Cara Harvey 00:00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Moms show here at A Purpose Driven Mom, we believe that it’s possible to manage your home, work on your personal goals, and grow and scale an online business. Most productivity tips out there tell you to hustle more and make you feel shame about not being motivated enough. And we’re here to dispel this myth. I’m Kara Harvey and I am on a mission to help work at home. Moms realize that they have the power to go after their dreams, take care of themselves, and manage their home without perfectionism, guilt, or having to sacrifice their sleep. If you’re ready to shift your thinking around productivity and get some practical tips to help you manage your mom life, toss your earbuds in while you fold the laundry. And let’s do this! Welcome to the Purpose of Your Mom Show episode 427. Today we are going to talk about procrastination and that fear of failure that might be holding you back. I know it’s not a fun topic, but I’ve been coaching a lot of women in the purpose of her mom club, and we’ve really just been diving into this like, why do I feel like I keep getting in my own way this like very self sabotage type of mindset.

Cara Harvey 00:01:10 And I thought we should talk about this now because the holiday season is like here, and it’s really easy to put off those goals that you made for yourself for 2024 because other things have to get done. And I want to talk a little bit today about why I think we procrastinate sometimes, what the fear of failure might be doing and how it’s harming you and your goals and what we can do about it. Show notes they’re going to be over at a Purpose Driven mom.com/podcast for 27. So again episode 427 it’s wild to think about. Thank you so much for listening. For sharing. You haven’t left a rating or review head over. We’d really appreciate it. Now, friend, I want to talk to you specifically right now because I know that you have a goal that is something you wanted to do this year. Get it in your head. Okay, give it a second. I know mine, I had well, I had two goals this year. One I’ve released and one I’d still like to do.

Cara Harvey 00:02:07 And one is heavier than the other one was. I wanted to write a children’s book. I thought about it in December. I kept thinking, I know the children’s book and I might, I don’t know, I might bring it back for 2026. But I really wanted to get it published this year, and I blessed and released it because I found myself procrastinating. So I’m going to use that as example one as we go through this. An example two is a light hobby. Goal is I wanted to learn how to crochet, I wanted to crochet, I kept putting it off and I have not done that. All right, so I want you to think of 1 or 2 goals that you have in your personal life, 1 or 2 goals that you might have in your business that maybe haven’t been accomplished yet. And we’re going to kind of do a little analysis to dive into why you might be procrastinating and how we can decide if there a goal that you want to move forward with or not. So what is procrastination? The most simplest term, right? It’s just delaying things.

Cara Harvey 00:02:59 It is delaying things that could move your goals forward. And there’s a few reasons we procrastinate. I think overwhelm is actually one of the top ones. A lot of times we shame ourselves, right? I can’t do this. I’m not moving forward. I’m the worst. When really one of the top reasons we’re most likely procrastinating is because we’re so overwhelmed with everything else we have going on in our lives, everything else we have going on in our homes. That thinking about one more thing the crocheting. For me, that’s like, I it’s not a fear of failure. It’s literally just I’m so overwhelmed with everything else that I cannot think of. One more thing. Okay? So I want you to think through the goal I just gave you. Are you procrastinating because of that? Is it decision fatigue? Is it impostor syndrome? Let’s start with digging into that root cause I talked about, which is overwhelm or lack of time. I want you to ask yourself, am I not participating in this goal right now because I literally don’t have the time for it in this season of life? Am I struggling because I just can’t fit it in.

Cara Harvey 00:04:00 This is real. I think there are strategies that we can use to find the time to work on some of our things. I’ll talk to you. You know, I had a couple craft goals this year. I wanted to finish a left hook pillow which took me. It was supposed to be a spring pillow. I started in January. I got done in the end of May, so I get to enjoy it for a little bit of time. So it did take longer, but I found myself procrastinating it because of my overwhelm, my lack of time. I did want to also learn this year how to cross stitch, which I taught myself in just a few weeks, so that was really nice. I didn’t have to take too long on that. And then the crocheting, it just kept getting pushed off my list. Okay, so what did this look like in real life? I had this goal of the pillow. Let’s talk about this latch hook pillow. I really wanted to do it, but I found myself putting it off every time I would put in my schedule.

