Dreaming big – and then actually going for it – is a vulnerable act for a perfectionist. But it’s essential if you want to build a successful business that you actually like.
That’s why, in today’s episode, I’m sharing 3 practical steps you can take that will support you to dream big – even if you feel delusional, if you’re scared of failing, if you’re worried you’ll just burn yourself out or you’re scared of disappointment.
You’re invited to join us inside Perfectionists Getting Shit Done for our annual review and 2026 planning calls that are happening next week. The two calls are happening at 6pm EST on Monday 15 December and Wednesday 17 December with replays available. You’ll then get to be supported inside PGSD long-term, with lifetime access to the tools and coaching that will get your perfectionist mindset on your side so your business can finally grow. To be part of it, sign up for PGSD by 6 pm EST on Monday, 15 December. To find out more and sign up today, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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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 wanted to do an episode on creating the safety, or feeling safe, to dream big. So at the moment, I am about to go through for myself my annual review for 2025 and I’ll be sharing some of that on the podcast, and also my yearly planning for 2026 and I’ve done a little bit of that already, but I’m going to go through my process in full ahead of teaching that next week, inside perfectionist getting shit done, we’re doing an annual review call together, and then two days later, we’re going to do the yearly planning together ahead of 2026 and so I’ve just really been reflecting on goal setting and the importance of having a big dream and being able to create a new reality like that is created from having a new reality that you want to create, having a big dream, having something that you are working towards that currently doesn’t feel in the realms of possibility, that currently isn’t in alignment with how you’re showing up in the things you’re doing, like it’s not currently the natural consequence of you staying the same and doing the same things and showing up in the same way. I love personally.
And this is, this is true of our PGSDers. We love growing, evolving, having a big goal, doing something big, being up to something and not like, when you catch up with their friend and they’re like, hey, what have you been up to? Like, Oh, you know, same old, same old like, I do not like being in that, like, oh, you know, same old situation. I love having things that I’m learning, where I’m growing things that are challenging. I love having that, and for that to be the case, I need to have something that I am working towards, that I am wanting to accomplish. And what happens for perfectionists, and this is what I want to talk about in this episode. In particular, is having a big dream, if we want to just call it, that can bring up feelings. And as perfectionists, we don’t like feelings. We try to disconnect from them. We often try to just be in our head, thinking thoughts and like, intellectualizing things and trying to be smart about stuff and trying to be strategic, but a really important part of creating a new reality for yourself, whether you’re working full time at the moment and you want to have a full time business or one that provides you with a full time income, whether you have a business already and you want to grow it, or you want to pivot it, like, if you have a new reality, a really important piece of creating that is the emotional side of that.
And there are emotions that come up that stop us from even setting to achieve that big goal in the first place, like even being willing to be clear on it and committed to it and convicted about it and willing to inconvenience ourselves for it, that doesn’t mean you have to burn out. That doesn’t mean you have to neglect everything that’s important to you. But if you are shifting your reality and creating something big, you can’t just show up in the same way and think the same things and do the same things you’ve always done before. That won’t create as a natural consequence, that won’t create a big shift in your life, unless, unless, unless, unless, a while ago, you set something in motion, you made those shifts to get into a new reality. The stuff I’m going to talk about in this episode, there’s going to be a compound effect, there’s going to be a lag, there’s going to be a time of building momentum.
So if you have already done the things I’m going to be talking about in this episode, then keep showing up, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep believing but if you’re in the situation where, and this is who this episode is for, you’re in the situation where it feels scary to have a big dream, you’re a bit fuzzy on it, you keep finding yourself professor, learning or procrastinating, researching or just like going back to the drawing board again and again, and finding yourself a year later thinking about the same question that you were thinking about a year ago, if you find that you feel inspired and motivated to have a business and to have a successful business, and yet your actions aren’t really showing that you’re busy, you’re doing stuff, but it’s not actually compounding. That’s not actually getting you the results that you want a lot of time what’s going on is that you don’t feel safe to dream big. And one way this can manifest too is just wanting to be realistic about stuff. And this comes up a lot for perfectionists who have an identity about being smart, about being strategic, and also, if you have an identity of someone who never fails at things, then you will set goals that you couldn’t fail at.
You won’t try stuff really like you won’t fully try it. You’ll, you know, kind of dabble away with things, but you won’t fully try, because if you fully try anything, you risk failing at it. Like, that’s just how it works, but oftentimes, especially if you have an identity, as many of my clients do, and myself personally, this is what I’ve had to really work on when there’s an identity there, of like, I’m a smart person, I’m intelligent, I’m able to figure things out. I don’t fail at stuff like I’m someone who’s successful. Then we just don’t try things where we might fail, and we tend to just shrink our world and really don’t have a go at stuff. Or if we have a go at it, it’s really in this like, half in half out. I’ll do it if it’s convenient. I’ll do it if it works right away.
I’ll do it if I can get everything just right and make sure that I don’t risk any embarrassment or any failure or anyone questioning what I’m doing like, I’m willing to do it if it’s going to be seamless and smooth for me, and until then, I’m not willing to do it like this is one of the biggest shifts that we support entrepreneurs with inside perfectionist getting shit done, is having that emotional willingness and resilience to really be all in on your business, to be willing to risk failure, to risk success, which might have you then feeling isolated or rejected, to have you risk inconveniencing yourself and then feeling like it’s a waste of effort, or that you disappointed yourself and that you let yourself down, or you let someone else down, and like there’s all of these emotions that stop us perfectionist entrepreneurs from being successful in business, and it’s so important to just see it like that, because it can be frustrating when you’re like, I know what to do, but I’m just not doing it.
