“Realize that failure is a part of the game of growth.”
On today’s episode, I’m talking about something that’s rarely talked about. In fact, I’m starting to think that other personal development people aren’t sharing this because they fear you won’t want to improve your life if you know this.
But, by us NOT talking about it, it’s harming you and others around you.
So today, friend, I’m addressing head on this unspoken truth about how personal growth can feel uncomfortable if not downright horrible at times.
Of course, overall, personal growth is great! Growing into a stronger & “better” version of ourselves is wonderful and it feels good (in time) to step into the person we know we want to be.
But, during the process of growth, our brains can FREAK OUT!
We often self-sabotage, encounter new unexpected problems, and just feel downright awful in moments as we move toward our next level of success.
We wonder if this whole growth thing is worth it. We wonder if we’re just doing it wrong. We even get concerned that we don’t have what it takes to step into this next level.
So, on today’s episode, I’m talking about why this discomfort happens to us and I’m giving you some quick tips on how to make this process easier for you.
(I share too about an area of my life that feels SUPER uncomfortable right now and I’m telling you directly the thoughts I’m hearing in my head as I change. Hearing the thoughts I have might be the lightbulb moment you need to understand how your own subconscious thoughts could be sabotaging you too!)
I hope this episode shows you that there’s NOTHING wrong with you if you’re encountering discomfort while growing and puts your mind at ease that this is just a NORMAL part of the process.
Be sure to listen to the episode on the link above.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
→ Continue the conversation in my free online community
→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training
Full transcript:
Episode 6: EMBRACING GROWTH’S DISCOMFORT
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 6, Embracing Growth’s Discomfort.
[music]
Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey, hey there friends, or maybe I should be calling you hey, hey there, Miss Unstoppable. That’s what I call all the women who are in my Become an Unstoppable Woman course. I feel like you and I, we’re starting to get on this unstoppable journey together so you are my unstoppable woman in training. How’s it going? How is your week going?
It is so great to be back on here. I feel like I want to be doing episodes all the time. There are so many things I want to share with you but I’m having to pace myself and keep my work-life balance or this term I’ve heard recently called work-life blend where I’m blending these two together because balance, let’s face it, can be really hard to achieve. Again, I’m trying to slow down here and not record all the episodes I want to share with you so badly because then my poor personal life would have no mom or wife involved at all but I’m just so grateful that you’re here and you’re tuning in for another episode.
Today we are talking about embracing growth discomfort. Something that happens a lot is when we are growing it can be very uncomfortable. This is something I feel like very few people know about and very few people talk about. Yes, personal development is great stuff, and it is great that you are sitting here and you are listening to a podcast like this. So many people out there, and I wish I had a stat, but I don’t, but so many people just accept their life for what it is or how they are for what it is. I know so many people this way.
So many of my family is this way I must admit. They just say, “Oh, well, this is just who I am and this is life’s cards I’ve been dealt with.” It’s very rare for somebody to say, “Okay, here’s the cards that I’ve been dealt with, but this is how I’m going to change it. I’m going to prioritize myself, and I’m going to learn, and I’m going to change, and I’m going to invest in myself,” because investing in yourself is really scary for a lot of people. It was for me at least. And then you do that stuff.
You invest in yourself, you listen to this stuff, and you start to apply it in your life, and you get some wins out of that. You feel some differences happening, which is so fun and so amazing. Then too, there’s a lot of discomfort and you start to see, “Oh, okay, this one friendship that I’ve had forever and ever, with these changes I’ve made, it just seems different now,” or, “My relationship with my partner seems different,” or, “This job that I once loved just feels ho-hum.” It can feel uncomfortable when that happens in our life.
I remember back when I started making big changes in my life from coaching. At first, it was so exciting. It was so exciting to realize how to tap into my thoughts, and to change them, and how it was affecting my feelings, and in turn affecting the actions in my life. I just felt like I was on this high for a really long time, and long time meaning like a few weeks. I had some of these beautiful moments that I will cherish for the rest of my life because I could just feel– I just felt so different and then I started to feel a little uncomfortable.
So much was changing in my life so quickly from doing this deep dive coaching type work that I started to do things like self-sabotage. I started to just feel really uncomfortable being in these kind of new circles of life, not just externally, but internally of, “Okay, these once problems that I thought about day after day after day, they’re not problems anymore,” and so my brain started to think of new problems to create. This is what all of our brains do.