Cara Harvey 00:04:46 I’m going to work on my laptop pillow for 15 minutes. That 15 minutes kept getting stolen by something else. That 15 minutes kept getting taken by the dishes, by this task that popped up right? And also by my own exhaustion. So think about your goal. Is that what’s really happening? This is what I think a lot of us think about when we think about why we’re procrastinating. It’s I just don’t have the time. So this is layer one. You might originally think it’s because you don’t have the time. We’re going to get into the other layers. But is this the cause? When it came to my laptop I’m I’m going to go through the imposter syndrome decision fatigue, perfectionism in a second. It really was truly, truly about it. That really was the root cause. I just did not have the time. Now I got the pillow done. I wanted to get it done in three months. It took me almost six, but I was able to find the time because I made a plan around it, which we’ll talk about the plan in a little bit after we talk about root causes.

Cara Harvey 00:05:38 But I was able to make a plan to not procrastinate. I didn’t get my goal done in the time I wanted, and my brain could have easily said, well, you’re a failure, you’re a loser. You didn’t do it. You said you were going to show up and you didn’t. But instead my brain was like, cool, I’m really proud of you. You got this pillow done, right? It took me a longer than I wanted. It wasn’t as enjoyable for me because I was like stretching it out at the end. I was like, I just want to finish this pillow. But I did it okay? And it truly was just because I had an overwhelming schedule and a lack of time. So look at your goal. Maybe that’s you. Now, the other thing that often leads us to procrastinate is perfectionism. And I always caution people to not use perfectionism as a tool to procrastinate. You know, perfectionism, right? I think we think as moms, we need to show up a certain way.

Cara Harvey 00:06:28 I think if it doesn’t look a certain way, we can’t do it. Now, let me give you this example. With the pillow. I finished the pillow. It really was a lack of time, but if it was perfectionism, what my thoughts could have been were, well, I said I was going to do this pillow and have it done before the spring and I didn’t, so there’s no point in working on it. That’s what it could have sounded like, right? A lot of times the perfectionism says this voice of if I can’t do it perfectly, I won’t do it at all. And what it does is it leads us to inaction, especially when you’re trying to balance your mom life with your personal goals or your business goals. I think about this when it comes to running, right? Running is something I enjoy doing when I’m done. Every year I make some sort of running goal, but there have been years I didn’t because I would disqualify myself because of perfectionism. Well, I can’t start running now because I’m.

Cara Harvey 00:07:16 I’m so slow and I have to walk, and because I have to walk, I shouldn’t go run at all. Now, logical brain knows that this is an incorrect logical brain is like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. How are you ever going to run if you don’t start with walking? But perfectionist brain says, I have to show up there. And this is where perfectionism holds us back. Our brains in perfectionist mode think I need to show up as the person I would be who completed the goal. While I’m working on the goal, right? I need to show up as a super fast runner while I’m started. And perfectionism doesn’t allow us to be a beginner, perfectionism doesn’t allow for us to not know how to do something Perfectionism doesn’t allow for any mistakes. It doesn’t allow for our humanity. It doesn’t allow for any grace. Are you doing that with your goal? Are you thinking, I can’t work on this because I’m. I can’t show up in this way. I can’t save any money.

Cara Harvey 00:08:09 Right? So. Or like I want to save for this big thing, but I’m struggling to save any money at all, so I shouldn’t even try. Do you feel like your brain says that about your goals? Is it the perfectionism? Is it though? Well, I would love to have a three hour Bible study in the morning, but I can’t get up that early. I want to chat with you now and invite you to grab one of my top.

