Orientation Before Acceleration - EP 062

Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | iHeartRadio | Pandora | Amazon Music

January can feel like a rush to decide, commit, and move forward, but clarity doesn’t come from speed. It comes from honesty. In this episode, I explore why orientation is the foundation of sustainable growth and how taking time to assess your reality leads to better decisions, steadier momentum, and deeper satisfaction.

Orientation comes before execution
Sustainable progress begins with understanding where you are, not where you think you should be.

• Clarity starts with honesty
  Honest assessment—without judgment or comparison—creates the conditions for aligned action.
  
• The cost of skipping orientation
  Overcommitment, burnout, loss of confidence, and planning for an imaginary version of yourself are often the result of inaccurate capacity assessment.
  
• Desire vs. capacity
  Honoring capacity doesn’t mean abandoning desire—it means holding desire with wisdom and timing.
  
• Constraints are not character flaws
  Time, energy, responsibilities, and season of life are situational truths, not personal failures.
  
• Orientation as a productivity strategy
  Taking time to assess and plan may feel slow, but it leads to better outcomes and a healthier experience.
  
• Satisfaction as feedback
  Steadiness, friction, and ease are data points that reveal whether your pace and structure are aligned.
  
• Support matters
  Orientation deepens when you have honest reflection from people and containers that meet you where you are, rather than imposing external expectations.
  

Mentioned in this Episode

The planning and task-estimation tool Sunsama, as an example of aligning daily plans with real capacity.

Connect With Rachel:

Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
Facebook: Rachel.Anzalone
LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello and welcome back to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone, and this is the first episode of a brand new year. Before we get into today's episode, I want to take a minute to reflect on where this podcast has come from, how it's evolved, and where it's headed in this coming year. I launched Pleasure and Profits back in November of 2023, and at the time, it really was an experiment. It was meant to be a testing ground for me. I had spent over a decade working behind the scenes, supporting other entrepreneurs in every way possible and sharing my insights and my experiences and my advice in private conversations with them, with their teams. 

And so, when I decided to launch Pleasure & Profits, I really had two goals. One was sharing what I felt inspired to share, the things that I had been saying again and again and again to clients in the past and hadn't ever put out in the world in a bigger way. Goal number two was to have some interesting conversations with like-minded people, conversational style interviews with other entrepreneurs who are doing work that felt aligned with my own perspective with my own approach to the world and to entrepreneurship. And that's what I did for that whole first season. And we did, I don't know, 30 some episodes and it was a practice. It was a commitment and I gained so much from really just being experimental and letting it unfold as I felt inspired for it to unfold.

And then near the end of 2024, I had this lightning bolt moment where I just got a knowing that enough experimentation had been done and it was time to get really focused. And so going into that second season in 2025, I started with a really clear map of what I wanted to create over the course of that year. I had very specific topics I wanted to dig into. I had specific people I wanted to be in conversation with. And that was a beautiful experience as well, and so here we are now at episode 62. And so much has shifted and evolved for me and for many of us and for the world that we live in.

I would say for myself, the sort of overarching theme of this moment of this season is that I really feel like I'm in a place of refinement, a place of less but better, so that everything that I do has bigger reach, bigger impact. It really feels like a season to tighten things up, to refine.

And so the rhythm that I'm leaning into in 2026 looks like this: honoring the seasonal energies that we talked about last year and leaning into specific monthly themes that align with those seasons. For each month, there'll be one podcast episode, exploring the theme of that month in a meaningful way. And then I'll be sharing in some other ways through my newsletter, on LinkedIn. I may slip in some guest episodes this year as they feel aligned or as I feel inspired to do so. Really because I just love those conversations. And I'm super grateful for the connections that I've made and the time that I spent in those conversations. So, I think I probably will be bringing some of those into this year as well. 

As I said, towards the end of 2024, I had this sort of lightning bolt moment. I felt really clear and really inspired and really motivated. And so last year at the beginning of 2025, I was feeling this incredible drive going into January, feeling really a lot of energy and momentum and big plans. And that energy felt like it was exactly the right place and the right energy for me to be in in this time of year, a year ago. And this year feels really different to me. And in the conversations that I've been having with friends and with colleagues, with clients, it feels different to a lot of us, I think. 

