Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Welcome back everyone. This is episode 72 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. Listen, I'm so excited because we're opening the doors again to our Visionary Mindset Program. This is our six month group coaching program for business founders and entrepreneurs.
After coaching for many years, founders and entrepreneurs on my one-on-one program last year, I decided to create a group program, and when I started thinking about what is it that I wanna teach in this group program, what is it that I think would be the most valuable, what are the most common problems and challenges my clients have?
So what I did first was create a list of the problems I coach about all the time. Problems such as, yeah, you're making money, but your revenue is unpredictable. One month you're achieving your goals. The next month you're itching because you don't know where the next client is gonna come from, or. When you're starting doubting yourself, maybe some weeks you're like, I'm sure I'm clear. Here's what we're going to do, and then you find yourself at 1:00 AM 2:00 AM overthinking your decisions, being very stressed about what you are going to do.
Some of the other problems I typically coach on, are you becoming the bottleneck, right? As business founders we're wanting to do everything and it's hard to delegate or to trust people to do things the in the way that we want them to do it.
Or how about when those days that something happens? We have a difficult conversation with a client. We get bad reviews about something and our emotions get triggered and we get hijacked by them, and it's really hard to execute and it can throw us off for hours a day or two days.
I'm always working with my clients on how to process those emotions without suppressing them, because we know that if they suppress them later, they're gonna have to pay for that suppressing. But actually in real time, how do you build the resiliency so emotions don't throw you off for long periods of time. Or even the burnout, right? Like your business, everything is going well. You're hiring people, you have more clients, but all of a sudden you find yourself working from 4:00 AM till midnight every day, and you're exhausted and burnt out.
I wrote down all these problems and I started going back into my experience. What has worked for my clients? How have I successfully helped them overcome these challenges so they can create the businesses they want, achieve the goals they desire? And that's how this program came along. This program, yes, I will teach you some strategies and some tactics, especially around marketing and sales, but the majority of the program is focused on you learning to lead yourself, learning how to manage your emotions, becoming very aware of the stories you are creating in your brain that are ending up in the results of your business. Learning to navigate emotions, learning to manage and influence other people.
So here's what we do. During six months, we focus on strengthening your CEO mindset, on upgrading your self concept. Your self concept is the way you see yourself, the way you think about yourself, because when we do this work, then you can navigate problems with more ease, a bigger vision for your business, make more money and have more fun.
Because we all wanna grow businesses. Yes, but we don't want our lives to be miserable. We wanna enjoy the ride. And the beautiful thing is that because it's a group program, you're not gonna be doing this alone. You're gonna be surrounded by other business founders, other entrepreneurs, and what my clients is that it's so rewarding to be inspired by others, but also to feel that you're not alone.
That these things you struggle with by yourself in your head, that you feel lonely about. You realize, okay, we're all in it together and this is normal and this is just part of being an entrepreneur. So if you're facing any of the challenges I mentioned earlier, you know, revenue not being consistent, being the bottleneck, being exhausted, emotions, managing your decision making. Let's explore. This is the right program for you. Here in the description of the episode, you'll find a link to my calendar and I will sit down with you and I'll walk you through the program, answer your questions, and together we'll decide if this program is the right choice for you.
I wanna make sure that everyone who joins a program is the right fit. So that's why I don't have open enrollment. I wanna meet each of you. I wanna curate a really strong group of entrepreneurs so we can all have a wonderful time and get incredible results in the program. If this resonates with you, go ahead, go to the description and book that call with me. I'll be so excited to share more details about the program and answer any of your questions.
And now moving onto today's episode.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a client who, she's one of my most successful clients. I mean a business case for starting a business creating rapid growth clients who love you, getting awards and achievements. You know, I'm such a big fan of her and her business, and she said, Hey, Caro, I need help with procrastination.
And it surprised me because if you see this woman, you would never think she procrastinates. She's smart, she's a go-getter. She makes things happen. So I was confused. So I was like, what do you mean procrastinate? And she told me that she's realizing that she's really good at being busy and getting stuff done, but that there are some things in her business that really require her attention, that are things that are not urgent.
It's not a fire she has to put out today. But there are projects that she knows she needs to work on right now to be able to sustain the growth that is gonna happen in the near future. And she's also starting to feel the pain of not working on those projects.
So again, talking with her, it reminded me that procrastination is not about self-discipline. It's not about laziness. It's not about how successful we are. Procrastination is a very real and very human response to our fear, to our discomfort, to our brain, wanting to protect us from pain.
Usually when I talk about procrastination, they come to me with very painful stories that they've created for themselves, stories that they've been telling themselves for years. Things like, I'm not good enough. I can't trust myself. It takes me longer than everyone else. I'm embarrassed if someone would find out how long it takes me to do things.
