Overthinking Is Killing Your Momentum—Here’s How to Fix It Fast

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W four WN Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W. Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on ZVO parks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have steps into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life or vice versa.

0:58 Learn more at www. Dot Givpark dot com and you can connect with tv ants contact dants givpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, giv Park. Good morning listeners. It's Tuesday morning, and I want to share a story. One of my clients just yesterday had been talking about being motivated and yet feeling stock and so many times, you know, there's that overwhelm, not knowing you know what's important, what's not important. And I'm sure that it's not only my client, but it's most of us who'll go through that. And that's what we will be tackling today. And before we bring in our guest, I do want to thank you for getting the book the AI Agency. Thank you for your all whelming response and sharing. So I do want to share with you that if you are looking to get that promotion, or if you are looking to figure out where do you want to get started in AI, or just understand how to think, not what to think, how to think and how to coexist with AI, this book is for you.

2:20 So if you have not had a chance, go grab that book and leave us a review. And let's welcome our guests. Hello, Hello, Hello, welcome. John's fantastic to have you on board. And just wanted to see if you recall a moment or a time in your life when somebody just left that indelible mark on you a positive one. I was very fortunate to have a lot of great mentors and coaches in my life, and one of the most pivotal mentors I had his name was Skip, and this is back when I was in engineering teen years I led test operations with NASA and elite military units on the civilian side, and the Skip was the person who hired me. So he was a wealth of practical knowledge and probably one of the biggest things that he taught me was how to communicate with not only the people that were leading, but making sure that the people at hiership leadership hire leadership tiers are up to speed so they can make the decisions they need to, but also making sure that the people that are on the same leadership tiers as you are up to speed also in case they need to step in or even just offer assistance. So he called it, you know, his up, down and across communications method. So one of my one of my mentors that that really just spoke a lot

3:53 of life into me, with probably one of the biggest things being the up down in a cross framework. He shared with me. What drew you to engineering? So my dream, my entire life, was to be in the US military, and whenever I applied, when I was coming to the end of my high school career, I was disqualified due to a congenital health issue that qualified me from service. So I was pretty rudderless. And I think a high school guidance counselor just said, well, you should consider going into engineering because you're good in math and science and in that phase of my life, as a lot of teenagers are. But I carried it through with me. I didn't really think ahead. I just would kind of just go with the flow. I would say, you know, I forced gumped my way through life, just kind of bounced from one thing to the other and found myself in engineering school at the Pennsylvania State University, and you know, went through it and struggled a lot, but eventually, you know, got degreed and that's how I ended up. There was never a lifelong aspiration. It was kind of like, Okay, well let me see if I can if I can do this because I have some of the core skill sets to make it happen.

5:10 Oh definitely, And sometimes as you mentioned that we don't know what life is going to bring for us, and when we go with the flow, it makes things much easier and it becomes more of an adventure rather than a end of her that they're your using up your energy. Mm hmm absolutely, yeah, yeah, being being flexible, you know, and that I've come to realize that a lot of the reason why I didn't want to set goals when I was younger or really think about, you know, where do I want to be in five years? Looking back on it, it's because I was scared of not meeting those goals because at that phase in my life, part of my story was I have very low confidence, right, I had very little belief in my abilities despite having a track record success. So I would not set lofty goals.

6:06 I would not speak out about what I wanted to do because I thought, oh my gosh, I already feel bad enough about myself. I don't need more information telling me I can't do what I say I'm going to do. And it wasn't until I had some shifts in my life, you know, started to stem from a tragedy about halfway through my engineering career that finally opened my eyes to setting these north stars as I like to call them in our life, and being okay with not knowing every single step that's going to happen, but just being confident enough to take the next step and do a course correction on these north stars. M So, how did you make that shift? You mentioned that at one point in time, because what happens is that when you lean into discomfort, fear definitely shows up, for sure. And did you move from that fear to setting gold?

7:05 I mean, it's it was definitely a shift and not switch. And that's where a lot of my coaching clients I like to interrupt their language whenever they say, oh, I did it again, I need I need to switch how how I'm behaving, And I'm like, well, hang on a second, let's let's look at the language we're using. Because my first coach, she was so she said there was so much weight and importance in the language we use. And when we say we need to switch, a switch is immediate, right, like you hit a light switch and the lights go on or off. And if we're saying I need to switch my behavior, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment right off the bat, because we are saying I need to change how I'm behaving, probably have been behaving for years and instantaneously, you know, change and that's not real. So I tell my clients, let's shift into a different mindset, because a shift implies that it's going to take a little bit of time. So it was bit by bit, moment by moment, you know, mentor by mentor where I was able to eventually shift out of that mindset of I'm not good enough, I'm fooling everybody, you know, like we call it imposter syndrome now, but twenty years ago, I didn't have that language to know what imposter syndrome was.

