for it to work itself out. Or you're just waiting. Generally you're waiting to be reasonable. And so you know, it's like, okay, why am I stuck? Am I waiting? Because if I am like, do I need to be? Is there something wrong with the timing? Is there a reason I need permission? Like, is any of that actually true? Hmm, probably not. The second reason we wait or sorry, we just get stuck. Is that we have a question Are we need help. And that's like a valid reason. But the thing is, is once we realize we have a question, or we need help, we then go find somebody to ask or help us. Sometimes we're stuck because we just haven't identified what we need yet. And once we do, it's like, oh, well, crap, I just need somebody that knows how to make that webpage. Or I need to call my friend that does this all the time and ask her how she does it? Or I need to spend an hour digging into how to use this tool so I can get everything I need out of it? Fine. It's when you identify that you need you have a question or you need help. It's like, oh, I'm not really stuck here. I know what to do next. Hmm. The third reason we get stuck, is I think, what I call the sneaky ninja of the bunch. The third reason is that we're unsure. And here's the thing, there is no way around this sucker. Like, uncertainty is just part and parcel of the game of doing life. Truth. But the problem is, is we like to have a plan. Teachers particularly like a plan, you had lesson plans that went six months ahead, come on, you know, you like a plan, you had everything laid out. It was all gonna work. It's all great. And then it never worked to plan because life doesn't work like that. But in business, what we try to do is we plan we try to plan out the uncertainty. And that's just not a thing. Like, we cannot plan away being unsure how it's gonna work out. But what happens is we wait, we stop, we get stuck, because we're unsure of how it's gonna work out. So when we're unsure, we're like, you know what, I should wait till I'm sure. But the only way to get sure is to keep going. And that's like, Oh, crap. So with uncertainty, sometimes we just have to keep moving. And we get to say to our brains, like, I teach my kids. They make fun of me, but it is what it is. When they are uncertain, and they're scared. Like, I'm unsure his fear in a Halloween costume, right? When they're scared and they're uncertain. I teach them as long as it's a safe situation, right? My advice son will be scared to go to bed sometimes at night. I'll say to him, Okay, you say to your brain, brain, and I'll go brain, I'll say brain, she'll say, brain. I'm safe. You can just be like, brain, we got this. You know, I have a coaching friend. Her name is Stephanie Spinelli, and she talks about this idea of a toddler with a knife. I don't know where she gets it. But like sometimes our brains run around like with a toddler, I could tell there was something they shouldn't have a toddler who accidentally picks up like a sharp object and is running around the room playing with it. You don't go like Oh my god, what are you doing? You go oh, hey, that's not for you. That's for grownups here. Let me take it from you hold on, and you take it out of their hand. Okay, this is the same thing. You go like, Hey, Brian, we don't need to freak out about this. It's okay, I got it. We're gonna work it out. I'm safe. And you move forward. The other the fourth of the bunch is trying to do it right. This is perfection. As you know, it's out there. It happens to me, it'll be like, Okay, I just need to do this one more time. And then it'll be right that time, like the podcast episode I recorded last week. I was like, super proud of and super happy about and then it came out. And like the sound quality is weird. Something didn't connect, right. And I was like, Oh, I gotta do that all again. And I was like, You know what? No, I don't. I was like, Nope, it's just gonna have wonky sound. I'll tell everybody. They'll love it. Anyways, the content is great. I'm gonna move on. Like, I don't let myself anymore get like tied into that. But I certainly have other ways that I tried to do it right. So don't worry. I haven't dropped perfectionism entirely. But we all do this where it's like, right, but I will keep moving as soon as I have it just perfect. It's not quite what I want yet. It's not quite ready. I can't tell anybody. This is my favorite of clients do this all the time. My friends do this all the time. I will start talking about it. As soon as I know all the details, step it you have enough information to start talking about it right now. So do that. So the process goes like this. You go like you get stuck. And you notice it. Sit back and you go huh? Why am I stuck? And if your brain doesn't offer you anything right out of the gate, you go, am I waiting? Maybe? Do I have a question? Or I need help? Am I in short? Or am I trying to do it right? Or is it something else? And then you get an answer. And you go like, Okay, what do I need to do to move forward from here? And if the answer is you need coaching, great. If the answer is you need an expert, great. If the answer is you just need to keep going. Super. The takeaway here is, you're capable, and you are resourceful. When you know that, when you believe you are capable, and you're going to figure it out, and you are resourceful, you're going to figure it out, you don't need to be perfect. You don't need to sabotage yourself, because you know, you're gonna figure it out. It might not work the first time, some things are not going to be perfect. That is okay. You don't need to press me, because it's not gonna be perfect, it's gonna be fine. But the thing to remember is that getting unstuck, doesn't have to be something you do alone. Like, I am crap at getting out of my own way, quite honestly, that is why I have a coach I meet with every week. That is why I have one coaching buddy I meet with every week and a pair of coaching buddies I meet with every two weeks, because we all get in our own ways. We need people in our worlds, to see us and be like, Why are you doing that? My coaching friends will be like, and my coach, my coach this week was like, Seriously, are you doing it like that? Why? And I just looked at her and was like, oh, oh, oh, we all get in our own way. If this really resonates with you, and you feel like you get stuck often, and you need someone in your world, to keep you accountable to moving forward and help you see the times where you need to make a change versus the times you just have to keep going, I can do that. This is part of what I do for clients all the time. It's part of what I teach them to do for themselves. So they don't need me forever. Because I am not going to work with everybody forever. That's not how this works. If you want to talk about coaching, you can come to my website, which is torpeycoaching.com. And you can book a time to chat, or you can send me an email sara@torpeycoaching. The other thing is, if this series is resonating with you, this is all part of what I wrote in a book last year called just keep going. It is a book of charts and questions. It's a workbook. It's like the best kind of book ever, because you use it for stuff. And there is a whole section in the book, a set of worksheets about getting unstuck. There's a couple sections, actually, because this is a big topic, right? So if you want to go do that work, if you'd like to see those worksheets, you can go to my website again and buy the book. Or you can do it on Amazon. It's just called just keep going. And I'll link it in the show notes. So you're capable, you're resourceful, I promise. Next week, we're going to talk about embracing failure, that is episode three of this series. And if you like this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you go to your podcast platform that you listen to it on you leave a review or you subscribe. This is part of how other people find it. And I would love for other people to be able to find it the more people the merrier, right? So thank you for listening for reviewing for subscribing. Thank you for being part of this world. And if you're not in my group, it's called teachers and business. You should come join on Facebook, because we do all this kind of stuff all the time. All right, I'll see you next week.