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Hi, itâs Pat! đ
I havenât used a pacifier for over 10 years now.
Wait â I mean as a parent, for one of my babies. Not for myself. đ
The origin of the word pacifier â derived from the 15th-century word pacify â literally means to âmake peaceâ or âbring peace,â and if youâre a parent with a crying baby, you can really resonate with that meaning.
But no matter what age you are, when something makes us uncomfortable, sometimes we subconsciously try to âbring peaceâ to the situation. Nail-biting is a common bad habit associated with nervousness, just as an example.
In this email, Iâm going to point out one of my own âpacifiers,â and how I actually used it to my advantage.
Because hereâs the truth: when you arenât conscious of the actions that hold you backâŚit sucks.
đ
See what I did there? Pacifier? Sucks?
I couldnât help myself. Alright, letâs get unstuck.
âItâs not who you are that holds you back, itâs who you think youâre not."
â Denis Waitley
I first realized I had an âadult binkyâ when I filmed my first online course in 2017. I had a bad habit that was subconscious until someone else pointed it out.
What was it?
When filming, I immediately grabbed my phone and started checking Twitter or Instagram after each take.
Filming was hard. I was really nervous and I felt very self-conscious about how I appeared on camera. After I trudged through the first module, I handed over the raw files to my editor and a day later, he sent me this message:
âHey Pat, this is kind of random, but I noticed that you were checking your phone between every take. Was there something going on while you were filming?â
He thought maybe there was a football game on that I was following, but that wasnât it at all. Twitter and Instagram had become my pacifier, soothing me when things got tough.
My social feeds were distracting me from the hard things I was trying to do, and it absolutely delayed my production. Deep down, in the subconscious mind of a first time course creator, a delay is probably what I wanted to happen.
I didnât want to film, so I grabbed the nearest thing that brought me comfort.
But hey, at least I didnât put my phone in my mouth.
This was an eye-opening realization, and I immediately did something about it:
And it worked.
These strategies werenât revolutionary, but understanding of WHY the distraction existed in the first place was a revelation.
Every time I had the urge to check my phone (and trust me, it kept happening even after taking it out of my sight), I used it as a signal that things were in fact hard, but I was making the conscious choice to do it anyway.
Opting-in to the challenge, versus seeking an automatic out was the key difference, and it allowed me to move a lot faster through the material. In late 2017 the course, Smart from Scratch, was finally published.
Since then, Smart from Scratch has served over 30,000 people. Click here if youâd like to check it out, especially if youâre new to creating online businesses, or you can get access to our entire course library with an SPI All-Access Pass membership.
It took my editor watching me on film to point out what my pacifier was; since then Iâve been consciously trying to uncover more of them.
When Iâm on stage, if I donât control my nerves, I tend to walk aimlessly back and forth. When in a podcast interview, if Iâm intimidated by the host I tend to say âawesomeâ a lot and then revert to basic, surface level questions, rather than go deeper.
I challenge you to find at least one âpacifierâ that you unconsciously gravitate toward when you get nervous or are faced with a challenge. Understanding those signals and reading the signs can help you not only get over them, but also use them to your advantage and get better results.
As a bonus, ask people close to you to point out possible âpacifier habits.â Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to see whatâs been there all along.
Good luck!
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What are the strongest days of the week?
Saturday and Sunday. All the others are weekdays.
â
Starting and growing a business can be hard, and sometimes you might feel stuck. Our weekly newsletter, Unstuck, gets delivered to over 100,000 people each week to help them get unstuck. We'd love to help you, too.
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