Bridge the Gap from Inaction to Action

Most online entrepreneurs don’t struggle because they’re lazy.
They struggle because their nervous system doesn’t feel safe with the level they’re trying to step into.

In this episode, Stephanie Zima breaks down the hidden gap between where you are now and the version of you that creates consistent sales, confidence, and visibility.

We dive deep into:

• Why overwhelm leads to procrastination and inconsistency
• How shame and unmet needs create hiding behaviors
• Why affirmations alone often don’t work
• The real reason you stop showing up online
• How to structure your life to support consistent action
• The “Money Hour” strategy for building momentum
• How to use an alter ego to bypass imposter syndrome and nervous system resistance

If you’ve ever felt like:
“I know what to do… but I still can’t make myself do it,”
this episode will help you understand why.

Because the goal isn’t perfection.
The goal is creating enough safety to finally take action consistently.

This episode is for online entrepreneurs, women in sales, network marketers, and anyone trying to build a business while healing the patterns that keep them stuck.

Walk It Free™ | Heal, Connect & Level Up

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello, hello everyone. Hey, welcome to tonight's training. I am excited about this because I think I found another angle on how to explain the mission vision values to you guys and why exactly I have this thing uh why exactly this matters for you taking action. Okay? So let me go and jump in here. So last week what we did is we talked about clarifying our message. We talked a little bit um about the direction that you want to go in, but it's not really helping figuring out like yes, we've talked about our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. Yes, we have figured out what we kind of want to do and what our goals are going to be, and we kind of like figured out about our environment and all of that in the heel unit, right? Now we are in the connect unit. We talked about our brand and how we need to show up on on um social media to build the storefront, but that does not combine yet the two into action, and I feel like it's so important that we understand the difference because so here is you, okay? Let me show you guys. Here is you. Okay, and you are in your circumstance bubble, right? And I'm just going to build, make a house, okay? So you are here in your house, and you are doing all the things that you love to do. Right? Okay. Now you have decided, oh, wait a minute. I need to make some dollars, and I want to make some dollars. So that means you need to get into this house over here. And let's make this a little bit bigger with a little arch, right? And this is where you need to go, right? Going that way. So you can level up one way or another. Okay. The problem now is that you are here in your current house, in your current circumstance, in your current way of being, your life, how you get up, what you eat, how you go to work, what your parents think about you, what your grandparents think about you, what your husband thinks about you, what your friends think about you. You are in this life that you've built, right? And then out of the sudden, we come up with this great idea, out of whatever reason, um, that we need to make money. Okay? Or maybe we say we want to travel more, or maybe we say we want to live a better, grandiose life in this bigger home, or we say we want to be a million-dollar earner and stuff. But the problem is, and this is where imposter comes in. This is where fears are coming in, and the reason why they're there is because we have no idea what this life is going to look like. Okay? We have no idea how rich people are going to behave. We have no idea how they have friendships, how they do life, to so to speak, on that level. Okay? We see it on social media, we see it uh maybe in our neighboring suburbs or wherever we are at, right? You may be seeing these homes, but inside of this home you have no idea what that actually looks like. So what are we going to do? We cannot pretend to just be that, to be living in this home over here. We cannot just pretend we are here, right? Actually, you should not make a frowny face, I should make it. We should not be able to pretend because what are you gonna pretend? You just assume. And see, when you assume we are uh these people, they know what it's like in here, so they probably gonna be ha ha ha ha. Laugh about you pretending to be living in this home when you're in fact not. Okay, so this is what most people are trying to do. They are pretending when you have affirmations, you are supposed to be building something based on an affirmation. I am rich, I am a million-dollar earner, I am blah blah blah blah blah. But you see, this is built, affirmations are built on a lie. Okay? It's on a lie because you have no idea what this is like. And that is where the problem is. This is why so many people cannot live and work with affirmation, and it won't do anything for them. The same as the um the the manifestation techniques, like the you know, when you sit down and you're trying to manifest something and you know, think and grow rich. Yes, think and grow rich is working for many people, but not just pretending to get