Have you ever heard of the book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks? It’s one of my absolute favorite books. He talks about this in his book. He says we are so used to being in a certain way in life and doing certain things and in essence, living in a certain status. I don’t mean that in an external way of how much money you have, but just in a certain realm of life. Then when we up-level, our brain freaks out and says, “Whoa, this is so different. This is scary.” Even though we know logically it’s not really scary, our brain, because of the newness says, “Oh, I don’t know what to do here,” and can sabotage us back into living life the way that we’re used to.
Even if our career up-levels, maybe it will start to sabotage our relationships, or we start to up-level in our fitness game and then all of a sudden, we hate this other part of our being. Because again, our brain is like, “I need something to criticize here and hold on to and feel comfortable with,” because our brain really just wants us to be an essence in the cave. This is back in the caveman cavewoman days of, “Let’s just stay small, let’s say safe. Because if we leave this cave, we may be eaten by a lion or whatever so we’ve got to stay here.”
Even though we’ve evolved past that as humans, our brains still says, “Oh, if we put ourselves out on social media, that’s like me leaving the cave,” or, “If I told this person this one thing, oh, this is so vulnerable, this feels scary.” I think it’s we’re going to die when we’re not and we know that. But still, our brain is very, very basic at the end of the day and says, “Oh, this is too much.”
Today that’s what I want to talk about is how this feeling can impact you, how to overcome this feeling, how I’m experiencing this in my own life and just some tips and some strategies on how to help you through this process. All right. Let me tell you what’s going on with my life right now and how I’m experiencing this firsthand.
I have realized here in the past few months that I am at the place in life that 10 years ago I once dreamed for myself. I’m about to be 35 years old. Back in the day when I was about 24, 25, I was owning and I was managing a dance studio. If you follow me for a while, you know this, I have this previous life doing this work and I really loved owning and managing that dance studio, but it just wasn’t my it. It was just something that fell into my lap. I really love certain aspects of the studio and having my kids but again, I just felt like this isn’t really what I’m called to do but I did feel like I was on the right path.
Before that, I had been in HR for a little bit and I felt like there were some things I liked about HR as well, but I like the studio even more. I like the development of my kids. I like the teaching aspect. I like having the freedom to create my own business, and doing the marketing, and connecting with my parents, and all of that really fun stuff. I liked that aspect too but again, it was just not my it.
I set out on this journey of, I got to figure out what my it is. I ended up getting pregnant with my daughter and again, I was like, “Well, what kind of mom do I want to be? I don’t really know,” and, “This is the kind of partner that I want to have and her dad is just really not the person that I thought he would be at this point in life.” Things fell apart for me. If you’ve heard my story, you know that, and then it started to come together in a really, really cool, almost magical way.
This is when I started doing coaching. I started to learn all these exercises and these tools to figure out who I was, and what I wanted, and how to overcome these negative thoughts in my head that were holding me back for way, way too long. Then I started to have these changes of, “Oh my gosh, I’m dating this person and I could see myself forever with the person that I’ve always envisioned that I would have,” and, “I’m becoming the mother that I want to be,” and, “Now I know what my it job is.” It’s this whole coaching thing that I’m going through, “Oh my gosh, this is it, this is it.”
Now, I’ve built that and I’m living that now. It almost takes my breath away some days to sit back and say, “How did I do this? How do I create this? This is a life even little girl Lindsay was wanting.” I couldn’t really put my finger on what it was, but just, I wanted to feel this certain way. That’s how I get to feel today. I’ve really been shy about sharing some of this stuff because it can come off as braggy. Then I think, no, I have to share this stuff with you because I never thought I would be in this place.
Now of course, I’m not rolling in the dough. I don’t have this perfect life. Even just this week my husband was annoying me. If you follow me really closely on social media, you know that I had a son and he’s about 11 months old at the time of this recording. I have been nursing him from my body solely for the past 11 months. I just weaned him but yes, that was hard stuff. Even still, my life is pretty good. I think about too, if something horrible happened. If I lost somebody I cared about deeply, or if I got really sick.
I still would- -sit here and say, “I absolutely have a life that I love even though I have these hardships because I have the right mindset. I know how to get through anything, anything. If I ever get off course, I know how to get myself back on it. I know who I am in a very deep way. I’m confident in that.” Again, if I just have a spiral thing, and I did have one of those spirals when I was pregnant, I can get myself back here and I end up getting back here and I’m even stronger, which is crazy.