And the reason you’re just not doing it is because of the emotion. Is because of the emotional side of it. You have the intelligence, like, you know, especially if you work at a computer a lot of the times, like, it’s just literally clicking buttons and typing words in a keyboard, you can physically do it, and you have the intellect to do it, but you don’t have the emotional capacity to do the things that you need to do. And that’s what we really support perfectionist entrepreneurs with, power planning, the growth goal, clean, rest, all the tools in pgsd, all the support in pgsd, is really designed to have you have the emotional capacity and emotional willingness to be all in on your business, to figure out things you haven’t figured out before, and to be doing that in public, a lot of business, depending what kind of business you have, but I think for all entrepreneurs, this has to be true that like people know you’re working on a business, and that can even just feel vulnerable to know that others know that you’re trying to do something and you’re trying to do something that some people fail at.
And also, if you have a business like me, where you have a Instagram account, for example, or a podcast or sending out emails, that there are people in my real day to day life that are seeing me actually have a go at building my business, and that can bring up so much vulnerability and so much just like again, emotion feelings of inadequacy or insecurity or feeling rejected, and we’re rejecting ourselves and all of that. So what we really want to do when we are looking at planning out the year and looking at having a year that is really going to be successful, is really going to be productive, is really going to be one that can be a turning point, if you’re like, I’m ready for a turning point. I’m ready, and I know this feeling so well, like I am ready for things to change, and for there to be that shift, and for me to start feeling that momentum, and for me to feel like I have the wind behind my back, the wind in my sails, like I remember for me the first time I felt that was in 2016, three years after starting my business.
And I finally felt like, and it was because I had started to, like, really understand this emotional work required, and began doing it, and, like, figuring out what that looked like. But I’d started showing up more and growing my email list, and, like, actually having traction in my business. And I was like, Oh my God. I feel like I finally feel the momentum. And I had been craving that feeling for so long, and at different points in my business since then, I’ve been like, Okay, I’m like, I really feel like I just want to have a year. That’s a turning point, because there’s going to be ups and downs in business, it’s so important to understand that’s normal. That’s part of it, that’s the game of business, and to have the emotional ability to navigate that. And that’s what takes entrepreneurs out the like if we don’t have the emotional ability to navigate it, if we go to shame, if we go to inadequacy, if we go to spinning, if we go to all of that, because we don’t have the emotional capacity, it is really hard to stay in the game.
So what we want to look at, I feel like I’m kind of sharing this in maybe a convoluted way, is kind of how it feels, because I’m just like meandering along. I have a couple of notes in front of me, of things I want to talk about, but I’m going to trust that it’s helpful. So what we want to look at when it comes to planning out the year is to have that emotional side in consideration, to know that planning your year in a way that you can actually stick to. And of course, your plans will adjust as you go. Of course, your updated decisions as you go. That’s really important to know that that’s going to happen. And part of the process that we teach inside pgsd And that I personally follow is having plans and also the ability to change them without going to shame because we perfect is like, well, I can’t make a plan, because what if it’s the wrong plan instead of like, actually, I know how to make a plan in a way that works my perfectionist brain, and I can also adjust the plan.
And just because I’m adjusting the plan doesn’t mean I’m wrong or inadequate, like that makes such a difference. So to have a plan for the year that you can commit to, that you can adjust, that you can evolve with and that doesn’t burn you out, and that doesn’t have you neglecting the things that are important to you in your personal life, and that doesn’t have you sacrificing your values and the things that you want to be doing in your business. Because often we perfection is like, well, I have to do reels or send people DMS, or I have to do this, or I have to do that instead of like, well, it’s a business, and there’s a million ways to do any kind of business. There are first principles of business, but you don’t have to follow best practices. Best practices are just the different ways that different people have applied first principle thinking. So you could actually just understand how the business works. Have the emotional ability to build the business and navigate the ups and downs and doing that in public, and then you can do it however you want.
And that’s how I love to do it. When I look at all the things that’s been most successful in my business is when I just understood the first principles of what works like with me in this podcast, I didn’t have to follow any best practices, and I don’t follow the best practices of podcasting, because I fundamentally understand what makes someone connect through a podcast and what makes someone want to then take the next step of working with someone after listening to them on a podcast. And so I don’t have to do all the different things people say you have to do to have a successful podcast. I just have a successful podcast from applying the first principles and self trust and blending in my own values and my own way of doing things. So when it comes to really developing out this plan for yourself, you have to consider and take into account and not try and like dismiss or outrun it, that you will have feelings about the year that need to be addressed.
So part of the way that we do this, part of the way that we create safety to dream big, and this isn’t one of my three points that I just wanted to chat to, but part of it is understanding what went on for you this year. And that’s why one of the two calls we’re doing, it’s like half the work of planning next year is really understanding the year that was, the year that you’ve just had, and understanding what was working and oftentimes there’s a lot of things that are just quietly working away in the background that our perfectionist brain dismisses. So really understanding what has worked, and there’s always something that’s working, even if you had the shittiest year, there’s always something that’s working. Understanding that, understanding what’s not working, it’s less about what actions didn’t work, it’s more about what thinking didn’t work, what feelings didn’t work.
And it’s not that you can’t have feelings. We want you to be able, to be willing, to have all the feelings. But for example, if you spend a lot of the year feeling avoidant, or if you spend a lot of the year feeling unclear, those aren’t helpful feelings that we need to process through those two feelings feeling avoided and unclear or panicked rushed, those feelings are not ones that we really need to just like sit with and feel like those feelings are coming from thinking that we have to get it right, and it won’t work unless we do get it right, that we’re behind. And that we need to have this figured out as of yesterday, like all of that kind of thinking has us then rushing, panicking, avoiding, spinning, and then from that place, it’s very hard to be successful. So what we want to do is just understand, in 2025 what was the main thought and feeling pattern that you were in with your business?
