Most people want to deny the feelings of discomfort, pain or conflict.
But here is a secret that I see most often amongst high performing athletes, millionaires, and successful entrepreneurs.
They are prepared to feel their feelings.
They are ready to face the hard stuff, so they can get through to the other side.
As an business owner you don’t have time to waste. You have a team relying on your leadership to guide them to the promised land.
But what will keep you stuck is staying in denial.
Most leaders don’t want to admit they have leadership and communication flaws. It’s a blind spot they are blind to.
One of the most important favors you can do for yourself, your team and your business is processing what feelings are holding you back so you get back up again swinging.
Learn how to feel your feelings as an entrepreneur on today’s podcast!
Enjoy!
TRANSCRIPT
Feeling your Feelings as an Entrepreneur
Welcome to the unstick your mind podcast on Mimika TV. Get ready to get unstuck align with your true purpose and unlock your God-given potential. The fact that I talk really fast is something that if my mother has always told me, you need to slow down and I’ve always said, I don’t talk fast. You listen slow.
And I hear my mother’s voice. Like, oh my gosh. So yes, it’s one of those things, but you know, when you’re excited to share and of course Some people like to call me an extrovert. I prefer more of an ambivert. So I get excited about being around people, but I definitely need some me time to recharge. And that is, you know, we learn that with maturity and with age, as we get to know ourself better.
Right. And someone in is in business, of course, brains rule the world. Right. And where our mind goes, the man or the woman follows. So for me, having been an entrepreneur, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 16. I’m kind of dating myself here. And I find since in the, and I’ve been doing this by 25 years, so you can do the math I’m in my mid forties.
And in those last 25 years, I’ve had four different businesses. And, you know, we learn a lot about ourselves and about the market and what value we. When we are more in tuned with who we are and what value we provide. Now, this is a real, it’s a concept that took me a few years to realize, but I’ve been always one of those curious kinds.
I’m always asking questions, which makes me a good interviewer, like, oh, tell me more where I always feel that Being able to understand how people are thinking and the motivation behind things really makes you make more wiser decisions and helps you stay in the driver’s seats. Now, especially for entrepreneurs, like we sometimes can feel, especially when the world goes a little Craig gray and believe me, I grew up in South Africa during a apartheid.
When there was a lot of political instability and my dad was an entrepreneur. So I saw him struggling through the ups and downs. And one thing I do remember, you know, about being him, being an entrepreneur is that I always wanted for myself was the freedom to be able to freedom of time, freedom of finances.
That’s the dream, right? Isn’t that why we get into business is the freedom. You know, if you don’t wanna
Exactly. It’s the dream. And we think that if we leave a job or a job would mean being chained to a desk, but you basically just ex exchange your, your boss for yourself and believe me, you are a worst boss than you would’ve ever had because you are the hardest on yourself. When you are your own business owner, you, you don’t give your sum ti yourself, time off.
You’re very hard and you have high standards and you expect a lot. So, and it goes to show it’s like entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It’s for those who are brave, who are willing to stay the course and are willing to go through the ups and downs. And that’s why I really feel as an entrepreneur.
One of the key things you can develop is resiliency, but the basis of resiliency is your mindset. Because if your mind, if you think your mind is the driver of your vehicle, you are the car for a lot of my clients who find me, they find themselves stuck on the side of the road. And when you’re stuck, you’re not going anywhere.
Talking about Feeling your Feelings
You’re not going forward. You’re not going back. You might be flinging a lot of mud, but you’re not really getting momentum. So what I really do well is help. My clients really think about what they’re thinking about to rediscover, why they are there and where they want to be so that we can take them into the garage.
Do some work under the hood and it can be a little, a little painful and a little uncomfortable, but it’s definitely worth it. Get some re tires and get you back on the road. So you can actually go at the pace that you wanna go. Cuz my philosophy is you have to slow down to speed up. Really the key to getting unstuck is to find that momentum.
And it really does start with baby steps. And I tell this to my clients all the time, and that’s why it’s so important is that if you keep putting your foot against the gas pedal, you’re just burning yourself out. You are gonna burn the engine, gonna probably blow ahead gasket and you are certainly gonna run out of gas and there’s no vehicle that I know they can run without guests.
And if you are your, you are in charge of your own oxygen mask. Because there’s to say on airplanes, if you don’t put your own oxygen mask on first, you can’t help anyone else. So the first key really is to pause, to figure out where you. Obviously to stop doing what you’re doing, cuz it’s clearly not working.
Cuz the last time I checked, Einstein said that was called insanity. But basically what we wanna do is wanna, we wanna take some time out to slow down to figure out where you are. And like, and as you said, being able to celebrate the baby steps and the winds is so important for your mind, especially from a neuroscience perspective, cuz here’s the thing is.
