Hey there! I hope you’re enjoying your week!
Struggle, stumbling and falling is inevitable as a business owner. When we first decide to start our business, nobody tells you exactly how hard it’s going to be until you’re in it (and many times we wish they would have). As we move through the “chaos” that begins to swirl around us we realize we can’t run from it and we freeze, we panic and worse yet we may fall and we may fail.
So the question is: How do we get through these struggles we all face? We do it by “honoring the struggle” and understanding it’s part of the journey towards realizing our dreams.
As an entrepreneur and business owner, we often ask ourselves…
“Who am I to do this, I’m not an expert?”
“What if they don’t like my content?”
“What if I say the wrong thing?”
“What if I’m not good enough?”
These questions bring up three things I know as Entrepreneurs we often face:
- The struggle. We all go through it. The part we miss? We need to honor the struggle, and understand that the struggle happens and it’s real, and there’s a reason for it. Really embracing it and understanding there are things that you will learn things as a result of the struggle. Honor it. The more your business grows, the harder the struggle, the bigger the struggle. When you stop honoring the struggle, that’s when it gets frustrating. That’s when a lot of people quit, that’s when they give up. But you’re not going to give up because you know that anything is possible in this world if you put your mind to it.
- Fear. Fear is there; and it’s not going away. You can fight it, and the more you fight it, the worse it becomes. A lot of people let fear take over their thoughts and then that prevents them from moving forward. I know how hard it is to put your first email blast out, to get your name up there, to open up a store and get that first customer in there. I know how hard it is, to balance all of the things you need to do to grow your business and have a life at the same time… But you see, the things that we need to do the most and the things that will move us forward are the things we are most afraid of. Yes, you have to embrace the fear, let it move you forward, but don’t let it rule your mind, don’t let it rule your actions. And you can do it. You can break through that fear, and you can move forward and you can achieve what you want to do. On the other side of that fear, is success, it’s your dreams. It’s stepping out of your comfort zone and leaning into the fear. When you lean in to the thing you are so afraid of, amazing things start to happen. Amazing things start to be created. Just launch your first blog post, and things just start to happen. You’ve got to lean into that fear. You have to recognize why you’re afraid and say, “Thank you for showing up, but I’m good, I got this.”
- Trying to control outcomes. When we don’t embrace our fear what ends up happening is, we try to control what happens, we try to control our successes. You can’t control those things. When you try to force an outcome, it goes the other way. We get frustrated, we get confused, and we want to quit. So you have to just let go and give it up to a higher power –God, source, or whatever you like to call it – and just let go. Just put your energy into doing those things, into creating valuable content that you can share with people and creating valuable products, products that people need. If we focus more on doing, we focus more on creating, we focus more on using our gifts, on being authentically us… then we can let go of trying controlling an outcome. We’re focusing on creating value, on serving, on being us.
So… that struggle, that fear, and the trying to control: Understand those things are part of the process and part of the lessons we need to learn as an entrepreneur. And it’s okay! Once you understand this, you can learn to embrace the struggle and realize that you will absolutely get through it (trust me it doesn’t last forever). You’ll start to see that there is opportunity and a lesson to be learned that will help you to grow in whatever it is that you are facing and really…it’s not so bad. It’s actually okay; it’s part of the process.
There is a book I read a short time ago, Yoga for Life, by Colleen Saidman Yee. This book is not just for the traditional yogi, it’s for anyone. It teaches us about handling different situations using the ancient wisdom of yoga. Colleen has an amazing story of strength and struggle she’s been through in her life, and how she’s gotten through it using her yoga practice. There is a chapter in the book that resonated with me which is about chaos. What it talks about is, when we are in a chaotic situation, the more we handle it with rigidity and try to force something to happen, the worse it gets, the worse we struggle. But if we just sit and let the chaos kind of swirl around us, (Yes, even when our email goes down, the website crashes, the Facebook ad isn’t working, etc…) and we sit in the eye of the storm and observe the whirlwind. Instead of forcing things to happen… if we just sit and just observe and let that chaos swirl, then come back to what’s in our heart and in that stillness, things just start to make sense.
When we let the panic go and we honor the struggle by understanding the struggle will happen. And we honor it by embracing it and learning what the lesson is.. we go back to the “why” of what we’re doing. We sit in the eye of the storm, and we can let that calm come over and the guidance come in and we realize and remember the reasons why we became business owners to begin with. If we get wrapped in the chaos of competing with people or creating more coupons to compete, or getting caught in the web of learning, we can’t move forward. Sometimes we just need to sit and observe, and honor it, and embrace it, so that we can move through that block. And once again, come back to the reason why in our heart and in our soul that we want to be an entrepreneur… because we made that decision to do something we’ve never done to get something we’ve never had.
