195. Why You Aren’t Getting Started
You have 67 tasks to get done today, but one of them is really important.
Naturally, you’ve spent the last seven hours and 45 minutes doing literally anything else, including a few scrolly scrolls through instagram.
Now it’s 4:45pm and you’re sweating a little, knowing you’re supposed to log off and start making dinner in 15 minutes, but … you haven’t even started on the *one important task* yet.
You’re so frustrated with yourself, mumbling insults you wouldn’t stand for if they came from anyone but you.
As the minutes til 5 tick down, you scramble. In a flurry of activity and adrenaline, you get it done. You’re both amazed and annoyed to see it actually only took you 13 minutes to complete the task.
The evening is saved!
You let out a big sigh of relief. But you’re also left wondering, why did you stress alllll dayyyyy about that task when you could have just done it in the first 15 minutes of the day? Or last week?
Why did you let it get so stressful? And is there a better way to do it next time?
This week on Satisfied AF, I’m digging into this topic. I’ll walk you through three key patterns that stop you from getting started, and then I’ll tell you what you can do about each one moving forward.
If you love the adrenaline rush of doing things at the last minute, you’ll get no judgment from me! But if you’d like to set yourself up with some other options, I’ve got you and I’ll tell you how to do it on this week’s podcast episode.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
I have openings for a few new or returning clients. If you're interested, click here to sign up for a free consult call. We'll discuss your situation and see if coaching is a good fit for you. You'll gain valuable insights from the call, even if you're unsure about coaching.
Additionally, I'm hosting a free Biz Curious call one week from today. It's a business Q&A session where you can ask me anything about starting or scaling a business. Sign up here!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
3 key patterns that keep you from getting started.
How to navigate each pattern so that you’re no longer blocked by it.
How to sign up for an upcoming free business AMA call.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about why you’re not getting started.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I have a topic to talk to y’all about today that I think is going to be really impactful for a lot of you. Something that happens in coaching all the time, and I also see it all over Instagram, TikTok, other places where folks share content, is this idea of putting something off. And then once you finally sit down and do it, it takes like 12 minutes.
And sometimes it’s a work thing, like creating slides for an important meeting or building out an Excel spreadsheet. Sometimes it’s a career thing that’s not for your current job, like updating your resume or reaching out to people for coffee chats. Sometimes it’s personal stuff, right? Like folding that laundry that’s been in the dryer for six days, or doing the dishes or even sitting down and having a difficult conversation with your significant other.
And the interesting thing is, sometimes we know ahead of time it’s only going to take 12 minutes, and we just put it off, and just put it off and put it off. But sometimes we don’t know it’s only going to take 12 minutes and we build it up in our heads and we think it’s going to be this impossible uncompletable task and then we sit down to do it and it’s over in less than a quarter of an hour.
And I think this is fascinating. I’ve coached tons of people on this kind of stuff, and I’ve coached people on this from pretty much every angle you could in every circumstance you could think of. Maybe not every circumstance, but in a lot of different circumstances. And it just happened to a client of mine recently that I was coaching them in Slack and they had put something off for like an eight hour work day and then they did it and it took 10 minutes.
And I think this can be super frustrating. And something I see a lot with this is that then people may beat themselves up of like, why didn’t I just do this sooner? Why do I always let myself get caught in this pattern?
So I wanted to take this week’s podcast episode to talk through three common patterns that may be at play if you find yourself struggling to get started, whether you know the task is going to take 12 minutes or not, and truly whether the task actually will take 12 minutes or not because sometimes the stuff we put off is sadly not completable in less than a quarter of an hour.
So let’s dig into it. There are three patterns that I see a lot. One of them is actually a pattern I’ve noticed in myself, and then I kind of gave it a name, and I see it sometimes in other people. And I think the other two are actually more common.
So the pattern that I’ve noticed in myself is that I have a resistance to transitioning from one thing to another. And what I’ve noticed about myself is this doesn’t just have to be things I don’t want to do. I will sometimes struggle to transition between things like even between something I don’t want to do and to something I do want to do.
So like I go country dancing on Fridays. I have for years, I used to in Seattle. Now I’ve found a place to go country dancing on Fridays in Sacramento. Big thanks to my friend, Alison, actually, who introduced me to that country dancing spot. Thank you, Alison.
Country dancing is one of my favorite things to do. It’s one of my absolute like bliss activities in this world. And yet there have been so many times when I’m on the couch, maybe watching a little TV and then it’s time to get ready to go dancing. And there’s a big part of me that’s like, I don’t want to. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to change my outfit. I don’t want to have to get the accoutrement that I need, which is boots and get in the car.
