One of the most powerful lessons I ever learned about leadership, I learned at age 16-17, as a Senior Student and Lead Actor in our yearly high school productions, having been trusted by two of my Teachers and Mentors to run several rehearsals with about 150 students involved, on their behalf.


Simultaneously, I’d also been a peer support leader, assigned, along with 2 other year 11 leaders, to a group of year 7’s, who through regular group sessions and one on one, we’d support through their transition into high school life and do our best to help them realise their highest potential in all aspects of life. So wether it was in the yard or a corridor somewhere, in the gym rehearsing, or in the change rooms afterwards, lots of the younger kids would often come and find me wanting to chat when they were either worried about something to do with their role in the production, or just when stuff was going on at school or in life full stop.


My big lesson though came the week ahead of one of the particular productions, at which time I was also trying to rally the students for funds to buy a thank you present for our Drama and Art Teachers who run the school productions. And had asked at each of the last few rehearsals for donations, but hadn’t seen much coming in yet for our thank you present and was starting to both worry and was feeling in myself frustrated as to why this was happening and why I felt like they weren’t listening or taking action.


I had a great deal of empathy and compassion for why I imagined many of the students may not have money to give or parents supportive of them doing so. And any number of reasons they’d not yet made it a priority. But when giving and gratitude innately in my head go hand in hand with leadership and service, but also receiving support, especially when people are going above and beyond for you, I found myself asking, are they not also grateful? Do they not get what a gift this is? What am I doing wrong here? How do I motivate them to care as much about this as I do to inspire action taking here?



I wanted to be a positive role model and help them grow in positive ways through this production. I wanted to do a great job as a Leader, on behalf of my awesome leaders, who were so good at encouraging kids highest potential to come forward and inspiring them to grow, through focusing on their strengths. And it was obviously the one thing I couldn’t ask my Mentors for help on!



Standing in front of that room that day, in front of in the vicinity of 150 students, this is where I messed it up:


There was a part in my address about our shared vision, a reminder about donations for the present where I thanked and expressed gratitude to everyone who’d paid and to all for their hard work.

BUT then there was the part where I lost it and went the way of “do you people not get how much our teachers and everyone are giving up so that not only we get this opportunity, but many of you get a space where you can get out of classes you don’t want to be in, seriously, 50c of your lunch money instead of that extra chocolate frog you’re going to buy in half an hour, it’s not that hard, get some gratitude" route, with my best condescending parent guilt tripping tone.


In other words, i went the way of the GUILT TRIP.




Four things happened after that little speech.

• A) I got heaps more money
• B) My high school boyfriend’s Mum, who’d been a teacher of mine since I was in primary school and had actually been down the back listening to the whole thing, later hugged me in the corridor….she’d been managing that deeply frustrated “why cant people just do the right thing and just NOT be DICKS?” part of me since I was like 5.
• C) I successfully got the present, which was a thank you Teddy bear that we could all write messages of love and thanks on and got as many people as I could to sign that bear and the card before we gave it to the teachers on the final night.

But then D…..and this is where the lesson is.

• D) That bear came with us to the after party on the final night. That bear though, somehow came home missing one arm and a ripped leg, eye's half hanging off, having been chucked around in the dirt a whole bunch and looking worse for wear compared to when we gave it a few hours earlier. Given a bit of unwinding and the play now being done, part of the tribe had spoken as to what they thought of my guilt trip via my beloved thank you gift teddy bear. I was kind of shattered to say the least. But I got it, i deep the deep hypocrisy of that message and I owned it.

And I learned some of the greatest lessons you will ever learn about leadership that week:


You might win the respect of a few as a leader for standing for something and being willing to hold your ground. BUT, you don’t win respect or follow-ship through judgement and moral condescension. And you don’t bring you and your people closer through it either.


People will do what you ask because you’re the leader, but secretly hate you for not seeing and recognising the good in them and honouring and rewarding their good behaviour, talents and efforts. And they will resent you for not showing more compassion and acknowledgement when they’re going through stuff or compassion when somebody is believed to be at fault, when really they didn’t mean to let anyone down and their hearts are in the right place. And if you don't own your sh#t, they'll resent you even more.



