GIRL – Today we’re getting REALLY honest about how it feels when we get knocked down and have to try REALLY hard to pick ourselves back up. We’re talking about how we can PLAN for the setbacks and the roadblocks so that we don’t stay STUCK and that we can QUICKLY get out of that FUNK! Are you ready?! Let’s dive in and do this, girl!
In today’s episode, I reference a recent book that I read (John Acuff’s – FINISH) that will help you better plan for “the day after perfect” — check it out!
I am so dang proud of you for all of the hard work that you’re doing. I can’t wait to see where these steps are going to lead you! Click here to listen to the podcast and let’s dive even deeper on this topic!
XO,
Krista
View the Full Transcript:
Hey girl, and welcome to the Sheep Calls or Shots podcast, where we’re all about making a bigger impact while learning how to live bolder, brighter, and happier lives. My name is Krista, and I’m a photographer, coach, and an entrepreneur, and I am so excited to dig in, do the work, and tackle our biggest goals together.
In this community, we are committed to taking massive action in our lives and in our business, while also learning to celebrate progress over perfection. And in this podcast, we focus on the real talk. In every episode, we’ll deep dive into honest and open conversations about life. Business relationships and inner growth, and we’ll share insight and tips on how to play a bigger game and ultimately live a life that we truly love.
So girlfriend, let’s make some moves and start calling our own shots. Hey girl. I am really excited about today’s episode, but if I’m being honest, I’m also, I was also really hesitant to record this episode today. Because honestly, I wanna keep this podcast real. I want this podcast to be an honest representation of not only where I am, but meeting you to where you are in your life.
And this episode, I mean, the fact that you’re listening to it right now, I’m, makes me really proud because that means that I recorded it, I put it out into the world, and, uh, I just, you know, I did it and I stopped making excuses. Honestly, I, I took a break from the podcast for little over a month at the end of 2020.
But it was really an unintentional break. I wasn’t giving myself space to create, or like time away, you know, for my own creativity really. It was mostly because I was running around in a hamster wheel trying to create new content every single week. And then things got really busy in life and my schedule picked up and my sessions picked up and it was the end of the year.
And inevitably I, I fell off that content wheel and I just felt. Stuck. I felt stuck in my own mind. I was overthinking everything. I felt like I wasn’t creative enough to come up with another, you know, podcast topic. And I really just felt like my creativity was gone. And maybe you can relate to this. I found myself starting to tell myself this, this false, you know, truth, that even if I got back on, you know, The content creation train that I, I wouldn’t be able to maintain it.
I was doubting myself and my abilities and before I even sat down to write the episode outline, I was already telling myself that I shouldn’t do it. And you know, I know this year has been difficult for everybody, for both you and I, you know, especially, you know, you’re listening to this podcast which is centered around personal growth, and I know.
That. We’ve had some moments this year where we’ve had to push through some really hard things. There were some times where we melt of, you know, we might have felt like we were watching ourselves flourish and we were hitting our stride, and we saw ourselves taking really big steps towards our goals. But then we also had times where, you know, we felt like we weren’t enough.
We doubted ourselves. We doubted our ability. We were afraid to make our voice heard. We were afraid to even take the steps to make our biggest dreams happen. And I, I listened to an audio book a couple of weeks ago that was specifically focused around this idea of picking yourself back up when you fall off track.
And it wasn’t by coincidence, coincidence that I found this book. I. I searched out this book because of, you know, the place that I found myself in creatively and mentally. And I searched for something that I felt like would help, you know, give me answers or get me back to where I wanted to be. And the book is called Finish and it’s by, um, John ak.
And I wanted to just share a few of my favorite takeaways in hopes that if you are feeling like you’re in the same boat, Even though it’s a new year, it’s so easy to find ourselves getting lost in this idea of being too afraid to even start. You know, we might have these big goals and these dreams and these visions and these things that are placed on our heart that we know.
We know we need to take action on, but sometimes it’s just hard. So my hope for you today is that I can share some of these tips and share some of these things that I learned from going through this season to help you have some extra tools in your toolbox to help you conquer those feelings when they happen.
So in the book, he talks often about, you know, this intentionality around planning for the day after. Perfect. And basically what he’s talking about is inevitably in our goals when we’re pushing towards something big, we’re going to miss a deadline, right? Like we’re gonna fall off track, we’re gonna have a day where we succeed, and then we’re gonna have a day right after where we just completely miss the mark.