I end up scrolling so many hours on Instagram or TikTok. And there's so much shame around it as well. So one of my goals with today's episode is to remove the shame and to really see procrastination as a very smart human behavior. So lemme tell you a little bit about it.
If you've listened to other episodes, you might have heard me already talk about this, but it's worth repeating it again. Our brain has a mechanism in which it's always trying to operate our subconscious brain, our primitive brain, our instinctual brain, and it has three strategies.
The first strategy is keep us away from pain. Anything that our brain perceives us pain. Our brain will be so brilliant to create stories, ideas that will motivate us to do other things instead of the painful thing. Also our brain is wanting to move us towards pleasure. So anything that will create a release of dopamine or serotonin or oxytocin, which are those really good chemicals that feel good, chemicals our brain produces.
Our brain is also gonna come up with a lot of stories that. Will drive us into doing those behaviors that feel good. And our brain is always trying to save energy because that's how we've survived .
In the history of human beings. Energy sources have been scarce. So our primitive brain is always doing the math. How much energy do I have to put into this, and how much energy will I get back? And with that equation is not telling us they're gonna have a surplus of energy again. Our brain is gonna try to block us from doing that thing. So procrastination is the response, is the strategy our brain comes up with to avoid us going into pain or to take us more into pleasure or simply to save energy. When I look at myself, I was thinking before recording this episode, when have I historically procrastinated? And where am I procrastinating right now? And the first thing I have to tell you is that you actually get better if you really work on this.
When I started my business, I could procrastinate honestly, four days, sometimes even weeks. I even remember getting emails from people interested in my coaching, and I would feel so scared that then they would later reject me that I think some of those emails, I never replied like I procrastinated forever.
But with time as I've been getting better at managing my emotions, managing my thoughts, telling myself more empowering stories, my procrastination has reduced significantly. Again, it doesn't disappear because I'm still a human being, but I can catch it faster. So I just want you to know that if right now you're seeing yourself as procrastinating a lot to see it as a learning curve, you will learn the tools that I'm gonna tell you in this podcast through your own practice, through your own awareness, and you can get better at it.
The two big reasons why I procrastinate, the first one is because I'm telling myself that that task or that project is gonna take a lot of effort. Or that it's gonna be hard to do or boring to do.
Recently, we created this assessment, which I think it's so cool. It's called the Founder's Capacity Assessment, and it was a big project. It started by doing some research about capacity, about the different capacities, what they meant, bringing from my own experiences, working with clients, and then undertook all that research and put it into this incredible assessment.
And then Andrew taking that to the next level, organizing it by different levels in each capacity, writing the reports, the questions, and then coming back at me. And I remember when I saw the amount of information that Andrew had created, I felt so overwhelmed. I started telling myself the story that this was gonna be a lot of work, a lot of energy, and honestly I was like, oh, a little bit boring because I had already thought about this, you know, months or weeks before and coming back at it.
And then creating the questions, the reports, organizing the information to tell you in what level are you in each of the capacities. Then all of that coming back to me for my review again, and I felt so overwhelmed. It was so many pages of information of things Andrew had written that my initial thought was like, oh my God, this is gonna be so much work, so much energy.
And if I'm fully honest, this work that is about attention to detail. It's not the most fun for me. So I also was dreading it a little bit, just going through all of it, and I started noticing myself procrastinating, saying, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it the next week.
And putting it off. So one of the reasons I procrastinate is that because in my head I imagine that something is gonna take a lot of effort, a lot of hours, or it's gonna be boring. The other reason why I procrastinate is when something means a lot to me and I really care about it, and I'm very scared of the rejection or the criticism or the failure it can bring.
For example, in the Visionary Mindset Program, we have surveys we ask our students to complete. I procrastinate reading the answers because I imagine that if someone is gonna give me. Criticism or negative feedback, it's gonna hurt so much. So it was good as I was planning this podcast to do my own analysis, like why do I procrastinate?
And those are my two main reasons. But I also wanna share with you some other reasons. I see people procrastinating. So here's the ones I came up with. Fear of not knowing how to do it. Have you ever been in that place that you're like, oh, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to do it. So,, you simply don't do it or you don't start it? , Lack of clarity.
Often when I ask a client, why are they procrastinating and we go deeper, we find out that they're not clear on what it is that they're going to do or we find out that it's, that they don't know what they're going to do. So even if they book the time to spend on a project, when they're unclear exactly what the project is about or what the outcomes are, they can easily, you know, push it down the road and do it later.
Fear of failure because we actually are afraid of feeling hurt, but also fear of success because we think if this takes off, if we're successful with this, then I'm gonna have to work a lot more hours and it's gonna be a lot more pressure and stress.
The thought that we might not be good enough and we don't wanna do that projects because we don't wanna confirm that limiting belief that tells us there's something wrong with us, or we're simply not good enough at whatever the thing is.
