120. From Chaos To Clarity

Breathe first. Then let’s talk about why control keeps slipping through your fingers even as your calendar gets tighter and your tools get fancier. We’ve been there—up early, last to log off, answering every question because “no one else gets how it works.” The outside looks successful. Inside feels like a slow burn.

We trace the real source of overwhelm to a missing definition, not a missing app. A simple mentor question—what does “in control” mean to you—becomes the unlock that turns scattered effort into intentional progress. From there, we unpack how chasing productivity without a vision makes everything feel urgent, why bigger teams can make you a bigger bottleneck, and how clarity becomes the filter that saves your time, energy, and sanity.

You’ll get a practical framework built around three prompts: how you want to feel while running your business, what a realistic ideal workday looks like in your current reality, and what you’re willing to say no to so your best work has room to breathe. We keep it grounded—no yacht fantasies, no guru speak—just honest trade‑offs, boundaries with a purpose, and tools that finally serve the plan instead of driving it. By the end, you’ll have a 15‑minute exercise to write three feeling words and one vivid paragraph for your ideal Tuesday, then post it where you’ll see it. That small artifact becomes your daily compass for what gets a yes, a no, or a not now.

If you’re ready to stop reacting to whatever is loudest and start leading with intention, this conversation will help you design a business that supports your life instead of consuming it. Subscribe, share this with a founder who’s always “on,” and leave a quick review telling us your three words and one thing you’ll say no to next week.

Thanks for listening!

Connect With Me:

📩 Join my email list: https://www.solutionsforscale.com/subscribe
📱 DM me on Instagram: @solutonsbyjenncody

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who needs to hear this message!

🎧 Subscribe to and Review The Create Your Day Podcast on:
📌 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Buzzsprout

