Visionary's Pursuit

Visionary's Pursuit

By Carolina ZuletaBusinessEntrepreneurshipEducationSelf-ImprovementManagement
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Visionary's Pursuit episodes

  • 102. Is It Safe to Tell You the Truth?

    Episode 102: Is It Safe to Tell You the Truth?

    In this episode, we look at why the people around you stop telling you the truth as your influence grows, and I share three tools to make honesty easier. When someone stays quiet or doesn't tell you the whole truth, my take is that you own part of the responsibility, especially in a professional setting.

    Not getting candid feedback, the full truth or questions from your teams? 

    • A father who learned his son had lied walked to the next town asking himself what he'd done to make honesty feel unsafe.
    • The son still made a mistake. The father decided part of the responsibility was his.
    • Trust is built in small moments, long before a big problem shows up.

      • Make time to hear what people think

      • Cancelling a one-on-one won't sink a deal, but it tells people their thoughts can wait.
      • Executives hesitate to bring ideas to a busy CEO, so the CEO never hears them.
      • Sit down with your team, your partner, your clients and your family and ask what they think.

        • Ask specific questions

        • "Do you like it?" takes courage to answer honestly. "Tell me two things you like and two things you don't" is easier.
        • Ask your team for two ways you could serve them better, and ask them to be critical. Be specific. 

          • Your reaction decides whether people speak up again

          • A Ford CEO kept asking his executives for problems and got none, until one leader named a hard one and the CEO thanked him in front of everyone.
          • After that, problems came to the table and the team could solve them.
          • Defending yourself is natural whereas keeping yourself regulated takes practice - this is the work we do in coaching.

            • Connect with Carolina:

            • Website: carozuleta.com
            • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
            • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult
            • Previous episodes: carozuleta.com/podcasts/visionary-s-pursuit

              • Subscribe & Review:
              If you found value in this podcast or today's episode, it'd mean so much to us that you subscribe to the Visionary's Pursuit Podcast and leave a review so we can keep putting out free content and reach more leaders just like you. THANK YOU!

              15 min
            • 101. Are You Too Busy to Feel?

              Episode 101: Are You Too Busy to Feel?

              At twenty-five, I had two flat tires and a foot on crutches in the same week. A friend asked, "Caro, what if this is the universe telling you that you're going too fast?" Looking back I find it a bit funny I needed someone to point this out to me given such clear signs. 

              In this episode, we look at what slowing down means when your calendar is full and your ambitions are big, and I share a practice that takes about two minutes.

              If you think slowing down means doing less, Carolina describes a practice you can use in the middle of a packed day. In practicing this, you'll soon see why leaders who learn to slow down within will create bigger, better ideas. .

               Slowing down takes two minutes

              • Put the phone down, place your hands on your chest and take two deep breaths.
              • Ask yourself how you're feeling and what you need.
              • Slowing down has nothing to do with dreaming smaller.

                • Busyness keeps us numb

                • Many of us reach for our phones the moment we have a free minute.
                • When we numb hard feelings, we lose joy and gratitude too.
                • Many of us ignore basic signals from our bodies, like thirst.

                  • Your inner wisdom

                  • Everyone has an inner wisdom that books and AI can't replace.
                  • With practice, you can tell fear from intuition.
                  • You can also separate other people's expectations from what you want.

                    • Slowing down is a competitive advantage

                    • Leaders who stay connected to themselves will handle change more smoothly and effectively.
                    • They will also be the ones who come up with new ideas.

                      • Connect with Carolina:

                      • Website: carozuleta.com
                      • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
                      • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult
                      • Previous episodes: carozuleta.com/podcasts/visionary-s-pursuit

                        • Subscribe & Review:

                        If you found value in this podcast or today's episode, it'd mean so much to us that you subscribe to the Visionary's Pursuit Podcast and leave a review so we can keep putting out free content and reach more leaders just like you. THANK YOU!