What you focus on grows. If you keep focusing on your failures or the lack of the thing that you haven’t done, you will always breed more lack and more frustration, where if you can focus on what you have done by looking back at the progress you have made, you can say, I might not be where I wanna be, but thank goodness.
I’m not where I was. And that really helps your brain to reframe where you are going so that when you are attacked or in a situation. Things aren’t going your way or you feel that’s going hard. Do you have that vision of where you know that, Hey, I’ve done this before. I’ve got a bit of resilience. It’s been hard, but I’ve been able to get through this because I have the vision of knowing that I can get there.
If I’ll just trust the process and follow the path. Because here’s the thing is our brains are so amazing in how they’re formed, but at the same time, you don’t have to live with the brain you were born with. You can change your brain. The sign shows that through the, the concept of neuroplasticity and basically what that means.
Like, if you think about it, if you go to the gym, you might feel a little weak and some muscles aren’t working great. And maybe you, you did soccer or football when you were a child. And, you know, you’re kind of getting older in the ages and you kind of feel like maybe you’re a bit. Your brain and your body have muscle memory and it remembers what it’s like to be fit.
So just like with your mind, I, that’s why I call myself a personal trainer for your mind, because the, the, the process that I take my clients through is a defined process that helps you understand, first of all, why you do what you do. Because awareness is key, right? Once you know what the trigger and the problem is, then we can get to work, fixing it then through repetition and using exercises that I’ve developed in my program is using that consistency of showing up and doing the new thing.
You can change the path. That you are on by repetition and by choosing where you wanna be. Cuz just like if you were in a, in a ship liner, it just takes one tiny little degree now to set you on a totally different path months, or maybe years down the line, say, as a business owner, you are the captain of your ship.
If you don’t like where you’re going, you can change direction. You can, even if it’s just about one degree, because we also come to the, the part of. There’s the whole issue of diminish diminishing returns. Like, is this worth me doing this? Is this, like, if I continue you down this path, is this really gonna get me where I wanna go as well as the concept of compounding interest.
And this is what we do as a business owners a lot is we underestimate the power of the little wins. Like we we’ve alluded to this earlier while you have to celebrate those baby steps. Cause from your brain’s perspective, It likes to confirm what it confirms. So if you’ve confirmed that you can be successful in an area, you are able to make change it, then teaches itself like, oh, we can do this.
We can totally change. We can, we can up level. And a good example is like, when you are doing pricing, when you first start in business, you think, oh, I couldn’t charge people that I, I’m not worth that because you are charging. You can afford, not necessarily what the value that you provide to your, your clients, but as you start to get more confident and you charge those prices and you’re like, wow, I charged this client $500 and they didn’t blink.
So, okay. The next client I’ll charge a thousand dollars and then eventually you’re like, okay, that client didn’t blink. Now. I feel confident. Now I’m charging 2000 or 10,000 or whatever the price is. Your confidence gets built as you start to take those leaps of faith. As you start to step out of your comfort.
And to push yourself beyond what, what you think you’re capable of. So that’s why we, I love to be able to help people tap into their own potential. Cuz so many of us do not actually activate the potential and the gifts and the talents that we have. We kind of just think, well, Joe blogs and Susie Q down the road are doing it this way.
Let me just copy her or his model. And if it worked for them, it should work for me. And that isn’t necessarily. because you are you and no one can be you. So being able to align your, your mind and your skills and your ability and your confidence is really when you become unstoppable, you know, you’ve breached the limits of your comfort zone when things start to get uncomfortable.
But that’s a good thing, cuz if you think about it like elastic band, when you first take it out the box, it’s a little stiff and you gotta really like UG in it to really get it loose. But the more you stretch it, the more it’s more it can contain the more volume more, the more it can can include within that.
But here’s the other good news is that once you’ve stretched, you never really go back to your original shape. So as a business owner, a lot of the time when my clients are coming up against maybe fear or anxiety or trepidation, I always need to, I like to ask the question, why do you feel that way? And what thoughts are coming up for you?
Because this is good. If you are comfortable and you’re thinking, oh, everything’s good. It’s kind of like, you, you, you, you’re going down in a canoe down a, down a, a calm river, but you don’t know that there’s gonna be a sheer cliff, drip, a drop on the other side. That if you aren’t thinking about that and thinking ahead, and you’re not feeling a little uncomfortable, and you’re not thinking that you, you stretching yourself, we don’t grow.
Right. Because nothing grows in a comfort. You know, and that’s the thing is it’s and we have to be able to allow ourselves to breach that, that, that level of, oh, this feels uncomfortable. Oh, this is risky. Oh, this is like a little, not, it’s more than what I’m used to and what that is. It’s, it’s an adopting a beginner’s mindset.
