Hello friends. Welcome to another episode of uncomplicating business. I am Sara Torpey. I am the creator of selling for weirdos. I help people simplify all the things. So today we are going to talk about something that is rather personal for me, and it is what I'm thinking of as lessons in trust from a summer in change, summer of change. 

This summer, my family went through some really big changes. They were not necessarily anticipated changes. If you had asked me at the start of 2025 if we were going to make any of them, I would have said no. And now that we are in September, we are in a new house, both kids are in new schools, and there's a lot of things that are different. And what I think I have had to reflect on in the last few weeks, now that the kids are back to school, is what this summer, really, the past four or five months have taught me about change and trust. And so what I want to do today is share the three, what I think of as key lessons that I am working on, even myself, with this right now with you, because I think we're all deepening in trust all the time, right? And all I can do is share what I have.

 So I think there are three lessons in trust that I have been learning and reminded of this summer as we changed, and they are definitely things that I have been working on, because I am not perfect at this either. The first one is that feedback is not equivalent to observation, and that even if you get valid feedback, the source matters. So let me explain what this is and why it has anything to do with trust. 

The first is that we have sold a house this summer, and what we got a lot of from people was observation disguised as feedback. So people would say, I have some feedback for you. I don't like the street that the house is on. We're like, well, that's not feedback, because it's not actionable. That's an observation, right? If they said, you know, Hey, would you consider staging this differently? Or hey, would you consider painting this it might show a little better. Or hey, could you do X or Y or Z in the yard? It might change some things. That's all stuff we can change. But when somebody's like, well, I don't like the way the layout is, that's not feedback, that's observation. But even that being said, sometimes we got feedback that people would say, hey, what if you did this thing a little differently? And then you have, we had to decide if we trusted the source. Sometimes the answer was yes.

 There was like an expert in space or someone who sold a lot of houses or a friend or a family member or whatever. And sometimes it was just like noise from the peanut gallery, right? And not every piece of feedback was valid. Sometimes actually the the thing that was interesting, and this is the trust that I am kind of reckoning with now, is sometimes the feedback we got was to not do something we had been thinking of doing to the house. And now, in retrospect, we should have right, like I should have trusted my own self, because I think the timing would have worked differently, or maybe it wouldn't. I think the timing is the timing is the timing. 

But you know, there are things that we did eventually that I had on my agenda to do sooner, and someone somewhere said, Hey, you don't need to do that yet. And I didn't trust my own self in knowing the process, so we didn't, but then we had to, like, scramble at the last minute. So what I think, the important part of this for me that I'm walking away with is this idea that, you know, when somebody offers you an idea or a thought. You know. The first question is, is it feedback, or is it an observation? Like, is this just them telling me their thoughts and feelings, or is this something I can take action on? And the second is, if it's feedback, is it from a trustworthy source? Like, can I trust it? Does it jibe? Does it jive with this thing the way I've been thinking about it, or does it feel like I'm running into something that conflicts and sometimes conflict is okay.

 We need conflict to challenge our ideas about ourselves. Because if somebody says, you know, that should be blue, and I thought it should be green, but blue is going to work out. A ton better, great. But at the same time, if you run into a conflict, is like, is this a growth moment for me, or is this conflict something else? And to be able to trust yourself to know that there's a difference and that you'll recognize when you know the feedback is something that you can let go of because you trust your own instinct or your own knowledge more than that, feedback is important, and there are a couple of cases where, sort of, in retrospect, I wish I had trusted my own knowledge and my own sense of things rather than the feedback. And I think you know, but the whole process is perfect, right? So I can't change any of that. 

The second thing is when this is a little tricky. So I think this summer of change overall, for me, was an example of when things are new or changing or different in a big way, trust returns to being a practice. And what I mean by that is like I practice trust all the time, like I feel like I am pretty solid in trusting myself as a business owner, as a parent, and then at the start of the summer or the end of the spring, we decided to sell a house and buy a house and change everybody's school, and I felt like I didn't know how to trust anything all of a sudden, and I've really had to. It took me a little while to notice it, first of all, which I think is interesting, and the second is that I had to sort of step back into learning in, in, like, literally practicing trust, as in, like, as if you'd like, practice dribbling a basketball, like you do it at the first time, and you're like, really bad at it, and then you get better and better. 

