3 Ways to Get Out of Your Own Way

Are you unknowingly sabotaging your own success? Join me, Nikita Williams, as I reveal three common self-sabotage traps that hinder entrepreneurs, especially those managing chronic illness. Discover how "dream downsizing" limits your potential, the pitfalls of focusing on non-essential tasks, and the crucial role of mindset in achieving your goals. Through personal stories and practical advice, learn how to break these patterns and thrive in your business. Tune in to redefine what's possible for you and get actionable tips to propel your business forward with confidence and clarity.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn signs of how you are shrinking what you want and learn how to pursue your true goals.
• Ways to Focus on Prioritizing tasks that drive real business growth.
• Learn How to Develop a resilient mindset to support your success.

Transcript

Nikita Williams: 0:04

Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness, the globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness who want to start and grow a business online. I'm your host. Nikita Williams and I went from living a normal life to all of a sudden being in constant pain, with no answers to being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and trying to make a livable income. I faced the challenge of adapting traditional business advice to fit my unique circumstances with chronic illness, feeling frustrated and more burned out than I already was. While managing my chronic illness to becoming an award-winning coach with a flexible, sustainable online coaching business, I found the surprisingly simple steps to starting and growing a profitable business without compromising my health or my peace. Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same. If you're ready to create a thriving business that aligns with your lifestyle and well-being, you're in the right place. Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for women with chronic illness and how we make a living.

Nikita Williams: 1:14

This is Business with Chronic Illness. Hello, my beautiful people, I have been sick as a dog, sick as a dog. But before I get into me being sick as a dog, this episode is about the three ways you're sabotaging yourself from making money with more ease and speed. So I did a little write up about this in my email, on my email that went out today, so you're kind of getting a little bit of this. But I'm going like a little bit more deep dive into this topic on the three ways you're sabotaging yourself from making money with ease or easier and faster and with speed. I want to give you guys just a heads up.

Nikita Williams: 1:50

I am recovering from the cold of the summer that just like took me out, like I thought it was COVID. It was definitely not COVID, it was some kind of other thing flu something, and it definitely felt like COVID. But anyway, my voice is doing a weird little thing of. You know, we've been coughing and hacking and blowing my nose and all of that beautiful thing for the last two weeks. So bear with me. Bear with me and my raspy voice, if you will, and my sips of water, if you happen to hear that.

Nikita Williams: 2:24

But let's get into it. Let's get into why I'm talking about this. Oh, my goodness, this is something that I don't think we hear enough about around the topic, around the fact that we can get in our own way of creating the result that we want. We sometimes go all in on all of these strategies and all of these courses and trainings and everything without taking some time to reflect on am I the problem? Is it me? Is that Taylor Swift? Hi hello, I'm the problem. It's me. Have we taken a moment to take a look at ourselves in this? And I see this come up not just for myself, but when I've worked with clients. When I'm working with clients, I see this, and I see this a lot, depending on where clients are in their journey of either becoming an entrepreneur or being an entrepreneur while living with chronic illness, or just in general, like dealing with everyday life hurdles or trying to transition from one type of like persona of a person in their work life to a different type of work life persona. So I thought this was really important, especially since we are in that half time of the year where some of us feel like, oh well, if we haven't attained our goals yet, it's over, we're not going to happen, it's not going to happen, or where some of us are feeling the pressure of making it happen. So we start to tap into some of these self-sabotaging things.

Nikita Williams: 3:58

I'm going to share a little bit more and I wanted to bring some more context and nuance to what I share with you all on my email list and, by the way, if you're not on my email list, you should be that's where I share exclusive content. Oftentimes it happens there before you hear it here. I kind of use my podcast in my email as my exclusive content machine. Where anywhere else you get things, you will get it maybe in a different way, a different speaking about it. But I've talked about it before, and first here on the Instagram, here on podcasts, here on the podcast or in my email.

