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Welcome to Imperfection in Progress, a podcast for ambitious women who are people-pleasers, perfectionists, or procrastinators. Want to feel less stress and more joy in your life? Then this is for you. I’m your host Dawn Calvinisti.
I have the perfect guest for our podcast today. Tara Perman helps busy professionals figure out what changes they can make in their careers to feel more fulfilled and satisfied.
Maybe you're ready to take a leap into a new role or industry, but you're not quite sure where to start. Or maybe you're feeling stuck in your current position and need some practical strategies to help you navigate the day-to-day challenges. As a career strategist Tara can help you through this.
In this episode Tara shares her fear setting strategy to reduce the unknown and lack of control we can feel around decision making. By doing this we are able to get clear on exactly what our next steps are. Here’s our conversation.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tara Perman: I am excited to be here. Thanks for this great opportunity.
Well, what drives me is that every day I feel like I get to help people, and that just feels like such meaningful work. And I know that so many people do get to do that in their jobs and that's great. And for me, I'm getting to do it in a way that just fires up all the talents that I think I inherently have.
And I think I finally found work that like blends this perfect thing of what I'm talented at, what I like to do and what feels really fulfilling to me. So I just feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing. And a byproduct of that is that I get to help people. It's like, check, check, check. This is great.
Totally, totally. It's funny, some of the work that I do as a career coach and I, we talk about strengths, people's strengths, and they identify them and I always ask a question like they, they can quickly articulate what their strengths are and then I say, okay, how much of those are things that you actually like to do?
You're good at it, but you also like to do it. They're like, oh, that's a very different question. I'm like, okay, we're looking for liking what you do and being good at it at the same time. So yeah, funny that you say that.
[00:01:11] Dawn Calvinisti: Yeah, I think it's important to, to have some of that, right? Like somewhere in your life you need to have some of that. So let's talk a little about, because this is coming out at the end of the year, so if you're listening this in actual release time, this is a time of year where I think a lot of people are starting to make some, some changes or decisions on what the next year is going to look like and often two things are happening. One is either some regret about what didn't get accomplished this year, or celebration over things that did, or both. And at the same time, some ideas of, Hmm, how big do I want to go next year?
And that can be, again, a lot of people that are listening are entrepreneurs, but also a lot of people that are listening are moms and have families, or are people that just want a better relationship. And so there's many areas of our life that we can be looking at this in, not just work based, but I think no matter what we're talking about today, you can tweak this to fit the things that you want to experience in your life over this next year.
[00:02:09] Tara Perman: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a timely topic for what I wanted to talk about today, which is just the idea of fear and how fear gets in the way of our actions. And at this time of year, we're thinking about big changes. We want, like you said, in our life and, and notice sometimes that we stall on those because we swirl or catastrophize about all the possible things that could happen, which then prevent us from taking any action.
With my clients I do a lot of work talking about fear and introduce this concept called fear setting, which is what I'll, I'll talk about with you today. But it's just trying to get more comfortable with our fear, see how it's influencing our actions and see what we wanna, what we wanna do about it.
So I'm happy to jump into that.
[00:02:54] Dawn Calvinisti: Totally, let's talk about fear setting, but I think the only thing I would like to say before that is it is normal for all of us to fear things. So if you think there's something wrong with you because you're afraid of something or you're not moving forward and you know it's because you're stuck in some fear, that is totally normal.
[00:03:11] Tara Perman: Yeah. Yeah, I think I am so glad that's where you started. I think that's a great segue because yes. Fear is actually, we're like hardwired to have fear, right? It's part of like how we're protected in life and so it's important that we have fear and it certainly can be helpful. And I like to think fear, like fear is useful for us.
So the thing that sometimes gets in the way for us, I think is when we're surprised that we're having fear, like, oh, no fear's here. Stop. Like, don't, you know, don't do anything. Like fear has shown up. Like we, we shouldn't, we shouldn't act. And that's what I really love to have my clients start to address a little more like, okay, so what fear showed up?
Let's, let's work with it. Like we shouldn't be surprised it's here. Let's expect that it's here, and then let's start to regain some control by telling fear what it needs to know about the situation. Like how, how are you prepared for what you wanna do? How are you going to accommodate the worst case, terrible thing that could happen to you.
So like putting yourself in the driver's seat of the fear versus the fear being in the, the driver's seat for you. And I, along those lines, I like to just acknowledge too that like any success that you've ever had in life came with a side dish of fear and discomfort. Like no successful person has ever told their story of success and said it was so easy every step of the way.
Right? There was always a little extra helping of some fear and discomfort that came along with that. So let's not be surprised it's there and let's use it to our advantage to, to kind of like help us prepare differently for what we're trying to do, so that our, our fear feels better, that we're paying attention to things
[00:05:02] Dawn Calvinisti: When it comes to looking at whatever it is that, that we have sitting in front of us, and we're, we're looking at this process that you're talking about, is there anything that we should be asking ourselves around whatever, whatever the goal is? The aim is the, the situation that we're in, that we should be asking ourself before we start the process.
[00:05:24] Tara Perman: Well, I think getting really clear on what is, what is the fear, right? Like there's a number of things that we could be afraid of when thinking about taking a step. So, so I think initially doing some reflection of like what, what specifically is this fear? Kinda like that, name it to tame it concept that comes up a lot in therapy.