8:29 So it was it was it was a shift out of that mindset that took a while, and it's still something I have to, you know, be aware of to this day. Absolutely, and I don't think so there's anybody. And of course if you are their power to you. These things are experienced by each and every one of us, and it may be the degree may be less or more. It's how we respond to it. That's what we are working on. Continue sleep. So you talked about working in NASA, and of course Artemis has been so much and news and of course you know people have been fascinated with the astronaut's journey, and I can tell you that, you know, when I watch them talk, it was so unfelt and hot warming and hot touching. So tell us a little bit about your Johnny at NASA.

9:28 Yeah, so I ended up actually getting the job. I already shared that. You know, I wasn't a four point student in college or in high school for that matter, so might be thinking like, well, how did I end up working supporting NASA as a as a civilian contractor? And the way I got the job was actually because I went the non standard path and taught rock climbing in college. And this gentleman's skip who hired me, he was his back Ronald was he was Special Forces in the US military, and he saw in my resume that I was director of rock climbing, so he saw leadership ability.

10:09 But more importantly, he went on to tell me after I got hired, he said, I didn't need another egghead to come in here at the four point oh gpa, he said, because what we're doing is we are out in the field from Antarctica to England testing these things to make sure they work. He said, I don't need someone with a four point zero. I need someone who has real world capability and is not going to get themselves, he said, or me killed doing these test operations because some of the things we did we had the potential to be extremely hazardous. So that's how I wound up there again because I kind of just forced gumped through through life in college and like one thing didn't work out and I bounced and it was like, all right, well, fine, I'll try rock climbing. I'll learn how to do that.

10:51 And that's actually how I ended up getting my foot in the door there where I stayed for fifteen years. So getting foot in the door is one thing, and keeping the job is also important. And so many times what happens is and I'm sure you experienced during your world career as you see leaders, that there's sometimes, especially in today's world, there's so many different opportunities. You may have a good job, but then something else shows up, or even if you're in a job, it's there's this initiative, that initiative, and sometimes it just comes down to priorities where there's so many different things that are important. So what are some of the ways to parse through as to what is important?

11:35 What to go with. Yeah, one of the first things we need to recognize we need to do is give ourselves the space to think about these priorities. And in today's world, everything's so fast paced. There's no shortage of distractions. You know, cell phones dinging, home devices dinging, TV's dinging. I mean, I mean even like people's refrigerators talk to them these days, there's no shortage of distractions. So we need to be very intentional with our time and recognize that the human brain is not designed to go twenty four to seven, like, we need to build space into our life where we reflect on what is important to us.

12:21 So the first thing I always tell people is when they're like, well, how do I make a decision? I have all these things going on in my head, I'm like, that's why my hits framework hi ts. The first thing is halt, like just just stop, you know, and recognize what's immediately important. But that first step that a lot of people miss, you know, the hundreds of people I coach, it's like you just need to you need to pump the brakes every so often and create that space intentionally so you can think and reflect about what is truly important to you. And if it's not coming to you in an instant, that's okay. If it's not something you're used to thinking about, your brain is just not primed for it. So I just help people, like, just give yourself space and then give yourself grace to figure out what's important to you.

13:10 So you mentioned the h what about its? Yeah, so the HITS framework to help make clear decisions because I'm sure we would agree that there is no shortage of information coming at us at all times. Yeah, right, So the he is halt just just stop, and then the I is recognize what's important, you know, what's important? And I always like to throw the cave on in there, like what's immediately important? Because it can be very easy to distract ourselves with things that are, you know, seemingly important, but maybe they're just a distraction, so we're not doing the thing that we know we need to do. So when you stop, you have to figure out what's immediately important.

13:56 You know, is does does when these things have a time component to it? For since, like if I've committed to picking up my daughter at soccer practice, that's immediately important, Like I have a time that needs to do that, you know, do I need to do the social media posts like right away, it's like, no, that can wait for another hour, right, So halt immediately important? And then the tea is take action, like actually do the thing and be okay with it not being perfect, but having the mindset of when we take action, it's not going to be perfect because perfect doesn't exist. So you have to have the mindset of excellence, like what's the best that I can do with the information and resources that I have right now? And then the s of the HITS framework is set a specific deadline, because that's where I see so many people just go off the rails as they say they're going to do something, then they never give themselves a deadline. And if they do give themselves a deadline, a lot of times they don't build any accountability into it and things never get done.

