How to Stop WAITING

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to another episode of Teachers in Business. This is Episode 31. And this week, we are going to talk about how to stop waiting. Waiting is a thing conventional wisdom is related to waiting is something we hear a lot we hear, we should be patient, we hear that we should let it unfold as it unfold, we'll let nature take its course, we hear that we have to wait our turn, we should wait and see when we're not sure. I get it. And quite honestly, I think conventional wisdom in this case should just take a giant hike out. Waiting is a sneaky progress killer waiting in so many cases. And yes, this is like a way over generalization. And that's okay. In so many cases, the waiting keeps us safe in ways we don't need to be safe. It keeps us small in ways we don't need to be small. And it keeps us you know. Sorry. Like it keeps us I'm trying to find the word I want. It keeps us from creating the life and the business that we actually want. It holds us back. It's our progress killer. Waiting, I think is the sneakiest progress killer out there. You're like oh, I'm just gonna wait and see. Well, when you're waiting and seeing you're not doing and that's a problem. So this week, we're going to talk about how to notice when you're waiting, because I think that that's like 60% of the battle. A lot of times it's like, oh crap, I've been waiting, not doing this thing, even though I could be and I didn't even realize it. And then what you can actively do when you find yourself waiting to move past it. Because waiting is a fear thing. Like we wait because we're afraid ultimately we're afraid of like stepping out and doing this thing. We're like looking for a reason. Or assigned to tell us It's okay. And we don't have one. So before we jump into like the practical things, I want to tell you why I was thinking about this. A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a client. And one of the things she and I have been working on is helping her to be just better friends with like her business money. She is wonderful. Our business is growing like crazy. Like, it's been amazing to watch. She's doing fabulous things. And she still sort of just pretends the money part of it doesn't exist. But she still has money goals. It's really interesting. And I said to her like, I think the next frontier for you really is, is getting out in front of the money things even though I know you don't want to. And she said, You know, I wish I knew what was in my way I keep working on trying to figure out like what the thing the worry I have about money. And, and like so I can move through it and get past it. I said, Well, you know, let's think about it. So we were talking a little while. And then partway through a conversation, she told me this story. And it was about her, and about how she in the last year has really changed her diet. And the way she is eating and it's made her way, way healthier. And she's lost a bunch of weight and she feels a lot better. And she said, You know, when I started changing my diet, I just knew I needed to do it. And then over time, as I've changed it, I've learned all these things. And really I had all these realizations about what was in my way. Before I started to change she's like, but I just didn't know those in advance. And, and you know where this is going. And I said to her, but like, Don't you think it's possible, it could be the same about your money. So she was waiting to have the AHA at the front of her journey. But what she learned in her weight loss in her food journey was that the A has come once you've started they home as a part of the process, just like that we made that parallel. Pretty much she's like ah crap. Because we all you know, from the outside, it's easier to notice that right? But for ourselves. It's it's sort of painful when somebody points out to you that like you just gave me an example that proves my point for me. So there's a bunch of things for her. She's waiting to deal with the money because there's fear there. There's discomfort, but we don't get out of that fear and discomfort unless we move forward. Another good example is this yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, a month ago I decided that it would just be fun to rent a bounce house waterslide on a Sunday, and not tell my kids about it and invite over a handful of their favorite friends, and just play all day on a Sunday and like go down the waterslide a million times.

So that was yesterday, and we had a ball. It was hilarious. It was nobody's birthday, there was no cake, there was no cooking I had to do. I don't have to do a party prep or decorating or anything. We just had friends in the driveway and a waterslide. And it was a hoot. One of my daughter's friend's younger brother is an anxious kid. And he wanted to wait and see they were the first people here. And he was like, No, I want to watch all the other kids go down a waterslide. And his mom, like basically dragged him up the steps. And here's why she knows. I know, I've known him a long time. I know them very well. They're some of our favorite people. But she knew that if he waited and watched, he would just get more and more worried as more and more kids came in like that we didn't have a lot. I think there were 10 kids here. But the more he waited, the more he would be waiting, that's all. And so she sort of shoved him out of his comfort zone and made him do it the first time. And then he like, might have been the kid that went down at most over the course of the day. The first time was painful, she had to like shove them up the steps. And if you were watching from the outside, you were like what is wrong with her, but I knew exactly what's going on. Because the minute he came off the slide, he was like, Oh, that was fun. Let me go again. It just took that first step.

