Speaker #0Let me ask you a question. How does your to-do list make you feel? When you think through what's on there, is it stressful, overwhelming, or maybe it makes you feel empowered and in control? Right now, my to-do list is reasonably small, proportional to the time I have available, and really, really scary. Today, I'm going to talk about why, even though my nervous system might not agree, a scary to-do list is a really good thing and exactly where I need to be. and why if you're building meaningful work for yourself and your to-do list doesn't feel at least a little bit terrifying, you might want to up the ante. So today I am just emerging from the two-week Easter holiday break with all three kids at home, so there has been very little official working time. but a lot of really critical problem solving and planning that I've kind of managed to squeeze into the gaps between easter egg hunts and zoo trips, as well as quite a lot of waking up at three in the morning unable to contain all of the thoughts and questions exploding in my head. Overall a lot of progress has actually been made and I think there's something actually quite healthy about the tension of not having dedicated time to work that makes it somehow more appealing to want to work and you know that decisions just have to be made in these kind of concentrated bursts. I think it's been quite a positive thing. The result is that I now have a kind of high impact critical path to-do list where every single item on that list moves me forward, moves the idea forward in a really meaningful way and as a result Out. Every item that is on that to-do list also scares the shit out of me. And here's the point, and this is what I wanted to share with you today. That's exactly where I need to be. Like, does it feel comfortable? No. Is my nervous system particularly happy about it? No. But it is exactly where I need to be. And I think that if you're building something meaningful and something different. it's probably where you need to be too. For the last few years, I've been in a kind of transition period since I sold my company. And actually, I've only really seen it clearly that way in the last few weeks since this idea kind of fully landed with me. And since I've said yes to this idea and kind of fully committed to building it into a reality. And now when I look back on the last couple of years and I've said many times I'm very proud of the work that I've done in that time. I don't see any of that as wasted but I also realised that I spent a lot of that time with a to-do list that I felt really pretty comfortable about. On a typical weekly basis it would be things like record podcast, check client notes. do coaching sessions with clients, draft LinkedIn posts, edit a video. And all of those things for me personally were firmly entrenched in my safe zone. And what is so different now is that everything I'm doing requires me to take risks. Everything I'm doing requires me to step into a new identity. And, you know, put myself out there with the possibility of failure and frankly of making an idiot of myself you know so now the kind of things that are on my to-do list to give you some examples look like things like um ransing angel investment when i've never ever had to ask someone for money before putting together an advisory board from people from colleagues from my kind of former life many of whom I've not been in regular. contact with, you know, selling them on an idea that is completely conceptual and a little bit crazy, attending my first international event for several years and, you know, doing several days of hardcore networking, pitching my ideas to publications. All of it is really quite scary. There's nothing that I just think, okay, great, yeah, let's just tick that off. And that's precisely why I trust it. Because there is no comfort zone in what I'm building. It is all new, it is all challenging, it is all high risk. And the thing is, that is true of, I think, almost all worthwhile ideas. They are inherently scary. They ask us to get out of our comfort zone. And I've seen quite a lot in my work with clients how tempting it is to retreat back to the things that make us feel like we're moving forward, that we're making progress, but are actually really about staying in that safe zone. And that's going to look different for everyone, but it will tend to be, it might be things like continually redesigning an investment deck. or spending a lot of time on AI researching and testing ideas. I can think of one client in particular who just loved immersing themselves in new concepts and new thinking. I was an incredible, voracious reader, but found it very difficult to move into action. So whatever it is for you, it's important just to recognise. When you're committing yourself to a particular activity, whether that really is moving the needle or whether that is kind of busy work that you want to believe has value but actually is kind of keeping you exactly where you already are. For me the scary feeling has become a signal to really take something seriously. and to act on it. And often, trusting that scary feeling and moving further in that direction opens me up to opportunities or possibilities that wouldn't have been there if I had just taken a rational, logical decision. So I'll give you a recent example. Last week, I was invited to an EU startup event and My first thought was, you know, I'm not really in that world. I'm, you know, it's sort of adjacent to what I'm doing, but it's not directly relevant. There's a lot more kind of tech there. It's going to be an awful lot of networking. It's possibly not quite the right kinds of investors. And I could make a very powerful, rational case for not going to the event. But I had such a strong feeling of kind of fear around it when I thought about, you know, getting on a plane, going to Malta where the event's being held. I mean, I loved, I was excited by that part, but there was also part of me thinking, oh, I'm going to be far away from my family. I'm not, you know, this is not an event within my network. I'm not going to have, you know, people I already know there. I'm not going to have any colleagues that I'm going with there's no one that I can go and like catch up with and have lunch and, you know, it would just be about this event. I'm going to have to be on a lot of the time. Probably a lot of people are not going to understand what I'm talking about and what I'm doing. And it was that kind of, ah, this feels quite scary to me feeling that told me that I really needed to be at the event and probably beyond any kind of, I don't know, practical wins that I might have, like. important connections that I might make or ideas that I might be exposed to. It's probably more than anything about becoming the kind of Alyssa who does go to international events and meets lots of people and has interesting conversation and puts her idea out there to be exposed and to be assessed and to be, you know, fed back on. It's really an identity step for me. And I think another aspect is that as I build this new venture, I don't have the luxury of time, which is a luxury I have had for the last couple of years. I've been able to work at a relatively slow pace, let my coaching business build in a very kind of organic way, trust that, you know, that I'm kind of putting content out there, I'm building my profile, and things are slowly you developing and that was right for what I was doing during that period. But now I'm back in startup mode. I'm self-funding at this stage. I'm also focusing less on paid work during this period and the reality is that as a startup founder every day costs you and every day has to count. Now that does not mean hustle culture for me. I will not be working 20 hours a day or sacrificing myself or my family. But what it does mean is that during those six hours while my kids are at school or the 30 minutes calm that I get between my kids' bedtime and my bedtime, or, you know, those few minutes, like sat in the car on my own, whatever it might be, I have to make that time count. And that means delivering on strategic strategic actions that all have really serious impact. And that means scary stuff every single day. Now, the good news is that every time I take one of those actions, I get kind of catapulted into the next version of who I'm becoming. And that's true, actually, even if the outcome or the result isn't what I wanted. And this is what I remind my nervous system is that it's not about success or failure. It's about... stepping into a new version of myself, about stretching my comfort zone and proving to myself that I can do it every single time, even when it doesn't work out. So my invitation to you today is to audit your to-do list and ask yourself whether you are stuck in a safe zone, because building meaningful work for yourself. almost certainly won't feel safe and it definitely shouldn't feel comfortable. Should it be joyful? Yes. Should it feel aligned? Of course. Should it be purposeful? Definitely. But also, very often, if not all the time, it will also feel scary as shit. And I'm here to tell you and tell myself but that is okay. It's a good thing. It is precisely where we need to be. And every time we take one of those scary actions, our definition of what feels scary develops. We're moving forward all the time. And that is how we build meaningful work. Thank you so much for listening to me today. I am going to head back to my scary to-do list. And I'd love to hear if this concept resonated for you. Maybe you could share something. audacious and terrifying from your own to-do list and we can help to hold each other accountable. As always you can reach me directly via email I'm at alisa alisa at regenerativeworklife.com and if you want to come along for this wild ride and get regular updates about my building journey then please subscribe to my emails and you'll find the link to do that in the show notes. I'll see you next week. 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