the bossbabe podcast - 246. BBS: Find Yourself Procrastinating? This Cognitive Shift Might Change Everything

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Are you a chronic procrastinator? Or maybe you’re someone who revises content to no end in the endless pursuit of “perfection”.  We all have these tendencies, and while we convince ourselves they’re harmless, they can really stand in the way of positive progress. So, what’s actually behind these mental blocks? And how can you move past them in a way that supports yourself and your business? Join Natalie for this new episode of bossbabe business school as she helps you identify, acknowledge and overcome the fear-based blocks that have appeared along your path to success. Highlights: Why the very thing standing in your way might actually be there to protect you. How to acknowledge your mindset blocks and use them to your advantage.  What your procrastination and perfectionism are trying to tell you + why you need to listen. Links: The Société - Join our private, online community of female entrepreneurs where you can connect, build and grow. Create Your Future - Download our FREE, 3-Step Formula to finally hit the six-figure mark in your business. Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Welcome all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm your host, Natalie Ellis, and this is an episode of Boss Babe Business School, where every Friday, we come to you with a really short episode packed with value that you can take and apply right away in your business. Now, you might not have heard me on here for a while because I've been on maternity leave, and I'm super grateful that Danielle's been filling in so that I could have that valuable time with my baby. If you're not already following me on Instagram, I'm at IamNatalie,

and you can see all the behind the scenes and her cute little face on there. So today's podcast is very business related, but not in the way that you might think. I want to talk about something that might be really holding you back from moving to the next level in your business, whether it's something that's stopping you from getting your business off the ground, or it's stopping you from moving forward. Now, have you found yourself in the past or maybe even presently doing something in silence? So you might have an Instagram account that you're trying to grow that you're not telling anyone about or you might have this business that you want to get off the ground but no one really knows about or you've got this business and you're constantly finding ways to improve on it before you're launching. You're doing more courses, you're getting more feedback, you're always

tweaking and changing and you think you're ready and then you just feel like you're not. You're always second guessing yourself for doing it right, telling yourself that you're not ready. Maybe there's something you really want to be doing and you're just not taking the leap. And you're almost talking badly to yourself because of this. You're like, why am I not just taking action on this? I know I should be. I know there's something I should be taking action on that's going to help me really move the needle forward towards this big vision that I've got. So why am I not doing it? When there's a situation like this, and this came up in one of our coaching calls this week, it's about identifying

a block. There is a block there. When you're going through this, you're basically experiencing a block and this block is probably completely mental. You know, it's not a physical block, it's a mental block and really it's going to stem from a fear that you have. Now this fear could go all the way back to childhood. There might have been an instance where you really put yourself out there and you felt like you got shut down or you were embarrassed or you got bad feedback. There's so many instances that this could be coming from. So this block is a fear and it's trying to keep you safe. It's actually not trying to sabotage you as much as you might think it is. It's really not trying to sabotage your business plan or your big vision or your ability to make money, your ability to network, your ability to grow an audience. It's not there to do that. It's literally there to keep you safe.

Now, that's the first thing that I want you to understand. And now, as you're listening to this, I want you to be thinking about where is that block for me? What is that thing that I keep putting off? Or maybe every time I open up my laptop, I'm procrastinating and I'm not actually moving forward. There's a block there. Let's just first accept that if you're in a situation like that, there is a block there. There is a block. There is something in your way. And so we're going to talk about that being a fear. We're just going to accept that it's a fear. You've got a fear. You might not even know what the fear is. You might be like, Natalie, this doesn't translate

to my childhood. I can't think of anything. I challenge you to sit with that because I'm sure you can draw some parallels to what you're afraid is going to happen to something that you might have made a story about in your past, whether it was your childhood or growing up, you might have a story over what happened when you did that thing. So when we're examining the fear, I want you to be thinking about what is the worst possible thing that could happen if I do this? What am I really fearing is going to happen if I do this? Now, as I say it, you might even start to feel things in your body that, you know, maybe you tense up, maybe you feel something in your shoulders. Yes, I'm talking to you because I'm guessing that you're starting to feel it. When I'm saying what is the worst thing that could

happen if you do that? What's the real fear? What is the thing that's keeping you from playing small or taking action or focusing exactly on this? Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you.

