If you want to achieve things in your business that you’ve never achieved before, you want to listen to this episode. Tune in to hear me talk about what a Trajectory Mismatch is, how it can stop you from achieving your goals if it’s too big (or too small) and how to get on track to your goals – especially if you’ve been feeling behind.
If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
Featured In The Episode:
- Join the waitlist for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) – samlaurabrown.com/pgsd
- Sign up for daily Perfectionist Power-Ups – samlaurabrown.com/power
- Follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject
Listen To The Episode
Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 579 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!
Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts (iPhone only)
- Google Podcasts (Android only)
- Stitcher
- Castbox
- TuneIn
- Overcast
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so I just want to record a quick little episode that I just, I’ve had this top of mind since the coaching call we did this week, imperfection is getting shit done. Because this is something that I coached on and I haven’t really put a name to this before, but it is something that is absolutely essential if you are wanting to achieve any goals in your business. And especially if like the client that I coach, you have a goal, like making a full time income or some kind of goal that is just something that you’ve never achieved before, I really want you to listen to today’s episode, soak it in and really reflect on if this is going on for you.
So I’ll just share a bit about the coaching and what I was sharing on that call, what came up, because it’ll be a really great context for this concept of a trajectory mismatch. So I was coaching a PGSDer and one of the things that came up was that she was saying she wants to be making a full time income in her business by April. And what I was saying to her, and I feel like as well, I’ve been, I’ve gotten feedback that my coaching style doesn’t potentially fully come across on the podcast because I do give some hard coaching and tough love always when I could tell the client is ready to hear it and that it’s going to be beneficial for them and that they want to hear it.
And yeah, I don’t know if it comes across on the podcast that I can be tough in my coaching when it is called for and our PGSDers love that. They love knowing that I’m not just going to be like, oh my God, you’re doing amazing. Just keep doing exactly what you’re doing and you’ll get there.
Like no, sometimes there is a trajectory mismatch and you need to be told, hey, you are not on the path. Like if you keep doing what you are doing, the natural consequence of that is not that you will achieve your goal. The natural consequence is that you won’t achieve the goal you have.
So you need to make some changes to be able to achieve the goal you have. So this PGSDer, she was saying, I want to be making a full time income by April. So I can’t afford to rest because I really need to get things in place so that I can be doing that.
And what I said is that you were just not on that trajectory. Like there is a mismatch that you are not going to be making that income by April based on the thoughts you’re currently thinking, how you’re currently showing up for your business. Like unless something dramatic changes, you are not on trajectory for that.
And that’s not this big problem or something to be ashamed about, but sometimes you just need someone to tell you like, hey, you’re not actually on track for that. And so let’s not have you just keep like trying harder and trying harder. Because if you do that, you are not going to get there objectively.
I, as a coach can see, if you keep the same thoughts and feelings and actions, you are not going to get the result that you were hoping to get. Instead, we need to change things. And for this client, for example, one of the things that really needed adjusting was her lack of clean rest, which meant it was very hard for her to show up fully.
She has a full time job. She has a partner and other things that she has going on in her life. Like most of us do, all the PGSDer, we’ve all got stuff going on in our lives besides a business.
And so if you want to be able to do that while also making a full time income from your business, and I really believe like going for the place where you’re not making an income to making a full time income is the biggest gap to bridge in business. Because there’s so much belief that needs to be built and needs to be shifted to be able to go from not making an income to being able to make an income that supports you full time. Once you’ve been able to make a full time income, you then have a certain level of belief that means it’s easy to keep making money or easier than it was in the past.
So it really is such a big accomplishment to be able to pay yourself a full time income from your business. I think it’s the accomplishment that I am most proud of in my business ever and ever will be is the ability to go from making $0 in my business to being able to pay myself a salary higher than I was getting paid as an accountant. And to be able to pay myself that while having four babies within four years, just being able to consistently keep paying myself that income, that is such an accomplishment to have that.
