55: How to Make Decisions in Your TPT Business Without the Overthinking Spiral

Speaker A: Hey, teacher friend. Welcome to Online Business for Teachers, the

Speaker B: podcast for educators who are tired of

Speaker A: being tired and wondering if there's more out there. Are you up late googling online jobs for teachers or how to make extra money from home? Do you dream about starting a business, working from home, or finally getting paid for the resources you've already created without adding more stress to your plate?

Speaker B: I'm Monica Lopez, a former teacher who

Speaker A: was burnt out, overwhelmed, and secretly searching

Speaker B: for a way out.

Speaker A: I wanted more time with my kids, the freedom to work from home, and a way to make money doing something I actually enjoyed. That's when I discovered the simplest path. Creating and selling my own teacher resources using the skills I already had. Now I help teachers like you turn your ideas into income with step by step guidance. We'll talk about finding time to grow your business and the mindset shifts that help you believe it's actually possible. So close those lesson plans and grab your favorite drink. It is your turn now.

Speaker B: Hey there. Welcome to Online Business for Teachers podcast. I'm Monica Lopez and I feel like I don't introduce myself enough, so I'm going to introduce myself real quick. For those of you that are new to the podcast, I started this podcast to help teachers start and grow their online business, particularly their teachers, uh, pay teachers business. I also offer one on one private coaching calls to help you get unstuck and move forward faster. I can help you with strategy when you've done all that you know how to do and you're ready for the next step, but you just don't quite know what that step is. So I'm here to give you that clarity and direction that, that you need in order to grow your business. Okay? So welcome. You made a decision today to listen to this podcast so you can make decisions. Yay. But when it comes to your TPT store or like your online business, suddenly every decision feels impossible. You go back and forth and you overthink and you end up doing nothing, and then you feel bad about doing nothing, and then you overthink some more. Am I calling you out? All right, so today we're going to talk about why that happens and what to actually do about it. I'm going to walk you through some of the things that I personally do when I'm in that spiral. And some of it might sound a little out there, but stay with me, okay? Because by the end of this episode, you're going to have some real tools to work with. Okay? So let's get into it. Let's start with Something that I think a lot of us do when we're stuck, especially in the last couple years or so, we go to AI, specifically ChatGPT. I mean, I know we all have our favorite AIs, but I think that Chat JPT is like, a personal favorite for a lot of us. So we go there and we type in our question, and we're hoping that it's just going to tell us what to do. I have done this a lot, and. And I want to be honest with you about how that has gone for me. A, uh, while back, I was trying to figure out how to scale my business, and I had to. And I had told ChatGPT at some point that I didn't want to spend money on ads. So when I went back and asked for a growth strategy, this was months later. It never mentioned Facebook ads, not even once, because I had already told it that it was off the table. It only knows what you have told it. And I had mentioned it months before, and it just kept that in its memory. And when I was ready for it, it didn't know that. Right. And so that is where some of that limitation is. I'm sure there's a lot of other limitations, but I, uh, just wanted to share that experience with you. And, uh, that's not even, like, the part that frustrates me the most. What really gets me is what happens when I bring AI a big goal. I'm a very positive thinker. My goals are above average. I don't want reasonable. I want to be the outlier. And when I bring these goals to ChatGPT, it'll say something like, let me ground you on this. And then it gives me projections based on my past data and tells me what a realistic goal looks like based on what I have already done. And I'm sitting here like, that is not what I asked. I don't want you to lower my goal. I want you to help me figure out how to get there. Y'. All. AI follows patterns. It works with what you give it, and it stays in the middle. And if you are trying to build something above average, the middle is not where you want to be. So the point I'm trying to make here is Google and AI are not going to fix the overthinking, because overthinking is not an information problem. It's a mindset problem. And those need a very different solution, which is exactly what I'm going to talk about next. Okay? So bear with me. AI and Google are really good for information. I know that you know they make mistakes on all the things, but they're really good for analyzing information. But as far as, like, generating strategy and tactics, that I don't believe that that's the best way to use AI because I feel like you need somebody with experience to tell you, oh, this is possible. Or they can come in and pinpoint things that you are thinking or not even thinking about, you know, because you don't know what you don't know. And AI is probably not going to tell you what you don't know, right? It might sometimes, I