Many of those kids already copped enough of that at home every day. And maybe they had parents who, like me in that moment, feared and doubted in themselves, in their own authority and the innate power of their own voices and ability to have a boundary or request be respected. Thus would resort to TRYING to be powerful and intimidating, or morally condescending, trying to bring about behavioural change. They didn’t need me to be another moral guilt tripping parent figure, trying to exact an old-school B.F. Skinner style Operating behavioural modification through punishment alone, as a Leader..



They needed me to, especially in THIS challenging moment, show up in my heart. To see and meet the part of them eye to eye, heart to heart, that WAS loving, WAS grateful, that WAS struggling, that was the highest version of themselves already in expression.



They needed me to encourage them and acknowledge all the little things I see them doing where they’re already being all the kinds of awesome that they already were. And to do what I would normally do in just reminding them (as I had done every other time prior) about contributing by today if they want and are able to and for me to get over my shit if I got a no. And keep doing what I would always do in being there if they needed and being generous with insight or advice if they asked for it too.


I needed to consciously show up as the version of me that both trusted in how powerful we are alone when you own your truth and speak from your heart. And understood how impactful words can be without you ever having to TRY and put force behind them. In fact, words a so powerful we need to be careful to always stay heart connected , speak kindly and stay attuned to the non verbal feedback we’re receiving about how the words we’re choosing are impacting the person we’re speaking to. To be sensitive to and adjust our tact as may be required based on the reaction of the person or audience on the receiving end of whatever it is you’ve just said.




Thus a few things to remember about how to be a great  Leader, the kind the truly motivates and inspires, that brings people closer and unites them to work together for a cause, side by side:

• LEAD grounded in your AUTHENTIC, HEART CENTRED self and SPEAK with LOVE, KINDNESS and TRUST (for yourself first and foremost and then for your tribe)

​

• SEE and BE PRESENT to the actual people in front of you (not your projections that are landing like a holographic image, 2 inches in front of the real them and preventing you actually connecting)

​

• Practice the 3 G’s of Great Leadership: GIVING, GRATITUDE and GROWTH FOCUS:

People will be far more willing to grow with you and support your cause if you give freely of yourself and your wisdom to them, give gratitude often and focus on the growth people are achieving over punishing fault and failure.


Sometimes that means asking how things are going or went and how could we do this better or bring about a solution in regards to this, instead. E.g. Go for the positive trip, instead of the guilt one.


And PRACTICING (hence role modelling) OWNERSHIP if you make a mistake, APOLOGISING for the impact when you do and practicing compassion and forgiveness with self and others when a mistake is made, so that we can all get back to being the best versions of ourselves as we continue to work towards our shared vision and mission.



In the end, you build connection and trust by looking at what we have in common, over our differences


That’s how you create trust and closeness in your tribe and be positively influential, in inspiring people to be and do their best.


Until next time, have fun take care.

A lot of conversations around how to get more clients focus on what the client's resistance is. But sometimes it's not always the client that is the one blocking the client from connecting with or buying our products or services. Sometimes, dag nam it, it's just plain old US getting in our own way. After my last several years of talking to Practitioners/Business Owners about how to get more clients and what's breaking down somewhere in the process that they're not getting more clients, this week an article with a few of the common ways we tend to block our own sales. Plus a few thoughts on what you can do to get back on track.

First though, let's take a step back and clarify what marketing and sales actually ARE:


What is Marketing?

As defined by the American Marketing Association, Marketing is the activity of and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for clients, customers, partners and society at large. 
It is the process of accurately identifying client needs and also effectively working out what will satisfy them. 


What is Sales?

If marketing is the means by which a concept moves to the creation of viable client offering or product, then sales if that’s what you want to call it, at it’s simplest, it is the exchange of a commodity (e.g. something of a perceived value) for money; in this case, it is the action of selling that something to a client.

