78. Why Starting Feels Hard and How To Do It Anyway
Starting a business can feel like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring at the drop. You want to jump, but your brain keeps finding reasons to wait until things feel safer, clearer, or more certain. If you've ever found yourself stuck in that cycle of overthinking instead of acting, this episode will help you understand exactly why that happens.
Your brain is wired to protect you from discomfort, not to help you grow. So when you start dreaming about a big, bold move, like launching your business, it kicks into survival mode. In this episode, I break down the four patterns I've noticed in my clients (and myself) that keep you from starting, and how to move forward anyway. You'll learn how to work with your brain instead of fighting it, and how to build momentum even when fear is loud.
By the end of this episode, you'll have practical tools to quiet self-doubt, manage fear, and take the next step toward your dream. Whether you're just beginning to think about your business idea or have been stuck in planning mode for months, this is your reminder that you don't need to feel ready; you just need to start.
If you're ready to stop feeling stuck, join my *FREE* webinar, Unstuck: How to Build the Business You Can't Stop Thinking About. It's happening on Wednesday, December 10th, 2025, at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. Click here to register.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why your brain resists new goals and how to work with it instead of against it.
The four most common thought patterns that keep you from starting.
How to recognize fear disguised as logic or “good planning.”
Small mindset shifts that make action feel easier and lighter.
Why starting messy is the key to building confidence and momentum.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Episodes Related to Starting Your Business:
Full Episode Transcript:
So, the next time your brain compares you to another person who has a business who's further along and is saying to you, like, she's so far ahead, I want you to replace that with she's showing me what's possible. For every example of somebody whose business is further along or a saturated market, there's also evidence that this must work if there are other people doing it.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. If you've been thinking about a business idea for a while now, or maybe you don't even have the idea yet, but you know you'd love to work for yourself, and somehow you just can't bring yourself to actually start it, this episode will change everything for you. Maybe you find yourself getting excited and fired up when you talk about your dream with friends, but when you sit down to actually do something, you freeze, or suddenly you decide to prioritize other things, or you convince yourself that you should get a better plan first, or you're no longer excited about your idea.
And if any of those things sound like you, I know it's easy to think that we're lazy or bad at follow-through or that there's some secret entrepreneurial gene that we're missing, but I assure you, there's nothing wrong with you. You are simply a human being with a human brain, and that brain is wired to protect you, not to propel you. And the brain's primal need to protect you is what makes things so hard, always, but especially at the beginning of starting a business, which I'm going to explain in today's episode.
So when you go to take a new step, especially something big like starting a business, your brain's first reaction isn't, "Yay, adventure, let's go." It's more like, "Wait, danger, let's run." And that resistance that you feel, that anxiety that hits the moment you think about putting yourself out there in different ways, that is not proof that you aren't meant for this, okay? It's proof that your brain is working perfectly.
Today, we're going to talk about why starting feels so hard, even when you know you want it so badly. And we're going to talk about how to move forward and get started anyway, even though it's hard. Because once you understand why it's all so hard, everything will change. And trust me, it's not what you think.
So I want to start with a simple truth that most of us have just never been taught, and it's that your brain's primary job is not to make you successful, creative, or fulfilled, unfortunately. Its job is to keep you alive. That's it. It doesn't care if you love your work or if you're building your dream. It just wants to make sure you don't die. Now, back when we were cavewomen, that was really helpful. Your brain needed to spot danger instantly, a snake, a cliff, a hungry tiger, and it needed to react without thinking.
But today, that same wiring is still running in the background in our primitive brain. So when you go to do something new, launch a business, post online, tell someone about your new idea, your brain still interprets new as a potential threat. And it sounds ridiculous because we obviously aren't in physical danger, and yet to your brain, the physiological response is the same. You get a hit of adrenaline, your heart races, your body floods with cortisol. These are all signals to stop and stay safe, physical, physiological signals to stop and stay safe. That's why even tiny steps can feel so big and so hard. And that's also why no amount of planning or figuring it out really fixes this.
Because the resistance doesn't come from lack of information, it comes from fear of the unknown. Steven Pressfield talks about this in his book The War of Art. He calls it resistance, and it's that invisible force that shows up the moment you try to do something meaningful. And everyone feels it. Every artist, every entrepreneur, and every creator, anyone who is actually stepping out of their comfort zone will feel resistance. And it's not because you're doing it wrong. It's not because anything's wrong with you. It's because your brain thinks it's keeping you safe.
And I want to share a story from my own life and business that perfectly illustrates this because it's one of the first times that I really noticed my brain doing its job to protect me, even though I was completely safe. When I first started exploring coaching as a business, I told myself the hardest part would be figuring out where to start. I remember thinking once I know what to do, then I'll feel ready and I'll make this thing happen, okay? So I spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what to do.
