62: Breaking Free: 4 Factors Keeping You Stuck in the Learning Loop
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Welcome to episode 62 of Permission to be Messy. I'm your host, JoAnn Krall and today I'm talking about being stuck in that learning loop. I'm going to be the first person to raise my hand. This has always been a struggle for me. I am a constant lifelong learner, and I had to learn how to know when to stop doing the learning and when to take action.
So I'm going to talk about four factors that keep us in this loop and hopefully give you some insight as to how you may be able to overcome it. But as always. my contact information is in the show notes. So if you have any insights or tips or tricks, please share them with me. I would love to share them with my community and, you may even help me.
Okay, so let's get into the four factors. The first one is fear of failure. We fear making mistakes. that's a human thing. We don't want to make mistakes, especially if we are publicly sharing things, if we're getting our house organized and we're doing it by ourselves, of course we want things to be good, but if we're sharing it publicly, we don't want people to see us failing. Or if we're in a business and we are putting ourselves out there, we don't want people to see, you know, we put, we put an idea out there and it fails. We're always searching for that perfect solution.
So one way. that helped me. And I know I've helped others with this is to remind you that. sometimes we have to fail in order to find the correct answers. It's that trial and error.
Taking action and doing something and finding out it doesn't work. That is information, which is actually learning, but you're doing it through action instead of trying to find that perfect solution and never taking action. You're taking the action. You're saying that didn't work. Move on. This was really hard for me in the beginning of my business. More so when I took it all online, because it was very public. I have put a lot of information out there, a lot of courses, a lot of things. and if you're somebody that has followed every single step, which I doubt. I had to remind myself that people aren't watching every single step you take. But if you did, you would see that over the past, say 10 years of my business being online, I've had a lot of failure. But each one of those failures has led me to success.
So, it's important to know that remind yourself that, take action. It's okay if it doesn't work. of course you don't want to take action on something that might be risky. But if it's something where there's no huge risk, other than that, Ooh, people are going to see me fail. Then try to give yourself that grace and just go for it.
I, equate this to, the first time I ever went live On online. creating a video for my business page and it was really uncomfortable.
And I failed. I actually share a picture of this when it pops up in my memories. But the first time I ever hit that go live button, I just looked terrified. I probably sounded, all jumbled. And I did that every day for, about five or six months. Before I started to feel comfortable and I, and I also felt you know what, it's okay to make mistakes.
And I still make mistakes when I go live. But it's okay. People love to see your imperfections. and I think that when we show people that it's okay to fail and that it will lead to success. That's really important. Now, I don't have any examples to give you right off the top of my head of famous people who have failed over and over. probably Oprah was one of them. But if you Google people's journeys, you can see that. they had a lot of failures before they became successful.
Okay. Number two. There is comfort in learning. Learning, makes us feel productive and safe. Because we're not taking any action and having that risk and uncertainty. When we are in that learning loop and for me, I see this pattern happen for me.
I don't know if this happens to you. But when I'm getting ready to launch something big in my business, I will see those ads in my Facebook feed. If somebody's teaching a free webinar or here's this class on this, I catch myself. But I will find myself, clicking on those ads and going, yeah. I want to learn about that. It's because it's comfortable and I am not wasting time just scrolling through social media. I'm learning, I'm filling my brain. But that is a pattern for me and I stop myself now. I'll go. Nope. You're not going to grab that free webinar, that free PDF download or, take this course or, follow this person. You're going to stay in your lane. and really the only tip I have for that is just to.
be um really strict with yourself and it's not always easy. like I said, I catch myself doing it. And then I stop myself. I guess it's just awareness, just knowing that when you're learning over and over and there's nothing wrong with learning, I still love to learn.
I just give myself those times and I also tell myself, okay, you're going to go learn about this new thing. It's going to help what you're doing now, but you're going to implement right away. And you're not going to worry about that fear of failure. Okay. Number three. Analysis paralysis. I think I talked about this in last episode, about information overload. When we have so much information available to us. we can become really overwhelmed and we just don't know where to do. Start for that next step.
I just created an ad for my action plan program. And I was talking about this very thing. Because my feed. is currently filled with the organizing ads. And right now there is an ad by, I think it's a company. I'm not exactly sure if it's an individual or a company. But they're doing this, summit or, I don't know how many days it is or, you know what's involved. But there's a hundred plus professional organizers. Giving you information for free. It's wonderful.
Right? It thinks wonderful. You're going to learn something. You're gonna get something out of it, but sometimes having too much information and not knowing where to go. Can be a problem.
