Bonjour and welcome to the MLM Trigger, I am your host Corine Arnaud and this PODCAST is to help you LEVERAGE Your Network Marketing Skills using the internet to grow your MLM downline.
We are going to dive into [How To Stop The Spiral Of Overthinking] and we'll talk about why overthinking is the reason many of us, including me often fall short of truly changing people’s lives.
Last night as I was recording my new podcast, I realized why most of us get scared when we’re about to publish something we really, really care about. Why we struggle to publish our message and why we can talk ourselves out of almost anything. We always have the ability to freak ourselves out with those thoughts of “I can’t do it” or “I’m not ready” or “I don’t have all the skills” or “this is impossible” or “it can’t be done” one of the easiest things in the world is to convince ourselves that we shouldn’t even try.
But what if you just took the plunge? What if you risked things not being perfect and put yourself out there? You might fail, but you will learn a lot more than if you had never shown your project to the world. It’s kind of like– the biggest risk takers are the most interesting. If I had really stopped and thought about how hard most of the things I set my mind to accomplish were going to be in advance of committing myself to doing them, I would never have taken them on because I would have been crazy to even try most of them considering all the difficulties I would have to face to get through them! And yet by taking them on and then just moving forward to make them happen it allowed me to accomplish so many things that I now look back on and said, “I can’t believe I was able to do that.”
That’s why we cannot allow ourselves to stop and overthink things in advance of committing to do them, because I know if we ever did we would talk ourselves right out of them, and then we would have never found out what we are capable of. Now that being said, there are many days when I think I must have been absolutely out of my mind to take this project on and believe I could actually handle it all. Like my podcasting venture, when I did my first podcast, I literally spent a long time. I spent one full week preparing for it, getting nervous, writing the outline, rewriting it, writing the stories out, then rewriting it.
Then I was so nervous about it. I was so afraid and it took me the whole day to prepare before recording it. And then l said NOW I’m going to do it. I spent another 2 or 3 hours working on the podcast, outlining, reviewing, getting all the things put together and then I started recording. I started recording it over and over again and I was 45 minutes into the recording and I was like, I don’t like this. I hate every word I said, I don’t like how I said it. I didn’t like all these things, so I stopped it and deleted it. I was tired, but I needed to redo it because I felt like that I understood how to tell the stories better and I did it. So I clicked record again and I spent over an hour recording the podcast episode once more.
The next day, all morning long I have been second guessing, maybe I should do it again. I told that story wrong, and I didn’t really have all these things. The ending when I did this, I don’t like how I did it. And then all the sudden, I realized maybe the reason why I was doing this exercise was to get feeling for the people who are going through the same experience.
When you’re nervous, you’re scared about publishing. It’s just interesting to understand the reason why. There are days we feel totally overwhelmed and inadequate. But when those days come, we need to force ourselves to stop and take a deep breath and remind ourselves that whenever we give something our absolute best effort, that somehow always seem to work out in the end and then we keep on moving forward.
Stop overthinking things. Stop giving yourself time to come up with all the reasons why something can’t be done, or why something isn’t possible, or why you shouldn’t even try, and just GO FOR IT! Don’t give yourself an OUT. Commit and force yourself to have the mindset that you CAN do this, somehow, some way, and don’t let your mind even consider that it won’t come together. Just get busy and start doing it! You will be amazed at exactly how much you really are capable of doing.
The 5 TRIGGERS that keep you commit to move forward:
1. Power Statement - Do the Work. Make your own power statement. One very simple thing to try in any difficult situation (not just overthinking the work) is to connect with a POWER STATEMENT. It’s so helpful to find a saying that you can repeat to yourself as a reminder. It’s a simple reminder that yes things are difficult and hard, but you only have to do one thing, “DO THE WORK.” This simple phrase can help to cut out the chatter in your brain and refocus to what is really important.
2. Trust Yourself. One of the reasons that we believe we can’t do something is that we don’t trust ourselves. So, we often look for approval from others. We may feel insecure doing the work that must be done if we have not gotten this approval from someone close to us. It’s very important to remember that you must trust yourself because this will allow you to do the work without wondering whether or not you will be capable of doing it successfully.
3. Focus on The ONE Most Important Thing. A lot of overthinking comes into play during the common traps that people fall into when planning work: Creating one massive to-do list - Not sorting tasks by importance. The problem with creating a massive to-do list is that it becomes so overwhelming with no end in sight. Additionally, it’s hard to tell from a to-do list what the most important task is. A tactic that I find works MUCH more effectively to reduce overthinking and overwhelm is to Focus on The ONE Most Important Thing.
4. Celebrate Small Victories. Sometimes we begin to overthink the work that we must do because we are entrenched in it and don’t see the results. Do you get overwhelmed and intimidated because you’re not sure that you can complete the work? If you answered yes, I invite you to try to celebrate the small victories. Acknowledging our successes can help us keep on track and doing the work because we can see progress.
5. Learn What Drives You. I’m a firm believer that we can work better when we understand ourselves and the ways that we work. We are individuals, which means that we are all different and we require different things in order to work more effectively. Understanding the way you work and catering your work style to meet your needs, can help to reduce the overthinking and overwhelm that you feel when it comes to doing the work.
6. Create a Space that Encourages Work. You don’t need to have an incredible home office with all the bells and whistles to improve your working environment. I want to just share a few tips with you that can help you improve your working environment. Work in a space that is free from distractions like tv’s and cellphones - Work in a space that makes you feel happy and motivated - Move around throughout the day when you’re stuck on a task - Change your positioning which help refocus your brain to the task.
You’re capable of amazing things. But unless you let go of the idea of perfection, you will have a hard time achieving those amazing things. The pursuit of perfection is noble, but unless we’re willing to settle for “good,” we may have to settle for nothing at all. Personal development is NOT easy work. But it must be done in order for us to continue to live our best lives, and to do the work!
How can you apply this principle to your daily practice as an entrepreneur?
Thank you so very much for tuning in. Next week's episode is all about WHY you should expect more out of yourself to GO TO that NEXT LEVEL.