Women owned businesses have been the fastest growing segment of new start up entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m glad to see this as I’ve been a professional and an entrepreneur for many, (yes, many) years now.
I have found being an entrepreneur takes a special kind of courage and it can be an amazing platform to grow one up spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. I can tell you story after story of the types of personal growth and expansion experiences that I’ve undergone that would not have presented themselves as dramatically if I had only stayed in the world of the job market.
Now job markets have their place for accelerating personal growth also – especially when they dry up as they are doing now! Our changing times are an opportunity to develop your courage and follow your purpose in developing your business platform to support your soul’s journey in evolving to your true potential.
Now, I want to touch on the biggest dragon that will need to be slain on this journey to fulfillment and empowerment; you may have guessed it, it is the issues that continue to haunt women and society concerning money. Money has been blamed for all manner of “evil”; in fact, people often MIS-QUOTE the Bible saying, “Money is the root of all evil”.
Actually, it said the “love of money” and here love refers to trust in or coveting – it refers to the true root of greed, selfishness and the belief in “not enoughness”. Do you know what this is? It’s FEAR – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality. Fear is the root of the perception of evil. Fear of lack, to be more specific and this lack covers everything from lack of love, security and even self-esteem – three fundamental human ego needs. I’m listening to an audiobook called, “Unleashing the Soul of Money” by Lynne Twist. The Universe always brings to me just what I need to explore and to solidify a lesson I’m undergoing.
In recent weeks, I have received many insights into my relationship with money. I’ll share a couple as it relates to the Soul of Money and business. As a young child, I always seemed to easily save and attract money. I never had fear about it; I just assumed I would have lots of it. I had a teenage experience however, that was full of drama, and ultimately, I made a decision; I created a paradigm that was based on a FEAR that money would not be there for me when I needed it.
Confidence is something that is invaluable in my life and business. I was an eye surgeon and entrepreneur for a long time, though confidence, true core confidence and a healthy self-image was not something that I actually possessed despite outward appearances.
I had bought into the lie that if I worked really hard, ignored my needs and just pressed on into the world of academics and achievement that I would feel good about myself, have plenty of confidence and happiness and live happily ever after.
Well, apparently this fairy tale lives on as I look around me and see women knocking themselves out and getting sick physically and emotionally from burnout and stress. I know men do this also, yet I’m specifically addressing women here.
Now that I’ve taken the time to go inside and learn how to eliminate the blind spots that were distorting my own self-image and limiting my true potential for business success, happy relationships and good health, I can see more clearly how to acquire the vision for my life that I always hoped for.
Now don’t misunderstand me, business and professional success is quite important to me, but now that I “know who I am” instead of believing the media and societal nonsense that there is something wrong with me or that I am deficient in who I am in some way, I can relax and have more energy and space to be my authentic self.
This authentic self, I call it the “Magnificent Me”, is separate from the sense of “self” that we form in our brains, the mental construct of “who we think we are” – The Mental Me. Science is now finally beginning to venture into this murky territory. It is not a black and white conclusion if examined like a math formula, yet the more we come to understand how our brain/mind create these identity stories, the more empowered we can be especially as women.
I find that we as women carry an over abundance of self-deprecation. We are constantly self-rejecting, rejection others, comparing, judgment and over doing. Men have far more testosterone than we do and can get away with over working more easily. When we over indulge in work and then turn around and try to seek love and approval by pleasing everyone but ourselves, our sexy, playful parts get neglected and we turn into “dull girls” (no offense ladies, “dull women” is just fine also).
Confidence for women takes courage that’s for sure. It requires courage in order to go against the prevailing “common sense”. Common sense, says that confidence is based on externals such as the degree you hold, your job title, your gender, race, religion, family social status, etc, etc.
This may be “common knowledge”, yet it is foolishness. It is not wise. Wisdom overrides convention, and thus, the need for courage to be able to open your mind – and heart – to be able to consider it and receive. Sometimes I need to be the “loving lioness”.
When I was insecure and lived in fear, I came from a place of self-rejection, criticism of self and others and essentially lived hiding behind a mask of “confidence” and over achievement. It was a mask because it did not feel authentically me.
I was so afraid of being hurt that I decide to control (what an illusion) instead of being controlled. While this decision did help me at the stage of consciousness that I was at, and in the world in which I found myself, it ultimately created chaos in my life and was leading to forms of self-sabotage.It became destructive.
Change is a good thing, in that sometimes things need to be destroyed before they are rebuilt. Yet, if you use wisdom, you can head some of this type of destructive energy off at the pass. Why wait until your life falls apart from illness, divorce or unpleasant relationship drama with children or friends? Why wait until you get kicked out of that job you hate or your business falls apart?
This is the way the “common” mindset works. It hangs on for dear life, clinging to the status quo, fearing change. If you want quantum leap change, and if you want core confidence, coming from your true, Authentic self, you will have to take the leap, by faith with courage, using PRINCIPLES that are ancient, and lasting, in order to live your true potential.