                        29 min
                      • 100. Interviewed by My Husband (He Didn't Go Easy)

                        In this episode, we celebrate 100 by bringing Andrew (my husband and business partner) to this side of the microphone. I ask him why he left a successful sales career to build this business with me, and what it's like to share a home with a coach. He then turns the tables with questions I hadn't seen before we started recording, and a few of them took me to places I rarely go on this show.

                        Connect with Carolina:

                        • Website: carozuleta.com
                        • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
                        • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult
                        • Previous episodes: carozuleta.com/podcasts/visionary-s-pursuit

                          • Subscribe & Review:

                          This couldn't have been possible without YOU! We're working on the next hundred episodes now and to make that possible, we ask that you subscribe/follow the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast and leave a review. It helps more people with a big dream find the support to pursue it.

                          29 min
                        • 99. Are You Afraid of Free Time?

                          The 6 Founder Habits Costing You Freedom: How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company's Growth, live masterclass September 16 and 17. If you can't make it live, sign up here to receive the replay: https://www.carozuleta.com/founder-freedom

                          EPISODE SUMMARY

                          "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" That line closes Mary Oliver's poem The Summer Day, and for years I read it as a call to accomplish more. I now believe she was asking something different. She was asking how we intend to be inside our days, in the ordinary hours, while the life is happening.

                           

                          If you had 10 hours back every week, and nothing in the business suffered for it, what would you do with them? I examine the beliefs underneath our discomfort with empty space, the equation of busy with responsible and productive with valuable, and how those beliefs lead us to refill any open hour with tasks or scrolling.

                          Key Takeaways:

                          Empty space is uncomfortable, so we refill it without noticing

                          • A cancelled meeting means catching up on emails, Slack, or the to-do list.
                          • Most of us have learned that busy means responsible and productive means valuable, which makes an open hour feel like waste.
                          • Being busy meets a psychological need for significance and certainty, and it lets us avoid sitting with our own thoughts.

                            • The structural causes of busyness are only one layer

                            • Weak delegation, unclear ownership, too many decisions landing on one person, and a team that depends on the founder all create busyness. Those are addressed in the masterclass.
                            • Underneath the structure is a habit of unconsciously refilling any space you clear.
                            • Without some intention for reclaimed time, it gets absorbed back into work or into numbing.

                              • Your best thinking may happen when you stop thinking

                              • The incubation effect, confirmed in a 2009 meta-analysis, shows that stepping away from a creative or complex problem improves the solution.
                              • Henri Poincaré found the answer to a long-unsolved math problem while stepping onto a carriage, after weeks of effort and a deliberate break.
                              • The work comes first, then the disengagement, then the insight. The break only pays off because the effort preceded it.

                                • Walking is the most accessible creativity tool you own

                                • Stanford researchers Oppezzo and Schwartz found that 81 percent of participants improved on a divergent thinking task while walking.
                                • A treadmill worked as well as a trail, so the setting matters less than the movement.
                                • Repetitive, low-engagement activities like showering, driving, or washing dishes invite the mind to wander, and the phone in your pocket has been crowding that out.

                                  • Leaders have optimized their calendars for reactivity

                                  • The highest-value work of a founder is seeing patterns, anticipating problems, and imagining possibilities, and none of it fits between back-to-back approvals.
                                  • As AI hands us instant answers, the skill of sitting with a question and finding your own thinking becomes rarer and more valuable.
                                  • We expect ourselves to be visionaries while designing days with no room to create a vision.

                                    • Doing nothing loses its value the moment you assign it a purpose

                                    • A walk taken to solve a problem is still a task. Carolina admits she can ruin doing nothing in about 30 seconds by asking what the ROI is.
                                    • The Dutch practice of intentionally doing nothing, and the childhood memory of staring out at nature at her grandparents' house, point to a kind of presence that produces no output.
                                    • A walk with no breakthrough, where you simply notice a bird you've never seen, is still worth taking.

