Imagine if the world's greatest innovators had waited for the perfect moment to act.
James Clear in his book, Atomic Habits, emphasizes that successful people start before they feel
ready, highlighting that waiting for perfect conditions can hinder our progress.
Mal Robbins in one of my favorite books, The Five Second Rule, encourages us to count down
from five and then take action, preventing us from overthinking and missed opportunities.
Steve Jobs exemplified this by taking bold steps into uncharted territories, often pursuing
innovative ideas before the market or technology was fully ready.
In today's episode, we'll explore how embracing action over hesitation can lead to remarkable
achievements.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of Life Snacks Lesson Plan.
I'm Rachel and I started this podcast during my 29th and last year as a high school teacher.
Goal of my work with Life Snacks Lesson Plan as well as my Live and Learn Patreon is to
create a connection where we are all teachers.
We all have lessons and stories to share that can help others.
I'm so fortunate to be able to extend the four walls of my previous classroom to an
unlimited audience where we can all learn from each other.
And my guests are some of the most inspirational people with the best stories and lessons I
know, which is why I want to share them with you.
Their words are something everyone should hear.
It is my hope that you are able to take away something from each episode to apply to your
own life, whether that be a career search, path to a more fulfilling life, or new ideas
on current topics.
Today we are talking about building trust in ourselves and how to have the confidence
to try new things, take a new leap, start a new journey.
Breaching to my own choir here.
We've had some guests in the past walk us through some of these things and explain to
us how they have done it.
I know personally, obviously this is the territory that I'm in right now.
And whether you are embarking on a new journey right now or perhaps might be down the road,
hopefully today you can take some action steps with you.
We're going to start by talking about how small wins can help you build trust in yourself.
So the importance of setting small achievable goals as we're getting started with something
new.
Instead of diving into a huge four year program or certification, in the past episodes I have
talked about committing to 10 or 15 minutes a day on a skill that you want to develop.
Be your learning a new language on Duolingo or your doing daily design challenges or writing
prompts.
Small commitments that build consistency will help you feel successful.
This is what we need in order to build confidence.
Another thing which might be scary at first is to build accountability by sharing your
goals with the public.
For example, if you're thinking of starting a blog, you could write one short post and
share it with a trusted friend or on one social media platform for feedback.
This would allow you to test an idea and gain confidence without the pressure of a large
audience.
You can also test a business idea through small pop-ups.
I know I helped my daughter with this two summers ago when she had jewelry business in
the summer.
She used Instagram to promote her products a little bit and then we branched out to participating
in a local market at Maxwell Street Days and then also reaching out to businesses to have
a little table set up and sell products and receive feedback.
It was a really great experience for her.
I enjoyed helping and it's really fun to help them build a lot of skills, social media,
communication, marketing and promotion, budgeting.
These are all great real world experiences to learn at any age.
Those small wins can help create a snowball effect which will help you build confidence
over time.
Some real life examples of this, some of my favorites, again one of my favorite podcasts
to listen to is How I Built This.
It's through that podcast that I learned the story of Sarah Blakely who is the founder
of Spanx.
If you're not familiar with Spanx, it is a very, very popular, started as a shapewear
company, but now they have expanded into athleisure, obviously bras and underwear and just really
expanded even into jeans.
She's a multi-millionaire, very successful entrepreneur, but Sarah Blakely's journey
began with a simple idea.
She was trying to fix actually a problem of her own.
She had some white pants that she wanted to wear to a special occasion and she didn't
like how her legs appeared underneath the pants.
She wanted to create kind of a smoother look underneath these white pants.
She started by cutting the feet off a pair of pantyhose to wear underneath the pants
and that seemed to work.
She started small by developing a product to do similar things for women in her apartment
and then she pitched her idea to local department stores.
She had no experience in business, no experience in fashion.
She tested her idea with her own friends and built her confidence one step at a time.
Today Spanx is a billion dollar company and her story shows the power of starting with
one small idea, trying to fix a problem, trusting yourself to grow from there.
A similar story is that of Stephen King, who you most likely know for his novels and writing.
His journey to writing his first novel, Carrie, he initially threw that manuscript into the
trash.
He just doubted his own potential.
His wife, Tabitha, pulled it out of the trash and encouraged him to finish it.
So King started small by writing in his spare time while working as a high school teacher.
When Carrie was published, it became his breakthrough novel, proving that taking a small chance
and leaning on support systems can lead to life changing outcomes.
