From F*ck Me to F*ck Yeah

4. How to Tame Your "What If?" Monster

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When your brain goes to the worst case scenario, here are two steps you can take to stop the spin cycle and let yourself move forward — without shooting down the highway to Panictown with no exits in sight. 

Learn how to ask a different kind of what-if question AND how to answer ALL your what-if questions. 

Fear will stop you in your tracks. But when you master this sh!t, you become unstoppable, because you're no longer someone who's stopped by fear.

Mentioned in this episode:

If you want support with answering your what-ifs, join me on select Fridays all year long for live, first-come-first-served group coaching on F*ck Around Fridays. Find upcoming dates and reserve your spot at https://bit.ly/kkmasterclass.

And if you REALLY wanna go deep, book a private business intensive with me during the month of August 2023. We'll spend 2 hours together on Zoom focusing my 15+ years of expertise on any area of your business that’s lighting you up (or KEEPING you up).

Big projects, big decisions, major changes, big launches, strategy, and more — you’ll walk away with clarity on where you’re headed and a concrete plan to make it happen.

Normally my intensives are a half-day or a full day, with a price tag ranging from $3K to $10K USD. These mini sessions are 2 hours long, plus a week of email support afterward, for $500 USD. This is a limited-time offer.

Book your private intensive here: https://kristenking.com/get-started/biz-intensive/

Prefer video? Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/fXe0x-ZvJaY

*****
I’m Kristen King, and I’ve been a business coach since before business coaching was cool — since the early 2000s after my first solo business hit six figures less than 2 years out of college. Now, I teach coaches, therapists, healers, and other brilliant service-based entrepreneurs like you how to build their own unique fuck-yeah business.

There's more to me than being a multi-certified coach for kickass entrepreneurs. I'm also a certified hypnotist and a certified mental health and wellness facilitator with an MBA, a master's in publishing, and 15+ years of multi-industry experience.

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Kristen King:

