EPISODE 049 | Are You Making Things Harder Than They Need to Be?

Are there days where you question if you’re making things harder than they need to be? 

Or maybe there are times where you’re so in the thick of it, that you don’t even realize there might be an easier way…

Well, my friend, you are not alone.

And on today’s episode, we’re going to shine a light on times in our business journey where we may very well be making things more challenging than they need to be. We’re also going to explore some reasons on why this is and what we can do about it moving forward.

If you resonate with this episode and you have a story about a time where you made something harder than it needs to be, I would love to hear about it! Connect with me on IG @otsgonerogue or through our Facebook page @otsgonerogue or better yet, make a post or create a story and share it to your own social media profile, as a way of bringing your audience along on your journey. Don’t forget to tag me so I can be there to cheer you on!

And if you have any questions or feedback on the podcast, please don't hesitate to reach out: https://www.otsgonerogue.com/podcast-contact

Transcript

Melissa LaPointe [00:00:06]:
You're listening to the OTs Gone Rogue podcast where we inspire therapists to think outside the box and do things differently. I'm your host, Melissa Lapointe. My passion is in helping OT entrepreneurs have a bigger impact on the world while building a life they love and doing transformative work that lights them up. On each episode of the show, I'm gonna share tools and tricks to help you flex your entrepreneurial muscles and grow your business from the inside out. I wanna see more OTs step up as visionary leaders, change makers, and influential CEOs. So let's get started. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. Here I am patting myself on the back, showing up for the 3rd week in a row.

Melissa LaPointe [00:01:02]:
So a big part of this weekly commitment is all about showing up more consistently for my audience. But in all honesty, so much of this journey is about learning to show up more consistently for myself. Now I'm recording this episode after a really long couple of weeks with way too much screen time, with not enough sleep, and definitely some ups and downs, which is kind of fitting giving the topic of the episode. Because as I look back on the last 14 days and the amount of work hours I've put in, I can very clearly see that the only person responsible for my situation is me, leading me to the topic of today's episode, this idea of making things harder for ourselves than they need to be. Now it's not often that I claim to be an expert at something, but when it comes to taking the harder roundabout way to a specific destination that requires more energy, more time, more resources, Yeah. I'm pretty darn good at that. I'm not gonna lie. It's also a conversation that I've been having with a lot of my coaching clients.

Melissa LaPointe [00:02:31]:
And honestly, I'm guessing that there are a lot of listeners out there who do this as well. And in my experience, when we talk about something, when we bring it to light, when we bring more awareness to it, we can then work on changing our thoughts and our habits. Okay. So this concept of making things harder than they need to be. What do I mean? Well, when I was prepping for this episode, I did a brain dump, a very big brain dump. I'm laughing. It's like, there were a lot of things that I'm like, oh, gosh. Which ones do I wanna talk about? So a brain dump of things I've personally experienced, as well as times I've had this come up with my coaching clients.

Melissa LaPointe [00:03:23]:
So there are some strong themes in this brain dump. So I wanna go through some of these examples and see if you relate to any of them. Then we're gonna do a deeper dive into why it is that we do these things in the first place. So we're going to start by going back in time to my first ever website as an entrepreneur. If you're a long time listener, you may recall some of the many stories that I've shared about this website. I think I've done a deeper dive in sharing on calls with some of my clients in our programs, but I've definitely mentioned it on the podcast as well. So it was a time in my business. I was a newbie.

Melissa LaPointe [00:04:10]:
So okay. Back up. I wasn't a newbie in many ways, but I was new to entrepreneurship. And I was working on establishing myself, so I was maybe a year into declaring myself as an entrepreneur, but I still didn't relate to calling myself an entrepreneur. And part of the story I had in my head was that people wouldn't take me seriously until I had a website, which is false. That's another conversation for another day, but that was a story I was telling myself. And I was working on establishing myself in our small rural community as not only a private pediatric therapist, which I was already well known for. I had been practicing peds for 7 years in our community at that point, and I was really good at it.

Melissa LaPointe [00:05:00]:
I had a really strong reputation for the work that I was doing. But I also was trying to establish myself in a new niche. So I was working on establishing myself as a women's health therapist when there were not many OTs working in women's health. I also wanted to be known as the go to person in our community for prenatal, postnatal health. So there was definitely some imposter syndrome sneaking in. I was also working on establishing myself in the OT community as a trailblazer in women's health. And I shouldn't say I was working on it. At that point, I had established myself in the OT community, and I knew that there were a lot of OTs around the globe who were watching what I was doing and who were paying attention to how I was showing up.

