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Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

Is This Stopping You From Taking Action?

by | Oct 13, 2024 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“Being detached allows us to stay balanced and free from the anxieties that arise from success or failure.”
~ Pundarika Vidyanidhi Das

 

I want to talk to you about something that comes up in my client calls all the time. The struggle to take action on important business activities. In today’s letter, I’d like to share one reason that I think that might be.

Take a moment now to bring to mind something that you want to do in your business but that, for whatever reason, you struggle to take action on.

It could be getting your content marketing up and running, launching a new product or service, reaching out to someone who you know could be a great collaborator or any other thing that you know will move your business forward, but, for whatever reason, you’re stalling on.

Now ask yourself this?

 

What outcome are you attached to?

Is it that the content you write is well received and impactful? Is that your launch goes really well and you get a certain number of sign-ups? Is it that the person you reach out responds enthusiastically?

Now take that outcome and consider the fear behind it.

Is it that people won’t like your content or that they’ll criticize it? Is it that no one will buy your new offering and it will look like you don’t know what you’re doing? Is it that you won’t get a response from the person you reach out to and worse still, they’ll be annoyed that you did?

Can you relate? Do you have these sorts of thoughts running through your head? Perhaps you’re conscious of them or maybe this is the first time you’re giving them attention.

The key is that many of us become attached to a certain outcome and the fear of not getting the outcome we desire then gets in the way of taking action.

I get it, I used to do this all the time and I can still fall into this same trap but I want to share something that really helped me.

Years ago, when Joan and I left our home in Mexico (where we’d been housesitting for a year) and moved to Valencia, Spain, we were both excitedly working on our businesses. Joan had, since meeting me, really got into personal growth and was keen to start his own coaching business.

In typical Joan style, he dived right in and decided to run an in-person workshop on stress. He found a venue, found a partner to help him promote it and set a date. On the morning of his workshop, I couldn’t believe how calm he was. “Aren’t you worried that nobody will show up?” I asked him. Well aware that if it were my workshop, that would be my greatest fear.

“Not at all” he replied and went on to explain that his only goal was to become a person who had run a workshop on stress in Valencia. Essentially, to have gone through the process of finding a venue, getting all the equipment, marketing the event, creating his slides, delivering the workshop and gaining all the knowledge that doing so would bring. “I’ll do the workshop even if nobody shows up.” he said with a smile.

I’m not going to lie, I was stunned by this and being who I am, I wanted to understand how he could be so calm, when I might be a nervous wreck. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that my stress in similar situations came from my attachment to a certain outcome. I realised that whenever I wanted to try something new in my business, I wanted to be sure that I would succeed and my fear of failure was often enough to stop me even trying.

Since then (that was 9 years ago!), I’ve largely got over this habit of getting attached to outcome. I’m much better at spotting the desire for success and feeling the fear of failure and going for it anyway. Knowing that who I will be on the other side of just doing the thing will give me more knowledge, confidence and true feeling of accomplishment (regardless of the results).

When we start to do things for the sake of doing them, rather than as a means to an end, we get to enjoy them a whole lot more.

Let’s go back to my earlier examples.

What if, instead of attaching to the outcome of people like our content, we created content because we enjoyed the process of creating? What if, Instead of worrying about what people might say, we focused on expressing our ideas and point of view through content, knowing that over time our content marketing skills would improve?

What if, instead of obsessing over how many people might sign up to our new thing or not, we focused on the skills we’ll deepen as we lean into launching and selling our gifts. One of the things I always tell myself when I’m launching is that nobody knows if it fails. I don’t have to announce that I didn’t get any sign ups and my efforts will likely have got some people ready to buy next time.

What if, instead of not reaching out to people for fear of rejection, we told ourselves that rejection is an inevitable part of the journey. Some of the greatest success stories in life have come about after countless rejections. I’m currently starting the Harry Potter series with my son and so it feels apt to share how the first Harry Potter book was rejected by 12 different publishers before an obscure literary agent took it on.

The truth is, if we adopt an attitude of play, experimentation and exploration in our work, we enjoy it a whole lot more and actually achieve success all the much faster.

Another truth is that while we’re worried about what other people will think, they’re not actually watching us and waiting for us to trip or fail because they are too busy worrying about their own potential missteps.

And let’s just say for argument’s sake, that we do fail spectacularly. What’s the worst that can happen? If you publish that piece and no one comments or someone writes something rude? In a few days you’ll have forgotten all about it — trust me I’ve been there. Or if you try and launch a new offer and no one buys, who is even going to notice?

