As entrepreneurs, we go through these crazy ranges of emotions while juggling a million different things. We’ve all been there! I want to give you three tangible things today so you can feel more at ease on the entrepreneur rollercoaster.
Number One: Know Your Strengths.
If you are trying to push yourself into being someone that you’re not, you’re going to feel that discord and that conflict in your business.
I want to share my own personal experience that I very recently did. It’s a really great test called the DISC test. Basically, you answer a couple of questions and it breaks down two states of being: your natural state and adaptive state. You are either naturally behaving, or you step into your adaptive, like when you feel you’re being watched. It was very fascinating for me to uncover where my strengths were and where I was actually pushing against those things.
So even though tests like these are not 100 percent accurate, what I learned from mine was that I have a very high internal fundamental need to be a leader. But, then I also have to take decisive action and to be quick with decisions…. BUT THEN I also have an incredibly high need to proceed with caution; as a perfectionist wanting things to be done correctly.
No wonder I sometimes experience emotional conflict! Those are all very opposing forces. If I want to get things done quickly and I also have a need for things to be done right, of course I’m going to feel out of control.
(To hack your own psychology, you can take the DISC test here -> https://discpersonalitytesting.com/free-disc-test/. )
It’s so important to not only have awareness of your own strengths, but then learning how to harmonize what is conflicting.
It’s different for everyone. You can listen to gurus all day long, but…
The best advice anyone can ever give you is to trust yourself; to really start to understand the way that you feel most fulfilled.
It’s funny. You can take this test, and then look back to your previous experiences and think, “Well that makes sense…”
When I was bartending, my nickname by this snarky manager was “By the Book.” Meaning that I knew every single recipe to the T. I could list every single recipe to the quarter of an ounce. And, for me, it was unacceptable to not make things exactly. We worked in a corporate place, which stressed brand consistency for this company. I wanted people to know that they’re getting the same product every time they go in. So, it’s been a core principle for me forever, so it was amusing to see it on my test results.
I also have that strong sense of leadership. Looking back, even before I really had much of an entrepreneurial spirit, I’ve always had this “don’t tell me what to do” attitude.
I was in 11th grade, not even senior year yet, and I was like, “I don’t want to wake up early.” So, I dropped my first period Spanish class. I mean, I was a crazy studier, but if it wasn’t something I cared about, I wasn’t going to do it. I wanted to follow MY rules.
In entrepreneurship, you do have that quality. If you step into corporate, where you have a manager telling you how to run the show, you’re like, “No, I have a better idea.”
You’re creative and you want to be the leader, but you’re being forced into an adaptive side of your personality. You’re not fully able, based on your circumstances, to step into your leadership; whether it be because of where you work or some limiting beliefs that you’re carrying.
That is why it’s so important to know your strengths.
Number Two: Release Irrational Fears.
We need to be acknowledging where our fears came up. For myself, I suddenly had this fear of heights when I was a really little kid. I was 6 years old and we got to almost the top of the mountain when we were hiking. To get to the top, we had to free climb up these weird old ladders. I refused, and that was the day that I established this fear of falling, or this fear of heights.
You probably have scenarios or moments like this in your life, and most likely from really early in your childhood. Maybe in that first grade class, a little boy said something mean to you. Or the teacher said something to you, or your parent yelled at you in a certain way.
All of a sudden, you assign some meaning to whatever happened.
That little child didn’t get something (or, maybe a multitude of things) and so we’re always looking to recreate that in our adult lives.
We have to really recognize that there is an inner child inside of us and say, “Hey, little me. I’m an adult now. I’m going to take it from here.”
There is SO much power in being able to release that energy.
You can go to therapy or you can work with coaches to push through all of that and peel it back. But, in general: you have the power right now, inside of you, to make that decision to throw away that irrational fear that you created in childhood.
Think about it. Maybe you were in kindergarten and a little boy said you’re ugly, and that was something that you have allowed to control your entire life. But, play out the visuals of that moment.
Walk into the scenario and see that little 5 or 6 year old boy.
Are they as intimidating now?
Would you react the same way now as you did when you were a little kid?
If you were parenting your baby self, what would you say? How would you handle that?
We can recognize that these tiny little moments in time do not have to dictate our entire existence.
There are people in nursing homes right now who have never worked through their shit. Now, they are unable to create the life of their dreams saying, “I just wish I could have. But, I missed my chance, and it was so stupid that I did.”
I know you don’t want that. I don’t want that for you. That is why I get up every single day and do what I do; because I know that there is so much greatness in you and so much possibility. You’ve just got to tap into it.
Number Three: Trusting your own voice.
