Ep. 22: The Actual Steps You Need to Take to Make Your Big Pivot

Making your big life change - or your big pivot - is about more than just taking action. Your pivot won’t happen until you get your mindset right. No matter what the change is that you want to make, this episode will outline for you the exact steps you need to take to get your head in the right space to then do what you need to do to get it done. It’s totally possible to make your pivot - and these are the steps that will get you there. 

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. My name is Stephanie Finigan. I am your host and coach and I am looking forward to this episode. This episode is going to be an overview episode and then in the coming weeks, I'm gonna be diving much more deeply into each of the topics that we're gonna talk about here today, but I wanted to do this episode on what exactly the process is for making your big life pivot.

When we talk about a big life pivot, as you know if you've listened to this show at all or worked with me ever, what we're talking about is anything that's a pivot for you. So for some people, a pivot is in their mindset around how to handle a stressful boss. And for other people it's how to lose 30 pounds after you've turned 40, or how to change your relationship with your partner because it's just not as loving and connected as it used to be, or how to run a marathon even though you've never run before in your entire life and you think you're too old, or how to change careers which I coach on a lot. Any, all, and a million other things could fall under Big Life Pivot. Whatever that means for you, that's what I want you to be thinking about as we go through this episode today.

But what exactly is the process to doing this? It seems like, okay, I have a job right now in corporate and I wanna start my own business, so I just have to learn how do I set up a business? And then I've gotta figure out, okay, what am I gonna do about the finances of it all? And then, okay, I guess I just do it. And we think that's how we make big life pivots.

No, that's not it. It has so much to do with your mindset before you ever get started on any of those actions. And the reason for that is because it's your thoughts that you have, your mindset there, that creates feelings, emotions in your body, and it's from those feelings that you take actions.

So we have to deal with the part that none of us want to deal with. We have to deal with the thoughts and the feelings before we get to the actions. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, the process of what it looks like to make a big life pivot.

I like to use these episodes talking about examples from myself or clients that I've worked with. And obviously I have a lot of examples because I've made a ton of big life pivots as have my clients. That's what I coach people on. So the example today I'm gonna use is from my own life. It is when I went from working as an employee for somebody else to going full-time in my own business, which is what I do now.

Okay, so here we go. Step number one that I had to go through was the step of awareness. When I went from being an employee to working full-time for myself, I had to become aware of the thoughts and the feelings I was having that were creating the actions and the results that I was getting. Meaning, I was an employee, I was working for somebody else and I also had this coaching business on the side. I knew I wanted to go full time in my coaching business for a whole litany of reasons, but I wasn't doing it and I had to stop and think, okay, what are the thoughts that led me to this situation where I have a day job and also was sort of moonlighting as a life coach. What I realized was the thoughts were that it wasn't possible to make enough money as a life coach, so I couldn't do it. I was scared financially. I thought, okay, there's no way I'm gonna be able to pay all of our bills if I just go all in as a coach. I thought people will think this is ridiculous. People will think I'm crazy. I thought I will never be good enough at this to make money at it. I'll never be able to do that. I realized I had all of these thoughts that were creating all of this fear for me and it was the fear that was stopping me from going full-time into my business and that's what kept me as an employee versus doing the thing I wanted to do which was work for myself.

So that was number one. It was really key that I came up with that. So just becoming aware, what are the thoughts and feelings that you're thinking that are creating the results you have now? That's where you're starting from. And then the next thing when it comes to awareness is asking yourself, whose voice is that? Because you want to notice it's not your voice. So when I had all of these thoughts about, oh my God, I'm just not going to make enough money and I was in all sorts of scarcity and I'm not going to be good at this, and people are going to think I'm ridiculous. I went through each of those thoughts, and I thought, whose voice is that? Because it wasn't mine, and it isn't yours. You've heard and learned and absorbed thinking from other people around you, and it could be your parents, it could be a sibling, it could be a friend or a partner, it could be somebody that you saw on TV, it could be a book you read growing up. You've absorbed ideas. That has formed the thoughts you have now. It's really important to break apart what is actually you and your voice versus what somebody else is.