So it requires a certain level of work, a certain level of willingness, a certain level of belief, a certain kind of feeling, a certain kind of action. It’s not something you’re entitled to just because you started your business X number of years ago, just because you want it really badly, just because you don’t like your job, just because you intellectually understand how to do it, you know the actual steps. None of that entitles you to being able to actually do it.
So there needs to be a certain level of willingness and work and rest. Rest is the fuel. It’s not the reward.
Rest, clean rest is the fuel, especially if you’ve got lots going on in your life to be able to achieve that. But you just have to look at how you actually, if you continue with the thoughts you’re thinking, if you continue with the feelings you’re feeling, if you continue with the actions you’re taking, if you continue with the self image that you currently have, which is the thoughts that you have about yourself, the thoughts that sound like I am, I’m not, I always, I never, I find it easy to, I find it hard to, any of those kinds of thoughts make up your self image. If that continues on, and you can just reflect on this, if you continue to be in those same thoughts, feelings, actions, and self image is the natural consequence of that, that you are going to get to your goal.
And if not, things need to shift. And that’s the work that we do inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. When people join, it’s because they can see they are not on the trajectory of achieving their goal.
There’s a mismatch. They are procrastinating. They are overthinking.
They are getting in their own way. They are having a hard time making decisions and sticking to them and making plans and following through with the plans and showing up and being visible and putting themselves out there. And because of that, they are not on track.
They are not on the trajectory of achieving their goals. And I know oftentimes, like for perfectionists especially, this thought of like, I’m behind, I’m not on track and all of that, it can really bring up so much shame and feelings like, and it’s because of this entitlement like, well, if I’m smart, I should be able to do it. If I started my business a long time ago, I should already be there by now.
But that’s not how it works. But also, if you’re feeling like I’m behind, I’m not on track, maybe it’s because you’re not on track. Maybe it’s because things need to change for you to be able to be the person that can achieve the goal that you have.
Another example of this as well is in the PGSD forum. So there’s an Ask a Coach section where you can get coaching and then there’s the Persistence Log section where our PGSDers will post updates, they’ll often share their weekly review from their power planning, but they’ll be posting updates as well on how they’re going, what they’re up to, what they’re struggling with, they’ll often share there as well, their growth goal and get that reviewed. And so I was reviewing one of our PGSDer growth goal and her growth goal was very high.
I’ve coached her for about a year inside PGSD, I’ve coached her on different coaching calls and in the forum and I’m familiar with what’s going on for her, where she’s at in her business. And her goal was just way bigger. Basically the way I received it is like this trajectory mismatch of she is not on track to achieve even close to that goal, even with making changes to her self image and her thoughts and her feelings and her actions, that having a goal so big.
So in this example, the goal was $270,000 and she hadn’t made any money in her business yet. And she has about nine email subscribers, she said, and she wanted to launch a course and have one-on-one coaching clients and do that while, because she’s also working and also has a son, do that while her son is sleeping and while she’s not working. So having a very limited amount of time and then going from someone who has a very small audience to them being able to sell in the first quarter, I think it was like 63 online course spots.
It’s just kind of like this mismatch of even if you do all the things that you are not currently in the self image and the thoughts and the feelings and the actions, and I said to her, it’s not that you couldn’t achieve it because you could achieve it, but you would have to be very willing to be very uncomfortable. You’d really have to have such a high level of desire, such a high level of willingness, such a high level of wanting to work hard and not from this hustle place, but understanding that there are complete frameworks and beliefs and everything in your mind needs to shift and it’s painful any time we shift belief. It is painful for our brain because it’s making ourselves wrong, especially as perfectionists.
We hate feeling like we’re wrong and we’ve been doing it wrong and we hate, even though we love shifting beliefs, we hate it to some degree because then our past self is wrong for thinking differently or if I’m thinking this way now, or if I can finally achieve this goal now, then I should have always been able to achieve it. We make ourselves wrong, but also just on a psychological level, our brains just want to keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again. That is what is most efficient for the brain and the brain is trying to conserve energy so that if we come under any kind of physical threat, like if we need to try to do something to actually keep ourselves alive, our brain is conserving energy.
