Crush Perfectionism and Boost Your Productivity! with Jen Grosso

You can find Jen Grosso at:
Website: https://www.boldfireinstitute.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifergrosso/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jengrosso.co/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindbodybusinessbreakthroughs

Jen Grosso Podcast Transcription

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Win The Hour, Win The Day.

[00:00:02] And I am your host, Kris Ward. And today we have Jen Grosso in the house and she’s gonna talk to us about how to beat perfectionism. So I am really eager to dive into this one cuz I’m gonna tell you I misunderstood this. Like a lot. I didn’t understand what it meant. I didn’t self-diagnose properly.

[00:00:22] I, there’s just a whole many things about this whole muck of information that I didn’t get. So I’m looking forward to this, Jen, welcome to the show.

[00:00:30] Jen Grosso: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Kris. I’m so excited to talk about this topic. It’s near and dear to my heart. We’re recovering perfectionist myself, someone who’s get caught up in procrastination, and if I can help your high achieving amazing business owners get past it like I have, I think that we’re gonna do a lot of good work for them today.

[00:00:48] Kris Ward: Yeah. So let’s start at the beginning, I didn’t understand for a long time what perfectionism meant. I thought it was really just working on something. Maybe I was a perfectionist about being a perfectionist. I don’t know. I thought it meant working on something till you thought it was perfect, and I thought there was some ego in that oh yeah, okay, now it’s good.

[00:01:09] It’s perfect, it’s done. And it was like not so long ago that I sadly figured out, oh no, it’s when you’re fussing around and monkeying around on something that, like this banner, or this color on this sales page is just and really that’s not, that’s not the point of what you’re doing. And you’re trying to whatever, launch a product or sell a course or do whatever, and you’re monkeying around with something so minute trying to just get it right and I thought that was just trying to be professional and it took me a lot of years before I understood like, what’s the end goal here?

[00:01:46] Get it done, get it up, get it out. And the whole concept, what somebody else on the show would talk about agile marketing and she was talking, reminding us all about how the software industry, they put out things all the time that you know, don’t work or flawed and we sign up and pay for the next version of it.

[00:02:05] So we all know that. And yet, when it comes time to putting our own stuff out, I know it’s oh, shoulders back, try to look like professional and get it all right. And that really is perfectionism, which is handcuffing us.

[00:02:17] Jen Grosso: Oh, it absolutely does. And I think what happened for me I was originally an attorney way back once upon a time, and there are, there’s so much about our culture that is involved in creating this belief that perfectionism will get you everywhere.

[00:02:32] Even it’s one of the most common things that people will say as a flaw about themselves? I’m a perfectionist, right? So people will think that they’re amazing and they’re gonna do an incredible job, right? And I started working with really high level people, entrepreneurs who are doing really well and exploring what’s the root cause of the perfectionism?

[00:02:50] Let’s get down to what’s causing this in the first place. So we stopped doing it because perfectionism, like you said, it creates this handcuff. It means you never produce anything you never get it out and perfectionism is really rooted in fear and it’s really worry. It’s really rooted in fear of what people might think about you that people might think that the mistakes that you’re making are going to, prevent you from moving forward in your business and it starts holding you back and it creates, it’s an internal stress response to worrying about what others think and worrying about whether or not who you are and what you’re doing in the world is worthy enough to be put out yet.

[00:03:29] And like you said, I love that example. There’s version point, 1.0. Then we go, we learn from that. We learn from what didn’t work. We learn from what customers want, how to translate that, make that better. And then we have version two and then we keep going.

[00:03:45] And only those who can recognize not who can recognize the perfectionism in them, inside of them, what that’s about. All right. This is just me. If I’m feeling the tendency to mess around and try to work on the details endlessly. And I’m not releasing something. Let me have some self-awareness about this.

[00:04:04] Why am I showing some perfectionism here? I must be afraid on some level that what I’m doing is not worthy enough, that I’m not worthy enough, or that, it’s related to this fear on the inside. And so if you can recognize that in yourself, you can then take a step back, take a deep breath, and then analyze. Alright.