                                      •  

                                      Memorable Quotes:

                                      "Most people tell me they want more time, but I'm not sure we've spent enough time asking ourselves what we would do with it."

                                      "Being busy means we're being responsible. Being productive means we're being valuable, and that empty space means wasted time."

                                      "He hadn't been at a desk thinking. He hadn't been trying to solve the problem. He was doing the most common thing, getting on his transportation, and all of a sudden, idea came, and it felt like magic, but it wasn't magic. He had done his work first."

                                      "We expect ourselves to be visionaries, but we've designed our days to have no room to create our visions."

                                      "What if you go for a walk and nothing useful comes out of it? There's no breakthrough or no strategy or no innovative way of solving the problem you have. Is that walk still worthwhile?"

                                       

                                      Resources Mentioned:

                                      • The 6 Founder Habits Costing You Freedom: How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company's Growth, live masterclass September 16 and 17, replay available: https://www.carozuleta.com/founder-freedom
                                      • The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
                                      • Sio and Ormerod (2009), meta-analysis on the incubation effect in problem solving
                                      • Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014), Stanford research on walking and creative thinking
                                      • Henri Poincaré's account of mathematical discovery in Science and Method
                                      • Research on the "shower effect" and mind wandering during low-engagement activities

                                        • Connect with Carolina:

                                        • Website: carozuleta.com
                                        • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
                                        • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult

                                          • Subscribe & Review:

                                          If you're enjoying this podcast, it'd go a long way if you follow and leave a quick review. Spreading the words helps immensely. 

                                          21 min
                                        • 98. Exhausted? Ask Who, Not How

                                          Go here to register for my latest masterclass, The 6 Founder Habits Costing Your Freedom: How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company's Growth: https://www.carozuleta.com/founder-freedom

                                          Episode Summary:

                                          I live between two worlds. In the coaching world, the three day week is the trophy. In the rooms full of executives and business owners I spend time in, they wear an eighty hour week badge of honor. "I'm SO busy." This episode asks you to consider which story you have been telling yourself about rest and whether you chose it on purpose. Using the Self Coaching Model, Simon Sinek's distinction between finite and infinite games and the "who, not how" question from Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, we walk through what an entrepreneur must believe in order to grow a company that does not depend on their hours. I also share where I am in this myself, since so much of my self esteem has come from being productive and I am questioning that right now alongside my clients.

                                          Key Takeaways:

                                          The Belief Comes First:

                                          • What you think creates what you feel, what you feel drives what you do and what you do creates your results
                                          • If you believe growth requires every hour you have, you will never make the decisions that create time
                                          • Bragging about exhaustion is a story, and the stories we repeat become the businesses we build
                                          • The first question is whether you want to be working this much, and whether you chose it consciously

                                            • Finite Games and Infinite Games:

                                            • A finite game has known players, fixed rules and a winner. A business built only to be sold is a finite game
                                            • An infinite game has no finish line. Lego and Apple are still being played long after their founders stepped away
                                            • At the University of Chicago every business plan required an exit strategy, and I never had one
                                            • Speed and eighty hour weeks belong to the finite game. Lasting value and a full life belong to the infinite one

                                              • Ultra-Delayed Gratification:

                                              • Entrepreneurs are exceptional at delaying gratification, which is why we hit our goals
                                              • The same strength turns into "I'll rest at Christmas, after the hire, once the capital comes in"
                                              • Look at your past milestones and ask whether the free time you were promised ever showed up
                                              • Play and rest have to happen on the way to the goal, not after it

                                                • Your Value: 

                                                • Your biggest contribution is the vision, selling it to the team, hiring the right people and creating an environment where they succeed
                                                • Ask "who can do this?" before "how do I do this?"
                                                • Starting the company does not make you the best person for every decision
                                                • The need to feel needed keeps a business dependent on you long after it should be

                                                  • What It Takes:

                                                  • Self awareness about your own behaviors and beliefs
                                                  • Difficult conversations and a willingness to look at blind spots
                                                  • Fewer priorities and clarity on where you add the most value
                                                  • Hard weeks will still happen. They are the exception, and the design decides that

                                                    •  

                                                    Memorable Quotes:

                                                    "We don't act rationally. We are emotional beings, and then we use our reason to justify our actions."

