Handling Overwhelm with Jayne Havens

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Transcript: Overwhelm

Intro: Welcome to Becoming a Sleep Consultant! I’m your host Jayne Havens, a certified sleep consultant and founder of both Snooze Fest by Jayne Havens and Center for Pediatric Sleep Management.

On this podcast, I’ll be discussing the business side of sleep consulting. You’ll have an insider’s view on launching, growing, and even scaling a sleep consulting business. This is not a podcast about sleep training. This is a podcast about business building and entrepreneurship.

Jayne Havens: Today I am coming on to the podcast to discuss overwhelm. I think that this is a really common feeling that entrepreneurs face in their businesses. Sometimes overwhelm is minor. Sometimes it feels totally — I guess the word is overwhelming, right? It just totally overtakes us, and it just feels like, how are we going to get to the other side of the mountain? The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I’m feeling it myself. And I know that a lot of people who listen to this podcast, I think, probably half of the people who listen are already sleep consultants. Then maybe the other half are thinking about becoming sleep consultants. This is something that we all feel.

I have had it on my list to record a solo podcast episode for a couple of weeks now. And every time I go to do it, I stumble over my words. I can’t figure out what I want to talk about. I am feeling overwhelmed. That’s what it is. It’s like I want to do it so badly. I want to get out there. I want to do the thing, but it just feels too hard. And I think that this topic, it must be really relatable. I know I’m not the only one that feels this way, so I thought I would just come on the podcast and be open and honest about having these feelings and what I do to get over them.

I think that this is really what ultimately separates those who make it from those who don’t. All of us are overwhelmed. All of us are scared. All of us feel challenged in working on new things and trying new things — whether you’re interested in becoming a sleep consultant, but you feel overwhelmed with the idea of, like, how am I going to find clients? How am I going to create a website? How am I going to do X, Y and Z? It just paralyzes you. And you’re like, “I can’t do it. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to stay where I am, where it’s comfortable and safe and the same.” That’s one option, right?

Or, you can feel this intense feeling of overwhelm. You can harness that energy, take all of your nerves and all of your anxiety, and just keep pushing through and realize that when you harness all of that nervous energy and figure out a way to put it to good use, usually, something really amazing comes from it. That’s kind of what I’m hoping happens right now in this podcast episode, because I know you guys don’t believe me.

I promised you, promised you that I have tried to record a solo podcast episode almost every single day for the past two weeks, and nothing has come from it. Every single time I do it, I’m like, “That’s garbage. Nobody wants to hear about that,” that I’m stumbling on my words, that I didn’t make sense. Then the next day is even harder because I have compounded a week’s worth of “me failing.” And I put that in air quotes. Because every single time that you do something, and it doesn’t work out, it feels like a failure.

But I’m here to tell you today that when you try something and it doesn’t work out, it’s not a failure. It is a learning lesson. It’s an opportunity to practice. It’s an opportunity to refine your craft. It’s an opportunity to say, hmm, why didn’t that work? I’m going to try it differently next time.” You know what? Failing didn’t feel so terrible. It felt a little bit frustrating. It was annoying. It was uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the end of the world. I got over it, and I’m going to try again.

So I’m sort of practicing what I preach today. I am back on Zoom, staring at myself in my own computer awkwardly, and trying my best to get over this overwhelm so that I can just move forward. It’s so important. I think this is really the key to entrepreneurship, I think that when you truly just push through your own discomfort, and instead of saying, “That was too hard. I can’t do it. I’m not going to do it anymore,” you just try again. I really think that that’s the key to success.

Really, when I look at those who are successful in business versus those who aren’t, the only difference that I really can see across the board is that those who are most successful are not afraid of their own failures. They’re not afraid of their own hiccups, or speed bumps, or anything that gets in the way. And they just keep moving forward. Progress whether it’s in business, or in sleep training, or anything else. Progress is never entirely linear. Sometimes things go really well, and then things get hard. Then things go okay again, and then hard again. Really, I think, truly, truly, the key to growth, the key to moving forward, in upward mobility is just persistence, and grit, and patience, and really just being willing to try over and over and over again.

So here I am trying again. I actually think this is going to work this time. I think this one’s going to be a go. I hope that this talk really resonates with everybody listening, whether you are already a sleep consultant, and you’re just trying to get your business off the ground, you’re just trying to navigate who you are as a business owner and who you want to present to your target audience. What sort of branding, what sort of imaging, what sort of voice do you want to use? It all feels really overwhelming at first.

And even for those who are listening who are interested in becoming sleep consultants, and all you can really think about is all of the things that are swirling around in your head that just feels so hard and just feels so far away, that feeling, we all have that. We all have that. Even once we get started, that feeling never goes away. It always feels like there’s more work to do. It always feels like there’s more growth to be had. When you’re really thick in it, it never ends. It never ends. I still feel even though I have a really successful business, I’m very established in my career, I still feel like I have so much learning to do. I have so much more growth to achieve, and I’m still somewhere on that path towards who knows where really. It’s never ending.

So if you’re listening to this and you’re feeling overwhelmed, and you’re feeling like you don’t know what the next move is, and you don’t know what the next step is to take, my advice to you is just to take that very first step forward, whatever that is for you. Take one forward step in the direction towards where you want to be. That is the first move on the big picture of your journey. It is one foot in front of the other. When things are hard, you have to keep walking. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m pushing through my overwhelm. I’m brushing my nerves, and I am just going with it. Anyway, I did it. I’m going to release it. This is it. I hope you guys enjoyed.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Becoming a Sleep Consultant Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, it would mean so much to me if you would rate, review, and subscribe. When you rate, review, and subscribe, this helps the podcast reach a greater audience. I am so grateful for your support.

If you would like to learn more about how you can become a certified sleep consultant, head over to my Facebook Group, Becoming a Sleep Consultant or to my website thecpsm.com. Thanks so much, and I hope you will tune in for the next episode. overwhelm