Hey, it's time to crank up the truth. I'm Val Selby. Over the decades of working online, I've 
learned the most important lesson: mindset owns your business. If procrastination, imposter 
syndrome, and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz, then I'm here with Val Full Volume ready 
to help you see choices that you're making. Get ready to own your personality and use your expertise 
to create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best. 
So let's get to it! 

Hello? Hello. Hello. Hello. I feel like I need to be saying welcome back, but I mean, 
you don't even know that I've been gone, right? Um, probably know if you've been on my list.

Right. It's been an odd February, an amazing, an odd February. I turned 50 on the fourth and 
we were gone to Vegas for a week so that we could do all of the nerdy things like go to the Mob 
Museum again coz we didn't feel like we got to go through it enough the first time and we hit the 
Neon Museum. 10 out of 10.

Recommend both of those. We went to the Pro Bowl, coz that was the day after my birthday 
and it was in Vegas also. And then, um, the most amazing thing ever. My family, we don't do 
surprises in my family. We just don't, not really any reason we're horrible liars. I guess that 
would be the reason we're really horrible liars.

So come to find out, oh gosh, whole story. Let me just set this up for you. So on the third Friday 
the third, my kids had bought me a full day at the spa. One of the most amazing experiences 
I've ever had in my life. They bought me two treatments and then I had full use of the spa at the 
Encore, the win.

Absolutely gorgeous, five stars. Resort spot. Absolutely amazing. Felt like a queen. Like felt like 
the queen. I am. So, then we're just gonna do dinner and chill out That day, because I was chill, 
period. The end, I was 100% chill. So, chill in fact that I left my phone. You're getting the whole 
scoop. I left my phone in the back of my Lyft ride because I set it down, and I never, ever, ever 
do that in a Lyft, ever in Uber or a Lyft.

I always have my phone in my hand as a, as a woman traveling by herself. We know this, right? 
And I set it down because I was so relaxed. That took days to get back anyways, so that had 
already been planned. We're just gonna stay at our hotel casino and uh, we're just gonna eat 
there that night and just, just hang out and just be chill.

So we went downstairs and my. Husband took me like the roundabout way through the back of 
the casino and we stayed at El Cortez, which is really, it's not big. So I was like, oh, okay. He 
wants to go down and look at the pictures again down the hallway, whatever, you know, we'll go 
down on this way. And we came back up towards the restaurant where we were going to eat 
and like I stopped and I might cry right now.

Anyways, it could happen. I'm not a crier. We were walking and all of a sudden, I looked up and 
my daughter's face, And I mean like just, I'm, I'm cried., full flood of tears. I. Oh my God. And 
then my son's behind her and then her boyfriend is behind them. So, all of those stinkers had 
been planning it since before Christmas and we all got together at Christmas and I'm like, how 
the hell did you guys keep this a secret?

They're like, we weren't sure we were gonna be able to keep it a secret, you know? Dad called 
me up, gave me the credit card. He is like. He's like, play on the flights. Go book the flights. You 
guys come on down for the weekend.  and that was before Christmas. And we all got together 
for Christmas. And I'm like, how in the world with us drinking and laughing and joking around, 
did it not come out?

She's like, we had to make a pact that we did not talk about your birthday at all because we 
knew it would come out. So needless to say, it was easily the best birthday I have ever had in 
my life. And I used to be the birthday., and that's a whole nother story. So, the fact that I just 
rolled into 50, having the best experience all the way around and with my family there and we 
had a great time and I still got to celebrate my son's birthday, his birthday's, the after wine, so 
we all got to celebrate it together.

So amazing. So, I was gone for that. Okay, so now I'm recording and it's a week later from 
getting back. My brain just came back yesterday.  we stayed, like I said at El Cortez coz I 
wanted to stay there. I wanted the experience. They had super cool retro rooms. It's, you know, 
the oldest hotel was, uh, owned by Bugsy Saga.

I don't know if you're into all the nerdiness. And that's where they trained people before they 
took 'em to the flamingo. And, and it still looks like history, unfortunately, it still smells like history 
and unfortunately, they must not have changed their ventilation system in at least 30 years. I'm 
really allergic to smoke, like really allergic to smoke and I'm not around it very much.

I live in Washington. We don't have smoking available anywhere anymore except for on the First 
Nation casinos and we hardly ever go there, you know, cause we're not gamblers, so there's no 
reason for us to go there. Even our pillows were just, Full of smoke. It was literally like staying at 
my grandparents' house growing up.