Nikita Williams: 4:34

So what are some of the three ways? So one of them is dream downsizing. So this is where I've seen this happen most frequently, when we don't believe that what we thought was impossible is possible. Now that we're living in whatever time, energy, circumstance, whatever right and I want to caveat this tremendously Do I recognize and do I know that some things, when it comes to things that you want in your dream, are going to be affected and sometimes snatched from you because of those different variables, yes, but often what I have found is that many of us snatch them away from ourselves because of not knowing any other way of doing something, of not being aware of the tools and the resources out there to create this result, because of conditioning, because of lack of awareness around what is actually possible, what is actually possible. So, and also our thoughts about ourselves, our thoughts about what we're capable, our thoughts about our worth, our value, all of this has a lot to do with dream downsizing, and when I say dream downsizing I just mean like you have a vision for doing something and then life happens, your chronic illness happens and it seems like it's absolutely impossible to attain, it is impossible to achieve, it cannot happen, right? And I want to show you how it's funny that, even though you tell yourself and you go down this rabbit hole of this is impossible, there's no way for me to do it. If it is a deep enough desire, if it's a deep enough strength and thing that you just naturally do, subconsciously, you will try to create it in some other form and call it so different and make, and it will feel more difficult and not enough. So here's what I mean. Let's take, for example you had a dream of being a Pilates instructor. I used a different example in the email, but I'm going to use this one because this is relevant-ish to me and I never would have thought of this. But this is just a random hypothetical. Just roll with me. Okay, roll with me.

Nikita Williams: 7:14

Imagine you are an active person, you are a volleyball player, you volunteer a lot of your time, you're walking all of the time, you're doing all of these things, you're living your best life and you're like physically feeling good and great and everything's great. And you are also doing Pilates and you love Pilates. It's like such a thing, you love it, it's the thing that helps you so much, and just your stability and feeling confident. And then you have an accident. You break your knee, your knee gets cracked or something in some other activity, and now it feels like Pilates. And becoming maybe the Pilates instructor that you thought you were going to be at some point is another thing that you would lean into. Can't happen, it's just not going to happen, it's just not your thing anymore. And you have now decided that you can't be this Pilates instructor as well. You've decided that's not a dream that's really attainable. You've decided it's not something you can do. So what? Naturally?

Nikita Williams: 8:22

And what I've seen oftentimes with clients who come to me who are like, when I ask them what do you want? They first have to really think about it and they give me, like this answer that seems like this is what they want, because this is all they believe they can want. And then it's like but what do you really want? If you didn't break your knee, if you didn't have a chronic illness, if you didn't have some random crazy life circumstances, what would it? What would you actually want? Like what would that be right? And when I hear what they actually actually really want versus what they have told themselves that they want, they're not that much different.

Nikita Williams: 8:58

Okay, so let's go back to this Pilates instructor person who wants to be a Pilates instructor. So she's like believing she can never be a Pilates instructor, right? She's got this knee issue, she finds out. Well, she's got rheumatoid arthritis and she's got this inflammatory, other fibromyalgia thing and she just knows she's not going to be able to accomplish in her head this lifestyle of being a Pilates instructor. It's just not going to happen the way she thought it was going to happen. And so she now tells herself well, I don't want that, I can't have that, so let me think of other ways of doing something else.

Nikita Williams: 9:33

So, instead of being a Pilates instructor, she starts looking for other ways to pursue her physicalness. So she starts doing she's like I'm going to teach people'm going to want to teach people how to stretch, I'm going to be become a person who understands stretching right. And she's like I'm going to start a business all about stretching and I am going to like share with people how they can stretch at home. I'm going to learn different. You know movements for stretching and that way you know it's not Pilates, but it's still physical and I'm still doing this thing. So here she goes, trying to share and learn about stretching. She's doing it, but she's not passionate about it. But hey, it's working. People are coming to her. She's like somehow like creating some momentum. People are coming and wanting to learn how to stretch from home.

