It Starts With Heart
It Starts With Heart is a relatable straight talking podcast, brought to you by Mindset Mastery Online Founder Rebecca Sonuga.
Rebecca is on a mission to empower women to be the best version of themselves, for them to know their worth and to have the self-belief that they can be and do whatever they wish.
Anytime you feel inspired, share this with your friends and tag @rebeccasonuga on social media!
It Starts With Heart
194 - All Out Messy Action
Ever felt the prickling heat of fear when stepping out of your comfort zone? That's the crucible of growth I've faced while launching into the world of social media for my online business—something I'm eager to share with you. Wrestling with the silence of 'tumbleweeds' on new accounts and the internal battle of posting consistently, I've come to realise the strength in vulnerability and the power of messy action. From the home office, where parenting and business tasks collide, I recount the sometimes chaotic, always authentic journey of building a presence online and the courage it takes to learn in the public eye.
Navigating through the thicket of doubts and fears is no small feat, especially when the path involves baring your soul and work to an online audience. The push to make public commitments as a form of accountability has been a game-changer for me, spurring action over stagnation. It's a dance of discipline and resolve, where I've learned that each step taken is a ripple that can inspire others. And through the trials of illness or the unpredictability of family life, I continue to honour my promise of consistency—a testament to the resilience we all possess.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, I delve into my 'path to freedom reflection strategy' and how it anchors my weeks—setting intentions, reflecting on progress, and adapting where necessary. It's about fine-tuning life's practices, be it communication, exercise or mindset, in a cycle of reflection and enhancement. My hope is that by sharing this journey, you'll be inspired to take your own imperfect steps towards success and happiness. Join me on this real-life adventure where we embrace the beautiful mess of growth, both personal and professional.
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Rebecca xx
Hello, my name is Rebecca Shinuga and you are back with it Starts With Heart podcast. I have a great episode for you today and I was inspired by a Zoom call that I was listening to today. As you know, I love personal development. Anytime I can get my ears or my eyes into something where I can learn, grow, be inspired. I am there and I'm very lucky because part of our community, within the travel business opportunity that I'm a part of, we host calls at 6am every single weekday, sharing value, nuggets, findings. It's a bit like a book club we are reading a book together and we are getting the value and discussing it and hearing other people's opinions about it.
Speaker 1:And the topic of conversation today, or one of the topics of conversation today, was all about messy action. And this took me right back to the days when I excuse me first started on social media and I had no experience. Oh my gosh, I was rubbish, I hated it. I thought, oh gosh, I've got to build a business on social media and I don't even like using social media. It makes me cringe. I didn't have a Facebook account. Tiktok wasn't even a thing then, or I didn't know about it. I don't think reels were even a thing. It was just, or I didn't know about it. I don't think reels were even a thing, it was just.
Speaker 1:I was someone who was the typical technophobe, anti-social media person ever. There's been numerous times in my life where I've gone years without being on any social platforms whatsoever, so starting an online business was a completely new thing for me, and the only way that I got half decent at it was by doing it, and doing it even when I didn't know what I was doing. Yes, part of my personal development was YouTube and social media tips and getting as many nuggets about social media as I could, following people or befriending people who I thought were doing well on social media, so I could look at some of their content and get some little tips and nuggets and replicate a little bit of what they were doing. I just used to look at the people's pages, look what I liked and thought, right, okay, let me do my own little version of this. Or oh, I like how they've done this post, so let me do my own little version of this. Or, oh, I like how they've done this post, so let me do my own version of this post.
Speaker 1:And it was complete trial and error and how I started was messy action and thankfully I had someone who actually had this conversation with me and was like the bravest thing you can ever do when you start a business is post every single day on social media when it's absolute tumbleweeds, no one's commenting, no one's liking, but you're still posting regardless. It's the bravest thing and one of the most valuable things that you'll ever do in your business. And I took that literally because I thought you know what this person's right. I'm just going to keep posting, because that's one of of the reasons why people don't post, right, when you have a business. Yeah, there's the whole. Oh, I'm not that technical on social media. Oh, I don't enjoy using social media. But then, let's be frank, there's also the limiting beliefs. Oh, people aren't going to support my posts, or my posts aren't going to provide any value, or what if no one likes them? And you just got to block it out. And that's how it all started.