That’s the thing in Sacramento. In Seattle I was lucky enough that I could walk to dancing. Here, I drive, right? It’s like, I don’t want to get in the car. I don’t want to leave my house. And so that’s something that I personally need to overcome when I want to start anything. And by start, I really mean if I want to go from doing one thing to doing another thing, I have to be able to overcome this.
So it happens like I don’t want to go to bed at night, but then in the morning I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to get into the shower, but then once I’m in the shower, I do not want to get out of the shower. So I’ve noticed this about myself for a long time. And I’m a thinking, thoughtful person. I spend a lot of time thinking about why do people do what we do? What are the blockers to us having what we want? And I observe my clients, but I also spend a lot of time observing myself. So this is one that I’ve noticed in myself.
I have not undergone diagnosis, but I have seen some stuff online that this may be something that people in certain neurodivergent communities face, but I’m just going to treat it right now as something that I think anyone could experience, just like this resistance to transitioning. I call it transition resistance, right? And so what do we do if that’s the reason we’re not getting started? How do we navigate that?
So for me personally, the best ways that I have found to navigate my own transition resistance are using things like timers. Those are going to be the cues that help me understand like, okay, the time for this is winding down and the time for something else is coming up. And yes, I do snooze them. I don’t snooze when I get out of bed because I read one time that that’s bad for the quality of your sleep, but I do snooze when I’m going between different kinds of activities. So that’s one thing I use.
Another thing I use is storytelling, and specifically the storytelling about why I’m doing the thing I’m doing. A lot of times, the story that I choose is about future Kori and what I’m doing for future Kori., So if I don’t want to get up off the couch and drive to dancing, but I know that when I get there I’m going to feel so good and happy in my body, dancing, twirling, seeing people, hearing the music. Then I’m going to use that as a sales pitch from myself to myself.
I’m going to market to myself about the decision of like, listen, I think you’ll be really happy if you make this decision. I know right now you kind of don’t want to get up, but I think if you do, you’re going to be really happy you made that choice.
So like I have timers and alarms. I actually do have them for Fridays. And they tell me what to remember to bring too. I have a timer that’s like, bring your boots, bring a water and bring socks because in the winter I wear socks since I already have them on, but in the summer I’m not wearing socks usually throughout my day. But I need socks for inside my boots.
So the timer has two functions, right? Function one is it reminds me what are the things I need to be bringing with me? And thing two is the timer indicates to me the time to be going there is arriving. And I set the timers early enough that I’m able to snooze them a few times to finish up whatever I’m doing, whether I’m working on something, having dinner, having a conversation with Alex, or even watching a TV show or reading a book.
So for the first key pattern that I see that stops people from getting started, transition resistance, the tools that I use in my own life to overcome that are these external timers and alarms that are going to go off and make little beepity-boopity noises and have little messages about the information I want myself to have. And that internal narrative storytelling and marketing of why we’re doing this.
Now, with something like dancing it’s like, ooh, this will be fun. This will feel good. You’ll be happy you went. If the thing I’m trying to get myself to do is less fun, like going to the dentist, I really do not like going to the dentist. I have, you know, I guess you’d call it dental anxiety probably. The sound of a dentist drill, like, gives me probably a stress response because I’ve had a lot of cavities over the course of my life. And I got a lot of them as a kid and I really don’t like it.
So for something like that, where I know like, ooh, this is going to bring up lots of negative feelings, then the story is like, okay, but we want to protect our teeth, right? Like we want to protect our teeth overall. And we’re going to feel so much better when we’ve gone. And when we go to the dentist regularly, then it’s less likely that we’re going to have a cavity to have to fill later, that kind of stuff.
So it’s the timers and then the narrative storytelling. And there’s also a piece of this about just not judging, shaming, or belittling myself for having this, what I’m going to call like setup, right? I think a lot of times we create really negative experiences for ourselves when we have a pattern that we exist inside of, and then we judge or shame the pattern.
So if I had transition resistance but I’m over here saying like, I shouldn’t have transition resistance. I’m a coach, I should be better than this. Or like, I’m an adult. I’m 40 years old, why am I still having this? That’s going to make me feel bad about myself. It’s going to make me kind of shrivel up or want to run away. That’s not going to help me do what I want to do or feel good about myself.
I firmly believe that when I feel good about myself, I do more of the things that align with my values. So I work hard to center the narrative of myself around me being capable and good at things and worthy. And if there are difficulties that I need to overcome, I have the skills to overcome them. And if there are moments in my life when I haven’t lived up to my own values, then I can make amends and do repairs and learn new skills.
