By Kate Marolt
You have probably heard before that how you do one thing is how you do everything. When I first started hearing this, I felt like I was being scolded every time someone brought it up. Like in yoga class, the teacher would usually say something like “If how you do one thing is how you do everything, and you give up holding that plank now, where else do you give up in your life?” That personally always fed the inner perfectionist in me, who was already doing a great job telling me I wasn’t good enough, so I set aside that comparison for awhile.
Over the years, the phrase that has come to ring true for me is “How I am being in one area of my life is how I’m being in every area of my life.” I may do things differently depending on the situation, but the energy that I bring tends to be pretty consistent across the board.
Most alignment-based entrepreneurs have at least some sense of being able to tell when things get out of alignment. We are pretty good at asking ourselves what is off, and may even mentally create a plan to shift what isn’t working. But what happens when something that is out of alignment feels so natural to us that we don’t realize how it is affecting our businesses and lives?
One area where many of my clients and people I know are out of alignment is in their bodies and their relationships with their bodies. If you are truly in alignment, being fully and completely you in all of your experiences, that includes how you are being with your body. As entrepreneurs, our bodies often get put on the back burner as we stay stuck in our heads or connect with our hearts, and I believe that how you are being with your body is the number one indicator to how you are being with your business.
There are so many different ways to parallel your relationship with your body and your relationship with your business, and today I’m going to focus on the four I see most often- Awareness, Discomfort, Control, and Support. If you are experiencing any of these in your body, chances are you are also experiencing them somewhere in your business.
1. Awareness – Are you ignoring or obsessing?
For most of my life, I refused to really see my body. I would obsess over my not flat belly, and think about all the things I ‘should’ be doing to ‘fix’ it (without necessarily doing any of those things, or committing to one thing and sticking with it). Even though in general I was strong, balanced, and fit, I put all of my energy into one area I didn’t think was good enough.
In looking at my business, I realized I did the same thing with numbers. Obsessing over the size of my email list and Facebook likes, constantly consuming content about how to grow those numbers, trying out strategies haphazardly without sticking with any one of them long enough to get real results. I couldn’t even see the things I was doing well, because I was so down on not having what I considered to be enough engagement or readership.
After bringing awareness to both of these areas of my life, I realized that they were both so important to me because they were the conventional idea of success. Flat belly, huge audience. Once I got present and aware, I could determine what I really wanted (strong stable core, dedicated and excited audience), I was able to focus on strategies in both areas over the long term, and be much kinder to myself in the process.
What are you ignoring or obsessing over? How is that affecting the bigger picture?
2. Discomfort – What are you putting up with?
Do you have chronic aches or pains anywhere in your body? Stiffness in your shoulders that is just ‘always there’, or a continuously tight hip? Kind of like the frog that doesn’t notice water beginning to boil around him, we don’t notice gradual build up of pain and tension. Our bodies adapt and we begin to think it’s just always that way. If there is something off in your body that’s creating tension, chances are there is something off in your business as well.
Are there tasks you are doing that give you headaches? Stuff that’s perpetually annoying but you’ve gotten used to dealing with? When we give our bodies permission to be tense and stiff, we are putting a lot of energy into navigating around and with those chronic aches.
Same goes in business- if something feels like you have to do it because it’s just one of those annoying things, think about how much energy you are putting into those annoyances, rather than focusing your energy and substance where it’s actually going to make a difference.
What have you been accepting as necessary that could actually be delegated, shifted, or done away with?
3. Control – What is your stress level?
You may have noticed that if you are stressed in one area of your life, it seeps in everywhere else. If you are putting energy toward controlling your body or feeling stressed that it isn’t good enough, chances are you are doing the same things in your business.
If you’re at all like me, at one point in my life I was stepping on the scale obsessively and meticulously counting calories. This was a similar time when I was unable to delegate tasks to anyone else and was completely overwhelmed with trying to control everything. I also felt like a failure every time I ‘lost control’ by doing something outside of my routine or program.
Having a plan is great; sticking to the plan obsessively no matter what can be a hindrance to getting into a flow state and trusting your instincts! If you are super stressed all the time, where do you need to relax the reins a bit?
Conversely, if you’re not paying any attention at all to your body and have no idea how to tell if you are full, hungry, if something didn’t sit right, or if you are tired, chances are you’re disconnected from the natural rhythms and necessities in your business as well. Having some sort of structure in place is helpful to actually move you forward and implement strategies that are both effective and feel good.
What is your relationship with control? Are you in a space right now where you need to relax the reins or create some structure?
4. Support – Do you have the life you want?
If we aren’t feeding and caring for our bodies in a way that supports the life we desire, chances are we aren’t allowing our businesses to do so either. I’m not saying you need to eat a certain way or exercise all the time; how you take care of your body is unique to you. The question I pose to you is a) what life do you want? and b) in what ways is your body either supporting or not supporting that? If you want to climb mountains and cave dive, for example, you have to eat and train to support that life. If you want a high level of energy and sustainable creativity, it makes sense that you will eat food and move your body in a way that nourishes you and fuels your creative nature. And if you aren’t feeling energized or creative- how are you treating your body? Are you moving and putting yourself in stimulating environments? Are you getting enough rest and refueling time?
The same questions can be asked of your business. If you aren’t making the money you want, are you moving and putting yourself into environments and actions that will get you there? If you are feeling stuck or stagnant, are you getting enough time to refuel and be inspired? Are you caring for your business like you would care for your support system? How can you let your business feel nourished and appreciated? What needs to happen in order for you to be supported?
These questions are designed to allow you to check in and bring awareness to what IS, right now, in the present moment. So often misalignment comes in when we lose presence and get caught in our stories. When you find yourself getting lost in your head, bring it back to your body. What can you be more aware of? What are you putting up with? What are you holding on to? And what do you need to feel supported?
Guest post by Kate Marolt
Kate Marolt is the Body+Soul Connection Coach at Soul Wild Free. She believes that we deserve to choose how we experience our bodies, ourselves, and the world, and her mission in life is to create a world of connection, love, adventure and freedom for herself and others. She does this by working with women leaders to move beyond self improvement mode and into their soul power places, where they deeply trust and act from their own gifts and instincts and feel completely at home in their bodies and selves.
www.katemarolt.com