Speaker 1:And then that was not the only thing where I had to start messing my business. It was everything. It was building the connections, it was building a team, it was utilizing all of the different things that I've got in my coaching business the websites, the mindset, mastery, masterclasses, doing this podcast, I'm still, in a way, doing it messy. Now I know how to do a podcast now, but obviously we all know that I'm building my business from home around my two young kids. I don't have the luxury right now of going into a podcast studio or having a professional podcast studio at home where I'm uninterrupted. I'm literally jumping on this now whilst Winnie's having a nap, and you know what it's like. She's shown herself on some of the last few episodes. She can literally just wake up at any time, and that's how it is. I'm doing it messy because I'm showing up. If I just left it and thought do you know what? I'm going to wait till my kids are a bit older, when I'm not going to be at home as much and I've got more free time in the day to go to a studio and do it all properly, and I'll get a videographer to make me some reels and I'm going to have all of this fancy stuff. If I was waiting for it all to be perfect, there wouldn't be nearly 200 episodes out now, would there? I would still just be sitting on it thinking, oh, I would love to start a podcast one day. I'm just going to wait for that perfect time the risen, a perfect time.
Speaker 1:So I want to share just a few things about messy action. And when I say messy action, messy action can be in relation to anything that you do, where you're doing the action anyway without being an expert. You're just trialing and erroring. You're jumping in at the deep end. You might have had a little bit of guidance, but you've never done it before. So you're just going to jump in and do it and just see what happens, and you're just going to plan, do, review and put a little plan in place. So you've got a little bit of an idea of what you think you're going to be doing. Do it and then review it and see how it's working.
Speaker 1:So the first thing I want to talk about is the power of imperfection. There's so many reasons, especially in the online business space, why imperfection is good. So if you're in the same industry as myself in terms of network marketing, I think being imperfect is a brilliant thing. I purposely show up imperfect on social media because it's relatable. If you're too squeaky, clean and too perfect, who's going to relate to you? Who's going to going to relate to you? Who's going to want to join you? Who's going to want to be your client? If they can't relate to you, then they're probably not going to buy something from you or want to work with you.
Speaker 1:And, on top of that, if you're so perfect all the time, a lot of your things that you do are going to be delayed because you're just going to be continuously scrutinizing it. This isn't right or this could be better, and don't get me wrong. You get to a certain level and you think, right, okay, I know my standard now. So even when I do launch something new now and it might be something that I haven't got much experience in, or a new system or a new strategy that I'm implementing, I've got a bit more thought process around it and I'm more further ahead than what I was when I first started. But think about where you're at and are you taking imperfection like steps? Are you doing the work regardless, even if it's not perfect? If you're waiting to be perfect, the reason why it can hinder your progress is because you just massively procrastinate.
Speaker 1:Imagine my podcast if I started it from day one now and hadn't had almost 200 episodes of practicing speaking on a podcast, uploading them, doing the show notes, talking about the different topics, getting the feedback that I do, seeing the analytics, imagine and imagine if, in another couple of years, I started to do the podcast and I was brand new but I was holding off because I was waiting for my business to be bigger and I was waiting for more influence online to get more eyes on it. And then I had even more eyes on what I was doing in, say, for example, two years time. And then I'm starting from day one. Trial and error from day one. No, I trialed and errored when no one was listening to this thing. I trialed and errored before anyone even knew that I even had a podcast because I was doing it when my audience was tiny.
Speaker 1:Like that is one of the benefits of doing it. If you are a entrepreneur who's in an industry where you're working online, you're working on social media, there might be just you or one or two people in your team. It's not a big organisation. Yet just do the messy action and don't worry about being too perfect, because the longer you wait and the longer you procrastinate, the more you are delaying your results, because you're not practising, you're not doing the work in order for you to personally get your results, because you're not practicing, you're not doing the work in order for you to personally get better at what you're doing. And there's not just myself who started messy. Look at anyone on social media now anyone who's got any sort of success, in whatever industry it is. If you go back and I've done this loads of times there's a really popular podcast that is not just one of the biggest podcasts in the UK, but now one of the biggest podcasts worldwide.
Speaker 1:And when I looked because it always interests me I always love to see people's journeys they started the podcast in 2017. It's now 2024. Millions and millions and millions of listeners and viewers on YouTube and incredible guests on this podcast every single week and sometimes multiple times a week. And when I listened back to the first episodes in 2017, they were not good. There was people who were supposed to be guests who weren't turning up. There was absolutely just winging it, but they just started messy.