there. So thinking and then growing rich is going to be a little bit different than what most people are advertising as something, because this gap over here, okay, this gap is too big to imagine, okay? Alright, so what are we going to do instead? Oh wait, before I go in to the solution, so the imposter syndrome is obviously then going to give you your fight, flight, or freeze responses. Or, fourth, is your fawn, which a fawn is what I've been doing for many years. I've been posing, posting, not posing, I've been posting, I've been doing the marketing, I've been doing the things that I'm comfortable with, but actually going out and having conversations with people, I would be hiding. I would be moving times in my calendar. And to this day, I sometimes still do this because I catch myself in the same old pattern, and I'm not ashamed to admit this because when you are in this situation, when you are recovering from trauma, you may know all the things, but you're still somehow not able to do it. And this is because this gap here is too big to overcome based on thoughts alone. Your fears is something you can train, okay? When I traveled, this is what I started with. I started training my fears. So when I had my uh travels, I had to prove, so fears is basically the way how you overcome fears is by finding proof for capabilities. Okay? That's how you overcome fear. So when you start realizing, oh wait a minute, I can actually jump on one leg. You're not afraid of it anymore. You when you say, when you like I had to prove to myself that I can make a home anywhere so I could start gaining self-confidence of you know proceeding with the divorce and and being on my s by myself with three kids eventually, right? I had to prove to myself that I was capable, me alone, I could do it. And that was to overcome the fears. I did not just travel because I wanted to just experience other things. That was another uh benefit of my travels. One, the main thing was I had to prove to myself that I could do it. Because I was terrified after my parents um after my mom died, and after I got estranged from my dad, I was terrified because I was alone. And I knew my marriage was broken, so I knew I needed to do something, and I was terrified. I was absolutely frozen, and I thought if I am not doing something about this situation, I'm gonna end up as my like my mother. I had to walk it free. So I started working on my fears. This is where I started. I started finding the proof that I was capable. I started finding proof with small little steps at a time, and this is why I'm so adamant about I know that this works. And then what I came across with what I came up against was that from the fears, once I started to overcome the fears, now I started realizing the imposter syndrome because I was like, um, I don't even know what I'm getting going for. I struggled finding the clarity because I didn't know what my goal was going to be. I didn't know what I was going for because I couldn't put the target on it. I've heard people say you have to have the bullseye, you need to be clear about where you're going and what you're wanting to do. And then I started realizing like I don't know where I'm going because I don't know what it's like to be there, because this is all I know. Okay, this is all I know. So the next step here in order to make progress, because that is really what we want to do, okay? We need to learn how to overcome the gap. Okay? When I'm right, I'm gonna write here the gap. Okay, we have to learn how to overcome the gap. In this gap, there is struggles, daily struggles of some sort, like your schedule, um, outside influences, the dishwasher breaks down, you know, those kind of things, right? Daily struggles. This stuff is gonna come up. We can call them also setbacks. Because here's the thing: when you have, remember your hierarchy of needs, okay? You have your goal, you want to make the dollars. This is up on the top over here, that's where you want to go and what you want to do, but here on the bottom, we have our physiological needs, right? Now, what do you think is going to take priority? Working your business with something intangible that you don't know what to do about, right? You you don't really know if I send my messages every day, will it work? You don't know. If you prospect people every day, will it work? We don't know. But meanwhile, the dishwasher is broken and this is happening, and this is on the bottom of the meats situation, right? Of course, this will take precedence over something that you have no idea is going to work, towards something you have no idea what's going to happen. Your brain is going to go for certainty. So, what is your certainty? You know this because this is familiar, okay? Your home, your life, your everything you've got going on is familiar in your little home. Okay, you know that, so that is what you're driving to. That is what you're going to spend your time on. Okay. The next thing in your uh in your gap is then learning skills. But you see, here's the other thing, um you don't really know what kind of skills you're missing, right? And when you look at the second tier of your maslow hierarchy of needs, that's safety. So if you don't know what skills you're missing, and if the lack, okay, focus on lack, if the lack of skills is going to