Again, my life right now is really a 10 out of 10 and no joke, no BS about it. That’s really where I feel like. I feel like I am the mother I’ve always wanted to be. Now, I do think I have little bit work to do on being the wife of a partner that I want to be, but I’m putting that on the back burner for now, but I am showing it better in that area. My family is the way I wanted it to be. The way I feel is the way I wanted it to be. Even the way I look is the way I want it to be. So many things about my life is great but there is one area of life that is something that is not as great. This is total first-world problems for you, but it’s my business.
The past five years, I’ve been growing this business and it’s been magical and awesome to really figure out what it is I wanted to do in the world and be. When I set out on this journey in my mid-20s, that’s really what I wanted was I just want to figure out what my it is. I want to figure out what the thing is that’s going to light me up, and give me passion everyday with my career, and I’m going to make money at it, and too, I’m going to be using my strengths and I’m going to be helping people. Because I want to help people on a really deep way, but I don’t know what that looks like.
I’ve accomplished that. I’ve created that, but since I’ve been so busy creating this beautiful life that I love, my business has gone on the back burner, especially the past year is I’ve had my son and really wanted to prioritize my health during my pregnancy and then spending time with him this past year. It’s hit me that, “Oh my gosh, I’ve been in business five years and my business is nowhere near where I thought it would be at this point, nowhere near.”
This is how I felt in my mid to late-20s when I was looking about in my life and I thought, “Okay, where I am right now is nowhere near what I want my life to be.” This is when I was going through my divorce and I just felt like total crap to be honest with you, especially mentally. I just felt really lost and the negative thoughts I would have day after day were just all consuming. I was anxious and I had these bouts of depression and sadness and too, from the divorce, later looking back, I had a lot of PTSD or post-traumatic stress.
Again, it was just like, “How am I going to get through this? How am I going to get over this? My life is not what I wanted.” That’s again, how I feel right now with my business five years in. It’s like, “This is not okay.” The discomfort of where I am right now in my business is worse than the discomfort of me up-leveling if that makes sense. That’s how I felt, again, in my late-20s was like, “I can’t live in this place anymore in my life. I’ve got to change.”
With that, just like I made those really big changes in my late-20s and early-30s to create this life that I love, now I’m doing this with my business and I’m realizing yet again how uncomfortable this is. It takes me back to my mid to late-20s when I was going through this with my life and how uncomfortable it felt. I’m seeing this with my clients that I’m starting to work with. I have this batch of new clients and I’m seeing this stuff happening in their lives too of, “Okay, I know this stuff is working. I can feel it, I can see it and I know it’s so important but my gosh, it just feels uncomfortable, Lindsay.” Again, I’m in there with them in the trenches again, of, “Yes, this is so uncomfortable.”
To give you a scoop of what’s going on with my business, is I’m starting to do a lot more live events especially here in my community. I’m doing things like networking and I’m doing these things called Strengths Soirees where it’s these live events where women come and they learn about their strengths. I’m meeting people face to face. Again, when you’re networking and stuff, you’re putting yourself up there. I’m doing different things with different moms’ groups and starting to do some things with some different entrepreneur or businesswomen’s groups, whatever you want to call them. Again, I’m putting myself out there.
I’ve really sat behind my computer for the past five years doing this work and doing it online, which has been great, connecting with women all over the world and gotten to help them that way but I just knew I wanted to make a bigger impact to my community and do some different things. I am a naturally very introverted shy person, especially when it comes to my business because my business is very personal to me. I know coaching is not for everybody and I know a lot of people don’t even understand what coaching is.
It takes me back to where I was before I knew about coaching. All my perception of it was kind of like Lucy on Peanuts. I’ve given this example before of just people putting up a sign saying, “Hey, let me give you some advice,” and then charge you for it and they were just all full of BS to be honest with you. I go in sometimes and think, “Oh God, what are they going to think? What are they going to do?” and of course, all these mind chatter, all these negative thoughts have come up.
Recently, even I went to this moms’ event about a week or so ago. It was a Christian moms’ event, and this was my first time to really show up in a church-type setting. Here I am, I’m promoting this podcast there, I’m promoting what I do and I think, “Oh my gosh, Lindsay, you are at this moms’ event with these Christian moms and your podcast is explicit. You say bad words on there and you talk about things beyond God. You say the universe, which some people find offensive and you talk about how you have the power and in some religious circles, they’re not about that.”