And what I'm sensing and what I'm leaning into for myself and for the podcast is that rather than starting this year with that acceleration that we often do in January, I'm starting it with orientation, with getting grounded and getting real clarity around where I'm standing in this moment and what that means for what's coming next and the actions that I will take. So rather than pushing towards some sort of reinvention that often happens around the new year. I'm beginning with more sort of grounding questions, and then of course the questions around what would feel really good to me right now. This moment we're in right now really feels like more of a season of creating the conditions of getting really grounded, getting oriented to where I am, where we all are. Like it's not quite time to start sprinting forward. 

The month of January, culturally, carries a lot of pressure. A lot of people are out there, you know, declaring intentions and setting goals and making resolutions and starting off the year moving very quickly. But what I know to be true for myself is that clarity does not come from rushing headlong into things. It comes from honesty. And honesty requires us to slow down long enough to really take stock, without judgment, without self-criticism, without comparison, and without the fantasy version of who we think we should be by now. Really looking at, who are we? Where are we? What are all the factors that contribute to what we're capable of creating in this moment, including what are our priorities? What are our values? And then how does that influence everything else that we're doing? 

So this month, both here on the podcast and in all of my work, I'm focusing on orientation and reality checking. Getting real about capacity, about energy, about constraints. Letting go of plans that maybe look good on paper, but don't actually fit the life that I'm living or the life that we're living, and separating what we want from what we can actually sustainably hold in this season. 

In other words, setting yourself up in a way that is sustainable, in a way that is going to lead you towards success instead of starts and stops that happen so often when we launch headlong into something without really taking into account all things that might affect our ability to carry that on in the long term. 

So as I say this, I can hear this sort of like little voice. I don't know if it's my own little voice or it is a little voice of of many people I've heard all in unison asking this question of like, well, am I just ignoring what I want then? Like that doesn't quite feel right to say, you know, if here's the vision of what I want and you're telling me not to think about what I want, but what I can actually contain, like that doesn't feel very expansive. And so what I would suggest, what I would offer is that I'm not saying ignore what you want, but maybe hold it with a little bit of a gentler grip and trust that if you honor your capacity, that all those things that you desire will come along when the timing is right. And honestly, probably a lot faster than if we're holding onto them so tightly and trying to force them in a way that is not sustainable. 

If you've been feeling in these first weeks of January, any sense of feeling behind or uncertain or resistant to this usual January urgency, then I just want you to know that there's nothing wrong with you or the way that you're moving through this season. It's in fact probably that you are listening to yourself in a much deeper way than so many people out there who are just propelling themselves forward without taking the time to assess, to orient themselves.  

And so in this episode, I want to talk about why clarity starts with honesty, what the cost is of skipping this kind of orientation or assessment, and why January is such a powerful time to orient us rather than to rush into what we want next. Not so that you can do less, but so that whatever it is that you do next is rooted in truth, is rooted in values instead of in pressure from anything external to yourself. So let's begin there with why clarity starts with getting really honest with yourself. 

I remember the very first time that I was presented with the process of visioning what it was that I wanted for my future. The facilitator of this training we were doing walked us through a series of exercises designed around getting some clarity around our vision for where we wanted to be in five years. And then, working backwards to like what we would have to do to get to that place. And I remember, gosh, I was in my early 20s and it was just, um it was super eye opening. It felt like, why have I never done this before? This is so brilliant and so powerful. And what I remember also, because I felt so inspired and I immediately started to take action around that was that we didn't really fully assess where we were at and what the foundation was that we might need to lay in order to get to that place. 

And so I just launched into my plan. I went full bore. I just like lived and breathed focus. I did a sprint and there were just so many things that I wish that I had understood before I started down that path of like what, where I was starting from and what that would mean for where I might get in six months, in a year, in three years, in five years. I didn't have the understanding of all the processes involved. didn't have the foresight to look at all of those examples. And the person facilitating didn't present that as something that we should really consider. 