We procrastinate when we don't have clear deadlines, when we don't make a decision about when something has to be done.
Or when we've procrastinated on something for such a long time that now every time we think about that project, we feel guilt and because we don't wanna feel this guilt, we keep procrastinating, but we also procrastinate because there's other things that feel better to do.
Things that when we check them off the list, they give us dopamine, which is the reward chemical. That it's like, yeah, you do it. That feels good. Or serotonin. Or oxytocin.
Or we procrastinate because there's something else we're looking at that feels easier to do and that's gonna make us feel better.
I had a client that we would laugh because she would tell me, my house is never as clean as when I have something important to do, and I could totally relate to this. I remember at the beginning of the business, I would even tell people, well, I can't start working until my house is impeccably clean until all the beds are made and the kitchen is clean.
But the truth is, absolutely I can work with a dirty house. In fact, nowadays I know I can do it, but back then it was, although I didn't like cleaning the house, the emotions were lighter, easier to navigate, cleaning the house and doing the work that created so much anxiety or fear or nervousness for me.
I also hear clients say, I can't work with a inbox with unread messages.
I have to clean them up before I can start thinking. And I want you to notice that all of those things I just mentioned are stories. These are the brilliant stories our brains create to keep us away from pain, move us towards pleasure or save energy.
So if you're noticing procrastination, getting in your way of your results or creating a lot of stress in your life, the first step is to get crystal clear on what is the story your brain is telling you that is holding you back from doing the thing you wanna do?
When I was growing up I would tell my mom, I don't wanna do that, that's so boring. I'm tired, I'm lazy. She would always told me the same story. That it's that. Laziness is a little fence we have around ourselves.
And every time we don't do something because we're feeling lazy or because we think it's boring, that fence grows. But every time we push ourselves through the discomfort of the boring thing, of the painful thing, and we cross that fence, the fence gets smaller.
The only way to get better at not procrastinating is to train ourselves to be with discomfort. Procrastination can become a habit, and the more we stop doing things because they're scary, they're uncomfortable, they remind us of pain, the better we get at procrastinating, the more we'll continue to avoid them. And that has a really. Profound impact in ourselves is that we stop trusting ourselves. We stop believing in our ability to get things done.
But it's that opposite is also true. The more we do things, even though we're feeling discomfort, even though we're scared, even though we don't wanna do them, and we train our brains and ourselves to do things even when they don't feel. Good. We'll get better at that and therefore we're gonna procrastinate less.
So again, it's not about waiting to not have fear, it's not about waiting until it feels good. It's about learning to do things with discomfort. That is the only way. So, okay, this thing you're going to do, you don't know how to do it. Well get in it and do it anyways. And allow yourself to feel the discomfort of the not knowing. Or maybe you had a fight this morning with your spouse or with a client and you're feeling down and sad. Well learn to do work even when you're not feeling good.
I am not saying shut down the emotion. I'm saying feel the negative emotion and do what you need to do. At the same time, we are able to do that.
years ago I was listening to Brené Brown. She was doing a Facebook Live or an Instagram live about something political that was happening in the world, and the way she started this live was by saying that she had scheduled it for 2:00 PM but when she got into the office, she told her team, listen, if we wait until 2:00 PM I'm not gonna do it I need to do it right now.
And I think this is one of the best tips for procrastinating. Do the hard thing first. Do it before your brain starts creating even a bigger story as to why you shouldn't do it. So , if you can organize your day, so in the morning you are doing the most boring things, the things that require your attention, that get you out of your comfort zone.
And in that way, you don't give your brain more hours to make a really good case as to why you shouldn't do it.
When we start overthinking, well, what's going to happen? Are people going to like it? Are they not gonna like it? What if this person receives it in this way? That overthinking is us giving our brain the power to tell even a more compelling story to not do something, but if we operate by just do it. Let's just do it and see what happens. That's another way of overcoming procrastination.
You know, My daughters recently, they had to take some medicine that doesn't taste good, and I could see the older one, like the little one would just take it and she would be done with it.
The older one, she would get something to drink and then she would look at it and smell it. Bring it close to her mouth and then say, no, it's awful, and put it away. You are increasing the pain every time you do that. Sometimes we just have to just do it and get it done with.
So I wanna give you some other practical tips and things I use and my clients use to overcome procrastination, to navigate that moment where we're feeling the resistance to do something.
Decide ahead of time when you're going to do it. When we're making decisions ahead of time, those decisions are being made by our prefrontal cortex that understands our values, that understands our goals. That is a higher level thinking. So when you're making a decision from your prefrontal cortex, and you decide, okay, I'm gonna do this tomorrow from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM. You are making decisions from your best place versus if you wait until the moment and see if you feel like doing it, that's when you're amygdala, your emotional part of the brain is gonna take over and it's gonna really push you to stay away from discomfort and move you towards pleasure or save energy, right?
