Mindset madness: Shed the “should”
LINKS
Savage Grace Coaching
Hey Marvelous
The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte
Shakti Encounter Day retreat
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Transcript
One of the first things (and one of my favorite) I did inside of my inner circle mastermind was a core beliefs & values exercise. Maybe you have done these? I’ve done it several times since the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. Danielle Laporte’s The Desire Map is a great resource as is the Hey Marvelous inner circle and soulful MBA courses which you’ll hear me reference throughout this series. Basically in this exercise you get a list of qualities or core beliefs and you circle your top ten. Then your top 3. Sounds simple and painless. And it is. Sort of. Until you run into the “should” wall and realize that some of your choices might not actually be your own. “Shoulds” come from other people's values.
The “should” wall is made up of all the qualities, ideas, and beliefs that we were raised with and may be important to us but aren’t necessarily our top 3 or 5 or even top 10 when it comes to things that really motivate and drive our desires and decision making process. They’re valuable but they aren’t our main core values.
Even if you don’t consider yourself an entrepreneur or that you ever will be, knowing your core values can make every decision you make easier. They are your internal guideposts and are essential to boundary setting in every area of your life.
This is important to really get a handle on when you’re trying to step out into the world ( business or otherwise) because ultimately you’re trying to set yourself apart. Basically that’s what finding your niche is all about. Niche is defined as a comfortable or suitable position or employment and a specialized segment of the market for a particular type of service or product.
The biggest question entrepreneurs face is what is it that I’m going to offer and who am I offering it to? You can’t know that until you really know who you are and what you stand for.
So how do you figure that out?
First you need to shed all of those “shoulds” that you bump up against in your core beliefs exercise. For me “shoulds” make me feel selfish if I don’t embrace them. For example, family is on my core values list. But it’s not number 1. I feel like it should be because I love my family and it would be selfish of me not to include it. But for me it’s not what I consider a major driver for decisions. This exercise isn’t about listing all the things that the world says you should be, it’s about discovering who you really are so that you can become the person you were always meant to be. And in business it’s to discover what you truly desire out of your life and so you can create a business that’s in alignment with your values that will give you that life.
For some reason in the wellness industry there are a lot of women who get really stuck here at the beginning. They know they have something to offer but something doesn’t “feel” right about it and so that sets off a chain reaction of self sabotage that leaves talented female entrepreneurs stranded at the gate. I know because I was one of those for a while until I let go of the ideas about what I should be doing and settled into the things that truly lit me up. Some of those things are right for a lot of other people so I’m not going to tell you that you can’t be successful doing them. I want to be clear that they were not right for me. And encourage each and everyone of you to discover your core values and let those guide you to the things that feel right for you.
So let’s highlight some of those “shoulds” and see if we can’t let some of them go.
You should have all the letters after your name in order to be qualified to speak on any given topic. - I know women with master's degrees and PhD’s that still don’t feel qualified to share their knowledge. This is the ultimate imposter syndrome. Guess what ladies, you already have what it takes. Your experience counts as expertise too and it’s extremely valuable. Yes, education is important, but what good is it if you never open your mouth and share any of it?
You should be able to prove everything you say - Backed by science. It’s great if you’re science minded naturally and you love to research and have a gift for translating that science into layman's terms. But not everything in wellness is backed by science that proves it works and not everything that’s “proven” to work, works for everyone. What makes science science is that you question it and test it all the time. You can share what you know with humility. “The way I understand it… In my experience… What we know now…” goes a long way towards building trust with your audience.
You should stick with a particular audience for all time. - You might know exactly who you are serving. In the inner circle we call this our quintessential client QC, some people call them avatars, but this is a person you know very well. If you don’t, you can do an exercise where you describe this person in detail to help you do marketing to them. If you don’t take the time to get to know this person or you’re confused about who they are, they will be confused too. But sometimes you might want a change, you might want to serve a new and different population. I love sharing trauma release and yoga with all kinds of people but I also like talking about the fitness industry and those are 2 very different populations even though there’s a lot of stressed out fit pros with trauma history. There’s overlap definitely. When I started though I thought I should only focus on military and military families because of my own family history. Even though that is a fantastic goal and something with a lot of value, for some reason in reality it never felt right for me. There was something just a little bit off about it. Like I was on a parallel track with one wheel off. So I got off that track.
You shouldn’t have to change your mind - If you believe that changing what you’re doing is failure then anytime you need to pivot it’s going to paralyze you. When you’re talking about business not everything works for everyone. For example, when I started my online studio, there was a big push to grow your “list”. This is the email list that every business cultivates in order to sell their product. Typically it’s done with a free optin product that’s high value for the customer but low time investment for the business. Then you can run Facebook ads to your free thing and capture people’s email and then later you sell them your courses or whatever. So I dove into the wicked world of facebook ads and after testing had some pretty good success growing my list. Until I realized that no one who joined my list from those ads ever actually purchased anything from my studio. The people who buy from me are students who I have a personal IRL relationship with. So I quit spending money on FB ads and courses on how to do FBads and started investing my time instead in free live classes in my community. That works best for me right now.
You should always do it right - like everyone else. There are a million ways to be successful at what you do. And even though there are hundreds and thousands of other instructors that teach what you teach, they don’t do it like you. Comparing yourself to anyone else is not productive. There is no wrong decision to any question that comes up for you. Every decision you make is going to the right one at that moment. If it turns out that there’s something better later then make that decision then. There’s no way to know if something is right for you unless you try it. If it takes you out of alignment with any of those core values that we talked about earlier then let yourself change.
So those are the top 5 should’s that I’ve seen get in the way of people figuring out what it is they want to do in their business.
I will say that there were moments when I felt stuck. Literally staring at a wall without any inspiration or ideas about what direction to go next. Knowing that continuing what I was doing was not working but not able to make the changes I needed to make. Wondering if I should just quit and get a real job. And then I remembered my core values.
Creativity, self reliance, courage, communication and honesty. I leaned into them hard. These are my guide posts and make a great filter anytime some kind of question comes up.
Each one of those has served me well and yours, whatever they may be will serve you well too. They’ll help you with your intentional yes and your mindful no. And let you finally let go of all of those “shoulds”.
Clearing those barriers can open the door to what it is you want to offer, who it is that you want to serve and how you want to deliver it. I’m telling you right now, today you have enough you know enough and you are enough to make it happen.
Thanks for joining me for this week's Work IN. Next time we’re looking at the dreaded shiny object syndrome and how to set the kind of boundaries that create a burnout proof work life balance. If you like what you heard and are curious to see some of these things in action you can follow me on Instagram at @realsavagegrace or on Facebook @savagegracecoaching And I would be forever grateful if you would give The Work IN a like and share or a 5 star review on Apple or spotify. You can find links to everything we talk about on this podcast in the show notes and the easiest way to get to those is to visit savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin
Thanks everyone and I’ll see you next time!
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