Melissa LaPointe [00:05:55]:
I didn't even have a niche yet. I don't think honestly I even knew what a niche was at that point. I had no consistent flow of revenue, And yet, somehow, I had decided in my head that this very first website, this very first business name, this first business logo, this would be what would make it or break it. This would be what would determine my success. I put so much pressure on myself to get this website right. For that matter, I put so much pressure on the website itself. At the time, I knew nothing about websites. I thought I did.

Melissa LaPointe [00:06:35]:
I had done tons of research. I had looked at hundreds of websites, but I knew nothing about direct response marketing and lead magnets. I knew nothing about blogs, but someone had told me that I really needed a blog. So, of course, I designed or rather I paid someone to build me a website that included a blog feature. I knew nothing about HTML sites and coding and custom builds, But I trusted a web designer, and they convinced me that based on the work I was doing and where I wanted to go in terms of my audience growth, that this was exactly what I needed. Again, I was very naive at the time. I honestly don't know how much exactly that website ended up costing me in the long run. So anytime I needed to make any changes, even if I saw a typo, which would irk me to no end, I would have to submit a ticket request to get it changed, and they would charge me $75 an hour.

Melissa LaPointe [00:07:43]:
I couldn't do anything. I had no idea how to work this website. It was in HTML code. I never, full disclosure, intentionally added up the actual numbers. I have it. We submitted our taxes. I did my books that year, or rather I paid someone too, but I never added up those invoices out of self preservation. And I cannot tell you how many hours I put into writing copy and rewriting copy and rewriting copy, writing blogs and rewriting blogs, over analyzing every single dropdown menu and image, again, without any understanding of how to build an audience and of website functionality.

Melissa LaPointe [00:08:29]:
So this is a fabulous example of making things way harder than they needed to be. So I hope some of you who are at the beginning of your journey with websites, I hope you're listening to some of the really tough lessons that I had to learn. I put off so many things back then. I remember saying to my friends, to my family, to myself, no, I can't. No, I can't commit to that. No, I can't go to that event. No, I can't go on that trip. No, I can't.

Melissa LaPointe [00:09:03]:
I can't. I can't. I can't. Not until the website's done. I have to focus on the website, and I did this for weeks, if not months. I put so much pressure on myself and on this bloody website thinking that that would be what would get me on the map for my consulting, for my role emerging work in women's health, and for my business. I told myself a lot of stories about what people would think, about what people would say, and how they would react when they landed on my website. There were a lot of sleepless nights.

Melissa LaPointe [00:09:37]:
Was a tremendous amount of financial stress, little bit of anxiety. Okay. There was a lot of anxiety. We went way over budget. I think we doubled. So what they quoted me, pretty sure we doubled that in terms of my investment. I couldn't get out of this contract. The website designer, the owner of the agency that I worked with at the end, oh my gosh, I remember just seeing her emails coming up and not even opening the email, but having these stress responses because I was trying to get out of this contract with her, and it wasn't even a contract.

Melissa LaPointe [00:10:12]:
I was just trying to get my credit card info back and stop working with them, and it was really tough. It impacted my relationship with my husband because this was all going down the first couple of years in business when I wasn't generating a profit. I was very far from a profit. I wasn't paying myself all of my money, my savings. It was being funneled into this damn website. So I went through periods of shame, embarrassment, stress, isolating myself from my friends and my family all over a website. Now I kicked this off with a pretty intense story because in hindsight, I can see that I was going through a really complex stage in my life. My husband and I were going through a very complicated stage in our marriage, and I think I was projecting a lot of my stuff onto this website process.

Melissa LaPointe [00:11:07]:
Meaning, it is what it is. I am now at peace with it. And, yes, this is 1 of the hardest stages of my entrepreneurial entrepreneurial journey, hands down, but I was able to come out on the other side. But, wow, did I ever make that first website a lot harder than it needed to be? And notice I keep saying first, my first website, my first business name, my first logo, meaning that, yes, there have been many variations, not many, but we've had different variations since then, and I've learned so much easier. My current logo, I've created it myself, and I'm pretty darn happy with it. So, again, wherever you are on your journey, I hope that you can come out on the other side. It is by taking action that we gain clarity and you can do this. Right? If I can get through that, you can get through whatever it is you're going through.