But that turned out to be totally wrong, okay? The hard part wasn't figuring out what to do. It was doing it, but not just doing it, it was managing everything my brain threw at me the moment I did take action. And I want to share exactly what that looked like, because I think you'll see some consistency probably in what might be happening in your life and business right now when you go to show up.
So, I had decided to volunteer my coaching with a local single parent housing coalition. That is how I decided that I would start coaching, start coaching strangers anyway. I would donate coaching hours for free. This was my plan. All things considered, seems like a pretty easy plan. It was an organization I'd walked by for years, one in the neighborhood. I always felt drawn to it. I looked them up one day and saw that they actually needed volunteers to teach life skills. And I thought, this is perfect.
I can pitch coaching with these moms because, of course, most single parents are moms, not all, but most of them at this housing coalition. So I would pitch coaching with these moms one-on-one as a powerful life skills experience. Coaching is the most intense life skills course you can take, so it felt so aligned.
I opened my laptop to send an email to their volunteer director, and immediately my body went into full-on panic mode. Okay, my heart was pounding, my stomach dropped. I had this, you know, empty feeling in my body, my hands were shaking, my face was hot and flushed. I was even sweating, and I was offering free help. I was reaching out to say I could fill a need and I was willing to donate coaching hours. It made no logical sense that my body had gone completely into fight or flight mode. But that's how fight or flight shows up in modern life, okay?
My brain didn't care that it was a simple volunteer email. It just registered new situation equals potential threat, okay? And because my default under stress is flight, my brain's message was basically abort mission, close the laptop, do literally anything else. Even though I had the credentials, even though I had the experience, even though this was something I really wanted, and logically, it felt pretty easy. Just saying, can I donate coaching to the women in your housing coalition who are looking for resources? Pretty easy. But my body reacted as if I were in danger. And that's the power of your protective brain.
And the thing is, in that moment, I had so much judgment towards myself. I had thoughts about not being meant to be an entrepreneur. I had doubts about my ability to start a business. Like if I couldn't even send an email offering free services, that's not good. But really what I wish I had known then is that that's not a weakness. Everything I was going through was not a weakness. Nothing was wrong with me. I was just being human with a human brain.
And what's fascinating is that after a few weeks of volunteering, because by the grace of God, this person said yes to me and went in on what I was offering. And after a few weeks of volunteering, all of that fear completely disappeared. And that's because by then, it wasn't new anymore, okay? My brain had evidence that it was safe.
And that moment taught me a huge lesson that I really want you to take in today. The hardest part of starting isn't creating the plan. It's calming your brain once you decide to begin, okay? Fear doesn't mean stop, but fear will be there. And fear doesn't mean stop. It means we're entering new territory, and that's a really good thing.
So, now let's look at what this looks like, or what it could look like when you're trying to start a business and your brain wants to keep you safe in real life. Just like the example I gave, but a couple other sneaky ways that our brain likes to keep us safe, because once you can spot it, you can start separating you from your brain or you from your brain's fears, okay?
Your brain isn't the problem. It's just doing its job, and I'll remind you of that a couple more times because it's really important for us to normalize that behavior because it will pop up no matter at what point you're at in the business. Even if your business isn't just starting, if you're doing anything new, revenue-wise, offers-wise, anything, your brain will initially react with fear and resistance. And the more awareness you have of how it's trying to keep you safe, the less power that fear has over your decisions.
So I'm going to talk about four different examples of things that either myself or my clients have experienced where they didn't realize it was their brain trying to protect them and it was really helpful for me to be able to call it out and to show them their blind spots.
So the first I'll talk about is something I'll call idea whiplash. And this is where you get a business idea that you're so excited about. You can feel that spark in your chest. You start imagining what it could look like. You tell your best friend and she says, "Oh my gosh, you'd be amazing at that. That's perfect." And then a couple days later, the excitement fades. You're no longer sure it's the right idea. You start thinking, maybe I should go back to brainstorming. I'll wait until I have more clarity and excitement. This must not be it.
And this happened recently with one of my clients. In our very first session together, she came up with an idea that checked all the boxes. She went from absolutely no idea what she wanted to do to an idea that just lit her up. It aligned with all of her gifts, her story, her energy, all the things. She was glowing when she talked about it. But the next week, she came back saying, "I think I need to start over. I'm not as excited anymore."
So what had changed? Nothing. Except that her brain realized the next step was to take action, and that felt new and uncertain and therefore unsafe. Her brain wanted to keep her in idea generation mode because brainstorming feels safe, okay? We can't fail while we're thinking. We can only fail once we start doing.
So I want you to catch yourself when you're losing excitement or wanting to pivot again and again, remind yourself, this is just my brain trying to keep me safe. Then commit to maybe just one small action to keep the momentum going forward. You don't need a full business plan, just one tiny next step. Action, I promise, builds safety, just like I talked about in my experience with donating coaching hours and volunteering. The action built the feeling of safety, which then was able to build confidence, okay? And that confidence allows us to keep driving forward.