I started to just have all these negative thoughts of, “You cannot be here Lindsay. You cannot be doing this.” Then I thought, “Okay, mind, you’re so smart, then where should I be?” “Well, Lindsay, you can’t be with the woo-woo people. You’re not woo-woo enough, and Lindsay, you cannot be with the stay-at-home moms because you’re not stay-at-home mom enough, you work. But you can’t be with the working moms because you don’t work outside the home. You have your own business.” It just kept telling me all these things. See the pattern already? “I’m not enough, I’m not enough.”
That’s what we’re all telling ourselves. That’s our deep-seated belief deep down no matter what it is, is that we’re not enough and I heard it. I started to almost have an anxiety attack, no joke. I couldn’t breathe. It was like, “[gasping] What is going on here?” I just felt almost like I was standing on stage naked, no joke. I was just so uncomfortable for me to be seen in this way and to know that some of these women, I could feel their energy they were not feeling me. Because online it’s really easy. If someone’s not feeling you, you have no idea. You might get a troll every once in a while, but you just delete it and move on.
But when you’re in front of somebody and you can tell that they are not feeling this very personal thing that you do, it’s hard. I felt that and I felt that discomfort. I came home and I had this what I call an inner mean girl attack. In the science world, they call it amygdala attack. It’s the part of our brain that’s highly emotional that comes out and says– It’s like a siren like, [siren] “You’ve had this really scary moment today Lindsay and now I’m just going to attack you.”
This voice in my head was just attacking me and giving me anxiety, and also, on the same day, I was having a huge up-level on my business. I was going to an event where first time I was being called an influencer, which if you’re an influencer, it’s not that big of a deal, but it was to me. It was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to this event for free. I’m like a VIP.” When I show up there, they’re calling me, “Hey, here’s one of our influencers.”
I get to go to this really nice suite and hang out and do all this really cool stuff and I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy.” I thought about Lindsay 10 years ago who was waiting for her then partner to come home, who was going to all these really cool events and saying, “Oh, one day he’ll take me to those events.” Then I sat there and thought, “I never even needed him. I could do this on my own and I’m doing this on my own. I have done it.” Again, it was that surreal moment of, “How did I do this? How did I get to this place?”
With that, it goes back to what I was talking about earlier with that Big Leap concept. My mind was like, “Whoa, you have a big up-level today. You’re doing this other event and I need to sabotage you in some way because we have got to stay comfortable, Lindsay. It’s too scary out there. It is too scary. What you’re doing is new and I don’t know how to process this quite yet and so I’m just going to bash you to the core.”
Luckily, thank God, I know how to get through that stuff now. Back in the day, I didn’t know and I just would hide in my bed and think, “Holy crap, this is horrible.” I would say and do these horrible things to my family and my friends and have those anger outbursts. You know what I’m talking about. It does not feel good. It does not feel good at all.
Anyways, here I am again. I’m this world. I’m doing these really big things. I’m growing my business now. The next 10 years I really envision is like, “Okay, I’m going to create the business that I love,” and I set these really big goals of these next 10 years, I’m going to become a multi-millionaire. You may hear that and you may think, “Oh, that’s so greedy,” because that’s what my mind was telling me that too was like, “You are so greedy.” But I have done some major minds at work even just around that of saying, “No, me wanting to go out and create this kind of money means, A, I’m helping a lot of people, a lot of people. Two, then I can take that wealth and I can spread it.”
I watched this documentary on Netflix the other day called The Pad Project about this women in India who don’t have access to sanitation napkins when they’re on their periods, and how that impacts their education, and how they don’t talk about it their menstrual cycle with other men or even women in their community, and how that impacts them. I thought, “Man, I wish I had the money that I could go there and give them these sanitation products. Man that would be so huge for these women. Man it would- -create such a ripple effect,” and all this stuff.
I thought, “See, this is why I’m doing the work that I’m doing.” I get to work with women who can afford to do things like coaching, and are in the mind space to do things like coaching. I get to help them live their best lives and so then I can go and help people just move a little bit further on their journey who may not be able to work with me in that sense. Again, I’m taking this all in of, “Holy moly, I’m creating this power in my world. How did I do this? How did I create this?” Again, my mind is freaking out.