[00:04:27] Kris Ward: Let me let jump in. Hold on, let me jump in. Cause jump in. I think you, you brought up some really super good points, and I’ve talked about this before in the show, but I know when I was doing the cover to this podcast and I put it into a group on Facebook to say, and you know what? I wasn’t really, honestly, I wasn’t looking for their opinion.

[00:04:43] I was you know what? I was looking for their praise. I was looking for them to say, oh, this is great.

[00:04:48] Jen Grosso: Validation.

[00:04:49] Kris Ward: Yeah. And I also was looking that it’s a great way to promote that this podcast was coming. Hey, I’m working on this cover. The podcast is coming. I know I have to market it, and here is me marketing through the side door.

[00:05:00] So I put the podcast cover up and they ripped it to shreds. It was vicious, right? So it’s this is unnecessary. It’s just a cover. Come on man. And the, I remember thinking for a moment. Old me would’ve taken that down right away. I would’ve been like, oh my gosh, I didn’t do it right. I embarrassed myself.

[00:05:20] I wasn’t ready. And because I don’t necessarily align myself with word fear cause I don’t usually do things and avoid things cuz of fear. Cause I think that once you go down this lane instead of that lane, cuz you’re afraid, you who the heck knows we’re gonna end up. So I Go ahead. Fear or not, right?

[00:05:38] Yeah. So when you are speaking now, I do realize there is a different, I, we associate the word fear with Oh I’m afraid I won’t do it. I associate it. I was fearful. I didn’t do my homework. I wasn’t ready. Yes. I didn’t prepare this properly. And so that changes the game. It’s oh, I’m trying to be professional and grown up and my business, maybe with the podcast, I’m new to the podcast world, so apparently I don’t know what goes on at cover, which again may I just sidebar tell you too when we did change the cover. Then a couple later, somebody commented, why do you now try smiling with your mouth closed? What the hell are you my mother? This is now, this is no longer positive feedback. This is a preference and we’re not dating. So you also have to disqualify, which is valid feedback and helpful.

[00:06:21] Jen Grosso: That’s right.

[00:06:24] Kris Ward: So that was the thing too, is. I thought, oh, I’m new to the podcast community. I’m showing my ignorance. They didn’t like the cover. So now I can gravitate towards the word fear, which I couldn’t before, cuz I, I think you’re right that you then you overthink it and you just take your toys and go home.

[00:06:38] Jen Grosso: Absolutely. And I think, we’ve talked once before about confidence too, that sometimes I don’t think that people are completely fearless or that someone is totally not confident in something. I think that we have different levels based on different things, and just like you said, for some people, they’re very fearful about or not confident based on what people might think of them.

[00:06:58] Others take that on a certain topic or a certain type of work they’re gonna put out in their world and they internalize it, just like you said. Did I do enough? And I think that some of the advice that so many us have received for so long is you have to fake it until you make it. I think that promotes perfectionism because if you’re trying to fake it, you don’t know what to do.

[00:07:20] You’re constantly like, all right, I could add this, I could do this, I could stack this. And you’re trying to make it a pure that you’re supposed to be where you are at that moment and I would agree with you that perfectionism really rears its ugly head quite a bit when we’re trying to break into a new area and we’re trying to level up and do something new can really hold you back.

[00:07:40] For sure. So one of the tips and tools that I use with my clients that they can perform better is I want them to take a step back, recognize that it’s happening. I’m spending too much time in the weeds, in the details, trying to perfect this. Do I really need to, is there really a gap right now or am I at a level where this needs to be released?

[00:08:02] Just like the piece of technology. Do we need to release this? Is this at its minimum basic viability? So I talked to them about that. Your M B V is what I need to put out into the world at its minimum basic viability. If it’s not, If it’s, sometimes people are like, do it messy, do it afraid. I love that advice to a degree.

[00:08:22] Sometimes you can put something out that’s too messy. So we’re trying to find that Goldilocks place of not, of being competent enough to put something out that it will be taken seriously, meeting and sometimes you need some objective feedback. Not all feedback, just objective feedback. Yeah. And then you put it out there in the world and be comfortable with the fact that it is.