So, the second brain trick that I want you to be aware of is, we'll call it productive distraction. And this one is common, especially for moms. So you finally carve out time to start the business, and right before you sit down, your brain suddenly remembers everything else that you need to do. Laundry, empty the dishwasher, those school forms, that work email that you could just knock out real quick. And before you know it, the time you set aside for yourself is gone.
And here's the thing. These are all good things. You're being helpful, productive, responsible, but what's actually happening is that your brain is prioritizing comfort and control over risk and uncertainty and ultimately fear, okay? Those familiar tasks, the ones you've done a million times, they give your brain instant gratification. You feel like, "Ah, look, we're productive. We're safe." But when you're thinking about starting the business and whatever new business tasks need to get done, there's so much feeling of uncertainty, vulnerability, and risk.
So your brain creates urgency around the things that feel safe and quietly moves your dreams to the bottom of the list. I see this all the time with my clients. They tell me I just didn't have time to work on my business this week or I had so much to do. And when we look closer, they did have time. It was just filled with a bunch of shoulds, a bunch of tasks throughout the day and throughout the house that they decided to prioritize over the business, work to-dos that weren't actually urgent, tasks around the house that felt responsible, saying yes to one more volunteer role because it felt easier than saying yes to themselves.
And the truth is, that's not a lack of time problem, although we'll talk about this a lot next week. We're going to talk a lot about time. But this isn't a lack of time problem. It's your brain trying to protect you from feeling discomfort, the discomfort that comes with doing new things, the new thing being starting your business.
So the next time you feel the pull to do something else, I want you to pause and notice and just ask yourself, am I de-prioritizing my business because I'm afraid? Okay? And I want you to answer it honestly for yourself. If the honest answer is yes, I want you to take a deep breath, thank your brain for trying to protect you, and go do the thing that moves you forward first. Because your dream really does deserve to be at the top of the list. And trust me, all the other things still get done. We're just way more efficient while doing all the things, efficient and creative. Trust me.
The third brain trick I want to talk about is comparison. So this is something we get into a bit of a comparison spiral sometimes. We might scroll through Instagram or LinkedIn, and we might see another mom who's already doing what you want to do, right? And she's confident and she's polished and she's got the brand photos and the clients and the captions that hit just right. And immediately your stomach drops and you think, "She's already doing it. She's further ahead. What's the point of me even starting?"
What's actually happening here is that your brain sees someone further along and panics because it doesn't know how you'd get from where you are at the very beginning to where she is. And that gap triggers fear. So instead of letting you sit in that discomfort, your brain takes the easy route and it convinces you not to start. We're too far behind, so what's the point of starting?
So, the next time your brain compares you to another person who has a business who's further along and is saying to you, like, she's so far ahead, I want you to replace that with she's showing me what's possible. For every example of somebody whose business is further along or a saturated market, there's also evidence that this must work if there are other people doing it. This person is showing me what's possible. This person's success doesn't mean you're behind. It means the path exists. It's proof that what you want can be done.
And finally, one of my favorite examples of how subtle this can be is different triggers, especially in language. And I think this one is motivated by one of my recent clients that wanted to start a business, and the business doesn't really have an exact name that aligns with her services. It's a unique offering. It's a mix of interior design, organizing, education, functionality, systems, right, all the things. And I've talked about her business before on the podcast because it's just has been such an amazing coaching experience and the growth has been just phenomenal and I've loved her idea since day one.
So this business that she started was so clearly in her zone of genius. But every time we talked about her work, she'd have some resistance to like language triggers, we'll call them. And she'd say, well, I don't know if I'd really call myself a designer, or I'm not technically an organizer. And every time those words came up, ones that felt misaligned with who she was or what she wanted her business to be, her brain panicked.
She'd say things like, this doesn't feel right. Maybe I should start over and do something else. There was even a moment where a potential client mentioned that she needed help with organizing in an email and my client had a mini freak out moment where she was going to respond that she's not an organizer. When actually, like, this was her ideal client. The client was just using traditional language and didn't know how to talk about the services in the way that most closely aligned to what my client wanted.
And what I worked with her on and what I wanted to be clear about what was happening that she didn't initially see, and which is why it's so helpful to have somebody calling out blind spots, is that her brain was looking for reasons to run and avoid taking action. By focusing on those nuances in the words that we were using and that people were using, it was creating a reason to go back into brainstorming mode and avoid continuing to take action. So instead of leaning in, her brain's plan was to like, let's burn it all down and start over because that felt safe.
I talk about this a lot with clients because it's really easy to plant a bunch of seeds, whatever that means in the business, and then to wait a couple days, not even, maybe a couple hours, and then try and dig them all up. And another analogy that I really like using with this is like we can start down a path in our business, and then we get to a point and our brain freaks out.