It is the process of checking what problems exist for the client in front of you and then identifying the most appropriate potential solution/s you have to that problem and then linking the client in with the before-mentioned solution/s.
Those solutions may be your services or they may be a good referral to someone else’s. But at the simplest level, that’s it.
 
Like many things on the planet, yes both can be used for good or evil. Which brings me to our first potential block:




7 Ways that we ourselves can be blocking sales and why. Plus what to do to fix it.



1- Investing too much of our time and energy in hating on the shadow side of sales, marketing, business and the existing financial system, instead of investing our time and energy in learning from the right heart centred, integral people, how to do heart centred, integral, soulful sales, marketing, business and conscious capitalism WELL (so that you can ultimately increase your reach and make a bigger difference in the world)


Ok, so we've probably all got a story of someone who used the laws of human psychology and effective communication and problem solving to try and manipulate someone into buying some THING for their own gain. But this is NOT the norm. Playing into the belief that ALL sales, marketing and attempts to make money are evil is a bit like that scene in Tomorrow When the War Began, when the kids take the petrol tanker and blow it up in the middle of the main bridge to and from town to stop the enemy being able to come into town. Only, in this instance, you're on one side of the bridge, your clients are on the other, and the bridge between them is made of good, authentic, heart centred but effective marketing and sales, that links the problems and aspirations on one side with the solutions and pathways to get there on the other. Literally, if you choose to detonate the tanker with the belief that it's ALL evil, you cut yourself off and hence move away from your life purpose and the exact processes that will help you CONNECT with more clients.


SOLUTION

Choose to see the thousands of gorgeous heart centred people standing all around you of all ages who want to help you learn to do marketing and sales the heart-centred soulful way, who are committed to using their time, resources to helping you make a bigger difference in the world and you, as much as them, live lives you love, with those you love. And invest your time and energy there, so that you can better be of service.




2- You're talking Practitioner Language not client language and hence, not communicating enough value to them for them to see you're offering as essential, not just relevant or (we hope not) irrelevant.


In case you missed it, or missed me mentioning it in previous blogs) I did a Facebook Live in the Women in Wellness Leadership group here.

But the basic idea is that, the longer we are training as Practitioners or Experts in a particular field and later working in that field, the deeper our knowledge becomes on a particular set of problems and the more technical and exclusive our lingo/language we use becomes in the process.

The longer we're on this path, the further we move from the version of us and what he or she knew and how we talked and behaved before we

• a) had this expert knowledge and
• b) had used it to solve as many of our own problems as we could 

Quite naturally, in our personal and work relationships, it's entirely normal to want to hang out with other people who also now 'get it" and are "on my level."


BUT there's one fundamental law of teaching and being a teacher here that we must remember for the sake of our clients. Think of a Primary School teacher for a second. Do they stop working with school children because they're "not on their level and don't get me"? Or do they operate on the understanding that it is their job to help their kids move through a bunch of learning and developmental milestones on the path of growth? Your task as a Teacher is no different.

It's not necessarily the people just like you that need your help too. There might be other people, from vastly different industries or backgrounds, who are facing the same challenges or similar ones to the ones you have, or know how to solve, but are anywhere from a few weeks to several years still developmentally behind you on that healing or growth journey. They could just as much benefit from the knowledge and solutions you already have.


SOLUTION

Thus, we have to remember to be sensitive to how we used to communicate (and how they STILL communicate) before we learned "Practitioner Language" and understood the problems/solutions the way we do now. To remember that we're now moving at running pace, while they're just taking their first steps. Communicating in terms they still understand, thus, will help your clients better understand

• why you're relevant
• what the value is of what you're offering and hence
• help them sign UP for what you've got on offer

3- Not everybody is going to catch fish when we all fish in the same little pond


Which brings me to no 3: further to the wanting to be with like people, have you ever noticed that every Practitioner and their dog wants to have their target market be other Practitioners? (Which kind of then has them ALL fishing in the same little pond, with a fixed number of fish in it, hence limiting your number of potential sales in basic "Supply outweighs Demand" fashion?) 