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Cara Harvey 00:09:00 Absolutely free with a video tutorial, it is going to take you less than 30 minutes a week to plan the week and save you hours. If you want to go and snag this checklist, you can go to a purpose driven romcom slash podcast checklist and it will be there absolutely free for you. Again, go to a purpose driven romcom checklist and get your copy.

Cara Harvey 00:09:22 I was still talking to some moms this morning at drop off line about working out. My friend and I, we somehow got our Apple Watches sync to each other, so she texted me once a couple months ago. I was like, great job on your workout. And I was like, what are you talking about? So every time I work out, she gets a notification. I don’t even know how to take it off. So she always sees that I work out and I work out in the morning before I pick my kids up or take my kids to school. I mean, and we were talking about it, and she’s like, I don’t know how you do that.

Cara Harvey 00:09:43 Like how you squeeze in a workout in such a short amount of time. I get up at six and we leave at 830, so that gives me 2.5 hours to get my kids ready, do everything, shower, workout. It is. It’s tight. My mornings are tight, but it is enough time for me to get those things done. Perfectionist brain would say, well, I can’t do a 40 minute workout, so I shouldn’t even bother with the 20 minute workout, right? I wanted to start for my mornings adding in reading, positive personal growth reading. So in order to do that, right now I’m struggling to get up before six. My body is like six is a good time. I like six, six feels good. Anything before that, it’s like not not going to happen. So my choices right now and this is a choice I just made were I’m not going to worry about creating a morning reading routine because I just don’t have the time. Or I ask myself, how can I adapt what I currently have? So I just finished a workout program.

Cara Harvey 00:10:29 I was doing 40 minute workout four times a week and I said, you know what? I found this new workout program online. It’s five days a week for 20 minutes. Perfectionist brain could say, well, that’s less right. That’s not as much as you were doing, so you’re not going to see results, so don’t even bother. But because I self coach, I realize that’s not true, right? If I’m getting in any sort of movement, it’s going to count, right? I’m excited about it. And now that I’m only exercising for 20 minutes instead of 40 to 45, I can now use 10 to 15 of those minutes to start to create a habit around my morning reading, so that maybe later, after this program, I increase it and I’m able to figure it out without having to get up earlier. That’s problem solving. Brain. This is the brain you want to have. You want to have the problem solving brain that moves you forward, and not the perfectionist brain that holds you back.

Cara Harvey 00:11:14 Now listen, I’m going to be real. Perfectionism does stop me in my tracks sometimes, but because I’ve worked on it for so long, I can pause and say to myself, is this perfectionism? Or am I not trying because I can’t do it perfectly right? Or is it something else? So I want you to look at your goal. Is that why you’re procrastinating, or is it this last one, which is the fear? Oh gosh, I know. Let’s talk about it. Let’s get deep rooted, right? Layer one. We think we don’t have the time, but layer two is it really. We’re just being a perfectionist and it doesn’t look a certain way. Or is it layer three. And again it could be all three of these. Layer three. Actually I’m afraid I’m going to fail. Actually I am afraid I’m not qualified. I’m struggling with imposter syndrome. What if people judge me? What if I try and I fail? Okay, let’s talk about the conference. The conference just happened when this is recording.

Cara Harvey 00:12:03 When or when I’m. When I’m recording this. The conference happens next week. When this airs. The conference has already happened. So the conference has not happened yet. But I’m going to talk about it because one of the scary things about doing an in-person event and sharing it publicly is what if it flops? This is everything in business. And it took me. I’ve wanted to have this conference since I started my business. Seven years, seven years to finally decide. I don’t care if it fails, I’m going to try anyway. So what happens? Right? Well, you have to get to that mindset. And I shared about it. We wanted to sell 50 tickets. We have 22 people at this moment coming to the event. It’s not 50, but I’m so thrilled for every single one of these people. I cannot wait to get to meet them. But there is that fear of judgment. Kara is doing this event, but she only has 20 people. She even a real business owner right now.

