EP26 (Final) Stop Waiting and Start Small
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[00:00:00] You're like the stars in outer space. Something about you radiates. And it feels so nice, and it feels so nice, yeah
Welcome back to another episode of the Starlit Success podcast. I am your host, as always, Jessica Gaines. And if you've been following along this little miniseries, last week we talked about how to use your time more intentional and how to just be more creative with your time,
but creating more time doesn't really do anything, it doesn't really change anything, unless you're using it to move closer towards the goal or the dream or whatever it is that you want in life.
that's really what this episode is about because one thing I've realized on this journey is
changing your life doesn't require some dramatic overhaul like you think it might.
It happens through these really small actions that you just repeat over and over again.
And I think this is where a lot of us tend to get stuck. - And I know I got stuck here quite a bit.
We look at, you know, this dream life, [00:01:00] this business, this healing journey, or whatever it is that you're going after, and we immediately think of how freaking big it feels, how long it's gonna take, how far away it feels from wherever we are now.
And because it feels, like, so overwhelming,
We convince ourselves that we need to change our whole entire life overnight in order for it to happen.
which most of the time just scares the shit out of us and makes us not want to do anything at all.
But take it from me, taking tiny steps every day can completely change your life over time.
This is the idea that really changed my view of how I look at success, growth, all of it.
Because the mistake that a lot of us make is thinking that making a massive change in your life requires, like, some massive action.
And it just, it, it's too scary. We immediately [00:02:00] think there is no way I could pull that off.
Or another one is, "I wouldn't even know where to start."
We think that we need to completely transform who we are to even begin.
... I remember before I even considered starting my own podcast, Eddie and I were just hanging out one day talking like we normally do, and he was like, "I could see you having your own podcast someday."
And I think he said that just because He was just so used to me always teaching him everything that I was learning. So I would tell him, "Oh, this new thing I learned on a podcast," or " This, this thing that I learned in a book." So I was always just kind of sharing everything that I've learned with him.
That I'm sure he just figured that it would make more sense to share everything I'm learning with everyone. But I remember when he first said that, when he first was like, "I could see you having your own podcast,"
I immediately started laughing, and I immediately dismissed the idea.
I didn't even consider it being a possibility because it felt way too big, [00:03:00] way too scary, way too intimidating.
My brain instantly started listing all of the reasons that I couldn't do it.
The first one was I could never put myself out there like that.
I don't know enough. I'm not confident enough. And who am I to even consider doing something like that? Like, who am I to have my own podcast? Like, what do I know?
It honestly felt like I would have to become a completely different person to even consider trying something like that.
And then even, even beyond the whole identity part, just thinking about all of the logistics that I would have to learn felt really overwhelming. Like the tech side and everything. Like how would I even put this all together? How would I even get it out into the world?
- I just remember thinking, "I don't, I don't know how to do any of this."
my brain immediately went to obstacles, excuses, like every possible reason that I couldn't do [00:04:00] something like this because that's what I believed
But I think what a lot of us do is we make things so much bigger in our head than what it actually is.
And when we do that, it just feels so scary. Like, you create all this fear before you even try anything.
You train your brain to focus on all the reasons that you can't do something
instead of all of the reasons that you can.
and what ends up happening is you put so much freaking pressure on yourself that you end up just not doing anything at all.
. You convince yourself you're not ready yet, so you put it off. And again, when you put things off, what do you lose? Your most precious resource, time.
You lose the momentum before you even have any. You already kill it before it gets going.
And how confident can you really be if you keep telling yourself you can't? That doesn't help you gain any confidence by telling yourself you're not [00:05:00] capable.
But time, momentum, confidence, those are all the things that you need to start.
And I can tell you, confidence rarely comes before you start doing the thing. Confidence comes from the habit of just doing it regularly. It's that practice.
Look back at my first few videos. I mean, I'm at, I don't know, over 20 at this point, and even now I don't feel 100% confident. But those first few videos, I even said, I think in my first one, that it was terrifying. I was so scared. I wasn't confident yet. But the more you do something, the more it becomes routine, the less scary it feels, the more comfortable you become.
And I think that's what a lot of people miss.
You might spend so much time thinking about how huge this goal is or how huge this dream is
- That you never even give yourself a chance to discover who you could [00:06:00] have become had you just start taking some little action towards it.
I always say, Rome wasn't built in a day, and your dream life won't be either.
If someone would have told me a year ago that within 12 months that I would have enrolled in multiple courses, I would have completed five certifications, I will hire an assistant, I will launch a YouTube channel and a podcast with over 20 episodes,
all while still raising kids, still attending all my kids' basketball games,
um, traveling, taking multiple trips, grieving the loss of several family members,
helping my son through his struggle with depression and his severe injury and the ACL surgery, and helping him start a mental health group, helping him start his own business.
Oh, and on top of that, helping him enroll in college and plan a full relocation to Florida
I would have [00:07:00] been like, holy hell, please stop talking. Absolutely not. I'm not interested.
Because that sounds terrifying. When you say all of that, my mind is just like so overwhelmed. I would be like, there's no way I can do all of that. Absolutely not. Go away.
it feels impossible. It feels stressful when you say all of that together. But that's not the way that it happens. It happens every day, a little bit at a time.
taking one small step after the other. You don't look at the end. You look at just what's right in front of you.
That's the way you need to look at it.
So just take one day at a time.
Think about looking up at a huge mountain, like this massive mountain, right? And you're like, oh, we're going to climb that. It feels like there's no way. There's no way I could climb that mountain. But if they're just like, you know what? we're just going to keep taking one step after the other. [00:08:00] And that's all you keep doing.
You just keep focusing on that next step and that next step. And then you keep just doing that every single day. You will reach the top. It's just a matter of time.
