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No one likes to experience worry, embarrassment, shame, anxiety, or the type of intense sadness that feels like a heaviness that will not go away. It’s uncomfortable, intrusive, takes away your sense of control, and often feels like an uninvited guest. If only we could make it go away. Bye girl, and don’t slam my door on the way out!
Yeah, if only.
Who doesn’t want to feel good? We live in a world where sunshine and everlasting rainbows dripped in positivity are constantly promoted. There is nothing wrong with a little bit of positivity, but when it means chasing away those negative feelings at any cost, that’s when it can become problematic. In my work, I’ve come across some pretty creative ways of avoiding feelings:
Never noticing and talking about it
Laughter at awkward times
Shopping sprees
Late-night eating while binge-watching Netflix
Oversleeping
Walking away at the height of an argument
And [enter your habit here]
These may be great momentary fixes, but the truth is, they only serve to invalidate your experiences. Without fail, the uncomfortable emotions will resurface again and run wild, often with greater intensity than before.
Have you ever wondered why your emotions are showing up in the first place? And where you learned to dismiss them? Is it a process you observed while growing up? Or maybe said to you with words like “boys don’t cry,” or hearing phrases like: “you’ll be fine” when it sure doesn’t feel that way at the moment, “toughen up,” or “calm down.”
Invalidation is sneaky, and the consequence is a human who learns not to acknowledge their emotions without judgment or trust their emotional experience. Worse yet, you realize it’s not worth it to open up to others about how you feel because it comes at the uncomfortable risk of again being dismissed or feeling unheard.
If I were to sum it up, there is nothing wrong with you. You are not defective because you worry sometimes, are scared of becoming depressed again or aren’t happy all the time. Our life is richer because of our emotional experiences. Emotions allow us to tune in to what we need. It gives us grounds to ask for clarification and express our needs. It fosters attuned leaders and skills like compassion and creativity. Learning to welcome your emotions gives us a real sense of flexibility, freedom, and control.
So how do you embrace your emotions and get to that kind of magic?
Feelings are just information. One of my favorite books is Visiting Feelings by Lauren Rubenstein. The book invites you to look at your emotions like a guest, but instead of shutting the door in its face, asking it why it’s here. We all experience a wide range of emotions, and to better respond to them, we have to take the time to understand them.
Start with taking some space when you notice a difficult emotion. It may mean excusing yourself from an argument with a scheduled time to return, stepping out of the office for a bathroom break, or closing your eyes for a few moments to disconnect. At that moment, find your breath. Use it to anchor you. Try something like four square breathing. Slowing your breathing allows your automatic nervous system to regulate and brings more ease to your body and your mind. It would look like this:
1. Bring your attention to your breath.
2. Inhale and slowly count for four seconds.
3. Hold for four seconds.
4. Exhale and slowly count for four seconds.
5. Hold for four seconds.
6. Do this four-five times.
When you feel that shift in your emotion or feel overwhelmed, angry, or frantic, pause and just breathe. Once you settle down, you can explore with curiosity the emotions that kicked this off in the first place.
What is it trying to bring to your attention (like maybe you’ve taken on too many tasks, need more support, worry about an outcome, etc.)?
It’s a great way to learn to notice and read your body signals as you would shift in temperature and the weather. This practice can help you recognize and understand the messages that speak to what you need or don’t need to feel better physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R is a Licensed Psychotherapist, Speaker, and Mindset Coach for high-achieving women in business. Her joy is tackling mental health on multiple platforms.
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you decide to buy to support our tea-drinking habits at no cost to you.
This post contains affiliate links. Read our full disclosure here.
Do you ever take the time to celebrate your progress? For most, it’s barely a thought, only focusing on the outcome, but is this hurting your potential?
Suppose we continue to push this mentality of working hard and hustle culture without space for acknowledging just how far we’ve come? In that case, you leave room for the disappointment of perfectionism and actually increase the likelihood of poor follow-through.
Join me as I dive into this blog on celebrating your wins, valuing your worth, and leveraging that to motivate you or your team.