But I think it’s really important to center the narrative around me in a positive way versus in a negative way. And I think what gets people into a lot of trouble, whether it’s getting started on a task, following through on a task, starting a habit, stopping a habit, creating a new relationship, is if they center the narrative of themselves around negativity or perceiving their attributes as negative or bad. That makes it really hard to then continue to do whatever the work is long enough to get whatever result is that you want.
Okay, so that is the first key pattern I see that stops people from getting started. That’s transition resistance. What’s the next key pattern that stops people from getting started?
So another key pattern that stops people from getting started, pattern number two, is predicting that it will be hard or unrewarding. So whatever it is that you’re not getting started on, if you have predicted that it will be hard or unrewarding, why would you do it, right? If your brain’s like, it’s going to be hard. You’re like, yeah, I guess I won’t do that. Or I’ll put it off until the very last minute. And then I’ll use adrenaline to get it done and then I’ll be so annoyed at myself because it will ruin my whole day.
So this is interesting because when you predict something’s going to be hard or unrewarding, it usually – Well, it really depends. Like if it’s a work thing, you’re probably still going to do it. You’re just going to put it off and put it off and put it off and create a bunch of stress for yourself along the way. And then again, like get it done at the last minute in this like adrenaline rush, and then probably beat yourself up for being such a procrastinator.
Or if it’s a personal thing, you might just not do it. So I think this is a big risk factor, right? For a lot of people, they’ll kind of get everything done or get enough done at work because there’s kind of this fear of consequences there.
But then for the things that matter the most to them, for the things in their personal life, for a difficult conversation with their partner, or if they don’t have a partner, finding a partner, they won’t push through that prediction of difficulty or something not being rewarding enough. And then they just won’t ever do the thing and then they won’t ever get the result or outcome.
And what does that usually lead them back to? It’s probably going to usually lead them back to then beating themselves up about not following through or not doing what they said they’d do or not taking the action to get them to where they want to go.
So this is interesting because some things really will be hard, but a lot of things are not as hard as we think they will be. And they don’t take as long as we think they will take. And they’re more rewarding than we think they will be.
So there’s actually a great book by Dr. David Burns called Feeling Good. And in this book he talks through a lot of the different thought patterns that cause problems for us and different methodologies for handling those thought patterns. And I was rereading a section of it today and it really overlapped with what I wanted to talk about on today’s podcast, because he was talking about this method of tracking, right?
If you have a task to do and you are not wanting to do it, it’s like writing down ahead of time, like how hard do you think this is going to be and how rewarding is it going to be? And then you do it and then you record how hard it actually was and how rewarding it actually was. And what people generally find, according to Dr. David Burns, and also according to a lot of the work that I’ve done in my own life and with clients, a lot of the time people find that it’s less work than they thought it would be and it’s more rewarding than they thought it would be.
And that’s such good information to know, because that can really help you recalibrate your own perspective on getting started on things. And that can help you kind of shift from always putting everything off to being like, you know what? I bet I can get it done in 10 minutes, let’s just find out.
Now, of course, the truth is you can’t get everything done in 10 minutes. And so sometimes what this also shows us is there’ll be something we put off for eight hours because we thought it was going to be really hard, we did it in 10 minutes. There may be something else that we thought we could do in 10 minutes and we sit down to do it and it turns out to be more complicated.
But I think this is the thing, it’s like, when we predict how hard and how rewarding something’s going to be, we’re often wrong. We can be wrong in both directions. But when we do something, like what Dr. Burns recommends in the book, which is kind of evaluating and fact-checking yourself around that, then we can get more information.
And guess what that’s going to help us do. That’s going to help us predict more accurately in the future and have a better understanding of what kind of tasks will take what kind of time commitment, and what the payoff will be. And then we can use that to help us figure out how we want to put those things onto our calendar and how much time we want to give ourselves to do those things.
So basically what I’m saying there is even if it doesn’t delight you, what you find out when you track and fact-check yourself, I think it’s still really useful information that will actually help you get started on things and complete them and have a more enjoyable experience of both.
And that brings us to the third key factor that is keeping you from getting started. And that factor is downplaying your own capability. So this is sort of the flip side of the second factor. The second factor is focused on the task. The task will be hard. The task will be unrewarding.
This factor is focused on you. It’s like, even if the task is easy, maybe you fear you won’t be able to do it. And it could be you fear you won’t be able to do it because you think you can’t do it at the level of difficulty that it is. This kind of fear could also be your capability of things like having the willpower, the follow through, the discipline, getting yourself to actually do what you’ve said you would do. So that could also be something that’s blocking you from getting started.