The worst that can happen in my opinion letting our hopes and fears about what might happen stop us from even trying. So please, ditch your attachment to outcome and consider what might be possible, if you just did the thing for the sake of doing the thing.

Care to share with me the one thing you’ve been procrastinating about moving forward with? I’d love to know so feel free to hit reply and let me know.

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The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

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Who Do You Need To Become In 2024?

Who Do You Need To Become In 2024?

by | Feb 14, 2024 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“Success is not so much what we have, as it is what we are.”
~ Jim Rohnn

Sometimes our inability to achieve our goals comes from a lack of skills or knowledge but often, we actually know what it is that we need to do but for some reason, we simply don’t do it.

Why is that? And how can we become the kind of person that does the very things that will bring us the success we so dearly crave?

I’m going to give you my best answer to these questions.

As I see it, there are 3 main reasons we don’t do what we know we need to do or what we say we want to do.

1. Lack of desire — We don’t actually want to do it. It’s not something we enjoy or have any true desire to do.
2. Lack of knowledge — We don’t know how to do it. The desire is there but the knowhow is not.
3. Presence of fear — We want to do it, maybe even know how to do it but there is some level of fear about what will happen if we do it.

Take a moment now to think about something you set out to achieve this year in your business but failed to do so. Do any of these three reasons apply?

What all of these three have in common for me is they relate to how we’re thinking about the task at hand and how we think about something directly affects how we show up to that thing.

One woman in my business planning workshop shared this comment and it felt so apt:

“I thought I really hated doing administration, marketing, planning, and all of that, for my business. And that I was bad at it. And I have to admit, with my ADD, HSP and possibly autism, it’s a big challenge. But if I take my time, stay in touch with my gut feeling, stay true to my values, accept that I have my own pace, my own way of doing these things, I actually kind of enjoy it. And I feel proud when I’m doing these things. I really do get better at it.”

Can you see how by changing how she showed up to those very tasks she thought she hated, how she felt actually changed?

Consider now something you want to do, know how to do and feel excited to do. I’d guess that nothing would stop you from doing something you feel this way about.

Now consider something you know you should do but have zero desire to do, have no idea how to do and/or feel some level of fear around doing it. My best guess is that it would be nothing short of a miracle if you managed to do this thing.

So let me ask you this. Where in your world do you need to change how are you are thinking about things to change how you are showing up to them?

I’d like to share with you something that’s coming up for me around this question of who I need to become.

Over the past few years I have had a financial target I’d like to hit, which, after several years of stable and steady financial growth, would be a stretch for me. And whilst I have increased my income year on year, I’ve yet to hit this particular stretch goal, which has been frustrating to say the least.

As I’ve been working on my business plan for next year, I’ve done just about as much thinking as I can about what I’ll need to do and how I’ll need to change my business model in order to achieve this goal but if I’m honest with myself, I’ve been feeling anything but excited about the prospect. Instead, there’s been a serious lack of desire or motivation to tackle these things head on.

As I contemplated my word of the year, which is what I suggest speaks to how you want to feel in your life and business, my mind kept going to a desire to feel more motivated or inspired. For a while, I thought INSPIRED might be my word of the year, but as I sat with it, I also couldn’t see how I was going to magically feel more inspired in 2024.

Then, this word dropped in.

BRAVE.

And I couldn’t shake it, it felt scary (in a good way) and big (also in a good way) and that’s when it dawned on me…

In order to do what needs to be done to hit my stretchy financial goal, I need to feel excited, inspired and motivated and in order to feel those things I need to be brave.

I need to push the edges of my comfort zone, challenge myself, do new things and be bolder and braver.

So my answer to who I need to become in 2024 in order to achieve my goals?

I need to become brave.

Now I’m here, it feels so obvious, some of my best life moments have come from leaning into being brave and I realise now that once I achieved a level of success in my business, I got scared of doing anything that might rock the boat. I now see that becoming brave again is exactly what is needed to take my business to the next level and, more importantly, feel inspired and excited in the process.

Shifting my thinking from what I need to do to who I need to become is such a simple shift but one that has the power to change everything.

It’s oh so easy to tell ourselves that we’ll never be able to do something, that we’ll never be able to be something but I’ve experienced and witnessed myself and others achieving what felt like the impossible time and time again.

So, my lovely, as you consider all that you would like to bring forth in your life and business in 2024. Who is it that you need to become?