Could you relate to this? Do you ever do these things in life where you just have these surreal moments of, “Man, how did I create this?” If you’re not having those moments, then I really encourage you to start looking at some personal development work because this is how life can be. Once you start working on your mind, and your thoughts, and your feelings, and you learn this process for change, either if that’s with me or somebody else, but this is what you can create, this huge transformation where you just become this powerhouse in your life and then in the world.
The other thing that’s going on in my world is my husband is doing all this genealogy stuff with our family trees. I’m starting to look at these family trees, especially the women in my family and I’m thinking, “I’ve come from a lineage of generation after generation of really highly emotional unhappy women.” Granted, yes, back in the 1800’s, even the Great Depression, all that stuff, it was hard to be happy. Right now where we are in this time is really what I consider one of the first times that women can live happily and in their power. We have all these resources available to us where we can do this kind of stuff.
But again, I’m looking at this lineage and I’m thinking, “Wow, I have broken so many barriers. I have changed the entire progression of my family lineage by doing this kind of work.” Again, I’ve had to sit back and take in, “Holy moly, how have I done this? I can’t believe I’ve done this. I have created this whole new pattern for my future generations. This is crazy.” I just want to put that out there to you as if there’s something that goes on your family for generation after generation, this kind of work is what changes it. It changes the game. It allows you again to just keep up-leveling, but that’s side change. I’m going back to growth discomfort.
Again, it just creates this uncomfortable feeling. I’ll give you some examples of some clients I have right now. I have a couple of clients who they’re working on prioritizing their own needs. They are moms and they have just been in the cycle of taking care of kids for year after year, which is so common. Then finally, they’re like, “Okay, I’m so burned out and I need to prioritize myself again. I need to up-level in these certain ways and heal these certain things,” and so they’re going through the coaching process. Them just prioritizing themself again is huge and it’s become uncomfortable.
We talked about it in the last episode with Julia Wells was my interview guest of women, we’re so used to seeing around us that we all have to sacrifice our happiness and everything else for our families. Again, it’s huge work that they’re doing and it’s uncomfortable for them. It is so uncomfortable and it’s me coaching them through that. Today, I want to coach you through that. If you are going through that, you’re feeling that or there’s going to be a time when you do feel that.
When you finally prioritize yourself and you do this personal development work, it’s going to feel uncomfortable. You’ve got to know firsthand that’s going to happen because I didn’t know that going into the game. I just thought, “Okay, I’m going to change my life, everything’s going to be great and then I’ll move about my day.” Someone didn’t warn me, “Hey, you’re going to have a lot of bumps along the road and here’s why. This is how our brain is wired, and blah, blah, blah, blah.” Because otherwise, I just thought, “Oh, it’s not working. Oh, it’s something wrong with me.”
No, no, no, that’s just how our brain is. Then too, here are some tips that I learn that can really help you. Tip number one, consume and surround yourself with people who get it. When I started making big changes in my life, in my late-20s and I was going through coaching, my friends were all super happy for me, my family, not so much. They were like, “What the heck are you doing?” My friends, they were all really happy for me, and I started to make these big changes. Again, it became then that I was almost like an outsider looking in of, “Oh, I’m so happy that you’re happy.”
They weren’t making big changes. They were just putting up with status quo and saying, “Oh, well, this is my life. You must be some magical unicorn that you get to go in and live this awesome life, but mine just stay ho-hum.” Even though they were supportive, they didn’t get it and they weren’t up-leveling anymore. I needed to be around people who got it and who understood may have to be around people who got it and who understood what this new life was like, and too, who had that go-getter motivated mentality of saying, “Okay, I’m going to prioritize this stuff too and we can talk, and share stories, and do all that stuff.”
Luckily, I found that in my coaching school because everyone was obviously going through coaching as they were becoming a coach but too, I had to watch what I was consuming in my world. I had to start to consume personal development books and podcasts. Too, this was the value of me having my own coach, of being able to talk openly about some of this stuff. I know that’s an investment. I didn’t get to keep that investment forever more. I’ve gotten in and out of having my own coach, but I had to really prioritize what am I taking in here? Because if you’re trying to consume crap all the day, every day, or if you’re just around negative people, that’s going to seep into your soul.
