Super Power Experts - How to Start Before You're Ready

In this hands-on coaching episode, Janice is back to learn how to add purpose and passion into an already busy life. Join host Wendy Perrotti as she walks Janice step-by-step through what to do to get started and how to keep the momentum going.

Welcome to A Glimpse Inside. I’m Wendy Perrotti. You’re listening to episode three of our four-part series on living your best life now. Janice is back with us today. In our first coaching session, we talked about the fear of failing, what it really means to be successful, and how much easier it can be to sit on the sidelines and kind of hide. Today we’re diving into one of my absolute favorite coaching topics, how to start before you’re ready. And I’m going to welcome Janice back.

Thank you, Wendy.

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I’m so happy you’re back here. I kind of preselected the topic today based on some of the things that you said in our last session. A number of times you describe yourself as a serial learner.

Yes, I am.

Serial learners and I’m right with you. I cannot read enough or listen to enough podcasts. I just am like a sponge for it. I love it. But sometimes when we’re serial learners and have a tendency to take the sideline seat, it’s really easy to feel like you’re never quite ready to get into action. But there’s one more certification, right?

Yes. I relate to that so much, yes.

One more thing to cross off the list. So probably we’re going to roll that way today, but we’ll see where you take us. Before we get started on that coaching, I’d love to hear and I’m sure our audience would love to hear, what, if anything you did with the homework. Did you noodle on it? Anything come up for you?

I did. Yes. Things came up.

Crazy how that happens.

Yeah, it really is. I think the more concrete one was a little bit easier for me, which was just noticing every single time my protective voice told me to hide. And it did. Some of it was simple in just. In my personal life, I feel like I do it when I don’t want to disappoint somebody or I don’t want to upset somebody. And if I know I have to respond to something and say no to something that someone has asked me to do, I put it off instead. I know this is going to be my answer. So why not just say it?

But it’s hard for me because I feel like I am letting somebody down. And I feel like that comes up a great deal in my work and in other things that I do, just the fear of what other people are going to think, how they’re going to react. Am I going to upset them? So it wasn’t surprising to me as I started to notice that coming up in my personal life. And then just, even in a lot of the business stuff that we’ve been talking about too, like thinking, “Oh, I should work on this right now.” Or, “Should I just go to bed?” What should I do with these precious moments that I have where I’m not working my full-time job or taking care of the kids or whatever it might be?

And I feel like I get in my head so much about like, what should I really be spending my own personal time doing, and should it be on those things that are my passions, that in the future, I could really do something to change people’s lives and impact people’s lives with? Or should I take these moments to just be? Because as a mom of small kids, it’s really hard to find that time in the first place. And I think sometimes though, I defer to it, and I choose it because it’s the easier of the two choices, or it’s the less risky of the two choices.

To just be.

Yes.

Is that what you’re saying? Okay.

Yes, yes. Yeah. So that’s what came up for me on the protective voice homework that I had. And then you asked me to redefine success without an attachment to an outcome, which as I started to think about it at the beginning, I thought it was going to be really hard. And then I thought about the second piece that you said, which was to focus on the feeling state. And I think when I thought about it that way, it became a bit easier and it kind of just started to flow a little bit more.

So for me, I guess success would be having freedom from worrying about what other people think, and having freedom. I don’t know if it’s freedom, but being able to provide for my family and still be able to be present with them, but also focus on my passions and not having anxiety around all of it anymore. But just being peaceful about it and focusing on the joy that it brings and having fun and also seeing how the things that I’m doing are impacting other people for the positive, hopefully. Both hopefully people that I would work with in the future, people that I work with now, and my family.

Okay. That is exactly what we’re talking about when we talk about defining success in a way that’s detached from the outcome, there are a couple of tiny things that I want us to tweak in here. It’s really about the language, and language is really, really powerful, especially when it’s working behind the scenes, in that like vapor of our brain, that when you’re not saying it out loud, it all just kind of gets tangled up in there. So rather than freedom from the worry about what people think, I want you to flip that. What is the feeling state when you’re not worried? We don’t want to say, “I want to feel not worried.” What would the feeling state be?

Confidence.

Confident.

So confident in your choices.

Yes.

Okay. I’m jotting these down as we go, because we’ll definitely refer back to this today. So confident in your choices. Present with the people in your life is that one is just solid. Providing, and I think what I heard you saying is that you want to be able to provide a sense of security, right?

Yes.

That’s the financial peace. Following your passion, having fun and creating an impact. So when you say it that way, we’re not worried about other people anymore. You’re not even in that old mindset. This is the step out of that. Confidence in my choices, present with the people in my life, providing a sense of security, building a secure life for myself and for them, following your passion, having fun, having impact. I think you used the word joy in there.

Great. All of these become a compass. And once you’ve got this compass, now all of the goals that you set, all of those decisions when you’re in your head, “Should I or shouldn’t I? Which choice in this moment gets me closer to my compass? Does this thing get closer to or farther from?” And it becomes this filter for how you make the decisions to move forward in your life.

And the really cool thing about using a compass to set your goals and to guide your actions is unlike having this giant plan where we write out, “Okay” Janice, you and I knew each other in a program where we talked about SMART goals. Right?

Yeah.

Everybody knows what SMART goals are. They are very effective. They’re very effective. However, they’re effective for certain kinds of things. For these sorts of things, I want to live my best life kinds of things, that’s way too complex for a SMART goal. And when you try to write out a plan, it’s almost inevitable that life is going to get in the way, and it’s going to pull you right off and you’re going to feel like you’re back at the beginning again, and then frustrated and disillusioned and all of those things. Right?

Yeah. I feel like you’re in my head right now.

It’s not just you. This is all of us. This is all of us. And so when you’ve got this compass, now each day, each moment that you make, whether it’s the middle of COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time of this recording, this is where we are right now, or whether it’s your best rock star day, where you’re just kickin it, or a day where you’re feeling kind of down, or something external has happened in your life that has completely emotionally pulled you off track, when you’re using this compass, all of those occasions, you can still say, “What choice can I make in this moment that gets me closer to or farther from?” And so in that way, you know 100% that you are always moving forward. Does that make sense?

Yes, definitely. I love that, yeah.

So the cool thing is that now you’ve got this compass point. We are going to take a really quick break, and when we come back, we’re going to dive into coaching, start before you’re ready with Janice. As scary as it’s going to be, that’s where we’re going to go today.

That sounds great.

So I hope everybody stays with us. We will be right back.