Would You Kiss Your Mother with That Mouth?
*this photo is of my son & I, back in 2004 … I love this photo*
Contrary to the subject line of this post, I’m not going to be talking about swearing today.
Or any other day for that matter.
As indifferent as I would like to think I am on the matter (yes, this falls into the ‘to each his own’ camp), I definitely have opinions about cursing/swearing (mostly around the ‘there’s a time & place for everything’ rule), but it’s hardly worth boring you with in an email.
Let me ask you this…
Have you ever wondered why there are so many sayings that stick around, generation after generation (even if they’re altered a bit)?
Or when they sound trite?
There was a time when we didn’t overthink everything everyone said.
When someone shared congratulations or condolences, we took them at their word.
We didn’t have to delve into context (or medium for that matter… text, phone call, written card, in person, etc.).
We felt their emotions and most likely thanked them.
End of story. Full stop.
We also didn’t have a zillion ways to measure our own worth compared to what other people were doing.
No matter where you look online there will always be someone doing more or better than you (regardless of how you define this).
There will also be someone doing less or not as well as you, yet we don’t pay as much attention to that, do we?
It’s kind of like the whole ‘unsubscribe’ thing with emails.
I can get 10 new subscribers one day and one unsubscribe on the same day, but the little voice inside my head is thinking “why did they unsubscribe?”… even if only for a minute (this really doesn’t have the same impact on me as it used to).
This always reminds me of something I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer say in one of his audios.
“At 18, you’re worried about what everyone things about you. At 30, you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. And at 60, you realize no one was thinking about you to begin with.”
It cracks me up… because let’s face it, we’re all a little wrapped up in our own lives, right?
Yet we still compare and measure ourselves against other people.
I’d love to tell you I have a solution for this, but I don’t.
What I can tell you is that it starts with getting out of your own way.
Being kinder to yourself.
When I think of some of the things I say to myself I can guarantee you I wouldn’t speak to my mother like that? (or my kids or anyone else I care about).
The one thing I’ve probably been most protective of with my kids is their self worth and the way they move through the world.
When we talk to ourselves like this we’re creating unnecessary obstacles.
In the last couple of years that I realized I was the biggest obstacle in my business.
I had all these pre-conceived ideas about things (completely made up by yours truly) and held myself back.
Building a business is challenging.
It takes time and it takes work.
If you can remove one of your biggest obstacles (i.e. the things you say to yourself), what do you think your business would look like?
If you stopped creating a mountain out of a mole hill (I’m brilliant at doing this by the way… I decide something is going to be a huge chore, then I just do it and it’s never as monumental as I made it out to be in my head) and just did it, you’d probably surprise yourself.
What if you just…
– Sent the email
– Wrote the post (ebook, lead magnet, etc.)
– Completed the course
– Shared your content
– Did the outreach
– Created the infographic
– Recorded the video (or podcast)
… you get my point
It’s never as bad as we think it will be.
In fact, the benefits always outweigh the cons.
We’re going to take a stroll down memory lane today with a podcast episode where I talked about being “The Obstacle in Your Business”…
In it I talk about one of my favorite books (that I think I’ve already shared with you guys… “The Obstacle is The Way: Turning Tragedy into Triumph” by Ryan Holiday) and how it completely shifted the way I looked at my business (and my life).
It’s one of those books I re-read every now and again.