[00:08:45] It is not perfect yet. I actually believe, just like I’m sure you’ve heard this concept that if you wait until something’s perfect to put it out, you have waited too long and you have missed part of market share.

[00:08:56] Yeah. So honestly, aiming for somewhere around 85% of what you think would be perfect is probably right for you.

[00:09:05] Kris Ward: I don’t even know. I know I couldn’t do it, but let’s say 50, 60% is even better too, because I also think like now, when you know and I say that and I’m not telling you what to do. I’m saying like, to be more forgiving with yourself. And I think now too, if I put something up, let’s say a sales page or new, we updated our website and then somebody says, oh, there’s a typo.

[00:09:26] I say now, oh, thank you. Fresh eyes always see everything. Or they say after you hit print or send, that’s when you see all the typos. But before I’d be mortified, and I’ll tell you the turning point for me was this everybody lean in, so I’m leaning. So some of, my husband had passed away, so I was off social media for two years.

[00:09:45] I mean off, I didn’t even, I didn’t check it. I didn’t put, I had nothing to say and I didn’t care what other people had to say. I’m just in my little cocoon. Getting through, and when I finally came back on and I was like, all right, I have a business. I, there is no way for me to get through this little duration of this business without ever going on social media at all, ever again.

[00:10:05] So I put some post, letting people know I’m back. And yes, I’ve been way, but the business has been going, it’s just been going without me, la, right? So I pulled this post. I had something like your and I had done a typo. It was supposed to be y o u, possibly r e. Yeah. And so here’s this post about, and people are saying, oh, it’s so good to see you back, Kris.

[00:10:22] We were worried about you. We knew you were still doing business, but we hadn’t seen you here. And then there’s this one that says, you have a typo. I’m like, okay. Yeah, missed the point. Thank you. Yes. So I realized if you are going to critique me on my first post back after my husband passes away about the you and the your, and it wasn’t that he explained how you use a two different yours.

[00:10:46] I clearly, it was a typo. Like hello. Of course. But he explained how you use them and I thought, okay, you can’t take people’s feedback seriously, cuz this is nuts, right? No. And that kind of sobered me up afterwards and people say, here’s your mistake. I go, oh yeah, okay, fine. No biggie.

[00:11:01] Jen Grosso: Although I’ll say, it’s so funny that you bring that up. I think that’s such a, it’s such a great one cuz people do that all the time. They’ll, they feel really superior to take someone down because they made a mistake grammatically. I was the managing editor of the New Jersey Constitutional Law Journal. I had a whole team. We put out something and it had two mistakes in it, and I nearly had a heart attack.

[00:11:21] How did we all miss it? How was all this stuff? And I ended up talking to someone who was a mentor, who had been an editor in a much better publication who was go read the New York Times, go read any book anywhere, ever. Nothing is perfect. I loved that job. I had that job when I was in my early twenties.

[00:11:39] I love that I did that because it taught me that perfectionism gets you nowhere. The material never gets out. You don’t have the laundry of waiting for perfection because you will be beaten to the punch with the material that gets out there. Now, yes, you want it to be amazing, but you can’t. And then there was a psycholo, a study that was done by some university and it was a psychological study and all my favorite part of it is I’ll send it to you so you can have it.

[00:12:06] It was something about how people who are willing to publicly out you for your grammatical mistakes, they’re more likely to be a jerk. Yeah. There you go. It’s Science.

[00:12:16] Kris Ward: Because you know what I’ve had, where there’s whatever been mistakes before and then you can tell the difference because somebody will send you a direct message and they say, Hey Kris, I don’t know if you saw this or anyone’s pointed out yet, but I’m just, and they’re doing it with warmth and intention, not trying to steal your thunder or humiliate you.

[00:12:32] Hey, I can take all the feedback I can get, please help me catch my mistakes. But absolutely you don’t need to do that in a way that, to point and make somebody feel silly.

[00:12:40] Jen Grosso: Absolutely.

[00:12:40] Kris Ward: Okay so we can’t be afraid of these people cuz they’re just, they obviously have more time in their hands than we do anyhow.

