Episode 55: Are You Advanced Enough to Worry About That?

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to The Work Of Becoming podcast! I am sitting on my couch. I’m under a blanket. I am a little bit not sick, but I’m having some allergy issues, so I’m congested, but in these moments, when I’m a little bit tired and I’m a little bit sick, I have found myself to be the most unfiltered, and I want this podcast to be really raw and honest and just a real description or insight into my thoughts and what’s going on in my head. And so, I was like, you know what? Podcasting actually sounds fun today. Podcasting actually sounds like it would be a really great thing to do with this energy. So, that’s what I’m gonna do today.

So, today, I wanted to talk to you about a question that might feel a little bit like a poke. It might feel a little bit sensitive for some people. That is the question of are you really advanced enough to worry about that? So, I’ll give you a story, as I do.

Yesterday, I was on a run, and I am following a run plan to train for my half marathon that I got from Alyssa (@doclyssfitness). I got it from her three or four years ago. But before she and I were friends, I bought her run plan back when it was an e-book. Now she has it on an app, I believe. But I’m following this plan, and so I’m supposed to do three runs every week, and yesterday I was supposed to do a tempo run. And I got outside, and I started running, and I started doing my tempo stuff, and I was really not feeling it, and I was like you know what? I just kind of want to run. I just kind of want to do an easy, maybe longer run. And my brain immediately started getting super perfectionistic about that, and my brain wanted to be like, “Well, we have to do them in order, and today’s tempo run day, and I have to follow the plan, and da-da-da-da-da.”

Then I stopped myself because the reality is that I am a beginner at running. I have not run consistently in many years, and I’m not adapted to it, and so, as much as I want to worry about the perfect time of day to run and exactly what my pacing is and whether or not my tempo run happens X amount of days before my long run, and do I do a recovery run. My brain wants to be all up in all of those tiny decisions when, in reality, it doesn’t matter because I am not advanced enough for that to matter.

And so, I think sometimes (and especially around the first month of the year) we see all of these pieces of education about our various goals, right? So, maybe you have a nutrition goal. You see all this information about meal timing and what you need to eat exactly (ratios of carbs and fats, etcetera) before your workout; or maybe you’re working on sleep and you see all this information about optimal evening routines and how you need to take a shower so your body temperature drops and da-da-da-da-da; or maybe you are starting a business and you’re seeing all this information about how your freebie needs to have an email sequence that leads in and you need to worry about conversion rates.

In all of those things, in all of that education, I want to say that the education itself is not bad. It’s a valuable education and it matters, but what I want to ask you today is are you actually advanced enough to need to worry about that because a lot of you (I’m being honest) are not. You are a business owner at the beginning of your business; you don’t need to worry about the particular conversion rate from your freebie to your course, right? Maybe you’re a beginner runner; you don’t need to worry about the exact pacing, getting it perfectly. Maybe you’re trying to eat healthier; you probably don’t need to worry about the exact logistics of your mealtimes and the perfect breakdown. You probably just need to eat a frickin’ vegetable, right?

And so, I think this is a really important moment to check ourselves because it is an ego thing, right? We want to believe that we’re advanced, and we want to believe that all this stuff is gonna matter and we want to believe that we are at this place where we really need to optimize our protocol, and sometimes it’s hard to admit that we are not advanced enough for something to matter. We are not at that point, and so, that is what I really want to remind you today.

I want you to ask yourself, of all the things that you’re trying to do, of where you are in life, how advanced are you at that skill you’re trying to learn, at that thing you’re trying to do? And if you’re a beginner, how can you make your approach more simple to match where you are at?

I’ll give you one last example because I think online business is actually a huge area where this really comes up. In the very beginning, I wanted to be very, very worried about email open rates and conversion data and do I have the perfect freebie that matches into my one-on-one program and da-da-da-da-da. All of that did not matter. What mattered at the beginning of building my business was talking to people and telling them I was a coach, was literally connecting with people in my life and telling them that I had spots open, getting on Instagram every day and telling people that I have spots open. Nothing beyond that mattered, and I see this so much with business owners (especially with new business owners) is we get wrapped up in all of the complexity of funnels and sales pages and, god forbid, fucking SEO, and it’s like you are not advanced enough for that to make a difference.

So, the quicker you check your own ego, the quicker you embrace your beginner status, and the quicker you simplify, the quicker you actually will grow and change and evolve and get closer to where you want to be.