Money and career success in general impacts our relationships, our lifestyles and even our health. All around us the workplace and business landscape is shifting. Being a former eye surgeon, I know what it means to invest a lot of time and effort at learning a skill yet, nowadays, there is no profession that is immune from change.
Job transition and entrepreneurship rates are rising rapidly, and depending on your perspective, this can be a “good” or “bad” thing. One thing is for sure – if you want to successfully navigate our changing times with your physical and financial health intact, you will need to consider opening your mind and become aware of what FEAR is – Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality.
I’m referring to psychological fear. When I wrote my book Empower Up and Play Big which introduces new cutting-edge brain science and practical ways to apply it into our everyday lives, it occurred to me that based on the way our brain works, if we are unaware of managing our attention, it is all to easy to create “stories” of fear of success of fear of failure.
These terms are tossed around loosely and often without much consideration as to what they really mean. From a practical point of view of learning how to “breakthrough fear”, I think it’s important to define what is the root issue in the first place. Fear of failure and success break down into the fear that there is a threat to either our sense of security, love or self-esteem.
If you are familiar with the chakra system of integrative health, you will understand that these are issues in the first three chakra levels, and even if you are not familiar you can still understand the point here, so stay with me. If these two fears are related to these three human needs, how do they play out? In essence “Fear of Failure or Success” show up in our lives as:
Empowerment begins the day you are willing to open your mind and reassess what you think you “know” for sure. Our beliefs are evolving all the time. We only “believe” we know “how life really is”. We’ve been taught, even this is done usually unconsciously, to put ourselves down and to judge harshly almost everything we do.
It could be the way we dress, what we read, our career choices, how we look, our hair – even how we mother and raise our children. The list is never ending. There are many reasons why this happens. What I want to focus on here though is a major concept as to how to stop judgment in its tracks. It’s called “self-acceptance”.
Self-love is not the same as narcissism. It is simply having compassion and the flexibility to allow yourself to grow and unfold. Where you are is where you are in consciousness today and that evolves. I am the mother of two teenagers, and of course I’ve given them “my best”.
One piece of wisdom I’ve come to understand is that in any given moment, I am operating out of my own level of understanding and how I feel about myself influences my perception of self and others. This is always “by best” as I cannot see through any other filter but my own mind and brain.
There is an article today in the Huffington Post, “Negotiating Mommy Guilt vs Mommy Wisdom”, and it speaks about the “inner critic” that we all have. Where does this critic come from? Some of the voices are our own stories and versions of “how life is” that started in early childhood. Some are from our ancestors via the gene pool. Some are from those rigid, small-minded teachers in grade school.
Where are they hiding out? In your memory, the memory held in your body at a cellular level. In fact, there is an area of the brain called the area of “autobiographical memory” – the story of who you think you are.
Staying healthy is not just about going to the gym. This helps, no doubt, yet if you are only focusing on your physical body and ignoring the power of your mind, you are not being as effective if you could be. Why? Dis-Ease starts in the mental and emotional realm.
You are a whole person, spirit, mind, emotions and physical. We all to often get stuck only on what our eyes can see right in front of us. If what you are focusing on is pulling your energy downward, you are potentially setting yourself up for ill health.
According to a study supported by the NIH, “Social Rejection Linked to Inflammation” which can be viewed online at MedPage Today (Click Here) there are some serious diseases associated with fear of rejection. The list is nothing to sneeze at: asthma, cardiovascular disease, depression and arthritis are named in the article.
Now here is a conclusion to think about – worrying about what others think of you, or fear of rejection is hazardous to your health. Yet, it is only hazardous if “thinking makes it so”. What do I mean? Just because someone rejects you, does not mean it has to matter to you. In fact, if you don’t mind, it does not matter!
This is the power of your thoughts, emotion (perception) and feelings. The same “fact”, that someone rejects you does not have to stir up negative emotion as you realize that their perception of you is just that –their perception. The negative feelings you have is harming your physiology and contributing to sickness. Acquiring years on the planet is not what is causing the disease.
It is HOW we manage our energy, our power, over time is what is creating all the ill health. Staying healthy is about waking up to this important and empowering idea. You have the power of “response – ability” to choose not to respond negatively. Here is the key: YOU must believe that you are good enough. YOU must believe that while you have “strengths and weaknesses” that there is no judgment for where you are.
You are where you are and everyone is doing the best that they are aware to do at the time. We are all in process, at different stages of growth. The need to judge self and others is just another conditioned behavior, like Pavlov’s dog, that keeps us stuck and playing small. When you start to love and accept yourself, recognizing yes, that here are behaviors and habits that no longer serve you and that it is good to grow and change, then you can do so easier and without the dread of being rejected for stepping out of your box.