WHY YOU MIGHT STRUGGLE TO CELEBRATE YOUR PROGRESS:
Do you ever take time to celebrate your success or accomplishments? Or even acknowledge the small wins in those around you?
I can picture you saying, “hmm….I don’t know” or “haven’t thought about that.” Well, think about what the message to yourself is or your organization when you don’t do that.
We are often so caught up on the daily to-dos and the pressure of unrealistic demands that we actually forget to notice what we’ve accomplished, or acknowledge the accomplishments of our peers sharing office air or zoom rooms around us. Well, I don’t think we forget, I think we are conditioned to discount the small wins as “not good enough” because we haven’t reached that destination, completed the project, achieved the goal, or received praise for it.
However, something powerful happens if you take the time to think about what it takes to get to your end goal and the tasks you’ve managed to pull off along the way.
When I trained for the NYC Marathon a few years back, 26.2 miles was the outcome. Still, there were many important milestones along the way- like actually deciding I could run that far (absolutely not a distance runner), hitting key milage like 13.2, 15 miles, 18 miles, and positioning myself for 26.2. What was more important at race day wasn’t the race itself but what it took to get there. Each time I hit a milestone, it reinforced that this was possible, and I also saw the shifts in friends and family around me and their excitement that this was actually happening. All of the above was motivation to complete one of the most challenging events in my life, next to birthing babies.
THE POWER OF PROGRESS IS FUNDAMENTAL TO HUMAN NATURE
Whether you are trying to bring in a big sale, develop a high-quality product or service, forge a new path in life, or get a handle on your anxiety, acknowledging everyday progress can make all the difference in how you feel and perform. That same concept of having and acknowledging the small milestones is not just a great way to motivate yourself, but also your team. If you can help them see the value of the steps, they have accomplished and find ways to acknowledge that as their leader, you are building their intrinsic ability to perform (and maybe even like what they are doing).
The power of progress is fundamental to human nature. Think about the excitement of parents encouraging a child to take a few steps as they learn to walk and the level of trust that child feels in themselves and the external motivator to take that step. Then the joy of the accomplishment. That celebration is an inspiration for that impressionable tiny human to keep walking until it turns into a full-out run. That concept of internal self-reliance is one we have to foster through our personal self-development. However, externally, a powerful and underutilized motivator by managers and leaders is praise.
We never stop being that little kid that responds to external praise, guidance, and support.
REMIND YOURSELF OF THE GOAL
I collaborate with clients to set goals and meaningful milestones because it’s the GPS for our work. It’s a sign of progress that we are going toward their goals, and for my clients, it becomes a focal point for the work. It’s easy to get distracted by the expectations of others or the disappointment we feel if we aren’t working fast “enough” or we aren’t where we should be. Those steps become a blueprint for reframing our focus and keeping us motivated.
BUILD A STRONGER SUPPORT SYSTEM BY SURROUNDING YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN YOU.
As I’ve hinted so far, part of your success is dependent on your ability to slow down and acknowledged your progress, or to embrace even the small wins. I encourage my high-achieving and driven women in business to enjoy the journey regularly as we look at developing a flexible growth mindset. Their drive can easily distract from the small but significant gains.
Another critical factor is who is on your team to provide external support? Does your team even know what you’re working on, and are they equipped to recognize those steps and high-five you along that process? You want a team that can nourish your progress and see it as essential to the larger objective. If you want to achieve bigger goals, build a support system of people with whom you can share your goals and who can also believe in your journey and recognize your progress.
Progress is a complex formula of how we view our support systems (organizations, management, workers, family, or friends) and how confident and equipped we feel in our abilities and ourselves. These join forces to either push us to higher levels of achievement or stunt our growth, contributing to resistance like overthinking, procrastination, stress, and inaction.
Stop minimizing your wins. It’s part of your progress and worth celebrating.
You are worth celebrating.
DO THE WORK: AN EXERCISE TO BUILD MOTIVATION
Let’s switch gears and do some heavy lifting to practice the ideas we’ve discussed so far.
Take a moment to reflect on this question I recently shared with several of the leaders doing a recent mindset workshop:
What beliefs about yourself do you have that may not be a fact?
When you think of your goals, what are some of the thoughts that come up around them that create obstacles to action?