Nikita Williams: 10:27

And as she's going through this process, she's finding it really challenging from an energetic space, a time space where she feels drained and unmotivated and like why isn't this working the way? I want it to work right? And then she walks into a Pilates studio because of course they're stretching in a Pilates studio. And you know she tells people, you know we're really, I'm really looking to share my stretching class or whatever she's doing, with their community. And it's it's not Pilates, but it's a close second, best right. And the instructor goes, the other person goes oh, that's really interesting, so share with me. Like, what kind of things are you doing? So she shares with them what they're kind of doing and they're like so how's it working? She's like well, you know people are coming.

Nikita Williams: 11:17

I'm just not really that motivated to like all the time do all of the things that's required for me to talk about stretching. It's kind of boring to me. I kind of get frustrated when other people aren't doing it. A certain way I also get tired of trying to explain, like how stretching is so important, like, but you know it is important, like it's a thing I need to do. And then the Pilates instructor says and then the Pilates instructor says how is this any different than Pilates? And in that moment this person who's like thinking she's never going to be able to be a Pilates instructor, has realized like she's already doing the majority of the work it would require her to be a Pilates instructor, but she's doing it, teaching people to stretch and hate it right and hating it.

Nikita Williams: 12:05

And so what I have found is that many of you have told yourself you can't pursue a dream, you can't pursue this new pivot or this new reality or this new thing. That's a difference that you're really interested in. And so you go, try pursuing something else that's probably pretty close to, or sometimes some clients are like completely opposite and then they're wondering why it's not working, why they're so frustrated, why they're banging their head, why this feels like it's so hard. And it's because they believe so much right now that the thing that they truly want, there's no way to attain it, there's no way to get to that thing. But here's what I wanna offer you and this is self-sabotage y'all the same amount of work and energy and effort that feels so heavy that you're doing in these other things that's not really the thing you want to do would feel more light, more easy and more fulfilling and happen faster, even though you take your time with taking the baby steps to achieve that thing in a different way.

Nikita Williams: 13:10

So if this woman had just decided you guys remember, this is a hypothetical If this woman decided, you know what? I can't be a Pilates instructor like a year from now with all of these new things that I've got going on, but I can figure out a way to step into that place. What kind of different decisions would she have made? How many other things would she be more motivated and committed to to attain that goal, even though it may take her a different route of achieving that right? And some of you might be listening well, what if stretching was that other way? She finally realized that's where she wants to go and she's going to be in Pilates, absolutely, absolutely.

Nikita Williams: 13:54

That is a possibility, but many of you all don't actually get to that step because you don't believe you are worthy, you don't believe you are capable. You have told yourself that you cannot. There's no one else that can do it. There's no one doing this thing like that. Right, when you lean into curiosity and you lean into learning and knowing and like gathering information, you might find that you can achieve that big goal, but just in a different time frame than the time frame you thought you would actually accomplish it.

Nikita Williams: 14:31

So if you're in this time of the year where you feel like you can't accomplish this goal that you may have set earlier in the year, so you're gonna make a smaller goal. I want you to reassess and really look at it and being like well, is it that I can't attain this goal, or is it that I need to keep the goal but adjust the way that I'm going at it? Right, is that what I need to do? How can I do that If you've been doing it alone, I can guarantee. That's the reason why it's challenging. Ask someone else who might be able to give you other feedback of how you can get to where they're going or where you want to be that you think is impossible, and your brain will tell you that it's impossible until you're like, basically right in front of it, right, and you give yourself baby steps. I call this baby, like it's a baby step framework that you kind of just guide yourself into doing the thing.

Nikita Williams: 15:25

So I use Pilates, for example, because I had an injury a year or so ago and also I was in crazy flare-up, crazy flare-up and for a while I just told myself I can't do it. I didn't even try to do anything different. I'm just like I'm not. I'm just I just can't do it. I don't think there's any other way. But part of me knows that I can, because I've come back from much greater situations when it comes to my knee and getting back on the horse, so to speak. So I'm like it's just right now, I'm okay to rest, but I will get back to Pilates. Notice the difference. I will get back to it. I don't know how I'm going to get back to it, but I will Right.