And if you want more stories like this, I highly recommend the How I Built This podcast,
the stories behind the people who built the brands we love.
So thinking about this in regards to your own life, what is one small step you could
take toward a bigger goal you have?
With that in mind, we're going to move on to the next section of the podcast, the power
of action over perfection.
So going along with Mel Robbins' idea of five, four, three, two, one action, action Trump's
waiting.
Her quote, confidence comes from doing, not waiting, encapsulates Mel Robbins' philosophy
that taking action is essential for building your confidence.
These ideas reflect the core message of her teaching in her book, The Five Second Rule.
I do discuss this exact book on my Patreon in episode four, much more in depth.
Robbins emphasizes the importance of initiating action to overcome hesitation and self-doubt.
So she introduces the concept of counting down five, four, three, two, one, and moving
forward.
If we take more time than that, research shows that our brains will talk us out of this.
In that Patreon episode, I talk about all the instances in my life where I've used
this mostly in the mornings before school to get out of bed.
I've lent my book to a friend and shared this with many friends who are in my accountability
group for working out before our work day starts.
Many of us use the Five Second Rule.
So what she is advocating for is the power of proactive behavior, that by engaging in
deliberate actions we can develop the confidence we're looking for rather than waiting passively
for it to manifest.
So if we want something, we have to take the first step.
And when we continue to take that first step, getting out of bed without pushing the snooze,
for example, we start to gain confidence.
We start to build confidence.
Think about times in your life where you felt proud for taking the first step, even though
you didn't feel ready, even if you were unsure.
There have been many instances that have turned out to be the best decisions in my life.
Again, I talk about this in that Patreon episode where I had to just start messy, start before
I was ready.
Being over the journalism program, which ended up being my favorite part of teaching, I was
not ready.
I hadn't done journalism in over two decades.
I had never done your book in my life.
I had to take the job or miss out on the opportunity.
And I'm so glad I did.
When I became department chair, I didn't feel ready.
I jumped in.
I tried it.
There are many cases podcasting being one of them.
I didn't have everything perfect from the start.
I still don't have everything perfect.
Don't have everything figured out to a T. But I'm doing it, getting good feedback and
gaining confidence as I go.
So take it from a recovering perfectionist.
If you continue to wait for the perfect time, it will never come.
We know this.
It's never a perfect time.
It's just another form of procrastination.
It's another form of delaying this.
Well, what if, what if it doesn't work out?
What if I don't like it?
You don't know unless you try.
Okay, so action trumps waiting.
Next, we're going to talk about the role of failure.
This is an F word that scares me.
It's not my favorite F word.
So failure is an essential part of growth.
We've all heard this, but we, none of us like it.
Well, maybe some people do, but I'm not one of them.
Taking action, even if it's imperfect, moves you closer to your goal.
And through that journey to success, you might fail.
But again, let's go back to some people who are large success stories, who went through
the pain of failing.
So let's go back to Sarah Blakely and Spanx, a billion dollar company.
Before founding Spanx, Sarah Blakely wanted to be a stand up comedian.
And as they explained in her episode, she even worked door to door selling fax machines.
She faced countless rejections, but would always reframe her failure as a learning experience.
Her father actually encouraged her to celebrate failures.
At the dinner table, they would discuss, what did you fail at today?
It's almost like a celebration, because if you fail at something, it means you took action.
You moved forward, you tried something, you stepped out of your comfort zone.
So this mindset actually helped her persist.
When some manufacturers that she showed some of her prototypes for Spanx to rejected her
idea for footless pantyhose.
Instead of giving up after a few failures and saying, well, I guess it's just not going
to work out.
She used their feedback to refine her pitch.
And now she has a billion dollar company.
So a no or a setback is an a dead end.
It's a step toward a better version of your idea of yourself.
If something doesn't work, analyze why, adjust it and try again.
Again, easier said than done.
I'm still not great at criticism, accepting criticism.
But I am trying to frame it in that whoever is giving it to me is giving it to me to help
me succeed.
Another example we're probably all familiar with Oprah Winfrey.
So Oprah was once fired from her job as a TV news anchor in Baltimore because producers
said she was too emotionally invested in stories.
Instead of seeing this as the ending of her career, a failure, Oprah leaned into her natural
ability to connect with people.
We all know what happened.
This approach led her to host the Oprah Winfrey show where her authenticity and emotional engagement
became her greatest strengths.