Melissa LaPointe [00:12:08]:
Alright. Another time that I made things way harder than they needed to be was in my journey as an online content creator. Now full disclosure, when I think of my journey as an online content creator, there are many aspects of this that I could share in terms of making things harder. So that time I had 2 businesses, 2 niches, 2 audiences, 2 email lists, for example, but I'm not gonna go into that 1. My journey with thumbnails and how complicated I was making all of the thumbnails. I've simplified it a lot. We're not gonna go into that 1. But what I wanna share is about how I was showing up on video.

Melissa LaPointe [00:12:49]:
So in the early stages so my first online course, I created it in 2015. So around 2015, that's when I started to show up consistently on video. So that in and of itself was a big step for me. Never liked seeing myself on camera. Never liked seeing myself on video. But when you commit to an online course, okay, you're in it. And what I'm about to share so, yeah, this started in 2015, but in all honesty, it's only been in the last year or so that I've made some changes to make things easier on myself. Okay.

Melissa LaPointe [00:13:24]:
Let's back up so you know what I'm talking about. So 2015, recording my first video content. I was, again, putting a lot of pressure on myself to get things right. You guys are recognizing any themes in my life here? Okay. So I was, at the time, looking to other online course creators for inspiration. And, of course, I was looking at a lot of industry leaders with a very different operations budget and access to very different recording equipment or a different level of a recording setup. So here I was with a toddler underfoot, a husband working really long hours, not a lot of flexibility in his schedule, not a lot of family support, part time childcare, and I was running back and forth between my tiny home and this office space that I was renting in town. And I was trying so hard to make everything look professional.

Melissa LaPointe [00:14:26]:
I was going through a ton of wardrobe changes. I was trying to do my hair differently. I was trying to do my makeup differently. So matching my eye shadow palette and the color of my blush and my lip gloss with different shirts that I had on, with different backgrounds often in the same space, but I was moving furniture around and I was moving plants around. I don't know why I had it in my head that novel tea was a good thing. There would be times that I would show up at my office with a ring light, a microphone, a stand, and sometimes my stand was actually several boxes, and a bag of outfits. So I'd have 4 different outfit changes. I would be recording bits at a time before pulling off 1 shirt, throwing on another shirt, pulling my hair up, taking my hair down, trying to get a different look.

Melissa LaPointe [00:15:18]:
Why I had it in my head that each video needed to have a different look? Again, I don't know. But it was exhausting, and everything was taking so much longer. It required so much more effort. And at that time, I wasn't sleeping. Well, I was trying to sleep, but Max was waking me up every 90 minutes. There were just so many things going on, but it doesn't end there. So when you record content for a course or a program, there does come a time where you're going to want to update the information, and maybe you don't want to rerecord the entire course. Maybe you want to rerecord parts of the course or parts of a particular lesson.

Melissa LaPointe [00:16:07]:
It's a natural evolution to program creation, which is why I always encourage my students to not invest in a fancy videographer, to not invest in all these edits, or in overly edited videos in general until their offer is more established, and they've had some people going through the content, till they're more confident in the delivery of the content. Trust me when I say you're going to change it. So especially in the early stages of your offer success journey, it's okay for it to be a little bit rough around the edges. And when you're wearing all these different outfits and your hair is styled differently in each video and all you wanna do is replace 5 minutes of content or add on an addendum to the video? Matching it up and making everything flow, you guys, is so much harder, especially when you're doing it all yourself. So fast forward to today. Today. So I say today, like the last 6 months, the last 9 months, I have 3 black shirts that I rotate between. My hair is always the same, same product, same process of styling it, which in full disclosure is to put mousse in it and let it air dry.

Melissa LaPointe [00:17:30]:
My makeup is always the same. I try to record my program videos using the same lighting in the same room, ideally, same as often as possible. My students now have very little concept on the timeline of when I recorded the videos. Sometimes it looks like everything was recorded in the same day, same background, same lighting, same look. But in reality, the video recordings were done over a period of months. It also helps significantly with decision fatigue. When I'm getting ready to be on camera, I don't have to overthink what to wear. I just go to my closet and I grab 1 of my 3 black shirts.

