0:00:01 - Speaker 1
Hey everyone, it's Betsy here. I hope you're doing well. I wanted to jump on quickly today to share some additional thoughts on my latest episode about how to overcome your fears and build a consulting or coaching business you love. I've been reflecting a lot more on what we discussed and I realized that there's some new things I wanted to add. So quick recap on what we talked about.
So in the last episode I shared with you why it's super normal for all of us consultants and coaches to have fear, and how these fears serve us. I shared what my definition of fear, which is an unpleasant emotion that alerts us to a threat to getting our normal human needs met. And then I went into the four most common fears that we all have and how to transcend them. And then this weekend I went to see the brand new Pixar movie Inside Out 2. So if you haven't seen any of the Inside Out movies, it's all about really understanding the inner worlds of our emotions. It's a great, great movie if you really want to understand sort of like the neuroscience of how our brains work in a really fun way.
But this latest episode is all around the character of Riley, who's a middle schooler and she's getting all kinds of new emotions. And if you haven't seen this movie it's really great and it has completely transformed my understanding of the fears that we experience. That can stand in the way of our consulting or coaching potential. So if you haven't seen the movie yet, warning, warning, warning. There's spoiler alerts ahead, so let me get into it. So in the movie talks about fear. That and fear was one of those emotions that Riley has had throughout her whole life, but then she hit a puberty and she got a new emotion which is called anxiety. So anxiety is the new character on the scene. And the thing about anxiety and fears there are a lot of like. Even as cartoonists as they drew them, they both kind of have a similar thing where their eyebrows are outside of their heads. So there is a connection between the two, but they are different, and in the movie they differentiate the two, which I thought was super interesting.
So what they said in the movie is fear. So that character of fear is triggered by an immediate, specific threat or danger. It's immediate, it's present, it's right there. It's a it's present, it's right there, it's a response to something that's happening right now. So the other day, when my daughter was worried about something in the middle of the night and she opened up my door while I was sleeping and I woke up and I was afraid that was. It felt like an immediate threat right then and there. You know fear as it relates to inside out, you know that's what helps Riley stay alert and safe. You know, fear is what reminds her to wear her mouth guard while she's playing hockey, that type of thing.
But anxiety is different. It's related but different. It's triggered by a potential or imagined threat in the future. So I was describing that as fear, but it was really anxiety. Anxiety is about imagining the threats in the future. It's a response to what might happen, but it's not happening right now. So it can make in the movie. So it was for Riley.
It was about worrying about making the hockey team, worrying about not having friends in the new school, and so in the movie, anxiety actually turned out to be sort of the villain of the movie and anxiety took over Riley, banished her core emotions to the point where her sense of self was gone. It was replaced with panic attacks that were keeping her up at night due to all these projections of these worst case scenarios and a new sense of self, and I know you can relate to this. This is what Riley started to believe about herself is that she's not good enough. So I'm not going to share any more of the spoilers. Go see the movie. But what really struck me is it's not fear that we're dealing with when we are saying I have all these fears about starting my own business. What we are calling fear, it's actually anxiety, and so what the movie portrayed I think is really interesting, is anxiety is our inner strategist. It's the part of us that sees into the future and can visualize new possibilities. But in the shadow, when it takes over, at the exclusion of all the other emotions, it sees only bad things in the future and everything that will go wrong. So, while the specific techniques or strategies that I offered in the last podcast episode I think they're still valid, which is to follow the feeling to the need that feels threatened and make a plan for meeting that need, I still think that's good advice, but there's a few things that I think I missed because I mislabeled this emotion. It's not fear, it's anxiety. So let me give you just additional thoughts to deepen what I was sharing in the last episode.
Number one as consultants or coaches. We are often gifted strategists. We are the ones that our clients turn to when they're not sure how do they get from here to there, and they know that we're going to give them the plans and the steps and the approaches. So I would imagine, because of our gifting, you know we can see these future possibilities. And it works against us when we're dealing with our own futures that feel uncertain, which is why I think anxiety, along with the vulnerability of being the brand, the product, the service, might be more prevalent for us in comparison to other business owners.