Cara Harvey 00:12:55 Here’s the thing. That voice I just gave you, I can’t guarantee, but a high probability. Nobody’s thinking that. That’s my inner critic. Her name is Julia, and that’s her telling me I’m not good enough. Fear of failure comes from up here in your brain. It comes from this inner critic. It comes from this place of judgment. It comes from this place of you self judging and then projecting it externally. Well, people are going to think, I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t start training for a half marathon. What are people going to think? What if I fail again? If you have had a pattern of trying things and not doing them like a human being does, your brain is thinking, oh, if we do this and we fail again, everybody’s going to think we’re a failure. Is this going to prove that I’m a failure? What if I try and I say, you know, I’m going to start a business, but this is like my sixth time starting.

Cara Harvey 00:13:44 What if people judge a bigger one too, with this procrastination? Is that imposter syndrome? I could never write again. The running. I have run this ten mile race. It’s in Philadelphia, where I live four times, and it’s hard and scary and my brain is like, I am not a small person, right? Like I’m overweight. I’m pretty fit, I work out, I fail myself, I find myself actually very fit. I just am happy and it’s cool. Like it’s just what my body looks like, right? But my brain wants to say, oh, you can never like, look how big you are. You. You’re gonna run ten miles. Like, that’s cute, right? My brain wants to make me feel like I’m unqualified. When I wrote my book three years ago, when this book came out, who the who am I to? And again, it happened with the conference. These people are flying in. Only one person actually lives in Philadelphia, which is a wild thought.

Cara Harvey 00:14:37 They are spending money they are investing in this weekend with me. Who am I? Who am I to run this? And that’s what the voice sounded like. And so I procrastinated sharing about it. I could have shared about the conference more than I did, but I found myself procrastinating because of that fear and I had to coach myself through. I had to put on my big girl panties, if you will, and be like, guess what? You need to try. We need to move forward and that’s what I want for you. So looking at your goal, I want you to identify like why am I procrastinating? Like, what’s the root cause? And now let’s give some tips of how we can kind of show up and change that thought pattern. The first thing the no fun thing is we need to change our mindset. We need to reframe what failure is. I am at the point 40 years of my life I have failed a ton. And here’s the thing I love a challenge. I love to try things.

Cara Harvey 00:15:26 I want to look at them as I learned. And there have been so many mistakes, so many emails I’ve sent out with the wrong link chimes. I’ve tried to sell something and no one buys it. There is so much. My mindset has now become like, okay, if it fails, what did I learn? I want to become a detective about it. So looking at one of the goals that maybe you failed this year, pick a goal. Pickle? You felt it? I wanted to lose weight this year. Like I mentioned, I’m trying. I’ve lost £10, which is great, but I wanted to lose like 40. I’ve lost ten. My brain wants to make it think it’s a failure, but I want to look at it as how did I show up for the goal? And what did I learn from this goal? I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about what foods make me feel good and what don’t. I learned a lot about my strength. When you reframe failure in this way of like, I am going to learn, your brain feels less scared.

Cara Harvey 00:16:18 It doesn’t have to to save you as much. And also stepping into the quote arena, right? Teddy Roosevelt has that quote about stepping into the arena. Brené Brown repurposes it in her books. You know, don’t judge somebody unless they’re in the arena with you when you step into the arena, when you try another goal, when you push yourself past procrastination and into action, that is really the success. I talk to myself all the time and I’m always like, I’m proud of you. Way to show up, Kara. You did that like I was working out this morning. And the new workout, it’s 20 minutes, but it’s intense. It goes fast. And I was I really pushed myself because with my 40 minute program, I found myself kind of dogging it a little bit at the end because I was kind of tired. I was over it with this. It’s so fast. I’m like, no, I’m going to give it my all for 20 minutes. And I was like, speeding through my little runs or whatever I was.