Melissa LaPointe [00:18:14]:
To go back in time. Oh my goodness. And offer these words of wisdom to Melissa from 6 or 7 years ago. Doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be easy. And if people are going to be going through my programs and judging me on like, oh my gosh, she's wearing that black shirt again. That's not where first of all, it's not who I'm attracting into my audience, so I've learned to let that go.

Melissa LaPointe [00:18:45]:
And that's not where my energy is right now. I'm more focused on the actual content I'm putting out, on the actual content that's going into my program. And, of course, I want the delivery to be good, but I can work on the delivery when I'm not exhausting myself on outfit changes and hairstyles and makeup. Oh, I'm just so still thinking back in time and how many hours of my life went into that. Okay. Speaking of recording, I have 1 more story about when I was making things so much harder than they needed to be. Most of you have heard me talk about my trips to the East Coast. So usually in the summer months is when we fly across the country to visit my friends and family on Prince Edward Island.

Melissa LaPointe [00:19:36]:
I love my time there in so many ways. It is a great opportunity to slow down and connect with so many people who are near and dear to my heart. But do you know what's not good about PEI? The Internet connection. My parents live in a rural area of the island, and whether I'm hardwired into their Internet or, you know, there are mornings where literally I ban everyone. No. No iPads, no other computers. Like everyone get off the Internet. I have a call.

Melissa LaPointe [00:20:10]:
Or if I'm trying to use my data plan. Oh my gosh. I cannot explain to you how painfully slow the Internet is. My Zoom meetings freeze. I can't get onto things. I can't upload things. Sometimes I can't get landing pages or websites to load. Uploading a 20 minute video can take in excess of 3 to 4 hours, and actually, there was 1 time trying to upload a 20 minute video took 21 hours.

Melissa LaPointe [00:20:40]:
Processing any type of video or audio is a nightmare. And yet every summer, I would go home and I would extend my trip. So I was location independent and wanted to take advantage of this. I can work from wherever. Isn't that 1 of the benefits of working from wherever? You can have workations all the time. So I would get it in my head that I could stay longer, which was great for me and great for Max. I could spend more time with my parents, more time with my brother, more time with my friends and my family. If I set up shop at my parents house, and made it a workcation of sorts.

Melissa LaPointe [00:21:19]:
And every summer without fail, between 2013 and 2021, I would spend a significant part of my time in PEI cursing and swearing at the Internet, feeling like I was in the dark ages with everything taking so much longer than it needed to. Add that to the fact that my parents are super social people with an open door policy. They are always ready to welcome in company and to entertain. They have friends and family dropping in all the time, unexpectedly and without warning. And they have hardwood floor throughout the house where the front door the front door is at the end of the hallway, basically sound travels. What I'm getting at is it's always noisy, not noisy, but sound travels, and there's always social activity happening. Now, this is 1 of the reasons why I love going to PEI. I cherish those spontaneous visits and the connections we have with our friends, our family, and our neighbors.

Melissa LaPointe [00:22:25]:
But when I'm also trying to work, it is tough. So let's take a step back here for a moment. Here I am, my own boss, where I get to determine where I work, when I work, and how I work. Meaning, the solution to this situation is pretty obvious, isn't it? But it took me a while to act on it. So this is such a great example of making things harder than they need to be. So last year, summer of 2022, I decided to make my life easier. I shortened my trip to PEI. We stayed for just under 3 weeks instead of 4 and a half, 5 weeks, which, actually, I discovered was a pretty sweet amount of time to be there.

Melissa LaPointe [00:23:14]:
I also committed to doing minimal amounts of work. So that was the agreement I made with my mom. We're going for less amounts of time, but I will be more present. I will not be distracted. I will not be trying to multitask work calls. I'm going to embrace the slower pace, and I'm going to use this time for some much needed r and r. Meaning, I went into the situation realistic with my surroundings and realistic with my work expectations. So, yeah, it meant I wasn't able to stay as long.

Melissa LaPointe [00:23:49]:
I had to get back to work. Couldn't take this, you know, 5, 6 week, maybe someday, but I'm not there yet. So I had to get back to work. I had to get back to generating revenue act you know, revenue generating activity. But it was a lovely trip, and everyone commented on how present I was. And I felt really good. I got to actually enjoy my time with everyone. From a work standpoint, my team knew that I was on vacation.