It takes a lot of energy to think and do all those things. Our brain is trying to conserve energy so that we have as much energy available as possible in case we need to do anything that would help us to stay alive. Our brain is therefore going to be resistant to changing thoughts, especially thoughts of self-image, thoughts about who we are and what kind of person we are and what we’re capable of.
Those thoughts as well, it just often feels like facts, like, oh yeah, I’m just not good with numbers. That’s part of your self-image. Or yeah, I’m just someone who procrastinates.
That’s part of your self-image. So there’s just like, it’s knowing that the trajectory mismatch, if it’s too big, it’s going to create, and this was a saying to this PGSDer, it’s going to create this disconnection. What she said as well was she was really inspired by the goals that I set, me, in 2018, because I’ve been sharing my goals and everything that I’ve been working on for a long time now, in case you haven’t been a long time listener, I started this podcast in 2017, and probably within the first 50 episodes or so, I share about the impossible goal that I had for 2018.
This is a concept that I learned from one of my coaches at the time, and the idea was to have this really big goal, but what I did was I set it too big, and this is what I was saying to her, and I also want to mention it on the podcast, in case you’re like, I’m so inspired by that goal, I want to do the same. The reason I teach the growth goal the way I do, and the reason that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone in the situation that I was in to have a goal like that, was because what I did was I went, okay, I think I made maybe $50,000 before, so I wasn’t starting from zero. I already had a decent sized audience, I already had thousands of email subscribers.
I wasn’t starting from scratch when I set that goal, but I went, okay, well, I intellectually understand how to make $100,000, so that doesn’t feel like too big a stretch, and I understand as well how to make about $250,000, even though I haven’t yet done that, I can visualize and imagine what might need to happen for me to make $250,000, but $500,000, I just cannot see any way that I could possibly achieve the $500,000. It just felt so out of this world to even think, and now, I’ve achieved that goal. I’ve made more than $500,000 in a year since then, but when I set that goal, that just felt like this absolutely insane, there’s no way I can actually believe it and connect with it.
And so, what happened was, because that goal was so big, because I thought intellectual belief was actual belief, because that goal was so big, where achieving 100K a year still felt massive to me and such a big stretch, but I was being like, well, but I understand how to do it, so that means I can, so it’s not a stretch to do it if I understand it. Well, yeah, it is a stretch, because there’s the emotional capacity, the skillset, there’s so many other things that require you to actually achieve something that you know how to achieve or understand how to achieve, and if you haven’t achieved it yet, you don’t really fully understand how to achieve it. You don’t know exactly what goes into it, even if you’ve listened to every podcast episode on it, even if you’ve seen other people do it and studied them, you can’t understand exactly how to do it until you’ve done it.
So anyway, with that goal, it was just too big that, and I felt, I didn’t feel at first like it was too big, it felt like, it’s kind of this, like it’s such a fairy tale, it’s so big that it’s like, well, maybe, I don’t know, and maybe I could do it, and I feel I felt a lot of disbelief, and it’s just good to have a big goal to aim at, but really, what was happening is I didn’t believe it, and I couldn’t really even connect with it, because 100K still felt like a stretch, so of course, 500K, and being able to do that, and that year as well, I was still working in a part-time job, so I wasn’t full-time in my business yet, and it just, I just, as soon as things didn’t go to plan, I would just spin for weeks and weeks and weeks, because I didn’t have really any belief and ability to connect with the overall goal, so I needed everything to then work perfectly in order to actually believe I could achieve the goal, and as soon as, I think I did a launch right at the beginning of that year, from memory, you can go back and listen to me, I did a launch, and it didn’t go to plan.