So if what’s blocking you from getting started isn’t the task itself, but it’s your perception of yourself, what do you do about that? I think in that case, what you need to do is change your perception of yourself. Something I’ve heard said before by coaches that I’ve worked with and something I’ve said to my clients a lot is you can either argue for your limitations or you can argue for your possibilities.
Now, obviously we all have both. We all do have limitations. We all do have edges of our skills where we go from being skillful to not having skills, like once you expand out. That’s true of me as it is true of any person. And yet if you want to be doing something you haven’t been doing, it can be really useful to get on the sales team for the idea that you can do it.
And when I say get on the sales team, I’m saying like selling this idea to yourself. Selling your capacity to yourself. Selling your capability to yourself. Marketing to yourself about why you can. And as we talk about all the time on the podcast, this isn’t about gaslighting yourself. It’s not about pretending. It’s not about being like, it’ll be great. It’s about saying things like, okay, well, you’ve done hard things before. Even if you aren’t 100% sure how to do this, maybe you have some ideas for how to get started.
And it’s looking through your own history for evidence as well. Is there any evidence that you actually do have the ability, either to do the thing you want to do or to learn how to do a new thing? So a lot of times in life, we want to do something and we don’t have the skill yet, but do you have some evidence that you know how to learn skills? I bet you do. If you can walk and you can talk, you weren’t born that way and you learned those skills in your lifetime.
So if you can learn those things, I bet that you can also learn this other thing. And it’s interesting with that example, because sometimes people are like, okay, but that’s what babies do, right? Babies learn to talk. They learn to walk. You maybe don’t remember doing that learning, but it’s still really profound. And if you look at a baby learning to do those things, they’re not like, wow, I must be terrible. I haven’t figured this out yet. Sometimes they get frustrated, but they’re just working on it till they get it. Sometimes they lie on the floor and wail, but they’re going to work on it until they get it.
And I think with babies and children, there’s this idea of like, well, of course they’re learning. And for some reason, people stop giving themselves permission in that way as they become adults. And I would just invite you to give yourself permission in that way. What if it was perfectly okay for you to not know how to do something, whether it’s something like having the willpower to follow through on a choice or whether it’s something like doing the two-step, which is the dance that I do on Friday nights.
If you were willing to believe that you have the capacity to learn, then that’s going to go really far for you. First of all, you already have lots of capability. Every client I’ve worked with, they’ll be like, I can’t do this thing. And I’m like, okay, but tell me the evidence you can. And there’s usually a lot of really compelling evidence that they already can.
And you already can do amazing things too. I just know you can. But also on top of these skills you have, if you just believe in your capacity to learn, that will cover pretty much everything else.
Now, are you actually going to learn everything? Probably not everything. There’s a lot of knowledge in the world. There’s a lot of skills, there’s a lot of languages. You’re probably not going to learn them all. You will need to make choices about what’s worth your time to learn. But if there’s something that you keep saying you’re going to do and you don’t start, you keep putting off starting it, and it’s because you question your own capability, what if you tried just flipping that around and being like, what if I can do it? What if I can figure it out? What if I could just get started? What if I did just spend 10 minutes on it?
I think you’ll be really impressed with how much progress you can make just by flipping your negative beliefs and kind of like turning them into powerful questions of how can I, how could I?
So those are the three key patterns that keep you from getting started; transition resistance, predicting that the task will be hard/unrewarding and downplaying or doubting your own capability.
And whatever it is that you want to get started on, it may be one of those at play, it may be all three of them at play, it may be some other additional pieces at play. But if you cover these three bases, that’s going to set you up really well to not just get started, but keep going and then get done and complete whatever it is that is on your task list or on your bucket list or on your vision board for getting done today, this week, this year.
And if this podcast was super helpful, but you want a little more customized support or when you go to implement the tools you’re running into some other obstacles, that’s exactly the kind of stuff that we do in one-on-one coaching together. And I do have room for a few new or returning clients right now. And if you would like to have one of those spots, just go on over to KoriLinn.com/learnmore, sign up for a consult call. And what will happen is we’re going to have just a free conversation where we talk about what’s going on with you. And then if it seems like a good fit, I will tell you how I currently work with clients.
You’ll get a lot out of a consult call. And I really want to welcome you to come and do the consult call, even if you’re not sure about coaching. This is not a hard sell situation. This is a conversation where I’m going to tell you honestly what I think about your situation and whether I think coaching is a useful fit for it. It’s not always. And I think you’ll get a lot out of it that will move you forwards towards whatever your goal is. And then there, like I said, will be options for more support if you want that.
