If you have ever talked yourself out of something you wanted because you were afraid, I bring three mindset hacks to help you move forward, fear and all, and achieve your goals.
I didn’t want to launch a program. Since the first time inspiration hit me with the idea of gathering everything I knew about female professional development and making a program out of it. I didn’t want to do it.
I didn’t want to because I was too afraid.
I would tell myself repeatedly that I didn’t want to face the humiliation of not having one single woman interested in the program. I never doubted the topic. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my own experience and through my female clients, it is that we gals need to learn how to navigate this male-dominant corporate world to succeed. You know, in the meantime, we girls take over the world.
I was afraid because I doubted my skills in selling the program.
After several months of pushing the idea aside, I made a commitment with: (insert here the spiritual form you like, Spirit, God, Universe, Gaia) that I would do the program, and they would have to bring in the participants. Because, oh, they know that public shame is a hard pill to swallow.
So I did it. After many weeks of working my butt off, there it was. Take the Spotlight went from living inside my brain to becoming a four-week, thirteen videos, forty-pages workbook, coaching group calls, and 1:1 sessions kind of endeavor.
This post is not about me telling you how to build such a program. This post shares how I did it despite waking up every day thinking about how ashamed and pathetic I would feel if I had zero participants enrolling.
Because chances are that, even if you are not creating a program, you have or will be facing a situation that feels like jumping into the unknown. And times when you will try to talk yourself out of it to avoid negative consequences.
Mindset Hacks to overcome your resistance
First, normalize your feelings.
Yes, I was afraid. I didn’t want to feel ashamed. But who would? It’s perfectly normal to resist doing something that could make you feel like a fool. But remember this, fear is not a stop sign. Fear means that you are doing something you have never done before. You can be afraid and keep moving. One is not a showstopper for the other.
And here’s a little secret: most people that try something new commit to it while feeling all the negative emotions in the world. You might think they are 100% confident, and I am here to tell you, they (we) are SOOO far away from that.
Second, separate your success from the result.
When you try something new, there is a big possibility that it won’t turn out as planned. That’s a normal part of the process. What you want is to focus on the journey. And not the outcome.
In my case, I woke up every day and made a success list.
I didn’t know how to put captions into videos, but I figured it out. I didn’t realize I needed to compress the videos so they could run better on my page, so I learned.
I needed to create a list with all my participants’ emails to send the instructions for the course. And while experimenting, I ended up sending them an unedited newsletter template that read “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.” That day, I learned how NOT to create a distribution list. You see, all successes as per my list.
Third, remember your Why.
I am stealing the Why concept from Simon Sinek. Knowing why you do what you do, makes all the difference. My mission is that I want to help people live to their full potential.
If I launch a program and don’t have one participant, I still wake up the next day and keep working on my life’s mission. Yes, I will feel like crap for a couple of days. But I’d still have my mission alive and ready to keep going. What’s your mission? Why do you do what you do? Inspiration beats motivation every single day.
And since we all love a story with a happy ending. I am honored to share that the first launch of Take the Spotlight closed with twenty-one amazing women with whom I will be working in the following weeks. I guess Spirit did its part and brought me the right people at the right time after all.