14:59 Yeah, that's absolutely true when you are setting a deadline for yourself. And so many times what happens is a lot of my clients will set deadline and they keep on missing it. So one of the things that I have seen to add to what you have shared to your point is creating rewards and consequences right as to like, okay, if I miss the deadline, because when you're committing to yourself, it's important that you matter to yourself because so many times when we make commitment to others, will we keep those commitments and we tend to override those commitments to ourselves. And have you experienced that, yes, And that's actually one of the biggest issues that I see with people's confidence is the fact that they don't keep the promises they make to themselves. Like it's it's so much easier to keep your promises that you make to someone else because that's how we're wired as humans. But when we break a commitment to ourselves, we think, oh, no, one's getting hurt but me. Well, what's really happening is every time you break a commitment to yourself, whether it's a big commitment or a small commitment, your brain just gets more information that says, I can't trust me. And if your brain gets enough of that information that you can't be trusted.

16:20 The definition of confidence is trust in your abilities. So what happens is your brain loses faith that you're going to do what you said you're going to do. So keeping commitments to yourself is extremely important to your confidence. And then that brings up a point right that when you're setting those goals, set yourself up for success, not for failure, even if it's like chunking it and going for smaller steps. So when we talk about setting goals, there's so many high performers who are very capable, very motivated, and yet they feel stuck. So what's behind that?

17:02 A lot of times what happens is, you know, the shadow side of being a high performer is we want to we set can set lofty goals, right, but sometimes the goals go beyond being challenging and being completely unrealistic. So if we're setting unrealistic goals, and what can happen is we don't even want to start them because they are too challenging, we've set the bar way too high, or they're not specific, and we don't know whenever we've done whatever we've truly wanted to do. So you know, this isn't my framework. It's been around for years, you know, the smart framework for setting goals like set a specific goal like don't you say I want to exercise more? No, want I want to run more. Make it measurable. I want to run three days a week for twenty minutes a week and only walk, you know, no more than five minutes during that twenty minutes. That's specific, that's measurable, you know, is it actionable? Like can I actually do something about this? You know? Is it relevant? Like why are you running if you hate running? Well, I want to run in a five k with my daughter. Okay, that's a relevant goal now, you know. And then t is a time bound. So those are those are great ways to get a handle on goals, to make sure that that they're they're they're measurable, you know, specific In the messed up, actually I said actionable attainable, Like we need to make sure the goals are attainable. Like if I said to you, like I'm going to run a

18:33 marathon in three weeks, like I'm good for six seven miles, but I'm not good for twenty one, Like that wouldn't be an attainable goal. I'd be setting myself up for failure. So high performers really need to check ourselves and make sure that we're not going outside the outside the realm of just being challenging and making it, you know, unattainable, because that that does not help our confidence. So we either won't start or we'll continually fall on our because we haven't set ourselves up for any chance of success. Mm hmm. That definitely makes sense. And going back to what you said is that you definitely need a whole lot more. It's not just about getting the grades or like even when you are in your workforce, it's not just about getting the promotions. It requires a whole lot of different skills. So what would you say, as you mentioned that skip set that we need someone who can keep us alive or I'm not sure, like you.

19:34 Know what for the depth of it, this diary we found ourselves in. But yeah, during those tough times, So what were some of the lessons you learned from them those times? From working in there's hazardous potentially hazards. The biggest thing is is clarity and understanding the risks, because if if we had just put our head in the sand proverbial sand and not identify the risks, we would not be setting ourselves up for success. We could be sitting ourselves up for extreme harm. So whatever we're doing, we need to understand the risks of what it is not to demotivate us, but so we can number one, remove the uncertainty and unknown because the human brain hates the unknown, right, that's that's that's where a lot of fear comes from.

20:34 Is unknown. That's where anxiety comes from. It's unknown, you know, overthinking about the unknowns of the future. The human mind hates the unknown. That's why we fear the dark. That's why we fear the deep water. You know, a lot of people we don't know what's out there. So if we can begin to identify what is what are the potential threats out there with the mindset of I'm just building knowledge so I can come up with a plan to mitigate those risks. Will it ever be completely you know, hazard free, whatever the hazard looks like in your life. No, But if we can give a name to it, that takes away a lot of the power of the unknown. And then once the name is taken away and of the fear starts isipaining. Now we can get practical and tactical and come up with a plan to mitigate that risk to as much as humanly possible or appropriate for what we're doing.