Maybe it was somebody called us an organizer or misunderstood our business, or maybe it was certain feeling that something didn't go well, or maybe a potential client says no, or any of these ways that our brain shows up and freaks out. And then we can want to retrace all of our steps and go back to the start. And this is the experience for many entrepreneurs is that they keep starting over, instead of continuing with a business idea and continuing to take action to really figure out what works and what doesn't work in the business.
But it's hard to even start down that path. Like our brain gets in the way of even starting. Our brain can lock on to not knowing how to describe what we do. Our brain can lock on to needing the perfect words or the perfect plan or the perfect idea. And I've talked about this a lot before on the podcast too, that it can think we need something that's actually not important at all.
What's so important is not scrapping our business idea, not scrapping the actions that we've already taken. The solution really is to keep going and to uncover what fears are rooted within the obstacles. And then figure out the answer to how to align our business. When we are talking about the language triggers, we can figure out how to build a business that aligns even though those words are likely to come up in different ways. The client example that I gave, like we needed to get to a place where those words no longer seemed like good reasons to avoid business or distract from this client taking action.
So if certain words, titles, or labels make you tense or make you want to avoid starting because you haven't quite figured out what to call yourself, I want you to get curious. This might be your brain getting creative with reasons to avoid taking action, reasons to avoid getting started. And you can just adjust the language and keep moving forward. You can take action in a way that feels safe enough to start. You don't have to have the perfect title or clarity or perfect plan to take action.
And it's not limited to these four patterns. I promise your brain will come up with new ways to avoid getting started. But I hope with my story as well as some of those examples that I shared from clients, that it will help you recognize patterns like these that are happening in your brain. So whether it's idea hopping or productive distraction or comparison or even small triggers like language, these are ways that your brain is trying to keep you safe vs. true facts as to why you shouldn't start.
Now, my hope for you is that you can catch your brain in the act and say, "Thank you for trying to keep me safe, Brain, but we're okay. We're not running from a tiger. We're just sending an email." And that awareness will lead to self leadership. It'll lead to you being able to take action even when you feel fear. So that's how you start building momentum even with fear happening. Because you are capable of feeling fear, which, again, is normal. Your brain wants to do that. You are capable of feeling fear and taking action.
I always say that fear will always be in the car with us. It just can't be the driver, okay? And when we don't have awareness, fear will be in the driver's seat, 100%. When we step into awareness, fear is now in the backseat, trying to be the backseat driver. But we don't have to listen.
Here's what I want you to really take away from this episode. You're not doing anything wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. You're just doing it human, okay? The hardest part of starting isn't figuring out what to do or how to do it. It's understanding what's happening inside your brain when you go to do it. When you feel resistance, when you procrastinate, when you overthink or lose excitement for the idea, it's not because anything has gone wrong and it's not because any of those things are true. It's not that you aren't actually excited about the idea. It's because your brain is doing what it was designed to do, and it was designed to keep you safe.
So that means the moment you take a step toward anything new, your brain will sound the alarm. It floods you with fear, self-doubt, distraction, comparison, not to hurt you, but to protect you. So the hardest part of starting isn't the task itself to get you started, okay? I know a lot of moms who think that similar to me, they need to find the perfect way to get started, the perfect marketing strategy, the perfect business idea, the perfect free coaching strategy, but that is not the hardest part. The hardest part is catching your brain in the moment that it tries to stop you. It will have so many good reasons for you to not start.
So I want you to notice it and gently remind yourself, I'm safe. I can feel this discomfort and still move forward. And that's it. That's the work. You don't need to wait until you're fearless or perfectly ready. You just need to understand what's happening in your mind and choose to move anyway.
Because once you can recognize the patterns that we talked about, once you can get slick to your brain, once you know that this is just your brain doing its safety dance, you stop believing the story that you're not ready or capable. You realize you can start this thing as long as you can manage your brain along the way.
Because you will feel irrationally afraid in the process, but we all experience that, and we are capable of feeling that and taking action, like I said before. And when you keep moving through that fear step by step, that's how confidence is built. That's how businesses are born. And that's why understanding your brain is the foundation of starting. The goal isn't to erase fear, it's to recognize it and move anyway.
So if this episode hit home for you, if you've been wondering why it feels so hard to start, even though you want it so badly, I want to invite you to my free live class, Unstuck: How to Build the Business You Can't Stop Thinking About. It's happening Wednesday, December 10th and it's completely free.
Inside that webinar, I'm going to help you to understand exactly what's keeping you stuck, why it's happening, and how to move forward. I promise what you're experiencing, if you're feeling stuck, is you are not the only one. You are not alone. So we're going to talk about why that's happening and how you can move forward. Because once you know those pieces, you can finally stop wasting energy fighting yourself and start channeling it toward the business that you want to start.
You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need more time. You just need clarity on what's really happening and why, so you can show up differently for yourself and the business over these next few months. And that's the work we'll do together in that class.