Nikita Williams: 16:03

And during this time I've been working on my mindset. I've been working on like how, what are the baby steps I need to do? One keep doing the motions that happen with Pilates, keep thinking about them, keep engaging in different ways so that you don't lose the muscle memory that you gained over a year, two years of doing this so consistently right. Secondly, talk about how this is challenging for you, how you want to get back to it. So talk about it Like I talk about it with my husband, I talk about it with my therapist, I talk about it with my friends and, like the people in my congregation, I'm like, yeah, I love Pilates, but I haven't been in like a year. It helps me stay accountable. To like this is dreaming. This is something I really enjoy and I'm as challenging as it is if I keep talking about, the more I'm going to figure out how to make it work, how I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out Right.

Nikita Williams: 16:54

And so that's led to a text message to my Pilates instructor of being like, hey, if I were going to come back, if I wanted to do such and such, can I just do like a 30 minute, you know, if that session, private session, just to start with, that's all I've done, that's all the conversations I've had, because then I got a cold and I'm like all janky and yucky but like like all janky and yucky, but like you see how I did that it's okay to pursue other things in your life while you still stay committed to the thing you actually want to achieve, because when you do, you find the solutions to achieve it. It's when you give up and tell yourself you can never, or you it's not, you are not capable of creating that reality. But you are. We are powerful. We have been wonderfully made to be able to accomplish so many things, even in the state of imperfection and in state of strife in the world that we see today.

Nikita Williams: 17:52

So how do you identify the self-sabotaging thing? Look at the things that you actually wanted to do before, maybe having a chronic illness or before some event happened? Right, what were some of those things that you wanted to do? Are those things that still feel aligned and good for you? Are they still passionate? Like, do you still have a passion for you? Is it still a skill that you have? Is it a skill you want to continue to develop? Like identify what you want.

Nikita Williams: 18:20

Many of us are walking around this world doing things that we don't want and mad about it. We can change that. We can change that. It may not happen overnight. It may mean that you're doing some other thing in order to support you getting to what you want, but you can attain it. It can happen, but it only can happen if you identify what it is that you want and choose to want it, choose to fulfill it, choose to find ways to make steps to get to doing that right.

Nikita Williams: 18:49

So that is one way you're self-sabotaging yourself for making money, because what happens is, if you're not doing what you want, you end up spending a lot more time and energy doing something you don't want to do and it feels like trudging water and you actually don't make that much money and you don't save that much time because you're trying to force something to work. Okay, so that's self-sabotage number one. Number two you get caught up in all of the tiny, non-specific important things in your business that look pretty, that feel easy sort of, but you really only need to focus on the thing that help you tell your story, show up for your audience and demonstrate and show people how you help them. Right, if you have found that you're specifically in your business right now and you're not where you want to be in your finances or your lead things like you're in your lead pipeline, and this also applies in your personal life If you find yourself not getting to the goal of where you wanna be in your personal life, if you find yourself not getting to the goal of where you want to be in your personal life, where are you spending a lot of time doing things that don't get you to where you actually want to be, that make the biggest impact for you getting to where you want to be? So, unless building a website and you're going to focus on cold lead traffic and you're going to be focusing on networking where people are just going to visit your website, you don going to focus on cold lead traffic and you're going to be focusing on like networking, where people are just going to visit your website, you don't need to be worried about your website.

Nikita Williams: 20:23

People spend a lot of time on trying to make things so pretty I have been that person. I love pretty but sometimes we get so wrapped up in making things pretty that we lose focus on the thing that actually gets people to decide whether or not they're going to work with you, which, honestly, is people knowing and seeing you and you showing up and providing value and helping them to see what's possible for them, what's possible that they believe that's impossible, right? This is what builds trust and that happens a lot faster. The reason why you end up focusing on other things that are kind of like behind the scenes, that are like small little details of things, is it's sometimes the fear of you know, the fear of success, the fear of failure, the fear of someone thinking you don't know what you're talking about. Or maybe you feel like you don't know what you're talking about. Maybe you feel like you don't have enough experience. Maybe you feel that if you haven't attained this goal right now in your life, you probably won't right.

