Tune in for a behind-the-scenes update on my own perfectionism project.
I’m sharing my lessons from last month as a perfectionist entrepreneur including the challenges I faced, the breakthroughs I had, what I did to shift out of perfectionist thinking and what I’m working on next to keep growing my business.
As always, it’s raw and honest and insanely helpful.
Sign up for my upcoming Power Planning Workshop at samlaurabrown.com/workshop
Follow me on instagram at instagram.com/perfectionismproject.
Sign up for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done today at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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 634 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
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.
I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.
Sam Laura Brown (Start of the episode)
Hello, hello, welcome to this episode. I am excited, I hope you are too, because this episode is a return to something that I used to do that was so loved. I love doing it, you love listening, if you were a listener back then, many of you who listen today have been listening for a long time.
But maybe you’ve never heard this kind of episode. If so, you are going to be delighted because what I am doing is I am sharing each month going forward a update behind the scenes of what’s going on with me in terms of my personal growth and getting out of my own way in my business and also in terms of my business. So I used to do these episodes when I started my podcast, which was 2017.
I did them mainly in 2018, 2019. I think I did 2020 as well. Once I got pregnant with my daughter, Lydia, I believe is when I stopped doing them, though I haven’t gone back to have a look.
But I believe I stopped around then because it was really hard to talk about what was actually going on for me in my business when I was pregnant and that was having such a big impact on my day-to-day, but I didn’t yet want to announce it. I announced my pregnancies quite late in for all of the pregnancies that I have, my three pregnancies for my four kids as I’m a mom. And yeah, I just have been missing this so much.
This is my favorite kind of podcast episode to listen to. It’s my favorite kind of episode to record, as in I don’t listen back. Actually, I have recently been listening back to some of the past ones.
It’s been super helpful, but I don’t listen back. I mean, when I’m listening to someone else share as an entrepreneur, this is the kind of stuff that just helps me really understand the actual entrepreneurial journey versus my own perfectionist expectations of what it should be like. Helps me feel less alone, helps me see a way forward, helps me know what I need to be doing differently and giving me insight into my own experience.
I just love it. So what I am doing is I’m returning to something that has been so core to my business, which is documenting. In 2017, I believe, I watched a video from Gary Vaynerchuk called Document Don’t Create, and that concept alone released my perfectionism handbrake in such a big way, the idea being, and you can go and look it up on YouTube if you type in those keywords, but the concept being instead of trying to create content, just document what you’re doing.
Document your own journey because A, it’s so valuable to others, even more valuable than like put together content where you’re trying to teach something or anything like that. And also it’s just like amazing for you to have personally. And the other thing I’ve been really thinking about with this before I get into my update on the last month, which was so fascinating, is that really for me, the name, The Perfectionism Project, because like the name of the podcast and the business, it’s the business name is The Perfectionism Project, is because this is my perfectionism project.
It’s your perfectionism project, and it is a project. And I really feel like in, I wanna say in 2022, as I’ve been reviewing things recently, like I really went into a thought of now I’m successful, I need to act like I have it all together, which is really interesting because I was still documenting, but I could see, especially because I achieved a level of success. And then I was also struggling at the same time, which is very normal.
Like that’s entrepreneurship that you’ll be succeeding and at the same time having things to work on. That’s not an abnormal problem. That’s not a sign that I’m making a mistake or anything like that, that my perfectionist brain made me, or not made me, my perfectionist brain produced thoughts that I now essentially like need to, I need to like be in this kind of expert mode, even though I’ve never resonated with being in that.
And all the teachers I really love, like my coach, my mentors that I have, they are all people who document their own thinking, their own journey, and they share from their expertise and document as well from a place of expertise, but they’re very much in a learner’s mindset, beginner’s mindset, growth mindset. Like Tim Ferriss is such a good example with his podcast that I have always loved because he’s just so like documenting his own curiosity and like all the things, and he’s such an expert. And also Stacey Bayman, my coach does that as well, Brooke Castillo, now Brooke Hicks with the Life Coach School podcast, which is the coaching school I’m certified with, does that as well so beautifully.
Like I just am obsessed with anyone who is willing to share the ins and outs while also leading at the same time. And so I just feel so ready to step fully into that. I’ve already been in that, but like really owning that I can share all the things.
I don’t have to share everything. I can share what I feel comfortable with sharing, but I can share anything and it will be so helpful for you if I feel compelled to share it from a place of this is gonna be so helpful. So with that said, welcome to the update for October.
I have no notes. I have my experience and self-trust, but I have no notes and I have my power planning. So my power planning is really going to be the guide for me because when I used to do these monthly episodes, I hadn’t figured out power planning yet.
And so I had to kind of like jog my memory. I’m sure I recorded many just top of mind, but I didn’t have a way to really get an insight into what was going on in my brain the way that I do with power planning. So power planning is how I manage my time.
It’s how I manage my mind and it’s how I really see what is going on in my perfectionist brain because my actions tell a story. And when I see that laid out in my calendar, I can tell so much more easily what that story is, have so much more awareness over that story, shift that story in the moment because I’m seeing it play out through my actions. Like I’m seeing my perfectionist thoughts play out in real time through my actions, through the steps of power planning, my power hour, my little tweaks, my weekly review.
They all telling a story about what is going on for me and the simple shifts I need to make to grow my business. So I’m obsessed with power planning, obviously. I created it out of need for myself.
I share it with our PGSDers and teach it in there. So my power planning is my guide for this episode. I’ve got it open on my computer in front of me.