So one tip is make decisions ahead of time. The second thing is if it's a very big project. Break it down into smaller steps and then focus only on the first step. For example, you know some of many of my clients, because they're all starting their businesses, there's a point in which they have to sit down and write job descriptions.
And this is one of those common projects that a lot of them don't wanna do. And I say, instead of thinking you have to write five or 10 job descriptions, focus on one.
Choose one job description to write right now, and then you think about the next one, so I tell them, Luc, listen. Think about the first job description. Commit to doing that one without thinking about the rest. And then do the second one and then the third one, instead of thinking of the whole project, because I can see how that can feel overwhelming. Also remember that although your brain is so good at creating this resistance stories, you can also create really powerful and good stories for yourself, even changing your language in very simple ways from, ugh, I have to do this to, oh, I want to do this, I want to write the job descriptions because, and then you give yourself a really good reason.
I want to read all this content from our founder's capacity assessment. From the capacity assessment, I wanna go through all this content from the capacity assessment because I know it's gonna be so valuable for anyone who does it. And I think it's so cool and like I'm so excited to share this with the world.
So even smaller reasons as to why we're doing something or reframing it in a way that we feel like it's our choice and we're in control are gonna help us move forward. And also it's important to get to know yourself. What works for you? So for example, when I need to do work, like write job descriptions, go over the assessment reports, things like doing taxes, things that you know that I don't find particularly pleasurable, I know that if I stay in my house, I'm gonna procrastinate more. So what I tend to do is go to a place, like a coworking space or a coffee shop because there's something about my brain being entertained by what's happening around me that allows me to focus better.
This is something I learned about myself after trial and error for many years after being in business school and never being able to get work done in the very, very, very quiet library and actually being able to study better and do my projects better in the cafeteria, I learned that how, that's how my brain works.
So try different experiments with you. Try to understand is it better for you to get your work done? Is it better to listening to music or having full silence? Is it better if you tell a friend that's meeting this coffee shop and I'll work on this? And you work on that, and that level of accountability or connection with another human being can help you?
To summarize what I've shared today, the first thing is to really remember that procrastination has nothing to do with our character. It's not a character flaw. It's a brilliant strategy. Our brain has to move us away from pain, towards pleasure and save energy.
Second thing, when you're working on. Moving away from procrastination or getting better at doing the things you said you were going to do. Start by analyzing the story Your brain is presenting you and question it. Challenge it, create a more empowering story. Remember that the way out of this is not by making everything fun and pleasurable.
It's the opposite. It's about learning to be with discomfort. It's about learning to feel the negative emotion, the resistance, and doing it anyway. And the more you do things without feeling good while you're doing them, the better you're gonna get at following through with your word at building that integrity with yourself. And the last thing I wanna say is that the biggest creator of procrastination is shame.
If you miss a deadline, if you don't follow through with something you said you were going to do, if you feel out of integrity with yourself and you start beating yourself up and shaming yourself, that's when you're gonna get stuck in that cycle of procrastination, self-compassion, seeing ourselves as human and being like, okay, well I procrastinate in this. Let me figure it out. How can I get it done soon? That's the way we move forward. Shame and hurting ourselves is never the answer.
Oh, and one more thing I wanted to share. For all of you who are managing people, and maybe you find an employee who is procrastinating with something, who is missing deadlines, who is taking a very long time on completing a task. Usually our response is to go and say, well, I asked for this yesterday. Why is it taking so long? I need it right now. when we're the boss and we're giving this criticism or this negative feedback to our employees, that can trigger the shame cycle and actually not help them overcome procrastination, but actually create more procrastination. So remember everything we talked about today, and remember that your employees are also human beings struggling with the emotional triad, and instead of coming at them hard, teach them this. Help them identify the story that is having them procrastinate, teach 'em compassion, and then help them create strategies to get the work done. I know that many of us didn't think that when we were gonna lead a team, we had to also become coaches or therapists, which I don't think is his therapy, but that we would need to understand human psychology.
But the sooner we understand this and we use it in our favor and our team's favor. The better we're all gonna get at this. Alright, so this is all about procrastination.
As I said at the beginning of this episode, we're opening the doors to the Visionary Mindset Program, and procrastination is an example of a behavior that I help you change during the program, and that has a huge impact on your business and the way you feel about yourself.
So if you're a business founder and you're working on taking your business to the next level, and you wanna continue evolving yourself so you can lead a bigger business, go ahead to the description of this episode.
Book a call with me and I'll walk you through everything around the program, answer your questions and help you decide if that's the right choice for you. All right, until next time, bye-bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there!