How does the expectations of you based on your identity (such as gender or race) influence those thoughts?
Remember the work starts with your understanding of yourself and how your life experiences or expectations cause you to respond both internally and externally. Have you considered what parts of those thoughts or processes are getting in the way of your progress?
Let’s take a look at your progress: Take 10 minutes to brainstorm your wins for this week. Go ahead, set a timer, start writing, then come back to this piece.
How many wins were you able to come up with? Celebrate that.
Notice how it feels to acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments. Permit yourself to feel the pride, joy, or even the discomfort that comes up with acknowledging yourself. Sit with that feeling for 15-30 seconds as you remind yourself you are worth celebrating, you are doing a great job, and you are fully capable of navigating the next step towards your goal.
You can easily do this for the team as well. What wins did your staff or business hit in the past week? Who had a role in that? Celebrate them.
As you get into a regular practice of reassessing and acknowledging yourself, it gets easier to motivate yourself and build and support those around you.
I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on celebrating the small wins and your progress as a source of motivation. Or share your experience with the exercise above.
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Goal setting for the new year is a process loaded with emotions like excitement, hope, disappointment, and anxiety as you reflect on what you weren’t able to accomplish and where you want to be.
If we pull the curtains back on these emotions, we probably find a mind ruminating on mistakes and setbacks and having a hard time with why they can’t follow through with goals and plans and keep their most important promise – the one to themselves. If you think about setting New Year’s resolutions alone, we get excited when that ball drops with all the possibilities, but by February, all the machines are empty again at the gym, all the items on our to-do list suddenly feels too complicated, and we are too busy to keep our commitments and our motivation tanks.
But committing to – and crushing – your goals doesn’t have to be this exercise in overwhelm.
In this blog, I’m sharing some thoughts I’ve had about following through on your goals (even past the resolutions) and the role of mindset in staying on task.
But before we break down the struggle with follow-through, let’s first take a minute to get on the same page about what the word even means. What do I mean when I say follow through?
Well, according to the websters dictionary, follow-through means “to complete (an activity or process that has been started)”. In other words, follow-through is an action (or set of actions) that you do in order to continue something you’ve already started, hopefully to an endpoint, or a goal.
We follow through with a lot of things in our lives, like getting up in the morning and getting dressed to get to work, when we cook a meal from prep to finish, pulling into a parking spot, etc. There are a lot of things we do often and easily get to the endpoint.
The obstacle comes when we want to follow through on a task that is challenging, unfamiliar, or new.
It’s when we set a goal for ourselves- whether it’s finishing a project by a certain deadline, learning a new language, building your side hustle after you get home from work, or getting to the gym five times a week (at the same time as all of the above), that follow-through gets to be more challenging and we fall off the wagon.
Why Do We Let Ourselves Down?
It’s not on purpose. Who wants to break a promise? And to ourselves!
The truth is, we tend to fight harder to keep our commitments to others than we sometimes do for ourselves. For example, you may find yourself working late to meet a deadline and put off going to the gym. Somewhere in our human development, we’ve learned to put the needs of others before our own, without the counterbalance of boundaries and self-advocacy.
Another reason we may not keep our commitment to self is our perfectionist and high achieving self, set the bar too damn high with unrealistic standards that are not attainable. That’s right, you set yourself up for failure.
It also doesn’t help that as a society, we are saturated by images and messages around us that say you should be able to do everything and make it look effortless. Growth and achievement are the opposite- it’s complex, dirty, messy, requires mistakes and flexibility.
Our success, performance, and happiness are deeply connected to our own beliefs about ourselves and our thinking styles around our capabilities. It’s easy for audacious goals to trigger doubts and avoidance- maybe I don’t know enough to do this, this is too hard because I’m not good enough or strong enough or as [blank] enough to attain that level, or I’m just going to fail at this too.
These negative thoughts and ideas easily trigger undoing actions like talking ourselves out of things or finding what we believe are more critical things to focus on.
It always helps to track those goals and work on changing them and we have several pages that tackle that in our new Digital Wellness Planner.