If you wanna picture me, I’m sitting in my office on my chair, I’m looking out the window right now. It’s a beautiful sunny day. We are, are we in summer here in Brisbane? I’m trying to think.
No, we are technically still in spring, but it is hot here. It’s kind of like, I describe it as like, if you don’t know Brisbane, which you might not. So almost all our PGSDers are in the US, many are in other countries too, but it’s kind of like LA or Miami kind of weather.
Just like we always have beautiful weather. It’s almost always sunny. We do get big summer storms in the afternoon, but like it’s a beautiful place to live.
So anyway, I’m looking out. We live on acreage at all the trees and the greenery. I have my, I have my water bottle.
I have my laptop. So I have a two screen situation. I have my big screen.
Highly recommend, by the way, from a productivity standpoint, if you are working off one screen and even like side note, we have been watching, what did we just watch? The Diplomat, fourth season on Netflix. We just finished that, which was really good. But also any shows like Suits or anything like that, where there are like high powered professionals working from a small laptop.
I’m just thinking like, what are you doing? You need all the screens. Like it’s, I love, I learned this from my accounting job, just having multiple screens. You can just get a cheap one.
Doesn’t have to be like, I have a MacBook. This is not really a tangent, but I’m trusting you’ll enjoy it. I have a MacBook Air and I have like an Asus, monitor sitting on a, I’ve had it sitting on like magazines or different things at different points, like books, but it’s sitting on a little small box.
So it’s at a good height. So I don’t have to crook my neck all day. My laptop is also sitting up on a stand, which is up on a box.
So everything’s at eye height. Another side note, get yourself an ergonomic setup. If you can, depending where you’re working, I used to just be like working from my laptop on the train on my lap.
So like there’s no issue with whatever you’ve got. But if you are working at a desk and you’re hunched over at a laptop, get yourself a little laptop stand, get yourself a monitor, can be really inexpensive. Doesn’t have to be Apple or anything like that.
You get a plug that plugs it in and you can have two different screens and just like have multiple things open instead of like constantly switching between tabs. I am rarely switching back and forth between tabs because I just have a couple of things open, which takes constraint and discipline, but I have a couple of things open and they’re all open at once. And that is just a very simple way to be more effective and accomplish more in the same amount of time.
So anyway, I have my power planning up on my big screen, which is the screen in front of me. My laptop is the screen to the right of me. And I am just scrolling through and I can just see from my color coding on my power planning as well, like what the vibe was for each of the weeks of October, which is also like, I did accomplish a lot in October.
We updated all of the onboarding inside PGSD. We simplified down the curriculum in PGSD. We changed how we do the coaching call.
So it’s even better. Like we’ve made quite a few changes so I could see the first month of October. Most of my business time was going to that.
I am, I guess like update or like since this is the first one of these and I’m just gonna assume like this kind of episode isn’t for everyone, but it should be because they’re the best. But I am going to just give you a bit of an update on like what my current lifestyle is like, if you will. I’m a twin mom of four under six.
Lydia’s five, Jack and James is three, turning four in Feb. And Liam or Lily as we call him is 18 months old. And I’m currently working four days a week.
And I will talk about that soon because that has been impacting my effectiveness. Basically I’ve had too much time, which is a counterintuitive thing to say because four work days is not technically like a full-time work time, but it’s too much for me. So in the way that like, I’ll talk about it in this, but my brain wants to fill the time.
Then like, I don’t need that much time. I work better with a smaller amount of time. So that is my setup.
And what else do you need to know about that? It’ll all unfold. So as I’m scrolling through my power planning, I am, by the way, by the way, I am teaching a live power planning workshop on it’ll be Thursday evening, US time, Friday morning, Australian time. And you can go to, it’ll be in, we’ll put it in the show notes, the link to go sign up for the workshop.
But if you wanna be power planning, which you do, then you wanna learn it from me live and I’m gonna be teaching it, which I’m really excited about. So it’s essentially gonna be like a live podcast episode, but even better. And I really want you to be there.
You really wanna be there. So go to, it should be samlaurabrown.com/workshop to go sign up, join me live. There will also be a replay recording available for a limited time after if you can’t be live.
So go and sign up, just hit pause, go sign up, then come back. It’ll take you 30 seconds. I really can’t overstate how powerful power planning is for me.
Part of how it’s called power planning, that’s the name I just naturally wrote in my first time that I was doing power planning. I called it that in my own calendar. I feel my best when I feel powerful in my business and power planning is how I tap into that.
And I will be talking about it a lot because it is so essential to how I run my business as someone with a perfectionist brain that wants to do all the things and should’ve, my brain just tells me we should do it all. We should’ve had it all done ages ago. Just all of those perfectionist thought errors we can have that just derail us and have us doing busy work and procrastinating and overthinking.
My brain produces them too. Power planning is the thing that grounds me. It allows me to mentally switch off.
It allows me to accomplish a lot in a small amount of time and keep things off my plate. It’s not about just everything on your to-do list put it all in your calendar. You actually need to refine down so you’re only doing your needle movers.
So anyway, I’m teaching power planning in that workshop. Teaching it live is gonna be insanely valuable. So get yourself there.
It’s gonna be so good. Okay, so let me just, let me take you back to October. So October for me was a month that, and I guess this is other context.
I’m in a mastermind, which I adore called 200K Mastermind. It is led by Stacey Boehman. And I have been in her mastermind at various times since I signed up for the first time for it in 2021.
