Helen Collard (00:00)
Why do we give up on the things that we really want? Welcome to an ordinary Tuesday. I'm your host Helen Collard and this is the podcast for anyone wanting to make positive change and achieve the best life you can possibly dream of.
I've been mentoring, teaching business, helping people set up online businesses and achieve their personal dreams for years now. And I've seen people go on to have fantastic results. And if we're talking about business for a second, especially around automations, that's my specialty. That's where you link up all of the technology to deliver your service without you having to be in front of your computer. Somebody can see what you bring, see the value by your service.
make a payment, receive a warm welcome email and a follow up and you get notified. And the reason I'm mentioning that right now at the beginning of this podcast is a lot of people think that the reason people drop out of setting up their own business is because of the tech and the technical difficulties, but it's not. Actually, that's the easy bit. The harder bits are getting clarity, nailing down what it is you actually deliver, who you deliver it to.
pricing, et cetera, but all of that can also be taught. It's fairly easy, especially if you're in a community of people and you're all doing similar work. You can compare offers, pricing, what works for you, what doesn't, and work out a way forward once you know that. That's still relatively easy, but where I've seen people, I don't really want to use the word fail, but let's say stop. Where I've seen people stop,
and give up on their business goals, on their personal dreams and quietly disappear back into whatever world it was that wasn't fulfilling them, that made them want to change in the first place. The reasons are always the same and what we're going to do today is explore some of those reasons. Now it won't be any surprise to you that a lot of those reasons come down to self-belief. So today I'm going to
deconstruct some of those reasons, I'm going to share with you what I've seen in terms of why people give up and what you can do about it.
First of all, I believe that you can have anything you want in life. I've always been absolutely certain of that from being a young child. And what I want to share with you today is just some of the stuff I've learned by watching those who let go of their dreams. The world is so full of possibilities and opportunities. There are so many people in the world all navigating the same paths, health, purpose, family, money, decisions, dreams, constraints, fears.
not knowing the next step etc. And what I want to say is that you are always a few steps ahead of somebody on the same path as you and a few steps behind others. The thing to do is focus on and connect with those a few steps ahead. Watch what they do, ask how they learned to let go or what steps they took and where they're going next.
and you can in turn offer that same advice and help to those a few steps behind. So reach out a hand, share something that worked for you, offer an ear or a word of reassurance when fear and doubt set in. Now that's what I've been doing for years. I've studied those who went ahead of me. I've worked with leaders, coaches, people who are really successful in their field and who make me think differently and grow. And in my own field, I continue to do this and probably will do for the rest of my life.
There's always something to learn, then implementing it, trying it, working out what works, what doesn't, where to pivot, where to make that learning mine, and then I pass it on. So in business, that's to clients, or in life, it might be to somebody I come across facing some kind of obstacle or challenge that I've overcome in my life, or it might be advice or something for my daughter or to the students I've worked with or with friends. But you can't help.
anyone who doesn't want to be helped. So we've all had a friend, right? Somebody going through a relationship issue or who isn't happy with their job or maybe a client and we've tried to help. We've maybe given advice or we've said what worked for us or we've downright broken it down into a step by step. Maybe we've passed on a contact we found useful, but for some reason that person stays stuck. They keep repeating the same patterns
and it can become frustrating and maybe that's you. So one of the first learnings is you can't fix people but you can empower them. You can show rather than tell but you must leave it to them. If they want to follow they can and if that's you, you might find that all the advice in the world doesn't help, it simply overwhelms and then you need to work out what it is you actually need or what feeling it is you are actually chasing.
So when it comes to setting up your goals, whether that be personal or whether that be a business, it leads us on to point number one, which is having a lack of vision and not knowing your values. So those people who are stuck, those friends that you've tried to help, maybe you yourself can be really kind of stuck in their own lack of vision or knowing their values. So we all have skills. We all have things that we know we've experienced and things that we're good at.