And if you continue in that, what’s the natural result of that going to be and really having that awareness over the year in a way that doesn’t create a shame spiral in a way that doesn’t make you feel dejected or wrong, but in a way that creates connection with yourself, in a way that creates curiosity, in a way that creates empowerment, instead of this helpless like, oh my god, I tried everything this year, and nothing worked like that. Actually isn’t true. That actually isn’t true. Whenever we go and look into that, and we do that inside pgse, because that’s one of these perfectionist all or nothing thought patterns, I tried everything and nothing worked, when really what happened is most likely, you didn’t fully try, you didn’t troubleshoot, you weren’t clear on what you were doing. So you were doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, or try this now, or what about that? You weren’t clear on where you’re trying to get to.
This is why having a growth goal is so important having a clear destination. I’ll talk about that a bit more in a second as well. But really, a lot of times when we’re in that kind of spinning thought we aren’t fully trying and things are working, but we’re just dismissing them. So we need to have connection with the current year and understand really, like, what’s going on, and have that to work with. Because what will often happen. If you feel like, well, I just had the shittiest year, or like, I achieved a lot, but I’m just so tired and so burnt out, or, like, any of those kinds of stories, we will try, if we try to make a plan without clearing that up and cleaning that up, we will make a plan that has us just doing more of the same, but trying harder. Or like, I have to be better. I have to be a better leader. I have to be better at social media. I have to be on all the platform like, we just go to doing more and to trying to do it better and to trying to do it perfectly.
And I talked about this in an episode a couple of episodes ago now, about how to get into a sufficiency cycle, that when we are not connected with the actual year that we had, we end up in this inadvertently, in this insufficiency cycle, the trying to get it right, cycle where we’re like, Okay, well, I don’t want to do that again. So then we go into trying to optimize everything, which then has us taking insufficient action and then creating insufficient results. So I go into that more in that episode, but we want to understand first of all this year, and so I’m guiding our PGSDers through a process of how to unpack that. And then there are three things we want to do, to feel safe, to dream big. And what I did was I just wrote down a few notes and just like, what are three things that help? And I just want to mention this, like as an aside, because a lot of my clients are content creators, whether it’s podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, wherever it is emails and our perfectionist brains go into I need to create this kind of thought pattern. I need to create, like, an exhaustive, like, whatever I create has to be a complete, exhaustive understanding of my knowledge on this topic.
And I must include everything and make sure I share all the things. And like, I was recently coaching a PGSDer who was like, with her webinar. But I have so much to say, and I want to, like, share all the things I’ve learned in the last 10 years in this and really, that’s not helpful for the person on the other end, because in 60 minutes trying to learn something or even understand 10 years worth of knowledge is just sheer overwhelming. But anytime we’re in a thought of like, I have to say all the things and have it be comprehensive. That’s that perfectionism handbrake thinking, that results are only created from what we deem to be perfect content, perfect creativity, perfect things that go out into the world instead of actually connection is what’s most important and like, we buy things when we feel connected. And pretty much all of my clients sell through connection, whether they realize it or not, they like go out into the world and just be themselves, and people want to work with them.
They go and chat to people, and they naturally just end up with clients or customers, or if they aren’t at that stage of their business yet, like when they’re just in their zone, in their element, sharing out in the world, people like, oh, like, can you give me more of that? And so we want to have you when it comes to your goal setting and your reflections and everything like that. And I also want to mention with the content creation that we want to have you not trying to be exhaustive about anything, or like a fully comprehensive because that’s just our perfectionist brain trying to get it perfect, and then we’re in that insufficiency cycle because we’re trying to get it perfect, but because we’re so busy doing that, then we take insufficient action and get insufficient result.
So just to wrap up my aside for a second. What I did with this episode was just like, what are three things I think they would want to know and would be so helpful to know you the listener, about feeling safe to dream big, I wrote down three dot points, and now I’m just chatting when my perfectionist brain wants to be like, we need to create this whole like, here’s everything I know on that topic, instead of like, well, here are just three helpful things of many. So I’m just saying that, in case your perfectionism handbrake has been coming on with content creation in pgsd, I specifically teach there’s a course in there called the creative cocoon where I teach content creation as a perfectionist entrepreneur. If you find it takes you a lot of time to create content. You’re overthinking you have, like, a plan to be here and then a plan to be there. And you’re not really doing any of it, but, like, you’re trying to do all of it. And you show up for a bit, and then you ghost, if that is you, then you want to be inside pgsc When we open again. So doors are going to open on the 30th of January for one week. So the the waitlist link will be in the show notes. It’s samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, but you want to be inside for our open enrollment that we’re going to do at the end of January.
So let me get into my points that I have and share with you three things that will help you feel safe to dream big, but know that we’ve already covered, really connecting with it, understanding your gear you’ve just had, is really important to just clean up any stories that like, if, if you don’t do that work, then you will just be trying to essentially operate from the same place while trying to create different results. If that makes sense, like, say, for example, if you showed if you created a big result this year, but then, like, you were so tired, then you will make changes like, Okay, well, I can’t burn out again. I can’t be so tired again. And like, you’ll just swing so hard the other way, like that, perfectionist, all or nothing mindset, and you will end up exhausting yourself with trying to not be exhausted. And so we just want to clean it up, clean up that thinking, find some more helpful thoughts, ones that are still true. And have you go into the year in a much more grounded place.
And we want to know as well that there are emotions that come up when we’re goal setting, the fear of disappointment, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of rejection, the fear of burning out like it brings up emotions. And a lot of perfectionists will just avoid goal setting all together, or have 17 different goals, or just a really vague like, Hey, this is a year. I want to have a full time income in my business that is super hard to achieve when it’s so vague, like that super hard to achieve. We want to have a like you dreaming big in a really clear and specific way. So I’m going to talk about that in a bit of like, what that looks like. But let me get started with point one, which is understanding how results are created. That is something that will help you feel safe to dream big.