Transcript

A Breath Before The Chaos

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Create Your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody, and I'm really glad that you're here today. But before we even get into what we are talking about today, I want you to do something for me. I want you to take a breath, like a real breath, not a shallow breath that is how you've been breathing all day while you're doing all the things that you need to do. I want you to stop and just take a real deep breath. Like inhale through your nose, hold it at the top, and exhale and just let your body kind of let it go for a minute. Because if you clicked on this episode, I am guessing you needed it. I'm guessing that somewhere between the coffee you had this morning and right this minute, unless you're having your coffee still, you've already handled probably three different things that should not have needed your attention. You're answering questions that other people should know the answers to, and you're making decisions that feel too small for someone that is running things the way that you're trying to run things. Maybe you've checked your phone a dozen times, and maybe you're wondering what the next crisis is that's brewing under the surface, and you just don't know about it yet. What I'm guessing is that underneath all of that doing, there's actually a quiet voice that keeps asking you, is this really what I signed up for? So yes, please take that breath if you have not, because you are in the right place. Here's what I want to talk about today: why your business feels totally out of control and it has absolutely nothing to do with your calendar. And I know that sounds counterintuitive because every productivity expert on the internet will tell you that if you could just manage your time better, if you could batch your tasks more efficiently or protect your calendar more fiercely, then you would feel in control. And I am here to tell you that is not the problem. And I know this because I've tried all of it. I have tried the time blocking. I have tried the Pomodoro technique. I sent you guys in my newsletter a timer to use for the Pomodoro technique. I've tried the apps, the planners, the systems. I have read all of the books. I've taken all of the courses. Right? I wake up at 5 a.m. That's what all the gurus say you're supposed to do. And you know what? I was still overwhelmed. I was still the bottleneck. I was still the one person that everyone came to for every single question, for every single problem, just everything that needed to be done, every decision that needed to be made. My calendar wasn't the problem. And honestly, I'm telling you, it's probably not yours either. So I'm gonna share with you a little bit about my story. And a few years ago, I had a business that looked amazing from the outside. My revenue was just growing like on autopilot. Super happy clients, or at least clients that were not complaining. I was starting to build a team. I had what looked like systems, but by most measures, although I was successful, inside I was an absolute mess. I was the first one working in the morning, the last one working in the evening. My family didn't ever see me. Every single decision was always running through me because I was the only one who understood how things worked. The team I had started collecting was totally capable, but they were constantly asking me questions because where else could they go to get any of the answers? I was in this situation where I the a day off was not possible. Otherwise, I would come back to chaos, right? I couldn't stop and take a lunch break without checking my phone to make sure is there a fire that needs to be put out? And you know what? I was really tired and not just physically tired. I'm talking about, you know, when your soul is tired, the kind of tired that makes you wonder, is what I am doing worth it? Is what I'm doing actually worth it? So I did at that point what a lot of people do when they feel like they're drowning. And what I did was I tried to optimize my way out of it. And what does that mean? Optimize my way out of it? It means better time management, you know, if I can get a handle on my calendar, delegate things more, have clearer boundaries, maybe get up a little bit earlier in the morning or work a little bit later at night, have more discipline, right? But nothing was actually working. Not working in a lasting way. Things work kind of in the moment, but nothing was working in a lasting way. And then one day I had a conversation that changed everything. So I was having a conversation with someone that I see as a mentor to me, someone who had built and sold multiple businesses, someone who really seemed to have figured out the thing that I felt I couldn't crack. I couldn't move forward because there was something, there was a secret missing. And I was going on and on about how I needed better systems, because that was always my thing. I need better systems, better time management. If I could just manage my time better, you know, like that's what I would say. Um, there were better ways to get everything done. And you know what she did? She stopped me right in my tracks and asked me a question that no one had ever asked me before. And she said, Jen, what does the phrase in control actually mean to you? And I opened my mouth to answer her, and I actually had nothing. I couldn't really define what it was that I was working towards. So I had all of these tactics for managing my time, delegating tasks, being more productive, but I had never really stopped to ask myself, what am I actually trying to create here? What does success look like on the other side of all this? Not for like the fake person on Instagram, not for my competitor, but what does success look like for me? I was trying to get somewhere, but I didn't know where I was going. And we've talked about that, right? Like there was nothing in the GPS. And that right there is why all of the productivity hacks in the world were not working. So what I want you to really hear in my words right now is that you cannot create something that you haven't defined. You cannot create something that you haven't defined. And when I say that out loud, it sounds so obvious. But think about it. How many of you are running businesses, making a thousand decisions, working yourself to exhaustion, but you've never really clearly articulated what is it you are building toward? We know we want to be successful, we know we want to feel in control, and we know we want to stop feeling so overwhelmed all the time. But what does that mean to you? What does it look like to you? What does it feel like in your body? If I asked you right now to describe an ideal Monday, an ideal Tuesday, not a vacation day, just a regular plain old Tuesday when your business is running exactly how you want it to run, could you explain to me what that looks like? Could you tell me what time did you start working that day? What were you doing in the morning? When at what point in the day were you at your sharpest? What kind of problems are you solving versus what are the problems that people can handle without you? So when you stop, and I mean really stop, not just migrate from your desk to the couch with your laptop, because we all do that too. Most people that I work with, they can't answer these questions when we first get together. And it's not because they're not capable, not because they're not smart, but it is because they're busy reacting to what's in front of them. They've never paused long enough to design what is it that they actually want. And here's what happens when you don't have a clear picture of where you're headed. Every single thing feels urgent, right? Imagine if you had a book that you were reading and you were trying to maintain, you know, absorb all of the urgent, important information from that book. Can you highlight everything in the book? No. Because when you highlight everything, nothing is important. When everything feels important, there's no filter for you to use to decide what actually matters because you haven't defined what actually matters. And what's the result of this? We say yes to things that we need to say no to, we spend time on tasks that don't move us forward, and we make decisions based on what is loudest, not on what is most important. And then we wind up overwhelmed again, despite the best efforts really being in place. I know that right now you might be thinking this sounds kind of like soft, because we're not here to journal about our feelings. We're looking for actual solutions for the chaos that we're dealing with on a daily basis. And I totally get that because I used to think the same thing that this work can kind of feel like something we do at a retreat with essential oils and meditation, and it almost feels self-indulgent when that happens, right? When you've got real problems to solve and real people depending on you, and I'm leaning you towards this world of feeling. But this is something that I truly have lived and learned. If you skip this step, it is exactly why the tactical stuff, the stuff that you keep trying to do, it's why that is not sticking. So think about it like this. If