21:26 Yeah, No, that definitely makes sense because when you have plan A, Plan B, Plan C, you know that you are equipped to deal with that uncertainty and that builds confidence, as you mentioned that having that trust in yourself, right, because when you trust yourself, you know that you've. Got your back. And how do you know you've got your back when you have taken that pause and created that action plan. So as so many times what happens is that a lot of leaders, they are are under high pressure, and they know what decision they need to make, and yet the situation calls for something that goes against their very decision making process, against their values. What are some of the ways that they can handle that well?

22:22 I talk about having wise guards at the gates of your life, right, Like, so if we think about, you know, a medieval city, a big walled city, it wasn't just all wall, right, because if it was just all wall, nothing could come in or out of the city. The city would would shrivel up and die in fester on the inside. It needed to have this flow in and out of it. So in order to get that flow in and out of these medieval cities, they put gates. But they didn't just leave these gates unattended because that would be foolish, right, anything and anyone could come in or out. So when they position there, they position guards at the gates. And a lot of times people think, oh, guards jobs is just to keep everybody out. It's like no, a guard's job is actually to practice discernment about deciding what gets in and what gets out. So I talked about having wise guards at the gates of your life, you know, with practicing discernment with your time, with your values, and with your energy. So if people are in a position where their values are being compromised, their energy is being continually compromised. I'm not talking about like your energy being compromised when you're in a sprint season, like you're an author, like you know, like there's sprint seasons we go through in life. But if it's continually being challenged, you know, your time is not being honored, your values are continually being challenged or pushed into a gray area, and your energy is not respected. Those are times for you to halt, get some space around yourself and figure

23:57 out is this truly worth it? Yeah? And then that's really powerful, that is it really worth it? And then they're taking that pause really really helps because so many times what happens, as you mentioned about the habits, that habits are sometimes default mechanism under which we operate and they're so reflexive we don't even think like so, for example, think about it if you had to unlearn how to brush your teeth. So similarly, there are the habits that happens so during the times when people make decisions, and this happens in the corporate world all the time, is that people make decisions, but then they make somebody else escapegoat. They start blaming others for their own results. What are some of the ways to cut through that, you.

25:00 Mean, for the person that is blaming everybody else or if you're the Stacey, yes you mean yeah. So this is where my Navigators framework comes into play, which is available as a free masterclass for everybody, and it talks about the difference between being on autopilot and being aware, right, and when we're on autopilot and just going through the motions and we're in a space of judgment, that's what I like to call the blamer mentality. When you're an autopilot, like you're just cruising through life and you're not really pausing to think about things and you're judgmental, that's what I call the blamer mentality. And that's where people just say, well, this didn't work because of them, because of that, and then they start blaming other people. And the way to shift out of that into what I like to call the secret mentality, which is the goal, which is where you're aware and curious about things, which is the polar opposite to being judgmental and on autopilot. The way to shift out of that is saying like, Okay, this happened, this didn't get the result I wanted, and ask yourself the question, what is one thing that is under my control right now? Because people that that blame, they don't want to have the responsibility. So if you're out there and you realize and I used to be I used to I used to be a master at this right,

26:31 you know, verbal judo to shift the blame away from me because I would do anything I could to protect my what little self confidence I had. So if someone truly wants to get out of that blame or mindset when something doesn't go according to plan or they feel like they're even being challenged and it might not even be a challenge, and invite you to think like is this person just being curious and I'm interpreting as a threat to say, okay, well what is the what's one thing than my control? And let me own that and then let me figure out how to do better next time, because that's what the mindset of excellence is all about, is how can I do better next time? How can I celebrate what I did? But how can I improve?

27:14 Yeah? Definitely, And every experience is an opportunity to learn from it because if we don't learn from it, then we are going to be making the same mistake over and over again. So learning and then also looking at as you mentioned, you know what you have done really well, taking a pause and celebrating that and taking the lessons learned and making them or turning them into best practices. That definitely makes a huge So we have talked about a lot. Are there any practical tips that you want to share with our audience that they can walk away with and implement them straight away?