You know, when we came home, even the clean clothes that we hadn't worn, I had to rewatch. I 
promise there's a reason for why I am going through all of this. I have not had an allergy issue 
like I had when I got home in. Decades coz I'm not around smoke, I don't have cats. Uh, you 
know, we're, we're pretty careful about it.

So that I don't get sick and all of a sudden on Wednesday, I mean, I'm feeling like hell, absolute 
hell brain is leaving the building. Luckily, you know, coz of Covid, we constantly have the meds 
on the ready. So, I'm taking those.  and like by Wednesday, Wednesday night, I'm feeling it, 
dropping my chest. I'm like, oh my God, I haven't felt like, I haven't felt this happen in decades.

This is, you know, I used to get bronchitis every single year growing up and it just felt like that. 
And I have really had to pull my brain back into, okay, this is happening. We're chilling out. 
We're gonna go and chill. You know, meanwhile, I've been gone for seven days. Right. I. Gone 
for seven days, unplugged.

I didn't even have my phone. Remember didn’t have my phone room. Over 48 hours, I was 
completely unplugged and I'm like, oh my God, I have so much I wanna get done. But my brain 
said, no, it's not happening. So luckily, you know, the meds all helped me feel a lot better and I 
did just chill. And where this is going is the whole procrastination thing came up because.

I got to a point where I'm starting to feel a little better because you know the meds, the meds 
are making my symptoms better. They're not helping with the brain fog. I mean, my brain was 
just like way out there. Hilarious story about that. But that would be off topic, But I started to get 
to the point where I'm like, oh my God, am I just being lazy?

Cuz I'm just sitting here with my laptop and I'm hardly even working. I mean, I've got my laptop 
on my lap watching tv, really not even watching tv and I'm going, oh my God. Are we? Are we 
just, yeah. I mean, my brain's going everywhere. Are we just this lazy, what's, what's 
happening? Are we not working anymore?

Are we done? I mean, like one weirdo sick panic, right? And. Finally, I got enough brain power 
on, you know, Friday and I started just like doing little things here and there. Thank goodness. 
Before we left for our trip, I had made a list of things that had to get done when I got home. It 
was a nice short list so I could.

Slowly work through those things because the list had been there. But then I'm like, I need to do 
something else. I just, I can't. I just feel, I just, I'm like, okay, I don't have any brain power. I don't 
have any energy, but I also am like sitting here going. I'm gonna start freaking out if I'm not 
working my business right now, I'm not.

I'm not at a point where I can take weeks and weeks off. I'm not there. So, I'm like, oh my God. 
So, I started looking through and doing this and doing that and, and getting back to doing my 
emails and. I'm looking at it going, gosh, you know, I went through my group for some reason 
and it's like procrastination just keeps popping up.

And I'm like, damn, okay, well you know what? Let's just talk about that. And then I started 
talking about that and then next thing I knew, all of a sudden it led into we've got like a full, full-
blown tons of procrastination posts going on. I guess that's not a challenge. We don't even have 
a name for it.

I've just deemed that we're gonna hit procrastination hard for the next few weeks. We're going 
weeks into this. So, one thing, if you have a group that you are running, it is so key for you to 
use. The group questions, and of course I'm talking about Facebook group. Use the group 
questions for joining for your benefit.

So, one of the questions I ask is, what's your biggest stumbling block in your business right 
now? And, and I have a Google sheet, so I keep track of all of the answers in there. And, and all 
you have to do is do a quick scroll and you'll see that I would say it's possibly two outta three of 
the answers are talking about procrastination in some.

It's that big.  and I'm like sitting there going, um, you know, like I said, I'm not even sure why I 
pulled that Google sheet up, but I did. I was meant to be pulling it up and I took a look at it and 
I'm like, oh my God. And how much have we addressed this and how much do we talk about 
this is important to keep track of and then use it.

And maybe I've talked about it here and there a little bit, but I've. Dove into it. And it's obviously, 
you know, I felt like maybe I'm procrastinating, am I putting stuff off? You know, what am I 
putting off? Because we're all typically putting something off and you know, clients working with 
that with a couple clients in the last couple of months and it's like, you know what, let's hit this 
hard.

So we are, go join., it'll be in the show notes. Go join the group. The posts are all gonna be 
there. I might make something more formal out of it. I will still be free coz it’s; I'm running it 
through the free group. Um, but, but for right now, just jump on board immediately and get in 
there and you can start answering questions.