So like name specifically what this fear is. Is it a fear of rejection? Is it a fear of scarcity? Is it a fear of I'm not talented enough to do what I'm trying to do. Right? So getting a lot more specific on which fear is the strongest, I think is a, is a good place to start. As well as, and I was hinting at that earlier, but before I even like to go through this process of looking at fear differently I, I think it's also helpful to just a little bit similar to what I just said.
Like, let's, let's be okay that fear is here, like I, I sometimes use an analogy with fear that it's sort of like a seeing eye dog for a person who has vision impairment. The human relies on the dog to raise alerts and have a heightened sense for what's around them and what could be a, a bad situation or a scary situation.
But the ultimate goal of that person having the guide dog is for that the owner to have more independence. And to explore the world with greater freedom and with less constraint. And isn't that what we want for ourselves? We want fear to show up, help us assess, help us think about our decisions, be smart about steps that we're taking, but ultimately allow us to have some freedom and autonomy to move forward and, and navigate life. So, I don't know if that's, would it be helpful for, for some of your audience, but I think just maybe visualizing your fear as like the seeing eye dog guide, like that it's your helper. Let's stop avoiding it and let's really dissect what it's about and show how we can prepare for what it's afraid of.
[00:07:22] Dawn Calvinisti: I love that analogy. It's so good because it has purpose, then we don't have to avoid it or try to stuff it down like there's reason for it to be there. Okay, so we do this and we take this time. Now, where do we go?
[00:07:36] Tara Perman: Yeah. So there was an exercise that I was introduced by a man named Tim Ferris who wrote the four day work week, I think was his famous book. But he did this exercise called Fear Setting and so all of us likely at some point have done some goal setting in our life, right? You think about what your goal is and you map out a plan for how you're gonna tackle it and what action is dependent on another action.
And you know, it outlines what your effort will be. So it's doing that same concept but with fear. So what is the fear? And this is why I said earlier, like let's really think about getting really clear on what's the specific fear that's preventing me from taking action. Identify that, and then go through this step-by-step process of really breaking that fear down. So the, the first thing that you do is you define it. So what is the fear? What are all the things that I'm afraid of that will happen if I take this action or don't take this action? Then you think about what could I do to prevent those terrible things from happening?
So what's all in my control to try to prevent that terrible thing from happening? And then you shift into a third kind of thinking of what if the terrible thing does happen? What are all the things that are in my power to mitigate that or to recover from that, or to take a different step at that point and still be okay?
So you're like doing, going through a thought process similar like you would with goal setting of like defining it. How could we prevent it and how could we recover from this terrible thing happening? That's kind of the, the first part of the process. And then there are some pieces after that, but I'll, I'll pause to see if you had a question about the first part of the process.
Yeah.
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[00:09:21] Dawn Calvinisti: I just like the fact that you mentioned like you're looking at what can happen if you do take the steps and what can happen if you don't. Because I think a lot of people think that taking the step is the issue, but the reality is if you choose to do nothing there's still things there that could be potential problems, issues cause fear and all of that.
And I don't think we, we think that through very well. So we just become either we procrastinate or we become stuck in that, that cycle where we're just spinning, like you were saying, and we don't move forward into that step. But in reality, how many other things can be creeping up because of that. So I think it is important for us to recognize not doing anything, doesn't fix it and take fear away necessarily.
It could still just cause different types of fear.
[00:10:08] Tara Perman: Exactly. Exactly. And just the act of breaking your things down and seeing some evidence. These are the things I'm afraid of. This is what I think I could do to prevent that. This is what I think I could do to recover it. Just the act of seeing that helps it not feel like such helps your first step not feel like such an ambiguous big step.
Like, oh my gosh, like if I, I, I'm afraid to do this because it might mean this would happen, like. No, no. Like there's a bunch of baby steps in here, little things that we could do to initiate the bigger action. Like can we get comfortable with one of these baby steps with one of these micro steps? And so it's just helping to reduce the swirl and the catastrophizing and the bigness of the decision into more manageable, smaller steps of action or more manageable like I can chip away at this little piece of the fear. Check. I've got that one. Now I know I'm gonna chip away at this little piece of the fear. That's my next step. So it's helping to reduce some of that big, scary ambiguity about our decisions and our fear.
[00:11:12] Dawn Calvinisti: I love this. I think for a lot of people who are very indecisive, this could be such a relief to actually put it down rather than just letting it sit in our head and, and then we, we don't really see all the parts and there's so many moving parts that it sometimes becomes even bigger and more catastrophized, or we become anxious and so on, and it affects our sleep and all those other areas of our health and everything.
So this is a really great beginning to this.
[00:11:37] Tara Perman: I think the catastrophizing piece, like so many of us are prone to that, like just the swirl and it's like, you know, I, I, I work a lot with people considering career changes and they're like, if I take that kind of a job, I'll make, I, I won't make the kind of money that I'm making right now and, and then I'll be homeless. And I'm like, well, well hold on.
Like there's, there's quite a few steps that go from taking a new job and then being on the street homeless, like, let's, let's do an activity like this where you see like, okay, there's a lot of things I have in between those two lines. Okay. I, I think I can make, at each, in each of those points, I have different choices to make that prevent me from going from took new job and now I live on the street.
