When you’re building a business, or putting together a workshop, or trying to make your website better, or writing a book… there will be times you feel inadequate. The self-doubt rears up. You feel a thick fog descending; sucking away your energy and motivation. You start to feel like you’re not enough, or you feel like it’s all just too complicated, and you can’t cope. And all your forward movement grinds to a halt.
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Here’s the secret: Everyone goes through these periods. Some more frequently than others, but sooner or later, even the most successful people hit these cycles. The difference is, they are not stopped by these emotional tsunamis. But why not? What do they do differently?
The way out of this ‘not enough’ cycle is surprisingly simple: You connect to the masculine part of yourself and come up with a list of 4 action items – written down somewhere permanent, and in your face. These are things you can do, no matter how crappy you feel. So that when these hopeless, paralyzing episodes occur, your business does not get derailed.
Let’s map this out and I’ll show you why/how this works… First of all, whether you are male or female, you have both aspects (masculine and feminine) inside of you.
Your feminine; your receiving, intuitive, feeling, part of yourself may be feeling, “I’m really down” or “I’m really low” or “I’m depressed” or “I’m not enough.” That’s totally fine. And until those belief systems or behavior patterns are transformed, you’re not going to get those feelings to go away. So it’s totally fine that they are there. Take a breath and fully accept those feelings and surrender to where you’re at right now.
Breathe… Surrender…
After you’ve surrendered and accepted your emotions, connect to the masculine side of yourself and say:
“It is okay, I deeply and completely love and accept myself just the way I am. When I feel like this, when I feel overwhelmed, and unmotivated, I’m going to have my go-to action list – the four things that I can do, that I don’t need to be feeling good to do. I don’t need to be feeling motivated. I don’t need to be believing in myself to do these 4 things.”
Take some time and a pen and paper right now, and look at what you offer, and how your brain works, and figure out what those four things are. For someone, their 4 action items might be picking up the phone and making 4 phone calls to 4 customers and having a chat with them – getting feedback. Or doing research online to see what’s happening in your field.
For someone else, it might be writing a blog post, or just posting a photograph with a few lines of text. Or posting the first paragraph from someone else’s post you love and then linking to that person’s post.
For someone else it might be doing a livestream video. Maybe you want to tell your people how you’re feeling and do it out in nature and perhaps it turns into a meditative practice and you give that for free. Or maybe you want to create a video, or an infographic, of self-care or inspiration to make yourself feel better, and then share that with others.
For someone else it might be to edit videos that you’ve shot and the footage is just sitting there. So rather than making yourself interact with people or customers, you retreat and go into editing mode. But you’re still being active. You’re still moving your business forward, regardless of how you feel. You don’t need to wait to feel better about yourself – just get into action.
For someone else it might be journaling about a book that you’ve had an idea for. Or painting something, then taking a photo of that painting, adding an inspirational quote on top – and posting that to your social media account. Or maybe that photo links to a blog post, where you’ve copied/pasted one of your favorite poems that pairs nicely with the quote. You can pull from your masculine to create and gift something that will also help or inspire other people currently feeling as destitute as you are.
Or you can just use this time to clean up your desk, balance your books, or other infrastructure tasks – you are still taking positive action and moving your business forward.
So although you’re accessing the masculine/action part of yourself, you’re not forcing yourself to put yourself out there. You’re not trying to generate money when you’re in this state, because it won’t work anyway – because your whole energy is saying to the universe ‘I’m not enough’ and ‘I’m not worthy.’ So don’t try to generate money! Use this period to connect to the masculine action part of yourself and just do something on your 4 action items list and give it for free.
Whatever you do, have at least one or two things on your 4 action points list be things that you can do or give for free. That way you will not be trapped by these periods. These periods will not tank your business. They’ll just become part of the natural ebb and flow of your business, and overall, it will still be a positive result. This is much better than sinking into inaction and stagnation when you feel down and when you feel unworthy; leaving and deserting your business because you feel like you’ve got nothing to give.
So when you’re in a good state of mind, come up with those 4 action items, whatever they are for you, whatever you can do when you feel like crap and you feel like you’re a loser. What are the things that you can still do in that state, the things that feel easy? Write them down.
Then tape your 4 action items list to the front of your computer. Or write them on your white board. Or tack them on your wall, because when you’re in that state, you’re not even going to remember that you have 4 action points! So you need to put your 4 action items list somewhere, so that when you go into your funk, it’s staring you in the face.
The key to success and consistency is not to be ON and UP all the time. A flow entrepreneur doesn’t beat their ass from sun-up till sun-down. FLOW includes ebbs and flows. Like the tide. Like the moon. Like every living, growing thing on this planet. The secret is to have a strategy for when your belief and energy ebb, so that you don’t leave your bus without a driver. Your customers, your tribe, can feel energetically when you leave the bus. If you do this repeatedly, you destroy their trust. And you stop the forward momentum of your business.
The strategy that works, because it does not require belief, self-esteem, or much energy – is to look at your 4 action items list and DO one thing. Then do the next. Then the next. Do simple stuff. Do it for free. Rinse, repeat.
Create your list now…
Here’s mine: Jini’s 4 Action Items
1. Edit 1 video and upload it (leave it as Unlisted for now)
2. Do the 100 Words Game to create a painting
3. Publish the painting on my blog
4. Post something interesting to my Facebook Page or post something from my phone to my Instagram; which auto-posts to Facebook as well.
Your turn…
About Jini