threaten your safety into fight, flies, and freeze, response, okay, if that lack is going to get you here, that is where again you're going to focus on this instead of that. Okay? You are not taking action to get into something that you don't really know or get into something that you don't even have a clue about, and you know, meanwhile, your dishwasher is right is breaking down in your familiar circumstances, you're fixing your physiological needs, you're learning new skills, focusing on the lack is threatening your safety, and you're still stuck in your nervous system, and so on and so forth. Right? So you get the point. The point is that X, Y, and Z will always going to threaten something. Now the next thing is here, actually, your love and belonging, right? So now you are spending a lot of time on trainings and yadda yadda yada, and now your husband is going to complain, and your kids' kids are going to complain, and everybody's going to complain. So, next thing you know, what is this thing here that you want to do, to earn them more dollars, but you really have no idea where you're going to, um, you're never going to do it. Do you see it? You are never going to do it. And that until you understand that your struggles, your learning skills, your safety, long, and belonging here needs to be covered first, somehow else, in your schedule, in your time, you will not do the things that are required for you to progress to the next level. Okay? So, having said that, now we understand why we're not taking the action and why somehow there's always something else that is going to be before us actually doing the thing we need to do. So, here's what we need to do. In our schedule, actually, I should have left the pyramid. So, physiological, bottom, safety, love. Okay? Alright, so those are the things just so we remind ourselves. In our time, daily schedule, what we need to do is we need to first take care of health. Of home health. Okay? That needs to be taken care of first and foremost, however, that needs to look like. You have to have a health goal of some sort, uh, you need to take care of that. Because that way you can satisfy this need. Okay? Then the second thing is your finances. Now, this is often because we are lacking in this apartment. Right? Why are we trying to do this? We are trying to improve our finances, that's why we have a business on the side. So this business lack, this financial lack, this is where you need to keep bridging the gap in your brain and say, I am doing my power hour, I am doing my work here. Okay? I'm going to call this the power hour. I am go or money hour, or whatever you want to call it. Actually, let's call this money hour. My my coach calls it money hour too, so let's just call it the money hour. It makes sense because we're tying it to our safety and our finances. So let's call it our money hour, right? Our money hour is kind of number two priority. And you need to put this into this perspective, into your perspective thing. And then third but not least is love. Family. Now, my kids, when they heard this, and I said this to them exactly like this, these are my priorities, right? Daily priorities. Um, when I told them about my daily priorities, they were like, wait a minute, we come on number three. We get to the we are on the bottom of the toting pole here, so to speak. And I said, No, you actually don't. You actually come on number number one. But if I am not healthy, I can't take care of you. If I don't have money, I cannot take care of you. So, with you being on number three, I actually took care of you twice already before I take care of you on this on the third spot. Do you understand? That is how you have to think about it, because if you don't, you will never find the spot. So this is the problem, or this is the solution to the problem how to find the time, okay, to build your money hour, to make money. So you can find the time in your schedule. There is no other way around it. You need to find the time, you need to look at this because this is how your master hierarchy of needs is built, and this is what you need to go for if you want change. If you don't want change, then you are going to continue to look at the lack and feel like a victim and feel like you can't do it. Okay? This is the one solution, the daily schedule priorities to take care of. So now, this is your money out, okay. So now we're gonna address the second problem. Okay? So we had time. It's the first excuse. Excuses why people don't take action, okay? For in action. Okay, so no time. All right, we addressed the no time factor. Now, the second option here is we the gap is too big between where we are right now to where we are going to be because we don't know what this looks like. Okay? When we send a message, no trust, right? This is the no trust problem. When we send a message, will it get us here? When we prospect people, will it get us here? When we ask people to look, will it get us here? Right? We don't know. We don't No, and that is when we don't know the insecurity that we have is going to stop us right there because then we feel again like an imposter, or we still have the fear and stuff. I can give you an example, okay? Um, I need to now do cold in-person visits at uh industrial manufacturing companies, and I have to go into networking