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

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How I Handle Pre-Performance Nerves

How I Handle Pre-Performance Nerves

by | Sep 20, 2023 | Mindset

“The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
~ Nelson Mandela

I want to share with you a few things I do whenever I feel nervous about “performing” in my business. That might be teaching a class, doing a live video, being interviewed, or speaking to someone else’s audience and even though I dislike the term performance, I trust you’ll get what I mean when I say that’s how it can feel to us!

As a solopreneur who is committed to getting the word out about conscious business and ethical marketing, I regularly need to face my fears and put myself at the front of the room, so to speak.

To give you a few examples, I presented on authentic outreach to Sarah Santococe’s Humane Marketing Circle, hosted a live online workshop (or 2), and was one of 4 speakers at a roundtable discussion on business model for Tad Hargrave. All of these things, to varying degrees, result in what I’m calling pre-performance nerves.

Back when I had a 9–5 office job, I had a lot of presentations to do and they absolutely terrified me. My voice would start shaking, my stomach would be in knots, I’d feel my face flush and I’d be dying inside (side note: people always told me I came across as very confident and didn’t see any of what I was experiencing inside). The thing was I didn’t have a choice, they were part of the job description, so I sucked it up and somehow got through the excruciating anxiety of it all.

So, you can imagine as a business owner, choosing to volunteer myself for speaking opportunities or “putting myself out there” has required some courage on my part. What spurs me on though is knowing that people need to know that I and my business exist if they are going to buy from me. So I’ve developed a couple of strategies I always do when I start to feel the nerves of presenting get the better of me.

I think about people who love me

I’m a proud Mama of two gorgeous boys and I have a wonderful and loving partner. I keep on my desk at all times photos of the four of us together as a family. Whenever I’m about to do something scary, I’ll pick up one of my photos and take a good hard look and I remind myself that no matter how badly I do in this… interview, presentation or speaking slot, they will still love me. They won’t care if I umm or ahh, they won’t care if I forget my words or encounter a tech snafu. To these 3 people, I’m already a hero and that really helps me to put whatever I’m about to do into perspective. Their opinion matters to me more than anyone else’s and it won’t be affected by how I perform for a work thing and just remembering that can be enough to calm my nerves.

I think about the future

In a similar vein, if I’m feeling particularly nervous, I like to think about a point in time after the event has happened and imagine how good it will feel once it’s over.

Usually, that point in time is the boys coming home, full of energy and life, wanting to hug me and tell me about their day. I like to think about and revel in the sensations of the relief and elation I know I’m going to feel once the scary thing I had to do is now over. I’ll even look at the clock and calculate how long it will be before this scary thing will be out of the way and not something I have to worry about anymore. Focusing on those future sensations often is enough to override or at least quieten any anxiety I might be feeling.

I think about my mission

Sometimes, pre-performance anxiety can come in the form of inner chatter like “who am I to share this stuff”, “there’s nothing special about what I have to share”, “everybody’s probably heard all of this before” etc, I’m sure you know how it goes! When that’s the case, I remind myself of the relief I felt when I first heard or learned of some of the things I now share with my audience and other people’s.

I think about the impact everything I have learned about conscious business and ethical marketing has had on me as a business owner and the growth and evolution of my business and I remind myself of my mission to spread that message.

When I was on a speaking panel with some giants in my industry who have been in business twice as long as me and make far more money. Initially, I felt totally inadequate, but as I remembered my mission I realised that for many people in the audience, the gap between themselves and some of these speakers is so huge that it might feel intimidating or overwhelming to consider how to bridge it.

My goal then became to tailor my message for those people in the audience earlier on in the journey who I can still relate to. That really helped me to anchor into the fact that I have an important message and experience to share.

I remember previous performance successes

Given I’ve felt pre-performance anxiety and nerves many times in my life but have yet to really blow a speaking opportunity and have always received positive feedback. I also like to remind myself that even though there is fear and anxiety, I can do this. I have a wealth of experience of doing things like this and not messing up.

Now each of these things on their own might not seem like they’d be enough to quel pre-performance fears but for me, they do the trick. Plus the more times I put myself out there and face the fear, the easier it becomes. Will I ever be nerves free ahead of an important speaking opportunity? I don’t think so but I think that’s a good thing. It’s what drives me to prepare and practice, which I do regularly. It’s a sign that I care about doing a good job.

