E4: When we don't know what we need; we think we need everything!

Knowing what we need to move forwards is a constant battle and what makes it worse is when you don't know what you need, you think you need everything and that often results in investing us in ALL the things and still not making progress.

In this episode we are going to explore why this is and what we can do to stop feeling like we need it all...right now!

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Transcript

Hello & Welcome to today’s episode of Dream Business Dream Life.

I once described my experience of coming into this online world as like being thrown into a pond full of sharks.

 That sounds pretty harsh…right?

 And it’s funny really as some of those sharks are now some of my closest friends.

 My issue was not the fact that people were trying to sell me their products and services; my problem was I had no idea what I needed so I thought I needed everything.

 Today I want to explore this a little more as I know I am not the only person who has felt totally overwhelmed at some point in their entrepreneurial journey.

 As you know I already had a successful business under my belt, so I wasn’t a business novice at all, but it was a completely different business that I was starting.

 That business did not need me to be the face of the business, that business did not need me to be selling myself, that business broke me, and I was so scared it would happen again.

 So even if we have been in business for a long time, it does not mean that we know what we need to do to start all over again or even to pivot a little from what we have done before, it doesn’t mean we know exactly what the roadmap to success is.

 As business owners the one thing that gets in everyone’s way at some point, is us.

And when we get in our own way, we start to doubt everything, we doubt our ability to make the right decision, we doubt that we have what it takes to make it, we doubt that we have the knowledge and skills we need, we literally doubt it all.

 So when we are something new, it is scary, it feels uncomfortable and so our natural instinct is to self-doubt.

 Our natural instinct is to not believe in ourselves or our ability because we don’t like getting uncomfortable.

 And as soon as we start to self-doubt, we start to resonate with a lot of things that are telling us what we are missing, things that are telling us what the secret sauce to success is.

Secret sauce…I mean what sort of phrase is that.

 Basically what it means is the things we need in order to grow our business.

 The problem is when we are in this state of self-doubt, we are not seeing clearly so we start to make decisions based on ‘made up facts’ things that we are telling ourselves are reality rather than real facts, which often leads to us investing in the wrong things.

 Now to be clear here when I talk about investment, I don’t just mean financial, I mean investing our time and energy too.

 I have invested in lots of things that were wrong; and when I say wrong, I don’t mean the thing I did was wrong as in it was a bad investment full stop, I just mean it was just not the right thing for me right there in that moment and therefore it didn’t give me what I needed so the self-doubt just got bigger…and bigger!

 And yes, some were just bad investments but that is a whole new episode as I am sure we have all made a few of those in our time.

 But back to where I was going with this…I mean if the latest investment doesn’t work…; if I have spent hours reading the book or invested potentially thousands in the program that has worked for so many others and it hasn’t worked for me then what will work?

 It is clearly a me problem!

 That was certainly what I felt back in 2022.

 And so, the cycle continues, back to social media scrolling and resonating with content that tells us what else we are missing.

 The problem is how do we know what we need, how do we break this cycle of I need it all!

 Well first things first we have to get crystal clear on where we are going.

 I speak a lot about the dream, and this is exactly what I mean here…we need to know what that dream is, we need to know where we want to go, in life and in business, so we can plan the best route to get there.

 You can’t set your sat nav without a destination; so why do you think you can set your dream life without one?

 And even when you set it, you get to choose the route you take, avoid motorways, fastest route etc.

 We want to choose the route that brings us joy along the way, as this thing we call life is about the journey and not just the destination, so we need to find the route that we want to follow.

 We also need to get clear on where we are right now as this will help us to work out the gaps.  The things that we actually need to get us from today to the dream.

 You see the problem is whilst we do not know what the dream is and where we are right now in relation to that dream, we will be constantly trying the next thing to get to somewhere beyond where we are right now. 

 But that somewhere is not necessarily where you want to be, so it is never going to get you there….to that place you really want to be…you know living that dream.

 And then of course we have to do the inner work, the work that stops us from getting in our own way, the inner work that stops us from letting others tell us what we need. 

 Of course, inner work is a constant work in progress, and I beg to differ with anyone who says otherwise; yes we can get better at controlling the things that go on in our mind but can we stop them…of course we can’t…not completely!

 In fact I probably go one step further and say life and business is a constant work in progress full stop…but that is ok…after all we are constantly growing.

 For me, I think that accepting this is one of the biggest things we can teach ourselves.

 It’s certainly been one of my biggest lessons.

 We simply cannot always stop things happening, but we can control how we react to them AND we can learn to spot the signs when things are not going the way we want them to go so we can do something about it.

 We can change our reaction to it.

 We can change what we were going to do.

 We can prepare ourselves for whatever it will bring.

 We can do things differently next time.

 So going back to where this started; in order to stop ourselves from feeling like we need all of the things and to enable ourselves to invest in the things that we actually need it has to start with getting total clarity on where we are right now and where we want to get to.

 Sounds simple right?

 But it is often the simple things we do not get right first; like anything we need to get the foundations solid before we start to build on it but sadly, we often go straight into building the walls and just hope it stands strong.

 So, if you can take one thing from this episode, it has to be get those foundations solid, whatever you are trying to build, as it is the foundations that will keep it strong.

 It is the foundations you can build on as that dream starts to unravel.

 Thank you for listening; see you next time…