Before I started this coaching business, I wanted to start a food blog. I was extremely passionate about it, but I wasn’t putting any action towards making it happen. It wasn’t until my ex, my boyfriend at the time, called me out on my inaction. At first, I was offended, but then I realized that he was right. I kept talking about this food blog I was so into, but I was too afraid to start actually posting. 

I was stuck because I felt like I needed clarity before I started anything. I was researching blogging and taking notes on other people’s blogs and just waiting for the moment I felt ready enough to post on my own blog. But that feeling never came. And it never would! Clarity is not what I needed to start my food blog – action was. 

In this week’s episode, we’re talking about clarity and how to stop overthinking and actually start doing. It’s time to take action and start working towards our most courageous lives. In this episode, I’m going to share my secret to manifesting my most amazing life. Here’s a hint – structured, perfectionist action doesn’t work but messy action does.

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Sign up for the “The Purpose Pivot” webinar here.

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Title

Erika: Hello, hello. Welcome back to this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution podcast. This week I want to talk to you about what to do if you feel overwhelmed with a variety of ideas and if you’re not sure what to do in your life professionally or personally and you are waiting for clarity before you take action. Maybe you’re saying to yourself, once I know what my thing is, then I’ll take action on it. Or once I find my purpose, then I can start living my purpose. But first I need the clarity. First, I need to figure out exactly what I want to do. First, I need to figure my stuff out and then I can take action. In other words, you are waiting for.

The path to be perfectly paved and you’re expecting these arrows that are telling you which route to take, take a left, take a right. And y’all let me validate that I have been in this place before too. I am not trying to shame you at all because especially if you went to college, if you were in the educational system, even just high school, there was a blueprint to help you graduate and then you leave and then there’s no blueprint.

To land your first job, and then there’s no information regarding how to negotiate your salary. Well, now there are right? My client Evie is helping a ton of women negotiate their salary, so now there’s a lot more resources, but in general, there is no blueprint the way that there was when we were in school.

And it’s not a surprise that a lot of people feel completely lost after school whenever they get into the work world. And I felt the exact same way. And I had a client who recently joined one of my programs, Courage Driven Latina,

Who kept telling me I’m really looking for clarity so that I can take my next step. And I, I get it. I get that we want to find clarity before we take action because we don’t want to waste our time. We want to be sure all of that. But I have a newsflash for you all. 

Clarity does not come from thinking. Clarity comes from taking action. Okay, you could read all the books in the world on driving a car, but until you finally get in that driver’s seat and start to drive the car, you will not learn. And then once you start driving, you’ll learn if you have a preference for taller cars, or shorter cars, or what kind of seats you want.

That’s a very literal example. But let’s say that you are looking to Start a podcast, start a business, create content, change your self, change your confidence from feeling doubtful at work to feeling confident at work. Whatever kind of personal or professional project you want to work on, it’s going to require you to start taking action and then you are going to gain confidence.

Clarity. And before I get further into the episode, I want to remind you that I’m hosting a webinar all about pivoting to purpose. So if you are looking for your next step, if you’re looking for your next purposeful step, join us. That is a completely free webinar. It’s happening on March. 5th at five o’clock pacific time.

You can register by going to the link down below in the show notes or if you just go to couragedrivenlatina. com it will link you to the webinar. All right, so let me just share a quick story about myself. I spent A lot of time while I was in the tech industry, knowing that I didn’t want to retire from the tech industry, I knew I wanted to do something different, but just like you may be at this moment, I was waiting for clarity before I could take my next step.

step. I was like, I need to figure out what my purpose is. I need to figure out what my next step is because I can’t take the next step until I know which direction I’m going. Right? Makes logical sense. So what did I do? I read a bunch of books on purpose. I took a bunch of courses. I, and then that, you know, was, was the beginning of taking steps.

So then what happened was I took so many different courses and there were. a bunch of different directions that I could have gone, but I did know one thing. I knew that I was interested in starting a food blog. So I did a course all about starting a wellness blog. I then took All of these different, I watched all of these different free videos on how to start your own website.