Speaker 1:That it was inconsistent all of the things that happen when you are not trying to necessarily dominate at that time. You're just finding your flow with things, and some tips as well for overcoming the fear of imperfection. It's just not worrying too much about what people think. At the end of the day, everyone goes on a journey, whether people show it or not. Anyone with any sort of success in any sort of area has had to do some sort of grinding If they were not presented with a silver spoon and being like here's everything in the world you could ever possibly want, and you don't ever have to work for anything in your life. Every single person has worked for something, even if they don't show it on the social media. So the more that you are worried about what people think of you, the more you're just prolonging your own success, your own personal growth. It's so powerful when you have the courage just to show up and do whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1:My brother my brother is I don't know if he's still got a Twitter account now. He gets banned on it all the time. I wouldn't even want to even say how many Twitter accounts he's had, but it's been sort of a running joke. He's a bit of a bit of like a funny, a funny character on there. Like people follow him just because of obviously like the outrageous things that he tweets and stuff, and he created a little bit of influence on Twitter and he wanted to start a YouTube channel. But he's also one of the boys in his group and group and he was sort of thinking oh, what are they all going to think of me if I start doing YouTube and he does these live chats on YouTube and he'll be like talking about whatever topic and answering questions and stuff, and people are chatting with him and people absolutely love it. And he was like do you know what? I'm just going to do it anyway. And the more you're not bothered and the more that you show you're not bothered, the less people say. People actually be quiet. If people think that they get into you and that you are bothered about what they think they're going to do it more, you have to have that posture. No one says anything to him because he's just like yeah, I'm just doing me, it's just what I want to do, and everyone ended up supporting him anyway. So think about that.
Speaker 1:Think about when you are scared of showing up for yourself and then think about when you're scared of being imperfect. If anyone's going to criticise you for being imperfect, for trying your best at that time, for whatever you feel your best is at that time, should they be in your circle? No, that person pay your bills? Probably not. Does that person deserve to make you feel a type of way and I can get him down a whole other rabbit hole of how it's important to how do I put this? How it's important for you to understand that you are in control of every single reaction and feeling, regardless of what's happening on the other side, of what someone's saying or doing to you and I could literally do a whole podcast episode on that and I might do one day but what I'm saying is just do it anyway. The time's going to pass and people are going to forget what you was like at the beginning. They're just going to see the results on the back of it and be like, wow, I want that as well. And people appreciate it as well when they actually see your growth journey. And I have someone who talks to me about this quite a lot, someone who I work with in business, and she talks about how she watched me literally before I even had a business and she literally watched my business grow on social media, my confidence in everything, and then that's what inspired her to start her business.
Speaker 1:So you never realise as well the different people like the ripple effect that your actions can be having on people that you potentially wouldn't even necessarily even think about, or sometimes might not even know about paralysis. How do you get over taking that first step? So most people who don't take that first step, they're overthinking, aren't they? Let's be frank, they're overthinking, they're thinking, oh, I can't do this, or it's too hard, or what if I fail? Or what if someone thinks this? Or what if it's harder work than what I thought it was going to be? What if I struggle to keep it up? Whatever it is? But literally the best way that you can do it is well, I'll tell you what works for me. Let me tell you what works for me and then you can take anything from this that you want.
Speaker 1:What works for me when I know that I'm overthinking something, or when I know that I am potentially procrastinating and it might be something that's making me a little bit uncomfortable, or something where I'm just not really in the mood, because we all have those days or I'm just not in the mood today. No one knows that I was supposed to be doing this thing, whether it's this gym workout or this live on social media. So if I don't do it and I just do it tomorrow instead, no one's going to know anyway, and it's one of them like when you know that no one knows what you was going to do and you're not letting anyone down, you're not looking flaky it's a lot easier for you to turn around then and be like I'm not doing it. The thing that works for me is I'll post it on my social media. I know that if I post something that I'm going to do on social media, I will follow through, no matter how challenging it is, no matter how hard work it is, no matter how annoying it is, no matter how I'm feeling on that type of day. This is why you'll see me even on days when I don't feel great, and people will know I'm not feeling great, like I wasn't well.
Speaker 1:I actually had a virus a few weeks ago and I still recorded a podcast, and it's because I'm not feeling great, like I wasn't well. I actually had a virus a few weeks ago and I still recorded a podcast, and it's because I'd committed to it. I had it in my diary. I had a guest on. I'm not gonna mess that person around. It just meant that the podcast needed a little bit of editing slightly because I was absolutely just.
Speaker 1:I felt like I was on my last legs, but the first step that I do is I put it out there because, for me personally, I don't want to be seen as a flake. That is one thing that people can never say about me. I am consistent. I'm someone who does what I say that I'm going to do, and if I didn't do what I say I was going to do, you better believe. There's a reason. I've been hit by a bus, I've had my legs and arms amputated or something like that. There's something that's happened what's meant that I could not show up for whatever reason, and it literally doesn't happen. I do everything that I say that I'm going to do and I show up and, like I said, it's just putting it out there my first ever Instagram live.