So I want you to go to mom.jenna.coach/unstuck to grab your spot. You can also go to the show notes jenna.coach/78 or just click the link in the podcast to get to the show notes in the podcast player. And we will talk about understanding your brain, because once you understand your brain, everything else starts to make sense.
And be sure to tune in next week. I'm going to be talking about why you don't think you have time and how to create it. So we're going to uncover some more of the obstacles and how we might be getting in our own way and solutions to move forward.
I also want you to click that follow button on the podcast so you'll be notified when that one is live next week. It's live Wednesday morning, every Wednesday morning. You will wake up and it will be available. And it would be great if you could follow so that you never miss a beat. So you have this accountability week after week. I know time is a huge obstacle for moms, and the solution I'm going to talk about next week is a simple shift that will create so much abundance, okay? I will see you next week, and I'll see you at Unstuck.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. If you've been thinking about a business idea for a while now, or maybe you don't even have the idea yet, but you know you'd love to work for yourself, and somehow you just can't bring yourself to actually start it, this episode will change everything for you. Maybe you find yourself getting excited and fired up when you talk about your dream with friends, but when you sit down to actually do something, you freeze, or suddenly you decide to prioritize other things, or you convince yourself that you should get a better plan first, or you're no longer excited about your idea.
And if any of those things sound like you, I know it's easy to think that we're lazy or bad at follow-through or that there's some secret entrepreneurial gene that we're missing, but I assure you, there's nothing wrong with you. You are simply a human being with a human brain, and that brain is wired to protect you, not to propel you. And the brain's primal need to protect you is what makes things so hard, always, but especially at the beginning of starting a business, which I'm going to explain in today's episode.
So when you go to take a new step, especially something big like starting a business, your brain's first reaction isn't, "Yay, adventure, let's go." It's more like, "Wait, danger, let's run." And that resistance that you feel, that anxiety that hits the moment you think about putting yourself out there in different ways, that is not proof that you aren't meant for this, okay? It's proof that your brain is working perfectly.
Today, we're going to talk about why starting feels so hard, even when you know you want it so badly. And we're going to talk about how to move forward and get started anyway, even though it's hard. Because once you understand why it's all so hard, everything will change. And trust me, it's not what you think.
So I want to start with a simple truth that most of us have just never been taught, and it's that your brain's primary job is not to make you successful, creative, or fulfilled, unfortunately. Its job is to keep you alive. That's it. It doesn't care if you love your work or if you're building your dream. It just wants to make sure you don't die. Now, back when we were cavewomen, that was really helpful. Your brain needed to spot danger instantly, a snake, a cliff, a hungry tiger, and it needed to react without thinking.
But today, that same wiring is still running in the background in our primitive brain. So when you go to do something new, launch a business, post online, tell someone about your new idea, your brain still interprets new as a potential threat. And it sounds ridiculous because we obviously aren't in physical danger, and yet to your brain, the physiological response is the same. You get a hit of adrenaline, your heart races, your body floods with cortisol. These are all signals to stop and stay safe, physical, physiological signals to stop and stay safe. That's why even tiny steps can feel so big and so hard. And that's also why no amount of planning or figuring it out really fixes this.
Because the resistance doesn't come from lack of information, it comes from fear of the unknown. Steven Pressfield talks about this in his book The War of Art. He calls it resistance, and it's that invisible force that shows up the moment you try to do something meaningful. And everyone feels it. Every artist, every entrepreneur, and every creator, anyone who is actually stepping out of their comfort zone will feel resistance. And it's not because you're doing it wrong. It's not because anything's wrong with you. It's because your brain thinks it's keeping you safe.
And I want to share a story from my own life and business that perfectly illustrates this because it's one of the first times that I really noticed my brain doing its job to protect me, even though I was completely safe. When I first started exploring coaching as a business, I told myself the hardest part would be figuring out where to start. I remember thinking once I know what to do, then I'll feel ready and I'll make this thing happen, okay? So I spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what to do.
But that turned out to be totally wrong, okay? The hard part wasn't figuring out what to do. It was doing it, but not just doing it, it was managing everything my brain threw at me the moment I did take action. And I want to share exactly what that looked like, because I think you'll see some consistency probably in what might be happening in your life and business right now when you go to show up.
So, I had decided to volunteer my coaching with a local single parent housing coalition. That is how I decided that I would start coaching, start coaching strangers anyway. I would donate coaching hours for free. This was my plan. All things considered, seems like a pretty easy plan. It was an organization I'd walked by for years, one in the neighborhood. I always felt drawn to it. I looked them up one day and saw that they actually needed volunteers to teach life skills. And I thought, this is perfect.
I can pitch coaching with these moms because, of course, most single parents are moms, not all, but most of them at this housing coalition. So I would pitch coaching with these moms one-on-one as a powerful life skills experience. Coaching is the most intense life skills course you can take, so it felt so aligned.