And then he could stop waiting and just go because it wasn't so bad. There really wasn't anything to be afraid of. So noticing you're waiting, you know, for her, her kid is seven, she could notice because she knows him like as an adult, she noticed he was waiting and hesitating. And she knew how to help. For us as adults, it's a little harder to call ourselves out. But sometimes we do actually literally have to push ourselves up the step to the slide. And the first step in that is noticing that you're waiting. So I have a couple of ways that I noticed when I'm waiting because I do it too. We all do it. One of the things that that I regularly asked myself in my journal in my notebook, like what are you waiting on? Like, what is it that you're not doing that you want to be doing? And why? So I actually asked myself that question pretty regularly. And it's an okay question to ask. And sometimes I sit there and think like, nothing, you know, but honestly, knowing me the way I do, there's always something I am a waiter like I am like a wait and see like test the water put my toe in kind of girl. So generally speaking, I asked myself that question, and I get an answer because because I'm waiting sometimes to get a bunch of answers. But usually there's one or it's like, Oh, you know what I was waiting for that to be safe. And it's, it's already safe. Like I get to decide that. The other thing that I noticed, the other way that I had noticed waiting on my own self is when I started to carry things across weeks on my to do list. So I keep a running sort of weekly list of things I'm trying to accomplish. And when there's a project that I really am excited about, that's carrying weeks a week, and I haven't started or I haven't made progress on, that's a good time to ask myself why I'm waiting there. Because that's what's happening. So if you have things that you're like, Hi, that would be so fun to do, or I really want to do this. And yet you don't start or you don't take the next step or it's not getting finished. That's the time to notice that that's happening and check in with yourself. Like why are you waiting? What's happening here. And then the third thing I catch myself in and I catch clients in us all the time is they say, you know what, I'm gonna do that when I I think of him, it's the one eyes. So like, we think I have to do a before I can do be really like most of the time that's not the case, we can just do that thing. And so when you hear yourself, like okay, when I get to x point when I make X amount of money when I when I have this many customers when I have this many clients when I write when I as a sign that you're waiting for some reason. The question to ask in that case is Why not now? Right? Like why not? Why Why is it when I Why can't it be now? Sometimes there's a reason it's like, okay, I can't put money in the bank account until I open bank account. But in so many cases, it's like well, I will buy that tool when I have five clients. Okay, well if you know you're going to use the tool, you just buy the tool I get it. People say to me, sometimes they'll say, Well, when I do this thing, then I'll be ready for coaching. Cool. If you already know you're ready for coaching, why is it conditional? So like trying to sell your house on contingency, it doesn't work as well, right? Like, you don't have to wait, why, you know, it's like, you're sleeping outside in the pouring rain and there's a cabin next door, you'd be like, well, when I'm dry, that could be dry, you might as well just go on the gap and the gap is dry, you need to be in the gap and to get dry. Coaching is the same. Like when you say like, well, I'll be ready to work with her. When I've done X, Y, or Z Li, you just take longer to get there, and then you don't get the help when you need. That's, that's like one of my one of my pet crusades right there. So there are all these tricks you can use notice yourself, that's the thing, it's cluing into yourself to see that you're waiting. And then once you notice, you know, ask yourself why. So I have a couple of strategies that I go back to time and time again, for when I'm waiting, when I'm like, Oh, I'm waiting. Okay. Let me see what to do next. So the first thing I do is I asked myself why I'm waiting, like, What's going on here? And most of the time, I can dig it out. Like, I'll ask clients, like, why are you waiting? And they'll say,