So if you see kids, they don’t seem to have the fear about trying something new, like, okay. They trust. The process or that they they’re just gonna do. And in, I’ve seen this with skating, I, I am overthinking everything. Adults be like, if I do this, maybe it’s gonna hurt. And like five year old will come along and just falls down, gets up again.
And I’m like, wouldn’t that be nice if we could all have that confidence off a park for all that, no matter what we do, it doesn’t matter if we fall on because here’s a, here’s a good. If you’re feeling super stressed and anxious and you’re not quite sure, or you you’re getting that sense of frustration or something’s welling up in you, your body has a very good way of telling you that there’s something up now in the world.
Let’s talk about Feeling your Feelings as an Entrepreneur
Most people want to just deny their feelings and they want to just push those feelings of uncomfort or, you know, conflicts aside. But here is here is a secret that I’ve seen. And I’ve I’ve noticed amongst people who are high performing athletes millionaires, you know, celebrities, they are prepared to feel their feelings.
Now, what this means is you can, if you think about it, if you feel your feelings and allow yourself to go through the process of feeling anxious, asking yourself, why do I feel this way? And really getting under the hood of what that trigger is. What’s the worst that could happen. Like a lot of the time our anxiety is based on something that could happen that maybe could happen, but isn’t necessarily true.
So we spent our life fretting about the shoulda-woulda-couldas when an actual actual fact, the stuff that we really should worry about, and not us not doing anything and staying stuck, cuz staying stuck costs you time and. So by feeling your feelings, you can lean into what pushes your buttons.
Like I said to my clients, figure out what those triggers are and lean into them. Let’s figure out why that bothers you. So here’s a good example. You know, I’ve had clients before who’ve had issues with staff members and perhaps they leave the company and they wanna compete with them and go and start their own business and they get really upset and they take it person.
Like it’s a personal attack on them, because what that is really is a sense of mistrust and betrayal, right? So really what we are dealing with is trust issues. So we are like, if you can’t, if you’ve taken on somebody to help you in your business, but you can’t let go of the reins, you definitely have trust issues and you maybe are belonging to the control freaks anonymous group.
And maybe we need to retire. So I say to my client says, okay, if you’ve got trust issues with your staff or with people who work for you or partners or whatever, let’s dig into why. And more often than not, when we look under the hood and we start to look there’s a lot of trauma that’s based in childhood.
That our programming has usually been developed and our reactions be by the time we’re 10 or even up to the age of seven. So if we think about what were those triggers that happened, that maybe your parent let you down, or you were disappointed or hurt or bullied or betrayed as a child that creates this resistance to trusting others, that it even shows up in your business.
So that’s why I say the most productive time you can spend. Is to sit in that moment of feeling uncomfortable, even disappointment or shame. Like if a business fails and you lose money, allow yourself to sit in that and process the emotions because you have to move through it. We can’t deny it. And that’s why I’m so passionate about teaching people, how to take control and reframe and rewire their minds.
Because if you don’t become reliant, Medication or distractions like eat overeating or all, all the vices we have out there, cuz really what they are, are distraction tools. So I definitely say the biggest advice I could say is allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling, allow yourself to process it.
And then you, you are over it, then you can move on. That’s that’s the key to be our humanness, right. Is being able to be empathetic and caring to others and understanding the other person’s points of view. That’s when you know, you’ve matured, right? Is that you can actually look at a situation from the other person’s perspective, because there’s always three versions of the truth, your yours, mine, and the truth.
And if we can allow ourselves to adopt and at least be more. Open to accepting that somebody else might have a different viewpoint and maybe what triggers them doesn’t trigger me. I mean, this can be come down to I’m sure we could avoid a lot of arguments in world wars. If we could all come to the agreement of just understanding everybody else’s perspective, that what one person values is not necessarily somebody else’s values, but you don’t have to force your values or beliefs or understanding of things onto others to project it onto others.
And then to. That you don’t get that result. And then you get disappointed. So by us, and really the, the key to this is you take back your own power by being control and saying, I’m in control of my own thoughts. I’m in control of my own feelings and I’m in control of my own circumstances. It’s not the world, it’s not the economy, it’s not the politics.
You know, it’s really, it’s up to you. You get to choose. That’s what makes us human. The difference between us and animals is, you know, our power of choice. And also as a, as a woman in faith, our faith, I really believe that this is, you know, God inspired that God puts in us that need, and that sort of compass and that, that beacon that we are constantly searching for greater meaning.
And purpose with what we are doing with our life. That being in business isn’t necessarily who you are, it’s what you do. But a lot of us get caught up and, and especially women, but men as well, we get our who and our due confused, or we get them together. So if something happens, for example, something happens with the business, maybe the business fails, or you made some bad financial decisions or partnership goes bad.