                                                    "Nobody's going to win the best lived life award."

                                                    "If we start with the belief that it's impossible to grow a successful business while having a lot of free time, we are not going to take the actions and make the hard calls that lead to freedom."

                                                    "By the time we achieve that goal, we already are thinking about the other goal."

                                                    "Because we started the business doesn't mean that we have all the right answers."

                                                    "The business can grow while we're reading another book, while we're playing with our children, or when we're simply sitting and looking at a sunset."

                                                    "It is not automatic. It will require self-awareness, difficult conversations and having fewer priorities."

                                                     

                                                    Resources Mentioned:

                                                    • Brené Brown on rest, play and the culture of exhaustion
                                                    • The Self Coaching Model by Brooke Castillo, The Life Coach School
                                                    • The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, building on James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games
                                                    • Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
                                                    • Masterclass, September 16 and 17: The 6 Founder Habits Costing You Freedom. How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company's Growth: Register HERE

                                                      • About This Episode:

                                                      This episode challenges the assumption that a successful business has to be paid for in hours. Carolina walks through the beliefs that keep entrepreneurs trapped in a cycle of postponed rest, the difference between building a company to sell and building one that lasts, and the questions that reveal where your time is going. If you are exhausted, in survival mode or quietly proud of how tired you are, this conversation is an invitation to design it differently.

                                                      Connect with Carolina:

                                                      • Register for my masterclass on Sept 16th and 17th: https://www.carozuleta.com/founder-freedom
                                                      • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
                                                      • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult

                                                        • Subscribe & Review:

                                                        If this episode helped you question how many hours your business needs from you, please subscribe to Visionary's Pursuit and leave a review. Your support helps other entrepreneurs discover the show and enables us to keep creating this free content every week.

                                                        18 min
                                                      • 97. Can Your Business Survive Two Weeks Without You?

                                                        I'm hosting a FREE live masterclass on September 16th and 17th called The 6 Founder Habits Costing You Freedom: How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company’s Growth

                                                        Register here: https://www.carozuleta.com/founder-freedom

                                                        Episode Summary

                                                        Ask yourself when you last took two full weeks away from your business. Two weeks with no email at breakfast and no call that could not wait, while your company kept moving well the entire time you were gone.

                                                        In this episode I walk through the two-week absence test and what it reveals about the company you have created. Every founder I coach started their business for two reasons, because they love the challenge and because freedom sits at the top of their values, and the habits that make them excellent operators are the same habits that keep that freedom out of reach. I get into what has to be in place before a company can pass this test, which comes down to whether your people can make good decisions while you are gone and whether those decisions carry the business where you want it to go. I share the story of a client of mine who stepped up and moved her company forward during her founder's absence, only to have the direction reversed the week her boss came back.

                                                        I also talk about the story so many of us tell ourselves about next month being easier, and why I have come to see it as procrastination disguised as optimism. Jim Collins learned something related from Admiral James Stockdale, and I share that here too. I close with the two jobs I believe belong to every founder, along with what Richard Branson and J.J. Abrams understand about surrounding yourself with extraordinary people and then letting them behave that way. If you have been postponing the hard conversations while you wait for an easier season, this episode gives you a place to start.

