Starting and growing a business can be scary and, as we know, our brains are wired to protect us from danger. Well, that doesn’t always bode well for our success when our brains protect us from moving toward the life we desire.
Today, we’re taking a look at the lies business owners tell ourselves in order to protect ourselves from risk and keep ourselves safe…and how to stop the lies, start believing the truth and making progress toward building a business we love.
Take a listen and let us know if you have any questions!
On This Week’s Episode: We Discuss the Lies We Tell Ourselves as Business Owners and How Those Lies Serve Us
[00:00:00] Hi, welcome back. We’re so glad you’re here. And this week we’re doing a business 101 episode again, and we’re gonna talk about the lies that keep us small as business owners. So we were thinking about this and what does it even mean to play small in business? So Pam, what are your thoughts on it?
[00:00:28] When I think of someone playing small or asking myself if I’m playing small, I often think of things like, am I conforming to what I think I should be doing? Am I conforming to what everyone else is doing or am I questioning my own worth? Typically, those are the strategies that I use to keep myself small.
[00:00:52] So I think a lot of people do the same thing. So those things that we cling to, I think as a [00:01:00] self-protective mechanism so that we don’t have to stretch ourselves. We don’t have to change, we don’t have to step into whatever our calling is because it’s safer to believe I’m not enough and it’s safer.
[00:01:12] To just do what everyone else is doing and not draw too much attention to yourself. I think that’s what playing small looks like for me anyway. For you? I think for me, what makes me play small is fear. Fear like regenerating itself. I think it’s looking at other people and believing that everybody else is way, way far ahead of me.
[00:01:37] And I think, I really feel like the driving factor of me is fear. Because I think if I could overcome that, I really feel like the sky would be the limit. The good news is that you can overcome it. Yeah. We’ll talk about that.
[00:01:58] So what [00:02:00] we did is we came up with our list of what common lies we believe business owners embrace to keep them small. And so we’re going to just go through these and we both have our opinions of course on it and how we see it in our time and business. So the first one we talked about is when we say to yourself, it’s fine, I’m totally happy with the way things are, and shouldn’t I be content with all the things?
[00:02:26] So I feel like contentment is comfortable and to grow is not comfortable. Sure. And I think sometimes it brings that into other parts of our life. Maybe other parts of our life feel chaotic. And if we’re like, if this business can just feel content, maybe that’s one part of my life that’s not gonna feel out of control.
[00:02:55] . And I think that’s part of the reason. That [00:03:00] we just say it’s fine. It’s all fine. Fine. It’s fine. And I think this is really a defense people use against making change. Oh, I’m supposed to be content in all things, so I don’t need to wish for more. I don’t need to work for more.
[00:03:14] I don’t have to do hard things. I can just keep myself safe where I am. So it is possible to be content while also striving for more and not even striving, just aiming for more. And you can say I’ll be content if things stay the same. And ask yourself if that’s really true. And also want more for yourself.
[00:03:40] Yeah, I think you can be both ways, right? So you don’t have to be grumbling in saying, I wanna grow my business, I want to grow my impact, I wanna grow my profits. You don’t have to grumble about that. But you also don’t have to stay in that space just to label yourself as content and grateful.
[00:03:59] It’s not in [00:04:00] gratitude. Yeah, I totally agree. Another one we had is I only set reachable goals because I am sure I can reach them and then I can just mark them off my list to do and there’s no disappointment with that because we all know as you grow, there are a lot of disappointments. And I think sometimes with disappointments. Becomes loss, whatever the loss is. Clients programs that you thought would work, that don’t work. Pam and I joke about this all the time. Like we both get up and we have a list of to-dos, and then we just talked about this earlier, like every single night we’re like, move it to the next day, move it to the next day.
CONTINUE READING THE TRANSCRIPT HERE
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