Breakthroughs in the Jungles Of Costa Rica
In 2016 I found myself sitting on the front steps of a villa in Costa Rica. It was the only place I could find some quiet and space to think as I was there for a mastermind experience that was very busy and somewhat overwhelming.
I had a giant pad of paper and colored markers and I was trying to write out the grand concept of "WHAT WAS MY MESSAGE TO THE WORLD." The purpose of my life.
No pressure or anything!
As I sat there, I suddenly realized how bonkers life really was.
I was literally in the jungle.
Watching wild macaw parrots perch nearby, curiously watching me watching them.
As I tried to focus my attention on my marketing message, it all seemed so ridiculous suddenly as I realized that even in this incredible experience, even in this wondrous moment of sitting in the Costa Rican paradise…
I was still trying to “get it right.”
I was trying to find the “right” way to tell people my purpose.
I was trying to pick the right purpose.
I was so busy trying to discover the RIGHT way to do my life, to build my business, to share my message.
That I wasn't for a moment considering the TRUE way.
Despite everything I knew, I was still trying to play by the rules of some arbitrary game that I was hell bent on winning.
Because if I did that, then I could prove I was good enough. Worthy.
I never did end up finding the right messaging for marketing my business on that trip.
But I did write something on my giant piece of paper that changed my life forever. A message that I felt swell up from somewhere deep inside me.
The rules aren't real.
There used to be this TV show called “whose line is it anyway.” that featured actors doing improv, and the host would randomly assign points and pick winners.
My favorite line of the show was the introduction where the host said “Welcome to the show where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.”
I love it because it's such a great reflection of life.
There are so many spoken and unspoken rules (outside of legal rules of course) that form part of our cultures or our social frameworks that we treat as deeply important.
But when we really stop to look at them, it’s often those same “rules” that we’re using to shame ourselves with.
The same rules we use to keep ourselves small and unfulfilled.
Stuck and afraid.
But, what if the rules ARE made up and the points don’t matter?
What if we don’t need permission to be and do exactly what we are called to in this life?
What if our work here is to learn how to be the biggest, most inspired and successful version of ourselves possible.
What if, starting today, you went beyond the made up rules, and instead step into;
Your own wisdom.
Your own inner guidance.
Your own intuition.
Imagine what you could do with your life then.
I cant hear myself over the noise of social media
Recently I sent an email to the Change One Woman community about the inner critic. The rules we think we’re supposed to live by and the things we believe about ourselves.
As I wrote, A familiar tug that I've been feeling recently started to pull at me. A muffled voice saying “over here…”
I don't often share the Woo Woo side of me because I believe very strongly in the responsibility of coaches to use evidence based modalities, and in my experience it's much easier to access our intuition and spiritual knowledge when we've cleaned up the stuff we can address with tangible strategies.
But It DOES play a part in all of our lives. And it plays a big role in my own.
Everything important I've ever done is because my intuition led me there.
It's why I left my home country.
Why I stopped fighting for relationships that at the time I was convinced were the ONE.
Why I walked out of my office on a random Tuesday morning, quitting my job on the spot and never looking.
Why I married a man I’d only met twice in person.
Moved countries again with no support, no money and really, no plan.
And why I jumped, full body dive, into coaching in 2011 long before having any real idea what I was doing or why.
Every great decision was guided by whatever the hell is on the other side of this mortal body.
And the tug I keep feeling recently, feels like a big one.
It finally made sense to me last night as I sat and thought about how extraordinary it is that I no longer really hear my inner critic, and when I do I recognize the self judgment and can address and release it.
I started to think about what I hear, what's going on in my mind now if not my inner critic.
And it suddenly hit me.
Everyone's voice.
I'm hearing everyone's voice. All the time. Seeing everyone, everywhere.
Social media has given us an extraordinary window into other people's lives. It's gifted us the chance to connect with, learn from and consume the work of EVERYBODY.
Which is unbelievable. It really is absolutely extraordinary.
Until I realized that I'm hearing everyone's voice but my own.
Like many other coaches and business owners, I spend so much time online. Endlessly hearing the thoughts and perspectives of people whose opinions and work I'm interested in, or am learning from. I’m so busy being on social media, that I’m not busy BEING.
But when you realize that you're spending over 1500 hours on average a year (yes I looked it up on my screen time tracker) on social media… it's no longer a surprise why there feels like there's so much noise.
I’m so tired of endless memes and repeated Sponsored Posts. I’m so tired of conversations with people centering on “this thing I saw on Facebook.” I'm tired of being sold something on every post.
And I am tired of whole interactions with humans being reduced to 10 second videos where it's HOOK EM OR DIE.
There's so much of everyone else's voice, that there's so little space for my own.
If I can't hear my own voice through the noise, or I start shifting the balance of trust to others… my own connection and growth slows down.
And if my growth slows down, so does my ability to help others.
SO I’m going off grid, feral. I’m opting out.
At the end of the week, I will be deleting my social media from my phone and computer. All of it.
I won't be posting to promote my business or sharing pictures of the duck.
I’m out.