How to Follow Through On Your Goals:
Write them down. Decide on a goal and write it down. Place reminders of your goals on your desk, on your phone, and anywhere else you look often. The reminder to stay on track is sometimes all you need to help you make better decisions.
A dose of reality. Reassess your goals from time to time. Is it realistic? Well, neither were Elon Musks’ goals. You do want to dream outside of your limits, but note how it makes you feel. You do want to eventually experience some progress in the direction of your goals, however small. Aim for a balance of intrigue and challenge, with a dash of struggle, but lean away from delusional.
Let go of limitations & finally work on yourself. Learn to tune into your own limiting beliefs that have been well crafted to keep you safe. It’s harder to achieve your goals when you respond to those beliefs and fears. Embracing a growth mindset is key here. Read more, make time for podcasts on your way to work, surround yourself with other ambitious people, and get connected with experiences that will challenge your mindset and optimize your outcomes.
Please don’t do it alone. It can be tough to keep resolutions on your own. Yes, you can probably do a lot by yourself, but all the quotes on success talk about the village and going further and faster together.
According to research from The American Society of Training and Development, people with an accountability partner are 65% more likely to reach their goals.
Small digestible steps. Once you are clear on what you want, set the goal, and don’t look at it as one big overwhelming whole, but break it up into small, realistic objectives that collectively will help you get to your destination. If your goals are too big or vague, it is also more challenging to sustain.
Repetition is key. Repetition speaks to the process required to get to your outcome. We often focus on what we want, like losing 30lbs or writing a book, but not on what is necessary to get there. Maybe it’s going to the gym twice a week or if you want to be an exceptional writer getting up at 5a and writing for an hour every day. It’s the repetition of those actions that lead to achieving those goals.
Mix in self-compassion. That critical self will probably appear several times as you work on your goals. By adding self-compassion to the mix, you can change the impact of negative self-talk. When you notice a negative thought, just notice it and visualize it floating away- like a balloon floating away. The better you get at slaying that inner critic and replacing it with something more positive or helpful: Like a hug, encouraging yourself like you would a friend, or shifting to your favorite mantra, the greater your chances of success.
Get your stress and anxiety under control. It’s hard to focus on your goals when you are not in optimal physical or emotional health. Things like overeating, alcohol, withdrawing to your room all day, self-harm, or engaging in avoidant behaviors are counterproductive to your success and a sign you need professional help to support your progress. Knowing your triggers and adding to your coping toolbox is an excellent self-care strategy.
Maybe your goal this year is to find two to three healthy ways to relax and cope with stress.
Don’t forget to have fun. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the process that we forget to enjoy the journey. Work hard, celebrate the small victories, and find ways to make fun a priority. It’s much easier to work on a task when some part of it feels good. Don’t just look it where you want to be, think about how you want to feel.
Question:
Do you ever struggle with follow-through? What is your top strategy to follow through on your plans? Let me know below!
If you are a woman in business, entrepreneur, educator, coach, etc, and would love to be a part of our accountability group for women of color, visit the Mastermind page here for details. Sometimes we just need consistent support and accountability to hit those goals.
Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R isn’t just a Psychotherapist. She is here to help women in business tackle the fear behind success, master their emotions, and use their strengths to achieve the next level in their business. Take a look at how she can support you here: amandafludd.com/coaching.
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission for anything you decide to buy. We only recommend quality products, but you should do your research before making a purchase.
We don’t always realize as women that we are the most important assets to our business, and it’s our thinking that leads (or gets in) the way of our success. The thinking patterns that drive our everyday interactions also carry over into how you show up for your business and feel about yourself.
Why do some of the most intelligent people sabotage their success?
We all have this humble inner voice that tells us what we should be doing with our lives, who we want to be ultimately and how we should behave. It’s often influenced by our past family relationships, traumas, environmental stressors, and all the stories you’ve decided to hold on to or have trouble letting go of. Even the most brilliant woman has a story that she probably needs to release.
