S02 Ep01: Stop Overcomplicating the Pursuit of Your Dreams (And a Welcome Back!)

Entrepreneurship

Sep 24

Written By Melissa Wesner

Have you ever told yourself that achieving your dreams would involve some grand feat? Perhaps you’ve made your dream out to be a gigantic mountain that requires conquering. If so, that doesn’t necessarily make us want to move forward with it, does it?
If you’re the person who tends to tell yourself just how hard and complicated achieving your dreams is, then this episode is for you.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Personal reflections on how Melissa has fallen into this same trap
- The importance of catching yourself, so you can move forward with your dreams
You’ll also get a sneak peek of what’s to come in our next batch of episodes. Stay tuned!
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Melissa Wesner, (she/her) LCPC (00:01)
Hello, hello, welcome back to the Dreaming and Doing Podcast. It's been so long since we've been together. It's been a whole summer. I hope things have been going well on your end. If you've been listening, then you know that I took the summer off from the podcast so I could focus on relaxing and enjoying the summer. And In today's episode, I'm going to fill you in on some things that I've been up to. I'll share some reflections about
not making our dreams so complicated. And at the very end, I'll be letting you know what you can expect from our next batch of episodes. I want to start out by filling you in and letting you know what I've been up to since it is related to our topic today. This summer, I not only took time off of recording, but I also made some other really big changes. I'm a therapist, as you know.
but I'm also a therapist who runs a group practice. One of the things that I love about the work that I do is seeing clients. I love doing therapy. This summer, however, I made the very hard decision to significantly reduce my clinical work so I could focus on running my practice as a whole instead. I'm not gonna lie, there were some tears involved.
and I had some people who were supporting me and holding me accountable to making that shift. And once I started making that shift, even before I was completely finished making the change, I noticed something start to happen. I felt more spaciousness in my life. I know, surprise, surprise, right? And I had breathing room.
As a result, I felt more creative. I had time to ideate, time to brainstorm, and I had time to do things outside of my office that I wouldn't have had time to do while being glued to my computer and committed to meetings. It was still work related, but sometimes you gotta not be in the office. One of the biggest things that I realized was that I had time to sit on my patio and drink my coffee without feeling rushed and without worrying about
where I had to be and how much time I had before I had to be somewhere. Now, I know that that might not sound like a big deal to you, so I want to take you back a year or two to help you understand why that was such a big deal for me and what I realized as a result. About a year or two ago, I was on a video call with another business owner and the two of us were talking about things that we wanted for the future and
We literally both had the same exact thing in mind. We both just talked about how we dreamt of being able to sit on our patios, feel relaxed, enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee, but without worrying about what time it was, was on your schedule, when you have to pivot, meaning stop enjoying what you're doing in the present moment. We just wanted to be able to sit.
and relax. At the time, that idea sounded so, so far away. I imagined that I would have to make some really significant changes or do some really big things in order for that to ever be possible. Only this summer's experience, however, simply taught me that I was again
falling into this little trap that I didn't even know I was falling into historically. And I was making things complicated that didn't have to be complicated. A year or two ago, I truly believe that relaxing in this way wasn't even a possibility. And if you're a business owner, perhaps you get that. Perhaps it feels like that for you too, right? Sometimes we're really busy. We've got a lot on our
There's a lot of responsibility that's on our shoulders. Sometimes things pop up unexpectedly and you are the person who's navigating all of that. And so it's a really hard to just be at ease. Sometimes because of our own thoughts and ideas, you know, just all these things that we're thinking about all of the time, but sometimes because there are external factors that we're dealing with that are outside of our control.
But that leads me to what I want to talk about today. And that is that maybe, maybe, maybe we've been making achieving our dreams out to be more complicated than they really need to be. Maybe we've told ourselves that achieving our dream is more complicated than it really is. And if we believe those messages, it can leave us feeling overwhelmed, deflated.
And like our dreams are so, so far out of our reach. So today I want you to ask yourself if there's a dream that you have that you've been over complicating. And maybe you haven't been over complicating the dream itself, but maybe the story you've created in your head is that achieving the dream is complicated or hard or really far away.