Instead, I’m saying yes to phone calls and texts. To long email conversations and Zoom hang outs. To spending time getting to know every single woman in the Change One Woman community as though we lived next door. Yes to seeing my friends in person as much as possible.
I’m saying yes to reading. To writing and journaling.
Yes to tuning into whatever my intuition says is the next right step.
I don't know how long I’m going wild for, but I can promise you that I’ll be a different person when I come back.
And If you want pictures of the duck, better make sure you get on the mailing list and read your emails.
But I don’t want to be Dumbledore!
Have you ever taken a personality test or those “Which character in a TV show are you?” tests that so often pop up on Facebook...
and been incredibly disappointed at the results?
Last week a friend of mine asked me to do the “find your personal archetype” test in a program she was a part of and the result I got was the same as what I’ve always gotten in other tests.
The Sage.
And I had to laugh, because just for a moment, I felt an old flutter of annoyance and I wanted to throw it out and go
“NOPE I don't want to be that one!”
I wonder how many of us do that? Get given a glimpse of who we are and immediately reject it because it's not the one we think is best.
Like when I did the Harry Potter quiz and was picked as Dumbledore! Talk about disappointment!
Or with the “which Greek goddess are you?”
Being sad that I wasn't Aphrodite.
Every time I've done any of the archetype style quizzes, I wanted some kind of reassurance that I could be the character that was Visible, Sexy, and Desired.
I wanted to be the over the top glamorous, attractive and desired character in order to be what a lifetime of cultural conditioning has said I should be. Everything I thought would make me feel special and valued.
What I didn't realize though is that every time I was disappointed, every time I rejected the version of me I saw reflected in those tests, I was dismissing and destroying parts of myself.
Which means that I was so busy trying to be the glamazon version of who I thought I should be, that I never got to see the power and beauty inherent in who I actually am.
I never acknowledged parts of myself that have proven to be the MOST important and empowered aspects of who I am. (That also happen to be rather glamorous oddly enough!)
I sat in my garden this weekend, sipping tea and looking at a friend's Instagram. She was sharing her recent photo shoot pictures, which are SO the vibe that I tried to cultivate for myself in the past. Something that in the past would have set off a chain reaction of self loathing for days on end.
She looked phenomenal. She was in her element. In her power, and it was glorious to see.
It made me think of my favorite little black dress and my matching Hermes Kelly bag tucked up in my wardrobe.
They represent a part of me that I love and am grateful for, but it's also not the deepest or truest part of me.
and instead of comparing myself to my friend and judging myself as not good enough…
I let my bare feet sink deeper into the grass in the same way that I let myself sink deeper into who I am and smiled at my own self being gloriously inside my own strength and power.
Which is what happens when we stop rejecting ourselves and truly embrace who we are.
So, what part of your inner power have you been dismissing?
Love
Tarryne
P.S. This week I'm going to sharing more about my new group and opening up membership access! Keep an eye out for those emails...
What if there’s nothing wrong with you?
I remember the day I realized that there was nothing wrong with me like it was yesterday. It made me so mad.
It was the day that I realized everything I believed was a problem in my life could apparently be solved by buying something. But I had been buying and it wasn't working.
I felt like my body wasn't good enough, but I could buy a gym membership and Spanx.
My face wasn't good enough, but hooray for skincare and makeup.
I wasn't popular or cool, but I could buy alcohol, nice clothes and fancy experiences.
No matter what I thought was wrong with me, there was a product, service or expert I could spend money on in order to fix myself and finally feel accepted.
Except I didn’t feel any different.
I dieted and worked out till I got to a size 2. Spent lord knows how much money on clothes, shoes, and partying. I got therapy. I changed friends. Jobs. Bought more stuff. Read literally HUNDREDS of self help books. Took up new cooler hobbies. Bought more stuff. Dyed my hair.
When I think of how much time, money and emotional energy I have wasted over the years trying to fix what I thought was wrong with me, it makes me feel sick.
Because one day I realized that there was actually nothing was wrong with me. There was nothing to “fix.” I had simply BELIEVED there was something wrong
Every single human being has a deep rooted fear of rejection. It's primal, because if the tribe rejects us, we become vulnerable to the elements, wild animals and whatever other dangers lie outside of the safety of the cave.
So we spend a lot of time trying to be good enough. Trying to fit in. So that we are safe.
and in 1955 when America was trying to rescue its economy from the devastation of the second world war, economist Victor Lebow had this to say about it…
““Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption.”
Which in very simple language means, exploit peoples basic human needs and fears in a way that makes them buy stuff, stuff and more stuff. Make them feel like the answers can be found in things we can buy.
A whole part of our culture has developed to profit from our most basic human fears.
Pretty fucking sneaky if you ask me.
But back to my point…
In 14 years of coaching, I have never met a single person who DOESN’T think there is something wrong with them. No matter how successful, beautiful, thin, popular, talented. (or any other descriptor we believe will fix the problem)
It doesn't matter. We all have it. It's hardwired in.
But something interesting happens when you finally accept that it's programming, not TRUTH. When you do the work to let go of those fears, things get so much easier.
You stop trying to fix yourself and instead get excited about evolving.
You stop trying not to struggle and start to live a better life.
