Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you, episode 191 today. And we're talking about a topic today which is actually something very relevant to well. I mean, it's very relevant to the podcast regardless, but it's been very relevant to me because it was kind of like a. It was a motto or a question or a statement that I used to challenge myself with or others with, going back way before I even started this podcast. I had a brand before this and it went about again having this ideology of, you know, helping you further your lifestyle, and the big question was why not? And further to that, the question that actually has come up today, which is further to the point around why not, is if you could give one piece of advice to someone hesitant to take the first step toward their goal, what would it be? And I think, in short, the answer is why not? But we're going to dabble into this conversation today, we're going to dive into it, we're going to break it down and I'm going to give you my perspective on giving that perspective of what I think people should be taking into account when they are hesitant in making that first step and rather than just saying why not, even though that is a very valid case to make when people are being too scared to make the leap or to start working towards their dreams and goals, I think there's a lot more that we can chat about. So that's what we're getting into today. Get cozy, get comfortable.

And before we even roll the intro, I do want to say one thing. One, thank you so much for being part of this podcast. And number two is this If you resonate with this episode, if you enjoy this episode, please go ahead, leave a comment, subscribe, but most of all, please share it with someone else. It really does help grow the podcast. Appreciate you being here. Let's dive in.

Okay, so I'll. I'll say the question again. If I, or if you, could give one piece of advice to someone hesitant to take the first step toward their goal, what would it be? Now, let's just humor my conversation from before and say well, I think the first question is we need to ask why not? Right, why are we not taking the steps towards the goal? If we're feeling hesitant?

What is it that's causing that and a lot of the time I think people get confused between fears and excuses. I think people get confused between fears and excuses, and what I mean by this is we have all these, I guess, barriers or mental things that hold us back in our minds. That's from the way we've been brought up, what we've experienced in the past, from situations, but it's also psychological in the sense of we might just be scared that it's not going to work out or we're going to fail, and that's probably the main reason why we are hesitant. But then there's excuses that we then make up that are actually more reasons that come to again down to fear, and a lot of the time it's because, oh, I'm not ready to do it, or I need a space to be able to do it, or when this happens, I'll do it. And we tend to find justifiable reasons to be able to delay actually making action. And I've spoken about this before. It's more relevant to marketing.

But Simon Beard, the co-owner or owner founder of Culture Kings, he says people buy with emotions and then we justify with logic. And it's no different when it comes to not doing something. We do it with emotion, the reasoning of why we're not doing it and then we justify it with logic of oh, because this makes more sense that we do it here and then, and what I call BS on that, because and I called my friend out on this one the other week and I think I mentioned it already in one of the other episodes but the reality is, if you're going to just keep kicking the can down the road, hoping for the perfect time for things to be ready to rumble, it's just BS, because if it takes six months for that perfect time to be, you've wasted six months. You've missed out on six months of opportunity. You've missed out on six months of progression, six months of movement, six months of actually making progress or just, you know, figuring out how you're going to get things moving and grooving even better.

So I think the first thing we need to really take into account is number one being action over perfection. You know there's I'm reading a book called, you know, buy Back your Time and he talks about you know, 80% done is good enough, right, Like? It's not about finding perfection, it's about getting the 80% done, that's, ensuring that that's good enough, right? We can never expect things to be perfect and unfortunately, you know when you start, things are going to suck, you're not going to be good at it, you're not going to see the results you want, you're not going to get the expectations you have right, and that's because you're learning. You're not an individual that has the experience of what you're about to embark on.

However I think when you start to make progress over perfection we can start to build that compounding effect that enables small steps to have increasingly momentum over a short period of time. Then you can actually become not addicted to it, but you start to really enjoy the process. It gives you endorphins and you get excited because you're making progress. It's not even perfect and it gives you endorphins and you get excited because you're making progress, and it's not even perfect and you realize that perfect does not need to be the case when you're trying to make progress. So that's the first thing right, and I think the other reason is coming back to that main question of why not is, if there are things that are holding you back, if it's because of fear of other people, all those things, we probably do need to deal with those, or I think the quickest way to you know, deal with them without facing them head on, which is not. What I advise, excuse me, is you know, you want to find the quickest way for you to build confidence, to prove those things wrong, and sometimes, again, it's going to require you to take a little bit of action and do some work and breaking free from that fear. It's about taking a shift in mentality and it's a shift towards embracing what that failure can mean and turning the negativity of it into a positive outcome.

And during my journey of building my business now, at the time of me filming this, this is back in the 13th of October, so we're way ahead now but you know, I recently, a couple of days ago, I hit my milestone of $500,000 in revenue since starting the business. Now, I mean one, of course, I wanted to achieve this number. Two, I never really thought about when that would happen. And three, it just I never really expected it when I started that that's the reality that was going to be coming and that's the thing. If I started out expecting to make $500,000 from day one, I think I would have been putting some pretty tough barriers for me to be able to thrive, because I wouldn't be seeing the progress that hits that number, to hit $500,000 over a long period of time, I think it works out to be like $360 a day or something. I've been doing this for less than four years, so that's a lot to start with, from day zero, whereas if you move away those numbers and you start thinking about okay, well, for the next two weeks, I need to make progress, what can I do today? That's going to get me one step further.

We spoke about this over the last couple of episodes and that progress is then going to enable you to break free of that fear, because you're going to start to see that things are working, that there is progress. Now, unfortunately I was going to say this before it does not get easier as you grow. The problems, the challenges, the things that come your way there's more of them. Problems, the challenges, the things that come your way there's more of them, unfortunately, however, which doesn't make it easy, right. But what we do get is we become better at being a better version of ourselves and becoming or having the ability to overcome these situations with a bit more ease. So I'm not saying it gets easier, but we know how to handle them with a more easier approach, or we get more comfortable with being uncomfortable or having to deal with these things, therefore making it easier to embrace, easier to manage.