Cara Harvey 00:17:04 I lifted heavier than I normally would have and I found myself saying, great job, great job. I want to pause and thank our sponsor today and that is Stacy Wolfe over at The Engines. If you want to simplify your beauty routine, discover quick and easy beauty tips that are going to fit perfectly into your busy schedule. You’re going to want to check out her site. She’s got makeup, skincare, and simplified. Stacy products are going to help you with saving time and getting out the door. The makeup all day long. You don’t have to have your stuff with you. You’re not doing all of these touchups. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time to put makeup on more than once a day, if that. There’s also a great set of pigmented skincare that is going to help not only just, you know, put on the makeup, but cover up some blemishes, heal your skin from within and anti-aging stuff which, as I’ve had 40 this year, I know I want more than ever.

Cara Harvey 00:17:54 Listen, if you want to go over to a purpose drama com slash Stacy, that’s Stacy. You can not only join her community, but check out all of these great products. That’s a purpose driven romcoms, Stacy. Now, I injured my arm a year ago. I tore ligaments in it and pinched a nerve in my shoulder. I went to about four months of physical therapy. It’s still not 100% right. It’s better, but there’s so many things I can’t do, and my brain wants me to get back in that perfectionism of like a push up, for example. Like I just feel like my arm is about to fall out of its socket. It does not feel supported right by my weight in a push up. There’s certain moves that if I have to move my arm a certain way, it just hurts. So I have to lessen what I do. Perfectionist brain wants me to call that a failure. Do you not remember when you used to be able to do that again, I’ll talk about the weight loss.

Cara Harvey 00:18:43 Before I had my kids, I lost £70. I know how to lose weight. I’m a lot older, ten years older than the last one. I lost £70. My life is very different. My hormones are different, right? So perfectionist brain wants to say to me, you’re a loser. You don’t know how to do this. You know how to lose weight and you can’t do it. This is another thing that we need to shift. Our mindset is continuing to look behind us at what we used to be able to do, and comparing it to what our current self can do. We will often put things off because we’re like, well, I used to be able to do this. I used to be able to get these things done. And because current you can’t, you feel like a failure. So it’s like, why bother trying? Well guess what? Current you is not past you and it’s not future you. It’s present you and you need to honor that. All right. So reframing failure is going to be really important with moving forward and giving yourself the compassion self-compassion to say this is hard.

Cara Harvey 00:19:36 I missed a day I overate I spent when I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t record the podcast episode. I got behind on this thing. What can I do moving forward? Because when we stay in that victim mentality, when we stay in that victim mindset of I didn’t do it now so I’ll never be able to do it. That fixed mindset versus the growth of I’ll be able to change. We’re not offering ourselves any compassion. We’re being really mean. And we have a phrase in the purpose of film club stop shooting on yourself. Right? And it’s you wouldn’t talk to your kid this way. You wouldn’t talk to a friend this way. So why are you beating yourself up for everything? I had a friend should in nursing school and she’d been doing great top grades. She talked to me last night and said she got an 84, which, like, it’s a B, it’s a great, great. But she’s disappointed in it because she’s always gotten good grades on her test. And she was very hard on herself.

Cara Harvey 00:20:17 And I said, stop talking about my friend like that, because the way she was speaking to herself, she would never have said that to me. If I text her and said I, I failed at something, she would she would build me up. That’s what we need to build ourselves up to now, when you’re also trying to move out of procrastination because of this fear of failure, because of all of this stuff in our brains, I want to encourage you to do small steps. I always say with goals, we’ve got two things. We’ve got the completion goal. I want to run the ten miles. Then we have the goal of the habit I show up to run. Those are two different things, and those are two different things we’re trying to accomplish. You need to look at how am I showing up for this goal and reward that? Did I go for a 15 minute walk today? I remember I’ve been trying to lose weight like my whole life is life’s work. A lot of people have it.