I opened my laptop to send an email to their volunteer director, and immediately my body went into full-on panic mode. Okay, my heart was pounding, my stomach dropped. I had this, you know, empty feeling in my body, my hands were shaking, my face was hot and flushed. I was even sweating, and I was offering free help. I was reaching out to say I could fill a need and I was willing to donate coaching hours. It made no logical sense that my body had gone completely into fight or flight mode. But that's how fight or flight shows up in modern life, okay?
My brain didn't care that it was a simple volunteer email. It just registered new situation equals potential threat, okay? And because my default under stress is flight, my brain's message was basically abort mission, close the laptop, do literally anything else. Even though I had the credentials, even though I had the experience, even though this was something I really wanted, and logically, it felt pretty easy. Just saying, can I donate coaching to the women in your housing coalition who are looking for resources? Pretty easy. But my body reacted as if I were in danger. And that's the power of your protective brain.
And the thing is, in that moment, I had so much judgment towards myself. I had thoughts about not being meant to be an entrepreneur. I had doubts about my ability to start a business. Like if I couldn't even send an email offering free services, that's not good. But really what I wish I had known then is that that's not a weakness. Everything I was going through was not a weakness. Nothing was wrong with me. I was just being human with a human brain.
And what's fascinating is that after a few weeks of volunteering, because by the grace of God, this person said yes to me and went in on what I was offering. And after a few weeks of volunteering, all of that fear completely disappeared. And that's because by then, it wasn't new anymore, okay? My brain had evidence that it was safe.
And that moment taught me a huge lesson that I really want you to take in today. The hardest part of starting isn't creating the plan. It's calming your brain once you decide to begin, okay? Fear doesn't mean stop, but fear will be there. And fear doesn't mean stop. It means we're entering new territory, and that's a really good thing.
So, now let's look at what this looks like, or what it could look like when you're trying to start a business and your brain wants to keep you safe in real life. Just like the example I gave, but a couple other sneaky ways that our brain likes to keep us safe, because once you can spot it, you can start separating you from your brain or you from your brain's fears, okay?
Your brain isn't the problem. It's just doing its job, and I'll remind you of that a couple more times because it's really important for us to normalize that behavior because it will pop up no matter at what point you're at in the business. Even if your business isn't just starting, if you're doing anything new, revenue-wise, offers-wise, anything, your brain will initially react with fear and resistance. And the more awareness you have of how it's trying to keep you safe, the less power that fear has over your decisions.
So I'm going to talk about four different examples of things that either myself or my clients have experienced where they didn't realize it was their brain trying to protect them and it was really helpful for me to be able to call it out and to show them their blind spots.
So the first I'll talk about is something I'll call idea whiplash. And this is where you get a business idea that you're so excited about. You can feel that spark in your chest. You start imagining what it could look like. You tell your best friend and she says, "Oh my gosh, you'd be amazing at that. That's perfect." And then a couple days later, the excitement fades. You're no longer sure it's the right idea. You start thinking, maybe I should go back to brainstorming. I'll wait until I have more clarity and excitement. This must not be it.
And this happened recently with one of my clients. In our very first session together, she came up with an idea that checked all the boxes. She went from absolutely no idea what she wanted to do to an idea that just lit her up. It aligned with all of her gifts, her story, her energy, all the things. She was glowing when she talked about it. But the next week, she came back saying, "I think I need to start over. I'm not as excited anymore."
So what had changed? Nothing. Except that her brain realized the next step was to take action, and that felt new and uncertain and therefore unsafe. Her brain wanted to keep her in idea generation mode because brainstorming feels safe, okay? We can't fail while we're thinking. We can only fail once we start doing.
So I want you to catch yourself when you're losing excitement or wanting to pivot again and again, remind yourself, this is just my brain trying to keep me safe. Then commit to maybe just one small action to keep the momentum going forward. You don't need a full business plan, just one tiny next step. Action, I promise, builds safety, just like I talked about in my experience with donating coaching hours and volunteering. The action built the feeling of safety, which then was able to build confidence, okay? And that confidence allows us to keep driving forward.
So, the second brain trick that I want you to be aware of is, we'll call it productive distraction. And this one is common, especially for moms. So you finally carve out time to start the business, and right before you sit down, your brain suddenly remembers everything else that you need to do. Laundry, empty the dishwasher, those school forms, that work email that you could just knock out real quick. And before you know it, the time you set aside for yourself is gone.
And here's the thing. These are all good things. You're being helpful, productive, responsible, but what's actually happening is that your brain is prioritizing comfort and control over risk and uncertainty and ultimately fear, okay? Those familiar tasks, the ones you've done a million times, they give your brain instant gratification. You feel like, "Ah, look, we're productive. We're safe." But when you're thinking about starting the business and whatever new business tasks need to get done, there's so much feeling of uncertainty, vulnerability, and risk.