I learned, the hard way, that fearing the opinions of others is a needless form of suffering. There can be many reasons that we fear other’s opinions, and here are three:
Law of Attraction was presented to the masses of people popularly via the movie “The Secret”. I know this movie often receives a lot of criticism, however I’m glad that it opened the doors to the conversation of our role in co-creation. Of course the Law of Attraction is not simply “positive thinking”.
It is also not about becoming paranoid if you have a negative thought. (For the record, negative and positive are relative terms of judgment). The idea of positive thinking is not new, as there were many books written about it even decades ago.
It is very important to realize though that your thoughts do absolutely contribute to the “reality” that you experience and this is now science. If this still sounds like “woo-woo” to you, I have to tell you that you simply don’t know what you don’t know. In business and life, if you can make your life easier and more enjoyable and on purpose, why not learn how to do so? One of the main missing ingredients though is the energy of feelings.
You see feelings carry far more magnetic and electrical energy than thought alone. It acts as the glue that wires thought into the body’s nervous system and thus, cellular memory. Once we wire our brain, either with strong emotional response or through repetition, it goes into the subconscious mind. This is when you go on autopilot as far as the action or behavior that is wired is concerned.
This is fine if you like the response and it serves to help you experience your hearts desire. If you have all of the love, joy, peace and abundance you desire great – though we all know that circumstances in business and life are constantly changing.
So if your current situation is not expanding you to your next level of purposeful evolution, you may want to consider the following keys as you consciously intend to use the Law of Attraction to affect change. This list is not intended to be inclusive; I just want to point out 3 important yet common mistakes that are made when attempting to consciously shift in areas of your business or personal life.
Core confidence comes from the inside out as does empowerment. Empower is just that, power coming from within. When I refer to core, I’m referring to the Authentic Self AND I see an acronym within the word.
C is for Courage, O is for Open-mind, R is for Reflection and E is for Enthusiasm. Within the word enthusiasm is “theos” which refers to God/Spirit and “en” is “in”/within.
So, in order to be truly empowered, your confidence and sense of self-esteem has to start from the inside out. As long as you look outside of yourself for security, love and self-esteem you are in trouble. Why do we allow others to tell us who we are and what we can do?
It’s primarily because we don’t trust ourselves. We’ve forgotten how to listen to our own intuition and guidance from spirit. We don’t “trust our gut”. This tends to come from years of not believe aware of how e wire our beliefs and just giving away our power out of fear of rejection. While rejection is particularly scary for children, and I do understand why, as grown adult women, we can make a decision and then set an intention to learn how to let go of the old stories that are wired into our own brain, nervous system and hence body.
Yes, this does require courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. FEAR here as referred to is Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality – it’s psychological in nature. When I first started this journey, I had to first open my mind to new ideas. Trying to get a new result using the same information and doing things the same way really is a form of “insanity”.
I had to reflect on the thoughts feelings and emotions and stop judging them and running away. There is much wisdom to be gained from reframing our stories. I learned how to make friends with them and “update” my belief system.
Lastly, instead of looking for transient artificial happiness “out there” somewhere, I realized that as I dropped the old stories that my body felt different, my perception of self and others changed, and I started feeling natural joy within – and it was more often than not independent of what was going on around me.
This is true enthusiasm. It comes from within, from the Authentic, spirit self. You see you do not need to seek the Light outside of you; the Light is already within you. Our behaviors and attitudes are not the same as who/what we are. They are just a reflection of what we believe. In fact, at your core, you are already “ok” right now – just because you breathe. What do you think?
Empowerment and confidence is about choice. It’s about awareness at it’s foundation as if you are not aware that you have choice, you will not exercise your will and your will will become flabby.
While I think that we have natural gifts and talents and that we have a purpose that is unique to us, I believe that whether or not you live out your purpose or just your fate (meaning weaknesses, strengths, environmental and genetic tendencies) will be determined by how clear you are and how much courage you have. Courage and confidence does not mean you have no fear.
Fear is ubiquitous and is just a part of the human game. What will determine if you can feel the fearful feelings and proceed forward anyway is based upon how awake and aware you are about the options that you have. Do you believe you are “only human” or are you also tapping into your intuition and spiritual nature?
If not, you are weakening yourself and doing yourself a disservice. Are you are of how to consciously operate your own brain and mind? Or is it set on the default button of FEAR: Fictitious Evidence Affecting Reality? Either way, there is no judgment from me, I don’t think it’s “good or bad”.
The question is, do you want to live an abundant whole life or do you want to continue to play the role of the hapless victim and miss out on the incredible experience that you could have if you would choose to stop listening to the outer voices that keep you stuck, struggle and playing small.
You too can begin to Empower UP and Play Big when you learn how to get in touch with your CORE confidence from the Authentic YOU and learn how to operate the greatest “supercomputer” on the planet – your own brain and mind. Who do you think you are? It’s time to “Breakthrough to the Real YOU”! What do you think?
Women owned businesses have been the fastest growing segment of new start up entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m glad to see this as I’ve been a professional and an entrepreneur for many, (yes, many) years now.