I actually have a client right now who’s living at home with some negative people, and she’s managing through that. It’s like, “How do I do that? How do I get through this?” A lot of times, you have to make that decision of what’s more important here, living with these people, having them in my life or myself? There’s been a lot of times I’ve had to choose myself. Even though I love these people so much, I’ve had to lose so many friends over the years just because they didn’t get it. They weren’t making changes. They weren’t up-leveling anymore and I couldn’t be around that negative energy. I love them dearly, dearly but I love myself more. I love me being able to create the life that I want more, and so I had to make that choice.
It sucks, and it stinks, and I hate it but again, what’s more important here? I know the bigger impacts that I want to make in this world and that’s with me getting on this mic and telling you how to change your life, so you can go help change your kids’ lives, go change other people’s lives indirectly or directly, whatever you do with that. Then we generate more income in this world, and we give back, and we give back, and we give back and then the whole world changes.
That’s just how I envision it. To me it’s like, “Oh, I love this person, but I got to let him ago. I got to let him go,” and too, I got to consume in my mind only this positive stuff. Again, you got to be there too. There’s a quote out there, and I forgot who said it that said, “You are the sum of the five people you hang out with most.” It’s so true. It is so true. There’s so many parents too in my daughter’s school that I enjoy, but they’re not working on themselves. They have some negativity. As much as I want to be around them, and I want to create that kind of community with them, they’re negative, and I can’t be around that, and it stinks. It totally stinks.
Again, my vision and what I want for my life, and what I want for my kids’ lives, and for my generations to come, and I want for your life, and anybody else in the show is way more important to me than having those relationships that’s going to seep into my soul, makes sense? All right, so again, consume and surround yourself with people who get it.
Number two, find some mentors, find some people to look up to. What I realized recently is I started to beat myself up about not having the business that I want right now. I want to backtrack on that for a second. I love my business. I love what I’ve created in my business. I just haven’t scaled it to where I thought it would be at this point. Everything I’ve done in the past, especially if you worked with me, you’ve been like, “Oh, Lindsay, do you regret that?” No, oh my gosh, no.
You have made me a spiritual billionaire because I’ve gotten to help you. Again, that’s why I just feel like such a billionaire in every area of my life except for my financial life, and my financial life is fine, it’s great. I could sit here and never work again. I’m in that kind of position, and that’s again is something big for me to admit to you, that I’m in a position like that, that I’m in a relationship where my husband does well financially, but I want to do more.
I started to again beat myself up of, “Man, I’m just not a good business owner and why is that? Maybe I just don’t have what it takes?” that negative mindset our brain likes to tell us. What I realized is it’s become, or it’s been a lot easier for me to become the mother I’ve wanted to be not only from coaching, but because I had all of these mentors in my life. I got to see all these other women be exceptional mothers when I was growing up, and I got to see a lot of unexceptional mothers as well and so then, I learnt a lot.
But I didn’t see a lot of women who were business owners and I really didn’t even see a lot of women who are working in my community. I lived in this upper middle class area and so most moms are stay-at-home moms back then, and some of them are rocking it. Again, it was like, “Okay, I want to create that, I want to create that.” I had that vision and when I wasn’t a part of that vision, I thought, “What do I need to do to get there?”
I really haven’t had a lot of business mentors other than just people I have seen online, other coaches that I’ve seen from a far but you know how this whole online space gets. A lot of people present themselves one way and then behind closed doors, it’s a whole different ball game. Again, it’s like some of these mentors that I thought, “Oh, I want to create what she has,” have been liars, no joke, liars. If you have been in the online space for a while, we’ve had these conversations. It’s been very disheartening.
I hope you guys never- -think that about me, ever, because I want to be very forward. And if you ever have more questions about, “Hey Lindsay,” you’ve got questions for me about different areas of my life, ask me, I am an open book, but anyways, finding mentors. People who are ahead of you, people that you can study, you can model after and look up to and just say, “Okay, I want to create what they have.”
I’m having to create that out of thin air, to be honest with you in a lot of ways. I do have a couple of mentors here and there that I’m looking at and starting to trust a little bit more. Again, that’s really what’s been something that’s helps me in the past be the mother I want to create and then– or be the mother I want to be, excuse me, and then now with my business.
Now, the third and final tip I want to give you today about embracing growth discomfort is something I’ve heard recently. Of course I’ve heard it many times over, but it’s really been hitting home with me lately. That is realizing that failure is a part of it. Meaning, when you are starting to grow and you are starting to expand, you’re going to fail and you’re probably going to fail a lot. I don’t know how I got as lucky as I did, me and my husband right out of the gate when I was changing my life. I don’t really know how that came together, but with my business, it hasn’t been as easy.