So your brain creates urgency around the things that feel safe and quietly moves your dreams to the bottom of the list. I see this all the time with my clients. They tell me I just didn't have time to work on my business this week or I had so much to do. And when we look closer, they did have time. It was just filled with a bunch of shoulds, a bunch of tasks throughout the day and throughout the house that they decided to prioritize over the business, work to-dos that weren't actually urgent, tasks around the house that felt responsible, saying yes to one more volunteer role because it felt easier than saying yes to themselves.
And the truth is, that's not a lack of time problem, although we'll talk about this a lot next week. We're going to talk a lot about time. But this isn't a lack of time problem. It's your brain trying to protect you from feeling discomfort, the discomfort that comes with doing new things, the new thing being starting your business.
So the next time you feel the pull to do something else, I want you to pause and notice and just ask yourself, am I de-prioritizing my business because I'm afraid? Okay? And I want you to answer it honestly for yourself. If the honest answer is yes, I want you to take a deep breath, thank your brain for trying to protect you, and go do the thing that moves you forward first. Because your dream really does deserve to be at the top of the list. And trust me, all the other things still get done. We're just way more efficient while doing all the things, efficient and creative. Trust me.
The third brain trick I want to talk about is comparison. So this is something we get into a bit of a comparison spiral sometimes. We might scroll through Instagram or LinkedIn, and we might see another mom who's already doing what you want to do, right? And she's confident and she's polished and she's got the brand photos and the clients and the captions that hit just right. And immediately your stomach drops and you think, "She's already doing it. She's further ahead. What's the point of me even starting?"
What's actually happening here is that your brain sees someone further along and panics because it doesn't know how you'd get from where you are at the very beginning to where she is. And that gap triggers fear. So instead of letting you sit in that discomfort, your brain takes the easy route and it convinces you not to start. We're too far behind, so what's the point of starting?
So, the next time your brain compares you to another person who has a business who's further along and is saying to you, like, she's so far ahead, I want you to replace that with she's showing me what's possible. For every example of somebody whose business is further along or a saturated market, there's also evidence that this must work if there are other people doing it. This person is showing me what's possible. This person's success doesn't mean you're behind. It means the path exists. It's proof that what you want can be done.
And finally, one of my favorite examples of how subtle this can be is different triggers, especially in language. And I think this one is motivated by one of my recent clients that wanted to start a business, and the business doesn't really have an exact name that aligns with her services. It's a unique offering. It's a mix of interior design, organizing, education, functionality, systems, right, all the things. And I've talked about her business before on the podcast because it's just has been such an amazing coaching experience and the growth has been just phenomenal and I've loved her idea since day one.
So this business that she started was so clearly in her zone of genius. But every time we talked about her work, she'd have some resistance to like language triggers, we'll call them. And she'd say, well, I don't know if I'd really call myself a designer, or I'm not technically an organizer. And every time those words came up, ones that felt misaligned with who she was or what she wanted her business to be, her brain panicked.
She'd say things like, this doesn't feel right. Maybe I should start over and do something else. There was even a moment where a potential client mentioned that she needed help with organizing in an email and my client had a mini freak out moment where she was going to respond that she's not an organizer. When actually, like, this was her ideal client. The client was just using traditional language and didn't know how to talk about the services in the way that most closely aligned to what my client wanted.
And what I worked with her on and what I wanted to be clear about what was happening that she didn't initially see, and which is why it's so helpful to have somebody calling out blind spots, is that her brain was looking for reasons to run and avoid taking action. By focusing on those nuances in the words that we were using and that people were using, it was creating a reason to go back into brainstorming mode and avoid continuing to take action. So instead of leaning in, her brain's plan was to like, let's burn it all down and start over because that felt safe.
I talk about this a lot with clients because it's really easy to plant a bunch of seeds, whatever that means in the business, and then to wait a couple days, not even, maybe a couple hours, and then try and dig them all up. And another analogy that I really like using with this is like we can start down a path in our business, and then we get to a point and our brain freaks out.
Maybe it was somebody called us an organizer or misunderstood our business, or maybe it was certain feeling that something didn't go well, or maybe a potential client says no, or any of these ways that our brain shows up and freaks out. And then we can want to retrace all of our steps and go back to the start. And this is the experience for many entrepreneurs is that they keep starting over, instead of continuing with a business idea and continuing to take action to really figure out what works and what doesn't work in the business.
But it's hard to even start down that path. Like our brain gets in the way of even starting. Our brain can lock on to not knowing how to describe what we do. Our brain can lock on to needing the perfect words or the perfect plan or the perfect idea. And I've talked about this a lot before on the podcast too, that it can think we need something that's actually not important at all.
What's so important is not scrapping our business idea, not scrapping the actions that we've already taken. The solution really is to keep going and to uncover what fears are rooted within the obstacles. And then figure out the answer to how to align our business. When we are talking about the language triggers, we can figure out how to build a business that aligns even though those words are likely to come up in different ways. The client example that I gave, like we needed to get to a place where those words no longer seemed like good reasons to avoid business or distract from this client taking action.