And then one more thing is one week from today, I am doing a free call. It’s another round of Biz Curious. If you were on the last one, it was a super fun business ask me anything. I’ve been in business for coming up on six years. And so I host this free call sometimes so that people can bring their business questions, whether you’re just starting out in business or you’ve been in business for a few years, or you’ve been a long time business owner.
If you have questions about how I’m doing things, if you have questions about scaling, et cetera, or just getting started, I will answer those both from the mindset and coaching point of view and from my own experience as well. And then on the next one, we’re super lucky and we have my friend Brenda on there as well. And Brenda is a lawyer and she can also help answer your legal questions. And she’s supported entrepreneurs as well in helping them get their businesses set up.
So if you want to sign up for that call, go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore, and there will be a sign up for that call available there.
All right, thank you so much. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I have a topic to talk to y’all about today that I think is going to be really impactful for a lot of you. Something that happens in coaching all the time, and I also see it all over Instagram, TikTok, other places where folks share content, is this idea of putting something off. And then once you finally sit down and do it, it takes like 12 minutes.
And sometimes it’s a work thing, like creating slides for an important meeting or building out an Excel spreadsheet. Sometimes it’s a career thing that’s not for your current job, like updating your resume or reaching out to people for coffee chats. Sometimes it’s personal stuff, right? Like folding that laundry that’s been in the dryer for six days, or doing the dishes or even sitting down and having a difficult conversation with your significant other.
And the interesting thing is, sometimes we know ahead of time it’s only going to take 12 minutes, and we just put it off, and just put it off and put it off. But sometimes we don’t know it’s only going to take 12 minutes and we build it up in our heads and we think it’s going to be this impossible uncompletable task and then we sit down to do it and it’s over in less than a quarter of an hour.
And I think this is fascinating. I’ve coached tons of people on this kind of stuff, and I’ve coached people on this from pretty much every angle you could in every circumstance you could think of. Maybe not every circumstance, but in a lot of different circumstances. And it just happened to a client of mine recently that I was coaching them in Slack and they had put something off for like an eight hour work day and then they did it and it took 10 minutes.
And I think this can be super frustrating. And something I see a lot with this is that then people may beat themselves up of like, why didn’t I just do this sooner? Why do I always let myself get caught in this pattern?
So I wanted to take this week’s podcast episode to talk through three common patterns that may be at play if you find yourself struggling to get started, whether you know the task is going to take 12 minutes or not, and truly whether the task actually will take 12 minutes or not because sometimes the stuff we put off is sadly not completable in less than a quarter of an hour.
So let’s dig into it. There are three patterns that I see a lot. One of them is actually a pattern I’ve noticed in myself, and then I kind of gave it a name, and I see it sometimes in other people. And I think the other two are actually more common.
So the pattern that I’ve noticed in myself is that I have a resistance to transitioning from one thing to another. And what I’ve noticed about myself is this doesn’t just have to be things I don’t want to do. I will sometimes struggle to transition between things like even between something I don’t want to do and to something I do want to do.
So like I go country dancing on Fridays. I have for years, I used to in Seattle. Now I’ve found a place to go country dancing on Fridays in Sacramento. Big thanks to my friend, Alison, actually, who introduced me to that country dancing spot. Thank you, Alison.
Country dancing is one of my favorite things to do. It’s one of my absolute like bliss activities in this world. And yet there have been so many times when I’m on the couch, maybe watching a little TV and then it’s time to get ready to go dancing. And there’s a big part of me that’s like, I don’t want to. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to change my outfit. I don’t want to have to get the accoutrement that I need, which is boots and get in the car.
That’s the thing in Sacramento. In Seattle I was lucky enough that I could walk to dancing. Here, I drive, right? It’s like, I don’t want to get in the car. I don’t want to leave my house. And so that’s something that I personally need to overcome when I want to start anything. And by start, I really mean if I want to go from doing one thing to doing another thing, I have to be able to overcome this.
So it happens like I don’t want to go to bed at night, but then in the morning I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to get into the shower, but then once I’m in the shower, I do not want to get out of the shower. So I’ve noticed this about myself for a long time. And I’m a thinking, thoughtful person. I spend a lot of time thinking about why do people do what we do? What are the blockers to us having what we want? And I observe my clients, but I also spend a lot of time observing myself. So this is one that I’ve noticed in myself.