So I’ve already talked about it a bit in this episode, but I want to make it clearer about how results are created, and that your thoughts and feelings are the most influential factor in what you’re able to achieve. So let me just outline and if you haven’t heard of this before, I’m just going to, like teach you about it in this episode. So Brooke Castillo, she has a podcast called, The Life Coach School podcast. She created what is called the self coaching model. And I’m certified by the Life Coach School as well, which I don’t mention often, but I am to teach this as well, that this is just a structure to really help with being able to see the universal truth that, like every teacher ever in personal development, teaches some flavor of this, that your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, and your actions create your results in a simplified way that that is how results are created.
And there are all sorts of quotes that you might already know that talk about this, like, whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’ll be right. Like this idea of something being a self fulfilling prophecy, that is because our thoughts are so influential, they impact how we feel, they create how we feel, when we feel a certain way, regardless of what action we’re taking, it flavors that action. For example, if you’re posting on Instagram and you feel inadequate while posting, you’re going to be creating a different kind of post than when you are posting on Instagram and you are feeling successful, or you’re feeling convicted, or you’re feeling compelled, or you’re feeling connected. Same action, and our perfectionist brains want to go to like, just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. But, and you might have seen this where you’re like, doing the things, and it’s not creating the result, it’s because the thought and feeling behind it aren’t aligned with the result you want to create. So your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions. I’ll give you a solid example in a second. And your actions that are fueled by that thought and feeling create the result.
And then, in terms of circumstances that are out there in the world, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s a client saying something to you, whether it’s a law or regulation, you have to follow those are circumstances, and we have thoughts about the circumstances. So just as an example of like how to lay this app, because we want to understand how results are created, so that when it comes to dreaming big and wanting to dream big, even though that might feel delusional and all of that, if you actually know how results are created, then it feels a bit less delusional. But when you think like, Okay, well, results come from what I’ve done in the past, for example, like past performance is an indicator of how I’m going to do things in the future, then you are going to feel pretty damn delusional to try and do anything different to the past, because your belief is that results are created from like, results are just created however they’re created. They’re out of your control, and you just get more of what you got in the past.
And the way to really step into it’s kind of like being delusional, and being okay with being delusional is that you start to understand that results are created by my thinking. And of course, to then create a new result, I have to think differently, and that means I’m going to need to think in a way that isn’t actually reflected in my current results, because my current results are created by my past thinking. So I will feel a bit delusional as I believe something that isn’t yet manifested into reality, but as I continue to believe it, I will begin to create evidence to prove that belief true, and at one point that won’t be a delusion anymore, that will literally be my reality. And actually, I have an example here, and I will share that too, but I wanted to share it with my own example of that. So for me, I started my business in 2013 as a blog. I was a very insecure 22 year old. I was at university doing a law degree, a finance degree, a Diploma of French. I’d done well in school, and I came across on my commute to my job that I had as a receptionist. I came across I was sick of listening to ads on the radio, so I came across psychology podcasts, which I’d always been intrigued by psychology. And then that led me to business podcasts.
And then I started listening to podcasts about having an online business, even though I had literally no intention whatsoever of having my own business, of having an online business, but because of the way the people I was listening to were talking about mindset, being part of it, and like, here’s different things that you can do, and this is possible, and you could believe this, and like all of that, it just started to seed this idea and see this possibility, like, oh, maybe I could have my own blog, which is what the people that I have been listening to, they had blogs and they had websites. Oh, maybe I can do that. And I don’t know what I’d do it on exactly, but maybe I could give that a try. And I like, listen to that for six months, and it just started being like, huh, maybe I could do it. And I won’t go into the full story here. I’ve already documented it many times on my podcast, but to go from the place where it felt like such a delusion initially, to even have my own website or blog or like, what would I even talk about, to now being in the place where I make a full time income on part time hours, if that like very part time hours.
I have a business that is based around a website and all the online stuff that people were talking about all those years ago. I help clients I didn’t even know about coaching yet when I listened to any of that that I have clients that I help from all around the world and have changed their lives, have influenced so much positive change through what I’m doing that I have a business that has not only been able to support me, but has also had me be able to have four children within four years, and I didn’t need to go and get a job or do anything like that, I was able to pay myself more than I made as an accountant, while having so much time off to have kids and do all the things I love, what I do, like all of that was such a fucking delusion initially, when I first started having those ideas, and in 2013 I started the blog, and then I ghosted it for three months because, Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. What the hell am I even doing? Saying I have an opinion on anything. Even though I wasn’t even doing that, I was just sharing links to like I like this YouTube video from this personal development creator, and I like this blog post from this person.
I was so embarrassed by myself. I didn’t tell anyone about it in my real life for a good year, including my husband, Steve. I was so embarrassed about I just worked on it when I like, it looked like I was studying for university. And then I started to have these ideas of, like, okay, and I came across Brooke Castillo, and, like, the world of coaching, I was like, Oh, my God, that’s a thing. Like, that’s what I I feel like, is me. Like, that’s a word for something that I didn’t know was a thing, but that’s what I I naturally do with friends and family and myself, and like, I’m just so intrigued by it, and like, oh my god, I can’t believe that’s a job, but I couldn’t do that, like, I couldn’t be a coach. And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna figure out having an online course, because I’ve heard about that, and I have some things I could teach. And I just like it was such a delusion to even think about having a coaching client. And then I started having different thoughts about it and different feelings about it, and then acting in accordance with that.
And then I started signing clients. And like, having the emotional willingness to tell people that you could be my client, and to have people be willing to invest money in working with me and in having my guidance and my mentorship and my coaching, and to be willing to risk the rejection that might come from that or my biggest fear, which was finding out that I’m not actually good At coaching, and to just be able to start building such a new reality for myself, and then being able to leave my accounting job that I had and pursue my business, and then to be able to a couple of years later, Leave my part time job that I went to and be full time in my business, and just all of it is such a delusion. But because I understood how results are created, I knew that even though I feel delusional about this big thing I’m trying to do that, me having the belief that it’s possible, or that I could potentially do that, or people like me have done that before, or maybe I could figure that out and slowly building up that belief and that willingness to believe, because it feels vulnerable to believe, it feels so much safer to be a skeptic. It feels so much safer to be a cynic.