How about you? I’d love to know if you have any tips or tricks for managing your nerves in situations like these. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Business Mojo

What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Business Mojo

by | Jan 11, 2023 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
– Maya Angelou

I’d like to talk to you about something that came up in a client session and how to make sense of it. What to do when we lose our business mojo or feel like we’ve fallen out of love with our business. Having been through this myself and coached countless others through it, I wanted to share the 4 main reasons behind this feeling and what to do about it.

This is the one I think is the least common but ironically it’s where many business owners go first. You might have experienced the “burn it all to the ground” feeling yourself. You know the one, when you just feel so sick of your business that you find yourself daydreaming about doing something completely different, like a whole other niche or even giving up on being a business owner altogether and getting a job. I think we’ve all been there at some point or another.

Rather than burning your business to the ground, however, I’m going to suggest that we can usually rekindle our love for our business by making one of three changes. Perhaps, there is a change you need to make regarding what you are doing in your business, or there is a change you need to make regarding how you are doing things in your business or maybe you’re feeling disillusioned and beaten down by a lack of tangible results and a change of thinking about what that means is all that is needed.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

This is where we need to consider what we are doing in our business. This could be within our business model (the products and services we offer) or it could be within the back end of the business (how we administrate and manage our business). Perhaps we are offering long-term 1:1 coaching packages when our sweet spot would be one off single sessions. Perhaps we’re offering a group program when our sweet spot would be getting creative with online courses. Perhaps we love delivering our services but hate the marketing and admin involved in running our business.

Whatever it is, there’s a chance that you could easily reignite your passion for your business if you just make some changes to what you are doing. Given we’re nearing the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to to review what you do in your business and what you could do differently in 2023.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What am I doing in my business that I really don’t enjoy? Then go ahead and list out everything that you DO in your business that feels heavy or drains you of energy. Once you have your list go though it line by line and write one of the following options: Stop, Change, Delegate or Automate.

You essentially want to assess each item on your list and ask yourself can I stop doing this altogether? Can I change what I am doing here (For example, changing long-term coaching programs to short-term or single sessions) or is this a task I can delegate to someone else or automate with a piece of software or a process?

This is one that came up for me many years ago when I started to fall out of love with my 1:1 coaching service. It was back when I was life coaching and I had reached a point in my business where things were going really well, my prices were at an all time high and I had more clients saying yes to working together than ever before.

The odd thing was I started to dread going to work on my business on a daily basis and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why. I was so confused that I should feel this way, just as I was starting to see real success with my coaching. A few months later after several conversations with coaches and mentors of my own, I finally worked out that the success I had been experiencing had changed how I was showing up to my client calls.

Because of the higher price and higher numbers of clients, I had unconsciously started to worry about losing it all, this had made me less bold in my coaching and had brought the people pleaser out in me. Instead of challenging my clients, I was appeasing them. Of course, this felt awful and once I rectified it, I started to enjoy my clients sessions once again.

I share this example as a way to illustrate the idea that how we are showing up our work can really affect how we feel about our work. This is just one example. For you, it might be how you’re doing your marketing. See here for more on that.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question:
Is there anything in the way I am delivering my offerings that could be contributing to the funk I am feeling?
Journal on this question until you’ve explored everything about the way in which you are showing up to and delivering your work. Given that there might be things here that you are unaware of, you might also want to consider talking it through with a business colleague, coach or mentor.

This is a big one. I see business owners dealing with some version of this on a regular basis. In response, I often talk about the business journey, which takes us from point A — starting our business to point B — succeeding in our business and the fact that during any time in between those 2 points, we’re likely to experience phases where we feel disillusioned or frustrated that we’re not where we want to be yet.

One antidote to this is to manage our expectations. Many of us are operating in a toxic online marketplace, where the predominant narrative is one of fast and exponential success. What I’ve realised from over 10 years of working for myself and over 6 years of supporting other business owners to succeed is that slow, incremental success is not only more realistic, but it’s also more fulfilling and long-lasting.

Suggested action:

Read this article I wrote on the pains of business growth and this article on the stages of business growth.

Next take some time to think about and question your inner dialogue about your progress. I talk to business owners all the time who are seeing results, but, because they are not as big as they want or expect, they dismiss them.

Next open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What can I celebrate today about my business growth journey? Write down all your wins, the small and big ones — you’ll be surprised how easily we forget what is actually working when we are so focused on what is not.

So I’m curious, for those of you feeling in a funk with your business, has this helped shed any light? If so, please let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

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Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.