[00:12:19] Dawn Calvinisti: Fantastic. So tell us once we've done this and we've taken this inventory, what do we do next?
[00:12:25] Tara Perman: Yeah. So you do the inventory and then you know that, that There's a, there's a lot of work that can be done just with those three steps, right? You see some actions that you can do. You're breaking things down. You're getting a little more comfortable with your ability to mitigate the risks that come along with you making the decision.
Or it may even become more clear to you, like, you know what, making this decision isn't actually good for me. Like it, I, I don't, now that I'm seeing all this on paper, I actually don't know that this is even a good choice for me to do this thing that I'm stalling on doing. So sometimes you can get clarity directly from that first step of the process. But if not, there's, there's a couple other steps. The second one is just asking yourself, well, what would go well if I took some action here? Like I'm gonna just rate what if I took some micro steps, what would I lose? What would I gain if I just took some micro steps and tested this out?
So we figure out what that could look like. And then the third is what we were talking about earlier. What's the impact or cost of not doing any of it at all? Getting more expansive of thinking about like, if I did nothing, I, I go through this exercise, I see it all out, and if I just choose to do nothing.
What's the impact of that? And we, I have people categorize that in a six month period, what's the impact of that in a one year period, what's the impact? And in a three year period, so that we're thinking a little ahead, but not like, you know, so far ahead that we can't even imagine what, what our life, how, how that decision could play out in a 10 year point in time.
Something a bit more manageable, like a three year point of time. And that just helps you I think have a, a bit more like have some depth, like seeing some depth to your decision making, but also start to help you not make a, like we, we often think our decisions are so permanent. The reality is there's very few things in life that have permanence to them.
Most things can be changed or corrected or you, you have another choice or step to make. And so, I do think it is helpful to see how your action or inaction, how that plays out over a six month period, one year, three year. Seeing that mapped out I think could be really helpful. And also helping you see there isn't permanence to those decisions, either. Like it could play out in a couple different ways. Six, six months out, one year, three years. So I think it just helps us get rid of that permanence feeling and still see that there's a lot that could still happen. There's a lot of paths to take even in six months from now.
[00:15:00] Dawn Calvinisti: I love this. I'm thinking of my, first of all, my perfectionists that are listening, because often we feel like everything's black and white, and again, we can really spiral quickly. And so being able to see all the gray, right, like all the in-betweens and, and make a decision based, not just on like, like you were saying, kinda like it, it's here or I'm in the street homeless.
Like there's, there's no in between. And I think the other thing too, that really this caught my attention was for people who are procrastinating, and I've said this many times. We don't always procrastinate because we don't wanna do something. Usually it's because we don't have all of the details that we would like to feel comfortable enough to make a decision.
And so this helps to release that. And at the same time, sometimes we're procrastinating because somewhere internally in our gut, we know it's not a good choice and we think we should just do it. And so we hesitate and hedge and we never really fully commit. And so again, using this process, I can see how that would really help solidify, yes, I should move forward, or no, this is not a good choice right now.
So I love this for my people that are listening. It's so good.
[00:16:12] Tara Perman: I think for perfectionist it's a helpful exercise in showing evidence and helping to see where you still have some control, even if you're not fully in control of all next steps. For the procrastinators, I feel like evidence is also helpful, but also it starts to give you a to-do list, like.
If you're, if you do this activity and you ultimately assess like, I do wanna take action, I do want this to play out, I wanna take some steps, that that's middle section of what you did. You identified all the things you're afraid of. Then you created the list of these are all the things I could do to prevent that fear from happening.
That's your to-do list. Then you take everything that you put in that section and here you go. Like, that's, there's your to-do list, it may not be in the right priority order, and that would be your step to figure out like, what are the right steps within this list here? But at least you're giving yourself a clear to-do list.
So I think that that could be helpful for the procrastinators, especially the ones that are, are procrastinating because something feels so ambiguous, they're having a hard time making sense of what to do or how to do it. And then for the, the people pleasers, I think This isn't in my worksheet. So in the moment I'm, I'm adding that this could be a good ad for the people.
Pleasers is maybe a prompt of, and, and where, where am I in these decisions and how do I see myself reflected in the choices that I make out of how, how I'm looking at this. So I think just that reminder of like, am I, am I making this choice? Like when I'm looking at the fears, are the fears about me and my impact, or are the fears about other people and how they're impacted by my choices. So I could probably finesse it a little bit to have a little bit more you oriented, self-oriented thinking going on in this process.
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[00:18:01] Dawn Calvinisti: Yeah, that's perfect. That's exactly what I could see people pleasing needing there for themselves, and it's definitely part of that, even the very first steps where you're looking at the fear and clarifying it because it could be fear around what others are thinking. What, what, you know, what the outcome will look like to others.
Are you meeting others' needs by making that decisions? Yeah, so there's so much there as well. This is fascinating to me because I love, I mean, I love a good list, first of all. So this is just like, oh, this is a checklist that I will be, you know, all over. But also I really love the fact that anytime we can take something that is unknown because that creates fear. Anytime we can take that and start putting words to it and steps to it and micro steps to it, it just takes out so much of the, the, the fear of the unknown. The fear of the what ifs, the fear of the, like, I can't control it. And so I'm not sure that the outcome will be, but I think the lovely part about what you're saying here is it really isn't a huge hard process. It's just reflecting and asking some questions.