SOLUTION

Remember though, as i was blogging about earlier in the year, there are other people out there from different backgrounds who STILL have similar problems to you, who also need your help, the whole world over. BUT you might need to step away from the familiarity and comfort zone of the known pond under that bridge you've so far been living near and get curious about the other ponds out there. And what they want and need.

For example, as one of my Mentors once said to me when i had previously come from a Community Services background and had not long been in private practice, there are just as many wealthy people (as he put it) who are dealing with/need help to overcome the ripple effects of abuse stuff in relationships, as the people i'd been familiar in working with through NFP's and agencies, who's problems i could ALSO be solving AND they could afford to pay a whole bunch more for it. I just had to get out of my comfort zone of what i already knew and get just as good at marketing, sales and being of service to them too, so that i could both make a bigger difference and (personally speaking) thrive in private practice.

Which brings me to no 4:




4- We're still working through our money stuff and or have the guilts about charging and that's putting the future sign ups on PAUSE


Again, like the Tomorrow When the War Began Bridge metaphor, this one can be temporarily terminal to the part of the bridge that relates to us RECEIVING a YES and the money for the sale, if part of us are still in a state of judgement about money and the integrity or people who have it, or not feeling entitled to it, again, we just blew up the bridge.


SOLUTION

To take what i said in my recent blog called entitlement is actually a good thing a step further, this also has an impact on temporarily blocking our sign ups/sales as well, because you've got to love money and square with it being an expression of love to get MORE of it.




5- We're resistant to that client because they're showing us the parts of ourselves we haven't learned to love in ourselves yet, and that can be blocking us and the client connecting more closely.


Sometimes the projection of our own unhealed shadow also creates a distance between us and a potential sign up. This might sound a bit like you saying "i don't know why, but i just don't like that person" or some other form of judgy, adverse reaction to whatever they're presenting with.

Breathe. It's human to have this happen. We all have parts of ourselves we have to learn to love and have compassion for. But, it's also worth remembering that you could feel it, right, the last time you were around someone who was triggered by you and couldn't be around you with their heart wide open because of that?

Our potential clients and clients are no different. They can feel it when you're triggered by them and or struggling to show up with the full degree of love and presence you know you otherwise normally would intend to. 


In a world where we all want to be loved, valued and honoured for who we are, warts and all, unfortunately, at times, immense value offered or not, that's motivation enough for some people not to buy.



SOLUTION

Relationships wont exactly last very long if we quit every one of them every time we get triggered, will they? BUT what we CAN do instead, is the self love work.

• What is it that's really triggering you?
• What, when and who is this really about? And
• What does it need for you to be able to bring love, compassion and acceptance to this part of you? Plus
• What would me connecting with full love and presence look like going forward?

Once you can love and accept it in you, you'll be able to be with it in your clients without resistance. A temporary referral might be advisable in the interim, in both your best interest, especially if it's something major. If it's minor, you might keep working on the bridge.




6- You're actually not listening to the part of you that doesn't want to be doing this particular thing right now or possibly even doing this thing anymore (and the low interest or sign ups are reflecting this truth back to you externally)

Sometimes low numbers are simply a reflection of something our heart in not really IN right now for whatever reason, in the short term, or occasionally maybe that we're now transitioning beyond, delivered back to us via the external world.

Sometimes, when you're sick or emotionally dealing with something, low sign ups might be life reflecting back to us that we actually need some rest or "me time" right now. 

Or when you've been a Practitioner for a while and have been giving it your all, sometimes it can just be showing us where we're burning the candle too hard at both ends and the old way we were doing things needs an overhaul. 

Or occasionally, at other times, it might show us when we're just DONE completely, because we healed or evolved beyond the reality of that particular story/phase of our lives and it's the natural evolution to now move on.


SOLUTION

Easy self care questions for this one:

• What do you really need right now instead?
• What is that wise, all-knowing part of you and or your body trying to tell you?
• How do i create more work tech life balance going forward?

7- We're feeling genuinely resistant because we're feeling an incompatibility red flag

In the eyes of the consumer, they have a lot of expectations about what they will want to get when they invest money. But there's also such a thing as a client code of conduct, e.g. a set of guidelines regarding practices and procedures within your business, as well as guidelines about how you would like to be treated in this business relationship. 