I’ve been listening to her podcast since 2019. And I joined the mastermind and I just love her approach to business. It’s so aligned with what I really deeply believe in which is essentially the power of your brain.
Like looking at like the essay strategy and things like that. But also just like your thoughts are so influential when it comes to creating your results. And our brain wants to be like, it’s strategy, but like being able to have a coach that keeps bringing me back to like, it’s your thinking and solving for that without being all or nothing about it and like nothing else matters.
But really like when you get the thoughts in place, the action follows the thought. So like the strategy is the action. So the strategy follows the thinking and a strategy with poor thinking behind it is not gonna be effective.
Like your thinking is so powerful, you are so powerful. So like whenever I listen to her, I just feel more like me. And this is something that’s really come up for me over the last few months is like, I only wanna consume things that help me feel more like myself.
And that doesn’t mean they don’t challenge me because it is challenging to be more me. It feels easier to just try and be someone else that feels like the easy thing to do. It feels harder to own like who I really am and what I really wanna do.
But I really just wanna consume things that in terms of content or lessons and whatever, that help me feel more empowered. And I hope this is that for you as well in PGSE that you feel more like yourself and you have the courage to be more of you rather than listening to things that are telling me consciously or unconsciously, like expressly or in an implicit way that I should be someone other than I am. I should do something that I don’t wanna be doing.
Again, it’s not about not being challenged. It is really challenging to grow. I just thought I would say it differently.
It is challenging to, it is the most challenging thing to let things be easy, to be more me, to believe that it’s enough as I’d want to do it and then to just solve for that and get it working. Like that is the work. So I’m in Stacey’s Mastermind, 200K, love it.
And what we were doing in that in October was the revenue challenge, which is setting a revenue goal for a 30-day period and then going after that goal. And for me, oh my God, it was so good. I love a container, and this is why I’ve loved launching as well, is it gives you, instead of having this endless period of selling that it’s really hard to know when to evaluate and you’ve got to have a really, like evaluation is so important.
And if you’re just endlessly selling and like say, for example, and we have a lot of PGSDs in this situation. So if that’s you, listen to this. And I’ve already talked about this in PGSD, but if you haven’t received this, let yourself receive it now, that if you were just say, for example, you have a service that you sell and it’s always available and you’re posting content to sell it, which you also be wanting to be thinking about, like there’s marketing, like all of your marketing alone without having some kind of sales mechanism or event.
And I’m not saying you have to do like a webinar or anything like that. And we have all kinds of entrepreneurs in PGSD, but sometimes our perfectionist brain goes into this sort of like our marketing should be doing all the selling for us instead of like what really happened for me in my business is I learned first of all, like how to even just post anything and do that. And like learning marketing and how to market consistently was the first thing I needed to learn.
Selling just felt so scary and having something for sale and the chance of refund requests and all of that. And then as I continued on, I started having something for sale, but I was trying to do that without actually selling and without having a way for people to, and I’m trying to think of how to explain this and thinking about where you’re at, maybe in terms of your business knowledge, but basically it needs to be just more than content. And I say that from a place of, for example, I had a client who was posting on Instagram.
She’s having a lot of drama about posting on stories, posting on her feed and selling her services. She is a coach. And what I was telling her is like, you also need to have, like you used to do events, but then you stopped them.
Like you need to have a way for people to really also get a taste and not say you can’t sell directly off Instagram or anything like that. I have sold a lot directly from my podcast, but the way I have sold from my podcast is essentially doing a sales event on the podcast doing the five part series. So maybe if you’re not making sales, just like have a look at that.
I do this work currently with my private clients. I am fully booked, but I hope in the future to be having more spots available so I can help more people with what comes after you’re taking consistently, sorry, what comes after you’re taking consistent action is being able to make consistent sales and getting out of your own way and the perfectionist thoughts that stop us from consistently selling. I love that work with my private clients that I do.
So anyway, why was I talking about that? Okay, so with the revenue challenge. So that, I love having a container and launching is an example of that, where you have just basically a period of time where you’re talking about what you have for sale more intensely, and you might have some kind of incentive to sign up that you don’t necessarily have to have one, but just a more condensed, like a campaign, a promotion, like some kind of more intense time of talking about what you’re doing and inviting people in powerfully to sign up or buy or whatever it is, like get what you’re saying. So I love that because it just is a mirror.
I love power planning for this reason. It’s the container of a week that is, it mirrors back. And when you do your weekly review at the end of the week, you see what’s going on.
Whereas if you’re just working from an endless to-do list, there’s never that reflection point that comes up. You just keep trying harder to be motivated, beating yourself up. When really like having that container of making a plan for the week, powering yourself up, like shifting your thoughts to follow through with the plan, but also planning in a way that’s easier to follow through with, then working off the overwhelming to-do list or the overpacked calendar, and then studying yourself at the end of the week to get the insights, so good.
So anyway, revenue challenge this last month was such like a container to really witness myself. And it was frustrating in the best way. And side note, I can say this with a PGSD goal, I wanna do an episode about pain without shame because it was really painful, but I broke free of the shame around it.
And then I could just actually see what was going on for me. And now I’m just solving it. And it feels so matter of fact, but I like one of the big breakthroughs for me in the month, there are a few.
So let me just go through them top of mind. Number one was just noticing myself chopping and changing, like having a plan, feeling really excited about it, doing it for a very little bit. And then if I didn’t get immediate signals that it was working, that I went, okay, that’s not it, it needs to be something else.