Well, I don't know. And then, of course, they know, like, I don't know, is often just code for I don't want to say it out loud. Or admitted to myself, like we use I don't know, as a cover for a lot of things. So most of the time, if I press it's like, oh, well, it's just really uncomfortable. Oh, well, it's just gonna be uncomfortable either way. So why would you Wait, you're like just drawing you when we wait, we make the uncomfortable last longer. Isn't that crazy? Like, we don't realize we're doing it. But we're uncomfortable for longer when we wait. Because we could have just gotten that thing over with. We've all done that where you had this thing to do that was gonna take two minutes, and you waited two hours. So you had pain for two hours and two minutes? Because once you were done, you're like, oh, that was that so bad. So the first is like, why are you waiting? And the other question I asked myself all the time is what would help me move forward? Like, what do I need to move forward? Do I Need help? Do I need to just like get out of my own way? Do I need to find something or resource? Do I need to ask for something? Like, what do I actually need? One of the other things that I think is also really helpful is sometimes we're waiting because we're just straight, like, not sure it's gonna work. So like, you're going to do something new, and you're like, I don't know, if it's gonna work out, I don't know, if it's gonna work out, I'll wait. Like, well, waiting isn't gonna ever show you if it's gonna work out, right? Like, we just don't know from there. So for me, one of the things I do in that case is I'd make a list of other times in my work in my life, in my parenting, the rest, I go look for some evidence that other times where I sort of took that first step without knowing I like stepped off the cliff. It worked out. Not saying that every time you step off the cliff, it'll work out. But every time you step off the cliff, you learn something. So for me, actually, it does work out. Because I'm always going to learn something. So what you do is you can sit back and think like, okay, where are other times where I kind of took a leap of faith, and everything was okay. Because you have you have evidence that says you can move forward. It's just that your brain wants you to wake up, it's safer, quote, unquote. And if you would give your brain some evidence that it's not safer, that waiting isn't going to help. And that waiting isn't effective. Plus that you've had other things. work when you've waited. Or sorry, not waited, like you've had things go well, when you took the leap, offer your brain a chance to listen to that. Right? Find some evidence that waiting isn't always the best deal that the best deal comes from when you take the risk. You meet the new person. You start the new business, you leave the old job, you make a new friend, you marry someone you love that you're like, oh, are we gonna be married forever? I don't know. But it's worked out so far. You get a couple of puppies. I don't know who did that me. And then the last thing I think is really helpful. Because I am a calendar driven person is that I set myself a deadline and actually not in the way you think. I don't set deadlines to finish things. A lot of times I set deadlines to start Have them. So like I know, I'm working my way through a program right now a coaching program that I'm because I'm always learning something, I think that's important. And that the next thing I'm going to do in the fall is hire some new one on one coach for myself. And so I have a deadline of September 1, where I have to start finding that person. That's, that's my plan. Like I set a deadline to start, I know when I'm going to start, and in my head, it means I'm working it out, I'm already thinking about it, you might set a deadline for taking the second step, or the first step, you might, you know, if it's a like i a couple weeks ago, ran a challenge over email that went super well was super fun. And what I did was start to publicize it. So I, I was waiting on it for a while, I'd had the idea for months, and I was waiting on it. And then one day on my LinkedIn feed, I was just like, oh, come join my challenge. It's gonna launch ga or June 14. And then I was like, crap, I just publicized it, now I have to go do it. Sometimes you got to do it to yourself. Or you might also, you know, share it with a friend. Sometimes saying it out loud, gives you the accountability that you need, what you're looking for is accountability. So it's alright, I'm going to decide by this day, I'm going to start by this day, I'm going to finish by this day, however you need to do it.

Set yourself some sort of deadline and then tell someone what you did, like accountability comes from outside and inside. Sometimes we know ourselves. Internal accountability is not always the thing. And actually, I got an email from a client this morning, thinking about her goals for the week. And one of the things she said Is she is going to start figuring out this was genius. By the way, I told her I was stealing it. And here I am sharing it. she she she was thinking about how to incentivize herself for taking risks. So in some ways, stopping waiting is taking a risk. So like if you stop waiting, and you take the risk, like what do you get? Like, what kind of treat do you get for that? Like, I have an Amazon list full of secret things that I buy myself when something good happens? Like I sit on that list, and then I use them as rewards like I'm not beyond a treat box for myself. It works for me. So how are you going to incentivize yourself? How are you going to move yourself forward in in? Do you need someone else in your world to help keep you accountable? I know I do. Sometimes everybody does. It's nothing wrong with it. Sometimes coaching is that tool. So this week, the goal is to stop waiting. Please friends, weightings that just makes everything take longer. It doesn't actually help us in so many cases, go out and try it, go out and do it. If I can help you stop waiting, this is one of my superpowers is to help people do the thing, make the progress without making a complicated in without making it as painful as you think like it's not going to hurt to stop waiting, waiting is actually more painful. If I can help you do this and I can and you want to do this work together, send a message or come to my website, which is http://www.torpeycoaching.com and book a time for us to talk about coaching together. Coaching is one of the most valuable tools. Because from the outside in, I can tell when you're waiting, I know when you're pulling the punch. And I will help you figure that out and to learn to recognize it for yourself. So you don't wait anymore. So you always are making progress in the direction you want forward actively, and that you don't have to worry about all the self sabotage that we all do to ourselves nearly as much as you would on your own. My job is to help you work that process better. So you can grow that much faster. So you don't have all the baggage with you. I would love to help you move forward sooner. Because really, teachers should be around the world, man. That's what we do here. If you want to talk about it, and listen, you don't have to wait. You can just book a call and it's okay. If you're not sure if you're ready. like nobody's ever Sure. Sometimes we just have to take the leap. If you're thinking it might be a good fit. Let's talk about it. I promise not to make you do anything you don't want to do. Alright, so enjoy the rest of your week. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.