Number two before you can make smart plans for meeting your needs in the future, you have to meet your anxiety in the present and find a way to calm yourself down by connecting with your breath and grounding yourself in the present, and then you can identify what you can and cannot control. So, brene Brown which I'm surprised, I didn't even look at the Atlas of the Heart before I created this particular episode, because I love how Brene Brown really differentiates these emotions and she describes anxiety as the feeling that we're not in control and that, since we don't know what's going to happen, we imagine the worst. So the only plans that you can make are for what you can control. But with the things that you can't surrender, is the only option letting go, like. You can do the best you can put your website out there, but you can't control the response. But you can control what you do and I get it. I know letting go is so hard.
I am literally here right now. So I'm selling my home here in Denver and I've been in the process of selling this home for a while. So my my realtor told me two weeks to get under contract is the average and now I'm pushing four weeks and I am losing my mind over this. So I went to see the movie yesterday but the day before I had a very promising buyer who fell through and I'm like I'm starting to lose my mind. The anxiety of like, okay, I'm going to go bankrupt and all of this is going to happen, and I'm I'm starting to get super anxious about it and I could tell you what strategies aren't working. I'll tell you calling my realtor over and over again for what else she can do to create more showings isn't helping. You know, ruining fun times that I have here because of my anxiety. That's not working either. And imagining myself like what's going to happen, you know? Am I going to be bankrupt? You know, because my house is never going to sell.
You know, I've been trying to do certain things to control the things that are out of control. I bought a St Joseph statue. I buried him head down. I'm like come on, st Joe, you can do this for me. You can get my house sold because I'm trying to find a way to control what I can't control, and so that's not working. And so similar for you is you can do the best you can with your business. You can invest properly, you can create a really great website. You can get out there, start marketing. You can do those things that you can control. You can't control all the results. You could put the best, your best foot forward with your proposals, but you can't control all the time of how somebody's going to respond. So what helps me in this moment is listening to music. Music is always something that gets me back to center. You know, taking my AirPods out and listening to music I love and or there was a bunch of bands that were playing this weekend in downtown Parker, where I live super fun got me back to center. Once I can do that, then I can get logical. I can focus then on reminding myself that, yes, all my previous houses are sold. I have the skills to make money. You know I can do what I can to make the house attractive. I could buy snacks for the people who are coming to my house for showings and all of that kind of stuff.
So from a practical takeaway, from how I want to relate it to you as a consultant or coach and business owner, is if you feel like you're dealing with fear, it's more likely anxiety and it's about feeling out of control. And we don't like to be out of control, do we? And this is why we're imagining the worst possible outcome. And just because the worst case scenario feels real doesn't mean it is real. It's not really logical that you'll wind up in the poorhouse, because you have a track record of success. You have skills that are marketable, that you. Maybe you don't see it exactly the way of how you're going to repackage your career into your business, but they are all there. You have a track record, you know how to make money. It's not true that you don't have what it takes, but you don't feel that way.
So, with anxiety, you have to get back in your body before you do anything strategic. So whatever works for you, just do that. Like you know for me, maybe doing a lot of meditation when I'm super anxious isn't going to work as fast as music does, so you need to find your own thing. Don't do what other everybody else does that works for them when they're having anxiety. Maybe for other people you know doing that. You know five things that you see, five things that you hear you know maybe that works for them. You know you got to figure out your own thing.
Once you can get back in your body, then you could do the strategic problem solving. Then you could do the role clarification between like, almost like you and the universe. Like this is my responsibility and this is what I have to just trust will happen for me. You know and you have to do that. And then, just as a reminder, anxiety, like all emotions, are here to help you.
So no name calling, please. It drives me batty when people say that you know it's your inner gremlin or you. We come up with some horrible name to call your anxiety. It's not. You know that this anxiety, even though it creates horrible beliefs, like I'm not good enough, isn't your gremlin. It's there to help you. It's there to protect you. So that is my new aha. I had to jump in there and share this with you. I would love to know what you think and if you see that there's a difference between fear and anxiety, and if this distinction even helps you or not, and if so, I would love to know what. What ways does this distinction help you? I would love to hear from you. You can find me on LinkedIn. We can become friends on LinkedIn and you could send me a message there, or just drop me an email at Betsy, at Betsy Jordancom and remember Jordan is with a Y, not an A, so please drop me an email. So that's it for now. Thanks for listening and I will see you next time.