But one of the things I wanted to address or talk about today in about procrastination is why 
we're not doing the thanks.  and there's no one answer, and that's why it can be so difficult to 
figure out because I mean, half the time we'll just go, we'll just go with me. For example, I'm a 
procrastinator. I have procrastinated for as long as I can remember.

I'm one of those girls that always wrote her papers at the last minute, and my grades were 
always good, so that didn't help me not procrastinate, right? Uh, until I got to college. That was 
a different story. We're not going there, but you know, elementary school, all, all through 
secondary school, I could easily just sit down and write my papers the night before.

So, I was rewarded for my procrastination coz I didn't have to worry about it before doing it the 
night before. So, I know this about me. I also know.  that I do that on some projects as well. I 
also know that drives me a bit bonkers because then I sit there with the, I'm not perfectionism, I 
don't think, but I will sit there and go, oh my gosh, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna do 
that.

But I don't have time now. So for some things that has been better. So, I'm not doing too much. 
Into a program, but for other things, it has made it harder for me to market because in my brain I 
wanted to do this, this, this, and this, and I didn't give myself enough time. So, procrastination 
has ITSs place for me, unfortunately, because if I wait until a deadline, then all of a sudden it 
has to get done and I typically will pass.

But because it's the deadline, right? but then I also sometimes beat myself up about, about the 
stuff. So, but that wasn't the point. Right? The point for today is there's so many reasons why 
we could be procrastinating, why you could be putting things off. You know, there's, there's 
obvious reasons that we ignore life.

Sometimes life happens and there's no way to like reschedule around., it's very black and white 
of this thing in life has to happen. This stuff over here, business and other life stuff will not 
happen. It just won't, there's just not time. I was talking to a client of mine today about that, you 
know, coz there's been some issues that she's been doing with family for like the last year and a 
half and there's just no way around it.

The things in her life take precedent over anything else. And you know, just like back in the day 
when. Step mother-in-law got sick and then my father-in-law got sick and, and our choice was 
100% to be there. And that meant there was a lot of other stuff that didn't happen that was on 
our list. That was a major goal even.

And that was a choice, but it's also a choice that we don't beat ourselves up about. There was 
no other option for us. This was number one priority, taking care of them and being with them as 
much as we possibly could. So, all of that stuff that didn't get done or that got moved two years 
later is okay.

It's okay. That wasn't procrastination right in my head. Sometimes stuff like that will pop in and I 
was like, oh my gosh, I'm putting it off. And it's like, no, no, no. You know, not this January, but 
last January when my dad got. I had his heart attack and then went in for surgery. It was really 
hard mentally to get any work done, and I had to give myself permission to not get the work 
done.

It wasn't procrastinating. It was the fact that I could not mentally and emotionally do all the 
things. I couldn't just work through work and pretend that I could be there and be present in my 
work at the same time. That was a real thing. It's not procrast. It's not, but we have to wrap our 
head around the fact that that's a choice and the choices needed to be made.

So sometimes it's just legit life and we need to give ourselves a break, move that stuff on, move 
it way ahead, move it to somewhere appropriate, change those deadlines, coz they're not gonna 
happen because life happened and we didn't have control over it. And the choice is to be in life, 
right. That's a big reason why we're working for ourselves for one is, is to be present.

So, there's life things. Ooh, that got deep, didn't it? And it's really crazy coz like the sun went 
behind the cloud, so in my office at the same time. Ooh. So, we have life. Life gets in there and 
makes changes. And that's not procrastination, it's just the fact that we have to. Revamp what 
we had planned on doing.

But then there's the other aspects of why we're procrastinating. There's sometimes for business 
stuff, there's things that we just really don't like doing and we need to take a look at, do we need 
to do them? Can we pass it on to someone else to do, or does it just not even have to happen 
anymore? Maybe it's something that you feel like you should be doing, but you don't wanna do 
it.

So, take a look. Does it have to happen? is that the direction that you have to go? There's legit 
reasons of, you might have to learn something new. You might have to learn a new platform. 
You might have to figure out, go take a workshop to figure out how different pieces are gonna 
work together. So, that’ll put off doing the work for sure.

Cuz you're like, oh my God, this is gonna take forever. I have to go and take this workshop. I 
have to figure this out. This old dog doesn't wanna learn new tricks. I just don't wanna, and 
that'll make me push stuff off for sure. It's like, ah, I don't wanna sit and learn that today. I'm 
gonna, I'll do it. I'll do it tomorrow.

