June 14, 2022
Is your "thinking" holding you back from chasing your goals and dreams? We often unconsciously sabotage ourselves thinking we are protecting ourselves when we are really just procrastinating and avoiding taking action. We wait until we feel "confident...
Is your "thinking" holding you back from chasing your goals and dreams? We often unconsciously sabotage ourselves thinking we are protecting ourselves when we are really just procrastinating and avoiding taking action.
We wait until we feel "confident enough," but the reality is that we will never feel confident enough unless we start taking action. And this is called "unconfident action."
"If you wait for confidence to strike, you will never get into a state of action." - Coach Ajit
In today's episode, Coach Ajit explores the power of taking unconfident action, the confident-competence loop, and a powerful exercise you can start practicing today to start taking action.
Key Insights:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to Master Coaching with Ajit podcast that inspires coaches to impact the lives of their clients more meaningfully. I am Coach Ajit and I'm known for coaching high performers, entrepreneurs, and leaders. I'm also a serial entrepreneur and author of many books. On this podcast, I am answering your burning questions. I'm also demonstrating and deconstructing behind-the-scenes coaching sessions.
Hello there, beautiful people. In today's episode, I wanna talk about something that came up in a conversation while I was coaching our group of Certified Business Coaches. The question... and this question gets repeatedly asked many times in one way or another. I've got this question from you as a podcast listener. I've gotten this question on my YouTube channel. I've got this question in many live calls and the question goes, Hey, Ajit, I am a new coach and I find resistance in going out and posting on social media. Hey Ajit, I'm a new coach, and I feel I'm not confident in being able to coach clients. Hey, Ajit, I am a new coach, and I feel like there needs to be some more experience I need together before I can actually go out and work with people. How do I get past this in one way or another?
The question that is really being asked is, how do I get out of my own way? How do I really stop myself from self-sabotage? How do I start putting myself into action? You see, this is a common challenge. When we are doing anything new in our lives, just take a moment and think about when was the first time you started driving a car or riding a bicycle or anything new that you ever did. Were you completely comfortable? Were you completely confident? Were you certain that you knew exactly what you needed to do more likely than not? The answer is no, you were not certain. You were not confident, but you had enough desire to keep pursuing a direction. You had enough desire to keep learning, to keep creating in the direction of the outcome that you want to have. Now you got older, you're 30, you're 40, you're 50 even, and now you're going, Hey, but this is something new at 30, 40, 50.
It seems like my life was in order. Why am I learning something new? And that's why it gets hard. You didn't find that difficult when you were 18 or 16 or 15, but because you're 30 now, you feel like it's so much more difficult. And I hear you and I see you. And I feel you because it is the same for everybody else. Most new endeavors are hard. Most new endeavors are challenging. Most new endeavors put us into an uncomfortable state. You see our mind, our body, our energy is always trying to go back into what is called homeostasis. This is a balance of energies where we are comfortable, where we feel like are aligned and we know what's happening around us. This is our desire for certainty. And so our energy balances, if it's getting too anxious, it tries to go back to normal and tries to avoid everything that will continue for us to feel anxious.
When we are feeling fear or stress about something, our body, our energy, our psychology, our emotions, everything is trying to go back to a state where we don't wanna feel the fear. We don't wanna feel. No. We want to feel certain. We wanna feel comfortable. And that's exactly what happens when something new is started in our life. When we are starting something new, guess what you're trying to do. You're trying to say, I don't really need to do this. I don't really need to do this. Let's go back to normal. Let's go back to my comfortable place. So you, your energy, your body is right now fighting every chance it gets against anything new because it doesn't wanna lean into fear. And while that may seem like a really good idea, what really is happening underneath is that you're also losing the opportunity for growth.
You're also losing the opportunity to create progress in your life. So what do we do? What do we do to get ourselves out of our heads, out of our minds, and get into some state of action so we can create progress? There are two ideas I wanna introduce. The first idea is a confidence-competence loop. What this idea suggests is that the more confident you get, the more you work towards more competence in your life. And the more competence you have, the more confidence that you get. So confidence increases with competence and competence increases with confidence, and so on and so forth. So as you're getting more competent, you're getting more confident. And so you expand into the greatest possibilities while this is a sound idea. Guess what the challenge is? The challenge is that when you are starting the loop, when you are not confident and you're not competent, you have the chicken and the egg problem.
What do you do first? How do you get confident if you're not competent? And if you're not competent, how can you get confident? So you have a challenge when you are starting something new because you can't be in the confidence competence loop. What needs to happen at that time is you need to take unconfident action. And the reason why I call it unconfident action is because, if you wait for confidence to strike, you would never get into a state of action. Which also brings me to the second idea that I want to introduce. And this idea was reemphasized in the recent movie that I watched, this movie's called Top Gun Maverick. You might have seen this movie in this movie. Maverick is the training instructor, which is played by Tom Cruise, to a group of elite fighter pilots, right? And they're about to go on an impossible mission.