I didn’t get the number of sign-ups that I needed, and I was just in such an existential crisis about it, it just felt like, absolutely, I just felt so much shame, so, so disheartened, and it really, like, I still achieved a great result, but because the goal I had was too big, and that trajectory mismatch was too big, that it meant that I just couldn’t even stay connected enough to continue on, so I said to this PGSDer, like, let’s set a goal for you that would be more like $20,000-$50,000 in a year, if that, and have you, because she was like, well, I, you know, it’s okay if it takes longer to achieve it, and that’s the amount I need to make to be able to replace my income, but really, I was like, but you’re not able to be connected to it, and even though it feels nice now, because it’s the beginning of the year, and you haven’t really attempted anything, this is going to be so hard, so let’s have you actually have a goal that you can stay connected to, and that’s going to be harder to have a smaller goal that you can actually connect with, feels more comfortable to have a big goal that, as soon as you don’t achieve it, like, as soon as you miss achieving the first little thing that you set out to achieve within your goal, to then be like, okay, well, now, I’m just gonna, like, forget about the goal, basically, like, oh, I forgot to, I can’t even remember exactly what goal I set.
We do that when it becomes so uncomfortable to stay connected that we disassociate from it, that we disconnect from it. So we want to have you having a goal and we set this in PGSD and we teach you how to set a growth goal at the right level. We give you so much support around this as well so that you have, we want there to be trajectory, we want there to be trajectory mismatch, but a mismatch that you can actually close, if that makes sense.
We want you to have a goal that right now, if you just continue on with how you’re thinking and feeling and acting, you wouldn’t be able to achieve that goal. So you have to grow in order to achieve that goal. That’s why it’s called the growth goal, because right now when you set the goal, you are not the person who can achieve it.
You are not having the thoughts, feelings and actions that would have you actually achieving that goal. So there is a mismatch, but we don’t want it to be a massive one. We don’t want it to be so huge that it just constantly feels like all the time you’re trudging through mud, you’re so overwhelmed, you feel so behind, you don’t know where to start.
That is a symptom of having a goal that either you’ve completely disconnected from, or it’s just so big that you feel like you have to make such big changes to achieve it, that it’s so overwhelming that you don’t even know where to start. So you don’t even start at all, or you just spend all your time in comfort work because you’re trying to comfort yourself and feel better about the fact that you feel like you can’t achieve the goal that you want to achieve. And when I was thinking about this as well, for me, when it came to looking at where did I have trajectory mismatch in a really positive way that I then had, I was able to close that mismatch.
I was able to actually get on the trajectory. When I look at what was required, and I’ve documented this as well on the podcast, when I was actually going through the journey of going from not having a full-time income from the business to being able to have a full-time income from the business, that was actually being able to go from, I want to have a full-time income. I want to be able to be completely self-employed.
I want to be able to also be self-employed in a way where, because I was planning to have kids, where I can have time off, where I’m going to be in a better position than if I just stay at my job and took the mat leave at my job. And that was such a desire that I had. That was the ultimate goal that I had for so many years.
It was only once I started doing the things that we teach inside PGSD that I was able to actually start crossing that chasm. I’m trying to think if I’ve got my hands in a little, how would I even describe it? It’s a duck talking, but closing this trajectory gap, if we want to call it that, the trajectory gap, closing the trajectory gap so that I could actually achieve it. And it was only when I really started to have a goal that I could be very connected with and it was specific and it wasn’t realistic.
That’s the thing. I’ve talked about this before in other episodes, but my philosophy with goal setting isn’t to set a realistic goal because a realistic goal is one that you’re already on track for. It’s one that you’re already on trajectory for.
You don’t have to change your thoughts. You don’t have to change your feelings. You don’t have to change your actions.
You don’t have to change your self image. Or if you do, you only have to change them very slightly and it won’t really be uncomfortable to do so. I want to be the kind of person that is growing, that is evolving, that is actually achieving things that my past self couldn’t achieve.
And so when I was able to have that goal of making a full-time income and I was really priming my brain to see opportunity when I was having it be a goal that I had a time frame for it, but it wasn’t this big, crazy, like, oh my god, I need to do that by April and I don’t even have really any clients currently, or I have like two clients and I need to do that so soon. That’s just way too big a mismatch. It’s so hard to close that trajectory gap.