[00:19:12] Tara Perman: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well stated. It's really a clarity giver and if your choice is to proceed with, you know, tackling it, it, it's a to-do list creator, like it starts to generate your to-do list. And I think you know, it's not complicated to do as you just said, and it certainly can be done alone. And, and you'll have a link that, that people can have to get a copy of the worksheet, so it certainly can be done alone.
Then what you come up with is a great tool to talk to other trusted people with in your life to just get their opinion, like, what am I missing? What don't you see in these things that I've outlined for myself? So it's just a good conversation guide if you're one of those chaperone seekers, as I call some myself and some of my clients, looking for other people to be involved in your decision making and validating a little bit about your thinking.
This is a great tool. You can show them all this thinking that you've done and help. Use them for reaction to some of that.
[00:20:08] Dawn Calvinisti: So this, this list that we're talking about you have a couple options of free gifts that Tara's gonna give you, which I just so thank you for. One is that you can book a 45 minute, Should I Pursue Coaching C onsultation. And I know from talking to so many of you, this is something that you have talked about, ask about, wonder about.
So here's part of a decision that you can actually do with Tara. And the other thing that she's giving is the Fear Setting Worksheet, which is what we're talking about. So that is also there. And they'll all be in the show notes as, and along with that, of course, all the contact info to be able to access tara. What's a really great place to connect with you the easiest?
[00:20:48] Tara Perman: I'd say the easiest would be to go to my website, which is tarapermancoach.com, so Tara, t a r a, Perman, p e r m a n, coach.com. Find me there or you can find me by that same name on LinkedIn.
[00:21:01] Dawn Calvinisti: Okay. So is there anything else to this process that we should know as we're getting ready again, end of year making decisions?
[00:21:11] Tara Perman: Well, I would just say like, I would, I would tell your audience like here's a call to action. If there's something that you've been stalling on or something that you're just allowing some fear to prevent you from really giving. Some thoughtful reflection on what that's about. This could be a way to jumpstart that for you and could be a great way to start your new year tackling something that you haven't thought that you were comfortable tackling before.
I'd love for your audience to think about using this to help with that reflection. And lastly, to get comfortable with fear. It's gonna be with us for the rest of our lives, and it's not this terrible thing that shows up. It's actually helpful and protective, and it's there to make you think about your choices. Am I making smart ones? Am I planning accordingly? And here's a great exercise to show your fear and say, I am planning accordingly. I have thought about this. Here's all the ways and all the things that I'm gonna do to make sure that we're gonna be okay. You and me fear. So that's what I would wanna leave them with that fear, fear is not something necessarily to be afraid of. And fear can be helpful.
[00:22:17] Dawn Calvinisti: I love that we're ending this with the idea of, of like, just approach it like you don't need to avoid it, you need to, don't need to stuff it down, run away from it. And I think if anybody's listening and you have a decision to make, I hope you're excited about getting this worksheet and working through it, because for me, I know we're, we're doing a couple of big decisions right now and then early in the new year.
And even for me, I'm thinking, you know what? I need to look at this again because sometimes I just keep it in my head and I don't really lay it out. And I think this is an awesome opportunity to just get it all out there and see it. The other thing that I ask every single guest on the show is of the three Ps, which are people pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination.
Which one do you tend to go to, Tara?
[00:23:00] Tara Perman: I am a people pleaser. I think it's rooted in like where I sat in my family, like youngest and only girl, and like constantly trying to like be a certain kind of person in my family and make sure everybody was okay. and happy and whatnot. And then that, that certainly has evolved as I've gotten older and I, I do too much for others and not enough for myself.
I see it showing up in work and in life and everywhere. So, yes, that's mine.
[00:23:31] Dawn Calvinisti: Thank you for sharing that. I love, I mean, we're all a work in process and so I love hearing where other people sit in those areas. Tara, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about fear setting. I think this is just a really important tool for us to get ahold of and to really start implementing, especially if we are the type who stews on these things.
And so thank you so much for being here.
[00:23:53] Tara Perman: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Dawn Calvinisti: Thanks for listening to today's show. If you found value in what you heard, please share it with a friend and rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps get us out to other women who could benefit from listening.
Check out our show notes for details from the show and to connect with me or our guests. Want to continue the conversation? My website is www.pursueprogress.com or DM me @pursueprogresswithdawn on Instagram.
Until next week, pursue progress no matter how imperfectly.
