Overcoming Overthinking with The Outlaw Journal

*This is a raw and unedited transcript.

Speaker 1 (00:02):

Hey Outlaws. This is episode 48 and today we are doing something a little bit different. I am going to be exploring a general prompt from the outlawed journal with you. On this episode, I had planned originally to choose a prompt ahead of time, but I think it’s going to be more fun for me to just pick a prompt at random and for us to dig in together, right, almost as if we all want a coaching session or a mentoring session, or just, you know, basically sitting on the sofa with a cup of hot coffee and going through the journal, right. And actually discussing and exploring this together. So if you do not know what the outlaw channel is, maybe you’re new here. Hi, welcome. Or you just haven’t heard me talk about the album Gianna before. Let me give you a little bit of insight into what on earth I’m talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:00):

So the outlaw channel is a guided journal for entrepreneurs. I self-published this journal Alia in 2021, and it is designed to help small business entrepreneurs paid a new normal for online business and marketing. It is your space to identify and unpack the pro marketing so that you can lean into what makes your business unique. It is a soft cover journal. So it’s a physical journal that you actually get to use. It’s not a PDF and there are six sections. The sections are broken down by characteristic of an outlook. So often an entrepreneur, six characteristics of an entrepreneurial outlaw and inside you’ll find things like the entrepreneurial outlook manifesto you’ll find out. Some of the examples I give of an outlook moments and I go through the characteristics and then we get into the actual journal where there are daily prompts and there’s about 160 something prompts for you to work through.

Speaker 1 (02:05):

So it would work out about 12 weeks, if you did one every single day. And these range from, you know, listing out things about your business, to really exploring and digging into some of the nuances of online business and then every single week, or as you finish up that section, you wrap up with writing out what your outlook moments are. So these really, you kind of moments where you challenge the status quo of business. Maybe you said, no, you pivoted, you shifted, you took a social media detox, whatever it might be. It took a Friday off. I don’t know anything that challenges the status quo of online business of marketing, of the way things have always been done. Those are your outlaw moments. And so I encourage you to really reflect on those every single week gout, all of the thoughts and ideas that you have, because Lord knows we have so many of those.

Speaker 1 (02:57):

And the wonderful thing about this is you can use it in so many different ways. So sorry, if you can hear some rustling in the background, it’s because I’m holding my Jonelle and gesturing at the same time, I’m getting passionate and excited about it. But as modern day entrepreneurs building businesses in this online world, there is no escaping the broader marketing narrative. So we have the opportunity to forge a different path, become the leaders that we wish we’d had. And it’s really time for us to tap into the values, stretch her out little wings and do business on your own times. And this is how the outlet general can support you. So if you don’t have a copy at the outlet channel, you can definitely go and buy a copy. Now go to Melanie nights.com forward slash shop. And over there, you can find all of the self-published genitals notebooks that I have created over the last 12 months. And you can buy your own copy of the outlook channel. But in the meantime, we’re going to dig into a journal prompt today on this episode, we’ve never done this before. So, you know, fingers crossed. This goes well, but I am going to flick through right now and pick out a journal prompt for us to work on together. So I feel like there should be some kind of drum roll.

Speaker 1 (04:09):

Okay. Oh, this is a good one. Right? So if you have a copy of the outlet, gentlemen, friends of you, this is page 164, and the prompt says, darling outlaw for today, let’s drop the overthinking. What do you really want to say and do right darling outlaw for today, let’s drop the overthinking. What do you really want to say and do? And that is so, oh, it gives me like, I feel a little kind of buzzy just thinking about that because I think we all need to hear that, right? We all need to sometimes put down the overthinking, right? Put down the overthinking because overthinking is a feminist issue, right? Overthinking is a feminist issue. And the antidote to overthinking is intuitive thinking, let me explain that a little bit. As you’re digging into this prompt, what often happens, especially as women business owners, because of the way society has kind of not to get us into what we believe about ourselves and our place in society.

Speaker 1 (05:35):

What can often happen is that we don’t think we are enough. We don’t think we’re good enough. We don’t think we have a story or a voice that is worthy of being shad. And specifically through the lens of business. This can often happen when we are looking at promoting ourselves, right? Maybe you have felt this way too, where you’ve gone to create a program or course, or sell something, anything. And you’re going through the process of, of the idea. You’re walking through the projects and tasks, and you’re really excited. And then something happens at some point in this process. And all of a sudden you don’t think it’s good enough. You doubt yourself. You think that you need to do more often more than it needs to be more that you need to get another qualification that you need to learn from somebody else fuss.