If you're ready for entrepreneurship to feel a hell of a lot easier, you're in the right place. Welcome to from fuck me to fuck. Yeah. The podcast where service based entrepreneurs learn how to tune out all the fear based bullshit that paralyzes you and how to tune into your unique fuck. Yeah. I'm integrated business coach, Kristen King, and I'm pretty much the bad influence. Your mother warned you about on this show, I'm going to teach you how to peel back all the layers of perfectionism, people pleasing and pressure that stand between you and how you really want this whole entrepreneur thing to go. And while we're at it, we're going to do that for the whole rest of your life too. I'm not here to make your business look exactly like mine. I'm here to make your business look exactly like yours. So stick around, fuck around, and find out what happens when my bad influence rubs off on you. Your mom's probably going to hate it, but you are going to love it. Let's do this shit. Hello friends. Welcome back. It is race season where I live in Leadville, Colorado. And on Saturday we are going to have over a thousand people Towing, I guess, wheeling the start line at the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race, which starts right outside my house. And our town is currently full of wild and crazy, extremely brave people who are doing wild and crazy, extremely brave things, and that's exactly What we're going to talk about this week, but before I get to you, I'm going to tell you a fun story about me. So in the last couple of weeks, I have gotten back on the wagon, so to speak with musical theater and musical performance for the first time in many years in, um, just a couple of weeks ago in July, I performed in a musical for the first time in probably 20 years, which is a weird thing. to say because it makes me feel really old. And also I can't believe it's been that long, but I was in the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the very famous Tabor Opera House here in Leadville, Colorado, which was super fun. And then just last weekend, during our big boom days, annual celebration honoring Leadville's mining history, I also competed in our local talent show, which I have done two other times previously. So that's like a little bit of context for what's going on. But in between those two things, I actually, for the first time ever, something I have been dying to do for many years. I sang the national anthem at the start of one of our races. I sang the national anthem at the start line of the Leadville trail, or I'm sorry, the Leadville stage race, which is like the trail 100, but broken across three days. And so for day one, I was the singer. And then they invited me back for three additional dates. So right before we start on Saturday morning, at like 6 30 in the morning, I'm going to be singing in front of roughly 3000 people, which is the largest crowd I have sung in front of ever. I've spoken to crowds of up to 6, 000 people, but I have never sung in front of more than like. I don't know, 800, 1000 people, something like that. So I'm feeling really excited and I'm feeling like kind of a bad. And this ties in to something that has been coming up. With a lot of my clients lately when they are doing very brave things that are super important to them, but that also scare the shit out of them, frankly. And so I'm going to put that in this category. And so today for this episode, we are going to be talking about how to tame your what if monster. And in the interest of full disclosure, I have to tell you, I did not coin the term the what if monster, I learned it from a book that my kiddos had when they were little, they're 11 and a half now, and they were probably like, I don't know, four, when we discovered this book, it was called Jonathan James and the what if monster, I do not remember the author's name, but I will find it and I will post it and the link to purchase it in the show notes in case you have kiddos and also would like to enjoy this, or in case you'd like to enjoy it for yourself, which I recommend. Thank you. But the premise of the book is that this kid, Jonathan James, is afraid to do things that he's really excited about. He's afraid to do things that are really important to him, because what if something goes wrong? What if people laugh at him? What if he can't do it on the first try? Then what? And we brought this out when my kids were experiencing some anxiety around new things, stuff like us going out of town for a longer period than we had previously, them starting pre K. Um, eventually when we moved from Florida to Colorado, there was some anxiety and some nervousness around that. And one of the things that I really loved about this book is that it was very practical and it talked a lot about the very real concerns and fears that we have because the truth is nobody has. a crystal ball over here. Like we don't know actually what's going to be happening in our business or our lives at any given moment. We might think that we know we might have ideas of things that would happen, but we don't actually know. And so it's, it's true that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world, but even when there's uncertainty, that doesn't mean that there aren't things that we can. No. And while the outcome may not be certain, we can be certain of what we're going to do along the way. And so one of the things that I often see come up with my clients Is that they will ask questions like, what if it doesn't work? What if I can't do it? What if I try and I fail? What if nobody shows up? Which is something we're going to talk about in more detail in probably the next episode. What if nobody shows up? We'll come back around to that. But what if, what if everybody laughs at me? What if I mess up? What if I don't make enough money to pay my bills this month? Oh my God, what if, what if, what if? And so they'll spin out in this uncertainty, this what if, this what if, this what if. And that's a really normal human thing. It's not a problem to ask the question, what if? It's honestly probably a really good idea because it helps you prepare for the things that are coming along. But the problem comes in when you don't answer the question. And that's what hangs people up. Their brain says, what if, what if, what if? And then they go, oh my God, what if? And they panic and they start thinking about every