I have not undergone diagnosis, but I have seen some stuff online that this may be something that people in certain neurodivergent communities face, but I’m just going to treat it right now as something that I think anyone could experience, just like this resistance to transitioning. I call it transition resistance, right? And so what do we do if that’s the reason we’re not getting started? How do we navigate that?
So for me personally, the best ways that I have found to navigate my own transition resistance are using things like timers. Those are going to be the cues that help me understand like, okay, the time for this is winding down and the time for something else is coming up. And yes, I do snooze them. I don’t snooze when I get out of bed because I read one time that that’s bad for the quality of your sleep, but I do snooze when I’m going between different kinds of activities. So that’s one thing I use.
Another thing I use is storytelling, and specifically the storytelling about why I’m doing the thing I’m doing. A lot of times, the story that I choose is about future Kori and what I’m doing for future Kori., So if I don’t want to get up off the couch and drive to dancing, but I know that when I get there I’m going to feel so good and happy in my body, dancing, twirling, seeing people, hearing the music. Then I’m going to use that as a sales pitch from myself to myself.
I’m going to market to myself about the decision of like, listen, I think you’ll be really happy if you make this decision. I know right now you kind of don’t want to get up, but I think if you do, you’re going to be really happy you made that choice.
So like I have timers and alarms. I actually do have them for Fridays. And they tell me what to remember to bring too. I have a timer that’s like, bring your boots, bring a water and bring socks because in the winter I wear socks since I already have them on, but in the summer I’m not wearing socks usually throughout my day. But I need socks for inside my boots.
So the timer has two functions, right? Function one is it reminds me what are the things I need to be bringing with me? And thing two is the timer indicates to me the time to be going there is arriving. And I set the timers early enough that I’m able to snooze them a few times to finish up whatever I’m doing, whether I’m working on something, having dinner, having a conversation with Alex, or even watching a TV show or reading a book.
So for the first key pattern that I see that stops people from getting started, transition resistance, the tools that I use in my own life to overcome that are these external timers and alarms that are going to go off and make little beepity-boopity noises and have little messages about the information I want myself to have. And that internal narrative storytelling and marketing of why we’re doing this.
Now, with something like dancing it’s like, ooh, this will be fun. This will feel good. You’ll be happy you went. If the thing I’m trying to get myself to do is less fun, like going to the dentist, I really do not like going to the dentist. I have, you know, I guess you’d call it dental anxiety probably. The sound of a dentist drill, like, gives me probably a stress response because I’ve had a lot of cavities over the course of my life. And I got a lot of them as a kid and I really don’t like it.
So for something like that, where I know like, ooh, this is going to bring up lots of negative feelings, then the story is like, okay, but we want to protect our teeth, right? Like we want to protect our teeth overall. And we’re going to feel so much better when we’ve gone. And when we go to the dentist regularly, then it’s less likely that we’re going to have a cavity to have to fill later, that kind of stuff.
So it’s the timers and then the narrative storytelling. And there’s also a piece of this about just not judging, shaming, or belittling myself for having this, what I’m going to call like setup, right? I think a lot of times we create really negative experiences for ourselves when we have a pattern that we exist inside of, and then we judge or shame the pattern.
So if I had transition resistance but I’m over here saying like, I shouldn’t have transition resistance. I’m a coach, I should be better than this. Or like, I’m an adult. I’m 40 years old, why am I still having this? That’s going to make me feel bad about myself. It’s going to make me kind of shrivel up or want to run away. That’s not going to help me do what I want to do or feel good about myself.
I firmly believe that when I feel good about myself, I do more of the things that align with my values. So I work hard to center the narrative of myself around me being capable and good at things and worthy. And if there are difficulties that I need to overcome, I have the skills to overcome them. And if there are moments in my life when I haven’t lived up to my own values, then I can make amends and do repairs and learn new skills.
But I think it’s really important to center the narrative around me in a positive way versus in a negative way. And I think what gets people into a lot of trouble, whether it’s getting started on a task, following through on a task, starting a habit, stopping a habit, creating a new relationship, is if they center the narrative of themselves around negativity or perceiving their attributes as negative or bad. That makes it really hard to then continue to do whatever the work is long enough to get whatever result is that you want.
Okay, so that is the first key pattern I see that stops people from getting started. That’s transition resistance. What’s the next key pattern that stops people from getting started?
So another key pattern that stops people from getting started, pattern number two, is predicting that it will be hard or unrewarding. So whatever it is that you’re not getting started on, if you have predicted that it will be hard or unrewarding, why would you do it, right? If your brain’s like, it’s going to be hard. You’re like, yeah, I guess I won’t do that. Or I’ll put it off until the very last minute. And then I’ll use adrenaline to get it done and then I’ll be so annoyed at myself because it will ruin my whole day.