CONNECT WITH DAWN:
Website: https://pursueprogress.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pursueprogresswithdawn
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/pursueprogresswithdawn
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/imperfectioninprogress
Imperfection in Progress Podcast: https://pursueprogress.com/podcast
Grab your 200 Affirmations for the 3 P’s here: https://www.pursueprogress.com/affirmationspodcast
CONNECT WITH TARA:
Website: https://www.tarapermancoach.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraperman/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/tarapermancoach
Special Gift: 45 minute "should I pursue coaching" consultation call and/or Tara’s “Fear Setting” worksheet
Link to Free Gift: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf-VXVULJuj7KRHbS9EEKQ2lhlumufp6439f8ACuDOhLl41pA/viewform?usp=sf_link
OTHER RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST:
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Book Your Free 30 Minute Strategy Call with the host, Dawn Calvinisti: https://link.theviphub.ca/widget/bookings/dawncalvinisti/highvaluestrategy
Welcome to Imperfection in Progress, a podcast for ambitious women who are people-pleasers, perfectionists, or procrastinators. Want to feel less stress and more joy in your life? Then this is for you. I’m your host Dawn Calvinisti.
I have the perfect guest for our podcast today. Tara Perman helps busy professionals figure out what changes they can make in their careers to feel more fulfilled and satisfied.
Maybe you're ready to take a leap into a new role or industry, but you're not quite sure where to start. Or maybe you're feeling stuck in your current position and need some practical strategies to help you navigate the day-to-day challenges. As a career strategist Tara can help you through this.
In this episode Tara shares her fear setting strategy to reduce the unknown and lack of control we can feel around decision making. By doing this we are able to get clear on exactly what our next steps are. Here’s our conversation.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tara Perman: I am excited to be here. Thanks for this great opportunity.
Well, what drives me is that every day I feel like I get to help people, and that just feels like such meaningful work. And I know that so many people do get to do that in their jobs and that's great. And for me, I'm getting to do it in a way that just fires up all the talents that I think I inherently have.
And I think I finally found work that like blends this perfect thing of what I'm talented at, what I like to do and what feels really fulfilling to me. So I just feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing. And a byproduct of that is that I get to help people. It's like, check, check, check. This is great.
Totally, totally. It's funny, some of the work that I do as a career coach and I, we talk about strengths, people's strengths, and they identify them and I always ask a question like they, they can quickly articulate what their strengths are and then I say, okay, how much of those are things that you actually like to do?
You're good at it, but you also like to do it. They're like, oh, that's a very different question. I'm like, okay, we're looking for liking what you do and being good at it at the same time. So yeah, funny that you say that.
[00:01:11] Dawn Calvinisti: Yeah, I think it's important to, to have some of that, right? Like somewhere in your life you need to have some of that. So let's talk a little about, because this is coming out at the end of the year, so if you're listening this in actual release time, this is a time of year where I think a lot of people are starting to make some, some changes or decisions on what the next year is going to look like and often two things are happening. One is either some regret about what didn't get accomplished this year, or celebration over things that did, or both. And at the same time, some ideas of, Hmm, how big do I want to go next year?
And that can be, again, a lot of people that are listening are entrepreneurs, but also a lot of people that are listening are moms and have families, or are people that just want a better relationship. And so there's many areas of our life that we can be looking at this in, not just work based, but I think no matter what we're talking about today, you can tweak this to fit the things that you want to experience in your life over this next year.
[00:02:09] Tara Perman: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a timely topic for what I wanted to talk about today, which is just the idea of fear and how fear gets in the way of our actions. And at this time of year, we're thinking about big changes. We want, like you said, in our life and, and notice sometimes that we stall on those because we swirl or catastrophize about all the possible things that could happen, which then prevent us from taking any action.
With my clients I do a lot of work talking about fear and introduce this concept called fear setting, which is what I'll, I'll talk about with you today. But it's just trying to get more comfortable with our fear, see how it's influencing our actions and see what we wanna, what we wanna do about it.
So I'm happy to jump into that.
[00:02:54] Dawn Calvinisti: Totally, let's talk about fear setting, but I think the only thing I would like to say before that is it is normal for all of us to fear things. So if you think there's something wrong with you because you're afraid of something or you're not moving forward and you know it's because you're stuck in some fear, that is totally normal.
[00:03:11] Tara Perman: Yeah. Yeah, I think I am so glad that's where you started. I think that's a great segue because yes. Fear is actually, we're like hardwired to have fear, right? It's part of like how we're protected in life and so it's important that we have fear and it certainly can be helpful. And I like to think fear, like fear is useful for us.
So the thing that sometimes gets in the way for us, I think is when we're surprised that we're having fear, like, oh, no fear's here. Stop. Like, don't, you know, don't do anything. Like fear has shown up. Like we, we shouldn't, we shouldn't act. And that's what I really love to have my clients start to address a little more like, okay, so what fear showed up?
Let's, let's work with it. Like we shouldn't be surprised it's here. Let's expect that it's here, and then let's start to regain some control by telling fear what it needs to know about the situation. Like how, how are you prepared for what you wanna do? How are you going to accommodate the worst case, terrible thing that could happen to you.
So like putting yourself in the driver's seat of the fear versus the fear being in the, the driver's seat for you. And I, along those lines, I like to just acknowledge too that like any success that you've ever had in life came with a side dish of fear and discomfort. Like no successful person has ever told their story of success and said it was so easy every step of the way.
Right? There was always a little extra helping of some fear and discomfort that came along with that. So let's not be surprised it's there and let's use it to our advantage to, to kind of like help us prepare differently for what we're trying to do, so that our, our fear feels better, that we're paying attention to things
[00:05:02] Dawn Calvinisti: When it comes to looking at whatever it is that, that we have sitting in front of us, and we're, we're looking at this process that you're talking about, is there anything that we should be asking ourselves around whatever, whatever the goal is? The aim is the, the situation that we're in, that we should be asking ourself before we start the process.