guess it depends on the prompt that you give it. But for the most part, AI is probably not good to help you set goals, especially if they are overthinking problems and decision problems. Okay. All right. So before we go into the tools, I want to talk about why we as teachers are so prone to overthinking in the first place, because I really believe it's not a coincidence. We are the biggest rule followers in the world. That is literally what we are trained to do and what we teach our students to do. Follow the rules, do it right, don't make mistakes. And so when we step into building a business where there's no teacher guide and no lesson plan and no manual, our brain doesn't know what to do with that. We become so afraid of, um, doing something wrong that we just don't do anything at all. And I want to share something personal here, because I think it will help you feel less alone in this. I remember going through this myself. I was so afraid that using Canva in my TPT resources was somehow breaking a rule. And this was before everybody was using Canva. Okay, so Everybody was using PowerPoint. And I was just kind of like, oh, yeah, but Canva is a whole lot easier for me. So I wanted to do it, and I just went ahead and did it. Right. And so I was super worried that somebody was going to come after me and tell me my products were illegal and make me refund every single person who had ever bought for me. And I had already spent all the money, so I was panicking about where I was going to even get all of that money from. Okay. And I lived with that fear for about two weeks. I say about two weeks. I'm not exactly sure, but I think that's. That's what it felt like. Two weeks of tight shoulders and a big ball in the pit of my stomach, like something really bad was going to happen. Now, nobody told me that this was going to happen. This was all in my head. And in hindsight, I can laugh about it because we're literally making mountains out of hills. But when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a hill at all. And what finally got me through it was going back to something I had learned from Brooke Castillo about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. And I decided I was going to actually do that exercise. So I sat down and I meditated and I walked my brain through every single worst case scenario. What's the worst thing that can happen? Okay, I have to refund everyone. And then what? I won't have any profit for a while. And then what? I won't be able to pay for the things that I had planned. And then what? I'll just have to go without them. And then what? Well, nothing, nothing horrible is actually at the end of that road. By the time I was done, I was shaking a little bit. I may have even cried a bit. And it took me a couple of times of actually sitting with it, uh, before I really let go of it. But what I realized is that we are not afraid of the actual thing. We're afraid of feeling what we fear. And when you feel the fear on purpose, when you actually let yourself go there and walk all the way through it, there's nothing left to be afraid of because you have already felt it. And that is how you feel the fear and do it anyway. You make the unknown known. And once it's known, it loses its power over you. So now that we know why we overthink, let's talk about what to actually do about it. I want to share some of the things that I personally do when I am in that spiral. These are my go to tools and fair warning. Some of this might sound a little woo woo, but I'm a big believer in self development and I have been listening to people like Wayne Dyer and Joseph Murphy and Abraham Hicks for years. So just stay with me here, okay? One of the things that I do is journal. When my mind is full and I cannot think straight, I just start writing. Whatever is in my head goes on the paper. Stream of consciousness, no filter, just get it out. And a lot of the times I'm not even halfway down the page before I already have clarity. There's something about getting it out of your head and onto paper that just organizes everything in a way that your brain can't do on its own when it's all swirling in there. Another thing that I do, and this one might surprise you, is and depending on where you live, you may or may not be able to do this. So I go out for a walk, and I talk to myself out loud. I think through the problem as if I'm talking to somebody else. Like, I talk to myself as if I was, uh, another person. Because we're really good at giving other people advice. We know exactly what to tell a friend who is stuck, but when it's us, we freeze. So I just talk to me as if I was talking to somebody else. And I just walk and I talk. And I think a lot of the times the answer just comes. All right, so that's walk and talk. What about when walking is not enough, though? That is when I use one of my other tools, I sit down and I meditate. Especially if I am, uh, like, at a real fork in the road or something big. I will put on some meditation music on YouTube and sit still and just try to clear my mind. And a lot of times, the decision comes from that still stillness. Your brain already knows the answer. It. It just needs the quiet to hear it. And sometimes our brain is going on with so much information that it's really hard to hear the clarity that's already there. Okay, all right. So the first one was walk and talk and then meditate. And the next one here is my personal favorite. And I call