Today we are going to be talking about mental health in relation to what is holding you back. What lies are we telling ourselves that are having a negative impact on our success, on our business, on our relationships, and on our lives? Because we all have the same potential within us. We may not have the same starting circumstances in life. But we all still have the same potential within ourselves to motivate us, and a lot of times we hold ourselves back from success because of certain lies that we tell ourselves and fear that we have inside of us. It’s this fear that keeps us from taking actions that would better our lives and improve our businesses.

We keep ourselves from taking chances, from investing in ourselves, and putting ourselves out there because we are afraid of rejection. If you want to be successful, it is important that you separate your Self from your business. Your own worthiness does not depend on the success of your business. You are amazing. You are worthy. You have value outside of your career. You do not have to judge yourself against your peers or your heroes, and we need to give ourselves grace to do and learn new things. But often we're telling ourselves these lies of “I can't.” Where does this come from?

When we grow up around people, their mindset and their viewpoints on how they see the world rubs off on us. For example, my sisters both had a very strong “you can't” mindset, and I didn't really notice it quite so much until I was an adult. It was only after I had been around my husband, who had a very different and very opposing mindset of “of course you can.”

Everything that I've come up with, every crazy business idea or challenge that I’ve wanted to do has been met with “okay, so how do we get that done.” He asks “what do I need to help and support you in order to achieve that?” It made me realize just how much I had been holding myself back in life earlier, thinking of every excuse I could for why I couldn't do something, why that wasn't going to work. It was something that I internalized and I had told myself “well I can't.”

Episode 31: What’s Holding You Back?

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What's really holding us back? I think one of the biggest things that holds us back is the fear of being rejected. And so that is why we tell ourselves we can't do something in our business because we're not good at this or we don’t know how to do that, instead of just recognizing and finding a solution to overcome it. I have been a hairstylist and a makeup artist for the last fifteen years, run my own business, know how to market, know how to book brides, etc.

I know both the business side and the beauty side of things. I've spent the last decade and a half perfecting and continuing my education to learn and to do and to get better at things. But coaching is something that's new to me. Instead of saying “well I don't know how to coach so I can't be a coach,” I said “well, if I want to be a coach, I have to learn how to do this.”

So, I started taking coaching education courses and I have a coach myself. In this coaching program that I'm doing we were talking the other day about imposter syndrome, and she put up 4-5 different archetypes for different types of imposter syndrome. It is a lie that we tell ourselves about why we can't do something, and the basis of it is that we fear being rejected for not doing something correctly.

The perfectionist archetype is one that I think a lot of people in our industry can probably identify with. And the reason that we are holding ourselves back is that we keep putting things off until it's perfect. We say “well, if it’s not perfect, it's not good enough, and if it's not good enough, then I'm not good enough.” We're denying ourselves the opportunities, because when you put yourself out there there's the chance that somebody's going to say “that's not good enough and we don't want that” but there's equal opportunity for somebody to say “Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to hear today!”

There are so many opportunities where, as a perfectionist, I redo and redo things, and I have a big fear of being rejected. For fear of not coming across as having all of my shit together in the last two years as a coach, I know that I have squandered hundreds of opportunities. I’ve missed out on connecting with new hairstylists and makeup artists, to help them grow their business and start making more money and have more flexibility and more freedom and stop overthinking and overworking.

Because here I am sitting overthinking and overworking and redoing things over and over because I have this perfectionist imposter syndrome. So, it's something that I want to bring awareness to because I've recognized it within myself. I realize and admit out loud to myself and now to the world that this has been holding me back.

I want to help to bring awareness to other people that they may be doing this to themselves, because I wish I had heard this a long time ago. I wish I had surrendered some of this perfectionism and learned how to overcome it a long time ago, because I feel like my business would be so much more successful. And so moving forward, I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to overcome this perfectionism, this imposter syndrome, this fear of rejection. I'm going to stop telling myself the lie of “it's not good enough, it's not worth putting out there.”

The other type of imposter syndrome that I recognized in myself is the natural genius. Now, it sounds even arrogant to say that out loud, like “natural genius… ooh, snooty bitch… like you think you're so smart?” Well, I'm the kind of person who is used to doing things well the first time.

I have a pattern of many things, not everything, but many things coming to me naturally very easily. The first time I ran into an opportunity where it didn’t, it's really hard for me to overcome that. For example, when I first put out my course, Next Level Bridal Business, it was hard for me to get feedback and look at areas where I needed to improve. I had to sit back and look at it and realize that maybe I wasn’t presenting something the right way or in a way that's going to be helpful to the majority of people.

I had to take a step back and realize that it doesn’t make me a bad educator or a bad coach. But maybe I need to refine how I present this information. Maybe I expect everybody to have a certain level of understanding of different concepts and topics. Or maybe I need to go over things a little bit more in-depth or a little less in depth.

So, I held myself back for a long time from helping people because I wasn't able to shift and think of how maybe it's not the perfect way right off the bat. Maybe this needs to be reworked a little bit. Now, I've come a long way in the last few years with being able to reevaluate things. Asking myself what do people still have questions about? What additional resources can I create based around that? I'm not a bad coach because somebody still has questions after that topic. Instead of letting it hold me back, I'm actually using it to see how I can do something differently. Because I'm still learning as a coach, and every day it's my goal to get a little bit better at that.

A more knowledgeable human becomes a better business person. I don't care if it's as simple as taking a woodworking class or a pottery class. You're learning something new, and you're training your brain to rewire itself to work in new ways. This is a reminder that we have value outside of our careers.

Will you join me in releasing that fear of rejection? Will you join me in remembering how amazing and how worthy we are of helping the people around us?

Whether it is in giving business advice or just being there on their wedding day and doing their hair or doing their makeup, we're still helping people. We're still touching lives. So it doesn't have to be perfect. Put yourself out there. Learn something new. Learn that it's okay if somebody says “no.” If that is the case, then it wasn't meant to be. Don't try to force it and don’t take it personally.

What's Next?

Check out my masterclass Mindset Reset!  Overcome your biggest mental blocks holding you back from making more money in this 90 minute masterclass and workbook.