or would require some type of gymnastics in order for it to be possible. A few years ago, I did a coaching program and the coach shared about her own tendency to overcomplicate things and to constantly choose the hard way of doing things. She talked about how her team would catch her and be like, or we could do things this way, a way that would inevitably be a lot simpler. And,
She challenged us to think about whether we too overcomplicate things or find ourselves pursuing the hard way when we could instead choose to let things be easy. At the time, I reflected in what she said, kind of like I heard the words coming out of your mouth. I'm gonna consider it. And then I said, nah, that's me. But that's not me, I mean. But since then,
I've had scenario after scenario where I've caught myself making things super complicated. So maybe that was me after all. Let me give you another example. One of the things that I want to learn to do is to invest. I want to learn how to invest my own money without needing a financial advisor who is going to manage my money and tell me where I should put it. I want to know this stuff on my own.
and I want to be able to invest my money on my own. So rather than say, okay, let's read some books, sign up for some classes, and we'll learn how to do that. My brain says this could be really valuable knowledge for other therapists. Maybe I need to create a nonprofit so other therapists can gain these skills and knowledge. Then my team can learn how to invest their money too.
And during this time, I'm thinking about how I would find people who know how to do these things, who can teach us these things. I'm thinking about how I would be able to pay them for their services. Would these therapists pay a fee when they attend these investing classes for therapists? So as you can imagine, my brain goes all the way in the weeds. And I'm entertaining this idea for a long while in my brain until I finally catch myself
And I have to remind myself that if I want to go out there and learn something, or if I want to go and do something that I'm allowed to go and I'm allowed to do it for myself. I don't need to go out there and create a whole new program. I don't need to create a nonprofit. And in case you're wondering how that turned out, I did go ahead after catching myself and I read some books instead. I am not
currently investing on my own, but I did take some steps to get started in understanding. So what I want to know is, have you been over complicating a dream? Have you been telling yourself that mountains need to move before you could possibly enjoy the thing that you want to enjoy?
And if so, what's one little step that you could take that would move you in the right direction? Or what's that one thing you could do to make progress towards the goal while allowing it to be simple and not making it complicated? I imagine people listening to this might fall into camp, like two different camps. One camp might be like, girl, you got some problems.
And if you're wired like my partner, you might be thinking that because he has a very quiet brain and he's very much here and now. Or you might fall into camp number two where you're like, yep, I totally get that been there, done that dude all the time. I am the queen of overcomplicating things over here. And if you are person number one, that is great. That is wonderful. I am so happy for you that you can.
have a quiet mind and be in the here and now and you know, enjoy the simple life. And if you're person number two, I'm just here to say you got this, you can figure this out and that sometimes we just need to get out of our own way. Sometimes we need to realize that we're over complicating things and that maybe they're not actually so complicated after all. so if you figure some things out,
If you find some ways where you could simplify things, not make them so difficult, take some action, create some spaciousness in your life, whatever that is for you. I want to know. So be sure to let me know what you've done to kind of move forward in a way that is a lot simpler. Coming up in our next few episodes, you'll be hearing some of the really great conversations I've got to have with people I really enjoy.
We have upcoming episodes about ambition and perfectionism, living the good life, manifesting our dreams and changing course. We've got an episode on playfulness and how we need that in our lives as adults. We've got conversations around authenticity. So keep an eye out. We'll be talking some more.
If you are a therapist in the greater Baltimore area who's listening to this, I invite you to come and hang out with me this year in our clinician community membership. get together each month, engage in a super fun activity like pottery glazing, watercolor, cooking classes. And we get to do that while exploring in the greater Baltimore area, supporting local businesses. And we get to hang out with one another and get to know people in.
an authentic way without feeling pressured like some people do at regular networking events. And if you're outside of Maryland, then I look forward to connecting with you on our next episode. As always, you can check out our show notes, check out what things we have in our show notes, what freebies we're giving away, and links to things that you've heard me talk about in this episode. I am looking forward to having more conversations with you.