[00:05:24] Tara Perman: Well, I think getting really clear on what is, what is the fear, right? Like there's a number of things that we could be afraid of when thinking about taking a step. So, so I think initially doing some reflection of like what, what specifically is this fear? Kinda like that, name it to tame it concept that comes up a lot in therapy.
So like name specifically what this fear is. Is it a fear of rejection? Is it a fear of scarcity? Is it a fear of I'm not talented enough to do what I'm trying to do. Right? So getting a lot more specific on which fear is the strongest, I think is a, is a good place to start. As well as, and I was hinting at that earlier, but before I even like to go through this process of looking at fear differently I, I think it's also helpful to just a little bit similar to what I just said.
Like, let's, let's be okay that fear is here, like I, I sometimes use an analogy with fear that it's sort of like a seeing eye dog for a person who has vision impairment. The human relies on the dog to raise alerts and have a heightened sense for what's around them and what could be a, a bad situation or a scary situation.
But the ultimate goal of that person having the guide dog is for that the owner to have more independence. And to explore the world with greater freedom and with less constraint. And isn't that what we want for ourselves? We want fear to show up, help us assess, help us think about our decisions, be smart about steps that we're taking, but ultimately allow us to have some freedom and autonomy to move forward and, and navigate life. So, I don't know if that's, would it be helpful for, for some of your audience, but I think just maybe visualizing your fear as like the seeing eye dog guide, like that it's your helper. Let's stop avoiding it and let's really dissect what it's about and show how we can prepare for what it's afraid of.
[00:07:22] Dawn Calvinisti: I love that analogy. It's so good because it has purpose, then we don't have to avoid it or try to stuff it down like there's reason for it to be there. Okay, so we do this and we take this time. Now, where do we go?
[00:07:36] Tara Perman: Yeah. So there was an exercise that I was introduced by a man named Tim Ferris who wrote the four day work week, I think was his famous book. But he did this exercise called Fear Setting and so all of us likely at some point have done some goal setting in our life, right? You think about what your goal is and you map out a plan for how you're gonna tackle it and what action is dependent on another action.
And you know, it outlines what your effort will be. So it's doing that same concept but with fear. So what is the fear? And this is why I said earlier, like let's really think about getting really clear on what's the specific fear that's preventing me from taking action. Identify that, and then go through this step-by-step process of really breaking that fear down. So the, the first thing that you do is you define it. So what is the fear? What are all the things that I'm afraid of that will happen if I take this action or don't take this action? Then you think about what could I do to prevent those terrible things from happening?
So what's all in my control to try to prevent that terrible thing from happening? And then you shift into a third kind of thinking of what if the terrible thing does happen? What are all the things that are in my power to mitigate that or to recover from that, or to take a different step at that point and still be okay?
So you're like doing, going through a thought process similar like you would with goal setting of like defining it. How could we prevent it and how could we recover from this terrible thing happening? That's kind of the, the first part of the process. And then there are some pieces after that, but I'll, I'll pause to see if you had a question about the first part of the process.
Yeah.
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[00:09:21] Dawn Calvinisti: I just like the fact that you mentioned like you're looking at what can happen if you do take the steps and what can happen if you don't. Because I think a lot of people think that taking the step is the issue, but the reality is if you choose to do nothing there's still things there that could be potential problems, issues cause fear and all of that.
And I don't think we, we think that through very well. So we just become either we procrastinate or we become stuck in that, that cycle where we're just spinning, like you were saying, and we don't move forward into that step. But in reality, how many other things can be creeping up because of that. So I think it is important for us to recognize not doing anything, doesn't fix it and take fear away necessarily.
It could still just cause different types of fear.
[00:10:08] Tara Perman: Exactly. Exactly. And just the act of breaking your things down and seeing some evidence. These are the things I'm afraid of. This is what I think I could do to prevent that. This is what I think I could do to recover it. Just the act of seeing that helps it not feel like such helps your first step not feel like such an ambiguous big step.
Like, oh my gosh, like if I, I, I'm afraid to do this because it might mean this would happen, like. No, no. Like there's a bunch of baby steps in here, little things that we could do to initiate the bigger action. Like can we get comfortable with one of these baby steps with one of these micro steps? And so it's just helping to reduce the swirl and the catastrophizing and the bigness of the decision into more manageable, smaller steps of action or more manageable like I can chip away at this little piece of the fear. Check. I've got that one. Now I know I'm gonna chip away at this little piece of the fear. That's my next step. So it's helping to reduce some of that big, scary ambiguity about our decisions and our fear.
[00:11:12] Dawn Calvinisti: I love this. I think for a lot of people who are very indecisive, this could be such a relief to actually put it down rather than just letting it sit in our head and, and then we, we don't really see all the parts and there's so many moving parts that it sometimes becomes even bigger and more catastrophized, or we become anxious and so on, and it affects our sleep and all those other areas of our health and everything.
So this is a really great beginning to this.