It feels so much safer to just be all realistic with everything and to just be grumbling about everything. It feels vulnerable to be the person who’s like, I actually believe I could do something that I’ve never done before, and that I haven’t seen many people do before, and I don’t actually know anyone who’s done it before in my real life, but I think maybe I could figure that out that feels vulnerable to do that. And so again, there’s that emotional capacity and emotional willingness that is required to do that. But little by little, I started shifting into beliefs that created what is now my reality, and I was willing to be delusional because I knew delusion or a belief, a better word for it is a belief that isn’t in alignment with your current reality. That’s all it is. Is the precursor to change. It has to come first. Our perfectionist brains that want to always be right and never get it wrong, always be loved, Never be rejected, especially by ourselves, that our perfectionist brain wants to see the result first and then, believe it, but that’s not how results are created.
The thought comes before the result, the feeling comes before the result. The result doesn’t come first, and then you believe. And people talk about creating confidence, like, how do you do that? You do that by, like, having a track record. But what’s imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is having a track record without a belief that matches that, and that’s a very well known thing. So just because you have a track record of success doesn’t mean you actually believe that you’re successful. It’s not a given. Otherwise, if it was a given, imposter syndrome wouldn’t exist, because you just like, Oh no, I am successful. Look at me. I achieve success. So it’s knowing that your circumstances which might be the success you’ve had this year or lack thereof, and in previous years, you get to choose how you think about it. There are thoughts you have available to you without having to do a bunch of work on them, that will feel better and have you taking more helpful action than what you currently believe.
So when I talk about like cleaning up thoughts, it’s changing the story you have about the circumstances, and oftentimes it’s even just getting clear on a circumstance. This happens all the time when I coach myself too, and when I coach in pgsd and my one on one clients that so often, when we have a thought that isn’t helpful, we’re actually just not seeing the full circumstance. We’re just only seeing a bit of it that enforces our belief or is in alignment with the belief we already have. And so when it comes to really having that safety to dream big, knowing how results are created, and that the thought and feeling you have behind the action you take in 2026 is the most influential factor for me that creates a willingness to believe things that that do feel a bit delusional, and really a willingness or like an understanding that just because I’ve always been a certain way in the past doesn’t mean that’s how I’ll always be in the future.
We talk about this all day long in pgsd, about how you just because you’ve always been a procrastinator doesn’t mean you always will be. Just because you’ve always been in a full time job doesn’t mean you always will be, and that you can’t build a business. But there are shifts that need to happen, and it’s not about, how do I do more? What’s the right strategy? Because if you are only focused on the actions, without changing the thoughts and feelings behind your actions, you will get more of the same, because the result is in alignment and reflects the thought, not the actions. So you can have someone, and you’ve witnessed this, and I gave the Instagram example before, like someone who’s showing up and doing all the things and following all the strategy, and they’re not getting the results, and someone who’s doing the exact same things, and they’re getting incredible results is because they’re thinking and feeling differently about it.
They they are operating in a different way. It’s not that they’re more motivated. It’s not that they’re like, have more discipline, do? They might have thoughts that support discipline and generate motivation, but they are in so much more belief about people want to work with me, or people want to buy this and I know how to sell it. There’s all these other beliefs. Instead of like, Oh, if I just get it right, people will buy. That belief creates pressure and has you not selling it in a compelling way, and then it reinforces the belief of, if I get it right, people don’t, unless I get it right, people don’t buy. And it just creates this cycle of like, okay, well, I have to really get it right, because no one bought that. Instead of like, oh, maybe me trying to focus on getting it right was actually what made people not buy. Maybe I actually missed high level what needs to happen for a sale to happen, for example. So how you think? And I’ll just run through my example, how you think, is so influential.
So say, for example, if in 2026 this is a circumstance, if you just imagine, like, five lines on a page, five rows, the top line has a C for circumstance, the next line has a T for the thought. The next line says a for action, and then wait, I’ve missed something, C, T, F, A, R, C for circumstance, the T for thought, F for feeling, a for action, and R for result, and then you have it laid out like that. So that’s what I’m reading through. So if you have your circumstance is you have the goal in 2026 to grow your business. I’ll talk about this in a second. Ideally you want it to be a bit more specific than that that’s so vague and very hard to achieve when. It’s like that. But for the purpose of this, let’s say you have a goal to make $100,000 in your business by the 31st of December, 2026 if your thought is, I have to get everything right to be able to achieve my goal, the right messaging, the right niche, the right website, the right social media platform, the right social media strategy, the right branding. You know the drill. Your brain knows the drill. The feeling that creates is pressure, or it could be inadequate. Some flavor of that pressure is inadequacy.
The action that creates is rumination, precrasti-learning, hiding until everything is right, constantly looking at more and more and more information to try and get it right, trying something for a little bit, and if you don’t immediately get the reaction you want, then you pivot and you pivot again and go back to the drawing board. And the result of that is your business doesn’t grow because I don’t take enough action. And I talk about this in that episode on getting into a sufficiency cycle, that if we’re in that mentality of, I have to get everything right, we don’t get the main thing right that needs to be gotten right, which is like you have to be taking action. You have to be doing stuff, and yes, your thought and feeling behind it is really important, and it’s better to just be doing stuff with the thought of, I’m going to figure this out. I’m willing to keep trying this, I’m willing to keep troubleshooting this, I’m willing to just stick with this and figure out why it’s not working, instead of the thought of, I have to, if you’re taking action, with the thought of, I have to get this right, and if it’s not right, then I have to go back into, like, retreat back and then figure it out again, and then come out again, like that, sporadic stop starting will have you not be able to have a business.