And what I've seen since then over the last, I don't know, 20 years or something, oh my gosh, perhaps 25, is that I've seen this process again and again, particularly because I've spent so many years working in and around the personal development industry, around the coaching industry, and so many people who are leading these experiences of visioning where you want to be next in order to get yourself from where you are to that place. The exercises very often start with creating a vision board, writing, closing your eyes, and using your mind's eye to envision where you want to be. And very often the message is, like, if you have that vision and you hold that vision and you know, recite that vision again and again and again, then inevitably you will get there. 

And if I'm not bringing it to life, very often the message is, well, you must be doing something wrong. You don't want it bad enough. You're not focused hard enough, you have some blockage that you need to break through. And so there are all these reasons given for why we might not be making the progress we want to be making towards that vision that we have for ourselves. 

And what I believe is that the real problem is that those visions don't take into account where we're actually standing. And so what it ends up looking like is just adding more and more things to your to-do list. Making us busier, taking a lot of action. But that action very often isn't considered, it's not measured, it's not intentional. And it's certainly not discerning in terms of making choices around what we are going to spend our energy on and what we're not going to spend our energy on. And then also like all of the constraints that we have in our lives. 

There is this sport called orienteering. It was totally unfamiliar to me. I honestly don't know if people do this in the US. Some family that I have that lives in the UK, used this term that the kids in school were doing orienteering and I had never heard it before. And it's this sport of navigation. So people participating in this will have a detailed map and a compass and they have control points that they have to find on terrain that they've never been on presumably, at least it's unfamiliar. And so the goal is to make their way to the end of this route, hitting all these points along the way. 

And so as you can imagine, you're starting with a map and a compass. The first thing you have to do is assess where you are in this moment on the map, you have to find your location and everything else starts from there. And then the things you might have to take into account in this situation of orienteering is like, how many days worth of food do you have on you? Are you wearing the appropriate clothes? Is there something that might be constraining you like your energy, your capacity to climb, your capacity to carry loads? Might you have to navigate around certain geographical features? Like, are you going to go over the mountain or are you going to go around the mountain? Are you going to go over the river? Are you going to go through the river? There's all these factors that go into how you determine your pathway to get to that end result, that place that you're trying to get to. And it all starts with orienting yourself to where you are, what your assets are, what your constraints are at the beginning point. 

So the power of orienting yourself first is that you fully assess your current reality, your constraints, which we all have. We all have constraints, whether it's time, money, capacity, energy, other commitments, things that are important to us, what other things are going on in our lives. We all have constraints. 

And so this brings to mind just so many conversations I've heard over years with coaches where it's like, often there is a denial of reality of like, don't look at what's real in front of you because if you don't like it, then you need to choose to look at a different reality. You need to sort of choose your own reality and live in that reality. And then everything around you will change to meet that. Well, it's my observation, my experience that avoiding reality doesn't make it disappear. It just makes it show up louder later on. 

And I've seen so many examples of this. It's interesting when you watch people over a period of time, different speakers, different authors, different teachers, and you see how their story about themselves and their experience evolves. And I've had this awareness a handful of times recently where I've seen somebody speaking and the story that they're telling is not the story of their lived reality. It's not the story of their life. It's not a real experience from the past or the present. That very often it's the version of the story that they want to be true, or it's the version of the story that's convenient for them to be true. And that's fine. You know, there are all sorts of reasons for people to like adjust their story, to make a point or to emphasize something. And, you know, none of us can know what someone's actual lived experience was because we weren't there. And so much of our lived experiences is based on perspective. 

But pretending that we're somewhere other than where we are, being in denial about our reality doesn't make that reality go away. And so you have the choice to look at your reality with optimism that you can handle it, that you can make improvement, that you have choices, or you have the option to look at your reality with pessimism and look at it that it's so difficult and so hard and I have so many constraints and I can't do any of these things, right?

