Episode 5: Ready, Set.... Wait - the Knowing-Doing Gap that might just feel a little too familiar.

Does this sound familiar? Just one more course, one more webinar, one more credential... it just needs one more edit, and then everything will be ready to go. And then you watch people moving ahead while you continue to plan, perfect... maybe avoid?

In this episode, Belinda gets honest about patterns she's noticed in her own business journey, the gap between knowing what she wants and actually doing it, the habit of waiting to feel ready, and the perfectionism that disguises itself as preparation. Spoiler alert: she's pretty sure she's not alone.

In this episode:

• The "procrasti-planning" pattern and why it's so easy to justify
• Fear of failure (and fear of being a phony) dressed up as due diligence
• Why intelligence and insight don't always move us forward -- and can sometimes keep us stuck
• The one thing that actually builds confidence: doing the thing

Want to go deeper?

The knowing-doing gap is something Bel keeps coming back to in her own work -- and it's shaping something she's building right now. If this episode landed for you, stay close. There's more coming on exactly this topic, and you won't want to miss it. Find Bel at belindabayliss.co to keep the conversation going.

Connect with Bel: 

Instagram: @belindabayliss.co | 

Facebook: Belinda Bayliss Co | 

Email: podcast@belindabayliss.co

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

hi, Ie'm Blinda. If you're a woman in business somewhere in your forties or fifties, juggling probably more than you should and still trying to sustain a business you care about, this podcast might just be for you. Welcome to Gen X Women in Business.