Do you have one? If not, might be time to write one down and get clear about it. 

But the point is, wether you have one already or just have a version of it in your head, sometimes you will spot it or feel it as clear as day when a client is not in alignment with that.


SOLUTION

In which case, it's often better to be honest at the outset, rather than string both of you along until whatever it is plays out and that negatively impacts not just your client or you, but potentially now your business too.

Sadly, just like "difficult" staff, challenging clients often pass from Practitioner to Practitioner, organisation to organisation with everyone tip-toeing around their challenging client behaviour, wondering what to do about it. Just like Centrelink or Community Services organisations, Hospitals or HR departments though, you're allowed to say something at times like:

• when someone is rude, offensive, discriminatory, sexually inappropriate or making threats
• their feedback is abusive rather than constructive
• when you think they're lying to or not being up front with you
• when they refuse to engage in your services or do the agreed upon work
• they're projecting or blaming the last 3 programs they did, rather than taking responsibility for themselves and their outcomes
• something about their behaviour you feel is beyond your level of skill or expertise to manage
• they're showing signs of crisis and in need of appropriate referral
• they're already co-dependently attaching to you like a parent or reacting to periods of your absence as abandonment
• they're late or didn't show
• they haven't paid and are avoiding you on explaining why
• they just flat out showing complete ingratitude for or apathy towards the opportunity in front of them 

These can be times where we need to set boundaries and or engage other appropriate professional support as needed. And those boundaries start by trusting in it initially when you feel a red flag with a potential new client.


If you're ever in any doubt about what to do when challenging behaviour comes up, it can be immensely handy to have a Supervisor or Mentor to check in with. On two fronts, for the welfare of the client. Plus, it can help you take the breaks off on recruiting new clients when you feel better supported and like you've got this, even when the road of service gets bumpy.

Admittedly, because I have an Allied Health, Emergency Services, Community Service and Counselling background, as well as now being a Business Coach and Mentor, my clients often check in with me when they need to come up with strategy on how to handle exactly these things. And i'm always happy to share what wisdom i have on such things if you ever need.


Finally, and here's the BIGGEST one, but a process too, to help us end on a high...



We secretly think we're not enough or what we're offering is not enough

So, whoever they are, perfect client, some one we worry is more qualified or experienced than us, maybe, sometimes we energetically block them from signing up before they ever have a chance to judge or BE disappointed or IMPRESSED.

This can look like:

• stalling on replying to an email or text or social media message or comment asking to book a session or to have a chat about a program, product or offering.
• Or flat out not registering that they actually just made a request for a sale
• Or running away from posting about your new program on social media
• Or at least doing it when you can sneak it in under the radar and not make too much of a fuss (when actually you need to be that teacher on camp banging the saucepans at 6am level LOUD in a loving way in attracting attention and seeking exposure)
• Or working crazy hard, over-delivering on value, forever discounting ourselves, trying to prove to clients that we are enough

as a couple of examples.

It's well worth taking a look at the "I'm not enough" belief, because it's not only like the cloud of smoke that comes with blowing up the sales bridge that blinds you AND your potential clients from being able to see and then connect with each other via the bridge. But's it's also one that can potentially be negatively impacting us across MOST areas of our life in which we're not really getting what we want, without us realising. Every time we get busy trying to prove that we're enough from the reality in which we believe "I'm not enough", we actually continue to reinforce the exact reality that we're actually not enough. And then what? We attract more people who perfectly line up with our belief, through their belief that we're not enough and stay in a state of longing for anyone who thinks we have value and we're enough.

I also wrote about it in greater depth earlier in the year in my blog called Valuing our own incredible value (and why people buy us)


SOLUTION

Here's a process i'd been running in my own Mentoring programs the last few years when it came to helping Practitioners particularly in the start up phase recognise how amazing they really are and what value they have to offer the world.