events, and I haven't done those in a long time. And I have to talk to presidents and vice presidents and all these people, these big people in the corporate world. And my very first thought was like, Whew! I can't talk to these people, I don't even know what to say, I don't know what to do, I don't know how to show up. I don't and I get so anxious, right? I got so anxious, and I thought to myself, like, I will never be able to show up as the person that is going to close the sales. So here's what's gonna happen, though. You can create something, and this is what's going to help you from where you are right now to get where you want to go in any situation, you create an alter ego. Okay, an alter ego. So, an example, everybody knows Beyonce, right? Beyonce was a church singer, gospel singer, sweet girl, um, and she was definitely not what she is right now. So, what she did is she created a persona called Sasha Fierce, what allowed her to step into a completely different side of herself. What allowed her to be a whole different characteristic, what allowed her to imagine what this is look like, okay? Because the reason why we don't take action to go here is because we have this fear that we don't know what this is. Okay, but here is the thing. If you now, through this alter ego situation, create dream life. If you create this dream life in your brain, that's then how you can get there. This is how you can bridge the gap. Okay? Alright, so how do we do this? What we need to do before we can create an alter ego, because you don't want to just dream something up and then you're not going to be able to do it anyway. There has to be a tie to your current life, to your current personality, to who you are right now that is aligned with you in order to make this happen. Okay? So, how do we create this alter ego? We are going to start with, you know, this is what I was talking to you guys about your core, your your your mission, vision, values, right? That's kind of almost the same thing, but we are now driving this a little bit in a different angle so it sits a little bit better. So you have here, you have your core self, okay? In your core self, that's when you know what you care about, what you believe in, um, what your sense of purpose is, all that stuff. That there's stuff that's really you. Okay? And from there, um from there, you have outside is your drivers. Okay, I have to look at my notes here so I don't mess this up. Okay, so then you're gonna look at your driver level. Okay? Your driver level is your belief system. Okay, so the belief that you will so when you believe in something, that becomes your driver. Okay, so if you believe I am uh the best salesperson, I have charm, right? And charisma, for example, then what that's your core self-belief. Your driver will then say, hey, yeah, that's okay, we can go out there because nothing bad can happen to us, right? Because we believe this about ourselves, we feel safe, we feel like we belong, because we have all the qualities that a great salesperson is gonna have. So you can show up there because you believe you are going to win. You believe you can be successful, you believe it's going to be okay. But that is not what most of us are doing. We have a thought, somehow, our core self has a thought that it's not, that we are not the best, that we don't have the skills, and so on and so forth, right? So that's where we need to drive into, that's where we need to really see. And I kind of like talked about this a little bit last time. So when we think about when we think about this now, in terms of our business, you think about the activities that you have to do in your money hour. What is your number one belief when you think about your money hour? What is your number one belief, right? You have to decide what your number one belief is. That is your core belief. From that your core belief. From that, you have your core driver. That is your action. Okay, the action that you take. Um, and then from there you have your um the action that you take, and then you have your uh sh what's the name of the now? Core belief, core driver uh action, and then you have your outcome. Okay? And we've talked about this, and the outcome, see, the outcome is like let's say if you go into a sales meeting, for example, if I now go in and I say, I am the best, sale, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the very, very best, I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm better than all the rest. If I have that mantra, if I have that core belief, right, and I go into this meeting and I shake somebody's hand and I say, hi, I'm Stephanie Zimon, I am the best, right? Let's say. First and foremost, I probably shocked the other person because they're like, wow, this person is competent, right? That person knows what she's talking about. If I then show up with the action of actually knowing what I talk about, the outcome of that will probably be success. Right? Now, sometimes we don't really know what success is going to be like. We don't know what success is supposed to feel like. What do we define as success? So next week I'm supposed to be going on these sales calls, and of course I'm scared. I haven't done that in years, right? And so here's what I'm doing. I'm personally defining success. What is success to