Again, sometimes what seems like a failure is actually a redirection toward something
better suited to your strengths.
When a door closes, ask yourself, what skill or passion can I lean into instead?
I've said this before.
I am someone who wishes all the time I had a crystal ball.
Where is this going to lead me five years from now?
And I have to be okay with we don't know.
But if I fail, if the door closes, I have gained skills and hopefully it leads me somewhere
else.
Take your strengths and use them in that redirection.
So think about one action today, no matter how small you can take to just move forward
or to use some feedback you've received recently to redirect your path.
We'll take a break before we look at some action steps and homework.
To those of you who have followed me for a while, you know that I value mental and physical
wellness.
Personally, I've worked with a few different coaches over the years and even been one myself.
If you are looking for education and support in your own wellness journey, I would love
to invite you to the wellness community I am currently in that keeps me accountable daily
with my nutrition and movement.
If you are a Facebook user, you can search for a free group called Team MG.
This group is led by my coach, Megan Grimord, who is a certified trainer and nutrition coach.
She offers lots of education and support for your wellness journey.
If you want to get to know Coach Megan more, you can follow her on Instagram at all lower
case Megan M E G A N underscore Grimord G R I M O R D or even listen to her on episode
10 of the podcast.
She has also created a discount code for my listeners.
Just go to her website www.team-mg.com and enter code lesson plan 10 to get $10 off any
of her premium coaching packages for the first month.
Coach Megan is a busy mom like me who works full time, so I appreciate her practicality
mixed with some tough love to keep me going.
I'd like to invite you since you're here with me on the life's next lesson plan podcast
is to check out our series on my live and learn Patreon.
In February, we have an exciting collection of self-love going on right now with each
week focusing on different aspects of self-love with practical tools and strategies to incorporate
into your everyday life.
We are also going to be having a culminating book talk on March 1st with the book called
Worthy by Jamie Kern Lima, which was recommended by Anna Strelow in her episode.
And then in March, I'm so excited to have a heart and hormone health series with an
upcoming guest that you are about to hear from in episode 16.
She will actually be joining me at the end of the month for a Q&A about all things heart
and hormone health related, which is really exciting.
So I hope you'll listen to her on episode 16.
Her own health journey will shock and awe you, I will just say.
And I'm really excited to have her over on the Patreon.
So with Patreon, if you're not sure how it works, you can do it a couple different ways.
I do have some subscribers who are just monthly subscribers.
They get everything on Patreon for $5 a month, which is a great deal.
They are allowed to listen to all the episodes, participate in all the activities.
Or if you're not ready for a monthly subscription, you can just buy collections.
I usually offer them at half price.
So our February collection, which is four events, which would be $5 each typically,
is just going to be $10 instead of $20.
And then I'll do a $5 collection for the heart and hormone health.
I know in January, we had the Sunday Scaries series.
And I put that together as a collection for $5 for you as well.
So I hope you'll join us if you would like extra content over on our Live and Learn Patreon.
We've come to the part of the episode that I keep looking forward to more and more.
Let's ask the teacher anything.
Today I'm going to answer two questions.
First one I have thought a lot about in the last year.
What does living a fulfilling life mean to you?
I just received news that someone very near and dear to my heart who I taught English with,
I ate lunch with her and her husband for like an entire school year every single day.
She invited my daughter when she was into horses to come ride her horses.
She just passed away.
And it's the first person I have taught English with to pass away, 10 years into retirement.
And it just reinforces again what is important in life, our time, our relationships, our
health, our quality of life, and the time we have left, how we spend it.
And it is not about making money.
It's not about a lot of the things that I used to think it's about.
It's about the small things.
And perhaps I'm having an existential crisis or something, which probably is not uncommon
when you make a decision like this, but really visualizing how I will feel if a year from
now, 10 days from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, I'm at the end of my life.
What will I wish I had done or hadn't done?
And that's where I realize it's the small things.
Not feeling rushed every single day.
Not feeling stressed every single day.
Not feeling out of patience every single day.
And I know that's a big part of life.
And I've lived that for 29 or more years of my life.
And not to say that in whatever I do next, I won't have stressful, rushed moments, but
trying to take more control over what my life looks like is my goal.
So I won't keep rambling on about that.
Second question, what are some common themes or lessons that have emerged from your podcast
interviews?
Well, these two questions might go kind of hand in hand, I guess.
But a lot of the guests who I have had have talked about leaping at opportunities.
