I really should be titling this post “the mindset you need to not lose your marbles while you run a business”, but that might be too long and scare you away. Which would be counterproductive; because you do need to know this mindset in order to survive. And not lose your marbles. And maybe learn to like yourself and be happy, maybe.
Ready?
The secret to running a business (and stay sane) is this: make it part of your inner journey.
You know, your inner process, your way of “working with your stuff”. Your “self-help” practice, your “self-development”, your own “personal-growth” path.
I call it “personal work” or “working with your stuff”.
You know, that practice of becoming more and more conscious of our own fears, traumas, dramas, which secretly run our lives hidden in our subconscious.
What is this “stuff”???
They are subconscious parts of ourselves that don’t feel safe wanting success, or comfort, or abundance, they resist change. Old patterns of behaviour, outdated ideas of who you are that you’ve outgrown, old ideas of how the world works.
Examples include: “I’m not good enough” “Nobody will like me” “The world is scary” “I can’t be successful”.(For an non-exhaustive but still pretty comprehensive list, click here)
Personal work is the best way to grow your business. Because it’s working through all the self-sabotaging mindsets that allows you to try things when you know that you may get it wrong. And there’s ALWAYS the chance you will get things wrong, always! That possibility never goes away, so you either learn to work with it or you stay stuck.
Still confused? Here’s an example
Say you struggle with self-love. I do too. (And so does pretty much everyone else, so we’re in good company!)
You’ve done some work on yourself and you know that this is a subconscious belief. Go you for doing the work!
And now you want to start a business, and you’re facing the prospect of… dare I say it… marketing yourself.
Oh no! Suddenly you want to run away and never think about doing anything ever again. The fear! The anxiety! The dread!
You may procrastinate on your marketing. Or you may copy someone else’s brand, to better hide yourself. Or you may spend all your time on social media secretly resenting everyone else because you think “I’ll never be as good as them” and using THAT to stop all your business plans.
In other words, you will subconsciously self-sabotage every step of the way because, secretly, you don’t think of yourself worthy of good things happening. And all of these examples are rooted in that struggle with self-love.
So… what are we to do?
We make our business work part of our self-work. We use conscious awareness, which is a fancy way of saying “we pay close attention to what is really going on”. We get curious, in a kind, compassionate, non-judgemental way.
How??? Like this.
Back to our example, you are thinking about maybe, possibly, beginning to market yourself. Putting yourself out there. Which is terrifying enough, so points to you.
What happens if you follow the traditional way:
“OK, I need to market this workshop I want to teach, but I have no idea where to start and I’m overwhelmed by all the options. I’m paralysed, I’m going to bed and never think about this again. I’m obviously not cut out for this”.
What happens when you make your business part of your personal work:
“OK, I need to market this workshop I want to teach, but I have no idea where to start. Hmmm, ok, I’m going to sit for a moment and look at this sense of being lost and overwhelmed. It’s really bad. I notice that I want this but also I don’t. What do I need? I need to stop feeling overwhelmed. I need to feel safe. OK, what can I do to feel safe? I can look up one option. I can ask my friend to recommend me something. I’m going to sit with a cup of calming tea to feel safe and think about things that don’t scare me. “
And after you do this for a while you may notice…
“Oh, wait, this overwhelm comes from wanting to control everything. I know I have a tendency to want to make everything perfect. OK, this is definitely my stuff. How can I work with this as I build my business? Maybe I can leave something imperfect and try to let it be? Or I could commit myself to reaching 8 out of 10 on my copy? Perhaps I can make intentional spelling mistakes, just for fun?”
See the difference?
In the first scenario, you are starting out stuck in fear, and you don’t make progress.
In the second scenario, you are starting out stuck in fear, but you’re working with that fear and moving forwards, even if only a little bit.
And that makes all the difference. Because small progress adds up. And before you know it you can do things that you were terrified of. Not only that but you begin to do things you never imagined possible before.
This is the best way to survive in business
First, because as your business grows you are bound to face new challenges.
New fears will get triggered. You will have to expand your sense of what is possible. Your identity will be shaken up. It’s a natural part of all growth, and the best way to be prepared for it is to keep up the constant practice of checking in with yourself and interacting with your “Stuff” in one way or another.
If your business is always growing, and you are always working with your stuff, then you both grow together.
You will find no shortage of bumps along the road when you run your own business, and if you want to move past them, you’re gonna have to work with what’s getting in the way. And often, that’s ourselves.
There’s fear of failure, fear of being seen, fear of coming across as incompetent. There’s struggles with charging enough, with doing enough, with over promising, and under delivering (and vice versa).
There’s dealing with other people’s criticism, or your jealousy. There’s dealing with money, the asking for it and the handling in it afterwards.
In short, there’s a lot of potential for self-sabotage at every stage of your business journey.
But there’s another reason.
You could skip all the “inner work” and just focus plainly on marketing, copywriting, time management, conversion rates, funnels, SEO and the like. And who knows, maybe it will be enough, maybe you won’t run into any great “identity crisis” or writer’s block or procrastination or anything like that. It could happen.
But what if you don’t succeed? What if you make money, but not as much as you hoped, or what if you invest in a big Marketing Strategy(tm) and it doesn’t work? Then you will have a sinking feeling of having wasted all your money, your time, and you dreams of youth.
On the other hand, if you do the inner work as well as learn about how to run a business then at the very least you will grow into a wiser, kinder, saner person. That’s guaranteed to happen even if you don’t succeed like you hoped.
And chances are that as you keep working on your self-sabotaging patterns, sooner or later you’ll grow out of them.
And then your business can really take off.