me? Success is going to be making a connection, not getting a sale. Success is for me is going to be having a business card, getting a name of somebody. Okay? That's to me success. Not from a hundred percent of the clients that I'm going to, but it's going to be from a few. So what is your success when you think about your money hour? Okay? Is it going to be that you have an expectation that you are going to close, that you're making sales, that you are selling three a day? And I've heard these goals of like one a day, one a day, one a day. We need to have just one find a day. And that spins you into a shame cycle if you're not ready yet. So maybe, because this could be big, right? Maybe you just set your success as, hey, I'm sending out the walk it free three, right? I'm setting out one message, I'm finding one message, and I'm inviting one message. Okay? That's why I said that. Maybe that could be your success rate. Maybe that is where you can say, okay, this could be my success. If I've done the action, detach myself from the outcome. I've done the action. Because this alter ego is what allows you to step into this, then, okay? Because many of us, the core self, is rotten because we don't have experience. So what we need to do is we need to create a new core self of something that could do that activity. So we reverse engineer, we we figure out, okay, success would be to do these three things. Okay? We send a message, we prospect one, and we ask one person. That would be success. So what would this person be like? That person would probably have, let's say, attributes, character, traits of confidence. That person could possibly be, and you have to fill in the blanks for yourself because you are uh different. That person could possibly be friendly. That person could maybe be caring. That person could be disciplined. Okay? ETC. So figure out what your alter ego, this this person that could do this, if it's not you. Who is the person that could do this? What would that person be like? Okay? And when you recognize what this person be like would be like, you can give it a name. Okay? I don't know if you guys know uh Jamie Lee. She called herself Bosley. Or Beyonce calls herself Sasha Fierce, right? Give it a name. Okay? And when you have this name and the character traits, that is basically what you can envision yourself, then, and we're gonna keep that a little bit short because it's a lot to take in, but this is where you can envision yourself as this um alter ego, okay? You can also call it Susan or Sally or uh, you know, we'll say Sally or whatever. What whatever you want to call it, okay? Call it a name, and then imagine this person, imagine what this person would do with the schedule, imagine what this person would do with the life, imagine what this person would feel like when this is all happening, and imagine what this person would be like in here. Okay? What would this person, which is not you, what would this person be like here? What would they do? What would they think about? What would they like? You create that in your mind. Because, see, sometimes it's too scary to jump from who we are to something scary, but if we make up the story through an alternative, then we are going to be able to start taking action. Okay? And we can always change it. We can say, all right, if this person that is going to show up every single day to fulfill that safety need is confident, friendly, caring, disciplined, she will network, she will show up, she will do the things that we have defined as successful. Okay, if she's done all these things, then we can be happy about it. Right? Then we can see what the outcome is. Guys, at this point, we just want to step into action. At this point, we need to start into movement and we need to get some data. Okay? Because we don't know with this money hour, we don't know yet how many people do we actually need to sell, how many people do we need to talk about, how many, like we are not even there yet. We need to start taking an action in order to get the money in. Some of you have no problem with the money hour. If that is you, imagine the alter ego to see what is your next step. What would that alter ego person, call it Sally or whatever, you know, Sasha Fevs, call it whatever you want, what would that person need to do to be to that next level? What would they do? Maybe you have somebody that you envision in mind, somebody that you want to be like, somebody that you have seen doing these steps. What have they done to get to that point? Okay? And imagine yourself to be that person or to act like that person. Now you are not an imposter. See, imposter pops up when you try to imagine yourself in here and you can't take action. But if you are operating like the other person here, then you are able to take steps. Okay? I hope this makes sense because this is really, really important to avoid not only avoid, but disengage the nervous system responses. Okay. This is a strategy for you to disengage that nervous system. You can use an alter ego personality to get you to do the things that you need to do. Okay? I hope this made sense to you guys. If you have any questions, please let me know. Um and again, like usual, check the five day challenges to actually apply what I just taught you. Okay? Alright, I'll see you all later.