And that’s not it, it needs to be something else. And I did that about four times. So I had like one kind of theme per week where I was doing different things.
And I just from this revenue challenge and like having that container of the month, I noticed that I just witnessed myself in such an incredible way, how I didn’t want it to be easy. I didn’t wanna believe I knew what I was doing. And when I’d make a decision, I just went back on the decision.
And it felt smart to do that, which was so fascinating. Like it smelt, it smelt, no, it felt smart. I have lots of little kids, so we are all the potty stuff.
I’m just, anyway, not gonna go back into what that sentence was gonna be if I got it wrong. But with, it just, it felt smart to change my plan, right? You get this. It feels smart to be undecided.
It feels smart to go back to research. It feels smart to learn again. It feels like all of that feels so smart.
I felt so smart for so much of October. And I didn’t, I didn’t when I saw what I was doing, I was like, oh, I’m just like, I’m not owning that I know what I’m doing and letting it be easy. And I think for me just really being in, and I was coaching on this yesterday on the coaching call.
If you’re a PGSDer, listen to the coaching call that we did this week on, it’s called like, what was it called? Did I name it? When you’re not making progress and like fear of success was what it was really about. So good. Everyone was like nodding along, be like, this is so amazing.
So listen to that on the private podcast. But I feel like coming out of a challenging period in my business, I have just been in this like struggle identity that like, I’m a struggler now again. It’s like really, it’s really fascinating to just, I think because also I didn’t ever fully normalize the success I did accomplish.
And so then it felt so uncomfortable that I went back to struggling. And even when I was succeeding, I still was in a lot of thoughts of, I don’t know what I’m doing. I like, it’s not working, even though it was working better than it ever had.
And objectively, I was very successful. But internally with my perfectionist brain being like, but this is where you could be. Like I just wasn’t, I wasn’t owning that I knew what I was doing and I was doing it incredibly well.
Like I was killing it. I still am. And that has been like, I got peer coaching today without in the master, like, oh, like I haven’t been owning it.
And it has felt more uncomfortable to own what I have accomplished and who I am than to be in this kind of like pretend struggle. The struggle has felt so real. Like, let me be clear.
The struggle hasn’t felt pretend, but it’s also kind of been like this manufactured struggle in a sense, just out of like comfort and familiarity. And there’s like identity stuff. I feel like it’s really identity stuff in PGSD.
I was recommending this to a PGSDer the other day in Ask a Coach, the self-image module. Search for self-image in PGSD to get all the lessons on this, because it is so important how you view yourself. And just really getting for me that I know what I’m doing.
This has been the constant epiphany I’ve had in the last few years, but then I haven’t, I mean, I’ve had a lot of progress with it, but it hasn’t fully clicked. And I feel like today it has clicked. And from this peer coaching call as well, she was like, what are you on about? Like this, you’re clearly very successful.
Like, what do you mean you don’t know what you’re doing? But I had a very, I had a good case I could put forward of here’s how I don’t know. But, oh, here’s all the proof. But really with this month, just seeing myself drop and change.
And then also, so Neha who works for me, I was reviewing, like she documents what she does with her time, same way that I do. And I was reviewing like, where has her time gone? I was like, oh, like so much of her time this month and many months has gone to like undoing the decision that was made or like going and making a new decision and like kind of like doing a lot of rework and a lot of, and it’s not to say in entrepreneurship that isn’t like, you do need to change stuff and all of that. But a lot of it, it wasn’t positive change.
It was me not wanting to stick with the decision because of an emotion and an identity. And so then us needing to do it again and again and feeling so smart and like, yeah, I’m figuring it out. But like, I have it figured out sufficiently in terms of the revenue goal I’m working towards, which is, and this is also I’ve been noticing myself wavering on it.
My next goal, my next like major milestone is 600K revenue. That’s my highest revenue year that I’ve had and I wanna return to that level. And I already have the skills and I know what I’m doing to get there.
And it’s not to say I don’t have new skills to develop because I do, but also I can just do what I know to do and get back to that revenue. And I really deeply believe that because not only that, throughout this whole period of building my business, I have only gotten more skilled. I understand myself in such a deeper way.
I’m able to shift my thinking so much more powerfully. I’m more powerful as a coach, as an entrepreneur. Like I have gotten more skilled.
So I’m not just like returning to like past things. I am more skilled, but I already have all the ingredients. But even this month, my brain went into like, okay, I’ve got to learn.
I’ve got to learn like all the, I was saying to Steve, like I’ve just realized like I’ve got to learn more skills. And he’s like, I don’t know what you mean because I don’t think that’s true. Like you’re not owning that you have skills.
I’m like, no, no, no, you don’t get it. I need to learn emails. I need to learn.
And like, yes, I can improve my skills in those things, but not from a place of not owning that I already have a lot of skills. So this has been like the breakthrough again and again that I’ve kept having is like, I know what I’m doing. And then I go into, wait, no, I don’t know.
Literally just a thought error, like a thought habit, and I really believe it’s identity related and just it feeling more comfortable to be in this kind of like struggle identity around my business than to be in the in an identity of I’m succeeding in business. And factually, it was so good, the peer coaching call today, I had, I put it in the self-coaching model in the whiteboard, like I prepared for the coaching, I self-coached to where I could get to and then presented my self-coaching. And I had in my model, the circumstances of my business.