[00:12:45] Jen Grosso: No, and that’s about them and that’s about their own issues, their own internal issues. I do wanna jump back really quick to what I said about 85%. You said maybe 50 or 60. So what I wanna point out is for the people I have come to me where perfectionism is their thing, right? We all have issues that are that, that prevent us.

[00:13:04] And if you find that you’re someone who’s really a perfectionist and you’re aware this is a problem, it’s holding me back in my business, it’s slowing me down. Going to 50 or 60% might be too much of a leap. Ah, that’s a good point. You don’t need to, you just dial back to 85% and I promise you, if you dial back to 85% over time, you’ll then be able to put something out at 50 or 60% because you will have expanded your nervous system’s capacity.

[00:13:33] A lot of this has to do with our biology. It has to do with how we react to stress responses. And so if you condition yourself to being able to put, taking those baby steps of putting things out there that you don’t think are perfect over time as you become more comfortable with that you then can get a little bit more comfortable with putting out a little bit less.

[00:13:53] Kris Ward: Yeah, you’re right. So let’s make a note here. Yeah. Jen knows what she’s doing with her clients and Kristen doesn’t know what she’s doing with Jen’s clients no, that’s a really good point too, because I have a client of mine, we were just talking about something totally different.

[00:14:05] He was doing his presentation in front of a group people and he realized that there was a typo on the slides. And I, the way he describes it, I think he almost had a heart attack. Like he, he, like his heart was beating fast. He was like, oh my gosh. Like I would’ve been, oh my, I’ve tripped on going up the stage going, all right then, okay, here we are.

[00:14:23] It doesn’t mean that there’s things that don’t cause me and get me stressed out or whatever. I have learned to roll with it. And if you can’t laugh, laughing at myself just breathes life into the room. But there are some people that, you’re right, it’s crippling for them. Crippling.

[00:14:37] Jen Grosso: That’s right.

[00:14:38] Kris Ward: But even for us, regular people, I think we regular people, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about here, but what I mean is, I think for somebody that I would describe myself as pretty level in temperament, pretty, always looking at the positive side of things, right?

[00:14:52] Even for us, I would think that you get caught up in, oh, I went to college, I went to university, and I’m in a business all these years, and so I’m trying to be a professional. And so you get caught up in what you think the expectations or the benchmark is.

[00:15:06] Jen Grosso: Yeah. And it’s assessing again that minimum basic, what do I need to be putting out here?

[00:15:10] And then it’s catching yourself, having enough self-awareness, noticing your thoughts are, am I getting caught up here? Am I spending too much time doing something because I’m trying to talk myself out of putting this work out there because I don’t think it’s perfect enough. And it’s actually take a break from that.

[00:15:27] Very often it’s difficult. So I would say, Take a break, take an assessment, decide if you do need a trusted advisor, maybe not putting it out onto the internet. By the way, I love that you put out your cover onto the internet as a yeah, piece. I think that’s perfect. I’ve done that too. But also just when it’s a perfectionism problem, when you know that’s actually holding you back and you’re at that stage in your career and you need to get to the next level, that’s when you might need to have an objective person who looks at this and goes, is this good enough?

[00:15:58] So that I can put it out there so that I can get the fee with the full knowledge, what I’m putting out there. I expect what I’m putting out there. I’m gonna need to get feedback so that I’m gonna need to create my version two, my version three, what have you.

[00:16:15] Kris Ward: Yeah. Okay. So what. Where do we start? What are some of the things that we can do better with this? Or how do we know is one week focus on here’s one of, there’s so many things jump to my mind is one of the things I’m really passionate about is to-do lists are just Lists of percolating emergencies, right? So I’m all about, your calendar is your time bank account. Yes. And that, everything you do has to be on your calendar or broken down into one hour chunks.

[00:16:43] And one of the benefits to that is then when you’re working on something and then you’re like, okay, I didn’t get that at today. Or I have to proof that one more time. It mo, you have to copy it or move it to next week so you can see, ah, if it’s just on a to-do list, you don’t realize I’ve left that now for five months.