27:57 Yeah? And that's so I have an operation background, you know, in my in my engineering career, like like we got out of the theoretical like boardroom critical design review on the PowerPoint and like we were we were literally there, like when the rubber met the road or something had to get loaded onto a rocket, like we were the ones doing it. So I'm all about practical stuff and that that is where my hits framework came from. Like I wanted leaders to have something to just be able to call upon when they're like, I need to get some clarity here. I have too much static in my head. So just hits. Just halt, take a beat, pause, Yeah, identify what's important. Mm hmm, you know, take action, don't wait for perfect Yeah, take action and then set a specific deadline. So yeah, is something people I mean they can implement it right.

28:54 Away, absolutely, And you're right, it's it's it's simple, it's easy to remember and you can tackle that. So if our audience wanted to connect with you can connect with you. Yeah. Yeah, an I should like to share with our audience. Yeah, for sure. So there aren't many John Malaura's out there j O h N M O L L e U r A. So it's John Malaura on you know, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Love to connect with people on LinkedIn and if folks have really liked what they heard here and one even more practical stuff about especially being shifting out that critical mindset we have of ourselves. If you go to John molaura dot com slash free stuff I have my free Navigator's masterclass which I taught the one question you know, to shift out that that blamer mentality. I have two more questions to shift out of, you know, the drifter mentality when we're just out there, you know, being distracted.

29:50 And then also most importantly, how to shift out of that critical mindset. So if you go John mollurer dot com slash free stuff, there's a free master class there for ittastic. And you mentioned about the critical mindset being critical of ourselves and why is that Like most of the people, I mean including myself you mentioned about yourself and most of my clients, where is that criticality coming from. It's actually a safety mechanism in our brain. It's trying to keep us safe, right, It's trying to have us place small because, as I mentioned, like the human brain hates the unknown, it really does, because it equates unknown with threats and danger. And the human brain has one job.

30:41 It's not to make you smarter, it's not to make you a better communicator. That your brain at its core level is to keep you alive. Like that, that's it. So it's constantly scanning for threats. So if unknowns and things where the brain doesn't necessarily know what's going to happen next. Is a high level threat that critic that we have is that's when it starts getting real chatty. Do you really think you can do that? Who are you to do that? Why would anyone hire you to do that? So if we can see the critic for what it is as a as a safety mechanism, as poorly executed as it sometimes is, then we can halt just look for where's the truth? Is there truth to this or is this a story that I'm coming up with to keep myself safe? But we all know that feeling safe and being safe are different things. And that's when we get to challenge the critic and say, truly, what's the worst that could happen here? How can I mitigate those risks? Let me identify it. Let me be curious and not put my head in the stand and identify those risks and come up with a plan to move forward.

31:51 Absolutely, and it's almost important to know that by having you play small, it is keeping you safe, because if you don't take the risk, you may non experience failure. But at the same token, it's also important to realize that when you're not taking the risk you are still making a choice absolutely, and you're maybe withholding yourself from different opportunities and different possibilities that could happen for you. So it's about understanding that, Okay, it's playing small, it's keeping you safe, but in keeping you safe, it is not serving you. So it's also sitting down and looking at what meaning are you talking about? What meaning are you putting to the stories that you're telling yourself? And so we have talked about a lot about building that in a trust and a confidence today. Anything else you'd like to share before we.

32:56 Wrap up our show? Yeah, I mean, I mean we try to about before. But it's such a powerful concept, especially you know for the beyond confidence audience, like they're here for confidence. If you find yourself lacking confidence, just halt think about am I keeping promises to myself? Or am I allowing myself when I'm not being held accountable to someone else, to let myself off the hook too much? And if so, no judgment, What are things I can do to start keeping the promises to myself? Because when you start keeping promises to yourself, that's when your confidence is going to increase. When your confidence increases on the little things. When the big things come your way, they're going to be able to be executed at a higher level and with less stress.

33:44 Absolutely and building that resilience because think about what's the difference between a sprint runner and a marathon runner. It's about building that endurance and slowly building your capability capacity and I'm sure that you will be able to achieve anything that you want. Thank you John for joining us, and thank you oneer Off audience for being part of our show. Thank you so much reach out to us, let us know how we can serve and support you to live the best life you can and I know you can. And thank you on for making the show technically possible. Until next time, be valuntich Care.

34:27 Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence with your host d V Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Dvpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready, need to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dot wpark dot com and you can connect with w at contact at wpark dot com. We look forward to you're joining us next week