I asked you to drive somewhere and didn't give you the address, you would just drive around, right? The GPS reference. Maybe you accidentally wind up somewhere else. More likely, besides winding up in the wrong place, you're going to waste so much time, so much gas or energy, going in circles, getting frustrated and wondering why you can't seem to get anywhere. And that's what most of us are doing in our businesses. We are optimizing, we are hustling and we are putting out fires, but we're not really moving toward anything specific. We're just reacting to whatever shows up. So the people who are going to be able to break free from that chaos, they don't need the best time management system. They don't need fancy project management tools. They are actually just going to get crystal clear on what they are building and then use that as the clarity filter for every single thing that's coming after that. So let's start this work right now. I want you to think about three questions, and I don't want the answers to be what you think you're supposed to give. I don't want the um professional sounding version, the like canned version, the thing that you think feels like it's ripe enough for the Instagram caption. I want real answers, the honest answers. So break out your essential oils because we're going into feeling land. Okay, the first question is how do you want to feel in your business? That has nothing to do with what you want to achieve. It's not about the revenue you're chasing, it's not about the milestone you want to hit. How do you want to feel? Maybe you want to feel calm, maybe you want to feel confident, energized, peaceful, creative, free, proud. There's a million different ways that you may want to feel. None of them are wrong. They just have to be honest. A lot of you probably have never asked yourselves this question because you're so focused on the external metrics, and those are things like revenue, growth, number of clients, number of followers, that we forget that the whole point of what we're doing is to create a certain kind of life, a certain kind of experience that we can build for ourselves. So, what is it for you? If you could wave that magic wand and feel however you wanted when you sat down to work each day, what would you choose? Okay, second question. What does your ideal work day actually look like? Actually, again, not the Instagram version, not the someday when I have more money or a bigger team. I'm talking about right now, in your current reality, what does a realistic ideal day look like for you given your current circumstances? Because what happens is people go to this question and they're like, sky's the limit. I want my ideal day to be that, you know, I have a chef in the kitchen cooking me a balanced meal. I'm about to go out on my yacht with my Starbucks and just lounge for the afternoon. Great. I hope that happens for you. But right now, I live in a much more realistic world. So an ideal day for me might be that, oh, do I get time in the morning to have coffee with John Scott? Right? That is my partner, my love, my soulmate. Do I get to spend some time with him today? Do I get to be present for my clients? Do I get to have dinner with my children? You know, whatever your realistic ideal looks like, ideal day looks like, given your actual current reality. So think about it. What time do you start working now versus what time would you want to start working? What are you doing in the morning? What are you doing in the afternoon? Who are you meeting with? Not meeting with, spending time with, when do you stop for the day? What time do you go to sleep at night? And what time should you go to sleep at night? I want you to design your day because most of us hadn't have not done this in a way that's based in reality. We do it in the way we want it to be in the future. And right now, what we do is we just let the day happen to us. We react to whatever shows up. And then we wonder why at three o'clock we're exhausted, we're resentful by the end of the week. But in the back of our head, we think we've we've written down somewhere what this perfect day is going to look like eventually. So we almost see the present as something we need to survive in order to get there. And that's just not true. So take a moment now to write it down. What does your ideal day look like? And now when you think about those things, how you want to feel and what your ideal day looks like. Question three is what are you willing to say no to? And this could be the most important question of all, because a lot of us do not want to hear the fact that we can't have everything, because we want to have everything. A lot of us got into the business we're in, the business of being business owners, dare I say, because we thought it was somehow the gateway to having everything. And if you haven't already learned that that could not be further from the truth, farther from the truth, um, you're going to learn it. So you cannot have everything, at least not at the same time. And you cannot grow revenue at all costs and have a perfect balance with your life at home. You can't be available to everyone all the time and also have protective time for your strategic thinking. So saying yes to opportunity is great, but you can't say yes to every opportunity and also have space for what matters most. Because every single choice is a trade-off. If you are not making those trade-offs consciously, life is making those trade-offs for you. So what would you be willing to say no to? What are you willing to give up? What are you willing to not have in order to create the business and the life that you really do want? So think about that, write it down, really get comfortable in the discomfort of this question. Um, because I want to talk to you for a minute about what happens if you don't do this work. If you keep skipping the vision and just focus on the tactics, you are going to keep chasing. You will keep optimizing and you will keep feeling like you're being productive because you're optimizing. But all you're going to be doing is continuing to put out fires and wondering why those fires keep coming back. You will hit goals and you will feel empty about it. You will grow revenue and you will feel trapped by it. You may build a bigger team and maybe then you become an even bigger bottleneck because nobody knows what you actually want because you haven't taken the time to see what you actually want. I have seen this happen so many times. People just like you who work harder and harder and harder and you achieve more and you have more external success, but you feel worse and worse and worse about your business, about your life, because you've never stopped to ask if you were building what you really wanted. I'm here to tell you, please do not let that be you. So this is what I want you to do after this episode. I want you to find 15 minutes. Just 15. It's not a lot. And I want you to go somewhere quiet. You could be your car, you could be a coffee shop, wherever you think you can think without interruption. I want you to write down three words that describe how you want to feel when you are running your business at its best, at its peak. This is not what you want to achieve. It is not the metrics you're chasing, it is how you want to feel. And then I want you to write one paragraph describing that ideal Tuesday, ideal Monday, ideal Wednesday, whatever, the regular working day, when everything is going the way that you want it to. Please be specific. What time do you start? Which what are you working on? What time do you finish? Who are you spending time with? All of it. That's it. Three words, one paragraph. And then I want you to put it somewhere where you can see it. This might be on your desk, on your bathroom mirror, or put it at your phone background, maybe, you know? That simple exercise is the beginning of everything. It is the first step toward building a business that actually serves your life instead of consuming it. And this is going to make real sustainable change for you. So this is what I've got for you today. The real reason that you feel out of control is not because you're bad at managing your time. It is not because you haven't found the right app, promise. And it certainly is not because you're not disciplined enough, or because you're not smart enough, or because you don't want it enough. It's because you've been trying to build something without the blueprint, essentially. You've been reacting instead of creating, you've been responding instead of leading. And the first step, the step that makes everything else possible, is getting clear on what you actually want. So that being said, if this felt valuable to you, I encourage you to listen to the next few episodes that are coming because I am going to be walking you through all of the steps that will help you get the clarity that you need to step out of the chaos that is consuming your life right now. Take this information, go out there, create your day in the best way possible. And I hope to see you here next week. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other. I'm Jen Cody. Thanks for being here, and I will talk to you soon. Bye. Take care. Have a good one.