These might be in a professional context, something you're qualified in, or it might be personal. Maybe you've been through a midlife change and you can speak to others in the same situation that you were in six months or a year ago. Maybe you've negotiated your way through a health issue and can inspire people to make improvements to their own health. Maybe you've been on a great adventure and you can show others who might desire a similar experience what you did in order to make that happen.
What lessons you learned along the way? What to expect. But I've seen so many people come in with big ideas and dreams and perhaps they want to make a business or finance their lives by helping others in some way.
but they don't clearly know what they want themselves. So they're pointing in a vague direction of satisfaction without really knowing their own values or their reasons why they're being called to whatever their goal is. And then they can find they either can't find the right people to help or they're misaligned with their clients. And I'm being very general here because it's a huge topic, but if you just have a general idea,
that you can help somebody because you've done X, Y or Z without knowing why you want to help or what your values are or what kind of a lifestyle you want to create and how having a business or whatever it is will take you there, then you're going to stumble along and not really achieve much because you're unclear on what it is you want to do and why. So number two, talent.
If we're talented at something, talent can give us a direction, but it's not enough to succeed. So I've been listening to Napoleon Hill on Loop again this week. I am obsessed with the book Think and Grow Rich. It's a really old book and some of it is definitely outdated, but the core principles are sound. And one of the arguments that Napoleon Hill makes is that talent, creative ability,
Imagination and genius, yes they are enviable qualities, but alone they will not make you succeed unless you have the desire, application and persistence and you work every day towards your goals without giving up until you achieve what you want. The only way to get what you desire is consistent movement towards your destination. Talent may give you a head start but it doesn't determine the end result. It's action.
Action is what will turn your potential into achievement. Now this leads me on to number three. How much of what we call a lack of talent is really a lack of confidence, experience or opportunity? We all grow up with different opportunities to try things out. So I grew up in a pretty normal town in Nottingham.
lived in a three bed semi with my parents and my brother, my sister, and I went to the local comp. Nothing special, but I did have a talent. I was good at art. Everyone told me so. I could draw and I would get lost in art for hours, drawing all of the things I wanted that didn't exist in my material world, mainly horses.
When I was 10 or so, I was staying with my cousins in London, which we all loved as it seemed so exciting, and my aunt took us all to the Dashnell Gallery. And they had an art competition for kids that was on at the time. And I entered it and I won it. And I knew I would. Now, I don't want that to sound arrogant, but I had a confidence. The confidence that kids have when they know they're good at something before it gets knocked out of you.
I knew I would win it and I did and I won a massive painting kit. But as I got older, I started hearing the following sort of comments around my art. Instead of people saying to me, that's really great. You're good at drawing, aren't you? I started to hear, you can't do art. You'll never make a living. You have to get a proper job in an office, work for a council. You need a job for life.
Stop messing about drawing and concentrate on your maths. Now was terrible at maths and I still am and you know what? I'm doing okay. When it came to leaving school, we had virtually no information on further educational paths. It was all youth training schemes in those days. My parents started going through a divorce at around that time and so I learned pretty quickly that I had to get on with my life and be sensible like everyone else.
So I had talent, but the desire and confidence that I could spend my life doing something I loved had been knocked out of me and there was no opportunity to develop my ability further at that time. Now I did pick this up again later in life when I'd worked on myself and learned a lot of what I teach now and I had reminded myself of that childhood belief that I could have anything I wanted. I just needed to go and get it for myself.
So I did an illustration degree in my 40s. I worked at my craft for three years whilst bringing up my daughter, who probably attended more lectures with me than most of the other students did. And I came out with a first class honours degree and a sticker telling me that my final project was the second best of the entire year. The best was won by an architecture student. So the next reason, reason number four is money.