[00:16:59] You see that on the calendar. It’s oh, I have to add, I have to add another. This is still not done. I have to put that on next week. So you start to see that, and I think that’s part of the problem too, where I talk to people about, where our clients always say we get them 25 hours back a week within the first month of working with us.

[00:17:14] And a lot of that is just work that they’re not holding accountable and they don’t even know how long they’ve been procrastinating at.

[00:17:20] Jen Grosso: Absolutely. And that’s procrast, so I can talk about procrastination too. It’s slightly different from perfectionism, but I..

[00:17:28] Kris Ward: Or oh, procrastinating getting it out. That’s what I mean, procrastinating. So you’re right. They’re two different things. Yeah. Yeah. I’m talking about procrastinating to put it out because it’s not perfect.

[00:17:35] Jen Grosso: Because it’s not perfect.

[00:17:36] Kris Ward: Yeah. See these words matter to her. We’re just throwing them around.

[00:17:39] Jen Grosso: They tie well, they tie in.

[00:17:41] Kris Ward: You’re right.

[00:17:41] Jen Grosso: They make the difference. Yeah, they tie in an interesting way. So what happens with perfectionism when you’re in that place? Perfectionism creates all of this stress. So having a system, like a calendaring system where you’re required to do exactly what you’re talking about, you’re required not only to write it down.

[00:17:58] But then, okay, if I haven’t done it, I have to move it to the following week. Yeah. I have used success trackers with my clients and things like that where they are required to move things over and identify what hasn’t been done. Looking at the, breaking down a bigger goal into the micro goals.

[00:18:15] So I was talking about putting out, maybe you’re putting out an article and, breaking that down into various things. What do I need to be doing? What are the steps that I need to do? Writing the article.

[00:18:26] Kris Ward: Yeah, we call that working backwards cuz too many times you dive into a project. But really if you say, all right, we do this in her personal life, like you say, okay, I gotta be at whatever my friend’s house at noon for lunch. She lives an hour away. It’s gonna take me an hour to get ready. All of a sudden you realize you have to be out the door at 10 for a lunch, so you work backwards. So I tell people to do that with their projects as well.

[00:18:48] Jen Grosso: Absolutely. So creating the, working backwards, creating micro goals related to whatever it is that you’re trying to put out there that will help you take that step back and assess what you’re doing. Do I have too many here? Yeah. Is this gonna take me too much time?

[00:19:02] Am I really am I really spending the right amount of time on it? That’s a great way to assess whether or not you are you’re spending too much time in that perfectionism bubble. And when you have to see it on paper that you’ve done, this is what I’ve been doing and this is, it’s taking up far more time than it would allow.

[00:19:21] Now where that gets tricky is if it’s something new or something that you don’t, you may not know if you’re being efficient about it. You may not know how long it might normally take to do that type of a task, and that’s where you have to do, you have to involve others, and have to do a little bit of research on that.

[00:19:38] So you were saying, like when you first put out the podcast, first, whenever we’re first doing something, it often takes us longer, but we also don’t know what’s normal. How long would it normally take me to edit a, to edit a podcast and then technically, I’m sure you have people who you know

[00:19:54] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:19:54] Jen Grosso: Do all that editing.

[00:19:55] Kris Ward: Let me move you ahead to something, cuz I think it’s important cuz we’re not talking just in theory, there’s neuroscience behind this.

[00:20:02] Jen Grosso: Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. So there’s, so what you were talking about too, where the neuroscience really comes in is that procrastination part too.

[00:20:10] It really comes in there as well, in a big way. So there’s, with perfectionism in general, there’s a lot of stress chemicals that are created. Okay. And some of it is, so it’s very much in a circle. Some of the perfection perfectionism is caused because we’re stressed and fearful, okay, about what we might do.

[00:20:29] But the more we are engage in perfectionist practices and we more, we act like a perfectionist, the more that raises our cortisol because you end up taking too much time to do something and stressing your deadlines or overworking and putting yourself in a place where you are not as calm about something

[00:20:51] Kris Ward: Because, so it’s kinda like stretching the elastic. You’re putting more and more strain on it.