As a it’s part of it is like you have to be taking a certain level of action to be getting the data, to figure out what to even iterate On, if you’re always kind of just in this, like thinking about it, planning about it, prepping about it, researching about it, learning about it, because you’re trying to get it right, then you don’t actually get the learning you need, which is to see how the world interacts with it and then to troubleshoot it, because it’s not going to be an instant success that your perfectionist brain wants. So we end up in that pattern of trying to get it right and then not getting anything right, because we’re not actually trying stuff when we’re in that mentality. And what we want to shift into is a thought and then a feeling that comes from that that will align with the result you want. So if you have the circumstances, a goal to grow your business to $100,000 in by the 31st of December 2026 then the best thought you could have is, I’m going to grow my business to $100,000 by the 31st of December 2026 the feeling that would generate is committed or convicted.
And then your plan would be, your action line would be, make a plan, stick with it, troubleshoot it, adjust it. Get supported, get coached. Keep going until I get to 100,000 by that point, and the result is, you achieve the goal of $100,000 by that date, there’s other thoughts that can be a bridge to that, like I’ve had used these ones before, people like me. So if it feels like there’s no way I could do that, and in pgse, we teach how to set a goal for the year at a level that will stretch you, but not like spin you out, but thoughts like people like me have made. Say it’s $100,000 have made $100,000 a thought I loved. If I persist, I will succeed. Another thought, I’m willing to figure this out and to keep at it, to not just think there’s a perfect strategy. And so if this didn’t work right away, then maybe there’s a better strategy. If this doesn’t work, maybe there’s a better strategy. If this isn’t work, it’s not the strategy. It’s you. You’ve got to troubleshoot you. You’ve got to figure it out and being able how brains are, like, but there is a perfect strategy, if that’s you, if that thought came up for you, you really want to be in pgsd because of that thought. I know it’s so compelling. Of like, Yeah, but there are better strategies than other than others, sure, but how you’re thinking and feeling as you execute trumps any strategy that you could have.
And that’s why I wanted to talk about, like, how results are actually created. And it doesn’t really matter what goes in the action line, it’s the thought and feeling that generates the result. It’s not the action that creates a result. So the second point I want to talk about is surrounding yourself with people who make your goals feel normal. This is another way to really feel safe, to dream big, and I have so many examples of this. For example, in in the beginning that I mentioned, listening to podcasts was really something. That supported me with, like, having even the idea of I could have a business and then okay, like they’re making it sound like I could do it, maybe I could do it. That was super supportive. But for me, the most transformative kind of support in terms of this surrounding yourself with people who make your goals feel normal. Yes, I love podcasts and things like that, but actually being having people directly that I’m able to interact with was really what shifted it for me. So for example, when I hired my first coach, and by that point, I knew that coaching was a thing, and I wanted to be a coach, but I was in denial about it, because I was scared, and so I was just as I said, scared to find out I wasn’t good at coaching and have my whole my whole self concept around that being ruined.
And there are all sorts of quotes that you might already know that talk about this, like, whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’ll be right. Like this idea of something being a self fulfilling prophecy, that is because our thoughts are so influential, they impact how we feel, they create how we feel, when we feel a certain way, regardless of what action we’re taking, it flavors that action. For example, if you’re posting on Instagram and you feel inadequate while posting, you’re going to be creating a different kind of post than when you are posting on Instagram and you are feeling successful, or you’re feeling convicted, or you’re feeling compelled, or you’re feeling connected. Same action, and our perfectionist brains want to go to like, just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. But, and you might have seen this where you’re like, doing the things, and it’s not creating the result, it’s because the thought and feeling behind it aren’t aligned with the result you want to create. So your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions. I’ll give you a solid example in a second. And your actions that are fueled by that thought and feeling create the result.
And then, in terms of circumstances that are out there in the world, whether it’s the economy, whether it’s a client saying something to you, whether it’s a law or regulation, you have to follow those are circumstances, and we have thoughts about the circumstances. So just as an example of like how to lay this app, because we want to understand how results are created, so that when it comes to dreaming big and wanting to dream big, even though that might feel delusional and all of that, if you actually know how results are created, then it feels a bit less delusional. But when you think like, Okay, well, results come from what I’ve done in the past, for example, like past performance is an indicator of how I’m going to do things in the future, then you are going to feel pretty damn delusional to try and do anything different to the past, because your belief is that results are created from like, results are just created however they’re created. They’re out of your control, and you just get more of what you got in the past.
And the way to really step into it’s kind of like being delusional, and being okay with being delusional is that you start to understand that results are created by my thinking. And of course, to then create a new result, I have to think differently, and that means I’m going to need to think in a way that isn’t actually reflected in my current results, because my current results are created by my past thinking. So I will feel a bit delusional as I believe something that isn’t yet manifested into reality, but as I continue to believe it, I will begin to create evidence to prove that belief true, and at one point that won’t be a delusion anymore, that will literally be my reality. And actually, I have an example here, and I will share that too, but I wanted to share it with my own example of that. So for me, I started my business in 2013 as a blog. I was a very insecure 22 year old. I was at university doing a law degree, a finance degree, a Diploma of French. I’d done well in school, and I came across on my commute to my job that I had as a receptionist. I came across I was sick of listening to ads on the radio, so I came across psychology podcasts, which I’d always been intrigued by psychology. And then that led me to business podcasts.
And then I started listening to podcasts about having an online business, even though I had literally no intention whatsoever of having my own business, of having an online business, but because of the way the people I was listening to were talking about mindset, being part of it, and like, here’s different things that you can do, and this is possible, and you could believe this, and like all of that, it just started to seed this idea and see this possibility, like, oh, maybe I could have my own blog, which is what the people that I have been listening to, they had blogs and they had websites. Oh, maybe I can do that. And I don’t know what I’d do it on exactly, but maybe I could give that a try. And I like, listen to that for six months, and it just started being like, huh, maybe I could do it. And I won’t go into the full story here. I’ve already documented it many times on my podcast, but to go from the place where it felt like such a delusion initially, to even have my own website or blog or like, what would I even talk about, to now being in the place where I make a full time income on part time hours, if that like very part time hours.