Money is a very real constraint. We all have bills to pay and financial responsibilities and sometimes we have other people relying on us financially. We don't want our lives to be all work and no play but the reality is when you have a goal in mind whether that's business or personal we have to have a financial plan to achieve it. I've seen so many people give up because they're looking
at the investment that they're initially so excited to make, whether that's an investment in coaching, training, software, or equipment, but they don't think about the ongoing running costs while they're still growing their business or working towards their dream house or holiday or whatever it is. Quite often people think, I'll save up X amount and by this time scale, I'll have achieved this. Reality might be different.
If you're starting a business, you might find it takes longer than you think to start bringing in the amounts you need to sustain your desired lifestyle. If it's a house purchase, you might encounter expensive legalities or unexpected costs.
I was a project manager for years and in the project management world we'd call this contingency, an amount of money that we would set aside or a plan to get you through this period and cover any unexpected turns in the road. In our personal lives we need to replace this contingency with resilience, application, consistency, determination, vision and good planning. So for example, in order for me to achieve my goal of studying art for three years mid-career,
I did several things to make sure that financially I could achieve it. I started thinking about it a couple of years before I enrolled. I brought enough money into my business to buffer me for three years.
I was running my own business so what I did is I paid myself a lower wage than I was used to so that I'd get used to living on less money. I educated myself on what I might be entitled to in terms of student financial help. I worked part-time through most of my degree but I made sure I could stop when the workload was intense. I wanted the goal badly enough to plan for it.
So it's really important that when you have a goal in mind, you plan financially for how you're going to achieve it. And there are lots of ways you can do that. You can cut down, you can live differently, you can look at where your money's going. It might mean finding some part-time work or a bridge job that will bring in enough money to cover your bills without taking up all of your time or all of the headspace while you work on that goal. And it will definitely mean you're working on your mindset.
Which brings us to point number five. So mindset, without a doubt, this is the number one reason I see people give up on their goals. It's a lack of confidence and self-belief, and it's about the money mindset. So from when we are really little, we are forming beliefs about ourselves, but all of those beliefs come from external sources. So we're not born believing anything. We're born curious.
dependent, brand new to everything, and we learn through what we see, hear, and experience. That's how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. So if we continue just with the theme of money for a moment, if you grow up in a family where you hear you have to find a job for life to pay your bills, or artists don't make any money, get a proper job, that's what you believe. We've all heard things like money doesn't grow on trees, or people like us don't.
do this or we can't afford that. And the irony is that no matter how much work we do on ourselves as we get older, how many books we read, podcasts we listen to, affirmations we repeat, hearing the opposite as an adult doesn't undo those formative beliefs. They live deep in our subconscious and it takes repeated habits to operate on a new level where we know that money is limitless and there are millions of people in the world.
who would happily pay for your services. There is an abundance of resources. We all have a valuable contribution to make and you can do and be and have anything you want to. Other beliefs we might ingest that we're not clever enough, talented enough, even attractive enough. I mean, really in this day and age, interesting enough, educated enough, talented enough. We're selfish, we're weird. We're lucky to have what we have, nevermind wanting more.
We are not special. Well, let me tell you right now, every single one of you is special, unique and wonderful. There is nobody on the planet that has your experiences, skills and qualities in your exact way. But this belief can impact us in all kinds of ways. And most times we won't even be aware. You can have great ideas, but when it comes to talking about them, are you confident enough to say what they are?
and why you believe what you believe. We may have imposter syndrome. I've been running my business for years and I've helped countless people and I have a list of thank you messages and testimonials as long as my arm. But when I went to a conference a couple of years ago, there was a speaker who had seen before and admired and I was talking to her. She asked me what I do. I was immediately unable to tell her properly and
heard myself using words like just and only and I was so cross with myself. Now, a few years earlier, that encounter and my response to it might have been enough to make me give up on my dreams entirely. I would have just thought I will never be as good as her. But because of the work I'd done on my mindset, I learned from that encounter.