possible worst case scenario, all the things that could go wrong. And they talk themselves out. Of doing the thing and if you remember back in our first or second episode about the FAFO method, the only way to find out anything is truly to fuck around. We might think we know, but until we try it, until we actually do it, until we fuck around, we don't find out. And if things are uncertain, you should just fling yourself into it. If you listen to that episode, you know, that is not the point. We're not like, YOLO. Let's just see what happens. That's not how this goes. But there are things that we can know and there are decisions that we can make. And so what I want to invite you to do is the next time you're asking yourself the question, what if, what if, what if, instead of continuing to pile on what ifs and uncertainties, I want you to actually answer the question. I know how to pause for just a second so you can think about that because my cat is trying to bust into my office and so I'm going to pause it for a second and I'm going to come right back once I let him in because I see his paw sticking in under the door. So the answer to my question, what if my cat tries to come in while I'm in the middle of recording is I'm going to pause the recording and let him in. So stand by for one second. Okay, we are now back with 100% more cat. And if the other cat decides that she wants to come in, we'll be back with 200% more cat. But where were we? We were talking about when the what if question comes up, I want to challenge you to answer the question. I also want to challenge you to ask a slightly different question than your original one. I'm not saying you have to get rid of the original, but I am saying I want you to augment it with the second one. So let's let's actually start with the low hanging fruit and that's asking an additional question. And so what does that look like? Most of the time are what ifs are about what if we fuck up? What if things go horribly wrong? What if this is a complete disaster, right? We go to that worst case scenario and we look at the negative outcomes. And that stuff could happen. I mean, sometimes it does happen, right? Like we, you know, we just stuff happens, right? We just have to deal with it. But what I want you to do is not just ask the question, what if this is a complete fucking train wreck slash dumpster fire and everything's ruined, but also what if this goes really well? What if this goes beyond what I was expecting and is even better than I thought it would be? What if then, so. Actually, asking that second question and giving yourself the chance to kind of look at multiple angles of possible outcomes from here is super powerful. But in both of those cases, you still need to answer the question. So if the question is, what if I don't make enough money this month, Oh my God, what if I don't make enough money this month, then we're all going to starve. We're going to freeze to death under a bridge. That's the thing my brain offers me all the time. We're going to starve. We're going to lose our house. We're going to have to live in our car and we're going to either starve to death or freeze to death under a bridge. That's like my go to. I don't know anyone personally that that's ever happened to. It's never personally happened to me, obviously, cause I'm here recording the podcast, but my brain is just like, Oh my God, this is good. So I have a lot of experience with that one. So we'll use that example. Okay. So for me, when my brain is like, Oh my God, what if we, what if we don't sell the thing? What if we don't make enough money? What if somehow everyone wakes up tomorrow and decides that they hate us and we never should have, you know, started this business, whatever, what are we going to do? Well, for a lot of years, I spent time spinning in that. Oh my God, what if, what if, what if, what if, and sort of like deciding that that was what was going to happen because I never answered the question. I just decided the answer to what if was, it's definitely going to happen. So Kristen, you're completely fucked. I mean, I guess that's possible, but it wasn't very fun and it didn't create a lot of space for me to do anything different with it. And so what I started to do was to actually answer the question. And so when my brain said, Oh my God, what if we don't sell enough this month? What are we going to do? And answers to that question can include things like we're going to make another offer. We're going to have our partner make up the difference. We could borrow some money. We could use some credit cards. We could pay some bills late. There's a lot of options here. And I want to pause for just a second because when I offer the option of like maybe we can pay the bills late, a lot of people panic. And I want to point out to you that there are like millions of people around the world who do not pay their bills on time every time. There are probably people on your block, definitely people in your town or city, people you grew up with. Like there's lots of people who pay shit a little bit late. And as far as I know, There is no documented case of anyone ever dying from that shit. We have a lot of stories about like the right way to do things, but the right way to do things is the way that you're willing to do it. So if what's available to you is I pay that bill 5 minutes late and everything is fine, great. If it's that I pay that bill 5 days late and everything is fine, great. If it's that I pay that bill 5 weeks late and I have to pay a 49 late fee, great. People don't die from that shit. They really don't, but they do die from like health related, health issues related to chronic stress, so just keep that shit in mind. But there are so many options there. There are things like, you know, I, I make a little extra next month and then I set it aside, so in the future if this ever comes up, I know everything is covered, I can pay ahead, right? So that's that's more like future thinking, but in this moment, what am I going to do if I don't make enough money to pay the bills this month? Well, I want you to go answer that question, whatever the stress, whatever the thing is that your brain keeps offering you figured out. But for a lot of people it is, what am I going to do if I can't pay the bills this month? And when that was the thing that kept coming up for me, cause I'm someone who in the