Audio Only - All Participants 0:16

I wanted to share something that I'm becoming more mindful and aware of in my own world and part of the reason. That I want to speak about it is because I have a pretty strong suspicion that I'm not alone in this space. Today's episode is going to land a little bit differently, I suspect, because it's about some behaviors that I've been observing in my own business practice. Today's story, my story that I'm about to share. is about my desire to change how I work in this stage of my life. So my early career was as a high school teacher and it was very regulated and consistent. It was, I. Organized and run and subject to daily bells. There were very solid start and finish times. I knew pretty much where I was meant to be and what I was meant to be doing for almost every minute of every day, including on showers, which had playground duty. And at the time with my son in school teaching fit that stage of my life. It was good to have consistency and routine and that known space, regular income. Regular holidays time, I knew that I could have with my son. So teaching for me was an intentional choice that supported career and family and I spent nearly two decades working in an education system because it fit that stage of my life. Once my son finished high school, however, I made a huge step into the therapy space, into a private practice business where life felt, in some ways flexible and freer, but in other ways not a lot different. Except inconsistency and income because as business owners We know that income can be inconsistent. So for me, there was a huge step moving away from a government job into working for myself. It came along though with some freedom that I was looking for. Well, at first it felt like freedom and that was, anyone who's worked in a school knows that you are in school for school hours. There's no popping out to the shops for coffee or grabbing lunch. It is a very regulated space. So the idea of working for myself, although it took me a while, was that. When I wasn't sitting alongside people in therapy work, I could pop down to the cafe and grab a coffee. I could pop home for lunch, and there was a certain freedom that came in that space and I really do adore business. So there was that dream space in a way, that desire space that was being fulfilled at that time. 10 years down the track though. That longing, that dream and desire has changed, and what I'm looking for now is more of the idea of legacy and location freedom. And so for me, legacy is taking my decades of experience and training and knowledge and university degrees, and sharing that in more of a community model. So this idea of creating community and courses and this location freedom that would be met, I. Moving into the online space. So that idea of being able to work how I want and when I want is so appealing right now. The idea of being able to work while I am sitting at the Sunshine Coast or taking time away where I'm creating and being in that beautiful flow space of creating courses and content, which absolutely fills my bucket. But I'm noticing that while that desire is real, there appears to be. A gap between knowing and doing My podcast launched in March, 2026. However, the podcast cover work. Was created in July, 2025. So while I knew what I wanted to do and I had the knowledge or could find the knowledge, there was this huge gap between the actual knowing and the doing. I found that for me. I moved to that space of needing to learn more. Before I can do XI need to do one more course, one more webinar, one more uni degree, one more credential, one more certification. And I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in this, but while knowledge is power. Knowledge is helpful. While I'm learning, I'm likely not doing so where I want to create that community where I'm too busy learning about how to create the community. I'm not creating a community where I was researching how to do a podcast. I wasn't doing a podcast, and so this is a behavior that I see popping up. My own journey through into my own midlife freedom. Another pattern that I notice is almost that waiting to be ready, like there's going to be this light bulb that pops up or this moment where I know that I'm ready to start. And I often joke about I'm getting ready to be ready to be ready, but again, while I'm doing all that preparation, I'm not actually serving or helping anyone. Finally, I've noticed at times that I can be. Everybody's cheerleader. I'm happy to coach and support and encourage others to do the very thing that I wish I was doing, and that's not really just showing up in my business. I see that in my personal life as well. I will be your best friend, your best cheerleader, but perhaps I need to be that to myself sometimes. That feels a bit raw to share, but it's true. So what I'm doing is sitting in my knowing, sitting in my waiting for that perfect moment. Sitting in my cheerleading space and not actioning all of the things that I want to be doing. Now, don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that I'm doing nothing. It just means that my progress is potentially slower than I would ideally like it to be, And the more I can see this pattern, the more I'm able to address it, my preparation, my research, my getting ready to do the thing. They're all legitimate in their own way, but they're also sort of a clever way to stay close. Without avoiding any risk, and I know there's a couple of things that lie beneath this, and they're probably not new to me. For me, the knowing and the learning and the coursework and the One more thing, the one more webinar. It is almost like a fear or protective factor. It is me trying to make sure that I have all bases covered, that all contingencies are prepared for, and I'm really aware that that comes from a space where I made a huge decision in business that didn't go well for us, and I don't think I wanna go there again. So it is this idea of being prepared, but in that preparedness, I'm not moving into the space as quickly or as efficiently as I possibly could be. So that is one barrier that I'm seeing. The second one that sits there is this idea of perfectionism. Now, I often joke that I'm a reformed perfectionist, but some days that's truer than other days. there are days where I get so stuck in the idea needing to be perfect, that it prevents me from doing anything I do have a note above my desk that says, imperfect action is better than no action. And I have to remind myself of that continually, which is why I had a podcast that launched because it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And the way that I will get better at podcasting is to podcast. The way I will get better at running communities is to run communities. The way I will get better at running online courses is to run online courses, and I'm sure right now you could probably put your own. The only way to get better than X is to do X. I'm sure you've got your own pattern that you can name in there as well. So sometimes the perfectionism is that idea of protecting me from the risk. Now, the risk doesn't necessarily need to be financial. It might be that what I'm creating doesn't serve the people I want it to. It might not be helpful it might be that people think I'm fake or a phony or one more person in the online space. Let's face it, we can jump into this space with no knowledge and no credentials and we can put stuff out into the world through courses and coaching and podcasts. And so there's part of me that wants to protect myself, I suspect, from being in that space, but at the same time, to create the life I'm looking for. I need to be in that space. And the thing is that while I'm sharing this pattern, it doesn't mean that I have it always figured out every day. there is certainly still a gap between my tendency to move to knowing and avoid doing. There's that bridge that some days I cross really well, and some days I think I'm too scared of the troll underneath the bridge, which in the online space could just be the troll on the internet. But the more we do, the more confident we become in what we are doing and the more we actually do it. So the one thing I have learn is to recognize when my patterns of avoidance, when my patterns of procrast to planning, as I call it, or even procrast to cleaning. To coffee. There's lots of ways in which procrastination shows up in my world, and the quicker that I can recognize that pattern, the quicker I can start to name it and ask myself what it is that is showing up for me that is stopping me moving into the doing, into the action. Then the quicker I move, so like all of us. I'm a work in progress and I suspect that I'm not the only one because at the very core of all this, what I'm doing is human. I'm showing up in the way humans do in all of their fears, in all of their hopes and dreams, and that is just a part of existing. And I think that there is a huge component to this of just that space of being a reflective human. and while we can have intelligence and insight, that doesn't necessarily. Protect us from moving forward. In fact, in some ways, it almost provides us with our own circular file of evidence about why we need to stay stuck in our knowing, in our learning, in our procrastinating. So it's not always the gift that we like to think it is. Because we can always justify the next course or the next research piece or the next conversation but the reality is the next step that we're often avoiding is moving to action, moving into the doing, and while we're waiting to be ready. Perhaps that is just something we tell ourselves to stay safe, to avoid the doing, to avoid the action. So where does this leave us all? Where does this leave me? I think where it leaves me is being really mindful of when these behaviors show up and moving through them quicker. It doesn't mean they're not gonna show up, it just means that I'm becoming more aware of them. This is something that I keep coming back to in my own work, and it's been informing some of my creation work in the background as well, so. I am really hopeful today that if you've got this far, that something in here landed for you or resonated, and that it planted the seed and maybe a little bit of a mirror to some of the behaviors that might be showing up for you in your business and in your life. If something did resonate and you'd like to share that, Please feel free to reach out on instagram@belindabayliss.co or belinda bayliss.co on Facebook, or you can email me directly at podcast@belindabayliss.co. Thank you again for taking time out of your day to listen. I do hope the rest of your day is awesome. Bye.

Speaker 15:50

And now the boring but necessary part. The Gen X Women in Business Podcast is produced for general educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here constitutes psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and should not be treated as such. If you are experiencing mental health concerns, please seek support from a qualified professional where guests appear on this podcast, their opinions and views are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Belinda Bayliss Co. Or the Gen X Women in Business Podcast. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional with any questions you may have.