Yes, I got some great clients out of the gate too, no joke, but there’s been a lot of bumps in the road. There’s been launches that I’ve done, meaning like putting a program out there that I lost money on. There has been clients I’ve had that weren’t so great, that didn’t really get the results. They probably should’ve been better therapy clients and I’ve learned that over time. Even just recently, I’ve been reaching out to a lot of different companies and people to partner with them. That’s my big thing I’m working on this year with my business.
There was a workshop here locally with somebody. I reached out and I did a proposal for them and I even put the date in my calendar and I’m like, “Of course, they’re going to say yes. This is an amazing workshop. I love this workshop that I doing.” They came back and they said, no. I wrote back and I said, “No, no, no, wait, I don’t think you understand. This is what I’m going to give to your clientele. They’re going to learn this, and they’re going to learn this and this. This is the most impactful and most important thing they can ever learn.” They came back and said, “Yes, no, we’re still not interested.” Again, it’s like, “What?”
I’m failing all the time now. I’m also getting success all the time and a lot of people, they just talk about the success. I could sit here and just say in the past month my email list has almost doubled in size, my Instagram has almost doubled in size. Normally I get about 100 profile views a week, I’ve gotten almost 2,000 in the past month. My business is growing at a very big rate this past month. It’s again, been really scary for my brain. It’s like, “Whoa, all these people are seeing my stuff. Ooh, I’m talking to more people.” I’ve launched this podcast too, which felt really scary.
There have been successes, but there’s also been failures and our brain is wired to focus on those failures. Again, if you go back to this past month, what’s the first thing that comes to mind for my brain is, “Hey, you remember that workshop they said no to? Hey, remember when you went to that mom’s event that you had anxiety at and nobody wanted anything that you had to offer? Yeah, that really stank Lindsay.” Then I have to think, “Okay, what’s gone really well?”
This is something I talk to my clients about, what I train my clients on is focusing on your wins, and what wins look like, and how to count those every day because we have to actively train our minds to focus on the positive. Let me give you an analogy here, is negative memories come in your brain and they’re like Velcro. They just want to stick in there like, “Hey, we got to remember this because we got to keep you safe.”
Then those positive memories, they just slip right off like Teflon, because your brain is like, “Oh, that was good. There was no danger. I don’t even remember. It’s not that big of a deal.” Again, we have to train our brains for that. Too, we have to train our brains for when we fail, because when we’re going to do bigger things in our world, we’re going to fail and it’s going to feel really scary to our brain because likely it’s something new and likely it’s something that you already felt scared about. Then going into it, the brain then wants to say, “Okay,” the siren effect, like [siren].
To me, when that workshop said, no, for example, it was like, “See Lindsay, nobody wants coaching. Nobody gives a crap about coaching. You can’t do this, just give up. Just be a stay-at-home mom. That’s what feels good to you. You’re a great mom. Put your feet back. Life is good for you. Just give up your whole business. Why are you even trying this?” See, my brain does this still after all this work and your brain is going to do it too.
So many clients I have, they work with me, they have these great big transformational results and then a couple of months later, they’re like, “Oh, but Lindsay, my relationships with my husband’s not doing very well and I just don’t know where to go with that.” I’m like, “Hello, we talked about this. This is what your brain’s going to do. This is why you go back to the tools so you know this is what’s going to happen. You know this,” and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, yes, my brain sabotaged me again because I’m growing and I’m changing,” and that’s just what our brand is going to do and we’re going to have failures along the way.
The last thing I want to say there too is going back to that Big Leap effect, that book that I keep talking about, is it’s so important that when we do have these big leaps that we realize sometimes that we’re going to sabotage our self. I mentioned earlier that this past week my husband has annoyed me more than in other weeks. I have taken back and before I’d be like, “What is going on? Oh, why is he so annoying, blah, blah, blah?” My brain would even like catastrophize of, “How did I get in this relationship, blah, blah, blah, blah?” and do all these things.
I’ve taken back and was like, “There is nothing wrong with Jason. Jason is fine. Yes, he’s annoying me this week, but I know what you’re doing brain. You’re trying to sabotage me. You are saying too much growth has happened this month in my business, okay, let’s start poking at our marriage now. Let’s start poking away at this, hey, look what he’s doing over there, isn’t that so annoying?” Because I have again, up-leveled to a new status and my brain is like, “Ooh, this is scary.”
