Why You're Not Doing the Thing

A client came to our session this week stuck on something she'd been sitting on for three weeks. Since our last session in fact.

She'd talked to her therapist about it. She'd been ruminating on it. She knew she needed to do it, that it was good for her business, that it wouldn't even take that long. And yet, there it sat, still not-done.

So instead of immediately pushing her toward the task, we went underneath it. I asked her to put herself back to the specific moment. Where was she? What was she feeling in her body? Then I asked: what stories were you telling yourself, about yourself, at that moment?

Things like: "I'm not experienced enough, so I shouldn't even reach out" or "If I get it wrong, people will see that I'm a fraud."

She wrote down everything that came up without filtering. Then we tested each belief against actual evidence. Not feelings, but facts. What has actually happened that proves this is true? What proves it isn't? Is this a fact, or is it a story built from facts?

Most beliefs about ourselves don't survive that step of introspection.

By the end, what had looked like a task-is-hard problem turned out to be a belief problem. She wasn't stuck because she didn't know what to do or wasn't qualified enough to do it. She was stuck because of what she was telling herself about herself. She was telling herself "I'm not good enough, so why bother."

I'd love to tell you I watched that session and felt very wise and sorted.

Instead I thought: I need to do this myself.

Because this week I did something I would absolutely call a client out for. Rather than focusing on the things that are actually good for my business right now, I spent hours (across multiple days) going down a rabbit hole on whether I should move this newsletter to Substack. Or maybe Beehiiv, its newish competitor. I read the comparison posts. I looked at other people's setups. I asked on LinkedIn. I re-examined a decision I had already made.

I knew while I was doing it that it wasn't useful. I had already decided it didn't make sense for me to be on another platform. But it didn't matter, I went down this rabbit hole anyway.

After this client session, I finally put myself through the same exercise (specific moment, what am I telling myself, is this a fact or a story). What came up wasn't really about where this newsletter should live.

It was the question: is this whole thing working? And rather than sit with that feeling of doubt directly (a doubt that is often not based in reality) I went looking for something different.  

The thing (substack or not) wasn't the problem. The belief underneath it was. I needed to deal with the current cycle of uncertainty, because in entrepreneurship it's always there.

Your version of this probably doesn't look like a Substack spiral. Maybe it's an email sitting in drafts, a price you haven't raised, an offer you keep tweaking instead of sending. But the pattern is usually the same. We orbit the thing because something underneath it feels too exposed to look at directly.

So, if you find yourself there, here's the exercise. You can do it in 20 minutes.

Step 1: Get into the moment. Pick a specific scene where you hesitated or held back. Where were you, what were you about to do, what did it feel like in your body? 

Step 2: Surface the beliefs. In that moment, what were/are you telling yourself, about yourself? Write down everything without filtering. You can start with "I am/I am not" if you're stuck. The ones that feel embarrassing to write are usually the most important.

Step 3: Test them against the data. For each belief: what evidence do I have that this is true? What evidence do I have that it isn't? Is this a fact, or an interpretation?

Step 4: Rewrite or release. Then one-by-one, ask yourself: Does this belief serve me? If not, either rewrite it into something more accurate, or name it as a story and loosen its grip that way.

Step 5: Anchor it. Pick the one rewritten belief that matters most right now. What would you do differently if you actually believed it? What's one small action from that place?

This isn't a one-time fix. The beliefs shift, but new ones show up. I'm always working with mine.