                                                        Key Takeaways

                                                        • The two-week absence test asks whether you can disconnect from your business for two full weeks and come back to a company that moved forward well without you. Coming home to eighty-hour weeks of catch-up means you moved two weeks of decisions to a later date and called it a vacation
                                                        • Passing the test comes down to decision quality. Your people need enough context to make good calls while you are gone, and those calls need to carry the business toward the vision you hold for it
                                                        • Founders know they created the conditions they are living in, and the story we reach for is that the season is temporary and it'll all get easier soon. As you may well know, that story postpones the conversation with the wrong hire or the client straining the team, and for many of us it has been running for years
                                                        • In Good to Great, Jim Collins asked Admiral James Stockdale who among the prisoners of war did not survive, and Stockdale pointed to the optimists who kept setting rescue dates that came and went. The Stockdale Paradox asks you to hold faith in the outcome while confronting the facts in front of you today
                                                        • The first job of a founder is to create the vision and communicate it enough times that the team can embody it. A good vision answers where the company is going and how decisions get made when priorities compete
                                                        • The second job is to put extraordinary people in positions of ownership, which goes well past handing out tasks and projects. Richard Branson credits this skill for the forty-plus companies he has built, and J.J. Abrams said he was not afraid of directing Star Wars because he was surrounded by extraordinarily talented people

                                                          • Memorable Quotes

                                                          • "Telling ourselves that next week, next quarter, next year things are gonna get easier, many times is procrastination disguised as optimism."
                                                          • "A good vision should allow your people to make decisions when you're not in the room."
                                                          • "Your job is to put A-plus people in every seat and then create the circumstances so they can operate like A-plus employees."
                                                          • "We as business founders can turn princes and princesses into frogs by not creating the right environment for them to operate at their best."

                                                            • Resources Mentioned

                                                            • Free masterclass, The Six Founder Habits Costing You Freedom, How to Reclaim Your Time Without Slowing Your Company's Growth, September 16 and 17. Register here: 
                                                            • Good to Great by Jim Collins, and the Stockdale Paradox drawn from his conversation with Admiral James Stockdale
                                                            • Richard Branson on hiring extraordinary people and allowing them to behave like extraordinary people
                                                            • J.J. Abrams on directing Star Wars while surrounded by people better than him at their crafts

                                                              • Connect with Carolina

                                                              • Book a consultation: carozuleta.com/consult
                                                              • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching

                                                                • Subscribe & Review

                                                                If this episode resonated, please leave a rating and follow the show. It helps other founders find the podcast and allows us to keep creating this content for free.

                                                                16 min
                                                              • 96. The Question That Predicts Founder Burnout

                                                                I have a favor to ask of you... if you've gotten value from this podcast, it'd mean the world to me if you could rate and follow. It goes a very long way in helping others like you find us. Thank you!

                                                                Episode Summary

                                                                There's a question I love asking founders: What do you say to yourself when you're working hard and the results still aren't showing up? The answer tells me pretty quickly whether in pursuit of their goal they're going to burnout. 

                                                                In this episode I unpack some common misconceptions in Angela Duckworth's research of Grit. We discuss the nature of tense moments. how to surrender your results and how to know if you're on your way to burnout. 

                                                                Key Takeaways
                                                                • Duckworth defined grit as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Most people drop the passion half and are left with white-knuckled pushing that eventually will collapse.
                                                                • The moment you commit to a big goal, you step into what I call the river of misery, the tension between the vision in your head and your reality on the ground. 
                                                                • Under enough self-imposed pressure, the brain looks for an exit. Phrases like "we'll see what happens" or "if it's meant to be, it will be" start to show up. They can sound like wisdom, and sometimes they're the pressure valve releasing.
                                                                • True surrender is different from releasing the tension. You surrender a specific outcome after you've done everything within your control. Releasing tension is when you check out of a whole vision because sitting in the discomfort gets, well, too uncomfortable. 
                                                                • The "why" exercise is one of the most reliable ways I know to build the passion half of grit. Ask yourself why you want the goal, then ask why again, seven times over. The purpose you land on at the bottom is what pulls you through the river of misery when perseverance alone runs out.
                                                                  • Resources Mentioned
                                                                  • Angela Duckworth's research "Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals"
                                                                    • Connect with Carolina
                                                                    • Website: carozuleta.com
                                                                    • Book a free consult: carozuleta.com/consult
                                                                    • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching
                                                                      •  
                                                                      11 min
                                                                    • 95. Why Are You So Hard On Yourself?
                                                                      While there are still spots available! Click here to book your free consult: https://calendly.com/carolinazuleta/consult-week

                                                                      Episode Summary

                                                                      We're naturally pretty hard on ourselves. The the voice that got us moving starts making us afraid to take risks, because we know how brutally we'll treat ourselves if things don't pan out.