this the nap trick. My, uh, friends already know. Like, if I'm not answering my phone or messages, I might be taking a nap. When my brain is completely full, which is a lot of times, and I just can't anymore, I take a nap. But before I fall asleep, I tell my brain, by the time I wake up, whatever idea or answer comes to me first, that is the one I'm going to go with, that is the right decision. And then I wake up, and I go with it. No second guessing, no going back. Which brings me to something really important. A lot of times we're stuck in indecision, and it's not because one choice is better than the other. It just might be that we don't know. And we have convinced ourselves that there is only one right answer, and then the other answer is wrong. And then we have to decide which answer is the correct one. And that's where we spiral, right? And this spiraling is causing us indecision, and then we don't even move right. So what I'm trying to say is, most of the time, either choice is going to be fine. A decision is just gonna. Is just a decision. You just have to pick one and commit to it. Because the moment you start looking back is the moment that you go back into that spiral. So this nap trick really helps when you really don't care which decision to go with. You're tired of overthinking it. So you just go to sleep. And when you wake up, the first thing that comes to your mind, then that's the one that you go with. Okay? And then of course, our good old favorite from when we were kids. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. Right? Pick something, go with it. Done. Both roads are going to be okay. All right, so that right there is how to deal with this indecision and then just you spiraling into this overthinking. Okay, so, uh, I know that not every teacher is going to go home and journal or meditate or take a nap before making a businesses decision. And that's totally okay because sometimes what you actually need is something different. It's something more, right? And. And here it is. We are teachers, we know exactly what scaffolding is. And you might need some scaffolding. You might need somebody there to help you sort through all of the thoughts, to listen to your ideas and your fears and help you figure out which ones are worth paying attention to and which ones are just your brain doing its thing to hold you accountable once you make a decision so that you don't go back and forth and back and forth and end up right where you started, right in the overthinking indecision. Because that's the other thing that happens, right? You finally make a decision and you feel good about it for about five minutes and then the doubt creeps back in and before you know it, you're second guessing everything all over again. And that back and forth, back and forth is going to keep you stuck for months or even years. Cutting that cord of indecision is really hard to do alone. It's just so much easier when you have someone in your corner helping you stick with it. Someone who can look at your specific situation and your store and your goals and your fears without judgment and help you move forward with clarity instead of just spinning. That is exactly what a coaching call for me looks like. You come in, we talk through what is going on and we figure out together what is actually in the way and what your next move looks like. It's not just me telling you what to do, although I can do that too if you really need that direction, but it's having that space to process everything out loud with someone who is actually listening and then walking away with a plan and the confidence to actually do that. If that sounds like what you need right now, the link to schedule a call is in the show notes. But before I wrap up, I want to leave you with something. All of these feelings, the overthinking, the fear, the indecision, the ball in the pit of your stomach, that's all part of the beginning of something incredible. Everybody feels this when they are starting something new. There's no manual for it. There's no teacher's guide. There's no business guide. Right. It's just you and an idea and a computer and a whole lot of uncertainty. And that is scary. I know that because I have been there. But the fear doesn't go away on its own. It goes away when you make a decision, feel the fear and do it anyway. And then you survive it. And then the next time it comes around, because it will come around again. Every single time you try something new or you're about to level up, you already know that you can get through it because you have done it before. I decided that I wanted this more than whatever it was I was afraid of that was going to happen. And that is what got me through it. I hope this is what gets you through it, too. Go back and listen to the episode on, uh, how to use Canva without breaking my rules. I'm going to add that link in the show notes, and if you're ready to talk through what is keeping you stuck, you can schedule a call with me at www.yourteacherbiz.com coaching again, that's www.yourteacherbiz.Com/coaching. All right, guys, I will talk to you next time.

Speaker A: Hey, teacher friend. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If this show is helping you dream a little bigger, would you take 30 seconds to leave a quick review? It means the world to me, and it helps more teachers find their way to this podcast. I'll meet you back here next week. Take care and keep dreaming bigger.