I mean, I went down the rabbit hole and then what happened was that I went so far down the research route that I had this abundance of information that then this goal of mine actually became very overwhelming because I had so much information. So here we are telling ourselves, Oh, I just, I just need to know what to do.

Once I know what to do, then I’m going to do it. But once we start looking at information, we learn that, whoa, we’re living in this era of information when we have too much information. We have conflicting information, right? One person says, do it this way. Another person says, do it that way. And let me just, you know, be honest with you.

It doesn’t matter which way you do it. What matters is that you do it. And everything changed for me when actually I, I’ll never forget this conversation. The person that I was dating at the time, which this was years ago, um, just really like called me out on my bullshit. And he said, cause I was overthinking it so much, right?

And I was like, well, you know, I don’t know what font to use and what color to use. I was overthinking all the little things. And he was like, it’s a dang blog. Who cares? Just make a decision and you can change it later. It’s not that big of a deal. And of course, in that moment I was like, offended. Are you kidding me?

This is like my baby. This is my passion. And I was making it such a big deal. And in that moment, I was offended by that comment, but now that I think back, I’m like, that was the pivotal moment. That was the moment in which I was able to see how in my head I was and how much I was overthinking it and how You know, in the end, people didn’t care about what font I used or what colors I used.

People didn’t even care that I started a blog. And here I am overthinking all of these different things. And you may find yourself in this place when you’re overthinking the small stuff. Maybe if you want to start a podcast, you’re like, What’s the name going to be and you like linger over that for months and for months and you’re allowed to change the name of a podcast.

I’ve considered changing the name of this podcast. I don’t know if I’ll actually get around to doing it, but I have thought about it and I’m like, I can’t, I can’t change it and that would be okay. But the point is that sometimes we overthink little micro decisions and we Get overwhelmed with information, and that then prevents us from taking action. And remember, clarity does not come from thinking, it comes from taking action. So, while I spent two years overthinking this food blog, from the moment it first landed in my heart that this was something I wanted to do, To actually executing it.

I thought about it for about two years and I took micro steps like I had an Instagram page and I would post on that. 

I want you to keep your dream project top of mind as I’m going through this. So, have you thought about it over and over? Probably have. Have you googled how to start this? Have you looked for the steps? Maybe you’ve even taken a course.

And what has stopped you because the information is available and the more that you do take action, messy action, the more clarity you will gain because then maybe you’re even questioning, is this exactly what I want to do? Do I want to start a podcast or do I want to start a YouTube channel instead? Or do I want to go work with, um, children or do I want to go do this other thing?

Maybe you have an abundance. So for me, I had the idea of the food blog, becoming a yoga teacher. Uh, what else? I mean, I wanted to become a public speaker, but I thought that was so far away. And I didn’t think that was even a possibility for me. Um. Um, fast forward now, that’s literally one of my main things in my business, being a public speaker.

 So after two years of overthinking, I finally have this conversation in which I’m pretty much called out, right? I’m called out. My overthinking is being called out. My self doubt is being, there was like somebody flashing a flashlight on all my excuses. I did it. And when I did it, I was like, why didn’t I just do this sooner?

Again, nobody even really cared that I started the blog, and I’m over here overthinking that. But not only that, then, once I started the food blog, I had it for maybe two months, three months. And then, that was me throwing my hair tie for dramatic purposes. And then, after a few months of having the food blog, I was like, oh, I don’t know if this is the thing I want to do anymore.

So after a few months of having this food vlog, I gained a lot of clarity. And that clarity was that I didn’t want to have a food blog.

And I think some of you are like, see, that’s the last thing I want to happen. But let me tell you why this was such a good thing. If I had never started that food blog, I’d still be thinking about it to this day. But you want to know what happened? That food blog allowed me to start creating content consistently.

It taught me how to write blogs. It taught me how to run a website. It connected me with a bunch of amazing people. I learned how to make a bunch of healthy but delicious and flavorful food. I still bake on the weekly at least because it was a baking blog. I still make my grain free, gluten free cookies that don’t taste like they are, and it’s a beautiful skill that I love.

But that project then led me into wellness in general. And then I did go become a yoga instructor. And then from there, I really got into mindfulness. And I mean, you all know the story. The pandemic happened. I couldn’t teach yoga anymore. So then I just turned to social media to talk about mindfulness and yoga ethics and yoga.