It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. So what I want you to do as you're starting to think about that is a big mindset shift. So I want you to move away from judging that block.

You might feel, okay, the worst that could happen, I'm going to be really embarrassed if I fail publicly. The worst that's going to happen is I could fail publicly. I could fall flat on my face, whether that's in real life or virtually. And people are going to see, people are going to witness that I failed and it's going to reduce my credibility. It's going to make me look stupid, whatever stories you're telling yourself. What I don't want you to do is then rationalize why this is wrong. Because it can be really easy because all of us, you know, we're like positive, motivated people. It could be really easy to jump in and say, well, Natalie, that's stupid because

what does it matter if you fail publicly? Like the people that mind don't matter, right? You could logically talk yourself out of this, but by saying things like, Natalie, it doesn't matter if you fail publicly, at least you tried, right? It might sound good for a few seconds, but then you notice you're actually not moving forward. You're hearing it, but you're not really taking the advice. It's not really landing. And the reason is you're judging the block. You're judging the block and making it wrong. Where what you really want to do is acknowledge that the block is real and it's there to keep you safe. So instead of saying, I know this is stupid. I know that this probably isn't going to happen. or I know if people are bullying me or judging me, then they're not the right people. Instead of that, you want to say, you know what? Yeah, that is a fear. I do have it.

And I'm grateful that that fear or that block is trying to keep me safe. I'm really grateful that it's trying to keep me safe because I know that it's there and I'm going to work with it. I'm not going to try and pretend that it's silly or stupid. I'm not going to try and pretend that it's not there. I'm just grateful that it's trying to keep me safe because if you judge the block, you are going to go around in circles. You're going to be constantly talking yourself out of why it is there instead of actually working with it. So when you acknowledge it, you're deciding, I see you, I'm grateful that you're trying to protect me, and the vision I have for my life is bigger than this one block. So how do we work together in a way where it feels good for all of us? That's how you'll break free of the block and actually be able to move forward. But if you

aren't being honest with yourself about what's standing in your way, you'll always have one foot on the gas saying, let's go. I'm motivated. I've got this vision. I'm making it happen. And another foot on the brake that's saying, slow down, be careful. What if this happens? What if people laugh? What if that? And it's very hard to drive a car with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. So what you're doing is you're just easing your foot off that brake slowly and you're saying, listen, I know that foot is there and the brake is there to keep me safe. I know it and I'm not saying that it's stupid. I'm just going to ease off it and we're going to work together. We're going to push the gas when it's right to push the gas and we're

going to pump the brake when it's right to pump the brake. So I really hope that this has helped to shift your mindset a little bit because I know every single one of us is working with blocks every single day. Whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not, they are there. The blocks are there and it's really not a bad thing. The minute we can learn to work with these blocks is the minute that we're going to get free of them and be able to move on to the next. And guess what? You're going to move on to the next and it's going to be another block and we're going to keep doing this work. We're going to keep working on them so that the blocks are a lot easier to work with. They don't stand in your way so much, but you can acknowledge and they're going to pass by. So I really encourage you after

this episode, I've kept it short because I really want you to just take some time, whether you're driving in the car, maybe drive in silence for the rest of the drive, or if you're on a walk, maybe don't put another podcast on after this, but start to think about what am I not doing that I actually really want to be doing? Or how am I playing small? What kind of fears am I allowing to dictate where I go and how I do it? If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear your feedback because I want to know, do these mindset episodes resonate? Are they helpful? If so, tag me, share this episode, tag me at IamNatalie at bossbabe.inc and let me know what really resonated with you. And bonus points, if you

start to think about what that fear is, maybe you can share that too. Share it publicly and put it out there and show that you're not afraid of that fear. Okay, so I will see you next time. We have another Business School episode coming up for you next Friday. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit, your simple no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this

must-have kit straight to your inbox. you