I have a business that is based around a website and all the online stuff that people were talking about all those years ago. I help clients I didn’t even know about coaching yet when I listened to any of that that I have clients that I help from all around the world and have changed their lives, have influenced so much positive change through what I’m doing that I have a business that has not only been able to support me, but has also had me be able to have four children within four years, and I didn’t need to go and get a job or do anything like that, I was able to pay myself more than I made as an accountant, while having so much time off to have kids and do all the things I love, what I do, like all of that was such a fucking delusion initially, when I first started having those ideas, and in 2013 I started the blog, and then I ghosted it for three months because, Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. What the hell am I even doing? Saying I have an opinion on anything. Even though I wasn’t even doing that, I was just sharing links to like I like this YouTube video from this personal development creator, and I like this blog post from this person.
I was so embarrassed by myself. I didn’t tell anyone about it in my real life for a good year, including my husband, Steve. I was so embarrassed about I just worked on it when I like, it looked like I was studying for university. And then I started to have these ideas of, like, okay, and I came across Brooke Castillo, and, like, the world of coaching, I was like, Oh, my God, that’s a thing. Like, that’s what I I feel like, is me. Like, that’s a word for something that I didn’t know was a thing, but that’s what I I naturally do with friends and family and myself, and like, I’m just so intrigued by it, and like, oh my god, I can’t believe that’s a job, but I couldn’t do that, like, I couldn’t be a coach. And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna figure out having an online course, because I’ve heard about that, and I have some things I could teach. And I just like it was such a delusion to even think about having a coaching client. And then I started having different thoughts about it and different feelings about it, and then acting in accordance with that.
And then I started signing clients. And like, having the emotional willingness to tell people that you could be my client, and to have people be willing to invest money in working with me and in having my guidance and my mentorship and my coaching, and to be willing to risk the rejection that might come from that or my biggest fear, which was finding out that I’m not actually good At coaching, and to just be able to start building such a new reality for myself, and then being able to leave my accounting job that I had and pursue my business, and then to be able to a couple of years later, Leave my part time job that I went to and be full time in my business, and just all of it is such a delusion. But because I understood how results are created, I knew that even though I feel delusional about this big thing I’m trying to do that, me having the belief that it’s possible, or that I could potentially do that, or people like me have done that before, or maybe I could figure that out and slowly building up that belief and that willingness to believe, because it feels vulnerable to believe, it feels so much safer to be a skeptic. It feels so much safer to be a cynic.
It feels so much safer to just be all realistic with everything and to just be grumbling about everything. It feels vulnerable to be the person who’s like, I actually believe I could do something that I’ve never done before, and that I haven’t seen many people do before, and I don’t actually know anyone who’s done it before in my real life, but I think maybe I could figure that out that feels vulnerable to do that. And so again, there’s that emotional capacity and emotional willingness that is required to do that. But little by little, I started shifting into beliefs that created what is now my reality, and I was willing to be delusional because I knew delusion or a belief, a better word for it is a belief that isn’t in alignment with your current reality. That’s all it is. Is the precursor to change. It has to come first. Our perfectionist brains that want to always be right and never get it wrong, always be loved, Never be rejected, especially by ourselves, that our perfectionist brain wants to see the result first and then, believe it, but that’s not how results are created.
The thought comes before the result, the feeling comes before the result. The result doesn’t come first, and then you believe. And people talk about creating confidence, like, how do you do that? You do that by, like, having a track record. But what’s imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome is having a track record without a belief that matches that, and that’s a very well known thing. So just because you have a track record of success doesn’t mean you actually believe that you’re successful. It’s not a given. Otherwise, if it was a given, imposter syndrome wouldn’t exist, because you just like, Oh no, I am successful. Look at me. I achieve success. So it’s knowing that your circumstances which might be the success you’ve had this year or lack thereof, and in previous years, you get to choose how you think about it. There are thoughts you have available to you without having to do a bunch of work on them, that will feel better and have you taking more helpful action than what you currently believe.
So when I talk about like cleaning up thoughts, it’s changing the story you have about the circumstances, and oftentimes it’s even just getting clear on a circumstance. This happens all the time when I coach myself too, and when I coach in pgsd and my one on one clients that so often, when we have a thought that isn’t helpful, we’re actually just not seeing the full circumstance. We’re just only seeing a bit of it that enforces our belief or is in alignment with the belief we already have. And so when it comes to really having that safety to dream big, knowing how results are created, and that the thought and feeling you have behind the action you take in 2026 is the most influential factor for me that creates a willingness to believe things that that do feel a bit delusional, and really a willingness or like an understanding that just because I’ve always been a certain way in the past doesn’t mean that’s how I’ll always be in the future.
We talk about this all day long in pgsd, about how you just because you’ve always been a procrastinator doesn’t mean you always will be. Just because you’ve always been in a full time job doesn’t mean you always will be, and that you can’t build a business. But there are shifts that need to happen, and it’s not about, how do I do more? What’s the right strategy? Because if you are only focused on the actions, without changing the thoughts and feelings behind your actions, you will get more of the same, because the result is in alignment and reflects the thought, not the actions. So you can have someone, and you’ve witnessed this, and I gave the Instagram example before, like someone who’s showing up and doing all the things and following all the strategy, and they’re not getting the results, and someone who’s doing the exact same things, and they’re getting incredible results is because they’re thinking and feeling differently about it.
