I am the first to say that moving past where you typically stop requires a ‘come to Jesus’ sort of moment. To decide to change your life will always come with a brief (or sometimes more than brief) moment of panic as you break through your fear.
If it doesn’t, you’re probably not upleveling yourself enough.
That said, it shouldn’t cause you to feel like crap! In fact on the other side of an aligned decision (which in my world often means putting down a ‘burn-the-ships’ type deposit on something) there is freedom.
True, peaceful, freedom. Not a “oh-thank-God-someone-will-save-me” idea of freedom, because that doesn’t exist.
Yet too many people make decisions from that place.
Much of the coaching industry is built on decisions made from that place.
I have made decisions from that place. I learned a whole lot from it, but it didn’t grow my business. I have worked with clients who have made a lot of those decisions from a place of fear, and in their work with me finally get to tap into who they really are and what they love… what works about them.
Cycle of Proving in Action
I watch it happen. A perfectly capable, confident business owner puts themselves in a situation to learn, without a clear awareness of who they are and what they are there to accomplish. They learn all of the latest tools, tactics, and trends that they COULD be using to grow their business. And they forget who they are and where they are, and the current skills and resources they have that work for them. They lose track of everything they already know and all they have learned before that day, and they turn themselves over to the person in front of them to give them an answer to who they should be.
And they start to think they need it all right away, and feel bad for not having it. They forget that while organic search may be dead, and paid search may be where it’s at, learning how to buy paid search will make no difference because… they don’t even like their website!
They want to prove they are good at that this thing called business, that they are enough, and they create an agreement that they are not enough if they don’t have paid search.
The Hype Can Win Out
A guru paints a picture of hoards of people being led right to you! And you think you need that right now. But you don’t, you wouldn’t know what to do with them if you had them! It’s not a problem to learn paid search. But aside from taking your precious time, here is where it really doesn’t serve you. If you buy into the idea that you are somehow doing it ‘wrong’ if you don’t learn it right now.
In any given day in a business seminar you could learn HUNDREDS of things you’re not doing at a level of excellence: Search, social media, email marketing, webinars, videos, follow-up, networking, finding speaking gigs, converting your audience to paying customers, sales, website copy, design, business cards, taglines, guest blogging, etc., etc., etc.
We always need to learn and grow as a business owner. But the moment you buy into the idea that you are not enough because you’re not doing these things, you are sunk. Energetically you just became the insecure provider trying to sell something. And when you make a decision to get support from a place of feeling inadequate and hoping someone – some program, some technology, some guru who knows more than you – can fix you, you are confirming the energy of inadequacy.
Every decision has an energetic consequence.
Love begets love, and fear begets fear.
Don’t buy into it.
You can move past your leading edge of growth, and I am a huge proponent of getting the right support for you to help you do that. And it will feel scary. But getting support doesn’t need to make you feel as if you aren’t enough to begin with. The best business decisions come from focusing on creating more of what you love, and focusing on the good within you and your business, and getting help to grow your unique genius. What we focus on, grows. Buying from fear grows fear.
The best thing you can spend money on is something that will teach you how to think, and how to make decisions that are in Alignment with the Truth of who you are, not ones that make you doubt all of the ways in which you are successful already. Own your value, damn it, and choose and invest from there!