So this is interesting because when you predict something’s going to be hard or unrewarding, it usually – Well, it really depends. Like if it’s a work thing, you’re probably still going to do it. You’re just going to put it off and put it off and put it off and create a bunch of stress for yourself along the way. And then again, like get it done at the last minute in this like adrenaline rush, and then probably beat yourself up for being such a procrastinator.
Or if it’s a personal thing, you might just not do it. So I think this is a big risk factor, right? For a lot of people, they’ll kind of get everything done or get enough done at work because there’s kind of this fear of consequences there.
But then for the things that matter the most to them, for the things in their personal life, for a difficult conversation with their partner, or if they don’t have a partner, finding a partner, they won’t push through that prediction of difficulty or something not being rewarding enough. And then they just won’t ever do the thing and then they won’t ever get the result or outcome.
And what does that usually lead them back to? It’s probably going to usually lead them back to then beating themselves up about not following through or not doing what they said they’d do or not taking the action to get them to where they want to go.
So this is interesting because some things really will be hard, but a lot of things are not as hard as we think they will be. And they don’t take as long as we think they will take. And they’re more rewarding than we think they will be.
So there’s actually a great book by Dr. David Burns called Feeling Good. And in this book he talks through a lot of the different thought patterns that cause problems for us and different methodologies for handling those thought patterns. And I was rereading a section of it today and it really overlapped with what I wanted to talk about on today’s podcast, because he was talking about this method of tracking, right?
If you have a task to do and you are not wanting to do it, it’s like writing down ahead of time, like how hard do you think this is going to be and how rewarding is it going to be? And then you do it and then you record how hard it actually was and how rewarding it actually was. And what people generally find, according to Dr. David Burns, and also according to a lot of the work that I’ve done in my own life and with clients, a lot of the time people find that it’s less work than they thought it would be and it’s more rewarding than they thought it would be.
And that’s such good information to know, because that can really help you recalibrate your own perspective on getting started on things. And that can help you kind of shift from always putting everything off to being like, you know what? I bet I can get it done in 10 minutes, let’s just find out.
Now, of course, the truth is you can’t get everything done in 10 minutes. And so sometimes what this also shows us is there’ll be something we put off for eight hours because we thought it was going to be really hard, we did it in 10 minutes. There may be something else that we thought we could do in 10 minutes and we sit down to do it and it turns out to be more complicated.
But I think this is the thing, it’s like, when we predict how hard and how rewarding something’s going to be, we’re often wrong. We can be wrong in both directions. But when we do something, like what Dr. Burns recommends in the book, which is kind of evaluating and fact-checking yourself around that, then we can get more information.
And guess what that’s going to help us do. That’s going to help us predict more accurately in the future and have a better understanding of what kind of tasks will take what kind of time commitment, and what the payoff will be. And then we can use that to help us figure out how we want to put those things onto our calendar and how much time we want to give ourselves to do those things.
So basically what I’m saying there is even if it doesn’t delight you, what you find out when you track and fact-check yourself, I think it’s still really useful information that will actually help you get started on things and complete them and have a more enjoyable experience of both.
And that brings us to the third key factor that is keeping you from getting started. And that factor is downplaying your own capability. So this is sort of the flip side of the second factor. The second factor is focused on the task. The task will be hard. The task will be unrewarding.
This factor is focused on you. It’s like, even if the task is easy, maybe you fear you won’t be able to do it. And it could be you fear you won’t be able to do it because you think you can’t do it at the level of difficulty that it is. This kind of fear could also be your capability of things like having the willpower, the follow through, the discipline, getting yourself to actually do what you’ve said you would do. So that could also be something that’s blocking you from getting started.
So if what’s blocking you from getting started isn’t the task itself, but it’s your perception of yourself, what do you do about that? I think in that case, what you need to do is change your perception of yourself. Something I’ve heard said before by coaches that I’ve worked with and something I’ve said to my clients a lot is you can either argue for your limitations or you can argue for your possibilities.
Now, obviously we all have both. We all do have limitations. We all do have edges of our skills where we go from being skillful to not having skills, like once you expand out. That’s true of me as it is true of any person. And yet if you want to be doing something you haven’t been doing, it can be really useful to get on the sales team for the idea that you can do it.
And when I say get on the sales team, I’m saying like selling this idea to yourself. Selling your capacity to yourself. Selling your capability to yourself. Marketing to yourself about why you can. And as we talk about all the time on the podcast, this isn’t about gaslighting yourself. It’s not about pretending. It’s not about being like, it’ll be great. It’s about saying things like, okay, well, you’ve done hard things before. Even if you aren’t 100% sure how to do this, maybe you have some ideas for how to get started.