Um, I was, I was creating yoga content, but then it kind of transitioned into more self development and motivation. And then people started asking me if I coached. So, all of this to say that I was waiting for 100 percent clarity before starting this food blog. And it took that being called out in that conversation with my, my ex that I finally did it.

And once I did it, I was really proud of myself and it was fun for a while. But then I gained the clarity that it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. But that led me to my other project. So there’s a few things that I would like to debunk in this podcast episode because I just started recording and I did not have a script for this.

So if you are following along and not like this girl’s all over the place, all over the place, then I appreciate you so much. So the first thing is, is that. Clarity does not come from thinking it comes from taking action and it comes from taking messy action Thinking back now. I mean, I’m glad everything happened the way it did with the food blog But I would have allowed myself to start without a website.

I would have allowed myself to just start posting about food. Like, I didn’t need a logo. I, I mean, I did all a bunch of stuff that I didn’t even need. So, inside of Courage Driven Latina, we call this your ghetto first draft. It’s the version of whatever it is that you want to do that requires the least amount of time, the least amount of money.

You’re just testing it to see if it works. So I didn’t follow this. I didn’t know this. So that was the mistake that I made. I literally ended up hiring somebody for my website. I ended up getting a, uh, a logo made all these different things. And then once I had all that, then I was like, Ooh, maybe I don’t want to do this.

And again, I appreciated it for a while, but my advice to you on this podcast episode is start messy. Start with it not being perfect, don’t go build the website yet, don’t go get the LLC yet, don’t trademark anything yet. We just need to test it to see if you even like it. That’s it. That’s all we are doing and there’s so many ways of doing this. 

And then the other thing that I’m, I’m looking to call out here is that No time is ever wasted. Even though this food blog is not what I’m doing anymore, that food blog taught me so much about content creation, so much about networking with other people, so much about putting myself out there, so much about showing up that has allowed me to have the business that I have today.

I think people look at my business and they’re like, damn, like if you followed me in 2020, it looked like I built my business overnight. I didn’t. Behind the scenes, I was learning social media. I was learning all of these different things. I read a ton of books. So I’m not against information, right? I was talking about there’s an abundance of information.

There is an abundance of information out there, but there’s nothing wrong with consuming information. When you only get stuck in learning and then don’t take action, that’s when we’re in trouble. So, my third, I guess, the third point I would like to make is, even as you’re listening to this podcast, right, this podcast is giving you information.

It’s giving you tips. A lot of times we have pretty actionable things. Sometimes I’ll give you journal prompts. Sometimes we’ll go through meditations. There’s a lot of things that can happen. I also host free classes like the webinar that I’m having on March 5th. So I’m even providing you with information, but my invitation to you is when you’ve learned something, implement it.

Don’t keep learning a bunch of other different things. Implement as you go. So inside of my program, Courage Driven Athena, we have a whole courage framework and it’s all about find just a little bit of clarity. And that little bit of clarity could be like, Oh, it would be nice to have a food blog. Oh, it would be nice to start a podcast.

And then the next step is we take brave action. What does brave action mean? Brave action means that you start messy. You start imperfect. You don’t wait until everything outside of you is perfect. And then from there, you reflect and revise. And you’re like, okay. I took action. What did I like? What did I not like?

What do I want to do differently next time? And then you make a new decision just like I did with my food blog. So if you find yourself in the same place as my client, where she felt like she needed to have it all figured out before she can start, this is my invitation to you to start right now. Start messy, start imperfect, 

And when you do begin to take brave action and micro steps, it may not seem like you’re making a lot of progress, but little steps every day actually turn out to be an incredible amount of progress. It’s like one of those things where, you know, it doesn’t feel like much day to day. But a month or two, you look back and you’re like, Oh, wow, I’m way different than how I was just a month ago.

I’m in a way different place. I’m thinking differently about this. I know a lot more about this. And you might be thinking, well, okay, you know, here are some of my common fears. What if I fail? Well, what if you do fail? Let’s just explore that for a second. Let’s say that you You want to start a podcast and that you have this fear that you might fail. So let’s say that you take a few steps. You pick your podcast name, you create the show, and then something happens, and you’re not able to record your first episode, and you’re like, oh my gosh, I failed.