I have had to sort of start what felt like new in some areas of trust, and it isn't new, because I know how to practice and that's what I keep coming back to. I know how to practice trust. And so for me, I think when circumstances change, what happens is our practices have to evolve to meet them. So maybe you feel really good and strong in your trust as yourself, in yourself as a business owner, your trust in yourself as a parent, and then something changes, something evolves, and suddenly you feel like you're you're not as sure as you were before, like every day in parenting, but whatever. And I think that you know to remember at that point that you know how to practice trust, and it is just a practice. Is like, oh, okay, I can go back to the habits that I have that support me. 

It's meditation for me, it's journaling, it's walking, it's just like pausing and being like, Wait, why am I all wrapped up in this and like, what am I trusting? Here is a question I ask myself all the time, like, Can am I trusting this? Like, what do I want to trust here? So for you, when you feel like you're back at square one, how can your practices support you? Okay, that's two and three is, oh, I don't like this one for me or for you, but it is true. 

Are you ready asking for help is a practice of trust. This last four or five months for us, I have had to ask for a lot of help from you know, hiring people to help us with things to paint to yard to real estate to lawyer to you, name it, to asking friends for help with rides to for kids, for, you know, asking people to just be like, Can I, can we go hang out for an hour? So, like, be somewhere else for a little bit, you know, to letting the timeline work out and and asking for help to say, like, hey, this isn't going to work for us. Can you help us find a different way? Listen, it's a practice. It is a practice in trusting yourself to know what you can and cannot handle, what your expertise extends to and what it does not. Those are two kinds of trusts, and then also trusting that you know who in your world is trustworthy for a given question or not, right? I was just talking to a friend earlier today
about how we don't we know, like which friend to take which thing to right? Women tend to know that. 

I think you don't take everything to everybody. And so this has been kind of the same. I've had to practice like, Who do I ask for that? And who do I trust if I'm asking for that? And what does it look like? You know, what do I expect? What do I want to do for them in return, if I need? To do something in return, because you don't always need to do something in return. 

Sometimes that all takes care of itself. So for me, I have really had to practice the act of trust in myself and other people that is asking for help, because we couldn't have done this otherwise. And you know, I know that asking for help is hard, but when you think of it as a practice, just like anything else is, that really changes things, at least for me, and it's like, oh, I'm practicing, learning to ask for help, and practicing asking for help and trusting myself to know when I need help. That all really matters. So for you today, if you're in the midst of big change, or even in your in the midst of day to day, because let's be real, it's always changing all the time, remember that, you know, feedback is great when it's not observation and when it comes from a trusted source. 

So it's you know, do you trust it? What do with it, that when change happens, especially big change, we have to practice trust in a new way, and that when we are practicing trust in a new way, asking for help is also a practice and trust sort of that's the synopsis for today. And you know, if one of the things that you want help with right now, and I'm going to transition a little here is simplifying and uncomplicating your business. Please come join us in group coaching. The applications for group coaching are open right now. They close October 5, and which is next week in the uncomplicating success group program, we use the four part framework that I teach about.

It's called, it's ground plan, connect, sell, to grow your business, to reduce the number of to do's on your list, to uncomplicate success, just like what it's called, and we do that in community with each other through both really intentional learning and group coaching and conversation and answering the questions as they come up, and looking for feedback. Right the the group group coaching container is where we make a plan, we take action, we get held accountable, and we get the feedback. It takes us, the actionable feedback from a trusted source to move forward, and that really is the goal of group coaching is to get you an action on the things that really matter for your business on the things that will help you grow and have a bigger impact and make more money. Like, that's, that's, that's what we're going to do there. 

So if that is something you are interested in, you can go to my website under the group coaching tab, and you can fill out the application. There are 12 spots. So three groups of four is when I'm running this round, and the sooner you apply, the sooner one of them can be yours. I will talk to you all soon. Have a great two weeks. I'll see you for more trust conversations in October.