Nikita Williams: 21:41

Your beliefs have a lot to do with where you spend your time. If you spend your time tinkering on all these little small things versus showing up and letting people learn from what you have to share your story and the way you help people solve problems and how you help people attain what they want, then you're kind of trying to keep yourself small and you can be visible and still have a modest business. You can be visible and you can be visible and you can share and support people and still have and not and still be humble, right? So it's about really identifying. Am I my? One of my coaches calls it buffering Am I buffering? Am I over here like tinkering on this Canva post forever because it needs to be perfect? Am I over here tinkering with, like the back end of my automations and everything to make sure everything is super crisp, to the point? Is my perfection my perfection of wanting everything to be so perfect where I can't show up as myself getting in the way of me getting to the next level or growing in my business? Am I doing that to myself, like? Those are some of the things to keep in mind. And lastly, this is this, is this is.

Nikita Williams: 23:04

If you haven't figured it out, this third one is like really tied to everything, but you are neglecting mindset work. You think that mindset work is not really that important. You just need to know strategy, right? So you keep trying lots of strategy, lots of different strategy. You keep learning lots of different strategies. You keep trying to do all of the strategies perfectly, and yet you aren't spending that same amount of time and effort on your mindset work, on how you believe, like what you believe about yourself, what you believe is possible, what you believe is not possible, what you believe you're worth, what you believe you're not worth. Right, what you believe creates impact and what you believe doesn't create impact and results. Right, your mindset and energy levels are significantly impacted by your actions and your results.

Nikita Williams: 24:03

So if you're spending a lot of time learning all of these different strategies and you're getting frustrated and keep trying to learn new ones, you best believe your mindset and your energy is also going to go tank tank, which means you're not going to, you're going to get stuck, you're not going to want to do stuff. You might be in that place right now. You might be in the place right now where you have been trying all of these new things and it's not working, but you're also, you haven't been paying attention to your mindset because you have just said oh, it's just, it has nothing to do with my mindset, right? So you're self-sabotaging because you keep telling yourself it's more about the strategy than about how I think about myself and about me doing the strategy. Okay, when you get your mind on board with whatever strategy you're doing, if you can fully be in it, you create better results.

Nikita Williams: 24:59

Because your mind is on board, right? Because when your mind is on board, your body's on board and these forces work together. Your mind and body work together. It's energetic, it's science, it's how it works, it's how we work. So you can't take the tool, these strategies, that you have the hammer, and expect the person using the hammer to aim correctly if they are not looking at the instruction manual of how they can use the hammer or how a person needs to be operating in order to operate that hammer effectively, right? So you have to do some of this work on yourself mindset-wise, and oftentimes we self-sabotage ourselves in thinking well, if I'm doing the strategies, then I don't need to do the mindset. If I just get perfect at doing the strategies, I don't really have to worry about the mindset work. But guess what? The strategy requires your mindset to be with you while you're implementing the strategies.

Nikita Williams: 26:05

So, if you're writing, if your strategy is podcasting to be the main way for you to get out long-form content to attract clients when you need to rest while you're dealing with whatever flare-up in life things that you actually want, and you are doing the strategy on creating content, answering questions, but your brain and your head says this isn't going to work. Nobody's going to listen to me, nobody even knows what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. You will, one, not be as clear and confident, you will, two, not be as consistent and it won't be sustainable, right? So can you get some results? Results? Absolutely, you can have like some trash mindset and get result, as long as you continue to work on your mindset intentionally.

