A few weeks ago, I met with a lovely yoga teacher. She was full of positive energy and the love for yoga and sharing this with her audience shone through her. But when we started talking about her website and social media it was like the light went out…

She told me how overwhelmed she is by marketing and online stuff and that she’s just “not a business person“.

Does that sound like something you’ve been saying too?

I totally get it. Fact is, we all are feeling overwhelmed from time to time. But it’s important to not give in to that feeling. If you are, you are manifesting a belief that can put the brakes on your yoga career before it even started – and that can keep you from reaching and helping more people through your gifts.

Which is what it’s all about – helping other people. To do that you need to get in touch with them and communicate, right? Well, that’s marketing. You also want to be able to support yourself. That’s running a business. It’s essential! And you are totally able to do it, you just need to change the story you are telling yourself.

1. Stop talking about feeling overwhelmed

The first thing I want you to do is to stop telling yourself that you are overwhelmed. Or that you don’t know what you’re doing. Seriously. Stop it. It’s not helping, it’s not solving anything.

Instead say “I’m figuring it out”.

It’s okay if you don’t know everything yet. You are figuring it out. It’s okay if you’ve never done this before. Chill out. It’s time to change your self-defeating thoughts: I’ll finish one thing at a time. I’m good at this. Tomorrow is another day. Overwhelm comes from your thinking. Manage your thoughts and your feelings will change.

Take action now and simply start with the first step. Action provides clarity. Clarity provides confidence. Step by step, you’ll get there.

2. Make a plan

The one really important thing you need to learn to run your business successfully is to divide a project into single tasks.

For example, if you want to create a website the whole process can seem overly intimidating. But divided into single tasks it much more manageable.

The steps could be:

• Decide what your website should be about
• Check possible domain names and availability
• Decide on a platform, for example wix, wordpress or squarespace
• Write your welcome message and about page
• Organize a photo shooting
• And so on…

And then you just do it. Yes, there will be challenges. Yes, there will be drawbacks. But you’ll keep figuring it out. Do what you have to do next and forget the rest – for now.

To organize your tasks, you can use a written to-do list, a simple task manager or a tool like www.asana.com or www.trello.com. I use Asana and love it!

3. Give up on perfection

Stop over-analyzing and over-thinking everything. Do your best and let the rest go. Too many inventions and products never come to fruition because they’re never good enough.

A symptom of perfectionism is very often procrastination. Because perfectionists fear being unable to complete a task perfectly, they put it off as long as possible.

Procrastination is easy to spot: Are you doing what you are supposed to be doing according to your to-do list, or are you posting on Instagram/reading Facebook posts/filing papers/running errands? If you answered yes to the latter, then you are procrastinating.

Remember that no one else cares and no one else matters. Most people are so wrapped up with themselves that they won’t notice any “slip” on your part. Let your desire to impress others go, and separate your performance from your sense of self-worth.

I know this can be hard and I had to let go of perfectionism, too. Now I go for good enough and get so much more done.

4. Stop comparing

When you’re looking at the amazing website, services or social media posts from someone else, remember that everything you see is really just the highlight reel of their lives. You don’t know how long it’s taken them to get where they are, how much support they might have in the background or their experience.

Stop comparing yourself and instead appreciate where you are and how much you have. It’s only natural to be influenced by your peers, but it’s okay to have different values and priorities in life. Just because another yoga teacher is successfully selling yoga videos online, doesn’t mean you need to do the same thing. Your values—what you truly want from life—are your values. That’s what makes you, you.

5. Delegate tasks

It’s okay not to be able to do everything. You don’t have to fall in love with marketing or business. It’s just a tool that you need.

And the good news is, that you can hire someone to help you. Either to develop your website or a virtual assistant (VA) to help you with the running of your business.

Delegating routine tasks to a virtual assistant will allow you to focus on the real growth opportunities for your business. Virtual assistants can do almost any task that you can. Granted, it may require some effort on your part to train them and get the quality up to your standards. However, it may also be an opportunity to let go of perfectionism and accept good enough.