This is probably one of the most challenging things to do, because today we are inundated with so much information. I think it’s something we read the equivalent of seven newspapers front to back a day. We’re scrolling Facebook, scrolling Instagram, taking things in at such a high capacity that our brains have not evolved yet to be able to sort all of that.
If you’re that person that goes to bed and just can’t sleep, it’s probably because your brain is trying to do overtime. You’re trying to store and sort all of the things that you’re reading and consuming throughout the day. So, you may need to go through like an information detox. Dare I say that you need a personal development detox? By that I mean, it would probably be wise to choose content that’s a little bit more spiritually based; as opposed to things that are about social media, marketing, video. That’s not the kind of stuff you really want to start with first thing in the morning.
I know for myself, if I start my day with trying to process information, my day is lost. I’m now off focusing on that instead of allowing whatever creative idea I could have come up with. I’d like to be a little bit more protective of my energy and my mindset before I start to dive into any informational content. In doing that, you can learn to just trust your own ways, listen to your own voice, learn how to pay attention and tune in to your thoughts.
So many times, we shush our inner voice.
I did for years, and that’s why I was so effing miserable. It got to the point where I was in school, commuting 10 hours a week, taking 21 credits, doing a show, working at a restaurant for like 25-30 hours. I would work sometimes until 3:00 in the morning, go home, take a shower, and wake up at 7 to leave for school. I was sleep deprived, living on Red Bull and coffee and pizza. I was just snippy and mean because I just was so burnt out.
But, in my mindset, I was not worth more than that.
I needed to really start to trust my inner voice.
Almost every single time that I woke up and said, “I don’t want to go to work tonight,” my inner voice was like,
“Jen, you can quit. You’ll figure something out. Another job will come. You will find better people to work with. You will find a better work environment with better hours. You will feel more fulfilled.”
But, I ignored it.
I actually talked myself out of living for about 7 years.
I mean, I wasn’t miserable the whole seven years. But,I didn’t think that I could find anything better. I was in that place of worthlessness and so of course, I was magnetized to a place that matched the way that I energetically felt.
When you are experiencing something over and over and over again, you come into a situation, a person, or a scenario with a specific energetic state. What do you think you’re going to get?
Your energy is going to bring you exactly what you’re putting out.
So, of course I had a shit time there. I was miserable. It got to the point where the only way for me to break out of that… was to leave.
It came down to pain versus pleasure. I was scared to death to leave and level up, but I finally listened to my inner voice and my emotional guidance scale. It said,
“You gotta go. There’s more out there for you. You’ve got to say no, so that you can say yes to something else.”
That was one of the scariest things for me to do. Everybody tried to talk me out of it, but I just thought, “I have to go. I might be broke. I might be scared, I might have less friends because people won’t spend as much time with me because I’m not at work with them…”
“…but I’m not going to die.”
I was able to finally listen to that inner voice and that feeling in my gut.
If you feel it in your gut, stop pushing it down.
Stop coming up with reasons why you cannot move forward.
You need to step into your highest self, right now in this moment. When you’re trusting your inner voice, you’re going to be successful.
When I was burnt out, ignoring every part of my body that told me to find a new path, I ignored it for four years. And then, one day, I was sitting in my car after a nap, and I pulled out my phone and I wrote up the words, “Feed your soul.” like it was a divine download. All of a sudden, I realized that I had ignored my feminine, creative energy for the last four years. I had went into survival hustle mode.
I was so unhappy, so depressed, and so anxious all the time. After that, I ended up leaving and I got accepted into a really prestigious acting conservatory. I spent the next year studying acting, and being in the presence of those people who were so spiritually tapped in and who were still in a state of growth. Every single day, we were getting uncomfortable, getting up and doing monologues and crying in front of people. Like, you are stripped bare. You are emotionally naked in front of a whole group of people that become your family. But, for me, that was what my soul needed.
I finally allowed myself permission to feed my soul.
I felt like I had done the work that everybody else wanted me to do. And I finally gave myself the opportunity to feed my soul, and that was probably one of the first times in my adult life where I was able to trust my inner voice. I could trust that everything was going to be OK, and really allow that divine download to come in and give me guidance to that next step. I decided to not go and get my Ph.D. in psychology, so that I could then go and pursue performing. And that led me into entrepreneurship, which is so my jam and my purpose. Like, to a certain degree, I’m performing right now!
I’m feeling so on purpose and so in my element. And I had to start by trusting my inner voice.
So just a quick recap of how to manage the entrepreneurial rollercoaster:
1. Know your strengths.
2. Release irrational fears.
3. Trust your own voice.
If you found this powerful, please share with someone who needs it!