So I encourage you. If you, you know, maybe you've seen the same ad. I don't remember the name of the company, but if you've seen the same ad and you've signed up for it. Just know that when you're going through it, try to focus and really think, have I tried that before? Did it work for me? Okay. No, I'm just going to let that information go.
If you hear a new idea and you're like, wow, I think that might work for me. Try it right away. Put it into practice and see if it works. Use your intuition. Look at what's being presented. And remember what has happened with you in the past?
And I'll give you an example. maybe the person is talking about. digital information filing, and they've got this amazing process that they're like, you're going to create these folders and these sub folders, and you're going to do it this way and it's going to work. Think to yourself. Have I tried something like this before didn't work? No. Just move on. Maybe you haven't tried it before because you know, it won't work for you but they're convincing you that it will.
And you're thinking, okay. Maybe there was just something wrong with me. this works for everybody else. It's going to work for me. I say, run from that right away.
Okay. Number four. Perfectionism, this kind of goes into the perfect solution of fear of failure. But, many of us has that had that desire to be perfect. without implementing, I'm going to use my podcast as an example, I did not start this podcast until 20 20, 23. And, I've been talking about it for 10 years that I was going to do a podcast.
Can you imagine if I started this podcast 10 years ago? How well it would be doing. I'm not really in it now for the, the fame and how well it will do I'm in it for, that person that needs to hear what I'm saying that day. But it was perfectionism. That got in my way.
I was learning all about podcasting. What's the best mic, what's the best platform. how should it be structured?What kind of music should I have in the beginning? What kind of outro should I have? Should I be advertising? Should I have guests? And that held me back. So one day I said, you know what, I'm just going to start talking.
I'm not going to worry about intro music. I'm not going to worry about an outro, I'm not going to worry about any of that. I'm simply going to present. And, that's worked really well for me. It was also a matter of how long it should be. Yeah, I kept hearing.
You want to make sure your episodes are long enough to keep people engaged. But, you know what I felt like I was just filling it with. filler stuff and I like to be concise. So I went for the shorter podcast and that's been working really well. and I could go on and on about perfectionism that held me back in the beginning with organization.
Obviously this entire podcast is about permission to be messy. Letting go of that perfectionism. But, this one is not easy. I can just say to you just like over your perfectionism. If it was that easy, we would all be that way. And that's really a journey that you need to go on.
I'm not sure that people with perfectionism ever really let it go. but if you're allowing yourself to fail. You are, putting plans into action or just doing a little bit each day. it goes a long way. I've come a long way.
Actually I'm laughing because if my daughter's listening to me right now, I'll record, she's probably yeah, you're not a perfectionist anymore. My house used to be so clean and showroom perfect. And then I had kids. And it was a real struggle for me. to let go of that perfection. I was forced into letting go of it. It's not that it was out of my mind, but I couldn't keep up. And, over time I just realized, it's all good. We're happy and good. But now my daughters are the perfectionists. So my house is once again, clean and wonderful. but it's not perfect. We have a lot of stuff that we can improve in our house.
So when you can recognize whether you have all four of these, you have maybe one or two or just one, or if something else is keeping you stuck in that learning loop. just recognizing it can help you.
The best advice I can give is make sure you're taking some sort of action every day. And the action is not the learning. Because that learning is an action, but taking some sort of action beyond learning. And so since this is a podcast about organizing letting go of something every day goes. So far. In helping you get to your organized space because the less you have, the easier it is to maintain.
So I want to stress again, if you have any tips or you see any patterns in your life that keep you stuck in the learning process, I would love for you to share them with me. also in the show notes, I'm going to be putting my action plan program. The link to that.
In that program, I help you identify the areas that you want to get organized. The obstacles that you're facing. And one of these one or more of these four could be in that list. the resources that you need. Maybe the feelings or emotions that are holding you back. Then I help you decide, what's your priority. And then once you have your priority, you go into action planning mode. That program is, on demand, you can do it at your own pace.
You are not left alone because you can always ask me questions in that program. And as of this recording, you also can come to as many live workshops on this topic. That I hold. I've been currently holding about two a week. and so you can join me live and work through this process with me and ask your questions. That program is only $47 at the time of this recording.
So I encourage you to get in. as I always tell people, when you join me, when I'm in my letting go of perfection mode, because you'll see it. When you go into the program, I let go of my perfectionism in that program. and you can watch over time how I improve things. maybe that'll help you.
So if you have any questions about that program or you have any questions about. Anything regarding organizing. Pop into the show notes. My contact information is there and I would love to hear from you. As always I'm wishing you much progress, peace, purpose, and the permission to be messy.
Thanks for listening.