I digress so you know we've spoken about, like, the fear of failure. We've spoken about the comfort zone. You know we get stuck in our boxes, right, and I think I can't force you to go make these decisions, right. But I think when you can link the connection between the excuse that you're making and using something else to kind of like hide that or blaming it on something else or vice versa, that's where the money's at, and what I mean by that is that's what you've got to deal with. That's what you've got to deal with. And when you understand the reason why you're delaying in doing it whether it's due to fear, whether it's due to you don't think you're confident enough, you don't think you're good enough, and you deal with those issues or you start to break down what those issues are, you can actually start to realize maybe this is the reason why you're not doing it.

And sometimes people put it off because they're not willing to deal with it, they're not willing to commit to it, they don't want to have to do the hard work they're, they're scared it's going to be worse than they expect. There's a whole range of different issues. You're going to be told something you don't want to hear. It's not going to be what you expected. It's going to be harder. Now, these are all the negative things. Where's all the positive things? Where's all the reasons to do it right? You know.

So if you're feeling hesitant in making progress, in starting jeepers, you know, like now that I've started and I took the leap from working the nine to five, I'm not saying to leave your job. What I'm saying is I did finally make that decision to step away and build my business, create this podcast. Now, if I had never done that, I would never know where I landed. It took me multiple years to really get into a groove of understanding how I'm going to make this business work, and only in the last year I've been able to really see the huge growth because we're starting to, things are starting to come into play, and that's because I've had to do progress over perfection. I've had to take action over perfection, and I've had to keep doing that over a long period of time. Now, a long period of time could be three months, or it could be three years, or it could be longer than that. So that's the reality of it. But imagine if I hadn't started. Imagine if I waited. I'll wait, I'll wait another four years and see where we're at. I would not be here and then I'd have to do another four years to be able to build that business, if not more.

So I cannot emphasize enough Key things. Here is starting small and just building that confidence, building that progression and starting to build that momentum. I mean, at the end of the day, yes, you do want confidence, but if you can build some courage to just execute, then that courage will then start to bring the confidence with it and the next thing that you go to take action on becomes a little bit easier. That's all it is right. And I think the other thing is we need to remember to do is give ourselves the permission. Give ourselves the permission to begin. You're going to stuff up, You're going to make mistakes, things aren't going to be the way you expect them, and that's okay. Give yourself your permission to go. Do that, see what happens. You might surprise yourself and it might actually be better than you expect. But I know it sounds scary, but at the same time it to me it sounds so simple. It's the why.

Why are we not doing this? And it could be also because you haven't had a click moment. There is a difference kind of motivation. Maybe there's some other issues that you've got to deal with, maybe you've got some bigger concerns, maybe there's some other things keeping you up at night and that's distracting you or compounding the effect of you being able to make a decision on moving forward with these steps. But I guarantee you, if you can figure out what the fluff is that's slowing you down, that's stopping you, that's hesitating you by asking yourself why not? Or, you know, why shouldn't I do it Versus you know, also, in the perspective of you know what's the worst thing that's going to happen. But also start to change the narrative of the positive outcomes that this could bring. Then you will, you will, you will thrive.

The other thing you can do if you're lacking oh what if this doesn't work out time. Box it, say I'm going to do this for 90 days and I'm going to see the results. But work out time. Box it Say I'm going to do this for 90 days and I'm going to see the results, but you need to commit to the 90 days. You can't just do one day here, a couple of days there, take a week off, do a few more days here, because there's no consistency, there's no progression, there's no momentum. You need the momentum, you need the progression and then you can start to see over time is there a trend? Are you making greater action over perfection? Are you actually seeing the progress that you want to see? And all these other things will start to fall off.

The problems that I had at the start of me building my business or even starting this podcast. I was so scared to start because I said I'm just scared. And they said, well, how dare I not start earlier to give the value that I have to give to others? How dare I hold that back? That's what someone challenged me on. And when I realized that it's like, I mean you know, yeah, we might get 15, 20 people listening to this audio. We probably get a hundred people of you, a hundred of you listening to it on a weekly basis. And you know we're almost about to hit 10,000 downloads from just audio only. I mean that's 10,000 people that have listened to my content or listened to this podcast. And imagine if I didn't start, I mean I don't know all the impacts that I'm making on you. I hear some really great messages, some comments that come through.

Thank you for this Really inspiring and that means the world to me, because it helps me understand that I am helping you further your lifestyle. But, to be honest, I can't help you further your lifestyle. You need to help yourself. I can give you some tools, some ideas, some understanding, some perspective and share what I'm doing to grow and to level up. But you've got to go do the work. You've got to go take the step and when you can change the narrative, when you take control of the narrative, you can really take control of making that progress and no longer be hesitant in making the first steps towards your goal. That's all I've got for you today.

We're keeping it short and sweet, but the reality is that's all it comes down to is why not? And what are the reasons that you're BSing yourself? Is it an excuse or fear? Are you saying you need the right circumstances or the environment? Forget it, just get started. What can you do today that's going to get you one step further ahead in making that goal a reality? Appreciate you being here. If you've got any questions, thoughts, comments, chuck them down below. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it, of course, subscribe and all those great things. It would mean the absolute world to me. Appreciate you. You have a wonderful day, cheers.