Inspired by some of the processes in the original 90 Day programs i was trained to offer, and my counselling and coach training, I call this one Awesome Me Awesome You Awesome Stuff.

a) Awesome Me:
Like you would for a job interview, for this one you brain storm a list of all of your strengths and everything you can think of that you know you're good at and that makes you who you are. Get as much out as you can before you start thinking too much about it.

b) Awesome You:
This is about taking stock of all the wonderful things that other people say and have said about you. Especially as it relates to work. It may involve: 

• asking some of your colleagues what they appreciate most about you.
• Having done and taking stock of comments on feedback surveys you've asked clients to do
• Taking stock of past references and testimonials
• Making sure you screenshot those positive comments you get on social media
• Peter Cook of Thoughtleaders Business School wrote a great blog on dealing with not feeling enough recently too in in which he suggested you might create a "legend file" in which you put all of these kinds of things for those moments where "i'm not enough" rears its head, to look back on and remind yourself of the ACTUAL truth of all the times you were awesome. (And in this instance, also when you clearly succeeded in getting people on board too ;-) And i too think that's a pretty awesome idea.

Then:

c) Awesome Stuff:
This one is about taking stock of your past achievements and the evidence of your holistic version of success (last week's blog), just like you'd do for a CV.

Some of them might be qualification related and some actual targets or goals you achieved or changes you made in specific job roles that, in this case, are relevant to customer service, case management, retail or sales.
You might too put things you achieved in business so far. Like that time you did that Facebook post or Live and got inquiries and a booking or 2 from it. Like that intro workshop you ran at a festival and got a few bookings for your next workshop from.
Or your personal best so far on product or program sales.
It can be good to reflect upon all how you felt at those times were you were last in the sign up zone. What happened just before and how were you behaving while you were "in the zone" that worked so well on those occasions?


This all helps reconnect you to the reality where you're awesomely succeeding and then some, e.g. back in "your zone." And, most importantly of all, it helps you sell yourself ON yourself. It builds your self-belief and your conviction in KNOWING through and through that you have something of immense value to offer the world. And seriously, about 90% of "selling" is conviction and belief alone in the value of what you're selling. Once you're sold on you, once you're one with the reality that i am awesome right here and NOW and what i've got to offer is just as awesome, there's no one left to convince. People start to belief in your belief. And that's why it's so important that you go all in creating and inhabiting the reality in which you believe in YOU.



Now (as one of Australia's Leading Experts on Self Belief, Conviction and Commitment, and author of The True Believers, Christina Guidotti would say):

d) Visualise and feel in advance the successful version of you.
Which is to say see and feel yourself (even if you have to get up in your lounge room, theatre style and act it out like you're rehearsing for a play) as the version of you who IS enough, who's overflowing with self belief, self confidence and conviction in the amazing value of what you're putting on the table. The you who is successfully helping for example, 7 people in your clinic on this particular day and receiving lots of great feedback and thanks at the end. Or delivering a talk to a room of 40 or even 4000 people, who are laughing along with something you just described, that they go through every day that they totally GET and LOVE that you get. And then see your sales process at the end and how many people are excited to be coming on board with you. Whatever "success" will look like for you personally.

Make sure you feel how you feel in that moment and notice how you're different to now and what you're doing different. Let it all flow back into awakening in you here and now.

Again, i've mentioned this before, but this is how you apply it to unblocking your sales potential :-)



So there you have it, some of the common ways I've noticed particularly Wellness and Service Based Business Owners can tend to block ourselves when it comes to sales and a few ways to get our authentic, integral, heart-centred sales mojo back ON.

Love to hear if there was a few AHA's in here for you. Is there any too that you'd add?

if you have any further questions, or there's anything I can further support you with in moving through any of these, and help you get more momentum from your sales and marketing efforts, feel free to drop me an email here. Just a reminder too, applications for private mentoring are now open again now for an October or January next year start. You can book in an application call below if you'd like to find out more.

​As always, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and until next time, have fun, take care.