And so it's not about denying your reality and pretending it's something other than what it is. It's about actually taking in the reality of your circumstances, looking at it through a lens of optimism and empowerment that you do in fact have choices and you are in fact the one who's in control of your destiny, if you, if you choose to look at it through that lens. And so it's my observation that over the years of the people that I have seen, have seen who deny this sort of the reality of the lived experience is that number one, we can do that sometimes for a season and it works. 

And if you have a big platform and you're in a space of that where you're teaching that you're choosing your own reality and anything that's not in the reality you want, just choose to ignore, you just don't look at it, you don't bring it into your reality, into your presence. Like we can all do that for a while. I've done it for periods of time. I've seen lots of people do it for periods of time. But if you watch anyone for long enough, you'll see that the reality shows up at some point and it has to be dealt with. And so often we're going through like cycles and seasons of this. And I've never to this day seen anybody stay on a like clear path of that trajectory for years and years and years or decades. And if they are in fact presenting that out into the world, then very often the reality is not matching what's being shown or shared. 

The other circumstance where I see that people have the ability to live in a denial of reality is that they have particular assets that are allowing them to make different choices than many of us get to make. And so, I don't know, they have a trust fund they're living on. And so they don't have to worry about money as a constraint. They have a wife. Like this is when I feel like I've seen so many times, like, you're looking at how they're spending their time and their energy and whatever. And it's like, well, they've got a wife at home who is, you know, making sure the house is taken care of and the kids are taken care of and the family is taken care of and sort of like all this unpaid labor that's happening there that they're benefiting from. And that's not the reality for most of us. 

And so when we deny the reality, when we choose to skip over this period of orientation of really getting clear around where we are, particular circumstances, our assets and our constraints, then very often what happens is we end up over committing. We end up planning for this sort of imaginary version of ourselves and then ending up frustrated, disappointed, resentful that we're not able to bring it to life. So often we end up feeling like a failure, losing confidence because we don't seem to be able to keep up because we said we were gonna do a thing and now we don't actually have the capacity to do it. And so skipping this orientation part really is an exercise in setting ourselves up to fail sooner or later. And so sometimes that might mean a week from now, it might mean a month from now, it might mean a year from now, but not taking all those things into account sets us up for this. 

And then culturally, the story that we're told is that it's like, it's a lack of discipline or it's a lack of commitment when in fact what it is is, is inaccurate assessment of capacity. It is a sequencing problem. We like jumped ahead before getting the foundation underneath us. I think this happens so often. want to like, we want to jump to the part that's like fun and exciting and the growth without ever building the foundation. 

But you know, that would be like, I decide I want to run a marathon and I just go great, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run a marathon. I see myself running a marathon. I'm gonna sign up for this and I'm going to show up and I'm going to run this marathon without doing the foundational work of just like jogging two or three miles a day, five days a week. There's so often all this foundational work that needs to be done. First, I would need to assess like what's my capacity now? Have I been running? Am I getting off the couch? You know, what does that look like in terms of what training I might need to do? I might not be able to just go run that marathon in three months. might take me three months to just get a foundation built and then I can think about training for a marathon. So that might be then another three months or six months out. I might be able to complete a marathon, but I might not be able to complete it at the pace that I want to. And so I have to take all these variables in, including it's a huge time commitment to train for a marathon. 

This is just an example of the things that we need to consider when we're making choices around where we're investing our time and our energy and our business and the goals that we're setting. And this orientation piece is such a critical part of that. It's also one of the reasons I get so frustrated when I see coaches doing hot seats with people that they don't actually know their business. They don't know their assets. They don't know their constraints. Getting a 30 second or a 60 second snippet this person shares and then giving them advice because it just fails to take into account all of these things. That's one of those things that looks really impressive. Like you could put a problem in front of me. I can give you an answer to it. Of course I can. I've got, a brain full of answers to all the problems of all the things that I've confronted over the last 25 years. However, whether or not that solution is the right one for you, that's a completely different question. And so skipping this orientation piece can set you on a path that is not the right path for you based on your assets and based on your constraints.  

Okay, so now let's get into what I think is really the heart of this conversation, and that is separating desire from capacity. So you all know I talk about desire, about pleasure, about really getting in touch with and understanding like what would feel good to you in this moment, in this season. And I really want to make a distinction here around what we want and what we can sustainably hold in this moment. And I made mention of this in the beginning that it's not about taking those desires and just chucking them out the window. 