But once I set my goal for myself in a way that meant I had trajectory mismatch, but I could then see the way to close it. And I had to have the willingness to work hard. I had to have the willingness to show up.
I had to not be in perfectionist entitlement of, if I do this, then they should do that. Like, if I post consistently, then people should just sign up. If I get the price right, then people should just buy without objections.
Like, all of this, I did a whole episode on it. This perfectionist entitlement we have that stops us from working hard, that stops us from being connected, that stops us from showing up fully. That is what we need to be able to generate to be able to close that trajectory gap and actually achieve the goal that is on like a different level to what we are currently on.
We need to have all the elements that go into that to be able to achieve something that you haven’t achieved before. And sometimes you just need someone to also just point out, and I hope this episode is helping with this, but to also point out like, hey, there is trajectory mismatch. And currently, you don’t have a plan for how to close that.
Your plan is to be more motivated. Your plan is to be more disciplined. Your plan is to wake up at 5 a.m. like, that isn’t a plan that closes that gap because that plan is just trying to take different action.
But you’ve got to change your thoughts. You’ve got to change your feelings. You’ve got to change your self-image.
That’s why the work we do inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done is incredibly focused on those areas. And yes, we’re taking action and we’re showing up and we’re doing things, but we’re doing it from thoughts and feelings and a self-image that fuel the kind of result that we want to create. Your thoughts are going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So if you wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to try and do extra work to make a full-time income from your business, but if at the same time, you believe that you’re too tired to even be able to serve any more clients and that you can never get a break or anything like that, or if you believe that you you shouldn’t actually be able to get paid the amount that you want to be charging for your product or your service, if there are these beliefs that are meaning that when you take action, you’re taking ineffective action, it doesn’t matter what actions you change. We need to have you having your thoughts and your feelings and your self-image be in alignment with the goal that you are achieving. That’s why it’s something that we focus on so much.
Almost all of the coaching is focused around that in PGSD, the tools to support everything to get you to have a really, what’s going to be the word for it? I’m just thinking of this out. What can I call it? Like you want to have trajectory mismatch, but you don’t want a crazy amount and you don’t want none. You have none when you have a realistic goal and when you have like that massive goal that I had of making $500,000 when I hadn’t made $100,000 before and it was just I was not on trajectory really even for $100,000, let alone $500,000.
That trajectory gap was too big, but we want to have you have a really powerful, aligned, I don’t know what the word for it will be. I’ll think about it and what we’ll call it, but having a level of trajectory mismatch that you can be connected with, that you can be engaged with, that’s inviting for you, that inspires you to then grow into that next version of yourself. That is what we want to have you do.
I hope this episode has been helpful to just give you a little bit of a wake-up call maybe if you have been feeling like, okay, I just have to work a little bit harder and be a little bit more motivated. Look at it. Are you actually on the trajectory? The goal you want to achieve, if you keep thinking, feeling, and acting the same way you have been, is achieving that goal a natural consequence of those thoughts, feelings, and actions? If someone else was thinking that way, feeling that way, and showing up in that way, would you think it reasonable that they would achieve the goal that you have? Or would you be like, oh, no, that doesn’t really make sense? For example, I love using fitness analogies because they can just be so clear.
If, for example, someone really wants to be, let me just think, if we had a physical one of like saying, having six-pack abs or whatever, and you’re like, okay, I really want to have six-pack abs. That’s something I’ve wanted forever, and I just really want to do it. Currently, I don’t work out, and I don’t eat healthy, or maybe every now and again from Monday to Wednesday, but then I fall off, and then a few weeks later, I get back on.
You from the outside would not be like, oh, yeah, of course, that result is inevitable for you. You’d be like, well, I don’t think if you keep showing up in this way that you would achieve the goal that you have. We want to look at that for yourself as well and just identify we do want there to be some level of trajectory mismatch, but we don’t want that gap to be too big.