Speaker 1:I knew it was something that I had to do to get over the fear of doing it. I knew it was something I had to do to get better at doing it. I knew it was going to be important for my confidence. I knew it was going to be important for my posture. I knew it was going to be important for my business to get it out there, and I knew it was important at that time because I was talking about mindset tips during the pandemic and people were struggling with the mental health massively and I knew I had this little bit of a gift from all of the knowledge and the stuff that I'd collected over the years and also just my resilience in general anyway, which I do believe is a huge gift and I was sharing that and I knew that I was going to help loads of people.
Speaker 1:But I was petrified of going live on social media. So what did I do? I posted on social media because in my head I thought if I don't do it now, I'm going to look stupid and I do not want to look stupid and I don't want to look flaky. And then I just show up. At the time I say that I'm going to show up and I just do it. And what a lot of the time is. I'll find that when I actually get into the flow of doing something for a few seconds, it's fine.
Speaker 1:It's like when I don't want to go and run 5k some evenings, I don't feel like going for a run. But as soon as I've got my shoes on and as soon as I've got out there and as soon as I set up my Apple Watch and then I start I'm good, but it's just doing those initial things. It's putting the trainers on, then it's heading outside and then it's moving from your nice comfortable walk to changing the workout on your Apple Watch, because you don't want to be recording a run on your Apple Watch and walking. So then you start jogging a little bit and then you think, oh, I'm feeling okay. So then you might pick up the pace, but it keeps on happening because you're moving, you're doing the things.
Speaker 1:It's like when I've got a live planned and I'm not really feeling up for it, what I'll do is I'll make sure everything's set up. I've set up my phone. If I'm having a ring light, I'll set up my ring light. I will make sure I've done my hair or whatever, whatever I want to look like on there, if I'm just showing up as just plain, or if I'm putting makeup on or whatever. And I'll get things ready in the background, because I know then it's going to be a lot easier to push that button when everything's already set up.
Speaker 1:So there's different things that you can be doing, but that's what works for me putting it out there that I'm actually doing it in the first place and then just getting the wheels in motion, just starting by taking little itty bitty steps, and then it progresses then into the actual thing, and then I always feel amazing after for sticking to it. Then you've got the thing as well of you're actually learning by doing it and I did touch on this previously but you're actually learning whilst you're taking the action, when you're not overthinking stuff, and you're actually doing things. You're actually learning. Oh, I won't do that again. That was a bit of a flop. That probably wasn't the best way I could do it. Or you're actually learning oh, I won't do that again. That was a bit of a flop. That probably wasn't the best way I could do it.
Speaker 1:Or you're giving yourself documentation for a few months time or a few years time to actually look back and be like wow, I can't believe my lives were like that, or I can't believe my podcast was like that, or I can't believe my Zooms used to be like that, or I can't believe my content used to be like that. And you can see then how far you've come as well. And, like I said, you might never have got that far in your development if you weren't taking that messy action in the first place. So those are my first few tips about taking messy action, and what I'm also going to talk about now is other things that come from messy action. So, yeah, it's about starting and not procrastinating.
Speaker 1:But when you do get into that flow, what happens on the back of it? You think of ideas. When you're actually in motion, you think of other things. It's a bit like if you've got I don't know, you might have to plan out some social media content for the next week or two, and you might be sat there thinking, oh, I'm really regretting this, like having to sit down, I don't, I don't, I don't want to sit down, I don't want to be here, I don't want to be doing it, blah, blah, blah, and you try to talk yourself out of it.
Speaker 1:Whereas if you actually do the thing, like just start the first thing or go on chat, gpt, just get a few ideas, just to anything, just to get the, the movement going, even if it's tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny steps at the beginning, every single step you take, it leads to a new idea, it leads to more clarity, it leads to more creativity, and then you're thinking, wow, I can do something on this. I can do something on this, I can do something else, whereas if you just stay stagnant, you don't do anything. You're crippling that creativity, because sometimes you have to unravel the layers, you have to go through certain steps in order to think of other ideas, and then you can just make a little note of them and come back to them later, or take action on them straight away, whenever works best for you. And and the same comes with experimentation as well so you might be in the flow of doing something and then you're thinking, right, okay, what if I try it this way? What if I try it that way? What if I try it that way? And suddenly this chaos, this messy action, becomes more structured, because you're like you've tried it one way and it's worked, or it hasn't worked, and you've tweaked this and you've tweaked that, and then what happens is more of a clarified system and it helps you go from chaos to simplicity, to ease, to flow, potentially as well. So those are massive benefits of just going all out and taking the action from the beginning. And then what about? The mindset shifts. So, instead of worrying about doing something wrong and thinking, oh, everything has to be perfect from the beginning, and taking the messy action and embracing failures or mistakes. What do you think is going to happen when you come across a failure or you make a mistake? You're going to get better, aren't you? You're going to start leveling up because you're not going to do that same mistake again and ultimately, going over these little hurdles and around these little obstacles, these actually get you the results in the long run. This is actually something that leads to the success, and how do you stay motivated through those setbacks? It's having a big enough why. It's having a big enough purpose for doing what you were doing.