I set myself a goal that I would confidently be able to speak about my work and become visible. So remember what I said at the beginning of this podcast about seeing people further ahead on that same path? That's all that speaker was really, a few steps ahead of me in confidence and visibility and being used to talking about herself. It's really important that we have these people in our lives, people who already embody who and where we want to be.
But it's important to recognise that we too can take those next few steps and that for those people who are a few footsteps behind us, we're that person leading the way. Reason number six is all about capacity, but it does have a lot to do with mindset too, so bear with me. I hear so many people say that they just don't have the capacity to achieve their goals.
So they've made an investment, perhaps they're setting up a business. I've worked with people who've invested in software, in time, in training. And then they'll say, I just can't manage this with my kids, with whatever it is I've got to do. How can I run a business when I'm a mum, I'm a carer, I have a full-time job? I haven't got the capacity for this. How can I put the time into getting my dream home when I have everything else to manage?
How can I work on my fitness goals when I have to make dinner for everyone and they won't eat what I need to eat? How can I train to enter a marathon when I don't even have half an hour a day to myself? How can I even work out what I want when I can't get five minutes peace and quiet without somebody wanting something from me? Sound familiar? Again, all of these are real considerations, but, and I say this without apology, some of these things are excuses.
It's scary making changes. If you really want something, you're going to have to work out the practicalities because there will never be a perfect time when you are less busy, there isn't so much going on and you have all the headspace in the world. Now this might mean carving out time for yourself in the evening or the early morning around work or kids or other commitments. It might mean taking yourself off to a quiet space.
It might mean joining a community of people who will keep you accountable or will champion you in the tricky parts of the journey. And that's one of the reasons I created the Next Chapter Pathway community, so come and join us. It might mean saying no to other people. It might mean making a very scary leap of faith, like handing in your notice at work or asking for reduced hours or responsibilities. One of the ways we can give ourselves more space for the things that are truly important to us
is by building some boundaries for ourselves around the things that others expect from us. So how would it feel to say no sometimes? To split the chores in the house, maybe somebody else cooks dinner, somebody else takes responsibility for something. This can make us feel guilty and dealing with our own guilt is a skill we have to learn. So one of my boundaries is that I know I get tired in the evenings.
I'm an early bird, I like to get up early and start the day, but in the evening I just don't have that energy to give. So I don't answer the phone after nine o'clock or have late calls unless I've specifically arranged it. So if I want to catch up with a friend on the phone, I'll treat it like a date and I'll make sure I've got that energy and I'll be honest about wrapping up that conversation when I'm tired. If I need to work a couple of hours in the evening, I'll make sure I have some downtime during the day.
so that I can rest and bring the energy I need to my work. I do this with an ordinary Tuesday and conversation calls which are passed off the next chapter pathway. They're at 7.30 in the evening, so I will make sure that I take a break in the afternoons and I'm fresh and energised and prepared for the calls. I'm also really particular about what news I allow in. I don't watch the news, I search for my news selectively. I don't listen to anything that I find negative.
For example, I love listening to the radio. I listen to radio too when I'm driving. But as soon as the arguing programme comes on, you know the one I mean, I swap to a podcast that will inspire me or make me laugh or some music that will uplift my energy. So be aware of how you're filling your time. Could taking half an hour out plan help you get more organised so that you can just get on with things when you do get some time? Could you delegate or even ditch some tasks altogether?
and you know what I'm going to say about scrolling through your phone. There are so many more topics I could speak on here, but I'm aware of time, so I'm going to move on to reason number seven on why people give up on their dreams, and that is a lack of practical know-how. There are always practical skills we have to learn. So if you have a health or a fitness goal, you may have to learn about nutrition, how to move the body, when to move the body.
how to lift weights without hurting yourself, where to run safely, how to cook, et cetera. If you're buying your dream home, you might need to learn basic renovation skills or where to source tools and furniture or how the legal process works. If you're building new income paths, you might need to learn how to invest, where and how to apply for funding, what sorts of income streams might be available to you. And if you're starting a business, there is a lot to learn.