Either we just don’t show up. You know, something life gets in the way. We have a curve ball that’s thrown at us, whatever it might be. And it’s kind of this idea of not only just accepting and acknowledging that there’s, you know, going to be an end to your quote unquote, like your perfect streak, right?
Like, you’re gonna be on your stride. There’s going to be a day when, when we kind of hit a snag and where things fall a little out of line. And for me, when, you know, I talk about this often when I think of this idea of perfectionism, I often think about how, you know, I, I personally don’t wanna let the idea of being perfect stop me from starting on my dreams, for me to be completely honest, starting something new and scary where I feel like I might suck in the beginning, or it might be hard, or I won’t be, you know.
Perfect. Or you know, I may not be exactly what I want to be in the beginning. I am okay with that. That’s usually something like I’m all about that. Like the underdog, the person who works their way up from the bottom and who like started with nothing and then grew it into something big. I am usually very good about pushing perfectionism aside and starting something new.
And for you, you might be able to relate to this, you know, you know. The idea of like writing that crappy first draft or like flopping through your first workout and having to pause to catch your breath, you know, halfway through, fumbling through my first podcast episode, even if I sweat through my t-shirt, because I was so nervous, right?
Like listening to this audiobook, I, I realized, and I recognized that that is a, you know, a side of perfectionism that I usually plan for. But this idea of perfectionism, the idea of planning for the day after perfect, the day when you miss the mark, the day when you miss the deadline, it made me realize that I haven’t done a very good job of really proactively planning for that day.
So I, I really loved the book. I highly recommend it again. It’s called, um, finish by John ak. And it’s really, you know, he talks about how will you not only celebrate that day when you hit the snag, but also continue working towards your goals without feeling like a failure. And it’s, it’s hard when we don’t hit our goals, right?
Like, we have so much excitement and belief tied up into these milestones, you know, that. When we hit that day after perfect. Or rather, when we have our first hiccup and we fall off track, it sometimes can feel like a pretty big jab to our ego when we mess up, because inevitably when we hit that snag, you know, in comes the self-doubt, the comparison of ourselves to others.
That inner critic voice that tells you. You know, you can’t do this. Like think of all the times when you failed in the past, what made you think that you’d be any different Today, like all of these voices that start to just fill up space in our head, and it’s so easy for it to just turn into a downward spiral.
But here’s the thing, the rela the realization that I had, and although you know, It’s not revolutionary. Nothing I ever say on this podcast I ever feel like is like, oh, you’ve never heard this before. Like, I’m sure this is something that you’ve not only heard, but you’ve probably thought about yourself.
But really this idea was the thing that pulled me out of this funk and had me even start to write this episode. It’s the idea that at the end of the day, no one is judging you around how fast you accomplished your goal. Or rather, if you had any hiccups or mishaps along the way, think about the people that you admire, the people that you feel like have made big revolutionary change.
No one is writing that, you know, biography and writing out their timeline to criticize them of how long it took them to get to where. You know, they were at the end of the day, and actually usually when we see that someone that we feel like has found success, when we see that they have faced adversity, that they had obstacles that were presented to them, that they sometimes fell flat on their face.
And they got back up and they did it again the next day. We admire that quality in someone and no one is sitting here saying, oh, I can’t believe it took them X amount of days, or like this amount of weeks, you know, to finish their goal or to get back on track. No one’s saying that we’re just admiring that they did.
They chose to pick themselves up and they kept going knowing that they were going to face obstacles, but continuing to show up anyway. And it just really confirmed this idea that no one is judging us except for ourselves. No one is putting us on these impossible timelines except for ourselves. And when I thought about this, I thought, you know, about what kind of got me in this, you know, creative rut, like what got me in the place that I am right now.
And it was, you know, that idea of constantly trying to push myself to do too much every single week. I was taking on too much. I wasn’t, you know, doing anything to help me work smarter. I was really just working harder week after week and not setting myself up for success. And I should have known that trying to create, you know, new content every single week while maintaining a business, while, you know, working on, you know, a different career and maintaining relationships and responsibilities, you know, all of these things.