Speaker 1:I've been running my online businesses now for four and a half years and there's been loads of times when I've hit stumbling blocks and something's happened that I wasn't expecting, or I've not felt great, or the business hasn't been going in the direction that I wanted potentially, or I've come up against some sort of challenge, and there would have been loads of times over the last four and a half years where I could have just been like yeah, whatever, I'm just gonna like just leave it, just sack it off, or whatever. It's crossed my mind on more than one occasion, briefly for a split second, and then I remember why I'm doing it and then I'm like, whoa, I need to go all in even more, actually, and then I'll just double down and everything, and then I will get that breakthrough and then it's a new level. A new devil is what I like to say, and obviously you always come against even more challenges, but it's part of the journey. Nothing is just handed to you for nothing. You've got to do the work, you've got to put it in, and you're not always going to feel motivated all of the time.
Speaker 1:Like I said, life does happen. Some days. You're not going to feel amazing, you might not be in the best of moods, you might have something going on in your life personally that's impacting your performance in your business or whatever area of your life that you want to look at. But the discipline comes in there and it's holding yourself accountable. It's putting yourself out there, like I said, and telling people what you're doing. So then you don't want to let them people down. So how do you go about taking the messy action? What do you need to do? And it's literally just starting. It's literally a few bullet points. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that, and then you're just taking the action and you're just doing it, even when you don't feel ready. You're just doing it anyway. And don't just be a learner, learner, learner, learner, like.
Speaker 1:If you want to start social media, just start. Just start putting stuff on your stories. Get used to using the different features of Instagram or Facebook or whatever platform that you're on, and get that needle moving. Just start showing up on there. First of all, you don't even need to announce your business straight away. If you don't usually post anything whatsoever, instead of worrying too much about what you're going to post and when you're going to post it, just actually start showing up A lot of the time. Having online businesses, it's good just to put your lifestyle on there, your face, a little bit about you like documenting your day or whatever it needs to be, just to get into the habit of posting consistently, and then you can start intertwining your business or do some big launch or whatever. Then you can worry about who your niche is and what you want your content to look like and your branding colors and all of this other stuff that people think about. But to start off, just do it. Just start posting.
Speaker 1:I literally I used to have motivational Mondays. I used to post an inspirational quote on a Monday. Then I had travel Tuesdays where I used to post a travel deal because I was at the time pushing being an independent travel advisor. And then Wednesdays would be something else and Thursdays would be something else. And'd just do it and there was no thought process really behind what I was doing, aside from I just wanted to post something every single day and know the type of thing I wanted to post, just so it was easy to think of that content. So I used to be like, right, okay, mondays are motivational Mondays, so what can I put on that's motivational next Monday? And I'd get that post ready to go and I'd post it on the Monday. Okay, so what can I do for travel Tuesday? And I just used to think of it like that. So I used to have a little bit of a plan so I wasn't going in completely blind. But then that plan refines and that plan gets bigger and that plan improves as you begin to go along your progress.
Speaker 1:And then, touching it before about time management, like prioritizing when to take the action, just doing it, even at the times it doesn't feel convenient, but know the time of day when you're thinking of doing it. And then, like I said plan, do, review, measure your progress. Just an easy way to do this is on a Sunday, so I call this my path to freedom reflection strategy, and I literally ask myself every single Sunday what went well in the week, what was my biggest challenges, what am I going to leave behind? What am I taking into my new week? What are my intentions for the following week up to three? That is literally all I do and that's all you need to do, because then you can be like all right, okay, how did my social media posts go?
Speaker 1:Oh, this wasn't too good, or that wasn't really that good, or that didn't really feel like the message that I wanted to put across. How can I tweak that? Or my exercise could have been a bit better, like I wasn't really consistent on these couple of days. So that's what I'm going to improve this time. Or I feel like I let myself down a little bit because I let my mindset get in the way, and so you know the things what to correct and what you're going to focus on the following week. It's so simple, guys, and this is what I'm trying to get across, like it doesn't need to be massively complicated, but the more you sit on it and don't do anything, then the more you're just going to prolong your own happiness, your own results, your own success. So I hope that helps. Make sure that you are sharing this. If you've got some value, tag me, tag your friends in it and I will see you on the next episode.