They they are operating in a different way. It’s not that they’re more motivated. It’s not that they’re like, have more discipline, do? They might have thoughts that support discipline and generate motivation, but they are in so much more belief about people want to work with me, or people want to buy this and I know how to sell it. There’s all these other beliefs. Instead of like, Oh, if I just get it right, people will buy. That belief creates pressure and has you not selling it in a compelling way, and then it reinforces the belief of, if I get it right, people don’t, unless I get it right, people don’t buy. And it just creates this cycle of like, okay, well, I have to really get it right, because no one bought that. Instead of like, oh, maybe me trying to focus on getting it right was actually what made people not buy. Maybe I actually missed high level what needs to happen for a sale to happen, for example. So how you think? And I’ll just run through my example, how you think, is so influential.
So say, for example, if in 2026 this is a circumstance, if you just imagine, like, five lines on a page, five rows, the top line has a C for circumstance, the next line has a T for the thought. The next line says a for action, and then wait, I’ve missed something, C, T, F, A, R, C for circumstance, the T for thought, F for feeling, a for action, and R for result, and then you have it laid out like that. So that’s what I’m reading through. So if you have your circumstance is you have the goal in 2026 to grow your business. I’ll talk about this in a second. Ideally you want it to be a bit more specific than that that’s so vague and very hard to achieve when. It’s like that. But for the purpose of this, let’s say you have a goal to make $100,000 in your business by the 31st of December, 2026 if your thought is, I have to get everything right to be able to achieve my goal, the right messaging, the right niche, the right website, the right social media platform, the right social media strategy, the right branding. You know the drill. Your brain knows the drill. The feeling that creates is pressure, or it could be inadequate. Some flavor of that pressure is inadequacy.
The action that creates is rumination, precrasti-learning, hiding until everything is right, constantly looking at more and more and more information to try and get it right, trying something for a little bit, and if you don’t immediately get the reaction you want, then you pivot and you pivot again and go back to the drawing board. And the result of that is your business doesn’t grow because I don’t take enough action. And I talk about this in that episode on getting into a sufficiency cycle, that if we’re in that mentality of, I have to get everything right, we don’t get the main thing right that needs to be gotten right, which is like you have to be taking action. You have to be doing stuff, and yes, your thought and feeling behind it is really important, and it’s better to just be doing stuff with the thought of, I’m going to figure this out. I’m willing to keep trying this, I’m willing to keep troubleshooting this, I’m willing to just stick with this and figure out why it’s not working, instead of the thought of, I have to, if you’re taking action, with the thought of, I have to get this right, and if it’s not right, then I have to go back into, like, retreat back and then figure it out again, and then come out again, like that, sporadic stop starting will have you not be able to have a business.
As a it’s part of it is like you have to be taking a certain level of action to be getting the data, to figure out what to even iterate On, if you’re always kind of just in this, like thinking about it, planning about it, prepping about it, researching about it, learning about it, because you’re trying to get it right, then you don’t actually get the learning you need, which is to see how the world interacts with it and then to troubleshoot it, because it’s not going to be an instant success that your perfectionist brain wants. So we end up in that pattern of trying to get it right and then not getting anything right, because we’re not actually trying stuff when we’re in that mentality. And what we want to shift into is a thought and then a feeling that comes from that that will align with the result you want. So if you have the circumstances, a goal to grow your business to $100,000 in by the 31st of December 2026 then the best thought you could have is, I’m going to grow my business to $100,000 by the 31st of December 2026 the feeling that would generate is committed or convicted.
And then your plan would be, your action line would be, make a plan, stick with it, troubleshoot it, adjust it. Get supported, get coached. Keep going until I get to 100,000 by that point, and the result is, you achieve the goal of $100,000 by that date, there’s other thoughts that can be a bridge to that, like I’ve had used these ones before, people like me. So if it feels like there’s no way I could do that, and in pgse, we teach how to set a goal for the year at a level that will stretch you, but not like spin you out, but thoughts like people like me have made. Say it’s $100,000 have made $100,000 a thought I loved. If I persist, I will succeed. Another thought, I’m willing to figure this out and to keep at it, to not just think there’s a perfect strategy. And so if this didn’t work right away, then maybe there’s a better strategy. If this doesn’t work, maybe there’s a better strategy. If this isn’t work, it’s not the strategy. It’s you. You’ve got to troubleshoot you. You’ve got to figure it out and being able how brains are, like, but there is a perfect strategy, if that’s you, if that thought came up for you, you really want to be in pgsd because of that thought. I know it’s so compelling. Of like, Yeah, but there are better strategies than other than others, sure, but how you’re thinking and feeling as you execute trumps any strategy that you could have.
And that’s why I wanted to talk about, like, how results are actually created. And it doesn’t really matter what goes in the action line, it’s the thought and feeling that generates the result. It’s not the action that creates a result. So the second point I want to talk about is surrounding yourself with people who make your goals feel normal. This is another way to really feel safe, to dream big, and I have so many examples of this. For example, in in the beginning that I mentioned, listening to podcasts was really something. That supported me with, like, having even the idea of I could have a business and then okay, like they’re making it sound like I could do it, maybe I could do it. That was super supportive. But for me, the most transformative kind of support in terms of this surrounding yourself with people who make your goals feel normal. Yes, I love podcasts and things like that, but actually being having people directly that I’m able to interact with was really what shifted it for me. So for example, when I hired my first coach, and by that point, I knew that coaching was a thing, and I wanted to be a coach, but I was in denial about it, because I was scared, and so I was just as I said, scared to find out I wasn’t good at coaching and have my whole my whole self concept around that being ruined.
Outro
If you want to join us for our annual reflection and 2026 planning that we go through inside perfection is getting shit done, you want to sign up now. You need to be inside the program by the time we do the first of the two calls. So you need to sign up by 6pm eastern time on Monday the 15th of December, as that is when the annual reflection call will start. You can get the replays if you’re not able to attend live, but if you want to join us, then you need to get yourself inside perfectionist getting shit done by the time that we begin our reflection, so that you don’t miss anything that is going on inside the pgsd community to help you. So go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, to find out more and sign up today. I’m looking forward to seeing you inside.