So I went through the thoughts I was having and I just kind of looked at it and thought, okay, who has money scarcity in my life? Where did I learn the money scarcity from? And then I named that person. And so I realized like, oh, that's not me. I'm not scared of money. I just learned from somebody else as what you're supposed to do. So you're supposed to be scared about money, that's responsible. And then I thought, okay, who else in my life went out on a limb and started a business? And I realized nobody in my immediate circle had done that. So the voice is everybody in my immediate circle that simply kept working as employees, that's the model that I saw. So I didn't have anybody saying, yeah, yeah, you can do this. I had in fact, examples of the opposite. That's what we mean by saying whose voice is that.

Step number two, future self vision. So this is really key. Where do you want to go? You need to put a destination into the GPS in order for you to get a map to get going. In order for the app to work, in order for you to get started and know are you going North, South, East or West, you need to know at least vaguely where you're going. You don't have to know what hotel you're staying at in New York City, but you need to know you want to get to New York City. So that's really important. For me, okay, I didn't have to know what my niche was going to be. I didn't have to know how to set up the business in terms of the legality of it. I didn't need to know how to create a Stripe account so that I could collect payments. I didn't need to know any of that, but I did need to know, what do I want to do? I want to be a life coach. I want to have my own business. I want to work from home. I want to work four and a half days a week. I had some framework for what I wanted and I had to sort of start to envision myself there. And then I had to ask why. Why do I want this?

Now let me be clear about this. Why you want something, I don't need you to have some big epiphany about this. I don't need this to be like, well, I want this because, you know, I want to change the world. If you have those whys, if you have those, if you have those big reasons for what you want to do, great, embrace them, run with them. They're only going to help you. But for me, I didn't have a ton of like mountain moving whys. I had some basic whys. I just wanted flexibility. I've always been a runner and I like to work out and I hated being restricted by hours and days and times. I wanted the flexibility. I'm an Enneagram Eight. I tend to butt up against authority and rebel and working for somebody else. I've always struggled with the rules of that, right? Having to ask permission to take vacation days and all of that. I just didn't like any of that and I didn't want to have to do that anymore. So I wanted to work for myself. And I loved coaching and I was good at it. And so I thought this is gonna be a great way for me to have the business that I want to have doing something I want to do that's impacting other people. Those were my whys. The reason to come up with your why is because you want to make sure that the why is yours and not somebody else's. Again, it's about the voice. Whose voice is that? Is it because my best friend left her job and created a business and I've always kind of envied her. It's not a great why. So get really clear when it comes to your future self, not only what you want to do, but why you want to do it, because you want to make sure that it's purely your reason and not people pleasing or not pulling in other people's ideas into what you really want.

Okay, step number three is an identity shift. You want to start thinking and acting as if. This is so important. It's really, really key that you become the person you wanna be before you have evidence that you can be that person. So you need to start thinking and acting like a business owner before you have a business. You need to start thinking and acting like somebody who's lost the 30 pounds before you lose the 30 pounds. It doesn't mean that if you want to be a millionaire that you start going out and buying cars and spending money that you currently don't have. But it means you think, OK, I want to be a multimillionaire. What would a multimillionaire do when she had the salary that I have right now? Thinking about that, what would she tell you to do? Think about that, and then start acting from that space. Start acting like the person who has the thing you want. If I'm a life coach, one thing I do is tell people that I'm a life coach. And I started doing that before I had a business. I started doing that before I was certified. Note, life coaching is not a regulated industry, so anybody can be a life coach. You don't have to be certified to be a coach. So while I was going through my certification, I told people I was a coach because I was. Now I tell people I'm a certified coach, which I am. What that means is a conversation for a totally other day. But the point is you start acting, talking, living into it.

Okay, so that's the first three steps. Step number four is to start taking action. It does not matter what actions you take. You just need to get moving. This is really key. I've said this before. If you want to make a big change, we get all caught up in the like, well, what steps first? I don't know how to do it. And I'm going to Google it and I'm going to make an action plan. I am the queen of the action plan. I've made so many action plans that I have never taken one step of action on. It's unbelievable. So instead, what you want to do, screw the action plan, rip the fucking band-aid and get started. That's what you do. You get started. You make a mess, you clean it up later. You just start taking messy action and then you can make it look nice later. Put the blog post out. Put the podcast out. Who the fuck cares if it needs to be edited and it needs to be perfect? It doesn't matter. It's never going to be perfect and it's certainly not going to be perfect the first time out. Just get going. Start taking action. And if you don't know what action to take, take the next best step you can think of. That's all you do. What is the next best step I can think of? Take that and then take the next one and then take the next one. And just keep going. You do not need to be able to see all the way to the end of the marathon. You just need to know, how do I get to the next water station. You just need to get to the next piece in front of you that you have to solve for. That's the key here. Start taking messy action. Don't worry about the details. Rip the fucking band-aid and go. So that's step number four.