It's about understanding that your desire is real and it's valid and that vision you hold for yourself is so important. And capacity is contextual and it's dynamic. It's not about getting rid of or ignoring those desires or those visions. It's about taking into account what your actual capacity is and making decisions based on that. Because ignoring capacity doesn't bring your desires to you faster. In fact, ignoring capacity is likely to lead you to burn out, to overwhelm, sometimes to just giving up entirely, feeling like a failure, feeling like there's something wrong with you. And it's not that it's that you didn't take into account the capacity that you have. 

I think it was one of the Kardashians was like, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, but we don't all have the same things to accomplish in those 24 hours a day. I'm certain that the Kardashians are not washing their own dishes, grocery shopping, probably not feeding the dog, mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, the things that so many of us have to do in our daily lives. And so time is not universal. 

Energy is a factor. I certainly know at 47, I don't have the energy that I had at 27. That's a factor that I need to consider in terms of my commitments. Emotional bandwidth, some work takes more emotional energy than other things. And so that's a factor. What support systems do we have around us? What season of life are we in? Am I in a season where I just want to drive forward in my work and that's my number one priority? Or am I in a season where I really want to be able to spend the weekend chilling out with my husband and go see a movie on Thursday evening and not be stuck to my computer? Where there have been seasons of my life where I'd be like, I'm gonna build my website till two in the morning and that's how I wanna spend my time. And then what are priorities? We all have these priorities of relationships, priorities of our own self care, priorities of sleep and wellness, priorities of our health. There's so many choices that we have to make in order to determine where we're gonna spend our time.

I personally had a real wake up call around capacity and how out of touch I was with my capacity. A handful of months ago, a friend told me about this app. I decided to try it. It's a digital to-do list. I had my own project management system, client project management systems, various clients and projects, email and calendars and all the things and I would get up in the morning and like, and look at what do I need to get done today? And I would make my list of the things I need to get done today. And inevitably my list on Monday would be gigantic and I would get a small part of it done. And then I would go into Tuesday feeling like I was already behind and then Wednesday. And then usually by Thursday or Friday, I would be like, I actually got all that stuff done, or the majority of it, or maybe there were some things that didn't really need to get done and they're going to get bumped to next week. But it took me a week to do the things that I put on the list all on Monday, which sounds completely insane and probably is. 

And so I decided to implement this app. And what it forced me to do was to assign amounts of time to every single task that I was doing. And it took me a while. I spent at least a month, if not more, working my way into using the system. But the first thing that I assessed was I put in all the things I wanted to get done on a Monday. And it told me it was 18 hours of work. That was never going to happen in a day. And so it's helped me to get more realistic about what I'm actually going get done within the time periods that I have and then to make choices about what gets moved to another day. The app is called Sunsama. I'll drop the link to it in the show notes. I won't, I'm not gonna like fluff it up. It really took me some work to set it up and to implement it, but it truly has been one of the most powerful tools that I have used recently and just changing my experience of my day-to-day work and really getting to understand what my capacity is when I put all the things on the calendar that are most important to me. 

And so having constraints, like these things are not character flaws. They are situational truths. And when we make choices about what we're doing today or this month or this quarter and what we're not, it doesn't mean that we're never doing those things. It just means that we're not doing them right now that there's something else that is more of a priority. 

The other thing that I talk about a lot is satisfaction. And I just want to make some clarifying points about this, that this idea of satisfaction isn't about like everything feels good all the time, it's all sunshine and roses. So the sense of satisfaction is feedback about whether or not we're in alignment, how we're pacing ourselves, what the structure around us is supporting or inhibiting. And so the questions to ask around this are, where do I feel steadiness? Where do I feel friction? What feels heavier? What feels like it's taking a lot more effort than it should? How do I feel when I look at that to-do list? How do I feel when I look at that calendar? Where am I feeling like I'm just stretched too far? What I found for myself is that I feel like I gain a sense of satisfaction by accomplishing less things and doing them really well, but knowing that they were the most important things to get done on that day or in that month or in that season. 