You start to evolve and grow and succeed from a place of acceptance and inspiration.
You stop judging yourself. You stop hating yourself and instead accept that you are unique and fascinating.
Because when you let go of your fears, you discover that what we really want is connection and authenticity.
With ourselves and others.
And you can't get that through judgment and consumption.
I was so jealous of her that I wanted to block her on Instagram.
Recently I felt a wave of jealousy and resentment wash over me as I saw a colleague achieve something really amazing.
I was so puzzled because I am also so proud of her and what she's doing with her work, so I couldn't figure out why I was feeling that creepy green eyed monster that made me want to scroll through everything she's ever done and copy her and at the same time, dismiss everything she's done and block her on Instagram!
And after a little while of feeling the yucky, sticky mean girl moment I sat down to dig into WHY.
When I was younger I experienced jealousy all the time. I would find myself deliberately going to see what people I was jealous of were doing, and then spend weeks in this crazy spiral of shame because I wasn't doing what they were.
It wasn't until I understood what jealousy actually is that I was able to stop my secret hater stalking.
We think jealousy is about other people having something we don't, but it's actually much deeper than that.
It's not about the other person at all.
Jealousy is what we experience when we think that what someone else has or is… is not possible for us.
Experiencing jealousy really just means that somewhere in our subconscious, we have a belief about ourselves that limits what we think we’re capable of.
When I really understood that, I realized that feeling jealous was a great way to see where subconsciously I was holding myself back.
I Think of jealousy as a “check engine” light for our self image. When it comes up, it means something that I think about myself has surfaced.
In this case, I realized that I was looking at my friend's achievement and unconsciously thinking…
“Well that's great for her… but I could never do that.
So now I’m setting out to prove myself wrong,
because that is the power of being jealous. When you’re able to see it for what it truly is it can be a powerful tool to help you see yourself in a different and more empowering way.
Are you in a toxic relationship with your goals?
It’s the end of January, we made it!
January somehow always seems like both the longest and the fastest month of the year where everyone’s frantically wanting to make changes while still recovering from December.
It's a weird month!
And I wanted to share something that I've been seeing my clients experience all month.
“I’m already behind.”
The first time I heard a client say that was January 4th. Yes, seriously.
So many of us create our plans for our goals from the perfectionist fantasy mindset, which in my experience tends to be unrealistic and with zero flexibility. And when life happens, as it inevitably does or things don't go 1200% according to plan, we throw up our hands and go…
I’VE ALREADY FAILED
I’m behind now… and I’ll never catch up.
I have something to tell you my darling friend… you might be in a toxic relationship relationship with your goals.
Imagine if you went on a date and met some lovely person and immediately decided that THIS person was the answer. Being with this person was going to fix everything. This relationship was going to change who you are and finally allow you to accept yourself.
That's a lot of pressure! And the moment that person didn't live up to the huge expectation of changing how you felt about yourself, you'd get disappointed and either double down on the pressure for them to fix you or maybe you’d just give up.
Not the healthiest of relationships right?
But that's how we treat our goals. When we set goals we often have this idea that reaching the goal is the point. And that result we attain is what will make us happy.
So when things don't go perfectly we freak out because we make it mean that we won't get that result and we’ll never be happy.
But that's not actually how it works.
Our goals aren’t there to make us happy, but to change us.
In order to achieve a goal, to do something we’ve never done before we actually have to go through a process of transformation. We essentially become a new version of ourselves.
We become the person who can achieve that goal.
And THAT does not happen in a perfectly planned and executed way.
Transformation is messy. Transformation takes time. It takes trial and error. It takes practice.
There is NEVER “perfect progression”.
Who we become during that transformation is the purpose of our goals because that is what changes who we are and how we feel about ourselves.
So if you’re feeling behind or like you've failed… breathe… breathe again… and take off the pressure.
Change is a messy process, let it be messy.
I wasnt part of the problem, I was the whole problem.
This girl wasn’t part of the problem. She was the WHOLE ASS problem.
For no reason whatsoever I couldn’t sleep last night. So I spent some time on Facebook, as one does, and found myself reminiscing about old jobs, friendships and relationships I’ve not thought about in years.
A quick trip into my old messages reminded me of why.
It was an absolute drama filled mess.
Seriously though, I don’t know how anyone put up with me in my 20’s. (Thank you to those that did and have still stuck around )
The more I read through decades dead conversations and thought about so many difficult interactions, a common thread began to emerge.
I was always the victim in every experience.
I was always at odds and always misunderstood. I can see so clearly now how I was always looking for someone to acknowledge me.
The more I read and the more I played those memories in my mind, turning each one over looking for clues I realized the common denominator in all of them.
I was a liar.
The root cause of every single issue had been me not being honest.
I had people pleased, I pretended to be who I thought people wanted me to be. Did what was “expected” to be accepted or loved. Not honest about what I wanted. Dismissing what was important to me. Never saying no.
Never taking responsibility for my part in any mess.
And lying to myself.
Telling myself that things were out of my control and that I was helpless in my circumstances.
Always waiting for someone else to fix all the problems for me.
The problems I was actually causing.
Ironic isn’t it. And all the ingredients for a miserable experience.