I should have known that it was too much, but, But I didn’t, and I started to realize, you know, I was so not surprised, you know, in the grand scheme of things when it didn’t work, I was holding myself to these unrealistic expectations on these unrealistic timelines that no one put on me except for myself.
And in these moments, the ones where we fall or we get off track, we can either take it as a failure, you know, choose to feel really sorry for ourselves and think about how all of the ways that the world was against us and why we weren’t able to even get close to reaching our goals. Or we can choose to learn from it.
We can see, you know, Looking back, what we could have done that would’ve made it, you know, easier for ourselves or set ourselves up for more success. We can choose to look at the things that, you know, the ways that the world did try and help us out, but we might’ve like pushed it aside. There’s honestly so much that can be learned from these moments and these, you know, times when when something doesn’t work and we fall short.
Even though I knew at the time that I needed to batch my content, like I’ve heard from a million people batch your content. You know, like it’s so much more sustainable. It’s so much easier. But I felt like, no, you know what? I have time. Like I have this energy and I’m going to keep doing it my way. And then what happened?
I fell on my face and I learned from it. And I realize now the importance of just because you have the time to do something doesn’t mean it’s the way that you should do it. Right? Like just because I had the time to create new content every single week, I wasn’t proactively thinking ahead to the weeks when I wouldn’t have time.
I somehow was like, Thinking that, you know, no matter what came up in life, that I would inevitably always have some extra time to be able to create new content, which, when saying it aloud is silly. But back to this idea, you know, I think one of the most gratifying feelings that you can experience is when you can find gratitude when you fall, because you then know what you need to do differently moving forward.
And there’s so much power within you when you can not only plan for falling off course, but when you can celebrate it, when you can take those times, when you fall short, you miss the mark, you miss the deadline, you let yourself down, you know, whatever it might be. When you can take those moments and celebrate them because you know that this is a learning point and that you can do it differently moving forward, those lessons that you learn by taking that action and learning from it are so much more valuable.
Than any lesson that we could ever try and plan for or prepare for without actually taking action. We will never be able to plan for all of the curve balls that life will throw our way, but we will be stronger by taking messy action and working through them. So, you know, maybe this last year, maybe these last few months, maybe you started something and you left it unfinished.
You know, it could be maybe you started writing a book or maybe you were choosing a new workout plan, or maybe you pressed record on your first podcast episode. Or you might be, you know, thinking of a new business idea, you know, thinking of starting your own business or, you know, putting your first dollar in your savings account today.
I want you to remember that it. Doesn’t matter how quickly or how slowly you get there, the thing that really matters is your direction, because truthfully, progress is still progress no matter how small it might feel. One of the things that I’ve, you know, tried to remember lately is that life is really just a, you know, a set of moments where we sometimes feel like we’re ahead of the game.
And sometimes we feel like we fell a little short. Sometimes we can jump right back up and sometimes it takes us a little longer to brush the dust off of our back. And regardless of where you find yourself right now, my hope for you is that you can give yourself grace and space today to do what feels right.
Choose to not let yourself fall into those false beliefs of self-doubt. Someone is looking at the life that you are living right now and all they see are the progress. That you’ve made up until this point. They aren’t counting the amount of times that you’ve fallen off track or measuring how long it’s taken you to get to where you are today.
They are only seeing the impact you are making and honestly, they are likely so dang proud and cannot wait until they can get to that point themselves. So let’s choose to look at our goals and our progress from their perspective. Let’s celebrate the heck out of the fact that we are actively making progress every day, no matter how small it might feel, even if we’ve paused, you know, our actions, or we’re reevaluating our next best step, or, you know, we might have fallen off track and we’ve taken a little bit of time to get back up.
Let’s choose today to not give up. Girl, you are making big waves and sometimes they might feel small, but every single wave begins with the tiniest little ripple. Just keep showing up and knowing that you are more than worth it. I am so proud of you. I am so thankful for you, and I am so excited to hear about what’s in store for your 2021.
I’ll talk to you soon, girl.
Thank you so much for listening in and for committing to yourself along this journey. I’d love to hear your favorite takeaways from this episode today. Tag me on Instagram at She calls her shots, and let’s celebrate the fact that you showed up for yourself today. Or if you know someone that would benefit from listening in, feel free to share this episode with her in a dm.
As always, I am so excited that we get to continue on this journey together, and until next time, I’ll talk to you soon. Girl.