You don't need to completely transform your whole life overnight. That's not how it works.
All you need to do is have a direction first and just start moving in that direction consistently.
1% better every day.
I think that's what a lot of people don't realize is The version of you that can handle this, this bigger dream that you're going after is built through these tiny actions that you're taking every day.
you grow into that person. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a process.
You don't just magically wake up one day and you're confident and you're successful
and you're, you're healed and you're disciplined and everything just happened overnight. you just went from this caterpillar to a butterfly. [00:09:00] As beautiful as that sounds, that's not really how it looks.
have you heard that saying how to eat an elephant? How would you eat an elephant? Well, one piece at a time.
I don't eat elephants. I don't know anyone else that eats an elephant, but you get what I'm saying. it's just little by little. That's how you get there. That's how real transformation happens.
And that's like the coolest part about this. it's not like those little actions change everything around you. They start changing who you are.
When you start taking small, consistent steps, you begin rewiring your brain for success.
You start building habits, and those habits become your new normal.
You build confidence because you prove to yourself that you can actually follow through.
And then, of course, you build competence because anything that you repeat over and over, you're naturally just gonna get better at. That's just the whole idea of practicing, right? Anything that you do over and over again, then, that you're rewiring your brain to become better and better and better at it.
And if you consistently [00:10:00] take action, and you're taking these steps every day, you're going to build that momentum.
And when you take these little steps each day, and you start to see the progress, then you wanna keep going, 'cause you see how far you've come.
The dream or the goal stops feeling so impossible because you see yourself moving closer towards it.
Even if it's happening slowly. It doesn't have to happen super fast.
I mean, for me, for example, I started recording in the fall. Um, right now it's May. I'm not sure when this will come out. This will probably come out sometime in June. .. It's probably been about seven months of me just getting more comfortable and, being creative, and coming up with ideas, and planning episodes, and recording.
And I don't have a huge following yet. That's not even really my goal right now. My goal is to just be consistent, . to just practice, really. Is just to get better, just to get more comfortable doing this because, as I've said before, it's not easy putting yourself out [00:11:00] there.
You know? And your goal might be something completely different, but in order to, to reach people and to touch lives, you have to be seen. So for me, it's just a matter of every week, every day I spend a little time coming up with episode ideas, planning them, recording, editing, publishing.
it's, it's a daily thing. It's something every single day I build a little time in my day towards this podcast. And I didn't have it overnight. It didn't happen overnight. It took me just taking the smallest action and just being consistent
And now it's just a habit. It's just something I do. And not only is it a habit for me, but it's something that my family is used to too.
So they know that I spend this time recording. They know I spend time editing. It's just part of my daily routine now. They know that this is important to me and they support it.
So really it's just changing your life happens with practice. It's not magic.
So if you're listening here [00:12:00] thinking like, okay, well, how do I actually do that? It's a lot simpler than you might think.
first, I just want you to keep your big ass dream. Keep that massive goal that scares the shit out of you. I want you to keep that. But I don't want you to focus on the end. I don't want you to look up at that massive mountain, okay? So even if it's a goal that's going to take you a couple of years, what can you do to break it down to even just the next 90 days?
How can you break it down that small to be like, okay, what do I need to do within the next 90 days to get me a little bit closer to that goal?
And then after the 90 days, break it down even smaller. What do I got to do? This kind of ties back to episode 12 and the whole the goal setting mistakes and just having like a big goal and not breaking it down, not having a process.
So if you want to go back to that episode and listen to that again to how we break down goals into the [00:13:00] smallest steps possible. But that's really what it is here. In order to be consistent and in order to take small steps, you have to know what action to take.
once you've broken your goal down to 90 days, just keep breaking it down smaller and smaller and smaller until you know what you need to do now, what you need to do next. Don't look at step 57, look at step 1.
and then just commit to spending 30 minutes a day. For me when I really wanted to start making progress, I committed to spending an hour every single day. Whether it's, you know, watching my training videos recording myself doing, the different techniques for my certification, or whether it was reading or brainstorming.
However, I followed my energy, like I talked about previously, but one hour every single day. And if there were days that I couldn't do an hour, okay, could I do 30 minutes? So where can you block off 30 minutes to an hour every single day and just commit to that?
It can be something super small. even if it's [00:14:00] just watching videos, what if you spent 30 minutes to an hour each day starting to watch some YouTube videos on how to go after what it is that you're interested in doing?
when my sons started their detailing business, that's what they started with. They started with YouTube videos, social media videos on how to detail cars. They didn't just, " Oh my God, I have a detailing business and I'm doing it right now." It was just, like, a little bit at a time. And then it was like, "Okay,
What product do I need?" Okay, go buy the product, those little tiny steps that you take every day compound over time.
So just get more familiar about what it is that you wanna go after. Um, learn more about it. Start practicing it.
Because steady daily progress
changes your life a whole hell of a lot more than random bursts of motivation.
And honestly, once you stop thinking that you need to just change your life overnight-
You realize the process feels a lot less scary and it starts to feel like something that's actually doable.
[00:15:00] So it starts with one small step and then you might get a little win. Just one little shift at a time.
So look at your days and where can you invest 30 minutes to an hour into the future that you want to build? All right, guys, I hope this was helpful. there's so many lessons I've learned. These four were, for me, the core ones that have really made such a difference in these last few years. I'm sure there will be more. I'm sure this won't be it. But I felt the need to share this with you to help you understand that it doesn't need to be as scary and as overwhelming and as intimidating as you think.
And you are more than capable of doing it. So if this helped you, please consider rating the show. And if you're not already following me, please follow me at Starlit Success over on YouTube or on Instagram. . And thank you for spending your time and energy with me today. And I hope to see you on the next episode.
So bright
