Your mind is playing tricks on you because it wants to keep you playing small in your comfort zone.
To break though to the other side, you must become comfortable being uncomfortable.
I just got back from a two day workshop with my mentor this past weekend. If you had told me a couple of years ago that I’d be flying cross country on a whim to attend a 16 hour live event, I’d have called you nuts.
Fast forward and this is actually the third time I’ve done it. Every time I come back invigorated, excited and ready to start implementing the learnings.
As you know I talk a lot about marketing because I’m passionate about it and lately quite a bit about Facebook ads but at the end of the day it’s true what they say:
Success in business is 80% mindset and 20% marketing.
Just today I was on the phone with somebody who told me that their biggest obstacle was that they did not like marketing and preferred to have somebody else do it for them so they could focus on their craft.
Well, that’s fine but let’s think about for a moment. Without marketing yourself (whether that is online or offline) how are your people going to find you?
There comes a time when you are required to do something that you don’t like doing in order to move your business forward. When that happens you got to ask yourself these questions:
Am I willing and am I able to do what it takes?
You want to answer these questions with a YES. Now I know it’s not always easy and it’s going to stretch you. Truth be told I came to this workshop with a big hang-up that I just could not get over.
I knew exactly what I had to do in order to move my business forward but instead I was playing little mind games with myself as in I’m going to do it tomorrow.
Today, I’m going to focus on my photo shoot, writing my sales page or posting some more on Social Media… [read excuses, excuses, excuses…]
Those are all distractions that kept me from taking care of the one thing I really needed to do. Until this image started flickering across the screen. That’s when it finally clicked.
I remembered a phone conversation we had about 3 weeks earlier where he asked me
Are you going to let your fear rob you of your dream?
Even though I had responded with a resounding ‘Of course not!’ at the time, I had not been able to bring myself to do the thing I was required to do. But when ‘the skull‘ came on I made a decision that I was going to at least give it a try.
I mean how else would I be able to find out if the fear thoughts that were coming up for me were real? Yes you could say I had a major breakthrough because I finally got out on my own way, acknowledged my fear, told it ‘Ok, you can sit right next to me and I’m going to do this anyway.’
And you know what, none of the doomsday scenarios that had been flickering in front of my mind’s eye happened, on the contrary,…
Low and behold as I sat down to carry out this task, a strange calm came over me and I found myself pleasantly surprised at how easy it was.
What was all the fuzz about then?
Had I created an elephant out of a mouse?
Yes, that is exactly what happened.
You see that was my mind playing tricks on me, by feeding me one doomsday scenario after the other, so I would not fully step into the opportunity.
That’s why it’s so important that we do our inner work at the same time that we tinker and fine-tune our marketing strategies to create a successful business.
The 80/20 rule does apply. Your desire has to be stronger than any of the fears that are coming up and keep you from moving forward in the right direction.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Do you have a similar experience?
Much love,
Simona
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