We’re often told when it comes to building a business, it’s about your mindset.
My husband and I have been in business in the online marketing world for 15 years now and in the beginning, I thought I was just lacking the tools, skills, and resources to build the business I had envisioned.
What our vision boiled down to was that we wanted to be able to have the freedom to not work a nine to five so we could travel and not rely on anyone else for a paycheck.
We tried many business ventures and eventually made the decision to sell all of our possessions, quit our jobs, rent out our home, and move across the world to Vietnam.
And a lot of people thought we were crazy.
But there were also a lot of people who were in our corner and supported us too.
We had a really good family friend that was working part-time in Canada and part-time in Vietnam. We had the framework that the most important people around us did believe in what we were doing and they were making the connections for us.
One of two things can happen when you make a big decision…
Either, you get a lot of support from the people in your corner and there’s not a lot of resistance. They tell you to go for it and hype you up.
Or you face a lot of resistance from the people in your life. A family member might think you’re crazy or tell you that it won’t work or it’s not safe.
There are people and circumstances in our lives that push us toward our goals or hold us back. Here’s the thing that we have to remember– 99% of the time when it comes to those that we love, they want the best for us!
As human beings, we are designed to keep each other safe. Safety looks like doing the same things, where we know the end result and we’re never going to get hurt. So if there is a chance that you can fail at something or that you may not be successful, or it just might not work in someone’s eyes and if they love you, they are going to express those feelings.
That’s unless they are somebody that knows that those things are possible and that it’s not a risk. It’s important to remember that the people in your life that might be holding you back still love you.
The fight or flight response and the safety net that we want to create for our families is a very natural thing. Our minds were not designed to help us excel in business. Because when it comes to building a new business and starting a new frontier, it requires risk.
If you want something that you’ve never gotten before, you have to be willing to do some things differently and get out of the fixed mindset; and that puts us into a state of the unknown. Not only do you have the most influential people around you, either supportive or not, you also have internal voices that are trying to keep you safe. So you’re battling multiple things along the way. And that’s why entrepreneurship is not easy.
It is a constant battle of managing your own voices and thoughts and managing the voices and thoughts of your social group.
So when you think about the people in your life, these are the three questions you need to really suss out to determine if their advice something that you want to take as truth, or if you should take it with a grain of salt.
Question 1: Do they have the same goals?
This is really important to consider. My dad, for example, has always been somebody that has believed in financial freedom and never having a nine to five job. So when it comes to my dad’s advice, usually about real estate since that’s where he has made a living, it completely makes sense.
Maybe you have someone in your life that doesn’t have that same experience. Maybe they’ve always worked for a corporation and don’t have a growth mindset. They have a pension and they’ve never done anything on their own.
Their safety zone is going to be sticking with working for someone else. That’s just where their safety net is going to be; so they’re probably always going to push you that way.
Question 2: Do they have the same values?
One thing that is really important to my husband Bill and I is freedom. Whenever I was working for corporate I found it really challenging to be able to travel and do the things that we wanted to do.
I remember one time so vividly; Bill’s uncle had passed away. We were all really close and it was very sudden. I wanted to go home so I could go to the funeral. My boss at the time was like, “yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and gave me so much pushback. I remember thinking, this does not align with my values at all.
Sometimes you’re going to come across people that do not have those same values as you. Maybe they don’t really value flexibility and freedom. Maybe they value security and having every debt paid. Or maybe they really value family and being home all the time and not traveling.
Whoever you are deciding to open up your ears and consciousness to, you want to make sure that you share those same values. Their roadmap to success is just not going to be the same as yours.
Question 3: Have they achieved what you want to achieve?
If you’re someone out there that is like, “I want to make six figures online and not have to go to work or depend on someone else,” is the person that you are taking advice from in that exact position that you’re looking for to give you advice?
I can guarantee you anytime that I have taken advice from a coach that I have hired because they have already gotten to where I want to get to, I have reached my goal a million times faster. And when I say a million times faster, I really mean it’s taken me a year on average.
The story would be very different if this person was not somebody that had gotten there already. They wouldn’t know the roadmap to get me there. So why would I think that their advice would be something that I should hold on to?
These are some really important questions to consider because ultimately, it really helps decipher if the people in your life are either pushing you towards their goals or your goals. They may be detracting you and not on purpose, but it happens because they just don’t have the same DNA that you ultimately need in order to get to your goals.
I put together a three-day mini-training in the form of three different emails.
One is going to be focused on a thought download. This comes from a couple of different life coaches and business coaches that I follow like Kris Plachy and Brooke Castillo.
This tool is a way to get really conscious about those limiting beliefs and thoughts that might be programmed into your mind. If you don’t get a handle on those, they are going to consistently disrupt you from the progress that you want to make. We all have them.
What happens is you’ll get to a certain point in your business where you just feel like you can’t get to the next level. You’ll just stay stuck until you’re able to remove that limiting belief and get to that next level. So that’s why the thought download is going to be a really important piece of this puzzle.
The second thing is meditation. The reason meditation is so important is that it helps prime your brain for where you want to go. What I love about meditation is that the more that you practice, the more that you can figure out which meditations are right for you.
I’m a big fan of Dr. Joe Dispenza. You have to start where you are so I would do just 5-10 minute sessions. Once I started doing these longer meditations, it’s like your body goes into this state of almost sleep and you start visualizing these crazy things that you want in your life.
I had this one visualization in November of 2019. It was of my husband and I holding onto the hands of our son or daughter. We had been having some struggles with genetics in trying to have a baby. It was like, at that moment, I knew that it was going to happen for us and that we were going to have a child.
It’s crazy because it was about six weeks later I found out I was pregnant and I am currently now 29 weeks pregnant with our first baby. That experience in itself, when it comes to meditation, it really solidified for me that that piece of the puzzle of being able to deeply visualize what you want is powerful.
And then lastly, there are many podcasts and books out there and tons of resources, but the most important thing is to actually make it a habit so that you are consistently bringing your brain to that place.
The best book I’ve read on this is called “Dollars Flow to Me Easily.” The idea is, if you think something is easy, it will be easy and if you think something is hard, it’s hard. It’s easy to catch yourself like, “Oh my gosh, this workout is so hard” or whatever it is that you’re tackling.
If you believe that it will be hard, or if you think it will be easy, it will be. That’s one of the most important life-changing books that I’ve read.
There’s a bunch of other ones that I would recommend as well as some podcasts. If this is a topic you’re really interested in, which you really should be, if you have gotten to a plateau in your business, or if you are scared of success, failure, rejection, or what your family will think, this three-day email series is definitely for you. You can grab a copy at https://ashleyshaw.ca/getconfident.
You will get:
The thought download template.
The meditations.
And the resources that I would absolutely recommend.
Thank you so much for taking some time for yourself to really focus in and start to listen to what you need. We’ve got to trust that we know best. If we can quiet our minds and start to silence all the other voices and really listen in, we do know what is best for us. That’s where making the time to listen and to get aligned with where you need to go from here is going to pay off.