[00:11:37] Tara Perman: I think the catastrophizing piece, like so many of us are prone to that, like just the swirl and it's like, you know, I, I, I work a lot with people considering career changes and they're like, if I take that kind of a job, I'll make, I, I won't make the kind of money that I'm making right now and, and then I'll be homeless. And I'm like, well, well hold on.
Like there's, there's quite a few steps that go from taking a new job and then being on the street homeless, like, let's, let's do an activity like this where you see like, okay, there's a lot of things I have in between those two lines. Okay. I, I think I can make, at each, in each of those points, I have different choices to make that prevent me from going from took new job and now I live on the street.
[00:12:19] Dawn Calvinisti: Fantastic. So tell us once we've done this and we've taken this inventory, what do we do next?
[00:12:25] Tara Perman: Yeah. So you do the inventory and then you know that, that There's a, there's a lot of work that can be done just with those three steps, right? You see some actions that you can do. You're breaking things down. You're getting a little more comfortable with your ability to mitigate the risks that come along with you making the decision.
Or it may even become more clear to you, like, you know what, making this decision isn't actually good for me. Like it, I, I don't, now that I'm seeing all this on paper, I actually don't know that this is even a good choice for me to do this thing that I'm stalling on doing. So sometimes you can get clarity directly from that first step of the process. But if not, there's, there's a couple other steps. The second one is just asking yourself, well, what would go well if I took some action here? Like I'm gonna just rate what if I took some micro steps, what would I lose? What would I gain if I just took some micro steps and tested this out?
So we figure out what that could look like. And then the third is what we were talking about earlier. What's the impact or cost of not doing any of it at all? Getting more expansive of thinking about like, if I did nothing, I, I go through this exercise, I see it all out, and if I just choose to do nothing.
What's the impact of that? And we, I have people categorize that in a six month period, what's the impact of that in a one year period, what's the impact? And in a three year period, so that we're thinking a little ahead, but not like, you know, so far ahead that we can't even imagine what, what our life, how, how that decision could play out in a 10 year point in time.
Something a bit more manageable, like a three year point of time. And that just helps you I think have a, a bit more like have some depth, like seeing some depth to your decision making, but also start to help you not make a, like we, we often think our decisions are so permanent. The reality is there's very few things in life that have permanence to them.
Most things can be changed or corrected or you, you have another choice or step to make. And so, I do think it is helpful to see how your action or inaction, how that plays out over a six month period, one year, three year. Seeing that mapped out I think could be really helpful. And also helping you see there isn't permanence to those decisions, either. Like it could play out in a couple different ways. Six, six months out, one year, three years. So I think it just helps us get rid of that permanence feeling and still see that there's a lot that could still happen. There's a lot of paths to take even in six months from now.
[00:15:00] Dawn Calvinisti: I love this. I'm thinking of my, first of all, my perfectionists that are listening, because often we feel like everything's black and white, and again, we can really spiral quickly. And so being able to see all the gray, right, like all the in-betweens and, and make a decision based, not just on like, like you were saying, kinda like it, it's here or I'm in the street homeless.
Like there's, there's no in between. And I think the other thing too, that really this caught my attention was for people who are procrastinating, and I've said this many times. We don't always procrastinate because we don't wanna do something. Usually it's because we don't have all of the details that we would like to feel comfortable enough to make a decision.
And so this helps to release that. And at the same time, sometimes we're procrastinating because somewhere internally in our gut, we know it's not a good choice and we think we should just do it. And so we hesitate and hedge and we never really fully commit. And so again, using this process, I can see how that would really help solidify, yes, I should move forward, or no, this is not a good choice right now.
So I love this for my people that are listening. It's so good.
[00:16:12] Tara Perman: I think for perfectionist it's a helpful exercise in showing evidence and helping to see where you still have some control, even if you're not fully in control of all next steps. For the procrastinators, I feel like evidence is also helpful, but also it starts to give you a to-do list, like.
If you're, if you do this activity and you ultimately assess like, I do wanna take action, I do want this to play out, I wanna take some steps, that that's middle section of what you did. You identified all the things you're afraid of. Then you created the list of these are all the things I could do to prevent that fear from happening.
That's your to-do list. Then you take everything that you put in that section and here you go. Like, that's, there's your to-do list, it may not be in the right priority order, and that would be your step to figure out like, what are the right steps within this list here? But at least you're giving yourself a clear to-do list.
So I think that that could be helpful for the procrastinators, especially the ones that are, are procrastinating because something feels so ambiguous, they're having a hard time making sense of what to do or how to do it. And then for the, the people pleasers, I think This isn't in my worksheet. So in the moment I'm, I'm adding that this could be a good ad for the people.
Pleasers is maybe a prompt of, and, and where, where am I in these decisions and how do I see myself reflected in the choices that I make out of how, how I'm looking at this. So I think just that reminder of like, am I, am I making this choice? Like when I'm looking at the fears, are the fears about me and my impact, or are the fears about other people and how they're impacted by my choices. So I could probably finesse it a little bit to have a little bit more you oriented, self-oriented thinking going on in this process.
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[00:18:01] Dawn Calvinisti: Yeah, that's perfect. That's exactly what I could see people pleasing needing there for themselves, and it's definitely part of that, even the very first steps where you're looking at the fear and clarifying it because it could be fear around what others are thinking. What, what, you know, what the outcome will look like to others.