Melissa LaPointe [00:24:16]:
We had planned for it well in advance. Everyone knew I was gonna be offline for a few weeks. With my group programs, all of our students knew that we had no video calls scheduled during that time. With my 1 on 1 clients, they knew that I was available through email and through Voxer. They knew there was 1 week that I totally, like, I am unavailable, black out on my schedule altogether. But for the rest of the time, we just didn't do 1 on 1 video calls. I had a couple of WhatsApp calls with someone, so someone that was international. And we had Voxer messages back and forth, and it was fine.

Melissa LaPointe [00:24:51]:
It wasn't a big deal. But most importantly, I didn't feel like I was letting everyone down or that I was screwing things up because I was trying to carry the world on my shoulders. We can set ourselves up for success by being realistic with our time, our energy, and our resources, Or we can put this huge amount of pressure on ourselves by being unrealistic with what we're able to do in a given amount of time. Okay. I have 1 more example. I wanna talk about program launches because program launches are a big 1. And I know that a lot of my clients, my coaching clients, can relate. So for any of our listeners who are relatively new to the online space, a program launch often involves a specific time where we're building up momentum, otherwise known as our launch runway.

Melissa LaPointe [00:25:51]:
So we're building up this launch runway, which takes a different type of strategy, a different type of energy, and then there's a specific time on the calendar where we have cart open, cart close. So a cart open, cart close period. There are a lot of moving parts to a launch. Now you can make it somewhat simple. You can make it very complicated. You get to choose. But in general, even with a simple launch, there are a lot of moving parts. So you have to choose your launch mechanism.

Melissa LaPointe [00:26:27]:
You have to get clear on your content strategy and how you're going to connect and grow your audience. Then you have to actually execute on this launch plan that you've created, which is often when people feel like they're hitting this glass ceiling in terms of their time, their capabilities, and their energy levels. Oftentimes, there's also work being done simultaneously on the offer itself. So there's tweaking the onboarding system or writing the welcome sequence or adding new content. Launches in general can be this beautifully orchestrated machine, especially once we get into this rinse and repeat process where we're getting some help from people on our team, but it takes a while to get there. In the process of getting there, These are things that you've never done before. So each and every launch, we're trying to grow and evolve in terms of our systems, our processes, in terms of our audience growth. And launches, inevitably can feel very, very messy and out of control.

Melissa LaPointe [00:27:50]:
People often completely underestimate the mindset work and the energy that goes into a program launch until they are in it. This is where so okay. I have to do a quick plug for our 0 to 60 program because that's 1 of the things that we really hone in on is program launches. So, yes, they can be overwhelming. They can feel messy. But what we do in our 0 to 60 program is, basically, we're holding your hand through your program launches, and we're working with you to build out a stronger launch mechanism and a more established rinse and repeat process. Alright. There.

Melissa LaPointe [00:28:33]:
I had to share that because I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty awesome program, But I digress, back to launches. So how do we make them harder than they need to be? Well, we do this in a few ways. 1 of the things that I've supported a lot of our clients through, and I'm guilty of doing this myself, is to create this wonderful, amazing launch plan that sounds awesome in theory, but then reality hits. Tech doesn't work how we want it to. Things take longer than we anticipate. Sometimes life throws us curve balls, and we can't keep up. Instead of letting things go or adjusting our expectations or simplifying what's involved, we instead cling to this launch plan like it is the only way. And we beat ourselves up repeatedly for not following through.

Melissa LaPointe [00:29:26]:
We become overwhelmed with our growing to do list and with this shrinking container of time that we have, the looming deadlines that we've assigned to ourselves. Keep in mind that these to do lists, these timelines we've set for ourselves. Meaning so often there are things that we can modify, there are things that we can change without anyone ever knowing. But, again, we're so determined to follow through because we've created the story in our minds that this is what it's going to take to succeed, that this is the way to do things. And yes, many of us are overachievers who like to not only hit our goals, but surpass our goals. So hitting our goals and then some. I remember 1 time I was gearing up for a program launch, and part of my launch mechanism was to host a free webinar. So I was hope hosting a free webinar where I was sharing more about my story, and I was taking people you know, I forget what the topic of the webinar was.