We take it personally, like there’s something wrong with us. And we say, we, we say the things to ourself like, oh, you’re terrible. Oh, you are awful. And you, and that’s not necessarily true. It’s the situation was awful. The situation was terrible, but how can I learn from that? How can I take what I’ve learned now?
And the person I’ve become and turn that into something good. And that is the difference between staying. Using your experience and your circumstances to gain momentum. Cuz I don’t know about you, but I’ve made many people who have been raised in the most dire situations. And I was raised in South Africa.
So I was surrounded by poverty all the time that I’ve seen people raised up from the, the, the lowest of the low income and family dynamics, you know, horrific abuse and they made that choice. They weren’t gonna use that as an excuse to say, because I came from the wrong side of the tracks. I could never be X, Y, and Z.
They look at it and say so, and so did it. And if he, or she could, it means I can too. They’ve given themselves permission to try and they’ve taken their own power back and said, I’m not gonna allow my past my childhood, my upbringing, my, you know, previous relationships, even my past experience and mistakes to define who I am, cuz I’m in control of who I am, how I think and how I feel and I get to choose.
And that is the greatest news. Words are containers of power and nothing is whether we get to wield our words for good or wield them for bad. And unfortunately not all of us were raised in an imperfect parenting situations. We had good words spoken over us and a lot of the time, and this is something I find quite common amongst high achievers, especially those in business and in professional athletes or, you know, those who are, who are achieving big things is there is a essence of lack that they had as a child that there are trying to fill through accolades people pleasing perfectionism performance.
Then I’m, I’m the first one to admit that was me. Feeling that lack as a child, like, Hey, look at me, mom and dad, you know, look at me, are you proud of me? And we take that through, unless we are aware, we start to perpetuate that in our, our adult lives and we pull it into our business and our relationships too, that if we constantly seeking for validation from people who don’t actually have the authority to give it to us, Or the permission, like, why are we waiting for someone to say, well done.
Now you can go and live your life. Like, why, why should we do that? If you think about it, it’s like, well, I can’t do that because of the situation that’s a very uncomfortable. And I would say, you know unproductive way of thinking where you think there, there is a saying that says everything is figure out.
It doesn’t matter the circumstances or the situation you find yourself in. If you can allow yourself to, to pause and get into what I call super think mode, allow yourself to, instead of the surface based reactive thinking of just reacting with your emotions and oh, how dare they insult me or start to ask yourself.
And the simplest thing is ask yourself, Why do I think this, why do I feel this way? Why do I, and when was this, when did this start happening? And you start to go deeper and deeper and you start to realize, and you go back and sometimes it requires, and this is part of some of the, the, the processes I take my clients through is, you know, going back and through trauma therapy and having to forgive the five year old or to forgive the parents of when you were five, who disappointed you and let you down.
And it’s amazing that the breakthroughs you. It’s like you just release that tension and that pain off of you, and it allows you and you’re giving yourself permission to continue and to reach what you wanna do. Especially if you feel like you, you try these things and you either boomerang backwards, or you hit these walls, that’s often an indication that there is a mindset or there’s a mental block.
Or a nice often a limiting belief that you’re putting on yourself because you’re either hearing mom or dad’s head like, oh, you can never do that. Oh. Or a teacher or somebody who spoke negative words over you. So I will always say is, you can figure it out. There’s always a solution. And there were always different degrees of, of, of, of looking at something.
We just need to allow ourselves the time and the patience to sit still and to really allow ourself to super think our way out of any situation. That’s when you realize that you’re more powerful than you think, and you can overcome any obstacle you come up against. My takeaway tip would be, this is to allow yourself to feel your feelings.
Like anything that comes up and, you know, triggers something in you, a good, in a good exercise is to take pen and paper and to actually write things out as a child, I used to have a, have a, a journal and I’d be like, dear diary. So, and so said this, and as I’ve learned, the neuroscience is actually science setback set up that it’s a very therapeutic way of allowing your actual deep feelings and thoughts and subconscious to come out.
So allow yourself time just to think. And, and, and to question yourself, like, why do I think or feel this. And allow yourself to, to say, okay, this, this is what shame feels like. It feels terrible, but it what’s the worst that could happen. You feel shame and then you get through it and you move on and allowing yourself that time and is really, really the best time you can spend and allow yourself just a little bit of grace to, to get yourself through the hard things.
Are you ready to change your brain to change your life? Discover how to break limiting beliefs. Stop self sabotage and unlock your full potential by rewiring your brain using neuroscience coaching and faith-based principles.
Come and join my coaching program Unstick Your Mind today!