So if certain words, titles, or labels make you tense or make you want to avoid starting because you haven't quite figured out what to call yourself, I want you to get curious. This might be your brain getting creative with reasons to avoid taking action, reasons to avoid getting started. And you can just adjust the language and keep moving forward. You can take action in a way that feels safe enough to start. You don't have to have the perfect title or clarity or perfect plan to take action.
And it's not limited to these four patterns. I promise your brain will come up with new ways to avoid getting started. But I hope with my story as well as some of those examples that I shared from clients, that it will help you recognize patterns like these that are happening in your brain. So whether it's idea hopping or productive distraction or comparison or even small triggers like language, these are ways that your brain is trying to keep you safe vs. true facts as to why you shouldn't start.
Now, my hope for you is that you can catch your brain in the act and say, "Thank you for trying to keep me safe, Brain, but we're okay. We're not running from a tiger. We're just sending an email." And that awareness will lead to self leadership. It'll lead to you being able to take action even when you feel fear. So that's how you start building momentum even with fear happening. Because you are capable of feeling fear, which, again, is normal. Your brain wants to do that. You are capable of feeling fear and taking action.
I always say that fear will always be in the car with us. It just can't be the driver, okay? And when we don't have awareness, fear will be in the driver's seat, 100%. When we step into awareness, fear is now in the backseat, trying to be the backseat driver. But we don't have to listen.
Here's what I want you to really take away from this episode. You're not doing anything wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. You're just doing it human, okay? The hardest part of starting isn't figuring out what to do or how to do it. It's understanding what's happening inside your brain when you go to do it. When you feel resistance, when you procrastinate, when you overthink or lose excitement for the idea, it's not because anything has gone wrong and it's not because any of those things are true. It's not that you aren't actually excited about the idea. It's because your brain is doing what it was designed to do, and it was designed to keep you safe.
So that means the moment you take a step toward anything new, your brain will sound the alarm. It floods you with fear, self-doubt, distraction, comparison, not to hurt you, but to protect you. So the hardest part of starting isn't the task itself to get you started, okay? I know a lot of moms who think that similar to me, they need to find the perfect way to get started, the perfect marketing strategy, the perfect business idea, the perfect free coaching strategy, but that is not the hardest part. The hardest part is catching your brain in the moment that it tries to stop you. It will have so many good reasons for you to not start.
So I want you to notice it and gently remind yourself, I'm safe. I can feel this discomfort and still move forward. And that's it. That's the work. You don't need to wait until you're fearless or perfectly ready. You just need to understand what's happening in your mind and choose to move anyway.
Because once you can recognize the patterns that we talked about, once you can get slick to your brain, once you know that this is just your brain doing its safety dance, you stop believing the story that you're not ready or capable. You realize you can start this thing as long as you can manage your brain along the way.
Because you will feel irrationally afraid in the process, but we all experience that, and we are capable of feeling that and taking action, like I said before. And when you keep moving through that fear step by step, that's how confidence is built. That's how businesses are born. And that's why understanding your brain is the foundation of starting. The goal isn't to erase fear, it's to recognize it and move anyway.
So if this episode hit home for you, if you've been wondering why it feels so hard to start, even though you want it so badly, I want to invite you to my free live class, Unstuck: How to Build the Business You Can't Stop Thinking About. It's happening Wednesday, December 10th and it's completely free.
Inside that webinar, I'm going to help you to understand exactly what's keeping you stuck, why it's happening, and how to move forward. I promise what you're experiencing, if you're feeling stuck, is you are not the only one. You are not alone. So we're going to talk about why that's happening and how you can move forward. Because once you know those pieces, you can finally stop wasting energy fighting yourself and start channeling it toward the business that you want to start.
You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need more time. You just need clarity on what's really happening and why, so you can show up differently for yourself and the business over these next few months. And that's the work we'll do together in that class.
So I want you to go to mom.jenna.coach/unstuck to grab your spot. You can also go to the show notes jenna.coach/78 or just click the link in the podcast to get to the show notes in the podcast player. And we will talk about understanding your brain, because once you understand your brain, everything else starts to make sense.
And be sure to tune in next week. I'm going to be talking about why you don't think you have time and how to create it. So we're going to uncover some more of the obstacles and how we might be getting in our own way and solutions to move forward.
I also want you to click that follow button on the podcast so you'll be notified when that one is live next week. It's live Wednesday morning, every Wednesday morning. You will wake up and it will be available. And it would be great if you could follow so that you never miss a beat. So you have this accountability week after week. I know time is a huge obstacle for moms, and the solution I'm going to talk about next week is a simple shift that will create so much abundance, okay? I will see you next week, and I'll see you at Unstuck.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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