I know I’m a VERY different person to that frightened, frustrated young woman I was…
but I also know that patterns repeat if we don’t actively change them.
So I started thinking about where it shows up now.
When I want to blame the economy, the social media algorithm, the alignment of the planets or anything else that I tell myself has more control over my life than I do.
The more I looked for it, the more I saw very clearly that there is only one real obstacle that I have to deal with on a daily basis.
Me.
When I lie to myself and tell myself that I don’t know how. Or that I can’t figure it out. Or that it’s too hard. Or I’m not good enough. Or that people will judge me and that matters. Or that it’s not fair.
It always comes back to me.
In the end, we will be either our biggest obstacle or our greatest advocate.
It depends on whether or not we are willing to do the work of facing ourselves.
Your past is not the key to your future.
This morning I was chatting with a client who is deciding what her next steps are and was struggling to visualize it.
We decided to do a creative brainstorming exercise where I asked her to imagine…if she could do anything as a business what would she want to do?
She started talking about a former job that she could potentially use the experience from but didn’t know how to make that a business.
But that wasn't what I’d asked her.
So I asked again.
If you could do ANYTHING, what would you WANT to do?
She started telling me about a different former job trying to figure out the same thing.
And that is why she was so stuck.
Often when we imagine our futures, when we want to make a change or when we think about what we want in our lives…
We think about now, but slightly better.
We envision our futures based on what we already have.
Which means that our vision of what's possible is based on our past, and limited by it. Because we are telling ourselves that what is possible for us is something that's only a few steps forward from what we already have.
Imagine if instead of “I want to be healthier than I am now”, we thought things like:
“I’m going to become a person who prioritizes their health and is in exceptional physical condition.”
Or instead of, “I want to have a bigger house than I do now, thinking “I want to become someone who has enough financial assets that I can live anywhere I want.”
Or even “I want a job that makes more money than I do now”, becoming, “I’m going to create a career shift that allows me complete control of how much money I can earn.”
If we limit the potential of our future by the experience of our past, we miss out on the vast possibilities that could be available to us.
It makes me think about when people used horses for transport. Hundreds of years worth of selective breeding and trial and error went into trying to breed horses that were faster, stronger or had more endurance than the ones before them. The future of transportation was limited to simply improving what had been done in the past.
And then someone said, “What if I created something that didn't require horses?”
And the engine was born paving the way for trains and cars.
Imagine what might happen if you stopped looking at your past to decide what's possible for your future.
I was a great coach, but I had ZERO clients.
The first time I decided to go “all in” on my business I spent several months putting a ton of effort into all the things I thought were important. I had a nice business card, a cute website with a blog I updated twice a week. My business Facebook page had 12 THOUSAND followers (something I was extremely proud of) and I went to so many networking events that my husband started to wonder if I was ever going to spend an evening at home.
I also had ZERO clients.
Not for lack of trying though! I was doing all the things that I was supposed to do, but nothing worked.
I remember sitting in my car outside of a networking lunch trying to get myself together before going in. I was in the middle of one of those “I’m so frustrated I'm crying hysterically” moments.
The thought of going into yet another meeting, standing up and awkwardly telling people what I do, then desperately making uncomfortable conversation to try to get clients before slinking out in defeat… It was all too much.
I left without going in and got a job the following week.
I didn't realize it then, but while I was a talented coach, I was a terrible business owner. I was lacking skills that I didn't even realize I needed.
I believed that If I was a good enough coach that word would magically spread and clients would just fall from the sky.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
But that's often how we talk about building businesses in the consulting and coaching space.
In order to build a profitable and sustainable business, we have to think like business owners and we need to build the skill sets needed for solid business foundations.
Something I now spend a significant amount of my coaching work helping woman to do in their own businesses.
It’s my mission to make sure that there is no more crying in frustration outside of networking meetings. No more Instagram accounts lying dormant because you don't know what to post.
No more mission driven coaches giving up on their dreams because nothing seems to work.
Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to be teaching the foundational business building skills in a group setting for all the coaches and consultants that can’t seem to get their business off the ground.
We start on Thursday Nov 9th, and I’d love for you to join us.
Today my To Do list put me in a bit of a panic.
I have a couple of big events and projects happening in October and early November, so this morning I spent some time planning out the rest of my month and everything urgent that I needed to get done.
After I’d put all the various tasks into my calendar and project managed everything I felt pretty good. It all fits. It’s busy but not insane.
Great!
And then I felt it happen.
A flutter of anxiety that snuck up into my body and whispered…
That’s a lot!
Do you really have enough time for it all?
As I listened to that little voice I could feel myself shrink. A project that felt totally achievable just minutes before suddenly seemed daunting.
What if it doesn't work?
What if it's not good enough?
I need more time to make it perfect.
Within minutes I’d gone from having a perfectly doable plan to wanting to cancel things, drop out of events and push out my deadlines another month. And if not for the fact that I am well practiced at dealing with those thoughts, that's exactly what I would have done.
Delayed the projects. Canceled the event. Not showing up to the opportunities.
That my friend is the power of doubt.