Speaker 1 (06:35):

There’s too many other people creating that thing. So you can’t do it because that is so much better than you, right. Maybe you’ve had one of those narratives. I know I have. And in fact, when I was craving out little gentle, oh my God. So many times I got stuck, right? Not just cranking out a little gentle, I’d had this happen so many times where I’m working towards a goal and I’m working on some kind of project. I’m really excited about it and I’m buzzing. And I can’t keep up with the ideas. And then just all of a sudden, it’s like a switch, something changes and something shifts. And all of a sudden, I believe that it’s not enough that it needs to be better. It needs to be more. And I knew this going into the outlet journal, that it could be a potential barrier for me just doing the thing.

Speaker 1 (07:34):

So I had a note, a post-it note on my desk as I went through the process that said, this isn’t the end, right? Because sure, I self published this. I can make edits to my new script. Right. That happens. It’s fine. So I had to remind myself that this was just the fast version of this thing that I was creating. So we all experience overthinking, right? We all experience over thinking. And oftentimes in online business, we start to overthink, we start to catastrophize. We start to tell ourselves stories about our ability or what somebody might think or why people aren’t buying this thing or joining our program or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 (08:28):

And as we start to overthink, we stopped to over-complicate. Right? So an example of this could be that we start to add loads of bells and whistles, right? We start to add a complex funnel on an upsell down, sell, and you know, three different payment options and this, that, and the other. And we stopped to make something really complicated. Right? Well, over-complicating it. Maybe we start to overcompensate, right? So we start to offer more and more. We just, we decide that we’re not worthy of that, that price tag or the hourly rate, or that price, that package price, wherever it may be, that we’re pricing. We decide that we’re no longer worthy of that price tag and our skills don’t, aren’t represented. And so, because we’re afraid of somebody saying no to us, right. Or to not to us, but to that product program, office service, we start to add more, right?

Speaker 1 (09:27):

We start to say, well, I could also do this, or I could also do that, or it’s okay. If you can’t pay me this amount, we start to overcompensate. We start to over-complicate right? And then we become really overwhelmed. And this is a spiral that we can sometimes get into and not even realize where that, and that overwhelm can be so paralyzing because it can lead us to, you know, shut down and essentially stop promoting or talking about the work that we’re doing. And that can actually end up sabotaging what we’re doing. We can end up getting the result that we didn’t want to start with because of this experience, overthinking is incredibly, incredibly impactful on our business because it really, really can stop us from turning up on life. It can stop us from showing up fully in our power as business owners, as content creators.

Speaker 1 (10:34):

And so in this prompt, when I’m asking you, what do you really want to say and do, I’m really encouraging you to explore all of those big dreams. I don’t care what they are, whether they’re possible now, or in 10 years time, whether you change your mind and you never do them propose all of those big ideas, dreams that you have feel business. Those thoughts are fleeting moments where you think about something. And you’re like, okay, well, I don’t have time to think about that right now, but I would love to do that. I would love to do that thing. Maybe you love to start a podcast. Maybe you want to publish a planner or journal. Maybe you want to write a book. Maybe you want to start a separate business, right? Maybe you want to start a second business doing something totally different, right?

Speaker 1 (11:30):

Maybe you want to change your business model, but feels really audacious. Or it feels really daunting to make that decision. Maybe you want to increase your prices, take time off. Do both. I don’t know, whatever those things are that are on your mind that you’ve been thinking about, write them down, right. Capture them. Cause you can always come back to them. And they were always going to be things that you, these ideas or thoughts that you have that you don’t come back to the you’re like, yeah, it’s just not going to be for me for whatever reason, but don’t allow the overthinking to be the reason you don’t do it. Right. Don’t allow the overthinking to be the reason you don’t do it. Right. Allow it to be because it’s not the right time for you financially, or it’s not the right time in your life.

Speaker 1 (12:25):

Will you have other things that you’re working on that you’re equally excited about? Or perhaps you need to, you know, buy a piece of software or I don’t know whatever it is, but allow the reason you don’t do it to be a valid one. Right. Allow that to be a valid reason why you don’t do it in the meantime, write it down because they could be other ways of approaching it. And I believe that, you know, when it is the right time, I know that we’re supposed to do it messy and do it afraid and that’s okay. But sometimes it’s not the right time. And that’s also okay. I believe you know that you already know that, right. You already have the answers. It’s just a case of kind of walking through them. And that’s what John Lynn can do for us. Right. Really digging into what’s going on under like under the, under the business owner outfit, like the layers of how we feel about things.