Cara Harvey 00:21:01 So I remember the summer between seventh and no eighth and ninth grade going to high school. I wanted to lose some weight, and I would run in my neighborhood, and instead of beating myself up for not being able to run around the whole block because I couldn’t, I would push myself to do one mailbox more, one mailbox marker. Just do the next mailbox, just hit the next mailbox took me all summer, but I could run around the block once. That’s the mindset we need for ourselves. I showed up for my goal today. I’m proud of myself. When is the last time you told yourself you were proud of yourself? Because if you’re not speaking it into you, it’s no wonder that the external voice of failure is creeping into your brain. If you’re not showing yourself compassion and love, if you’re not celebrating the small task. I showed up today even for five minutes. It counts, right? Okay, we talked with the brain, but let’s get practical. Showing up for the five minutes.

Cara Harvey 00:21:51 The ten minutes? The 15. I made the 15 minute formula. I wrote the book for a reason. Because it works. Showing up for 15 minutes allows me to actually get things done. I could get my whole set of dishes loaded in 15 minutes or less, right? I could do a lot more than I realize. And when you start to show up in just 15 minutes and you look at it in these small chunks, then you start to make moves forward. So if you find yourself procrastinating on a task, on a goal because of overwhelm, because of that fear of failure, because of the imposter syndrome or all these things that are happening, the perfectionism, ask yourself, how can they show up in a small chunk? How can I put five, ten, 15 minutes towards this goal today? When you start doing that, you start to kind of fill your bucket, right? Oh great job, great job, great job. And you start to move forward. The other thing I’m going to ask is that you find a buddy.

Cara Harvey 00:22:41 You know I talk about the wrong club because it works. Having the external accountability. I have people who get on and they tell me that they have made more progress in just a few weeks in the club than they’ve made in the years, because they are having accountability. Find a buddy. Find someone to check in with. Hey, I really need to go and write this blog post. Do you want to find like writing time? I did this when I wrote the book. I found a friend. We would get on zoom, we would not talk to each other and we would write. And it really, really helped find someone to check in with us. Find someone when you’re struggling, find someone else that is not you because it’s very hard to hold ourselves accountable. We’re reading in the purpose of Run Club The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin. Right, and I am an upholder, which is one of the through and through. So most of the time I can push myself to my goals, okay, but not all the time.

Cara Harvey 00:23:29 I need external accountability too. But maybe you’re someone who her personality called the obliger, right? You know you need that external accountability. Get it right, get it in a way that works for you. Celebrate the way that you show up. I love a visual tracker and so have a tracker. check it off every time you show up for your goal. Have a little jar that you put pom poms in. Get yourself a reward. I have this calendar over here. It’s like a year long calendar I bought on Amazon, and one of the ways I use it is for when I show up on my goals so I can celebrate. And every time I do it, I want you to retrain your brain. Great job showing up. Check. I’m proud of you. Check. Showing up matters. Check. Speak it and it works. If you have a goal and you would like to still work on it this year, can I encourage you to not give it up? Even though the holiday season is about to be busy, can I encourage you to lean into it? Don’t procrastinate it.

Cara Harvey 00:24:21 Make it your priority right now that you’re going to spend five, ten, 15 minutes multiple times a week on this goal, make your latch pillow right. Start your podcast. Just because it’s the holidays, it’s not too late. Don’t allow perfectionism to become your procrastination tool. And don’t let fear be your anchor. Move forward with your goals. You still have a few months of the year. It is not over. All right, you can check out your show shownotes over in the description. Check the links. I want to see you achieve your goals. Don’t let procrastination hold you back. You are capable, you are worthy and the goal that you want to do it matters. So work on it for the rest of the year and get it done. Thanks for listening friends, and we’ll chat soon.

Cara Harvey 00:25:05 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Purpose Driven Mom Show. If this episode served you in any way, we would really appreciate it if you headed over to wherever you listen to podcast, hit that five star and leave a review and a rating.

Cara Harvey 00:25:17 That’s how more moms can find us and we can grow our community. If you had a tip or an make sure you come over and tag me out of Purpose Driven Mom on Instagram and share it with your friends. The best way for us to get this message out there of less hustle and less shame and more intentionality, is for you to share it with people you know need to hear it. Thanks for listening. We appreciate you and I can’t wait to connect with you more outside of the podcast.