Five Things I’m Doing To Start The Year Off Well

Five Things I’m Doing To Start The Year Off Well

by | Jan 4, 2023 | Mindset, Uncategorized

“If you believe you can change — if you make it a habit — the change becomes real.”
~ Charles Duhigge

I want to share with you five things that I’m doing to start the year off well. My hope is that they may inspire your own list of things that can support you to start the year on the right foot.

The key to all of these things is that mainly they are not specifically “business” related. They are things that are key to improving my personal life, which I know will, in turn, have a positive impact on my business.

1. Clearing my space

I spent several hours cleaning and organising my office. I’m so grateful to have a dedicated room from which to run my business, however, when we moved into the new house, my office was a hot mess of boxes, piles of paper and uncared for plants. Not a space I really enjoyed spending time in.

I got ruthless and threw a lot of old papers into the recycling, found a home for everything that needed one, watered and pruned my plants and cleaned the floor and surfaces. It felt sooo good.

It was so wonderful to start the day in this space and I know that keeping it clean and organised is going to be essential for my mental wellbeing over the year. Clutter and chaos in my external environment definitely has a negative impact on how I feel on the inside so I’m excited to cultivate more calm by keeping my office tidy and organised.

2. Getting more sleep

I typically don’t get enough sleep. Period. On a daily basis, by the time my partner and I have got our two boys to bed, tidied up and washed the dishes, it usually close to 10pm. Given that we need and want some time to relax, decompress and connect with each other before bed, this means we often go to bed way too late. We were often getting to sleep as late as midnight, only for our alarm to go off at 6.30am! Cue exhaustion.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how to fix this, including getting better at meal-planning so that we can eat earlier and thus start the boys bedtime routine earlier, so that we can be ready to start winding down at 9pm instead of 10pm. We’ve made a promising start on this.

We’re also committed to having less screen time in the evenings and reading more before bed so that we sleep better.

3. Daily meditation

My mind, body and soul has been craving more mindfulness in my day to day for months (if not years!) now. Having small children and a busy business to look after has meant that some of my spiritual practices have taken a back seat in recent years. I’m also not one who does well with typical, silent, sitting meditation and so for many years my meditative practice was running. However, since having children, as a result of a compromised pelvic floor and related lower back pain, running hasn’t been on the agenda for me.

A while ago my partner bought me some virtual reality goggles for my birthday so that I could use them for fitness classes when weather or workload prevented me from getting outside to exercise. What I’ve discovered recently is that they are also great for meditation.

I’ve found an amazing app called Tripp, which I’ve been using morning and night to meditate. The interactive, immersive nature of the guided meditations really works for me and I’m already feeling so much calmer and less stressed out.

4. Daily exercise

This one is huge for me. I know that a lack of exercise in recent years has left me low on energy and feeling disconnected from my body. Working online means I’m sitting down for much of the day and a lack of movement over time leaves me feeling sore and achy and less inclined to move my body. It’s a negative cycle.

I’m now doing a combination of walks in nature and boxing and dance classes on my virtual reality goggles to make sure I spend some time each day moving my body.

We also dusted off our bicycles at the weekend and went on a lovely family bike ride in nature which is something we’re committed to doing more of as a family. Being more active gives me heaps more energy.

5. Drinking more water

For years I’ve been in the bad habit of making myself a cup of coffee to drink on my client calls. Given that I can often have as many as 3 or 4 sessions a day, my caffeine intake has definitely contributed to low-level feelings of stress a feeling of being wired. And given that my go-to drink is coffee, I’m aware that I’m in no way drinking enough water and that doing so has a negative impact on my energy levels and overall sense of well being.

I’ve committed to drinking more water each day so that I avoid the effects of low-level dehydration and reap the benefits of drinking enough water each day.

And that’s it, five new habits (not resolutions) that I’m committed to implementing in my life this year.

I appreciate that none of the things on this list are particularly groundbreaking, but it’s been really helpful for me to think about the key habits I want to put in place that will have a ripple effect on both my personal and professional life. How about you? What new habits might support you in 2023? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

SIGN UP FOR MY SOULFUL STRATEGIES WEEKLY

 

Once a week, in the form of an e-letter, I share the best of what I know about building a business with integrity for conscious business owners.

The intention behind these letters is to be a voice for integrity within your (undoubtedly) cluttered inbox. To be the one email you can count on to contain strategic and soulful advice for building a business without selling your soul.

If you want to receive the Soulful Strategies Weekly, simply share with me your name and email address below and you’ll start recieving emails right away.