The Causey Consulting Podcast

Too Much of a Good Thing

September 21, 2020 Sara Causey Episode 45
The Causey Consulting Podcast
Too Much of a Good Thing
Show Notes Transcript

Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. We can take generally good advice or a generally good principle to an extreme. Let's face it: 2020 has been an odd and often insane year. Be gentle with yourself. This may not be the most fun and amazing time in your life and that's OK.

Key topics:

✔️ If you are listening to "gurus" on YouTube screaming that you are a loser, turn that mess off. Offffffffffffffffffff.
✔️ "Living your best life" can turn into a cult if you're not careful. Sometimes we have to do what the crisis demands, which may not be the most glamorous solution. 
✔️ There is a season. Some seasons may require you to be conservative and cautious and others require risks and leaps. 
✔️ Let common sense prevail. 

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Unknown Speaker :

Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting Podcast. I'm your host, Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at Causey ConsultingLLC.com. Today, I want to talk about too much of a good thing. Let's face it, there's times in life when we can take a generally good idea, or generally good advice to an extreme. At that point, it no longer becomes good. In fact, it at times it can become downright dangerous. The other day, I was talking to a friend, and he confessed to me that he had gone off the rails a little bit, he was surfing around on YouTube and found some recordings of like some gurus that were like screaming at people, if your business is in trouble, or you're not making as much money you want during the pandemic, then you're a loser, you're weak, there's something wrong with you. And I was sitting here like, oh, pal, listen, you ort notta done that, the minute that they started saying stuff like that, instead of continuing to listen to the recording, you should have just immediately turned it off and moved on to something else. Like in my mind, that's not, that's not the kind of poison that that you want to interact with. Because to me, that's exactly what it is wasting your valuable time while somebody screams at you that you're a loser or you're weak or that there's something wrong with you, especially during a pandemic, like, Thanks, but no thanks. So we had listened to these recordings and gotten himself into a negative headspace. And he said, You know, I just, I feel like there's so many people right now that aren't living their best life, they aren't doing exactly what they thought they'd be doing when they grew up. Or maybe they were in a job they really liked and they got let go because of Covid. And I just feel like collectively, we're all in this super weird space. In a way it reminded me of an Oscar Wilde quote that I've mentioned before, there are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, and the other is getting it. We may have a dream of going someplace or trying a new career. And then the opportunity presents itself for us to do so. And we're left a bit wanting, it reminds me of a vacation I took and we went out to a friend of mine and I went out to Universal Studios, and we did the studio tour. And I didn't necessarily know what to expect, I went into it with an open mind, and I really enjoyed it. But for whatever reason, she had hyped it up in her mind, I do not know exactly what she thought was going to happen. I suspicion that it may have been like a Bruce Springsteen / Courtney Cox kind of thing, you know, like in the dancing in the dark video where he pulls her up on stage. And it's like this aaaahhhhh moment. I wonder if she thought that like she was going to get to see some famous Hollywood actor that was going to like pick her out of the tour group and be like, Oh, yes, you are my Helen of Troy. And then when that didn't happen, she was woefully disappointed. Like, I don't know exactly what it was that she thought. But when it didn't go according to her plan, it didn't live up to this grandiose expectation that she had, in her mind, she was really disappointed was like, Well, that was a bust. I'm almost sad that we did this. I was standing there like, Well, I'm not I thought it was perfectly fine. I've known people that made career changes, and everything was successful. And it was everything that they dreamed it was going to be they were totally in love with their new job or with their new career path. And it was great sunshine and roses. And then I've known people who made a career change and realize that it was not what they thought maybe there were some consequences or some duties to the job that they didn't anticipate, and no one told them up front. And they realized after they made the leap, that it just wasn't what they thought. One of the things that I mentioned to my friend in this conversation is the path of least resistance. Even though I'm about to use corporate jargon, and I hate it it is useful here so bear with me. I myself have learned to just lean in. Look for the path of least resistance look at where the money is flowing quickly and easily. Where do I feel the most happy and the most productive and just lean into that? Instead of trying to chase after something that's new and shiny or trying to make lightning strike in a bottle. Look at where things are flowing of their own accord. I think you know, I'm always willing to tattle on myself. And earlier this year, I was at a place where I thought, okay, in order to really grow the coaching side of my business, I need to get more serious about advertising, I need to determine where to advertise what kind of a budget makes sense. And as I was getting estimates, and doing some fact-finding, trying to determine where it made the most sense, and how much it was going to cost, there was just always something holding me back, like I did some advertising, but I never really just went whole hog, like I never did the belly flop into the pool and said, Alright, I'm going to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars. Now for one thing, I learned a valuable lesson in my first iteration of self employment that you don't want to spend some insane amount of money that you're not willing to gamble with. Because in so many ways, advertising is a gamble. If you're going to spend $10,000 on Facebook ads, and you really don't know if you're going to get a return on your investment, and you cannot afford to lose that amount of money. Or you cannot afford to just have it as