And like, it’s so clear when I did that, like that my thought is a thought error that I was sharing about, which I woke up, maybe I’ll share about that in the next one that’s on November, um, cause I’m in November recording this, but the thought error that I was working on today, the perfectionist or nothing thought that was having me essentially go through the motions with something I’m working on instead of powerfully doing it and being decided and moving on that it is clear that I know what I’m doing. And she was just like, this makes no sense to me that you’re thinking how you’re thinking. I’m like, okay, thank you.
Um, so that was really helpful. Always so helpful to have your brain looked at. We do that all the time in PGSD because we can just be our thoughts feel like facts, but don’t believe everything you think.
So, and sometimes you just need someone to be like, Hey, that’s not true. I’m like, what it is like, no, here’s why I’m like to really shift your perspective. So that was super helpful, but I noticed myself going into this smart feeling thought.
So interesting. I feel smart when I’m self-sabotaging getting my way, my perfectionist thoughts feel smart. So I felt smart to keep changing my plans.
I felt smart when I was learning. Okay. Let me learn more about webinars, which I wanted.
Like I was like, I’m going to do a webinar. And then I was like, no, I’m going to do a podcast. No, I’m going to like, I was just chopping and changing.
And I could see it so clearly in my power planning that I would also as well in my week, like be working really hard on something up to the Friday afternoon, my last work day and being like, Oh my God, I wish I had more time. And then the next week on the Tuesday, I just start doing something completely different or I’d like schedule stuff in my work time in a way that was like, I normally wouldn’t do that. And I started filling my work time with other stuff.
I just noticed all of these really interesting behaviors coming up like these actions of, and there was so many amazing breakthroughs that happened in October. It’s not all or nothing like October was a really important month for me, business wise. I really reconnected with Instagram.
I know what I’m doing and emails and just like there’s quite a few areas in the business. I was like, Oh, I can, I know what I’m doing. Let me just do it.
And at the same time, in terms of sales, I just watched myself chop and change and chop and change and not achieve my goal. Not for lack of skill, not for lack of ability, not for lack of anything else, except my perfectionist brain was just like, no, do something else. That’s the smart thing to do.
Let’s just find the right answer. And so I hope hearing me share that, it helps you just recognize, yeah, your perfectionist brain will do that. And the key is just to witness it without judgment and to have a tool that helps you witness it.
But this is a skillset, learning how to witness it without judgment, learning how to shift it. But if you judge it, you won’t be able to shift it. So judging it, I’m sorry, not judging it, watching it, noticing yourself from a place of curiosity, like, Oh my God, this is so fascinating.
Shifting it and knowing what to shift it to. We teach you that in PGSD and really being able to, to just be onto yourself in the most powerful way and not in a nitpicky way and not in a like, I have to get it right way. Or like once I finally am onto myself, then I’ll finally be successful enough and whatever.
It’s like, no, I just love, I love the, and this is the other thing at the end of the month, I listened back to an episode. I, I feel like I’m not doing the month justice, but I’m just trusting that me, cause it was so, so powerful for me. I’m just trusting that me chatting about it like this is really helpful.
But at the end of the month, I was listening to, and kind of like got reconnected with a few really important things that I, so I listened to, there’s an episode on the make money as a life coach podcast, which is my coach Stacey’s podcast, which is amazing. So I listened to an episode I’d listened to ages ago. So one thing to know about me is, and when I’m like really operating at my best, I find episodes that really power me up and like, allow me to think differently in a helpful way.
And then I listened to them again and again and again, and again, and I hear something new each time. And like, just cause I’ve heard something once doesn’t mean I know it like until I’m living in, I don’t know it like this, like there’s understanding the information conceptually. And like, you know, something like you truly know it when someone from the outside would be able to tell that, you know, it just based on your actions.
And so I anyway have for my coach and a few other podcasts, like the life coach school podcast, which I’ve started listening to again, like the old episodes, which was so good. I was like, Oh, there’s this episode called quit or breakthrough that someone else in the Chris, it’s an interview of him. I was like, I don’t know why I just need to listen to that.
Like I need the message of that because at that point I was so frustrated with myself and just in this, like, I like, what is going on with me? And I feel so differently now, which is so fun. It’s like less than a week later. This is only like five days ago I’m talking about, but I listened to that and it was on the weekend.
I was solo parenting. I just listened to it while Liam was having his nap and the kids are watching TV. And I just was like, I need this.
I think this in my brain. And also because I was doing a promotion for PGSD and the really fascinating thing I noticed was that, so I like chopped and changed the plans and then I planned and like, this is a red flag for me. And I proceeded and I just love that for me.
And I, I just love that I can see that. And I’d just be fascinated. So on the Friday, I knew I was going to be solo parenting for the full day, Saturday and Sunday as Steve was working.
And then Monday is our family day. So I didn’t have any work time plan either, but in my brain, I was like, and I didn’t power plan it out. That alone is the sign, like when you’re not power planning, like, okay, so there’s a reason you’re not wanting to look at reality and like, see what’s going on.
Like, so that’s always a such, such an important part of power planning is even just like noticing when you don’t want to power plan that gives you an insight into what’s going on in your brain. So I didn’t power plan it out. And I just was like, I’ll just squeeze it in over the weekend.
Even though we had two birthday parties, like I took the kids to two birthday parties, we had tennis and there just wasn’t going to be any time for me to really sit down and do any kind of focused work while solo parenting. But nonetheless, my brain was like, no, we can squeeze it in. So that was so fascinating.
And then on the Saturday, so that was the Friday, the Saturday, I was like, what is going on? Like, I know that doesn’t work for me. Why am I trying to rush myself? Why am I pushing through it? Let me understand my thinking that is having me do that. Like, it’s just a thought I’m having, what’s the thought? So I listened to that episode and it was really helpful.