If that gap is too big, it is unhelpful. If that gap is too small, and you have a realistic goal that requires you not to grow, that isn’t helpful either if you’re the kind of person who wants to grow and evolve and achieve things that you have never achieved before. If you don’t want to achieve things you’ve never achieved before, keep being realistic.
You’ll keep getting your same reality that you had. If you want to achieve things you’ve never achieved before, you have to be unrealistic because you’re trying to create something that currently isn’t in your reality. We want to have you just look at that and identify for yourself, am I on the trajectory to achieve my goal? I might have trajectory mismatch.
For me, for example, for my year, and I’ll do an episode soon, I promise, on my phone for this year and what I’m up to, but I have trajectory mismatch. It is clear to me there is self-image work to be done, skills to be learned, thoughts to be changed, feelings to be processed. There is work to be done, but I have a plan for how to close that trajectory gap and achieve the goal that I have.
I will keep working that plan and being connected to that plan and troubleshooting that plan so that I get there. That’s how it works. It’s not like you just have a plan, here’s how I’m going to close my trajectory gap, and then you just achieve it.
You have to stay connected to it. You have to work the plan. You have to troubleshoot it and review it and be in touch with the plan and with your execution of it to be able to then get to the point where you are able to achieve what you want to achieve.
It’s not that I don’t have that, I do have the trajectory mismatch, but I have a plan. If you were like, I have the mismatch, but I don’t have a plan, or my plan is just to be more motivated, or my plan is just to beat myself up so that I don’t keep procrastinating, that is not a plan that will close the trajectory gap. We want to have you actually be able to close that trajectory gap.
That is what happens when you achieve a goal. So I hope this has been helpful and I also want to invite you inside perfectionist getting shit done. If you have a trajectory gap and you don’t have a plan, you don’t have support, you’re just trying to go off sheer willpower or doing more research or trying to get the business model right or the name right or like make the right decisions and not make any mistakes.
If that perfectionist approach is your plan, like, well, I’ll just get everything right and then I’ll achieve my goal. You are not actually, like your trajectory gap, that trajectory mismatch, you are not going to be able to close that gap if your plan is, well, if I just get everything right, then I’ll achieve my goal. That is not how business works.
I’ve said this in different ways in different episodes, I just want to keep reiterating it. Business isn’t the game of I get the right answer and I get the A+. That is not the game we are playing.
That’s school, that’s employment, that is not business. There is no reality where you just make the right decision and then everything instantly works forevermore. You have to have resilience, you have to have the ability when you get knocked down to get back up and to have your own back and to make decisions and to troubleshoot and to adjust and to do that without a shame spiral.
That is the work that we do and what we teach you how to do inside PGSD. I want to invite you inside to join us when doors open for one week only on the 30th of January. Not very far away that we are opening our next enrollment up.
So make sure you join us, get yourself ready to join us inside so that you don’t just have this trajectory gap, this trajectory mismatch with no plan to actually close it. Maybe you’ve past few years, you’re like, okay, I’m going to be more motivated this year. This is my year.
I’m going to be productive. I’m going to do it. And it doesn’t happen.
If that keeps happening, it’s because you’re not changing the thoughts and feelings and actions that need to shift and the self-image that needs to shift, the perfectionist thinking that needs to shift for you to be able to achieve your goals. So let me teach that to you. That’s what we do in PGSD.
We have so many successful PGSDers who have done that work, who have gotten incredible results. You can read about them if you go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. And I want that to be you too.
I want you to know that this is available, that you don’t have to just keep like trying and struggling and trying and struggling and feeling like you’re not cut out for entrepreneurship and then feeling so sad because you’re smart and you know you have potential, but it’s just not actually adding up to anything. Like let’s just solve that. Join us in PGSD.
So samlaurabrown.com /pgsd is where you can go to find out more about the program, sign up for the waitlist. You want to be on the waitlist as well so you don’t miss out on the enrollment and on important information about the program. So with that said, I hope you’re having a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you in the next episode.
Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the waitlist for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today, go to samlaurabrown.coms/pgsd.