Our mindset is one of the most powerful tools that we have, and if you're not actively using it in an intentional way then it's going to use itself against you. The greatest business strategy in the world cant help you if your own thoughts are slowing you down.
Because it's not that I want to fail or focus on the negatives or the fears.
My brain is simply designed to do that.
It’s designed to show me the worst case scenario.
It’s supposed to argue for NOT doing things that require effort or sacrifice.
It’s always going to try to give me good sounding reasons to quit.
That's its job.
MY job is to see and understand it for what it is, and choose.
My job is in those moments to learn the skill of being able to see that the creeping anxiety, the playing small is just my brain saying…
“Let’s not do anything that feels scary or takes a lot of effort. Let’s stay small and quiet and safe.”
and say back to it,
“That wont get me what I want. So I’m doing this. I’ll find a way.”
Then get to work.
Don’t let your fears run your business!
I used to be an opera singer.
For many years my goal was to be a professional opera singer.
I was doing all the things. Bi weekly voice lessons. I studied music theory and languages. I even learned to play piano… rather badly to be fair!
I belonged to an opera company and did regular shows. I was on the competition circuit and did pretty well. I won several scholarships for being a “promising classical performer.”
I even made money from it, singing at more weddings and funerals than anyone ever needs to go to!
But despite all signs pointing to a possible career in performing arts I had two overwhelming thoughts about it.
I’ll never be good enough to succeed.
What if I fail and all this work is for nothing.
Not a mindset that I found particularly motivating.
What it did do was create massive anxiety and perfectionism. And impatience.
Every time I didn't win a role I thought I should have or saw someone else succeed, I told myself
“I’m never going to succeed.”
Every time I struggled with a song or didn't get the response I should have from an audience.
“See, it's not working.”
So I stopped trying so hard. I stopped working on my voice outside of lessons. I stopped being prepared for rehearsals. I stopped even auditioning.
The anxiety of thinking I might fail made practicing so uncomfortable that I avoided it.
So I got no more roles. Won no more scholarships. I stopped progressing.
And eventually, I stopped doing anything musically related, because why bother if it wasn't going to work anyway.
I stopped doing the very things that contributed to my potential for success.
The ONLY things that would actually create success.
And so, of course it didn't work. I did fail to succeed.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with you…
I see newer business owners doing exactly the same thing.
When a social media post doesn't get the engagement you think it's supposed to.
When you don’t sell as many places in your program or course as you wanted to.
When you’re struggling to sign clients.
When it feels hard and there's so much fear of it not working.
What do you do?
You procrastinate.
Slow down.
Second guess yourself.
Stay stuck in frustration.
And you stop doing all the things that will make success inevitable.
Building a business takes a lot of resilience because things often don’t go the way we think they should, especially at first.
But if you give up because you’re afraid to fail, then YOU guarantee your failure.
If you believed success was inevitable, what would you be willing to do?
Why your business is like a cake fail.
Last week I was at an industry mastermind with about 1500 business owners all gathered together. AMAZING.
BUT
Something I noticed when talking to so many of my colleagues was that everyone is looking at the wrong place for inspiration.
And making themselves miserable over it.
I spoke to many people who were looking at coaches with very successful businesses, with all their slick marketing and funnels and programs and groups and memberships and money…
Asking themselves
"Why isn’t that me?”
“Whats wrong with me that I’m not there?”
The thing is that your first few years in business are never ever going to look the same as those bigger businesses do now.
If you want the truth of what your benchmark should be, you need to find out what those businesses looked like in their earlier years.
I rarely watch TV but sometimes my husband will put on an episode of a show that I delight in called Nailed It.
It features amateur home bakers attempt to recreate the stunning and imaginative desserts and cakes created by a master patisserie and chocolatier.
The results are HYSTERICAL.
It may be cake but it looks absolutely NOTHING like the experts version that they are trying to copy!
But here’s the thing that always intrigues me. The cakes that taste good are the ones that win. Even though they might look like they were baked by Frankenstein’s monster while he was blindfolded.
Your business is going to be the same.
In the first few years, it’s going to look like a little bit like a Nailed It cake.
Wonky, not particularly pretty and not at all like the more experienced business owners current business does.
But the true test of a business, is whether or not you are selling value to your clients.
Delivering Value is what builds your business. Not how big or pretty your business looks.
It’s just like the wonky cake that tastes good. It will still win because the value is there.
Which means that instead of comparing yourself to everyone else and despairing about what your business “SHOULD” look like, you need to put your focus on nailing a few key things and some foundational skills FIRST.
Strategy
Mindset
Support Structures
It's not grey hair. It's a reclamation.
Yesterday I stopped hiding my grey hair.
More than that, I actually had a stylist accentuate my grey streaks.
And if you watched my Instagram stories, you might have heard me talk about how uncomfortable I was as I sat in my car outside the salon.
I kept thinking, “I’m going to look old and out of touch.”
“People will think I’m weird”
“I’ll look like I've stopped caring.”
“I’m letting myself go.”
One of the hardest things I’ve had to continually work though in my own journey is worrying about what other people will think and trying to be good enough for them.
For years that meant trying to fit a vision that someone else had for me of who I should be.
No matter how hard I tried, I could never be thin enough, pretty enough, young enough, old enough, quiet enough, demure enough, smart enough, organized enough, social enough, cool enough…. you get the picture.
Trying to be everyone's expected version of me is a full time, completely unachievable job.
And it showed up EVERYWHERE in my life.
From relationships I got into because I needed someone to validate my sense of “enoughness”, to holding myself back in my business for years because I believed that what I did was never ever good enough for people to want.
I feel like I've spent decades of my life trying to dance on the fine line of always meeting other people's expectations.
Always at the expense of my own.
Always at the expense of what I wanted to say.
Who I wanted to be.
How I wanted to look.
Which is so interesting… because the more I let go of what I think I “SHOULD” be, the happier and more successful in all ways I become.
And the more I do it, the more I uncover ways that I’m still holding back.
Like feeling I had to hide my grey hairs.
I knew I was going to feel nervous and I worried about regretting it.
What I did not expect was seeing myself in the mirror with my “wise old witch of the woods”, hard earned grey stripes and having the sudden overwhelming sense of liberation
Of coming home to myself again.
It’s not just hair. It’s a reclamation.
It’s one more bold action towards stepping into who I AM.
It’s letting go of just one more version of not good enough.
It’s refusing to buy into the idea that a woman should age gracefully, and quietly.
Rejecting the idea that my value lies only in my youth or beauty.
I feel like I’m only just getting started with what I have to offer the world.
I have shit to say.
And I’m only going to get louder.
In the words of Captain John Paul Jones when he was told to surrender…
I have yet begun to fight.
Why mindset IS business strategy.
I was chatting to my mum recently about some of my earlier coaching work which was exclusively mindset and self development and she mentioned that she missed the focus being on that.
It was so interesting to think about because, about 90% of what I work on IS that.
But when people first find me, that's generally not what they are looking for.
When building a business people think that all they need is the right strategy.
Strategy is ESSENTIAL, without it you don't have a clear plan and your brain will just be running around feral, causing chaos.
Having a strategy means that you're spending your time and energy on things that actually move you in the right direction and are purposeful, intentional…
but strategy is maybe 20% of what makes someone successful.
Because the greatest strategy in the world doesn't matter if you’re not following through on it. If you're procrastinating doing the work.
No amount of strategy can save you from yourself if you give up whenever there are obstacles or failure.
There's no strategy that can fix you self sabotaging through pleasing people, or fear of what people might think.
And there is no plan that can prevent the fall out from believing that you're not good enough.
I love to be able to offer my people really practical support with their business strategy. In fact one of my most fun sessions recently was sitting with a client and friend and rewriting her website copy line by line until it felt like it really reflected who she is.
But without her mindset being in the right place, we could never have done that.
If she was still holding onto a belief like “I don;t know the right thing to say” we would never have been able to think clearly about what she wanted to truly communicate.
Or like a client I had a few years ago who wanted to publish adult coloring in books or original artwork, but who was believing an uncle who said “Nobody buys those things.” because it fed her own fears, and so almost didn't launch her book…
Finding the strategy that works for YOUR business also requires a strong mindset.
Because despite what people selling $20 business strategy templates online would have you believe in their marketing, there IS no one size fits all strategy. It's a process of educated guesses, some trial and error, and the skill of being able to evaluate results without letting your fears tell you that nothing is ever going to work.
It takes a willing and open mindset to be able to walk yourself through the journey of finding your perfect strategy.
And even if you create the perfect strategy, A plan is only valuable when it's supported by the mindset that creates action. That is willing to be uncomfortable and grow. That explores and resolves resistance.
The mindset that transcends our fears and primal desire to stay safe and not rock the boat.
A mindset that is committed to becoming the version of ourselves that is capable of achieving our potential.
THAT is the secret success to business. That is the magic formula to getting what you want.
Without it, all you have is a good plan.
And this is true not just of business building but anything you want to create in your life. Mindset plays a huge part!
I like to think of the work that I do not so much as helping people build businesses, that's a side effect. What I do is help build business women. By helping someone BECOME the version of themselves that IS capable of creating a successful business, the success becomes inevitable.
Someone was going to get slapped, and other stories about the patriarchy.
Last week I had dinner with some friends, among them a relatively new addition to the group who had been a stay at home dad for the first few years of his son's life.
With his son now heading off to school, his wife wanted him to get a job in order to help with the bills.
And he was having a really hard time with it.
He started telling the group that it was really difficult because he couldn't figure out how to manage dropping his son off at school, going to work, picking his son up and then coming home to deal with housework and dinner making etc. He was really overwhelmed and didn't think it was possible.
He was angry that he was expected to both care for his son and have a job…
Every woman at the table just stared at him. One of them looked so annoyed I was afraid she would slap him.
After the initial amusement and irritation of the women wore off, everyone started giving him advice on how to make it work and ways that they managed to pull it off.
It was quite the education for him.
Listening to the various pieces of wisdom everyone offered him reminded me yet again that the system we live in, was not designed for us.
The system of working and making money is not set up for the needs of caregivers. Whether you have children, or you’re the primary person who cares for your home environment, the system is not made for us.
In fact it works against us.
