#199 Being strategic vs failing in advance

In this episode, I share what failing in advance looks like, why we do it, and how it quietly sabotages growth. You’ll learn how to spot the pattern, challenge the false certainty that keeps you stuck, and take the next step even when you don’t feel ready.

If you’re tired of overthinking, second-guessing, or waiting for the perfect time, this one’s for you.

Book a consultation here, and let's start designing a business that works FOR YOU.

Link to Music Credits
Track: Positive Motivation
Author: AShamaluevMusic (ASM)
Publisher: CD Baby (IPI 700570289)

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Transcript

Welcome to this week's episode. We are going to be talking about failing in advance. You know that little voice that says, I'm not ready yet. This isn't the right time. This isn't going to work. It's really the same fear, which is the fear of failure, just wearing different outfits. And it is keeping you stuck maybe in undercharging,

feeling exhausted, and it will show up in different ways for all of us. But mostly it feels like you are being strategic, being logical when really you're not. So let's dive into it.

I was coaching a client and she wanted to launch a new service that she felt really excited about, really aligned with where she is in her business and just something that she's been planning on doing for quite some time. And she's ready. She's ready to launch this new service. She's also incredibly qualified. She has lots of experience and her clients really love working with her. In fact, many of her clients stay with her for years at a time. But every time she got close to launching, she would find a new reason to wait. First, she said, I don't know if I have the right experience for this. I don't know if I need more experience for this thing. Then she said,

I think the price might be too high for my specific audience, for the people that I'm currently serving with my business. And then she said, I don't think I actually have the right people in my audience. So really it was different reasons coming up for her, but really in essence, the same pattern, right? And what was happening in her situation was that she was rejecting herself before anyone else could. She was deciding that it wouldn't work.

In an attempt to avoid failure in the future or the risk of failure. By reducing her rates or charging less than this service was actually worth, she was trying to avoid hearing someone say or potentially say in the future, this is too expensive. And so she was also convincing herself that her audience maybe wasn't the right people. She had...

the wrong people in her audience, these people weren't going to take up this offer. And so she delayed taking action because now there was actually another problem to solve first, right? She had to go and figure out how to get the right people in her audience first so that she could actually sell to the right people. This is failing in advance. This is when we protect ourselves and disguise that protection as logic. You decide ahead of time that you're going to fail, and then you try and control how that failure happens by creating obstacles before you even get started. And so in essence, you're failing on purpose in advance on your own terms. 

And the thing is this feels safer than the real rejection, right? Than putting yourself out there and failing, really failing in reality. So if you decide you're not ready yet, then that is in essence a form of control. Controlling when you fail, how hard you fail. And so you don't have to hear it's too expensive. You don't have to hear or deal with I'm not interested or I don't think you're qualified. But the thing is, everything that she was imagining, all of these fears, the things that she was trying to protect herself from were imagined scenarios. So she was in essence protecting herself from something that she made up, discomfort that really actually only existed in her mind, because it hadn't happened yet. So failure in advance says, I already know how this ends.

It's basically your brain trying to protect you from potential failure or potential pain in the future. But it's trying to protect you from that future potential pain right now in this moment. So when my client and I looked at these obstacles that she was in essence creating for herself, it became clear that the majority of them weren't real obstacles, right? It was her imagination. It was her making up stories.

in an attempt to protect herself. And many of these scenarios would probably never actually happen, right? Now, if you catch yourself doing this, your work is to really challenge your certainty around the things that you think is going to happen in the future. So a question that I asked my client was, do you really know that this is how it's going to go? Can you be absolutely certain? that this is how it's going to go for you. And her answer was, no, I can't be certain. And if you're answering anything else other than, no, I don't, then I want you to really get honest with yourself and revisit that question for yourself. So the bottom line here is that you don't know how it's going to go. You are guessing. And the fact that you are guessing is really hurting you more now than the potential failure in the future would ever hurt you. Most of the obstacles that you are creating for yourself that you're focusing on actually don't exist. I'm not good enough. They think it'll be too expensive. I don't have the right audience. These are all things that you have to question for yourself. You have to question your certainty around that. Because as long as you stay focused on these obstacles, you don't have to act and you're not going to act. So in a sense, it's keeping you comfortable. And at the same time, it's keeping you stuck. It's making you stay small. So I want you to stop and ask yourself whenever you catch yourself saying things like, I'm not ready because it won't work because I need to wait until fill in the blank. I want you to stop and ask.

Is this really an obstacle or am I trying to protect myself from potential failure in the future? Am I failing in advance? And what would I do right now if I didn't believe that this obstacle existed? Right. And then the next step is really just to go and do that thing because confidence in the thing, feeling experienced, feeling like this is the right price or knowing that it's the right price or, you know, feeling like you are capable of doing this thing, you're enough to do this thing, to go after it. The confidence is only going to come after you've done the thing. The confidence is going to come from the action. It comes from doing the thing and then seeing that you can actually handle those objections. If someone says it's too expensive or you're not qualified enough, right?

But if you keep rejecting yourself, if you keep failing in advance, you're not ever going to give yourself the chance to experience what could happen, right? The opposite of what you think is going to happen because that's only actually half of the, of like, it's a half truth, right? It could happen. It could happen that this offer doesn't work or people don't take her up on it or people think it's too expensive. That can absolutely happen.

But there's also, that's only half of what could happen. There is also, it could be a massive success. People can think this is a no-brainer to pay this price, right? People can think you're the best person to help them solve this problem or to be the person that they work with. Go and do the thing. Get real world feedback, right? And trust that you will be able to deal with whatever comes your way because you've gotten to where you are right now. You've done things in the past that may have felt scary and uncertain and you did it anyway. And so I want to invite you to tap back into the places and the things that you've done that you maybe also felt scared to do. And you did it anyway, right? And if you can see yourself in this pattern, if you can see how you're finding new reasons to wait, if you are second guessing what you already know or holding yourself back on something that is actually ready, this is the work that we do in coaching. 

We are looking at where you are failing in advance, where you are creating obstacles that don't really exist, and what is happening underneath that? What is creating this resistance for you? And then we clear those obstacles, we clear those blocks, and we build a plan that moves you and your business forward with less overthinking, more clarity, more confidence. So if you're ready to stop hesitating and to start making real progress inside of your business without stopping yourself every time you have a good idea. I want to invite you to book a consultation. We're going to spend some time together to talk about where you are, what's keeping you stuck, what needs to shift inside of yourself and your business so that your next step feels really clear and very doable. You can find the link in the show notes. underneath this episode or wherever you're tuning in from, or you can visit ILONKARAS. COM / CONSULTATION I'd love to help you stop failing in advance and start building that business and life that you want and that you know is available to you. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. I will chat to you again on the next one.