And there were so many exact things I needed to hear that when I listened before, I didn’t hear it in the way I heard it. Then I was like, oh my God, yes. And I was like, I just felt like, okay, I need to listen.
Cause that was all about identity in that episode. I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. Then I listened to a past episode I did because they were talking about like the identity crisis.
And I was like, I’ve done an episode. It’s in 2020. You can search for it and find it.
I’ve done an episode on what to do in an identity crisis. Oh my God, I’m so excited. I’m just like yapping away, stumbling on my words.
So I looked for that episode and I recently recommended it to one of my private one-on-one coaching clients. And so it was top of mind also for that reason. I was like, let me just go back and listen.
And I had such a breakthrough from that. A, because I laid out, because it’s me, right? It’s like literally me. So the things I’m saying are effective for me.
Again, another gift for documentation that it was an episode where I was documenting, like here’s the identity crisis I’ve just gone through. And here’s what worked for me. I was like, gold, gold, gold.
Yes, yes, yes. And also the main breakthrough, which I think is really what broke me through is as I was listening, I noticed, I don’t think this way anymore. And also I can easily step back into it.
It’s not like, oh my God, it’s so far away. But the way I was thinking was I was just so in love, clearly just from the way I was talking, even though in the episode you can tell I’m kind of potentially lower energy. I’m talking about something that’s really challenging and I’m coming out the other side.
But I was just so in the thick of the premise of business. I’m in business because I love the personal growth of it. Oh my God, here I am in an identity crisis.
Of course I am. I’m growing a business. I’m growing as a person.
This is normal and here’s how I navigate it. I was really in this mindset of I love personal development and that’s why I’m in business. And that is the thing I love about business.
And it’s the thing I love about entrepreneurs is it brings up all of the personal development you need to do. And I love business and I love understanding the mechanics of it and how to build a business and all of that. I am nerdy about business in and of itself.
And also I love business. When I started my blog, it brought up all my perfectionism that I needed to work on that had just been lying dormant. It had been very active, coming up as a student in my accounting job.
Actually at that point in time, I hadn’t been in my accounting job, but it definitely came up there. In the jobs that I had, it for sure came up. However, the business was the magnifying glass and I couldn’t unsee the problem.
And I didn’t know the problem at first. I thought it was a motivation problem. I had to figure out what the problem even was before I could even begin to tackle it, instead of misdiagnosing it.
And once I realized it’s perfectionism, okay, now what do I do about that? Oh, I’ve got to figure that out because all the stuff I’m trying that people say about perfectionism isn’t helpful. And I’m going to study myself and I’m going to figure this out. And I love personal development.
I started my blog with the topic of personal development. That is how I began as a personal development blogger and having a business. And so then it was me documenting how I’m growing my business as someone who is obsessed with the personal development side of business and also enjoys business.
But that episode I listened back to, I really just felt so reconnected to my love of personal development and like, oh yeah, all this experience I’ve had this month is personal development is my personal growth is like, it is all normal. And I used to be delighted to witness it. And I was just had gotten into this mindset at some point of, and like shifted how I was thinking.
So I was thinking more like I shouldn’t, almost like I shouldn’t be struggling anymore instead of like, oh, this is the part I love is like noticing, getting in my own way, getting back out of it, noticing a new way that I’m doing it, figuring that out. Like, I love that. I love documenting it.
Also part of why I want to do these again is when I’m doing it monthly, I just naturally found like, I wanted to have something to talk about in my monthly, they used to be called the personal growth update. I wanted to have something to talk about. So I was really actively personally growing.
I was challenging my thinking. I was like really asking myself to rise to the occasion and just having that like container of a monthly um, documenting. And I think I was going to say this before, but I didn’t end up saying it is that with the perfectionism project and like, this is my perfectionism project and documenting the persistence logs that we have in PGSD is how you document your own perfectionism project.
And I hadn’t realized that until a couple of days ago. I was like, ah, this is why that’s such a cool piece of PGSD completely optional to do it with everyone in the PGSD community and to share it. But so many of our PGSEs love that.
And it’s really like, you’re documenting your own growth. Like you have, even yesterday, I was saying to one of the PGSDs, like print, like print out your persistence log as a PDF and give it to chat and or Claude or whatever, and ask it to show, to like document all the progress you’ve made, because you’re not seeing it, but you’ve made it. I can see it as your coach, all the progress, but like, you can just literally give it your journey through the persistence log that you have in PGSD and it will be able to tell you, like you had a breakthrough around this.
Then you, instead of it taking me four hours to write a newsletter, now it takes you one hour and you publish it consistently. And like all of these different things that she just wasn’t seeing because of a perfectionist thought error, but really being able to document is such a useful thing for me that really has me being growth minded and leaned into the, like enjoying an identity crisis. As weird as that is to say, like enjoying the cognitive dissonance that comes from not being where you want to be yet, but seeing where you could be, but not being there, enjoying that instead of being frustrated by it because it shouldn’t be happening.
And so I just really felt connected back in with my love of personal development and the growth mindset. And I haven’t talked about that term for a while, but it’s such an undercurrent of everything. The idea that you can change the growth mindset, isn’t just like, are you interested in personal development and read books about it? It’s like, are you willing to grow through trying and failing? Are you willing to really live the mantra of, it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all? Whereas our perfectionist brain is like, it’s better to not try than to fail.
The growth mindset is, it’s better to try and fail than to not try. And it’s one thing to understand the concept of it. It’s another thing to live it.
But hearing myself talk, I was like, oh, I was living that. I was delighted about this identity crisis that was incredibly painful. I didn’t have shame about it.
This is that like pain without shame. I didn’t have any shame that I’m going through an identity crisis and that I can see what I want, but I can’t, I’m not yet the me who can get it. I loved that.
And I just, I’m back in, I feel like I could just slip right back into like, oh yeah, I love that. And then I was listening to, this was the next day because I’m looking at my power planning, I can see, and I don’t have every minute recorded in my power planning, but I put it as a block. When I was doing my power hour this week, I like went back in over the weekend and roughly put in like what happened over the weekend.
Like when I went out of the house, any like major blocks, it’s mainly like clean rest with a few things here and there, because it’s such a helpful tool to just roughly speaking, see what happened on my non-work days. But I don’t like have my power planning open all the time on my non-work days. Like I don’t really open my power planning at all, except like it’s my main, it’s a tool for business primarily.
And so I have it open all the time when I’m working. But for sure, when I’m doing my power hour, I roughly put in what I’ve done so that I can study myself in a really powerful way. So the next day I just, it kept popping into my head, listen to, and again, I have like a Rolodex of podcast episodes that I’ve listened to many times, especially Brooke Cascio from the like, when I started my blog, when people signed up for my email list, I emailed everyone back personally.
And I said like, hi, I like, I want to get to know more about you. And then I would say, based on whatever struggles people had, this was before I had, I was coaching, I had anything for sale or anything. I’d be like, okay, here’s the episodes of the Life Coach School you need to listen to.
Listen to episode 59, it’s this title, listen to episode 10 is like, I just point everyone like here’s where to go to get the answers. So I know her back catalog very well, especially the first like, I don’t know, five years of her podcast at LogTylissa. So I was like, there’s an episode called Passing Through Neutral.
I need to listen to that. And it just popped into my head, like listen to Passing Through Neutral. And so I went and listened to the start of that, just like you have to go back and listen to Pure Circumstance first and then listen to Passing Through Neutral.
So I did that. And like the breakthroughs I had from those episodes, which essentially were about how to experience just, instead of like trying to go straight into like positivity, to just be with a circumstance without language, which is an advanced concept. And she talks about in those episodes, so you can go listen to them if you would, if you’d like, but highly recommend, but it is an advanced concept to be with your life without language and without positive or negative judgment and to just be in your body and with your life.
And it was, so I just like lived for the next couple of days after that in this, like, what would it be like to be in the moment without language? And it was so powerful to just be there and not be in a rush to change. And then from that place, now we are in November, but I could feel myself going into also, there’s like so much to fix. Like once I was thinking about my work day on Tuesday, there’s so much to fix and all of this.
And then I was like, well, no, like I know what I’m doing. And so this week has been incredible. And maybe I’ll tell you more in the November update, what I’ve been doing this week, but just, I feel like I have broken through from the all or nothing.
And that’s been the major thing too. And this is one of the key things that getting coached on a PGSE call yourself or hearing someone else get coached or getting coaching, ask a coach or reading someone else’s coaching and ask a coach. Just like having all or nothing thinking pointed out to you because our brains have a really hard time for ourselves spotting all or nothing thinking.
I can spot it quite well in myself, though I also need help with it, but I can spot it quite well because this is what I do for a living and I have developed the skill over a decade plus, but our brains really go into all or nothing thinking very easily. And it feels very factual to do so, but I could just see how I wanted to go into this all or nothing thinking of like, okay, I need to zoom out, create this plan and all. And I was like, but no, I actually need to keep running the business, improve the things that need improving now, also have a long-term plan, hold all of that.
Like it just went into a much more, like it’s not this or that it’s, and, and I’ve really operated that way this week. It’s been so good. And then finally, I will wrap up by saying that one of the big shifts that came from that this month, like the last month, October this week that I have implemented is shortening my work day and finishing at 3.00 PM.
And we typically pick up the kids like 4.35, like in the afternoon, Steve and I will often be together and do that together. And I just was from a place of like insufficiency and I need to work more. And I’d been saying, I’d heard myself saying to people, like, I’m so glad I have full work days now because I can just get so much more done.
But when I’m at my best, my most self-trusting and everyone’s different, I’m not saying you have to work my work schedule, but for me, and I also like human design, I’m a projector, a two, four emotional projector in that, which is all about like having lots of, and it’s no surprise if you, if you know what I teach with clean rest and things like that, having lots of spaciousness, being well-rested and then just having a smaller amount of time to work, being super effective with it and then moving on. And so when I’ve had longer work days, I’ve just been in an extra work day. I’ve just been complicating things up to make it fill up the time.
And so this week I was like, oh, it’d be so nice to like once a week finish early. I was like, I could, this is also the self-coaching and challenging you’re thinking, or like we do this on the calls, have your thinking challenge and shifted that I was like, I could actually, like, I used to do that every day, every work day pre-kids. Um, but before I had Lydia, I was like, I actually worked best starting work in the morning around eight 30 and then working until about two 30.
And after that, like, I don’t really need that time. When I used to work at a part-time job, it was an afternoon job. So it really aligned with that super well.
I go in for my four hour shift after I essentially had my normal work day. Um, I didn’t need till five. I didn’t need like when my perfectionist brain thinks I need till 10 PM, but I don’t need much time.