Fast forward a few years and evolutions of that system, I'd since developed a version of my own that run more over an 8-12 month period.
​
​Within these systems, among other things, some of the things we'd record and track as a measure of progress would be what action clients did or didn't take towards their main goals, how they felt or felt different at the end of each week. Plus we'd keep track of things like new and existing clients numbers seen and money made that week.

For both women and men, within the course of tracking their progress on such things, plus feeling and having to be accountable for their own reactions in regards to their progress or perceived lack thereof, people tend to either love it or completely hate it.

​It's easy to love it when you're winning (if sometimes it takes particularly women a while to get ok with doing the happy dance, particularly with others.) Regardless of gender, it's easy to hate it when it's triggering all your deepest darkest stuff about competition, insecurity, jealousy, privilege or failure and challenging all the ways (as i've blogged about previously) our self worth is being generated based on such things!

The easy route in those moments is to take the old playground "I don't like this game, i'm not playing anymore" stance. Which in adult business land, looks like, pulling away from the tribe and or considering quitting the program.  Because it's often so deeply engrained and unconscious, often people will start to play it out, rather than seeking to talk it out. And very often blaming something or someone else, like

a) someone around them
b) the system
c) you the Coach/Mentor
d) the whole damn patriarchy for their outdated overly masculine ways of doing business including
e) capitalism and
f) all success systems that encourage competition and only track quantitative left brain things, and
g) don't support women to be in the feminine or
h) men to be the truest, heart-centred version of themselves

results. To, with love, dish out a little piece of truth though for a moment, what i've learned over the years is that not one of those is the actual reason things didn't go how we hoped that week and not ONE of them, in a first world country, on a planet with over 7 billion people,  is really preventing us from achieving our goals  and being who we are NOW. While at times it can feel very real, to play into it is actually a distraction from the real task at hand.

The real gift when all our stuff about failure and competition comes up, the high road, is to accept the challenge to look at our stuff head on and learn to deal with it in healthy ways. Ways that make us more confident and resilient and ways that bring us closer in relationship of all kinds, personal and professional. (Otherwise, if you let it, this stuff will keep messing up your insides and your work and personal connections indefinitely.)
​


HOW TO CREATE A MULTIDIMENSIONAL DEFINITION OF SUCCESS


There are 2 KEY THINGS that i think need to happen here to keep everybody on track to their healing, growth, the realisation of our personal and professional goals in a heart centred, new paradigm kind of way (and on a wider scale that will help create more connection than further separation) and those are:



1) Creating a definition of success that is Holistic. In other words more comprehensive than just commercial and quantitatively measurable. 

Because while smashing targets is awesome (seriously, I truly LOVE it and thrive on having goals and targets, it's motivating and i do love to celebrate those moments with others, mine and theirs) life success is not just about smashing commercial targets, is it? Is it just about having a successful relationship to you?  Family? Health? Friends? Enough money? Emotional Wellbeing? Spiritual Wellbeing? Purpose? A house? Any number of material things? Or external things achieved? Is it also about what two of my Coach friends would call embodiment? In other words, about BEING, as well as DOING or HAVING? Is it about how you feel now, compared to way back when? Is it about how we deal with our losses and perceived failures, as well as our wins? What qualitative aspects of success are there?

I find it helps to appraise these wider range of things along the way, or it's easy to get lost in the commercial side of things and equating our value to that.

But in truth, we are so much more THAN the sum of either our achievements or our failures alone and success has so many more facets to it, that no one can decide for US.

In fact, that's actually what Coaching was originally meant to be about, you come up with a holistic definition of success for your life and business, and a Coach or Mentor acts as a sounding board and an accountability partner in you taking action towards creating and embodying that. 




2) Look at what our experience is really showing us about how we handle failure and how to deal with it in healthy ways

To continue to play into the belief that anything external is to blame for our progress or lack thereof, is a bit like when a toddler is taking that first leap from gripping chairs and couches and doing the shuffle walk along them, to the moment they get to the end of the couch and try and reach for the coffee table next to you, reach for it, lose their balance on the turn and fall down. Because you looked at them with encouragement in the middle of that, and you're a perceived authority figure, they turn and give you the biggest greasy EVER and CRY, like you somehow did this, while they were the one who fell. YOU, they believe, lead THEM to believe that they could do it/have it and it was WRONG! WRONG! And that hurts more than the shock of falling on your nappy-clad bum.  But is it all them? Or is this also the perfect opportunity to feel all the feels that come when we don't make it, to learn from what didn't work and how to deal with it in healthy ways and rise again?