Overall, the issue isn’t the stories or our mindset and thinking around our experiences, but that you’ve believed that these anxiety-provoking, limiting, or shame-based stories are true. Over time, these self-critical internal stories create an automatic narrative of how we view the world and respond to it, which also plays out with our business moves. A woman who defines her worth by her external success, and see herself as a failure when she isn’t a top performer, is more likely to be self-critical. That woman will probably feel less motivated when things don’t go as expected, may even question her whole business, and often think, “I’m not enough”.
Stay fresh under stress
How to Recognize Toxic Thinking Styles
Leading a business can trigger a rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions. We want to focus on the more negative thoughts or cognitive distortions that typically show up when you are worried, anxious, or upset. The clients I work with often struggle with overthinking, are huge procrastinators, and are good at talking themselves out of taking risks in their business. I find it empowering to help these women recognize how their thinking patterns play a role in their motivation, frustration, sense of self, and even problems like anxiety, stress, and making decisions.
How you can recognize if your thinking is an issue is to listen to how you speak to yourself. Do you hear a lot of self-defeating, harsh, or critical statements like “I can’t do this,” “this is going to fall apart,” or “If I don’t succeed at this, I’m a failure?” Another sign of toxic thinking is giving up easily. You are ambitious and driven with impressive goals and ideas but often focus on the failures, not the successes, and give up on them too quickly.
How to Know If Your Negative Thinking Is Affecting Your Business
While a few common unhelpful thinking styles can keep the most ambitious and intelligent woman stagnant in their business, do you know which one is common for you? Let’s take a look at five common thinking patterns that can damage your business strategy.
The Checklist of Unhelpful Thinking Styles:
What is your go to negative thinking pattern?
One: Should statements are prevalent and are laced with critical messages (and usually unattainable standards) and often trigger guilt and anxiety. It involves thinking about things that you believe you “should” “ought to,” or “must” do.
It may sound like “I should be able to handle this,” or “I should be doing better by now,” or “I ought to be able to handle this .” These statements tend to dial up the pressure and make it very difficult to keep working on those business goals when you don’t achieve what you connected to those should statements.
Two:Catastrophizing is when you jump right to the worst possible outcome for a situation. When you are constantly worried about what could happen in a scenario, it can intensify your anxiety and minimize your actions when it comes to your business. So if I go live, no one will watch, and I’ll be an epic failure. . .so instead of leaning into the fear, you avoid and don’t go live, sound familiar?
Three:Discounting the positives is all about discounting your accomplishments and minimizing the positive qualities about yourself. For example, if you do an excellent job with that launch you’ve worked so hard on and it goes well, you reason that it was luck, it isn’t a big deal, and fail to give yourself credit for your role in the success.
Four:Jumping to Conclusions is when you interpret a situation without the facts. There are two parts to this thinking pattern; you can either be a mind reader or a fortuneteller.
Mind reading is when you assume that people react negatively to you or judge you when there’s no definite evidence for it.
Fortune-telling is when you decide things will turn out badly, “I can see it now, this just isn’t going to work” or “no one is going to come .”Have you ever done that?
Five: Mental filter is when you dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives, aka negative Nancy.
How many of those toxic thinking styles show up for you?
The next time you find yourself overlooking the good, procrastinating, or struggling to get out of bed to slay those goals, it could be you are engaged in a toxic thinking pattern. The good news is you can learn to shift your thinking so it’s more balanced, resilient, and encouraging to help you reach your goals and tackle the most challenging situations.
How to Deal with these Mindset Missteps
A great place to start is by noticing when you are dwelling on any negative thoughts or when there is a significant change in how you feel (like maybe more anxious). Start to get into the habit of slowing down to reassess the situation by observing and cross-examining your thoughts with the following questions:
1. Is this thought realistic?
2. Am I basing my thoughts on facts or feelings?
3. What is the evidence for this thought? Don’t simply assume your negative thought is accurate, and don’t be afraid to prove yourself wrong.
4. Is there another way I could look at this?
5. What would a friend say, or is there someone else I can ask for perspective.
Over time, with practice, you won’t need to consciously ask yourself these questions to shift your negative thinking. It will become automatic, and you will better be able to catch them way before they spiral out of control and get in the way of your success.
Remember, many of these cognitive distortions or thinking patterns are common. Still, if you believe that it is negatively impacting your follow through with your business goals or your confidence, it’s a good time to talk to us about business coaching from a mindset perspective.