Melissa LaPointe [00:30:37]:
I think it was on c section recovery, actually. And this was a way that I was building my audience. So there are essentially 2 goals to a program launch. 1 is launching your program and generating revenue, getting enrollments. But another big goal, a a reason for launching is to grow your audience. So they they work simultaneously. At the time, I was enrolled in a program that provided an execution guide for webinars. So they had promised all I had to do was open this checklist, follow the execution guide, like, follow the steps.

Melissa LaPointe [00:31:12]:
It's all done for me. Well, no. It wasn't done, but the outline was there. I just had to plug it in to my own business and I was good to go. Mind you, what they didn't say was that this execution guide is what they use in their business that has 8 full time employees on their team. So that was in tiny fine print. Here I was trying to multitask. I had clinical work on the go.

Melissa LaPointe [00:31:40]:
I was parenting a small child. I was managing a home. I was still in the early stages of entrepreneurship where I had little help, so doing everything myself. Then I got sick. I had this awful head cold, so I was all stuffed up. I was trying to recover from that. And I remember a few days before promoting this webinar, we received terrible news about a friend's little girl. So this news shook me to my core.

Melissa LaPointe [00:32:09]:
I was so distracted. I was so upset. I wasn't feeling well and it was taking everything in my power to not freak out at the idea of hosting a webinar for a couple hundred people. Because that at that point, when I was hosting webinars, we were getting that many people that we would get 3, 400 people signing up, and I was hosting webinars. Generally, we would have a couple 100 people, not always showing up live, but going through the replay. Right? So live replay combo. And this was my original goal. This is what I was going for.

Melissa LaPointe [00:32:46]:
And pardon pardon my language, but everything that was going on in that week so the week before, the week after, it was just 1 big shit show. Thankfully, I was in a coaching program at the time. And when I say I was in a coaching program, so I had someone I could reach out to. I had someone I could reach out to and get on a call and help me sort out my thoughts and guide me out of this state of overwhelm. So my coach asked me some really important questions. She asked me, what would it look like, Melissa, if this webinar was easy? What would it look like if you were to show up for your audience and have fun? When you look at your to do list, what feels really heavy? Is there anything on your to do list that can be put off until later? What will you make it mean if you put it off until later? And is that true? What else might that mean? Is there anything on your to do list that can be simplified? So she helped me to take a big step back and look at the situation with a different perspective, the different set of eyes. That's what a very skilled coach will help you to do. And, of course, 1 of the more powerful questions that she asked me, Melissa, if this was 1 of your coaching clients going through this situation, how would you show up for them? What would you say to them? How would you guide them through this scenario? That really helped for me to see that I was in my own way because different ways that I would work with a client, you know, that's when the wheel started turning and I was getting different ideas and different downloads of of a different way of doing things.

Melissa LaPointe [00:35:01]:
Because I can tell you now that I am a lot better at showing up from a place of understanding and compassion for my clients than I am for myself. Something I'm working on, but it's definitely something that I'm aware of doing. So in the end, my new goal was to promote the webinar in 1 Facebook group. I wasn't running ads. I wasn't going to show up in all of the Facebook groups. I picked just 1, and I was going to promote the webinar to my email list. My intention was to show up and practice the delivery of my slide deck. I don't even remember if I ended up promoting my program.

Melissa LaPointe [00:35:41]:
Basically, I let go of my expectations. I adjusted my expectations, and that was it. Was I successful in building my audience? Yeah. I was. I think we ended up getting a 100 people on our list from that webinar. Was it an earth shattering number of participants that enrolled in my program? Like, did I knock it out of the park? I like I said, I don't think I actually even talked about my program. I think I just let that go and bumped the timeline out a little bit. Does that mean I failed and that I suck and that I'm lazy and never follow through on things? No.

Melissa LaPointe [00:36:18]:
Those are stories I can tell myself sometimes. So if I'm not intentional with my thoughts, if I'm not bringing more awareness to the swirling beliefs that are in this head of mine yeah. But I was really intentional with showing up from a place of compassion and acknowledging that in that moment, I was doing the best that I could with the resources and the support that I had, and I was okay with that. People vastly underestimate the inner work that goes into this journey of entrepreneurship until you're in it. When you're in it, you get it. So as we start to wrap this episode up, I want to share some theories on why we make this so much harder than it needs to be. I've already shared some thoughts on how many of us are overachievers and we get focused on sticking to this plan, sticking to this idea that we've laid out in front of us. But sometimes we can go deeper and there's more to it than that.