past has experienced bankruptcy and foreclosure. And so I've been there where like, I couldn't pay my mortgage. I had a medical crisis. Disability wasn't enough to cover it. I talked about this in detail on Bryn Bamber's podcast of, I don't know, two years ago, so I'll put the link to that in the show notes too. So you can go listen to it because it's, it's a good story with a very happy ending, a spoiler alert, but you know, like I actually went through that, like I lost my home and I had to make a new plan and so it felt like a reality and it still feels like a reality sometimes when that comes up in my brain, but what has changed is I've learned how to answer. The question. So when my brain says, well, what if we don't make enough money this month? I have like a running list of ways that I could generate quick cash. If I needed to things like I could go get a part time job at the coffee shop. I could go clean overnight at the hotel up the street. I could walk dogs. I could clean houses. I could move shit around in my house and rent out some rooms. I could sell a car. I could suck dicks in the Safeway parking lot at 25 bucks a pop. Not all of these are optimal solutions, but they're all ways that I can make cash if I need it. I have a car that I could live in. I have a camper that I could live in if I had to get rid of my house. I have, you know, we have an amazing food bank in our town. I have friends and family who would take my kids temporarily or long term and feed them. No one has to live in a car and freeze to death or die of starvation under a bridge if I have a slow month. But my brain didn't actually believe that was the case. until I came up with this list of ways that I could make money. If that thing actually happened right now, what would I do about it? I can answer that question. I have options. And you have options too. They may be different options from mine. They might be better or worse from mine, but those options exist. So when you are asking yourself that question, I want you to pause. And instead of the, Oh my God, everything's a nightmare, panic response. I want you to pretend for a moment, like watch yourself in it. Don't, you don't have to go all the way there, but pretend for a moment that's actually happening. And now you have to decide what you're going to do to deal with it. What is actually going to be your solution there? Are you going to add something? Are you going to subtract something? Are you going to try something different? Are you going to try again? What are you going to do? Because even if that thing happens, the likelihood that it's going to immediately kill you is very low. You are going to have an opportunity to respond to that. And for every worst case scenario that your brain offers you, when you develop the habit of actually answering the question of what if. And actually coming up with your plan, which you're probably never gonna need, just to be clear, then that shit stops being so scary. It's not actually the thing happening that we're most afraid of. It's the idea that we won't be able to handle the thing. That it'll be too overwhelming, that we'll be too small. That's another thing that my brain offers me. It offers me this sentence all the time when I'm feeling nervous about things. That's, it goes like, the world is cold and relentless, and I am too small. I don't know where this shit comes from, but my brain is very creative. And it's very good at coming up with things to keep me exactly where I am. Which is really good in certain cases, but it's not necessarily compatible with the way that I want to thrive in my life. And so when, when this stuff comes up, we have the opportunity to respond to it. May not be in a way that we enjoy, but it's in a way that we're going to survive. I'm going to pause there for another second because we have 100% more cats coming in trying to squeeze under the door. So we'll be back in just a moment. Hey, we're back. Now we have two cats, Batman and Poppy. And for those of you watching on video, Batman is the black one on the couch. And he is a big, fluffy Maine Coon ragdoll something. We don't know. He's freaking huge. He's like 13 or 14 pounds. Um, and he just got a haircut, so he looks like a lion. And then we have Poppy, the brown one, who's very small. She's about six pounds, and she can absolutely kick Batman's ass. So. Keep that in mind as we're thinking about things that are too small for the big world. If this little six pound cat can beat up a cat who's more than twice her size, you can definitely come up with a game plan for whatever the worst case scenario is. And so as your brain is offering you these things, you have an off ramp. To that panic superhighway, you do not have to stay on the bullet train to fuck my life. Everything is ruined. You have off ramps and those off ramps are answering the question. What if with practical solutions, even if they're things you wouldn't necessarily want to do, knowing that you have options takes a lot of the charge out of those worst case scenarios. And when you stop being controlled by the fear of something going wrong, because you have literally shown yourself in a very concrete, specific way that you can and will respond to this thing if it happens, then there's nothing to worry about. There is space for you to fuck around and find out and know that you are gonna have your own back, and this shit can get handled. Now, when I say there's nothing to worry about, I don't mean that there's not going to be things that need handling. I don't mean that there's not going to be things that feel uncomfortable or upsetting or devastating or are full of grief. You're still a human being. You're going to have human experiences, but you're not going to die from the emotion of it. You're not going to die from grief. You're not going to die from disappointment. You're not going to die from shame. That stuff does not have to be a life ruiner, a business ruiner, a relationship ruiner. The only thing that stops you is you stopping. Let me say that again. The only thing that stops you is you stopping. That doesn't mean there's not space to pause or to regroup or to, you know, make a new plan and back up and then go forward again. By all means, do that stuff. But it's not going to be the end unless that's the place where you end it. And when we get that in, when we look back at all of the challenging moments