We offer support in our 90-day Business Mastermind Intensive here and through several other coaching programs.
Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R isn’t just a Psychotherapist and a Mindset Coach for Ambitious Women who are business owners or striving to be. She is here to help you move from fear to success, master your emotions, and use your strengths to achieve the next level in your business. For 1:1 coaching, or to take a look at how she can support you, learn more at amandafludd.com/coaching.
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you decide to buy to support our tea-drinking habits at no cost to you. We only recommend quality products, but you should do your research before making a purchase.
A lot of side hustle queens are not taught the right growth mindset to start their own business and grow their side hustle dreams to a successful business. This blog attempts to look at some of these mindset shifts and why they are essential to your success.
Starting your own business can be intimidating. You’re now responsible for your own income, your own money, and your own success. If you’re used to working for someone else, you might be excited about the opportunity but anxious as hell too. The issue for most minority women in business is the road can seem lonely with few mentors, families who don’t understand your work (or look at you with a side-eye), and a closed-lipped community of colleagues when it comes to the how to’s of growing a successful empire. This is one of the reasons that I started my journey as a coach. I wanted to give women a place to know their feelings are valid and to feel free to share what they were going through.
Before you even started your business, you probably experienced a lot of self-defeating thoughts. And, if you are like most business owners, these thoughts trigger strong emotions and reactions like procrastination, overthinking, and overwhelm that threaten your success.
HERE ARE 10 OF THE MOST IMPORTANT MINDSET SHIFTS TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
Old Mindset: I don’t know enough to do this. I’m not sure I can be as good as the next entrepreneur.
Growth Mindset: I am unique in my approach, talents, and viewpoints. My education and expertise give me an excellent viewpoint to serve and help others.
We won’t be distracted by comparison if we are captivated by purpose. – Bob Goff
Something in you brought you to the conclusion that you have something to give or the ability to solve a problem in the first place- don’t forget that queen. As humans, we are prone to find the negative in situations, leading to self-doubt and avoidance. Is this a good idea? People won’t like it. Can I do this?
Yes, sis, you can. You’ve been doing many things in life that have gotten you to this point. You’ve been grooming yourself this whole time for this moment, and you didn’t realize it (you are the expert in the room). We are always learning, with areas to improve on, and as you put yourself out there, you will know exactly what you need to develop to fine-tune your approach.
Avoid comparing yourself (or your business) with other entrepreneurs and overthinking because it can work against you and create resistance instead of action. It’s ok to use others in your industry as inspiration. Explore what is working for them, how they get over their challenges, and what methods you can incorporate into your approach, but limit the time spent doing that. The amount of time you spend working on your business should be greater than the time spent learning about it or looking at what other people are doing.
“Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Better use of your time would be to reach out to those other bosses, and who knows, end up collaborating instead of emotionally competing with them. To expand your knowledge base, you can also enroll in continuing education classes, read business books and blogs, or join the local chamber of commerce (I just learned about them this year and a tip is to look for the more active groups in your area).
“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” – Denis Waitley, motivational speaker.
Old Mindset: This is going to be great, and success will happen like right now.
Growth Mindset: My race. My pace.
All that pretty stuff you see out there took time: the massive followers, beautiful websites and pages, organized systems, hefty contracts, and increased income. Social media tends to make it seem like it happens quickly and right away, but this is a marathon. That means there will be days it sucks, the doubts will come, there will be days you need to walk away, but understand that greatness takes time, grind, and commitment. Even more motivating is that you’ll constantly be pushing your limits as you supersede them.
The key here is to start from a realistic standpoint and acknowledge that your efforts will reflect your success. It’s what you want to do, how you want to do it, and the pace that works best for you.
“…you must always be yourself and do things at your own pace. Someday, you’ll catch up.” ― Natsuki Takaya
That said, come up with great short-term goals. I want you to have the more significant milestones for your business, but it’s equally important to set short-term, attainable goals. Otherwise, you will get discouraged when your big dreams aren’t realized quickly and may give up to soon.
Old Mindset: What If I fail?