I mean, I'm thinking about guests that I have coming up as well, thinking outside of the
box, cherishing small moments, people in your life.
I mean, I really think it's a lot of the same things I just talked about.
What is important to you?
I mean, my first guest, Tony Angle, what do you value?
And how can you build your life around what you value?
That's what he said.
And I think that that's such an important message.
I mean, listening to Anne Cook about how you reflect on a really successful career.
I feel really great about my career.
And I feel like I wish I would have had a lot more energy in the last three to five of it.
But you know, there was a pandemic, I went through a divorce, a lot of things changed.
And the accolades weren't important anymore.
So I really think the lesson is create the life that you feel is best for you.
We'll go back to the transcendentalists, episode one.
simplify, get to the heart of what really matters.
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Hugh and Grace has played a key role in this transformation, offering safe, effective, non-toxic
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If you listened to episode 16 with certified Mayo Clinic health and wellness coach Tracy
Danielson Mitchell, you heard our talk about the importance of hormone health.
Coming in March, I'll be doing a deep dive into heart and hormone health on my Live and
Learn Patreon, where I'll list all the tests, supplements, and product swaps that have helped
me balance my hormones in my 50s.
Plus, Tracy will be back to answer all your heart and hormone health questions at the
end of the month.
If you're on this journey with me and are interested in exploring Hugh and Grace's trusted,
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All right.
We are back from break.
We're going to keep it upbeat.
I have two confidence-building exercises for you, and then we're going to recap what we
did today and have a few takeaways and action steps for homework today.
Exercise number one, visualization exercise.
We're going to pick something that you wish you could have success with.
Close your eyes if you can.
Otherwise, you're just going to have to picture this in your mind or pause and do this later.
Imagine what it would look like if you had success in this endeavor.
What does success look like in this endeavor?
Is it a feeling?
Is it your life looking different and how you're going to be living?
Is it a paycheck?
What steps did you take to get there?
What would be the first step?
What might happen as a result of that first step?
What would you do next after the first step?
Visualize yourself doing this, and it might also help to take out a pen and paper and
write this down.
Write down what it would look like.
What does success look like for you in this venture?
What are the steps?
What are some potential setbacks?
And then you can have your redirections.
So that's exercise one.
You can repeat this.
You can do this multiple times for multiple ideas.
Next, we're going to create an I've Done This Before list.
So if we have pen and paper, handy, or a blank computer docked, you can use that too.
You're going to really have to dig back in your memory here.
And we're going to write down hard things we've done in our lives.
I think there's a great thing I've seen on social media that's like, you've survived
100% of what you thought were the hardest moments, like what you thought were going
to be life-ending moments.
Moments where you're like, I would do anything to get out of this moment.
You've survived all of them, all of them.
And you're here on the other side, even if you didn't think you were going to be able
to do it.
Oh my gosh.
There were.
Times during the pandemic, I didn't know if I would ever feel normal in life again.
This is evidence of your capability to overcome 100% of your biggest challenges.
How did you feel?
Coming out of something you once thought was impossible.
That just hit me actually saying that.
The immense amount of gratitude that I have today for coming out of that dark, dark time,
those dark, dark years.
And yeah, I've had a lot of those in life starting at a very young age.
And it always makes you stronger.
There's definitely hurt.
There's definitely scars and emotional wounds, but we did it.
Okay, two positive exercises that you can use when you need them.
Today was about building confidence.
We're going to try to replace any negative self-taught.
I might fail.
What if I fail?
I'm not good at this.
I don't know enough.
We're going to replace that with empowering statements.
Instead of I'm not good at this, we can say I'm learning and I'm improving every day.
I was trying to think of a name to call my little sister who's been helping me with this
venture.
Sometimes I just in my mind call her my marketing maven.
But I need a good name for her.
But all the time I feel like when she's sending me stuff, I just want to say I'm just not
good at this.
And I have to do this myself.
I am doing it.
And I'm learning and I'm getting better every day.
And I'm doing it.
I took the leap.
No matter how it turns out, Miss Crystal Ball, I have to know the future.
I'm doing it.
It's probably a good time to remind you too that I'm talking about this this month on
my Patreon.
We have a three part series on self love and the week two episode of the February self
love series is all on affirmations and limiting beliefs and self talk.
So if you feel like you need more of this, you can purchase just that one episode.
You can purchase the self love collection.
You can join me on Patreon for just $5 a month and get everything we've done and everything
that's coming up.