Well, in that circumstance, you actually learned a lot, and you can still record your episode now. There’s really no such thing as, as failing, because the real failure is not even trying. Because in both scenarios, you still don’t have a podcast episode, but you’re technically in the worst possible situation now.

So let’s say that you’re like, Oh, I want to start a coaching business. So what if I post content and make an offer for people to work with me and nobody works with me? I consider that a failure. Well, is anybody working with you now? In other words, sometimes we fear, Oh my gosh, what if I fail? When we fail to recognize that we are already in that state of failure right now, because we haven’t even tried.

So you have nothing. To lose and everything to gain. If you post something on social media, if you start the podcast, or attempt to start the podcast, you’re gonna learn so much more in the process than if you just sit there in your comfort zone. And the truth is, like, some people have this mentality of, oh, if I don’t try, I can’t fail.

But isn’t the failure not trying? Isn’t that the ultimate form of failure?

Or another one like, Oh, what if I do this particular client, I keep going back to podcasts because the client that made me think about this podcast episode wanted to start a podcast and a blog, which is why this is kind of the focus. But again, that project, that’s your dream project, fill it in here.

Don’t just listen to the podcast if that’s not something that you want to do. Fill in your dream project. Anytime I’m talking about. This client’s podcast.so like another concern that this client had is what if nobody listens? What if I have an audience of zero? And we also have to remember every podcast started with zero listeners.

Every Instagram page started with zero followers. Every business started with zero dollars in sales. Everybody started their career without any experience. At some point, you’ll have to just get started, right? So we have to be okay with being beginners. The other thing, um, that really helps as you are navigating doing something that feels really scary, it is to surround yourself with people who are going where you’re going.

I’ve talked about this so many times, I mean, literally, this is why I have group programs because I think community is so important. I have my own support system. I have a bunch of different group chats that I can go to. I have. I have friends that live nearby. I have other friends that aren’t that nearby, but we do our best to meet up every once in a while.

I have my entrepreneur friends. So depending on like what it is that I’m struggling, if I’m having a relationship issue, I’m probably going to call my friend Karina, who’s a relationship coach, or my cousin Brenda, who I know that she won’t judge me and she is literally the most like loving person. If I am going through something business wise, I will go to my friends, Liz and Mariela.

We have a little group chat where we, I can go to them honestly for anything. But my point is, it’s important for you to have a supportive community of people who are going where you’re going. Because if you’re only surrounded by people who don’t get what you’re doing, you are going to completely doubt yourself because they are doubting what it is that you’re doing because to them, it’s not possible.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible for you. Remember other people’s views of what’s possible for you is limited to their own. lived experience. If you’re talking to your mom about launching a podcast and she doesn’t even listen to podcasts, it’s going to be very hard for her to validate you and help, help you troubleshoot if you’re going through something difficult.

She doesn’t understand the why behind it. While another person is also either new to podcasting or wants to start a podcast, they would be a great support system for you. Alright y’all, so the three main things I talked about is Clarity does not come from thinking or overthinking. Clarity comes from taking courageous, brave action.

Even if it feels really small. The other point is, if you do take action on something, and you decide it’s not what you want, like, I decided the food blog wasn’t what I wanted. That’s okay. That is clarity. That’s literally why you tried it, just to see if it worked. So don’t beat yourself up if something didn’t work out.

And then my third point, 

 Surround yourself with people who want to go where you want to go, or who are already where it is that you want to go. Alright y’all, thank you so much for hanging out with me. Um, don’t forget to register for the webinar that’s happening on March 5th. Bring a friend. We’re talking all about finding purpose, how to pivot to purpose, and how to find more meaning in your life right now.

And maybe it is through a dream project like what we just talked about on today’s episode. Maybe, because honestly, having the food blog gave me purpose while I was in tech. I think I said that on the last week’s episode. I don’t remember. All right, y’all. Thanks for hanging out with me during this informal podcast episode.

I will see you all next week.