Are you meeting others' needs by making that decisions? Yeah, so there's so much there as well. This is fascinating to me because I love, I mean, I love a good list, first of all. So this is just like, oh, this is a checklist that I will be, you know, all over. But also I really love the fact that anytime we can take something that is unknown because that creates fear. Anytime we can take that and start putting words to it and steps to it and micro steps to it, it just takes out so much of the, the, the fear of the unknown. The fear of the what ifs, the fear of the, like, I can't control it. And so I'm not sure that the outcome will be, but I think the lovely part about what you're saying here is it really isn't a huge hard process. It's just reflecting and asking some questions.
[00:19:12] Tara Perman: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well stated. It's really a clarity giver and if your choice is to proceed with, you know, tackling it, it, it's a to-do list creator, like it starts to generate your to-do list. And I think you know, it's not complicated to do as you just said, and it certainly can be done alone. And, and you'll have a link that, that people can have to get a copy of the worksheet, so it certainly can be done alone.
Then what you come up with is a great tool to talk to other trusted people with in your life to just get their opinion, like, what am I missing? What don't you see in these things that I've outlined for myself? So it's just a good conversation guide if you're one of those chaperone seekers, as I call some myself and some of my clients, looking for other people to be involved in your decision making and validating a little bit about your thinking.
This is a great tool. You can show them all this thinking that you've done and help. Use them for reaction to some of that.
[00:20:08] Dawn Calvinisti: So this, this list that we're talking about you have a couple options of free gifts that Tara's gonna give you, which I just so thank you for. One is that you can book a 45 minute, Should I Pursue Coaching C onsultation. And I know from talking to so many of you, this is something that you have talked about, ask about, wonder about.
So here's part of a decision that you can actually do with Tara. And the other thing that she's giving is the Fear Setting Worksheet, which is what we're talking about. So that is also there. And they'll all be in the show notes as, and along with that, of course, all the contact info to be able to access tara. What's a really great place to connect with you the easiest?
[00:20:48] Tara Perman: I'd say the easiest would be to go to my website, which is tarapermancoach.com, so Tara, t a r a, Perman, p e r m a n, coach.com. Find me there or you can find me by that same name on LinkedIn.
[00:21:01] Dawn Calvinisti: Okay. So is there anything else to this process that we should know as we're getting ready again, end of year making decisions?
[00:21:11] Tara Perman: Well, I would just say like, I would, I would tell your audience like here's a call to action. If there's something that you've been stalling on or something that you're just allowing some fear to prevent you from really giving. Some thoughtful reflection on what that's about. This could be a way to jumpstart that for you and could be a great way to start your new year tackling something that you haven't thought that you were comfortable tackling before.
I'd love for your audience to think about using this to help with that reflection. And lastly, to get comfortable with fear. It's gonna be with us for the rest of our lives, and it's not this terrible thing that shows up. It's actually helpful and protective, and it's there to make you think about your choices. Am I making smart ones? Am I planning accordingly? And here's a great exercise to show your fear and say, I am planning accordingly. I have thought about this. Here's all the ways and all the things that I'm gonna do to make sure that we're gonna be okay. You and me fear. So that's what I would wanna leave them with that fear, fear is not something necessarily to be afraid of. And fear can be helpful.
[00:22:17] Dawn Calvinisti: I love that we're ending this with the idea of, of like, just approach it like you don't need to avoid it, you need to, don't need to stuff it down, run away from it. And I think if anybody's listening and you have a decision to make, I hope you're excited about getting this worksheet and working through it, because for me, I know we're, we're doing a couple of big decisions right now and then early in the new year.
And even for me, I'm thinking, you know what? I need to look at this again because sometimes I just keep it in my head and I don't really lay it out. And I think this is an awesome opportunity to just get it all out there and see it. The other thing that I ask every single guest on the show is of the three Ps, which are people pleasing, perfectionism and procrastination.
Which one do you tend to go to, Tara?
[00:23:00] Tara Perman: I am a people pleaser. I think it's rooted in like where I sat in my family, like youngest and only girl, and like constantly trying to like be a certain kind of person in my family and make sure everybody was okay. and happy and whatnot. And then that, that certainly has evolved as I've gotten older and I, I do too much for others and not enough for myself.
I see it showing up in work and in life and everywhere. So, yes, that's mine.
[00:23:31] Dawn Calvinisti: Thank you for sharing that. I love, I mean, we're all a work in process and so I love hearing where other people sit in those areas. Tara, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about fear setting. I think this is just a really important tool for us to get ahold of and to really start implementing, especially if we are the type who stews on these things.
And so thank you so much for being here.
[00:23:53] Tara Perman: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Dawn Calvinisti: Thanks for listening to today's show. If you found value in what you heard, please share it with a friend and rate and review us on whatever platform you listen on. It really helps get us out to other women who could benefit from listening.
Check out our show notes for details from the show and to connect with me or our guests. Want to continue the conversation? My website is www.pursueprogress.com or DM me @pursueprogresswithdawn on Instagram.
Until next week, pursue progress no matter how imperfectly.
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You'll feel relief as you realize what things you can do less of and what area you should focus on right now.