In that moment, the Toddler is possibly projecting their disappointment and maybe a little embarrassment that they didn't make it and (if they've learned already that achievements and GOOD behaviour results in love and approval being given and more love and good vibes come when you succeed) maybe also their projected disappointment that they didn't impress you like they wanted to and fear that you won't love them exactly as they are if they didn't do it right. Thus, the parent or caregiver's job for the toddler, is to show up completely in your heart in that moment and continue to love them unconditionally regardless of falling or successfully walking and help them find their way to getting back up after a fall. E.g. learn to deal with it in a healthy way.  Over time, when they have the cognitive and language skills to comprehend it, you can then ask them questions that will help THEM think and love their way through the emotional side of those moments, so that they get back up faster and keep at it longer. 


What comes up for each person in regards to those down moments of business is a little different for everyone. Because the childhood through to adult experiences and associated beliefs that evolved from them are slightly different for everyone.  But, as grown ups here's a basic process you can follow to help navigate those "not win" moments:



HOW TO DEAL WITH "FAILURE" IN A HEALTHY WAY


AWARENESS: open a dialogue about what you/they think is happening just now and unpack what's really playing out, and what experiences and beliefs are underlying that

ACCEPTANCE: That right there will often be where we get emotional, so now you want to be with whatever comes up with unconditional love, acceptance and maybe (if appropriate) the occasional spot of humour. But either way, it's about dissolving the fear, judgement, shame and embarrassment about the faily bits and re-embracing them as entirely normal and human, along with a big psychological hug for both the child and the grown up parts that need it. (And be mindful that, if this comes up in front of others, our or people's public humiliation stuff will come into play and it pays to be very gentle in how you approach that....because it's one of the deepest of all human wounds.)

ASSESS: Time to analyse and decide wether these patterns and beliefs are or aren't serving one positively in their adult professional and personal life.

ADAPT: if they're not, it's time to reframe them. How does one want to be thinking, feeling and behaving instead in future? How would the version of me/them that's nailed this challenge do it?

APPRAISE: Here, we apply that above holistic definition of success, which is unique to each and covers numerous areas of personal and professional embodiment and evolution, in addition to one's commercial goals. The goal is to acknowledge where you/they are making progress still constantly, even if it doesn't FEEL like it in business right now, so that it doesn't hit us so hard all the time when we DO have a commercial loss moment. And

APPRECIATE: the aim is to appreciate where you/they are already making progress in and what their wider range of strengths and gifts are. The ones that are already the living embodiment of the best possible version of themselves and and are already helping them both along each moment of the journey and bringing them closer to the destinations not yet reached. Because as they say gratitude and success, breed more success. And finally, then we want to:

ACTION: Get back on the horse faster than you can find more reasons NOT to and take some type of action that keeps you in momentum towards your goals.

In a society today that's so focused on instant gratification and the quick fix too, it's worth remembering too that today is just a moment and while some victories move quickly, other learnings take their time too, and sometimes, in the grand scheme of things, there are good reasons for that, that if you could look above and see them NOW, we might be a little more forgiving of ourselves and others in the process. What's that saying again about "learning to enjoy the journey, as much as the destination?" And the one that says everybody wins sooner or later, it's just a matter of when. A little cliche, perhaps, but no less true :-)

if i can ever be there for you and help you navigate one of those moments, just let me know.

​Until next time, have fun, take care.

P.S. Private Mentoring is back from Monday 10th September, for those moments where you did all the right business and market programs, but you just need a sounding board and the brain to pick of someone who knows the whole local practice building game, all the way up to the multiple 7 figure online business game and can help save you a few falls on the bum along the way. You can connect with me here if you'd like to find out more...