Step number five, track and measure your progress. This sounds obvious, but here's the key to this. You want to track and measure your progress, but your progress is going to look like any example of evidence that this is working for you. And you want to start looking for evidence that things are working, and you track that. So, I have weight loss clients, and many times the weight loss clients are like, okay, well I stepped on the scale, and the scale didn't move. So that's evidence like this isn't working. When your brain is going to look for what you tell it to look for. If you tell it to look for evidence it isn't working, you're going to see a lot of evidence that something isn't working. If you tell it to look for evidence it is working, you're going to see a lot of evidence it is working. The reason you want to do that is A, because you want to keep doing the shit that's working to get you to where you want to go, but B, because you want to stay motivated. It really helps to keep your mindset positive and your energy up and your motivation high to see evidence that things are working. So if you're a weight loss client and you step on the scale and it doesn't move, okay I would say to you tell me some other evidence that it is working. You've changed your diet, you've changed how you move your body, you're working on your mindset, you're meditating, you're drinking water, you're doing all these things, tell me evidence that it is working. And you start looking for that and a client might come back and be like, well actually the scale didn't move but my jeans fit a little bit better or actually the scale didn't move but I went to bed last night and I didn't eat dessert and I don't even remember the last time I didn't eat dessert before I went to bed or they might say I went out to lunch and I only finished half of my lunch I was done and I didn't take it home with me and I didn't clean my plate and I don't remember the last time I've just left half the food on my plate and not worried about it. So that is evidence that it's working, that your mindset is shifting, that things are changing. You track that, you measure that. So tracking and measuring your progress is key, but make sure you're looking for evidence that it's working, whatever the changes that you're making, look for evidence, and then make sure you're tracking that as well, because that's key. That will keep you going when some of the bigger metrics might not be changing as quickly as you want them to.

Okay, step number six, make changes as needed. So you look at your progress, you say, okay, I haven't made as much progress as I want. Let's see, what could I tweak here? What could I change? Oh, I've been trying to do things this way, I'll try a different way. For me, as I was getting my business off the ground, I was thinking, oh, you know what? I'm good at creating content, but my sales are pretty low. So what did I do? I reached out for help. That was a change I made. I reached out to a friend who is an expert in social media and started to get help from her. I hired a business coach. I made some other changes that were necessary because I realized I took this thing as far as I could on my own, and I'm not seeing results as quickly as I want to, so I'm gonna reach out for help. There are other smaller changes that I made too. I made changes to how I managed my time. I made changes to how I managed my business bank account. I made other changes that were helpful for me in order to help solidify, professionalize, and track the progress of my business. So keep making changes as you need to. Everything is written in pencil when it comes to my business, everything. I could burn this whole thing down and start over tomorrow if I really wanted to. That's okay, and that's how it should be for anything you're going after. The only thing you don't change is your goal, is your pivot, is your ultimate desire. You keep that, but how you get there, all changeable.

And finally, don't stop until you get there. This is so key. If you don't stop, if you don't quit, if you don't give up until you succeed, you cannot fail. So you keep going, whatever the goal is that you are trying to achieve, go after it. Tweak things as you need to, track, look for more evidence, hire help, get a coach, do whatever it is you need to do. Revisit your future self vision, revisit your identity shift, do any of those things and all of those things, just don't give up. Your desires, your goals, they are there for a reason. I genuinely believe that. So go after it. Be the example for other people that pivots are possible.

All right, that's what I have for you today. If you wanted to talk to me about your big life pivot or anything that you heard today or anything else, you can find me at makeyourpivot.co. You can get free email coaching over there, sign up for the newsletter, sign up for a console. Lots and lots of ways to be in touch. Lots and lots of ways to be in touch. Alright, I hope you guys liked this episode and I will talk to you next week.