“I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” – Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.
Growth Mindset: What If I succeed?
I don’t think I ever had the direct thought of what if I fail at the businesses. However, that fear of failure shows up with aspects of the industry like, will this launch be successful? Will I make enough to sustain my family now that I’ve left my career job, etc.? Failure may sound different for each woman in business, and it’s ok to have that experience. The next time you notice those failure-related thoughts, challenge them or get curious about them.
Here is an exercise I do with clients. Once they notice the fear, I have them explore why they feel afraid. See, our feelings have a lot of information for us, like a friend coming over with the latest tea, we have to get curious about why they showed up. So lean into the fear, figure out what the fear is trying to tell you- determine if it is a want or a wish, and ask yourself how can I move closer to that instead of allowing the fear to trigger any avoidance. You can download the complete Fear Reflection worksheet here.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb.
Take this potential fear of failure as a learning opportunity. It’s a chance to succeed at many other things like trusting yourself, exercising courage, learning a new trade, and making additional income.
Old Mindset: I don’t know what I’m doing.
Growth Mindset: I am doing the best that I can. I am capable of figuring things out.
Girl, who knows what they are doing? Many of us know how to play it off really well or figure it out. As women, we sometimes have this false narrative that we need to know everything, but is that realistic?
When we faced audits at my prior position, we were trained to say, “I’ll get back to you” when asked something we didn’t know, and that was ok once you took time to find that answer and came back with a response. It’s OK to give yourself grace and space in that way and be clear on your limits. While people may expect a certain level of ability, you should never lie to anyone about your experience. Still, you don’t have to minimize your value either or be critical of yourself for not having an answer. Just like you’ve done your entire life, your confidence is in your ability to figure things out.
“Women have the power to choose which path they wish to take. We have to believe great things are going to happen in our lives, and we have to do everything we can to make them happen.” – Gabriela at w4.org
To develop your confidence, it’s a good idea to take a few minutes every day or at least reflect once a month on your achievements so far. Remind yourself of what has gone well for your side hustle and your role in that.
Old Mindset: I have to do this by myself. It’s all on me. No one gets it.
Growth Mindset: I need a tribe.
While the responsibility of your business is yours (and no one will love that baby as you do), you can’t grow without the proper nourishment. It sounds super cheesy, but your business / the boss behind it will be as good as the company she keeps. Find a tribe that understands the world of entrepreneurship and who can pour into you and celebrate you. You can even join a mastermind group to exchange ideas or hire a business coach whom you trust.
“The best bosses do more than charge up people and recruit and breed energizers. They eliminate the negative because even a few bad apples and destructive acts can undermine many good people and constructive acts.”
― Robert I. Sutton
Old Mindset: I have no idea how to start this business.
Growth Mindset: Well, somebody does, and I am open to guidance and coaching to create a profitable business I enjoy.
As a black woman in business, I’ve struggled to find people who were open to sharing tips and strategies about their success to support mines. There is an intense competition factor (or intimidation) within minority communities. Outside of that, in larger (more white based) coaching circles, the information may be there, but not the level of connection to the psychology behind success and the skill to move someone through that process. Maybe my expectation is different with a background as a psychotherapist, but that’s how I coach and mentor- from this place of your success is my success and incorporating proven strategies to engage your Mindset to get you there. If that’s what you need, you should be working with me, and here is how.
Suppose you are worried about the legalities of a business, like how to form an LLC. In that case, I think the easiest way is to use Incfile to take the overwhelm out of the process and get all that support in one area.
So now we’ve covered a few essential mindset shifts to dismantle the doubts and build a successful business. Which Mindset shifts do you need to make? Let me know in the comments below.
Changing your mindset and embracing a growth mindset is not easy, but they are necessary to take your business to the next level. When I started my business, I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know logistically and how much of my skills as a therapist would be needed to thrive as an entrepreneur. That’s why I coach now and want to help my fellow sisterpreneurs move past the fears and achieve their goals.
Amanda Fludd, LCSW-R is a Licensed therapist and Mindset Coach for high-achieving coaches and online entrepreneurs. Her joy is helping them move past their fears to practical business goals.
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