Really exciting stuff.
And the next month or two that I'm working on.
Okay.
Confidence is not an eight, so it is a skill that can be learned and can be developed through
practice and experience just like anything else.
What do we tell our kids?
What do we tell our students?
You get better at something by doing it, right?
10,000 hours to become a master of your craft.
Confidence is the same thing.
And the more we do something, we become competent, the competence fuels confidence.
The more you know, better you are at something, the more confident you'll become.
You can't get better at dribbling a basketball by sitting on the bench with a basketball.
Looking at the basketball in the corner of your room and saying, I wish I was good at
basketball, right?
We got to take a risk.
Basketball side of our comfort zone, even if it means failing, we're still further
than we were the day before.
If we hadn't tried, if we hadn't picked up the basketball, seek out as many opportunities
as you can to learn and grow, even if they seem daunting.
Have a phone call with me.
I'll tell you how daunting things have felt, right?
Always challenge.
Hey, take on as much as you feel you can at that time.
I feel like I have unlimited amounts of things to learn and wish every day that I were better
at what I was doing, but every day I'm moving forward.
So maybe I'm doing the fake it till you make it.
I do feel confident in the primary things that I'm doing, but it's all the residual
outside things that don't initially feel confident in, but I'm learning more and getting better
each day.
And with that in mind, my marketing maven, build a support network.
Surround yourself with people who believe in you and encourage yourself growth.
I can't say enough how much it keeps me going when someone sends me a text and says, I've
been listening to your podcast each week and I really enjoy it.
One sentence, huge, because as you know, when you're doing something new and the paybacks
aren't immediate, you are like, why am I doing this?
This is hard.
And if it was easy, everybody would do it.
Right?
We've all heard that.
Find people who are like, I really admire what you're doing.
Hey, it's really cool what you're doing.
I wish we did that more for other people and just really work on the beliefs that are holding
you back.
Okay.
If your failure, visualize success, practice self compassion, build a strong support system.
All right.
Homework, action steps.
Number one, take one small step today.
Choose a tiny achievable goal related to your next step.
Maybe this is just, I'm going to try to get 8,000 steps in a day for walking, which believe
me in the winter in Wisconsin, especially when now we're headed back into negative temperatures.
It's not easy.
This can be applied to anything you're doing.
Write an email, research one company, look up a question you've always had about something
that's held you back.
Just take the step forward and with Mel Robbins help when you're like, yeah, I should really
do that five, four, three, two, one, go.
Do it.
Don't overthink it.
Don't talk yourself out of it.
Okay.
Look at that.
I've done this before list.
Hang it up.
Remind yourself of your past wins.
Keep this list visible as a reminder of your resilience.
Think about how you would speak to a friend if they were saying, well, I'm just not good
at that or I probably won't succeed or not good enough.
What would you say to them?
And then speak to yourself that way.
Practice confidence boosting exercises.
Spend five minutes in the morning, three minutes.
Training success.
Use a power pose.
I need to start playing my pump up song from Anna Straylow.
More often I haven't played it very much recently.
I feel like I need that before a tough day or a big task.
I have made it through a hundred percent of my hard moments.
Okay.
And then lastly, it's tried and true.
Use a New York Times bestseller for a reason, the five second rule.
Try it.
Use it to overcome hesitation.
Use it to overcome fear.
Use it to launch yourself out of the bed in the morning when you have to get up to work
out and it's negative 10th in your state.
That's how I use it.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Best reminders.
Confidence comes from action, not waiting.
Small wins, build momentum.
Visualization, body language, pump up jams are all powerful tools.
Share your small wins.
Reach out to me if you're having self doubt, dig in to those Patreon episodes.
Go back and listen to an inspiring episode.
I've listened to Anna Straylow talk in my ear when I need it.
All right.
We'll be back next week.
And again, join me on YouTube where I'm counting down.
I'm now down to 75 days left in the classroom.
I have a video each day, something related to my classroom or leaving the profession,
what I've got going on next.
So join me on Life's Next Lesson Plan YouTube.
I'd love to have you join our book group this month where we're reading worthy.
That is free.
You can join us on Zoom if you're on my email list.
You've got the Zoom link now.
If you want that Zoom link, you can sign up for emails at life's next lesson plan dot
com.
And don't forget to join us on Facebook, Instagram, get all our behind the scenes, and stay in
touch with what we're doing.
You can do it.
Share this episode with someone you think could also use a confidence boost.