[00:20:55] Jen Grosso: Yeah, you’re taking it, you’re taking some, by being a perfectionist, you’re taking something that should have, let’s say a level five of difficulty. Ah, you are expanding it up to an eight or a nine or a 10, right? And if that’s the way you operate in the world, in general, in your business, you’re going to make your business a lot more stressful.

[00:21:16] Here’s where procrastination comes in. Why do they procrastinate? To put it out? Because procrastination in a neuroscience way is a method of stress relief.

[00:21:26] Kris Ward: Okay. Oh, I see. Okay.

[00:21:29] Jen Grosso: Okay. Okay. So the reason people procrastinate is not because they’re lazy, it’s not necessarily because they’re terrible at time management. The reason people procrastinate is because it delays the stress they think they’re gonna feel.

[00:21:45] Kris Ward: Okay. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Jen Grosso: So the outcome of procrastination, the reason like why do we engage in a behavior that we know is often terrible for us? We know we’re gonna buck up against deadlines. We know that procrastination cause people financial stress, right?

[00:21:59] Because they procrastinate on getting things done and then they don’t bring in the money or get the money that they need to get. It can cause deadlines. It can cause stress from making people upset that you didn’t get them. Maybe you’re delivering work to a client and you are, see…

[00:22:13] Kris Ward: I couldn’t take the stress of procrastinating, and that was like my saving point in university when everybody else was leaving essays to the last minute.

[00:22:20] I’m like, I can’t live like that. I can’t say that tomorrow I have to write a essay that I should have had two months to write. Or I always, what if I slipped and fell and hurt my arm? They didn’t say you fell yesterday. What have you been doing for the last eight weeks? And you didn’t, my nerves couldn’t take procrastination.

[00:22:36] Jen Grosso: So that’s one of the things too, as we could get into that talk. It’s really when I work with clients too, the, there’s very high performing clients, people who are high achievers, I have to assess what’s going on with them. How do they respond to stress? So most of the reason I deal with perfectionism, procrastination is those are just two things that cause people stress.

[00:22:55] So I was working with you. I would know you’re not going to procrastinate. No. But what is causing you stress specifically, we would look at that for you in particular. But so many people, about 50% of people is the estimate that are high achievers will engage in procrastination practices at times.

[00:23:14] And the reason behind that is it’s an attempt to delay stress. This is not necessarily logical by the way.

[00:23:28] Kris Ward: No, it makes sense because I’m not a big procrastinator on so many levels. I get stuff done, however, so I would say compared to somebody else, I might be at 2% procrastination. But I know to the point, again, with the calendar, I’ve been saying I’m gonna be doing lives on LinkedIn and TikTok and stuff and for one reason, okay, one reason after another one I will tell you is not my fault.

[00:23:48] We had the first ever hurricane in Canada. So 10 days of electricity is a justified reason why we didn’t do that. But anyhow. But then still I realized this week like, listen to my team. I can’t move this on the calendar one more week. So by the time this airs, there better be freaking lives out there because I can’t do this.

[00:24:07] I said, we’re gonna do it. And so now it’s in my face again, back to the calendar. But I do realize I wasn’t excited about it. I was doing it cuz I thought it should do it. And then lucky for me, I meet amazing people like you on the show, and we just interviewed somebody today that was talking about lives.

[00:24:21] So now I’m excited. Okay. I think I can do this. But I was putting it off because I was doing gonna do it because I thought I should, not because I wanted to. So you’re right, you can justify the procrastination even if it takes a hurricane.

[00:24:35] Jen Grosso: Absolutely. So when you look at procrastination, it’s when you break it down, again, I love to get to the root cause of things.

[00:24:42] Why are things happening? Because if we just put, put bandaids on the symptoms, ultimately you’ll go back to the habit. Because what happens is the habit of the procrastination is a habit, and it gets hardwired into our brain as a stress relief response. Okay? And so look at it this way.

[00:24:58] You have a trigger, something that’s stressful, something that you know that you. Then says, okay, I’m gonna respond to this by avoiding doing it so that I don’t have to be stressed right now. And I’m gonna choose something else to do in its place. Sometimes even what you choose might be productive.