                                                                      This episode makes the case for self-compassion as an essential business skill. We talk about  Kristin Neff's three components of self-compassion and I share the concept of a "soft landing" that Andrew and I have practiced with each other for years.

                                                                      My hope is that you can use this episode two ways. Listen once for the framework, and come back to it on the days when you've made a mistake, missed a mark, or need a reminder that being your own worst enemy is not the price of ambition.

                                                                      Key Takeaways

                                                                      • Self-criticism can create short bursts of motion, but the long-term cost is a smaller life. When we know we'll punish ourselves for failing, we stop taking the risks that would grow us and the business.
                                                                      • Kristin Neff's research names three components of self-compassion working together: self-kindness instead of self-judgment, common humanity instead of isolation, and mindfulness instead of over-identification with our pain.
                                                                      • A soft landing is what it sounds like. When someone we love makes a stressful mistake, we can meet them with warmth and partnership before we solve the problem. The same principle applies to how we treat ourselves.
                                                                      • Accountability and self-compassion are not opposites. We can acknowledge a mistake, repair the damage, and change our behavior without adding a second layer of pain on top of the first one.
                                                                      • The inner critic is a part of you, not all of you. Mindfulness is what lets you notice a shaming thought without collapsing your identity into it.

                                                                        • Memorable Quotes

                                                                        •  "What if we created soft landings for ourselves?"
                                                                        • "The inner critic is a part of us, but it is not who we are."
                                                                        • "Life is too short, and your dreams are too important, for you to be your own worst enemy."

                                                                          • Resources Mentioned

                                                                          • Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion and the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion (co-founded with Chris Germer)
                                                                          • Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

                                                                            • Connect with Carolina

                                                                            • Website: carozuleta.com
                                                                            • Book a consult: carozuleta.com/consult
                                                                            • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching

                                                                              • Subscribe & Review If this episode was helpful, subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and leave a review to help more people like you find the podcast. Every single rating and review goes a long way!

                                                                              19 min
                                                                            • 94. Why Top Performers Hire a Coach
                                                                              Consult Week is kicking of Aug 17th - 21st! 

                                                                              Book your complimentary consultation here: https://calendly.com/carolinazuleta/consult-week

                                                                              I'm opened the doors to my Consult Week, which runs from August 17th through the 21st. Twice a year I open my calendar for free consultations, and every spot fills. If you have been curious about coaching or wondering whether it could serve you, this is the week to find out.

                                                                              Episode Summary

                                                                              Every week I sit with executives and business founders who are extraordinary problem solvers. They make decisions with incomplete information, manage competing priorities, and navigate personalities most people would find impossible. A

                                                                              And still, sometimes they get stuck. Often times it's because they are so close to the problem that they cannot see it clearly. In this episode I explain what coaching actually is and what it is not. I share the cost of not having a coach, the kinds of blind spots I see in the room most often, and why the right time to hire one isn't always in a crisis.

                                                                              Key Takeaways

                                                                              • The thinking that got you here is not always the thinking that will take you further. High performers have a track record of trusting their own assumptions, and that same track record makes it harder to see when those assumptions have stopped serving them
                                                                              • Coaching is not mentorship, therapy, or consulting. A mentor gives you advice based on what worked for them. A therapist helps you understand how your past shapes your present. A consultant brings expertise and frameworks from their industry. A coach helps you examine the thinking, assumptions, and emotions behind the decisions you are already making
                                                                              • Everyone in your life who cares about you also has an agenda for you, because whatever you decide will affect them. A coach is impartial. The only agenda is your vision, your values, and the version of yourself you are working to become
                                                                              • You do not need to arrive to coaching with a polished question. You can bring something as broad as "I am burning out" or "my team depends too much on me," and together we will find the pattern underneath
                                                                              • The cost of not having a coach is often invisible. It looks like staying in problems longer than needed, beating yourself up over decisions, letting fear drive choices you would never make from a grounded place, and losing team members, clients, or health before you notice what was actually happening