I'll do it tomorrow, and keep moving it away. When you find that you've got something on your 
list that you keep moving, take a look. Something's going on. Something's going on. Other 
reasons why you might not be doing the thanks besides the fact that life gets in the way 
because life is life, or you might have to learn something new.

or you might not want to do it. There are times when we have to pay attention that we might not 
be doing what we want to be doing, and that's a hard one. That's a really, really hard one. Some 
of us have multiple websites, multiple businesses. We're creative. We talk about how creative 
we are. We do this, we do that.

We wanna do this, we wanna do that. We've got 5 million ideas rolling at the same time, and 
that is a form of procrastination for sure. That is one I have battled decades with. I didn't wanna 
hear it. I did not wanna hear it from any of the coaches. Knew that I needed to get one thing 
rolling first before I worked on anything.

I can do it all. No, you can't. I can't, we can't, we can't do it all because all we're doing is 
spreading our time out, and we only have so much time to work on stuff. So that leads to 
procrastination because then it's like you are only doing the favorite things in each of the 
businesses. So for example, if emailing is your favorite thing, then all you're doing is emailing to 
multiple lists for the multiple different idea.

When are you gonna create products? If you're doing that, are you gonna create products? If 
you're doing that, it doesn't leave enough room for stuff. It's a form of procrastination. Adding 
more ideas and not following through on the other ones is a form of procrastination., and I can 
tell you that for sure because that's one of my forms of procrastination.

A big one is looking for the outside answers. I just did this. I'm sending out the email here in just 
a little bit about it. It's got to do with today's post and the group even. So look for that as a 
couple days ago now that you, you know, you're getting this on Tuesday. When I'm putting 
things off, I tend to go look outside for the answers.

I don't need to look outside for the answers neither do you. You know what you need to be 
doing and we just have to do it. So those are some of the reasons why you and I are not doing 
the things, but definitely pay attention to.  so that you can acknowledge it and work past it, you 
know your comfort. If it's something new that you are trying, it's very easy to put it off.

It's like, eh, it's scary. Your brain's gonna try and protect you. It's like, no, I don't wanna do the 
thing. I don't know what I'm doing. All the imposter syndrome, all the other bullshit comes into 
your brain and then you're like, tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll do it tomorrow. I don't wanna do it 
today. I'll do it tomorrow.

Cause its new and.  just equals scary, brain wise just equals scary. So, take a look. If you are 
moving things to tomorrow, to tomorrow, to tomorrow, take a look at what it is and what you're 
telling yourself as you're moving it. It's really key to start honing in on what you're telling 
yourself. Really key.

And it's not like going to be smacked upside the head. , here's the sentence that you're telling 
yourself. For some of us, we have to really pay attention, like really pay attention because half 
the time I don't even realize that I'm telling myself something because it's not like this voice is 
saying, Val, don't do this.

It's scary, and that's what I expect., wouldn't that be so much easier? It would be so much easier 
if my brain would just do that, but it's not usually telling me anything. It's just like putting up the 
wall. I don't wanna do that today. And so, I have to work through, okay, what's going on? What 
is it? Why does it keep happening for this?

Is this the same thing? Oh my gosh, three years ago I was going through the same thing., I 
have to start correlating. All right, so that's the beginning of procrastination. Figuring out why 
you're not doing the thanks. Start paying attention. If you're moving things down the list, start 
paying attention to why life in the.

Life taking precedent over that to-do list. You don't wanna do it. Maybe it's the wrong thing to be 
doing. Maybe it's new and scary. Maybe you have to learn something. So you think it's gonna 
take even longer than it actually probably will. Lots of different reasons. We have so many 
different reasons and then it, it gets even worse if we've got a combo of different reasons, right?

So the good news is you can figure out the procrastination is happening and you can stop it. 
You can figure it out, you can catch your flags and you can start squashing it down and saying, 
Nope, we're doing this. And there's obvious ways to get through that. So we'll talk about that 
later. All right. All right.

Thanks for being here. Join me over in the group again. It's down in the show notes. Uh, join me 
in the free group. Let's talk about procrastination. Don't deal with it alone. Come and hang out 
with us. We are giving each other different advice cuz you know what happens when you give 
and share your advice.

It gets more ingrained in your. And then you pick up on it, which is perfect, so that you can start 
self coaching a little bit and working through it on your own. Alright, I'll talk at you next week. 
Thanks for listening to Val Full Volume. If you are done spinning in circles and procrastinating, 
check out my quick workshop.

14 Biz Actions Action, create Change now. Go out there and create the biz of your dreams.