[00:25:15] Kris Ward: So then you can really justify that.

[00:25:17] Jen Grosso: Yes, you justify it instead, and you’re delaying it ends up being this monkey on your back cuz you know it’s coming. And so instead, and then the benefit you get is that you have this momentary stress relief response and it’s gives you like a shot of, let’s say you go and you do some something that feels comfortable to you, like social media posting that gives you a dopamine boost, which is a chemical in your brain that makes you feel good, right?

[00:25:44] So often you’ll choose something in the avoidance that gives you this chemical brain boost, and ultimately that avoidance gives you this stress relief. Now that stress will skyrocket when you get to the point where you have no choice but to do it.

[00:26:00] So going back to your, it’s so fascinating you brought up the exams. Lots of studies been on students because yeah, we all have this friend that you spoke to in school that was like, I don’t study until the last day because that’s when I do my best work. And that’s when it all gets in there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:14] What that is also a trained, they trained their brain to respond to the adrenaline. That comes in from massive amounts of stress. Yeah. And then that’s when they will be productive. That’s when they will get into that hyper-focused state. Now that sort of works for people in college if that’s how you operate your whole life.

[00:26:35] By the time you’re in your forties, you’re trying to run a business, you now have all this overabundance of stress, chemicals like

[00:26:42] Kris Ward: and you’re not fun to be around.

[00:26:43] Jen Grosso: Yeah. You’re not fun to be around. And the triggers are more significant more. So we’re always going to have these stress triggers, right?

[00:26:52] So always, we’re going to, especially as life gets bigger and more complicated for entrepreneurs who’ve been in business for a while, you it’s, you have bigger problems. So maybe you have something that happens and you know you have to address it. And if there’s a way to put it, if you are someone who procrastinates and that’s how you respond to stress and you put it on the shelf, if you can recognize that about yourself and say, okay, this is just my normal habit of responding to this stressful situation instead.

[00:27:23] So what can you do about that? It’s, first of all, it’s first of all look at what are my thoughts around this that are causing me to say, I can put this off. Now, sometimes it’s a circumstance. There can be, the triggers can be internal or external, right?

[00:27:35] It could be something that makes you feel inside a stressor, but it could also be something like you’re talking about external, like a hurricane in Canada. Yeah. What on Earth? I’m sure that’s stressing a lot of people out in what it delayed in their business, but then it’s how, it’s immediately am I gonna go into a place of avoidance?

[00:27:54] Which you did not. Yeah. So even though you delayed. The work, you didn’t go into a place of avoidance completely. It was when can I reschedule this? Yeah. So one of the ways to respond to it instead of completely avoiding the stress and that being your habitual response would be, All right, I’m gonna take a deep breath here.

[00:28:17] What is one immediate action I can take that will move this forward? And the quicker you can get to that action, even using the I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Mel Robbins and her 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Take an action. Yeah. Method. But if you can get your brain to take an action, any action can be a very tiny micro action, like moving something in the calendar.

[00:28:40] That will help you beat procrastination over time and put you into a habit of responding with action rather than avoidance. And it’ll help train, create new neural pathways where you respond quickly. And the reason, so 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 I’ll give you this is based in neuroscience. Your brain can’t talk you out of doing something in less than five seconds.

[00:29:05] So if you just get into action in five seconds, you will. You are more, you are 80% of people who take action that quickly and will continue on for doing like whatever their action is for just a couple of minutes. They will usually continue rather than go back into that place of avoidance.

[00:29:25] Kris Ward: Okay. That makes something that we can use today. Oh yeah. All right. With our five seconds, everybody, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna find out where can we reach Jen Grosso, where can we find more of your excellence?

[00:29:37] Jen Grosso: You can find… So I am the founder and CEO of the Bold Fire Institute. So you can find me at the Bold fire@boldfireinstitute.com.

[00:29:47] You can also find me on Instagram jengrosso.co, and you can find me on Facebook as well..

[00:29:54] Kris Ward: Excellent. All right, Jen. This has been a treat. I really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Everyone else, we will see you in the next episode.

[00:30:03] Jen Grosso: Thank you.