Just know it’s going to happen to you and then you’re going to start to get some grounding in that new status and it’s going to start to feel really good. You’re going to, like I have said before, if something ever happened with my relationship with my husband, I would never in a million, trillion, bazillion years go back to dating the type of guy I dated before my husband. The way I was treated in those relationships wasn’t necessarily bad on the surface, but man it was so toxic of just these little things that were always there.
I would never go back to dating a guy like that. At first, when I first dated my husband and things started to get really serious, and I remember when we were saying I love you to each other, it was so scary. It was so scary and my brain really wanted to get out of that situation real fast of like, “I don’t know how to do this. This is really weird.” But now it’s like, “Of course. Of course, I deserve a relationship like this. Of course I can handle a relationship like this.”
Again, it’s just going to be uncomfortable. It’s just like when your muscles are growing and changing when you start working out more. It feels like crap at first, but then your muscles get used to it and it’s like, “Okay, let’s do more. Let’s do more.” Our brain is the same way so just realize it’s part of the game, all right friend.
I hope today’s episode helps you. It helps you understand A, that discomfort in growth is normal, what can happen when we go out and we start to grow, and then some tips and strategies on how to help yourself when you’re growing and you’re changing.
Now, again, if you’re at a place in life where you are happy and you don’t want to change, lucky you. That is great. I love those kinds of moments where you can just sit back and relax but for some reason, I’m always wanting to grow and change and I hope you are too. If you’re listening to a podcast like this, you likely are a go-getter woman who’s always wanting something more. That doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy with what you have, it’s just like you want a new challenge, you want to take on something more.
I really would love to work with you if you’re at a place where you’re like, “Okay, I want to up-level my mind. I want to know how do you create even more success in my life.” That is the key coaching client right there, somebody who’s already had some success and wants even more, and wants to learn how to be even more powerful and more resilient and more of the person she knows she wants to be.
I would love for you to reach out to me if that’s you. You can go take a free assessment to see if coaching with me is right for you. You just go to lindsayepreston.com/assessment to go in and learn if we’re a great fit to work together. Then if we are, you’ll be directed to do a free one-on-one discovery call with me where I can learn even more about you and what you want coaching to help you with so we can ensure it’s a great fit.
All right, my friend, that’s all I have for you today. I hope loved this episode. If you did and you haven’t left a review for the show yet, please do. I love reading your reviews. It gives me the momentum to keep getting on and giving you these free contents. When you do go and leave a review, I have a free podcast community. I was going to charge for it if you’ve heard other episodes. I said, “Oh, I’m going to start charging,” and I decided I’m not going to do that.
I’m going to allow anybody into the community who has gone and left a review for the show, because that tells me you’re active, you love what I’m creating, and so then, we can talk behind the mic of what’s going on in your life. Maybe it’s growth discomfort. Maybe we need to talk more and I can help you through that. Then I have some great guests coming up on the show and we talk about, “Hey, what questions would you ask this person?” Be me and I want ask those questions for you or what topics do you want me to cover on the show.
Then too, you get to connect with some other women who are listening to the show, and network, and do all that fun stuff. Because what I’m learning, as you’ve heard on the show, networking is very powerful. I’ve just networked for a few times now and already I’ve created so much abundance out of that just with different Facebook communities- -and in person and I want to create that kind of community for you.
For you to create and have some friendships and some business partners or whatever you want with other powerful women in the world who are stepping up and saying, “Hey, we’re going to create this amazing life and we’re going to give back in the process of giving that amazing life.” Come join me, leave a review and then all you got to do is take a picture of that review and then email it to me at [email protected] and I will give you the links to the community.
All right, my friend, that’s all I have for you today. On the next episode of the show, I have a very special guest and we’re going to be talking about some mindset things. This guest is a counselor and she’s a life coach and we’re going to be talking about the difference between counseling and coaching. We’re going to be talking about ways that you can really master your mindset. You hear a lot of mindset stuff from me, but I wanted to bring her on because she has a little bit different perspective, especially having that counseling background.
It’s a really great episode so come back, tune in, it’ll be live on April 15th, yes, Tax Day here in the US, so join me then. All right, my friend, until next time. All my love and blessings and remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe to be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
0 Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks