We are each born with an innate sense of what’s true.
I learned this when I was in corporate, and I was nominated for a coach training program where we were trained to be essentially diversity coaches, helping people to have good reporting relationships by identifying any potential biases they could have about the other person up front.
In our training, we each needed to sit in the center of the circle and ‘tell the truth’ about our inherited beliefs about things like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. And everyone around the circle would give a thumbs up or a thumbs down if we were telling the truth.
I learned a profound lesson in this training – we can sense when someone is telling the Truth. Now, growing up in a household in which lots of things were said that I didn’t agree with at the core, I had almost lost my way in terms of what was true. Yet it was undeniable that every one of us had that sense when we really got down to it.
So what do we do when we make a decision to do something like start a business? And we don’t necessarily know how, and we need to rely on ‘experts’ who have gone before us, and we need to stretch ourselves and do things we’ve never done before?
How do we honor our Truth then?
This week I had some issues with my plumbing – the water wasn’t draining in the tub. Kimmi called a plumber to come out and take a look. With his equipment he couldn’t fix it. He seemed a little uncertain about what was going on. He referred me to another plumber who had the equipment I would need.
The new plumber had a camera and could see where the problem was. He didn’t know what the problem was, but it was Friday afternoon – no time to get a permit or get anyone else to look – he recommended digging up where the problem was, for a hefty price tag.
Now this guy’s personality really bugged me. He talked – A LOT. We could just say he wasn’t ‘my people.’ But he was there, and I desired working plumbing.
I won’t go into the details of the 4 plumbers I ended up needing to work with, and the shadiness of the situation, but lets just say it wasn’t the best decision.
Now we can look back and say, “So, he talked a lot. Big deal.” And that is essentially what I told myself that had me go ahead and hire him. In retrospect, my gut was telling me he was not my people. And ignoring it had a cost.
I’ve had a lifetime of little lessons like this, of putting the opinions of ‘experts’ above my own inner knowing. It’s why I focus so much on believing yourself.
I’ve seen a lot of this recently, between my clients and my own experience. It’s easier to defer to an expert so it becomes their fault when it doesn’t work out. And it is not easy to make a decision to not work with someone simply because your gut says ‘not my people.’
A couple quick examples:
Let’s say you’ve hired a VA and you really like them. After all, you are the type of person who sees the good in people. And they are really good at some things, and yet things aren’t getting done the way you’d like, or you sense that sometimes their guidance leads you astray. You want to trust your gut, but you feel bad letting them know. (That’s another article – I’ll talk about feeling bad next week)
Let’s say you get crystal clear about a vision you have for your business. But before you know it you’ve clicked on some free training ad on Facebook (I love Facebook ads, by the way), and next thing you know you are watching a training that gives you three reasons why your idea won’t work. Perhaps they are sharing statistics on why you need to launch a certain way, and your vision involved doing it a different way. You want to trust your gut because this vision of yours really felt inspired. But here is this expert questioning what you believed!
Let’s say your friend hired a coach that they think is amazing, and they encourage you to hire that person as well. That’s awesome – we love when people hire coaches, and we love great experiences. But when you check into this person, they just don’t vibe with you. They might be fantastic and get great results, but your gut says they are not your person for this stage. You want to trust your gut, but you question it because all these other people made the decision one way, and what if you’re wrong?
You’ll never know how right you are until you’ll let yourself be wrong.
So here’s the thing. In business you’ll take a lot of chances. My clients are challenged to try things they are uncertain about – if they weren’t they wouldn’t grow. But they chose me because of a gut “yes, you’re my person” that was in alignment for them, so they are willing to push through their own self doubt. When you get into a relationship with a gut yes, then it is worth believing in that decision through and through… make the decision and make it right.
In most instances that don’t work out (relationships especially), the person can look back and point to something early on in how that relationship formed that was off for them, but that they ignored. And most likely if you’re thinking of one right now, you can too. And there was some other ‘authority’ in your life influencing you to ignore your inner knowing.
I challenge you to put yourself around ‘your people’ as much as possible this week, month, and year, and trust your knowing about where you belong.
(BTW, if you think you might want to put yourself around my tribe, grab the call with me, use code BYC to get a great deal! CLICK HERE)