And so I’ve been playing a lot of tennis this year and with Steve. And one of the things that I noticed for both of us that we laugh about is that when we’re playing and there’s so like a shot will come over and you have like, you’re already perfectly positioned for it and you have a lot of time to think about it. So say it like comes high over the net and you could just put it away.
As you’d say, like you could just put it into one of the corners. You can place it like the person hitting it isn’t in a good place to hit much back. So it’s just one of those like shots where it’s just completely like it’s given to you and surely you’re just going to nail it.
And I’ve watched so many times where that would happen. And you could see, and I could feel myself and I could see it happening for Steve too. We’d go into like, okay, should I put it in that corner or that corner? Like just having so much time to think about it meant that we’d like put it into the net or hit it out.
Even when it was just such an easy win of a shot. And it’s like having that extra time to think and not having like power planning helps you have positive time constraint and really be able to not have so much time that you overthink it. Even when your perfectionist brain is like, we need more time.
Let me, let me throw time at the problem. And I talk about this in the episode coming out after this one, about being responsible for your time, about how we love to throw time at the problem and lack of time is not the problem. Even though our brain is like, no, it is like, if I just have more time, it would be more successful.
So stay tuned for the next episode, if that’s you. But just when we’d have more time and like tennis, I love it so much for many reasons. One of the reasons is because if you like, you can’t be tense, it’s not about, it’s not a game of being tense.
It’s not a game of being in your head. You’re still strategic, but really from a place of, and I read a great book called the inner game of tennis, like this relaxed concentration. That’s I’d say true of pretty much every single sport that it’s really about having, like developing the muscle memory and then trusting yourself and not getting into your head when it’s a pressure moment to then, okay, now it’s a pressuring moment.
I have to tense up, like noticing for me, like when I’m serving a practice serve, get it in so often when it’s in a game, then I’m like tensing up from a thought that I have to get it in. And then I tense, and then it doesn’t go in because I’m tense. The tenseness makes it go out.
So I find all that so fascinating, the best analogies, but just noticing how I had been really like tensed up. And when I actually then changed my power planning to finish at 3 PM and just like, I literally went, ah, like, yes, like I now have this time to do nothing, see no one, no demands on me, and especially no demands from me, on me, from myself. I’m the most demanding one.
Even with four kids, I am the source of the demand, the constant demand. But having that time, and I did an episode recently on do nothing, see no one time, having that time and just like having, I just know I work best with it like that because I’m, and the things I’ve accomplished as well, like right before giving birth, like, and winding up before that, like, okay, well, I just, I got to, I’m decisive. I made decisions.
I execute them. I move on. Like that’s, that’s it.
That’s me in my knowing what I’m doing and being in my powerful thinking. And so shortening my workday already, I feel the benefits from that. And just really taking responsibility was the other thing that came up just how my brain wants to be like, and really like it’s the two sides.
And I talk about this in the next episode that will go out of like feeling like blaming myself so much from like, it’s all my fault. And then also being like, well, like, here’s all these reasons why, and just like really not being responsible for my business and for the business’s money and for the results I’m creating and like still being aware and all of that, but just like not really being responsible fully. And so I’ve really been stepping, like thinking about even just on my, my non-work time, like, oh, what can I take responsibility for right now that I haven’t been? And then doing that, and it has been the best ever.
So a positive responsibility is, and like, I say positive responsibility from the place of like, responsibility is positive and you don’t get into business to not have responsibility. That’s not the game. And if you want freedom, in business, it’s not freedom from responsibility.
You have a lot of responsibility and you have to take responsibility or you will not succeed. But our perfectionist brain either wants to be all or nothing with that and blame us for everything and, or not blame ourselves for anything. It’s the algorithm.
It’s, I don’t have enough time. It’s like, I just don’t know what I’m doing. Like instead of like, but I do know a lot.
So let me just do what I know to do and then figure out anything else I need to figure out. So I really feel like it was such a painful month in the best way. And I just feel so reconnected with like, okay, I love this and I can figure it out and I can document it and talk openly about it and just be me and share it.
And it’s going to be better than ever. Like now I have my power planning. If I can really like see myself in a way I hadn’t been able to see myself before when I used to do these updates, all sorts of things.
I’m just really excited to be doing this. So I hope it was helpful to hear. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did take a screenshot, share it on Instagram. I’m at perfectionismproject because there will be others that you know, that would find it really helpful too. If you did it, then you’re connected with other people who would like it as well.
But regardless, I hope you have been nodding along, being like, oh my God, yes. I just, I just hope it’s been so good. So that is this episode.
Stay tuned for the next episode about being responsible for your time, a bit of tough love in the best way. And come to the workshop on Thursday evening, US time. So samlaurabrown.com/workshop, go and sign up for it now.
You’re going to love it. I’m going to be there live. I’m going to be teaching you live.
It’s just going to be, if you’re getting in your own way, you want to be power planning. It’s, it’s the core thing. It’s the core thing that helps that and coaching and you get both in PGSD.
And I’m going to teach you about power planning in the workshop. So join me there. And I hope this episode has been incredibly helpful.
I will talk to you in the next one.
Outro
If you struggle to build your business due to procrastination or overthinking, or maybe you keep burning yourself out, I want to invite you to join my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. Inside, I will teach you my proven process for getting shit done as a perfectionist entrepreneur. In case you didn’t know, perfectionists can’t follow the same productivity advice as everyone else.
When we do, we get in our own way. So let me teach you what works inside the program. It’s simple and anyone can learn.
To sign up today, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd. I’ll see you inside.