In the United States, nearly 40% of households now have a woman as the primary “breadwinner”, defined as the person contributing 60% or more of the total household income. While nearly 70% of women report still being fully responsible for child and home care.
Which means the system isn't changing fast enough to reflect the massive shift in economic realities over the last few decades.
This is just one of the reasons why I LOVE seeing more and more women owning their own businesses.
In no other environment do women have the level of control over their time and incomes than in self employment.
In very few other forms of employment do women have the ability to design their life, responsibilities and priorities in a way that actually works FOR them.
It's also well documented that in female owned businesses there is higher employee retention, partially due to more flexibility to allow for family priorities and a greater focus on the well-being of employees.
Which to me means that women owning and running successful businesses is part of the pathway to changing the system.
Business ownership is female empowerment.
And I’m here for it!
Another strategy wont save you.
A fellow coach asked me yesterday what the most common problem I help women with is.
She was expecting it to be something like how to market your business or the best strategy to get clients.
But that's honestly about 10% of the work I do.
The problem I help women entrepreneurs with most, is self trust.
Often when women start a business they go out and get a list of things to do and a basic strategy thinking that if they just follow it, then their business will be a success.
And in most cases that would be true!
Except they don't actually follow the strategy
They don't do the things that would create their success. 99.9% of the time it sounds like…
“I don't have enough time”
“I have too much else on my plate”
“I need another course / certification / training before I’m ready”
All of these are smokescreens. Reasonable sounding justifications that hide the real issue.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“What if people judge me?”
“What if I fail?”
“What if people get mad at me?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m not good enough.”
These are the voices of mistrust. The things I hear most from women before they are able to believe in themselves, and from my clients when we first start working together
And if you think about the things that YOU would like to be doing or achieving that you just can't seem to get any momentum on… listen very closely beyond your first layer of excuses.
You’ll hear these sentences. You’ll hear the fears that stop you from moving forward.
So take a moment to really check in with yourself before you decide you need a new strategy or that maybe being a successful business owner isn't for you.
Find the real reason, then get to work on challenging your fears and building unshakable trust in yourself.
Comparison is the thief of potential.
There's an expression that says “Comparison is the thief of joy” but I think it's far worse than that.
Comparison is also the thief of potential and of self belief.
Culturally we have this idea that comparison will push us to greater heights, that competition makes us strive to be better than we are.
And sometimes it does, but it comes at a cost because of what it does to our self of self worth.
When I was 10, I had a teacher who kept a star chart in the classroom. Every time we did something well we would be rewarded with a star. I think there was some kind of reward for the person who got the most, but to be honest I had no interest in the end prize, only in my own stars.
I was extremely proud of my stars and how hard I had worked to get them, until one day when I was showing them off, it was pointed out to me that someone else had more stars.
Which was true. And which was said in a very loving way in order to motivate me to strive for more.
Instead of inspiring me to try harder and achieve more stars. It shut me down.
Because what I took from that experience was that my stars weren't enough. I wasn't good enough.
So why bother trying at all.
I stopped even trying to get stars.
I had the same experience of being a classical singer, in my jobs, relationships and even in my early days as a coach.
Allowing myself to play the comparison game, or “compare and despair” as I've heard it called, shut me down and stopped me from actually making any kind of progress at all.
Until I stopped doing it to myself because I learned to understand the mechanism that it relies on.
The fear of not being good enough and risking being rejected.
When we compare we will always lose. Because no matter what, we can always find someone who does something “better” or who is smarter, more talented, more successful or whatever.
Which means that inevitably comparison tells us we aren’t good enough.
There are generally two responses to comparison. Drive harder to try to prove yourself, or give up entirely.
If you’re striving from a desire to see what you are personally capable of, it can be thrilling and motivating.
If you’re doing it to prove you’re good enough, it will never be enough.
If driving harder is your response, you’re also eventually guaranteed to fail and burn out, because you will always find someone who does it better, especially if you're always on the lookout for someone doing it better than you.
Every world record eventually gets broken. Every achievement is eventually surpassed.
I’d love you to take a look at your life, your work and what you believe is your potential and ask yourself where you're comparing yourself. Be honest with the impact that it has on you.
And I want to offer you a different perspective.
The world has plenty of space for all of us, with your various gifts and abilities. It’s only in allowing ourselves to truly be who WE ARE without comparison or judgment that we are most able to fulfill our potential.
Comparison offers us nothing of value. It’s literally just shooting yourself in the foot.
The freedom to allow your potential to unfold without comparison will lead you to a much greater level of success than you currency believe is possible.
The great productivity lie.
If I got a dollar every time I hear someone say “I’m not productive enough” I’d probably be retired and living in a castle in the south of France within 5 years.
This is one of the biggest things that women come to me for coaching on.
I have to be more productive.
And yes, most of us could benefit greatly from getting better at time management, being more strategic with our actions and more focused when we do work.
But that's only part of the story.
The other part is that often we’re striving for a perfectionist day dream about what productivity looks like.
We have this idea (largely taught to use by traditional business structures) that productivity means ALWAYS producing. We think that we’re supposed to sit our ass down at our desk and work for 8 hours or we aren't doing enough.