And it’s looking through your own history for evidence as well. Is there any evidence that you actually do have the ability, either to do the thing you want to do or to learn how to do a new thing? So a lot of times in life, we want to do something and we don’t have the skill yet, but do you have some evidence that you know how to learn skills? I bet you do. If you can walk and you can talk, you weren’t born that way and you learned those skills in your lifetime.
So if you can learn those things, I bet that you can also learn this other thing. And it’s interesting with that example, because sometimes people are like, okay, but that’s what babies do, right? Babies learn to talk. They learn to walk. You maybe don’t remember doing that learning, but it’s still really profound. And if you look at a baby learning to do those things, they’re not like, wow, I must be terrible. I haven’t figured this out yet. Sometimes they get frustrated, but they’re just working on it till they get it. Sometimes they lie on the floor and wail, but they’re going to work on it until they get it.
And I think with babies and children, there’s this idea of like, well, of course they’re learning. And for some reason, people stop giving themselves permission in that way as they become adults. And I would just invite you to give yourself permission in that way. What if it was perfectly okay for you to not know how to do something, whether it’s something like having the willpower to follow through on a choice or whether it’s something like doing the two-step, which is the dance that I do on Friday nights.
If you were willing to believe that you have the capacity to learn, then that’s going to go really far for you. First of all, you already have lots of capability. Every client I’ve worked with, they’ll be like, I can’t do this thing. And I’m like, okay, but tell me the evidence you can. And there’s usually a lot of really compelling evidence that they already can.
And you already can do amazing things too. I just know you can. But also on top of these skills you have, if you just believe in your capacity to learn, that will cover pretty much everything else.
Now, are you actually going to learn everything? Probably not everything. There’s a lot of knowledge in the world. There’s a lot of skills, there’s a lot of languages. You’re probably not going to learn them all. You will need to make choices about what’s worth your time to learn. But if there’s something that you keep saying you’re going to do and you don’t start, you keep putting off starting it, and it’s because you question your own capability, what if you tried just flipping that around and being like, what if I can do it? What if I can figure it out? What if I could just get started? What if I did just spend 10 minutes on it?
I think you’ll be really impressed with how much progress you can make just by flipping your negative beliefs and kind of like turning them into powerful questions of how can I, how could I?
So those are the three key patterns that keep you from getting started; transition resistance, predicting that the task will be hard/unrewarding and downplaying or doubting your own capability.
And whatever it is that you want to get started on, it may be one of those at play, it may be all three of them at play, it may be some other additional pieces at play. But if you cover these three bases, that’s going to set you up really well to not just get started, but keep going and then get done and complete whatever it is that is on your task list or on your bucket list or on your vision board for getting done today, this week, this year.
And if this podcast was super helpful, but you want a little more customized support or when you go to implement the tools you’re running into some other obstacles, that’s exactly the kind of stuff that we do in one-on-one coaching together. And I do have room for a few new or returning clients right now. And if you would like to have one of those spots, just go on over to KoriLinn.com/learnmore, sign up for a consult call. And what will happen is we’re going to have just a free conversation where we talk about what’s going on with you. And then if it seems like a good fit, I will tell you how I currently work with clients.
You’ll get a lot out of a consult call. And I really want to welcome you to come and do the consult call, even if you’re not sure about coaching. This is not a hard sell situation. This is a conversation where I’m going to tell you honestly what I think about your situation and whether I think coaching is a useful fit for it. It’s not always. And I think you’ll get a lot out of it that will move you forwards towards whatever your goal is. And then there, like I said, will be options for more support if you want that.
And then one more thing is one week from today, I am doing a free call. It’s another round of Biz Curious. If you were on the last one, it was a super fun business ask me anything. I’ve been in business for coming up on six years. And so I host this free call sometimes so that people can bring their business questions, whether you’re just starting out in business or you’ve been in business for a few years, or you’ve been a long time business owner.
If you have questions about how I’m doing things, if you have questions about scaling, et cetera, or just getting started, I will answer those both from the mindset and coaching point of view and from my own experience as well. And then on the next one, we’re super lucky and we have my friend Brenda on there as well. And Brenda is a lawyer and she can also help answer your legal questions. And she’s supported entrepreneurs as well in helping them get their businesses set up.
So if you want to sign up for that call, go to KoriLinn.com/learnmore, and there will be a sign up for that call available there.
All right, thank you so much. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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