                                                                                • Memorable Quotes

                                                                                • "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
                                                                                • "The difference between successful people and others is not that successful people don't have bad days. It's how long they allow themselves to wallow in misery." — Robert Herjavec, quoted from the Big Deal podcast
                                                                                • "Coaching will give you something that money cannot buy. That is the ability to get to know yourself, to be conscious about your life, to live with intention."

                                                                                  • Resources Mentioned

                                                                                  • Big Deal podcast with Codie Sanchez, featuring Robert Herjavec 

                                                                                    • Connect with Carolina

                                                                                    • Website: carozuleta.com
                                                                                    • Book your complimentary consult here: https://calendly.com/carolinazuleta/consult-week
                                                                                    • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching

                                                                                      •  

                                                                                      19 min
                                                                                    • 93. The Stories That Keep Us Stuck

                                                                                      We spent a week this summer at a lake house in Colorado with my husband's family and mine. By the end of the trip I noticed I was still enjoying it in a way that would have been out of reach for me a decade ago, and the difference had quite a bit to do with a skill I've been building through the work I teach.

                                                                                      That skill is at the center of today's episode.

                                                                                      It comes down to noticing a thought as it shows up, rather than becoming it. It's the same skill that keeps founders from being ruled by the three most common stories I hear:

                                                                                      • "I'm not doing enough"
                                                                                      • "I don't know what to do"
                                                                                      • "I don't have enough time"

                                                                                        • Each one sounds like an explanation and produces the opposite of the result we say we want. I walk through where each story comes from and the specific move that helps you loosen its grip on your day.

                                                                                        If you're a founder trying to break through the next revenue ceiling, or a leader whose day has been getting spent by a story you didn't consciously choose, this episode gives you a framework for noticing the story before it makes the decision for you.

                                                                                        Key Takeaways

                                                                                        • Steven Hayes' concept of cognitive fusion explains why "I don't have enough time" stops registering as a thought and starts feeling like reality. Creating a small linguistic distance from the thought is the first move out of the loop.
                                                                                        • The story "I'm not doing enough" survives because "enough" stays blurry. When you define what "enough" looks like today, the shame spiral turns into an action plan.
                                                                                        • Confusion is usually the brain negotiating for a guarantee that no consequential decision can offer. The way out is to commit to a choice for a defined period so you can evaluate what it produced, rather than what it might produce.
                                                                                        • Self-criticism produces short bursts of action fueled by pain, and pain is not sustainable fuel. Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion points to accountability without shame as a more reliable engine for consistent action.
                                                                                        • The compounding effect of using ten-minute pockets well is larger than the mythical two-hour block used never. A better question than "do I have enough time" is "with the time I have, what can I move forward."

                                                                                          • Memorable Quotes

                                                                                          "It's not about making the right choice, but about making a choice and then making that choice the right one."

                                                                                          "Stories will come with us. Our job is to not let them decide where we're going."

                                                                                          Resources Mentioned

                                                                                          • Steven Hayes and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for the origin of the concept of cognitive fusion
                                                                                          • Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion

                                                                                            • Connect with Carolina

                                                                                            • Book a consult: carozuleta.com/consult
                                                                                            • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carolinazuletacoaching

                                                                                              • Subscribe & Review
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                                                                                              32 min

                                                                                            About Visionary's Pursuit

                                                                                            From the publisher's feed

                                                                                            Whether it's a business idea or a creative endeavor, bringing anything meaningful into existence demands emotional mastery, strategic clarity and the courage to make difficult decisions amid constant urgency and uncertainty.