Nikita Williams: 26:57

This is something I teach my clients like. You don't have to have a perfect mindset in order to create results. You just have to intentionally be working on your mindset all of the time, like as much as possible in order to create results. Even though you're not perfectly in your, like your mindset all of the time. Like as much as possible in order to create results. Even though you're not perfectly in your like, your mindset isn't perfect, right, you have to have the belief work behind. I am a work in progress and because I am a work in progress and my mindset's a work in progress, whatever strategies I implement are going to see the results of that, as long as I continue to intentionally work on my mindset. So don't discount this. When you work on your mindset intentionally, you actually make the strategies feel more easy, more effortless and helps you to create more results faster when you're doing the mindset work along with working on those strategies. Okay, so you might be like the key to the dog. This is kind of heavy, this is kind of deep.

Nikita Williams: 27:53

It's just a few of the self-sabotaging things that I've actually noticed working with some clients, getting some sales calls and seeing this and also just in the industry of what I'm seeing, as far as like the posts that I'm seeing and the content that I'm seeing from some people, is that there is this there are some of these things that are happening where people are leaving industries, People are deciding that this business model doesn't work or didn't, and I think a lot of these things are just symptoms of some of these sabotaging, mostly mindset things that were not dealt with before and weren't part of the reason, like weren't part of the holistic solution to how they were approaching their business, right? And so I don't want that for you. I don't want that for anyone, right? I don't want you to get to the end of the year. I mean like this is not what I want, and it's because you never asked yourself what you wanted and it's because you never actually explored what it is that you wanted.

Nikita Williams: 28:54

We get afraid of exploring, doing things that we think are impossible, because it feels uncomfortable. But what if you explore what was impossible and it didn't feel as impossible anymore? Wow, what, wow, right? So we are afraid of our feelings, we're afraid of the unknowns, we're afraid of the status quo not being our status quo, and so, therefore, we start self-sabotaging, start making ourselves smaller, we start working on things that don't really get us to the next place that we actually wanna be, and it makes us stop doing the work on our own thoughts and our own beliefs, and those things all in together affect how you're able to make money with ease or not, right? So I wanted to share that with you all. I hope this was helpful. I hope it made sense.

Nikita Williams: 29:45

I gave a much more clear, concise example of this in the email that I'm sending you, and I also did a shorter video like a real quick video about this on a loom video that I did like in while I was still like a little bit sicker than I am today, but I kind of just wanted to go like real ham on this for you all to kind of get some clarity. So how do I help you? Like not self-sabotage. In any of my containers you're working with me One in my one-to-one coaching.

Nikita Williams: 30:16

I am quick to identify when you're self-sabotaging. I also teach you to know how you are self-sabotaging. I also teach you how to go after and create a business that is not only profitable but it's sustainable for you and your energy energetically, because that is important, right? And so, because I do that with you on a one-on-one basis, I'm not just giving you support without any access to me. You get access to me, get access to a free team member to support you and getting you to where you want to go, and I also help you see things from a different perspective.

Nikita Williams: 30:53

But you start to see things from a different perspective by just changing the way you're thinking and believing about what's possible. Right, it changes everything, but you get the strategy, you get the tools you need, you get the systems and all of that to actually run your business online, living with chronic illness and make a livable income. And you get support on someone helping you to know, hey, you're about to run off a cliff, don't go over there. Right, and that's the power of one to one coaching is having someone over there with you, being like who's done it before, to be like hey, also, you're going to hit some bumps in the road. Let's try to avoid some of those bumps in the road. Let's also avoid some confusion and overwhelm that happens from advice that you're consuming from the world that's not considering what your life is like living with chronic illness. That's the kind of work that we do within our one-to-one container. So if you'd like to learn more about that, go ahead and book a call and I will see you on the next episode. Thank you so much.

Nikita Williams: 31:56

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness. If you would like to start and grow an online coaching business with me, head to the show notes to click a link to book a sales call and learn how to make money with chronic illness. You can also check out our website at wwwcraftedtothrivecom for this episode's show notes and join our email list to get exclusive content where I coach you on how to chronically grow a profitable business while living with chronic illness. Until next time, remember yes, you are crafted to thrive.