Once you've established what you're delivering and to whom, there's the how. How to set up a website, what platforms, hardware and software to use, and whether or not that's actually needed and if it is needed, at what stage. How to build your audience, how to do social media, how to create a podcast, how to create a funnel, which is just a fancy way of saying how do you make sure your customers know who you are, get to know and trust you, become clients and really start to build you an income.
Now often this all just feels overwhelming. We work through the ideas and the mindset, but then just the practical things to learn can feel like the straw that breaks the camel's back. And when we loop that right back to money and what we're spending on tools and tech, that can feel paralyzing. This is where the build your business pillar of the next chapter pathway comes in. I built this to share not only the strategy and development stuff, but also
everything I know about what different platforms do, how I've used them with clients and how I use them myself. So I use a system called Kujabi to host the Next Chapter Pathway and the community and this podcast. And it's great. It's a really good system, but it's overwhelming when you first get it. You log in and you don't know where to start. When you get new systems, you have to learn them.
So this is just one area I include getting started in Kajabi course for free if you do need that system and you get it through me, you can find that on my website. But I'll always tell you whether you need something or not. If you don't need to spend that money, don't spend it. In the early days, you don't need it. You don't need a lot of equipment. What you do need is your vision. So my advice to people is usually
not to spend money to start with, just start. So when I started creating this podcast, I'd never created one before and I had no idea how to and the practical not knowing probably stopped me for about six months. But when I decided enough was enough, I started with what I had, which is my ancient Mac computer.
my Rode microphone and I just recorded it in Zoom because that's what I had and what I knew and who listens to your first episode anyway? Just start. It's the same with your social media. Your first posts are probably not going to go viral but every time you do post you will get better. You will learn what works but consistency and sticking at it is key. And
I suppose this is really what sits behind everything I've been talking about today. We don't necessarily give up because we aren't capable. Sometimes we have a lack of clarity. We don't know exactly what it is that we want and that we're delivering. We have a lack of self-belief. We don't believe with a person who can do that. Sometimes we just don't know how to make it happen or we simply haven't got the support around us to keep going when things get difficult.
And that's why I brought all of these areas together in the next chapter pathway. It's about giving yourself the opportunity to work through those things rather than trying to tackle everything at once and on your own. We start with the foundations, what matters to you, what you want your life to look like, what success means on your terms. And then there's the work on yourself, your confidence, your mindset, your habits, and the beliefs that might be holding you back. There's the practical business knowledge too, if that's the direction you want to take.
and the work of building a life that reflects the things that matter to you. And you get to do all of that alongside other people in the community who are working on their own next chapters. If that sounds like something you'd find useful, do have a look at the next chapter pathway. The links are in the show notes.
We still have our founder offer on for the next week where you can join for £19 and after that it'll be going up to the regular price which is £39 a month based on the price of a coffee and a cake a week because working on yourself is a lot better for your well-being and health than cake and it's just as satisfying. There's no tie-in, you can leave at any time if it's not for you and you keep the same price for the lifetime of your membership.
So if you join at the founder rate, that's what you'll pay forever. So what are the things I'd like you to take away from today's episode? They are that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped, but you can empower them. You do need to understand your own values and have a clear vision of what you want before you start building towards it.
Talent is a starting point, not a guarantee of success. Action, application and persistence matter. Don't mistake confidence or opportunity for a lack of ability. Plan financially for the things you want to achieve, including the unexpected. Question the beliefs you've inherited about yourself and what's possible. Protect your time and energy by creating boundaries.
and be honest about where your capacity really lies. And finally, don't let not knowing how to do something stop you. Practical skills can be learned. You don't need to know everything before you start. You need a reason to begin, a willingness to learn, and the determination to keep moving. Thank you for spending some of your Tuesday with me. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do share it with a friend, and please, please leave a review and a rating.
Now I would suggest five stars of course and I will be back next week.