in our lives, Where we have continued moving forward, even when there was shit going on that was fucking awful, when we have handled things because handling it was the only option we gave us, we start to see how strong we are, how powerful we are, how resourceful we are, how much support we have, whether it's from ourselves or from people we know, or even from people we don't know. But if we don't pause and actually answer the question of what if we never really get to experience that. And when we answer that question, our what if monster goes from this big looming force that's got us backed into a corner to something a lot smaller and a lot more manageable. And we may still have to manage it, but it's not going to crush us. So the next time your brain offers you a what if, I want you to do two things. The first thing I want you to do is answer is like do the what if the other way. So if the first question is, what if this completely fails? Also answer the question, what if this is wildly successful? That's the first piece. And then for both the, what if we for sure don't want, cause it sounds fucking awful. And the, what if that maybe we want, but maybe we don't want because it's something new and possibly intimidating. I don't know. We can talk about that in another episode, but whichever one, you know, whatever you come up with, I want you to actually answer those questions. If that were to happen, what would I do? Make that plan for yourself again, as a plan, you're probably never going to need, or maybe you'll only need parts of it. But if you have the plan. The what if the uncertainty is not going to control you because no matter what is happening in the world around you, you can still control what you do about it. You can control how you act. You can control how you talk to yourself. You can control who you ask for help. You can control whether you accept help that's offered to you. You can control whether you come up with and implement solutions. There are a lot more things that you can control than things you can't control. And when you answer that, what if question, it becomes a lot more clear how true that actually is. And that's when that what if monster goes, like I said, from that big looming force that's got you cornered to that little six pound cat who's chilling on the back of your love seat in your office, right behind you, like mine is, it's not going to go away necessarily, but you're going to be able to continue moving forward in the presence of that. Because the certainty that you create for yourself is what allows you to carry on and carry through and do the things that you want to do, even if you don't know exactly what's going to happen next. So please try that out. See what happens. Let me know how it goes for you. All the links to my socials and my website, everything around the show notes. I love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out. Give me the update. Please. Also, if you find this or any of the others have helpful, please leave me a rating and review because I love to hear about it. And I have an additional invitation for you on select Fridays, every month. I do a live public group coaching session called fuck around Fridays. And for two hours on these select Fridays, seven bucks gets you your seat. It's first come first serve. You show up to the zoom meeting, you raise your virtual hand and you get coached on whatever's going on. And so if you have a what if that you're not sure how to answer, that's the perfect kind of thing to bring to those fuck around Friday sessions. We have a really good time. Sometimes it's a big group. Sometimes it's a small group, but it's always seven bucks. It's always first come first served and whatever is going on for you, whatever shit is fucking up your other shit. We always get that sorted out. So I'll put the link to the space on my website where you can get the upcoming dates for all of the sessions. When you're listening to this, the immediate next session is going to be August 11th. So as, as I'm recording this, I don't know when you're going to listen to it, but as I'm recording this, the immediate next session is going to be August 11th. And then there are also sessions on August 18th and August 25th. And I try to vary the time for like morning time. In us mountain time and afternoon time in us mountain time from session to session. So folks around the world have the chance to attend, but go take, click on that link and bring your what ifs to coaching seven bucks. How badly could it possibly go? It's going to go great because you're going to learn how to answer that question and you're going to get freed up from that. What if monster, and instead of being afraid of it. Whether you come to the coaching call or not, I hope you do, but whether you come or not, if you practice developing that answer, instead of being something you're afraid of, it can become something that's neutral or even something that you're grateful for because it's alerting you to what's important to you and what's available in the face of what's important to you. So hopefully I'll see you soon on a fuck around Friday. Hopefully I will see you soon in the ratings and reviews on this podcast. Hopefully I will see you soon in my inbox, whether it's my email or my DMS, when you tell me all about how you tamed your what if monster. Until next time, my friends, I will see you soon. Bye. If you like this episode, you're going to love the rest of my content. Visit the show notes for links to all the good stuff I've created to help you go from fuck me to fuck yeah. Be sure to follow me wherever you hang out on the socials. And for insiders only info, get yourself onto my email list. My email subscribers are the first to know about new content. New tools and new ways to work with me. And speaking of subscribing, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. I'd also love it if you would leave me a review and a five star rating. The only thing better than getting fuck yeah info in the first place is getting it and then sharing it with your favorite humans. So please feel free to share this episode and any others with your business besties. Until next time I'll see you in your inbox and on the socials now go out there and create your next fuck. Yeah

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Kristen King

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