Speaker 1 (13:26):

So really what do you want to say and do, right. If you could see yourself the way other people see you, right. If you could see yourself the way other people see you, what would you say or do if there were no rules, if there were no S if you could just say what you can, but if you could just switch everything tomorrow and change how you do something or add something to your business, what would that look like? Would that be right? What would be really easy, fun, creative inspired right now. Right? Without any of you ever thinking, right. Viney, any complication or overwhelm without overcompensating, what would you do if you could that all on yourself, through all the chips in, what would that look like?

Speaker 1 (14:33):

And I want you to channel about that today. I want you to really take some time and think about what you would really want to say and do. Maybe this is something you need to hear in terms of marketing your business or how you approaching online, social media. Maybe you’ve been feeling like you’re holding back a little bit. Maybe you have an opinion that you’re afraid to share. Right? I remember the first time I wrote about not having a six figure business, oh my God. I wrote the post. I was terrified. I didn’t post it. I told my coach and she was like, Melanie, you need to share that post. And I shared it and it was one of the most engaged posts I ever had, because guess what? It was what I really wanted to say. It was the truth. I don’t have a six-figure business and that’s okay.

Speaker 1 (15:29):

And I needed to hear, I needed to put it out there and say it because once it was out there, I couldn’t take it back. I mean, I could take it back, but I wasn’t going to, and it was the truth. And other people were like, yeah, me too. So what is it that you really want to say? And do you let go of that overwhelm? Don’t overcompensate, don’t add more bells and whistles. Right? What would you be doing? What would that project be? What would that program product or service be? How would you change things? How would you improve things? What would you take away?

Speaker 1 (16:08):

And you don’t have to take action on anything that you write down today, but I want to know, and I really do. I want to hear from you. And I want to know how it feels to have that conversation with yourself, right? To go through that. Self-Inquiry being curious about what you would really do and say, no other thinking just you. No one else is reading it. I’m not reading it. You don’t have to come and talk to me online. I would like you to, but you don’t have to. If you want to share what comes up for you from today’s episode, I add you to come over and follow us on Instagram, entrepreneurial under school Outlaws come over and say, hello. Even if you just want to come and say, Hey, you have no interest in sharing your general prompt answers with me. That’s also fine. I love to hear your stories. I want to know more. I want to know what you think of today’s episode as well, because this is the first time we have done something like this. And it was really exciting for me. And I’m really glad that we did it. So let me know what you think. And if you’d like to go through these kinds of pumps, again, is this helpful? Is it supportive for your business? What did you get from today?

Speaker 1 (17:31):

Next week here on entrepreneur Outlaws, we are joined by a really special guest. I’m joined by Eric [inaudible] of Erica Kevin’s consulting. And the reason that’s going to be really special as was actually the second time we recorded. So we had already recorded the episode, but was some technological problems. So we had to rerecord and we had joked that the reason the tech happened was not only because of my career retrograde, but also because the world was not ready for our bad-ass Surrey. And the second time we recorded, I think it was even better, right? It’s it’s just, it’s a jam packed episode. We’re going to be talking about sales and promotion and ethical sales and human fast approach to selling. So I am so excited for you to tune in next week for you to listen to a slightly longer episode, or I’m sitting down with Erica and we’re going to be chatting all things sales.

Speaker 1 (18:32):

In the meantime, I would absolutely love it. If you could head over to iTunes and leave a five star rating and review your ratings and reviews of this show are so powerful. Not only do I get really excited to read them, because anybody who wants to leave a review, I love seeing what you think of the show. I love seeing how the show is helping you in your business and your approach to business, but it also tells iTunes and apple or whomever is it tells someone in that, that this podcast is doing great things that we need to put in front of other people. Also, if you’re listening to diet on your phone, please take a screenshot, just take a screenshot or tag me in your stories on Instagram. Let me know that you’re listening in and what you thought of today’s show. Because every time you share this show, these episodes, we’re reaching more and more people who need to hit these conversations who need to let go of the overthinking and really just start to challenge the status quo of online business, right?

Speaker 1 (19:41):

We are forging new paths. We are making sure that we have the, we are the leaders that we didn’t have. And the best way we can do that is by showing up for ourselves, but also for our communities. So I would absolutely love for you to leave a five star rating and review. And if you have already done that, or if you feel really want to do both, take a screenshot of you listening in to today’s episode, tag me entrepreneurial underscore Outlaws, and let me know that you’re listening and I will make sure that I reshare your posts. And I will send you some, some kind words and gifts and things inside of the DMS as well. So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of entrepreneurial Outlaws. And I will see you next week for our guest episode with Erica heavens until next time Outlaws.