Mindset Matters: dealing with your fears & excuses
Excuses are the WORST. Many times we don’t even realize that’s what they are.
We use them to defend ourselves.
To play victim to our situations.
To keep from having to take a risk.
To keep from getting hurt, and many other reasons.
To keep from playing big, so we won’t fail.
But if you look back on those previous 5 sentences… what’s the common thread there?
FEAR.
Are you using fear & excuses to stay stuck?
How do we overcome our fears & how do we keep fear from ruining our lives, and our businesses?
Are you using excuses to stay stuck?
I was & I didn’t even realize it. It sounded something like this:
My home internet really sucks, I can’t do a lot of the stuff other business owners do, so I can’t scale until we move & can get something better.
My audience is too small to do X, Y, Z.
My traffic is too low.
I don’t know enough yet.
My copy isn’t resonating with anyone.
I don’t ever have enough time.
Sound familiar? I thought so.
The truth is, some of those excuses are still valid; I just quit letting them stop me. Here’s what I mean:
We live in an extremely rural area, about 20 miles from every town or city around us. Because of that, we can’t get regular cable or even DSL internet; we have satellite internet. I. am. not. kidding. I’m the website designer with satellite internet. 😆 It means we have an extremely low monthly data cap, and having decent internet depends on the weather. Like, it’s actually unreliable or even unavailable in a thunderstorm, or for the first few minutes of normal rain storms. There’s a latency on video calls, so what I hear or say is always 1-3 seconds late, making back-and-forth conversations harder because we’re constantly, unknowingly interrupting each other. It’s also pretty slow, compared to cable or even DSL, at about 25mbps on average, as opposed to my Dad’s which is closer to 100mbps. It actually is extremely limiting & frustrating to deal with for a person in the tech industry.
But ya know what? I just stopped caring & learned to work with what I have.
Why? Because I was looking at the wrong things. We love living in a rural area. We can’t see our neighbors. We’re surrounded by pine trees & our driveway is nearly a half mile long so we can’t see the road from our house. We don’t need a fence for Luna to run free & I don’t have to worry about her getting in the road. It’s really private & secluded & peaceful. We don’t have HOA fees, or neighborhood rules/politics/drama to deal with. 😉
I got a cell signal booster, bc we don’t even have cell service there otherwise, and now I use my unlimited cell data as a hotspot when I can’t use our satellite or if I need to make a video call.
Same with the other excuses. So what if my audience is small or my engagement was low. I don’t have enough time, because I’m spending too much of it doing tasks that keep me busy, but aren’t needle-moving tasks, –and the best one:
I will NEVER know “enough.”
What is enough, anyway? Does Marie Forleo or James Wedmore or even Oprah Winfrey know “enough?”
I highly doubt it.
The truth about that one is, I’ve been a graphic designer, professionally, since 2006 and have been designing on Squarespace since 2016. I have assloads of experience for a 30+ year old & I’m confident in what I do know.
The rest? I’ll learn as I go. That’s what life experience is. We figure it out as we go & that’s how we learn.
The absolute worst thing you can do is to use your fear to stay stuck & never move forward.
Tips for conquering your fears
But how do you get past your fears? It can be both stupid-simple and really difficult.
I’ll tell you what has helped me!
Take the emotion out of it
James Wedmore is one of my favorite business people, because his content focuses on mindset. How to deal with, work with, and improve your thought processes when it comes to your business.
Wedmore says we have to stop thinking of our businesses like our “baby” and start thinking of them like a science experiment.
Why? Because that takes the emotion out of it and helps you analyze what went wrong/right so you can tweak & make it better as you go and grow.
It takes the pressure off.
Your launch didn’t go as well as you’d hoped? Okay; you’re not a failure! Look and see what you did/didn’t do & tweak it to see what will work better next time.
No one signed up for your new service/product? Okay; you’re not a failure! That’s just not a need in your audience, so find out what they do need & offer that instead!
Keep it simple, stupid. 😉
Everything is your fault
I know this will sound counterintuitive to what I just said, but hear me out!
It’s your business, so everything that happens is your fault. It’s your responsibility. You have to take ownership.
Stop playing the blame game.
Stop being a victim.
Your employee messed up something big? You missed something in their training or maybe you hired the wrong person for the job.
We have to take responsibility for everything that happens in our business. It is NOT out of our hands; we make all the decisions as the owners.
Employees that mess up:
We do the onboarding with our employees & control the handling for that.
If we missed something, it’s our “fault.”
We did the interview. We hired that person. We made that decision. We trained them.
Working with “bad” clients:
We did the onboarding with that client & control the handling for it.
If we missed something, or miscommunicated something, it’s our “fault.”
We got the inquiry form, and we made the initial discovery call.
We decided to work with them when they decided to work with us.
We edited the contract & made those decisions.
We trained the client how to work within our boundaries when we onboarded.
See what I mean by that?
We are making the decisions, so we are to blame & we are at fault.
But we are also in control of how to change those things & make them better, IF we can stop being so emotional about it.
Progress, not perfection.
Stop overthinking it. Just DO something.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the wrong thing, you’ll figure it out & move on. I mean, really!
“FEAR:
f*ck everything and run, or
face everything and rise.”
You won’t know it’s the wrong niche, or the wrong type of client, or the wrong product/service to offer until you DO something.
Until you make a decision to take messy action.
Nothing is permanent!
Not sure what website template to start with? Feel paralyzed with overwhelm?
Just pick one! On 7.0 you can switch templates & keep your content. On 7.1 you can’t switch but all the templates have the exact same set of features, so just keep tweaking!
Not sure what niche to pick?
Just pick one! Try one on for size, and if it doesn’t work, try a new one.
Yes. You MUST niche down. No one trusts a jack-of-all trades to be a specialist in one. Right?
Not sure what product/service to offer?
Just ask your audience what they want! They will tell you, if you ask.
Afraid to put it out there? Do what James Wedmore suggests: post something on social, asking your audience to DM you about it if they’re interested. That way no one will know how many DM’s you got and you’ll know how many people are interested before you go create that thing.
There’s always a way. You just have to be creative!
That’s what entrepreneurs are: we see the unseen & create new ways to get/do things.
Watch where you put your focus
If you only ever see the glass as half-empty, you’re being negative.
Negativity breeds more excuses, just as positivity breeds more optimism.
You have to adjust your focus to be where you NEED it to be, not where you ALLOW it to be.
If you’re a naturally negative person, start keeping a gratitude journal. Write down 3 things you’re thankful for every single day. The more often you look for those things, the more often you’ll begin to notice them, –the more you’ll find. The easier it will be to pick them out. I promise you.
You ever heard that phrase, you are what you eat? Or you are who you hang out with? Or you are what you do?
That’s because your focus is on those things, so you become like them.
Eating a lot of junk food? You’ll probably, eventually, gain weight.
Hanging out with a lot of 9-5ers? You’ll take longer to develop the CEO mindset, because you’re thinking like an employee.
Filling up your time with busywork? You’re not bringing in money if you’re not focused on doing the things that bring in clients/customers.
You are what you do, what you say, and what you focus on.
The cool thing about that is that YOU get to choose those things.
It’s your business.
Each day you wake up, you get to decide how to live that day in your business.
Decide to handle your fears each day
Fear can affect everything in our lives, –from our relationships, to our everyday decision making about what we eat, how we react to stumbles, how we interact with others, to how we manage & live our lives.
WE choose how much we let that fear & negativity in.
