As you dive in to the foray of the marketing world and stumble upon product after programme after 7 Step Success Formula, it soon becomes apparent that the more you learn the less you know.

I’ve been around this marketing world for more than 13 years now. Starting up before WordPress, before Facebook and before 4G connectivity and having the world in your pocket. It’s been an exciting and wondrous journey at times. But at others, even I have felt like Alice falling in to the rabbit hole; spinning faster and faster, wondering when I was ever going to hit the ground.

There’s always the next new thing.

And then the next thing.

Just when you think you’ve cracked Facebook, they go and change their algorithm or terms of business. Just when you got the hang of writing your blog every week, all you read and hear is that you should be podcasting.

Or video blogging.

Or doing Facebook Live videos.

You start to realise that the more you learn the less you know.

The more you try and follow the 7 Step Success Formulas, the more you forget to listen to your gut and your inner wisdom.

The more you learn the less you know

I was speaking to a client earlier this week. It was our first call together and she wanted to crack her niche once and for all.

She was a spiritual coach but also came from a corporate career and it was these two components – her logical business mind and her innate spirituality – that were seemingly clashing.

She had read almost everything there was to know about niching and the importance of targeting her marketing. But after 7 years, she still was not clear on who is was she wanted to attract.

But here’s the thing … she was attracting.

OK, maybe not as many clients as she wanted to which is why she came to me and wanted help with her marketing strategy. But it was clear to me that she was attracting.

It appeared to me that she has got so caught up with the process of finding her niche, that she had lost the confidence to listen to what she knew already.

And I see this a lot; both in myself (yup … I am human just like you LOL) and in my clients.

Our mind is fuelled with thoughts each and every second of each and every day. Some days, our thoughts are helpful, brave, full of creativity and limitless. On other days, our thoughts are restricting, cowardly, fearful and at times mean and down-right nasty.

We could go all-NLPy and try to fix our “bad” thoughts. But it’s simply not possible.

We have no control over what thoughts come our way. We can only observe and decide which ones to take action on and which ones to let go.

When we don’t realise this (or simply forget this because when you have a crap day, it’s easy to let the crap take over), it’s real easy for the “bad” thoughts to seem real. And this is when we stop listening to what we know.

We go after more stuff to learn. We feel there’s got to be a better way so we decide we need to seek the better process.

There is a simpler way … stop and listen.

Turn off your emails.

Get off Facebook.

Take yourself off away from your business and let the sands settle.

As you physically move yourself away from the problem, it becomes easier for the “good” thoughts to come through. When the sands settle in your mind, the flow of thoughts quieten and you remember that your inner wisdom had an answer all the time. It may not be THE answer .. but there will be an answer.

And most importantly it will be yours.

So is learning is good for the mind, body and soul? Absolutely.

Are there marketing strategies and systems that you can be taught? Sure.

But when your learning becomes frenzied to the point that you find yourself screaming, “If only someone could show me where to look?” … take a breath.

You have the answer if you can take time to allow the whirlwind of your mind to settle.

What do you think about this idea of chasing the “next thing” and the impact it has on our businesses? Do you find that you more you learn the less you know? Do you find that the more you chase knowledge from the outside, the less you lose connection with your own inside knowledge? 

Leave a thought, comment or observation below. I would love to hear from you.