Now, to bring us back to where we started with this, that this month, January, is really about orienting ourselves. It's about orienting our energy and it is not about executing all the things or rushing headlong into everything. If we launch into January, just burning energy, trying to get in some state of momentum without taking the time to orient, then what we end up doing is locking ourselves into plans that by March feel absurd, feel like, why am I even doing this? Or then needing to pivot and adjust everything because we have set ourselves up for something that's not actually sustainable. So the invitation is to take January as a time for listening and for allowing yourself to just not maybe have all the answers yet. 

While orientation and assessment might not feel productive, it actually is one of the most productive things you can do. I can say from all of my years of managing launches, managing projects, managing campaigns, that the time that I would spend gathering information and creating the detailed plan, based on the actual timeline and capacity of all of the people involved, that front end piece, the orientation and the planning, would determine not just the outcome of the campaign, but very often the experience of the campaign. And so while that orientation and planning piece might not feel like it's super productive, it actually sets the stage for much greater productivity down the road and productivity that feels good and is sustainable. 

And so here are a few questions for you to reflect on, not to be an action on. So first, what is your lived reality telling you right now? What can you glean from looking around at, you know, the way your days are going, the experience you're having, what's on your plate right now, how you're feeling in this moment in this season? And what is all of that information telling you? The second question is, what would change if I stopped planning for who I wish I was and started planning for who I actually am right now? 

And I want to speak to this a little bit because I have talked in the past about getting clear on who you need to become in order to create the results that you want in this idea of identity engineering. And so I want to bring some clarity to this because there is nuance, which is in what ways are you planning for who you wish you were without having done the work to become that person? And there's a difference between that and recognizing how you might need to evolve, how you might need to become the person, evolve your identity into the person who accomplishes the things that you want to accomplish and then making choices that are going to support that so that you can be the person who does that. And so it's really like a cart before the horse thing, right? And so the invitation is to give some consideration to that of like, are you planning for who you wish you were? Or are you setting yourself up so that you become that person and then are actually doing the actions that that person would do? It's a fine point. It is a truly a nuance, but I think it's a really important one.  

As we close up here, I want to name one thing that I believe goes unsaid very often, and that is that orientation work like this, while it can be done in isolation, certainly you can do it on your own because there is this internal reflection aspect to it. And I, you know, me personally, I need that time to sit by myself and do that reflection. And it also benefits often by having some honest reflection from people who can see who you truly are, who are not gonna say to you what they think you wanna hear, but are gonna say the thing that you need to hear, who are gonna bring the things to light that maybe you're not seeing because it just is such a part of your day-to-day life that you're not consciously aware of it, but people around you might be able to see and share and reflect back to you. 

And people who can share honestly with you. I know I've run into this myself so many times where I've reached out for feedback and realized as I was receiving the feedback that the feedback was based on that person's needs, desires, their perspective, and not of the support that I needed in that moment. And so getting feedback, getting support, and getting structure from people, community, whether that is from like a trusted person in your life conversation, whether that is a steady container that's gonna support you, that is going to help you to follow your own intuition, listen to your own voice, reflect things back to you for you to consider, and allow for you to make the choices that are the best choices for you and not to be prescriptive and overlay their desires or their expectations or some map or blueprint or framework on top of you that doesn't actually meet you where you are or support you in the ways that you need to be supported. 

And what matters most is that you don't rush yourself out of this phase before it's complete, that you take the time to do a thorough evaluation, assessment, and really orient yourself, so that you're making choices that are gonna lead you down the right path for you. Another aspect of this orientation is looking at the support systems that you have around you and evaluating, are they putting pressure on you to charge for it in a way that doesn't actually support your sustainable growth? And only you know the answer to that. 

A final reminder here that orientation is not a delay, it's the foundation. It's the beginning of alignment. And being in alignment is what's gonna support you in creating sustainability and ultimately the bigger impact that you desire to create in the world. And we will end with that. Until next time, remember your pleasure is your power. Take care.