It's even worse when we run our own business. Because then we often tell ourselves that we should be working ALL. THE. TIME. or our business won't be successful.
That if we aren't the poster child for being productive, that we are failures.
We are taught to believe that our worth as people, can be measured by how productive we are.
I’m here to tell you that view productivity needs to change.
We need to stop believing that productivity is the same thing as how many hours we work.
Time isn't what creates productivity.
Strategy and focus is.
Strategy allows us to not only be working on things that actually matter, but we can be strategic about when and how we do our work.
The biggest mistake I see business owners make is not having a strategy, so they end up spending hours of their time on things that end up not actually making a difference. Using the “throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks!” method, isn’t strategic.
You need a strategy if you’re going to be productive.
Focus is also not something we do, it's something we create.
It's a combination of being clear about what we actually need to focus on, rather than having mile long to do lists.
It requires support structures like good time management, and being well rested. Because tired brains don’t focus! (And if you have ADHD like me, some the structures will include how you work around your brains obstacles)
It requires the mindset that we have to learn and cultivate in order to allow us to deliberately put our attention onto something.
Productivity is an environment we create for ourselves, not a giant dirty stick that we need to beat ourselves up with.
So as you start thinking about this coming week, try asking yourself…
How can I support my productivity this week rather than beat myself up with it?
Making decisions other people wont like.
Today I had a super uncomfortable moment where I had to make a pretty big decision that I knew other people weren't going to be happy about.
I spent most of my weekend thinking about all the ways that I could try to make something work, and I couldn't find an outcome that's actually in my best interests.
Every option I considered was really just a form of people pleasing.
So as I drove into town to my office, I took a really deep breath and imagined what it would feel like to just do what I actually want to do.
There was immediately a feeling of calm and being grounded.
Self trust embodied.
Quickly followed by all the thoughts of people being upset and disappointed, but that feeling of calm was too clear for me to pretend that it's not the right decision.
I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with being a business owner…
Being a successful business owner requires a huge amount of self trust.
It's probably one of the most difficult things to cultivate, and it's also one of the things that's most likely to slow down our progress. In business, you’re going to find yourself faced with tough decisions… and moments where its hard to trust that you know what to do.
A lack of self trust looks like:
Second guessing our decisions.
Constantly changing the plan when things feel hard or scary.
Asking EVERYONE for an opinion before we take action on something.
Doing things that other people say we should, even though there's a little voice telling us no.
Constantly doing “research, taking courses and training programs but never actually moving forward.
Waiting till we feel “ready”.
Telling ourselves we don't know what we’re doing.
Over explaining ourselves or justifying our actions.
Constantly feeling like we’ve done it wrong.
And if this is you, the good news is that it's totally normal.
Culturally we have been taught that there's a right and a wrong way to do things and that there's an expert out there who has all the right answers.
We learn from very early on that making mistakes or risking failure is bad so we shouldn’t do anything out of the box or that isn't the “right” way.
So we quieten down that little voice inside us that is so filled with wisdom and fire.
We tell ourselves we don't know enough, that we have to see what other people think we should do.
That we should only act if we are sure it's the right way.
And in the process, we lose the very thing that creates incredible success.
Our uniqueness.
If you look at any wildly successful person, they all have one distinct thing in common. Their uniqueness drives what they do.
They know that they have something extraordinary to do here, and they are willing to trust their own voice even when things feel hard.
I’d love you to try what I did this morning.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what you would be doing differently if you trusted yourself and didn’t worry about disappointing people or getting it wrong…
What do you think your life and your business would look like?
Business ownership is an emotional rollercoaster.
Some days you're on top with a HELL YEAH I GOT TWO NEW CLIENTS!!
And you spend the rest of the day being super productive because you just KNOW that it's all going to work out and your business is booming.
The next day you have 10 people unsubscribe from your email list and you get a negative comment on Instagram. Suddenly you’re face first into a pint of ice cream because this is the beginning of the end and you might as well give up because your business is going to fail.
The emotional ride of being a business owner is the craziest roller coaster.
And this is normal. Whenever something happens, our emotional response is always there.
But what we do with that emotional roller coaster can make or breaks our business.
Think for a moment about the days where you 100% believe that your business is actually going to work and make money.
When I have those days, I am the productivity fairy. I’m a business ninja!
I get SO MUCH DONE. Way more than I had planned!
I have ALL THE NEW IDEAS!
On the days where I believe my business is doomed however?
My brain tells me,
“Don’t bother sending out that email, no ones reading them anyway.”
“You might as well skip going to that networking event, no one wants to work with you.”
Everything that I have planned that would make my business succeed, my brain wants to cancel.
And this is why your strategy is so incredibly important.
If you left your business up to your emotions to run, it would be chaos. On the difficult days, we make random and frightened decisions.
Your strategy, your action plan, your accountability…
Those things are all in place to support you in the moments where your fear wants you to hide and not do anything.
Because it's those moments where you need the clearest path. The “set in stone” to do list. The coach that holds you to your strategy.
Your plan is what keeps your businesses growing when your humanness has its doubts.
Your plan is a support system. Use it!