And one of the students, his name is Goose. So Maverick is talking to Goose because Goose and Maverick have a backstory to themselves. And Maverick says, "Goose, the problem is that you think too much, you're so much in your head that you don't take action. You have to do, Goose. You have to do, you cannot just keep thinking about something you have to actually do." And Goose says, "Who are you to tell me that I should just do? You just doing things got my dad killed", which is the backstory that they have. And Maverick doesn't have anything to say at that time. He's tried to make his point, but Goose cannot hear it. And then they're both on a mission. Maverick is dagger one. He's trying to fly into this impossible location and bomb this enemy target really within a timeframe because if they don't hit that timeframe, they're more likely to get killed because there are fighter pilots coming to them with a much superior plane.
And so there's definitely destined to die. And so he's chasing a timeline. He's pacing himself trying to just do and get to the destination. Whereas, Goose is dagger three. He's a middle one that is trying to move the second layer of attack that they need to have. And he is thinking, he's thinking. And so he's being careful. He's being mindful. He's trying to make sure he doesn't hit something or do something that may actually get them into an accident. And what he's unaware of is that if he keeps thinking and does not take the action, if he doesn't do, they are more certain to die. And so he closes his eyes and he asks himself, what is it that I need to do right now? What is it that I need to guide me? Guide me, dad. And he hears the voice, "Goose, stop thinking. Do." And Goose, of course, listens to this, paces himself, flies really fast, bombs the location.
A nuclear land has been destroyed and everybody goes, yay. We won. And the moral of the story is that most of the time, like Goose, you may be thinking. You may be thinking that I can find a way out of the situation by thinking through it. And most of the time you can't, because what happens when you're thinking through something is you're drawing out scenarios. You're drawing out scenarios that may not ever happen. You're drawing out circumstances that may not ever happen. You're drawing out the impossible. You're drawing out the negative things that can happen. Things that can go wrong versus things that can go, right. And that is our mind trying to protect ourselves. And this is why you need to do more than think. Think about it like this. When last time you got yourself in action, what were you thinking?
You were thinking about how things will not work out, how you will reach out to a client. And they will say no, how you will reach out to somebody and they will kind of go, what are you talking about? They are not gonna look at you with the same power that they look at you. You think about judgment that people may have about you. You were thinking. Did any of that ever happen? How many times in your mind that you've drawn out a scenario and it never actually happened? If that was true, then it might be true. Now, the scenarios that you're planning, the situations that you're coming up with, may never happen. Here's an idea for you. Start your confidence-competence loop immediately by doing something. I want you to take out a piece of paper and write down each idea that you have, that you think you wanna pursue and then write down if it's comfortable or uncomfortable for you to do and rate the comfort level on a scale from one to five.
And the more comfortable the idea is, start there. Because your body, your soul, your energy is gonna resist it a lot less. It might be a simple idea like talking to a friend or joining a certification program or joining a coaching mastermind. It could be a simple idea where it invites you to go out and reach out to a neighborhood cafe, to talk to the cafe owner, and talk about business with them. It might be about hosting a circle of leaders and having conversations with them. It could be anything, the more comfortable, the idea, the more likely you are to actually execute it. And that puts you into unconfident action. Once you take unconfident action, you will find that most things that you assumed will happen do not happen. And because they do not happen, you will actually start creating momentum. And as you create momentum, you'll find more confidence.
And as you find more confidence, you'll reach out to more people and you'll actually practice the skill of coaching practice, the skill that you've been wanting to practice, and you will get more competent. And as you get more competent, you'll start to gain more confidence. And the loop finally will start where you'll get more confident and you'll get more competent and you'll be able to create more results in the world than you have ever done before. So next time, when you start to sabotage yourself, when you start to wonder if everything is gonna go, all right, or not, when you start to challenge all the ideas and strategies that you have, when you let fear come over you, when you're about to do something, I invite you to take unconfident action, to create movement in your life, to create momentum in your life. So you can move towards something that is more outcome-oriented versus more fear-oriented.
Here's what I want you to do next. Go ahead and follow this podcast. And the reason why I want you to follow this podcast is so every single time you're about to sabotage yourself. You can listen to my voice, telling you how you can take unconfident action, how you can create progress, how you can do things that you otherwise may think are impossible for you because they are already possible for you. And I want to support you in any way possible. So you can continue to master coaching, so that you can continue to create the impact that you want to have in the world, so that you continue to create the abundance you wanna create for yourself in the world. I want to be that voice in your head that tells you that you can do it. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Coach Ajit and you're listening to Master Coaching with Ajit.