Melissa LaPointe [00:37:28]:
I know for me, I've worked with a lot of coaches and therapists over the years. So I've worked with them in that I've coached them, but I also have invested in their services. I've invested in their programs. So I've been diving head first into personal growth and self acceptance where I'm working on improving my relationship with myself and with my self awareness. And a lot of this work has involved taking a deeper look into the subconscious beliefs that are swirling around in my head. So during 1 very powerful session with 1 of my coaches, I was able to uncover this belief that I've been carrying around for a long time. That in order to succeed, in order to do something good in the world with my business, there must be sacrifice. Meaning, for something good to happen, I have to personally give something up.

Melissa LaPointe [00:38:28]:
This was tie tied to another belief I had been been carrying around that in order to succeed in business means I won't be available as a mom to Max. So to succeed in business means I'm going to have more on my plate. I'm going to have to work harder. I'm going to be more distracted. I'm going to work longer hours. I'm going to have less time, and I won't be as present of a partner, a wife, or a parent. Now I'm not saying these are truths. I'm saying these are beliefs that I was carrying around unknowingly, and on some level I was acting as if they were truths.

Melissa LaPointe [00:39:12]:
So, of course, I was running into resistance. Of course, I was running into limiting self so these limiting beliefs and self sabotage in terms of growing my business. Of course. Being there for my family and being a good mom, these are my core drivers. These are my whys. And if on some level, I was associating this idea that leveling up in my business or hitting a new level or a different stage of my business meant sacrificing my why, of course, I'm going to find ways of holding back. Another belief that I uncovered during the coaching session was this idea that I wasn't enough and that I wasn't deserving of success. So that was a hard 1.

Melissa LaPointe [00:40:05]:
Correction. That is still a hard 1 because I'm still working on it, and it ties into a lot of stories from my childhood. So things that I'm still carrying around with me. This idea that I'm not worthy, that I'm not enough, that I'm not deserving of great things. This is lifelong work, letting go of these beliefs, of these stories, and intentionally choosing a different way of talking to myself. This is what I mean by growing your business from the inside out. I've said it once and I will say it again, being the face of your business is like personal growth on steroids. So as we finish this episode, I want to encourage you to keep your head up and continue to work on your own stuff.

Melissa LaPointe [00:41:02]:
Be careful with the stories you're telling yourself because our words are powerful. So instead of saying, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed, try saying, I'm having overwhelming thoughts, and I have the power to change my situation. I have the power to choose what's on my plate in this moment and what I'm saying yes to. Instead of saying to yourself, oh my goodness, I am so lost. I don't know what to do. Try saying, I've never done this before, so I'm feeling confused, but that can be expected. And on the other side of confusion is clarity, and I have the knowledge and the resources to figure this out. Instead of putting your head down and trying to figure everything out on your own, I want you to hold your head up and take note, look around who's in your support system, who's in your network.

Melissa LaPointe [00:42:03]:
If you're listening to this, I think of you as being in our rogue community, meaning you have access to so many resources and so many amazing people. You're not the only 1 going through this situation and you're not alone. Okay. I could talk about this stuff all day long. And in all honesty, I think we should be talking about this stuff more frequently than we do. But I do have an agreement with my podcast editor on how long these episodes will go. So I think that's enough of a deep dive for now. As always, if you have any questions or feedback or if there's a scenario you're struggling with and you want to share it, go ahead and reach out.

Melissa LaPointe [00:42:51]:
You can find me on Instagram, or you can go to the OTs gone rogue.com website and use our contact us form. Most importantly, do your best to take some of what I've shared on this episode and apply it to your own life. When you're feeling stuck or overwhelmed, I want you to imagine me so a tiny version of me sitting on your shoulder and gently asking, is this the only way? Is there another way of doing things? Is there something you can do to make this less overwhelming or less complicated? Because I promise there's always a solution or a workaround that can make our lives easier. All right, my friends. That is it for today. Take care. Share this episode with someone in your life who could benefit from these words of wisdom, and I'll talk to you next week.