a tax write off, but not as liquid cash that you can really do something with, you need to be really freaking careful. Like, I as I've said to people before, there's probably not a business mistake you've made that I haven't. And I speak sincerely from experience. In my first iteration, I spent money on so called experts and gurus that did nothing for me. I got into programs that yielded no sales. I spent money on running ads that went nowhere. So it's like I know of what I speak from firsthand experience. So it was I was weighing all of these things out. Like there was just always that something keeping me from doing the belly flop into the pool and spending massive amounts of money. And now here we are, you know, the autumn season is almost upon us. 2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year. You know, we've had all kinds of turmoil, political unrest, people fighting with each other, the pandemic, people losing their jobs, people being scared. It's just been and then there's all these natural disasters, too, you know, there's wildfires. And I think they've gone through so many like hurricanes and tropical storms that they're now on to the Greek alphabet, because they've run out of Latin alphabet names. I mean, I'm not gonna say Can it get any worse, because it always can. But my God, like, I would really love to have a calm and peaceful year after all of this, like, I think we're all due for a Pax Romana. So I have to say, in hindsight, I really feel that my better angels were keeping me from doing that belly flop into the pool and spending massive amounts of money that in all likelihood, wouldn't have yielded a dramatic result, I decided to lean in to the places where business was flowing, the easiest and working with clients where it made the most sense, taking on consulting projects and project management work where I knew for sure that I could handle the work. It's not to say that I advocate for staying in your comfort zone. There's a time and a place to push your boundaries to try something new, to learn a new skill and to challenge yourself to really prove to yourself that you have the chops to do something new. And then there's also a time to play it safe. And to say you know what, I'm getting a little cash poor right now I need to take on a gig that I know I can successfully complete, and I'm not going to underbid or overbid myself, I'm going to get right in the sweet spot and get the necessary amount of money that I need to make ends meet. You know, there's a time to be conservative in the way that you play things. And sort of like your investment portfolio, you know, and there's times when you can be very risk tolerant, you can say I want a, you know, high risk situation that might give me a very high reward. And then there's a time later in your life where you want to back off the gas pedal and say, I'll be more conservative. Maybe I won't get as high a return on my investment. But I know that my investments will be stable, my entire 401k is not going to get knocked out over the course of a month if the market takes a nosedive. I feel like this is where the Buddhist teaching about the middle path is so helpful. You we don't want to stay trapped in our comfort zone forever. And we don't want to sit and just listen to bad news. We don't want to dwell on the pandemic. We don't want to just sit around and cry in our coffee and say, well, nobody's buying anything. Nobody's spending any money. Nobody's hiring. Nobody. Nobody's gonna do anything because of Covid. Yeah. Wow. If you're sitting around, telling yourself That nothing good is going to happen for you because of Covid. Or because it's an election year or because 2020 seems to be a cursed by all the gods on Mount Olympus, then that's exactly what's gonna bear out in your life. Now, with that being said, we can go over to the other side of the pathway, where there's gurus screaming at you on YouTube, that if you're not taking crazy risks, and if you have any amount of worry or concern whatsoever, then you're just some kind of loser or weakling. You should just be spending money left and right, you should, you should just pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary in 2020. And it's like, that doesn't sound like very sage advice, either. Can you still grow your business? In a pandemic? Yes. Will you be able to do it the same way that you've always done it? Probably not. You may have to move in a different direction, you may have to learn some new skills, or you may have to fall back on some old skills that you'd rather not be using. Maybe you would rather be doing something artistic, but you need to do something in it to pay the bills. Or maybe you would rather be doing something in it. But all of your expertise and current experiences in healthcare, and so you need to stay in healthcare until you can afford to make the transition out. I go back to what Joyce Meyer says about doing what the crisis demands. We're all going to have times in life when we're in a less than ideal situation, and we just have to pull up our britches, or put on our big girl pants or our big boy pants and just say, all right, this is not ideal. This is not the place that I want to be for the rest of my life. But until such time as I can make the change or make a leap into something different. I want to be sensible and how I'm approaching my life. As I said in the opener, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. There are times when we need a little kick in the pants, we need that person who can be either an accountability partner, or someone who's like a trainer that can say no, I know you've got one more rep in you or no, I'm not going to allow you to skip your workout today because it's raining outside. Like there are times when we need that drill sergeant type of person that's going to give us a kick in the pants and tell us not to whine and mullygrub and they won't accept our excuses. There are times in life when we need to be gentle with ourselves. There's times when we need to be pushed out of our comfort zone. And then there's times when we may need to stay in it for a little while longer than we'd like to in order to make ends meet. It doesn't mean that you're weak, it doesn't mean that you're wrong or that you're a bad person. In all things allow common sense to prevail. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it. If you haven't already, take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review for us on iTunes. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai