Today’s Guest

About Jo Casey

Jo Casey has over 20 years experience of working as a trainer and consultant in the corporate, public and third sectors. Her flashy clients and workplaces have included Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), The NHS, BT, Toyota Motors, Peugeot Business School, The Welsh Assembly Government, The Girl Guides UK, Vets4Pets/Companion Care, several Local Government Authorities, and The Department Of Work And Pensions. But she’s also worked with many no less wonderful smaller ventures, micro businesses and SMEs.

She’s a self-confessed nerd and has taught at college and university levels and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Chester. Jo has a Masters Degree in Coaching and Organizational Development and she’s an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI qualified professional certified Emotional Intelligence EQi 2.0 consultant.

She’s been coaching for over 15 years now – clocking up over 1000 hours of coaching experience. Basically, she carefully treads that line between being passionate and a tiny bit obsessive about what she does (obsession often wins). Jo runs accredited coach training programs and coaches people from all over the world via the power of the internet.

Listen to this episode

   

What You’ll Learn

• What our own journey has been like in dealing with these fears and how this shows up for us
• Why this happens and why we have these fears
• How this shows up in business and how it holds us back
• Why this is a problem and why we need to work on it
• How perfectionism comes into play and why we need to get used to taking imperfect action
• How this is related to resilience and how we can strengthen our resilience muscle
• Why we need to step outside our comfort zone in all areas of our life, not just business
• What you can do to change this and release these fears so you can take action more easily
• Practical baby steps you can take to get used to speaking out and taking action

Other Resources

• BMP220 Jo + Holly ~ Why You Need Resilience in Your Business
• The fuck-off fairy

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Related episodes

• 277: Holly Worton ~ How to Create Authentic & Organic Connections Online
• 263: Holly Worton ~ How YOU Can Start Your Own Podcast
• 262: Holly Worton ~ How to Use Patreon to Create a New Income Stream in Your Business
• 231: Louisa Whitney ~ How to Create Unique Collaborations in Your Business
• BMP178 Joanna Hennon & Karina Ladet ~ How to Run Your First Conference
• BMP174 Maria of Gentlewhispering ~ How to Create a Successful YouTube Channel

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello, and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast, episode 259. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey. I am really, really, looking forward to sharing today’s episode with you, because this is one of the biggest issues that I have struggled with, it is one of the things that I work with clients on, it is one of the core topics that I work on with people.

So, today, Jo and I will be talking about: Will they like me? What will people think?

We share our own journeys, what it has been like for us in dealing with these fears, how these limiting beliefs, limiting questions I guess, have kind of held us back in business, and what we have done to get over them, how it shows up for us.

We talk about why this happens, why do we have these fears? Why do we even care of what people think of us.

We talk about how this shows up in business and how it holds us back. Why it is a problem and why we need to work on it.

We explore how perfectionism comes into play, and why we need to get used to taking imperfect action, even if it is scary, even if we are worried: what will people think if it is not perfect? Because, of course, everyone else is perfect!

We discuss how this is related to resilience, and how we can strengthen our resilience muscle, yes, we have talked about this in the past, I will link to that episode in the show notes, if this is something that you know you need to learn more about.

We discuss why we need to step outside our comfort zone in all areas of our life, not just business, and how taking action outside our comfort zone, in our personal lives, with our hobbies, whatever, can have a ripple effect in our business.

We talk about what you can do to change this, to change those fears around: will they like me, what will people think? And how you can release these fears and you can take action more easily.

We also share practical baby steps that you can take to get used to speaking out, get used to taking action, in your business, despite having these fears: will they like me, what will people think? This is such an important topic, and I don’t honestly know anyone who hasn’t experienced some form of this. I think this very common, I think it is kind of a very natural thing to be afraid of. The thing is it holds some of us back more than others. So, you see these people out there online taking big actions, and making big statements, and being really bright and bold and really letting their personalities shine; and sometimes it can be scary to do that, and I totally get that. So, today, we are talking about what you can do to stop being beige, to stop being neutral, and to start putting more of your personality, you true personality, online, speaking your truth, despite the fact that you may still have those fears about what will people think of me?

Jo: Hi everybody, this is Jo Casey, I am here with Holly Worton, we are here with our monthly episode where we discuss all things mindset, and meaningful business, and today we are going to be talking about something that comes up a lot, doesn’t it? The fear that so many of us have about: what will people think of me if I put this thing out online, or if I build this business up, or if I really go for it, or if I share this opinion? And, this thought that holds us back, way too often, this whole kind of: will they like me? Will they shun me? Will they approve of me? In this age of the pressure cooker, the dumpster fire that it can sometimes feel the online world is becoming, I think that it is a question that occurs to a lot of us. And, I see it in my work with clients, who are maybe not being as visible as they want to be, I see it in myself, when I am getting ready to launch something, or to promote something. I think it is worth spending some time just unpacking this. So, hi Holly!

Holly: Hey!

Jo: So, what’s your take on this? Is this something that you experienced as well?

Holly: Yeah, this was a massive, massive, issue for me, I think this is one of the biggest things that I have had to overcome in my business journey so far. And I feel like it was one of the symptoms of low self-esteem, low self-confidence, low self-value, that I was experiencing when I started out on this entrepreneurial journey, it is actually something that showed up even in my first business, because I think as soon as this online world kind of started, and my first business appeared on TripAdvisor, that was kind of the first hospitality, I want to say social network, but where people were doing reviews and things, and I was showing up and commenting and that kind of thing. That was when I first became aware of: what will people think of me? Will they like me? They are giving my hotel a bad review so clearly that reflects on me as a person! so I started to feel kind of personally hurt by those reviews, and this was way back in…I don’t know when did TripAdvisor start, 2001? That was kind of the first time I thought: oh! they don’t like me! Because they had a bad experience, or something minor happened, or whatever. So, that was kind of when it starred, and I have done a lot of mindset work on clearing the stuff, because it has continued to come up, and continued to come up, and even just this week I released a podcast episode with Joanna Hennon that we did on: are prices too high as online entrepreneurs? And, that made me feel a bit icky, because it was a conversation, we weren’t saying everyone’s prices are too high and we must all lower our prices, it was: let’s ask this question because Joanna had gone to see a psychologist for her son, who was charging €100 an hour and this woman has gotten a PhD from this expensive university, and she has got years and years of experience and she is charging €100 an hour, and how does that compare to online prices? So, that was kind of the start of the conversation but, still, I was thinking: what are people going to think of me? Are they going to think I have money issues, are they going to think that I haven’t worked through my money beliefs, that I have money blocks? Because the whole online world is about: you have got to value yourself and raise your prices, and if your prices are low you don’t value yourself, and I was caught up in that thing and I was thinking: ah, what are people going to think of me? But it didn’t stop me from releasing that podcast episode, so it is kind of like I have done the work, so I can say the stuff, but I still get those twinges: what will they think of me?

Jo: Yeah, and you will laugh, because I have that same voice, with that same tonality, that pops up for me as well! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} [changing voice]: Who do you think you are?!

So, what’s your journey been like on this?

Jo: Oh God, so my entrepreneurial journey, I think I spent about ten years kind of preparing to launch in terms of all this, because I did a lot of that hiding stuff. I taught myself how to design a website, I taught myself how to copyright… I did all of those things while still having a full-time job and I know loads of people who are building a business on the side, but I wasn’t actually building a business, I was just learning these things. I wasn’t offering services initially, I was just learning these things, and I had a blog, and I had a website, and it looked kind of shiny from the outside; but I wasn’t ever doing the thing of: hey, you can hire me for this amount…because what would people think if I started asking asking for money in exchange for my services? So, I did a lot of hiding, and I think one of the ways that it shows up for me is in perfectionism; so, it has to be perfect and until it is perfect I am not going to kind of… And people who have worked with me one-on-one will be killing themselves laughing at this, because one of the things I say over-and-over is that we need to get used to taking imperfect action, and I say that because that is something that is an ongoing journey for me, is something I still have to overcome, because the way this pops up for me more often than not is: if I release it and it is a bit shit, what will people think of me? And that has a good aspect to it, because obviously you want to have high standards, you don’t want to be releasing things that is your pile of poo, but at the same time that can also go way too far because (for example) at one point I spent three months agonising over a logo, and to be clear I was getting about three people a week visiting my website at this point. My logo didn’t matter at all! {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} What did they think of your logo those three people?

Jo: I think this goes to a wider cultural thing around this, in that, as humans, when we think back to when we were hunter gatherers the way that our brains evolved, we were tribal, to be thrown out of the tribe, to be cast out of the tribe, meant death. We couldn’t physically survive on our own, we would have been eaten, we would have been killed by something, we would have died of exposure, there wouldn’t have been enough food. And we are still kind of hard wired for that, so, we have this inbuilt desire to be accepted by the wider tribe. And so that has not changed for thousands of years. If you think back to, my gran used to talk about, she lived in a very close-knit, working class catholic community in Liverpool, 30s, 40s, 50s. She would talk about the importance of, well, making sure you didn’t let the street down. So, if you hadn’t scrubbed down your front step at least once a week, then other people would be talking about you.

There was once a time, I even feel bad about sharing this now, and she passed many years ago, but I have still got that shame of sharing this, that I don’t want, about them having an infestation of fleas and them having to get the flea man round in the middle of the night because they didn’t want the neighbours to know….and the flea man was used to coming around in the middle of the night, because this was obviously a common thing. It wasn’t the fact that they got fleas because they were dirty or anything like that, it was just one of those things that happened, but that judgement and the power of that judgement could have serious social consequences. And, so, this is nothing new, but it is just to run an online business, to run any kind of business, anything that is outside of the norm, you are an outlier and that is scary, and there is something vulnerable about that. But, it is kind of our bread and butter work, it is one of the issues that we have to get to grips with, because otherwise what would you say some of the…because I am just aware that I am going off on my soapbox again! What are some of the things that you see happen if people don’t deal with this, as our resident mindset expert, what are the ways that you see this showing up?

Holly: Before I answer that question, I have to say, what you mentioned about your nan and washing the front step, I am just aware, I went out for a run this morning, came back in and we have a non-existent front garden in our house, it is like this little patch of rocks, but there are weeds in it that I haven’t pulled. And, I, as was walking into my house after my run, I felt shame for my weeds. And, our house is on a corner, so people walk by our house all day and I have got, it is not a weed patch, there are five or six weeds that I could pull, and I just had that thought: what are our neighbours, neighbours that I don’t even know, but what are they going to think of these weeds, in my patch of rocks in my garden!?

So, it shows up in so many ways, in business and non-business, and kind of starting to answer this question, I think it is really useful to identify where this stuff shows up in all areas of our life, business and non-business, because if you can clear those limiting beliefs, those fears, it will kind of have a ripple effect in all the other areas.

So, how does it show up? I see it show up in so many aspects of business, but it is all about trying to fit in, like you said so you are not cast out from the tribe. You don’t want to rock the boat, you speak out, you maybe water down your opinion a little bit, so it is easier to digest. You don’t really say the things – 100% unfiltered – that you want to say. Playing small, hiding, not speaking up on things that you want to speak up on for fear: what will people think? There are so many different little ways that it can show up in business. Sending out emails every week or month to your list and not ever letting them know what you do, or how they can give you money, or what services you are offering. Or, one thing I didn’t do for the longest time, and it is so embarrassing now that I say this, but I wouldn’t send out emails because I didn’t want people to unsubscribe. {Both: laughing} So this was years ago, kind of with my first list, but I would only sporadically send out emails because I just thought: I don’t want to bother than and then have them unsubscribe because I will feel bad about myself.

Jo: I had that too, I have to say that I am now at a stage where every time I send out an email I will get seven or eight unsubscribes, and you know that’s okay. They don’t all, like in the latest email I just sent out kind of email me back… I swore in this particular email and one person emailed me back to say: swearing is unacceptable in my inbox, please stop emailing me. {laughing} You get that kind of: oh, they don’t like me! Just for a moment. But, that whole kind of I don’t want to bother people, I don’t want to be too in their face, will they think I am too obnoxious?

Holly: I am too sales-y, I am selling stuff all the time…

Jo: And while it is really important that we are not being just kind of bam, bam, bam, in-your-face with the marketing, ultimately this whole thing of being ruled by: what will other people think of me? It is a killer of dreams. Because whether it is you playing small, and not being able to build the business that you want or, as you were talking, I got this really sharp memory of this conversation I had with a friend’s father, not long after I had qualified as a life coach, and so I needed some practice clients and she said: my dad would love to. He was a lovely and somebody I knew pretty well, and was great to talk to and stuff, and he told me that he wanted to be, he had always wanted to be a stand-up-comedian. And he was a really funny guy, one of these people who are naturally very, very, funny; and at this point he must have been in his early 70s, and I said: well, what’s stopping you from doing it? And he said: I couldn’t possibly, what are people going to think, somebody my age, doing something like that? And he never did it, I am still in touch with the family, and as far as I know he has never even told them about it.

Holly: Oh!

Jo: His family, and that’s a dream that has died on the vine.

Holly: That’s so sad!

Jo: It is so sad, and I think about all of the things that we hold ourselves back from doing because we are worried about what people will think; and while nobody likes that feeling of being ostracised, or being criticised, actually, in the vast majority of cases the worst that is going to happen is that you are going to get some people who maybe are a bit critical, or maybe tell you that you are being stupid, but, it is not going to equal death.

Holly: No, and it is something that we have to get used to as online entrepreneurs, because we open ourselves up to the comments and reviews of people who don’t know us and care about us, and don’t care about our feelings. I remember my first YouTube videos that I put up, I disabled the comments because I was so afraid of getting YouTube comments. And I have this one YouTube video that has now got just over 100,0000 views, so that obviously means that it has gone out to a wider audience, it is about self-muscling testing. So, I get a lot of people going on there saying: what are you crazy? This doesn’t work. It’s dangerous. I had a comment the other day that was like: The Bible says that divination is of the occult, and a sin, and I was like: delete! So, I have gotten to the point where I…{laughing}

Jo: Sorry, listeners, you can’t see the look on my face right now! {laughing}

Holly: I almost responding and said: thank you very much for letting me know, I am not Christian, I don’t give a shit, but I don’t want to feed the trolls. So, I have gotten to the point where I can enable comments, and I can receive comments, and I don’t take them as personally. I do sometimes get a little twinge but yeah, I can handle it. I actually deleted a bunch of comments on that video just yesterday because they weren’t adding to the conversation they were just shit, so I thought: I am not going to leave this up there, delete. It has been a journey!

Jo: It is a journey, like a muscle that you can strengthen. That’s not to say, either of us, are people who deliberately go out there to court controversy — some people absolutely thrive on it. I am not seeking the drama, or anything like that, but there are times when I share stuff and I think: this is going to be a little bit controversial, or actually there are times when I share things and think: well that’s just really obvious and neutral, and I still get pushback. You do get used to it, but it’s hard. Have I shared the time, the worst criticism ever, that I was fearing, that I actually got? I am sure I have shared this at some time, so forgive me listeners if I have said this before. I had two main fears when I first actually started to do something with my business, one was that somebody would say, or other people would say: you’re not qualified to be talking about this; and the other was, same type of thing: Who do you think you are? And the first time that happened was actually when an ex of mine, who I didn’t have a fantastic relationship with, and still don’t, which is why we are exes, just sent me this horrible message about: who do you think you are portraying your perfect life online like you are so bloody perfect, blah, blah, blah? It was almost word-for-word what my deepest, darkest fear was that somebody would say, and I thought: Oh, piss off! {laughing} Just so perfect that it came from him, and don’t get me wrong, it wounded for a moment, it really did.

Holly: Yeah.

Jo: But then it was like: no, you don’t have the right to say that to me, and it kind of broke the spell on that one for me, because he was somebody who knew my life, he was somebody that was …so I was able to bat that one back and think: that’s not mine to carry, that’s not my criticism to carry. The other one was a time when I had written a blogpost about, there was some really interesting psychological research about how positive thinking can be unhelpful if you just do the: ‘think positive and you will be fine’. Because, what this research has found is that if you just do that, so they did this one study where got some students preparing for their exams, they had a control group kind of carry on with their revision and study plan, and they had the test group doing some visualisation every day of them doing fantastically well. They found that the test group did worse, than the control group. And when they looked at the amount of study time both groups had done, the positive thinking group had done less studying and less revision

Holly: Because they were visualising.

Jo: Because they were visualising. And, so, there is a lot of really interesting stuff around that, you know, positive visualisation which is really good for some things, like stress relief, and getting you into the right frame of mind and things like that, but you do also have to do the things. It is like if you were going to go, I don’t know, bungee jumping, you can just visualise doing this amazing, perfect, bungee jump, you also need to go and check your harness and make sure that the rope is safe and all of that stuff. So, I had written this article, this was at the time when I was getting maybe 30 views a week on my blog, and somebody wrote this really, really, critical comment and he said he was a doctor, basically a psychoanalyst. He said I was dangerous, I was giving people dangerous advice, I wasn’t qualified to be giving people advice, I clearly hadn’t understood anything about positive psychology and positive thinking. It was all of the worst things, it was like my deepest, darkest fear had come true, and I read it and felt sick and then I walked away and then I read it again, and I still felt sick and then I read it again… and then the weird thing happened was, I read it a few times and I thought: no, that’s not what I am saying. And then I read it again and thought: oh no, he has misunderstood that bit, and by the time I had read it…I must have read it a dozen times, and thought: oh no, he has not understood this, he is wrong. And it was the weirdest feeling, it was such a liberating feeling, to actually work through that fear and get to the point of: Oh, this guy has either not understood, or he is just being deliberately a bit of a troll with it. It was liberating to have what in my head the worst thing that could happen at the time, and not only survive it, but it reinforced the fact that everything I posted was researched; and I had put links to the relevant research and the right papers, and things like that. I don’t actually need to be a doctor, or a psychologist, to be able to have an opinion on this. And it was such an empowering feeling, and I wouldn’t have got to that place, had I still been in the: I am not going to put anything out, just in case, just in case… Actually, sometimes having your worst fear realised on this type of stuff can be really helpful. That being said, I have got friends who, particularly women of colour, who have got some horrific, kind of consistent trolling online, so my experience of it has been really minimal and I didn’t get the kind of constant barrage that some people have had. But in terms of helping you to move into: what do I actually think on this, do I stand by this opinion? It was really useful.

Holly: I think it is interesting because the things that you are afraid of people saying: you are not qualified, who do you think you are? Those are manifestations of the belief: I am not good enough. I am not good enough to write this blog post, I am not good enough to do this video, I am not good enough to do a podcast on this topic, and that is such a fundamental limiting belief of so many entrepreneurs, it is so common. It is something that gets triggered by all these things that we do to market our business, if we are actually taking the action.

Jo: Yes, exactly, so what have you found have been things that helped you?

Holly: So, absolutely doing mindset work, so using PSYCH-K® to do beliefs: I am safe in the world/ I am safe in the online world / It is safe and appropriate for me to speak my truth. Stuff like that, also doing the heat-centred-energy-work to release the energy blocks. Doing the mindset work, being aware of where I am holding myself back, where I am hesitating to take action, where I am not taking action, and figuring out what do I need to believe to make it easier for me to take action? And doing that work.

Another thing that’s really helped me, and this is going to sound like weird advice, but I am fairly active on Reddit, not for business reasons, just to read stuff online. And that can be a really hostile community, so I change my username every few months, because I don’t want to say too much personal stuff and be identified. So, I try to stay really, really, anonymous, but I also kind of use it to share my opinion on things, because I am anonymous, and experience the backlash, and I feel like that helps me kind of get used to saying stuff online even though I am not saying it as me. So, I don’t know, there was this post I think it was last week or the week before, about some guy in California – a gun collector – and he had 553 guns seized by the police because he was a felon, and as a felon you can’t have guns, but he was a collector and there were all these “amazing” historical guns and all kinds of guns, but there were 553 of them. So, all these people were saying: This is terrible, because the guns are going to be destroyed and blah blah blah. And this one person said something about: These are collector’s items. Then, I said: but I kind of feel like even if these are collector’s items, no one needs 553 guns, that’s a lot of guns. And I got downvoted like crazy, and this woman said: What does that mean you are not allowed to collect 153 widgets? And I said: well, if widgets kill people, then no, I think that’s a little weird. So, I got into this whole debate with this anonymous internet person, and me as an anonymous internet person, but it wasn’t easy for me to say even though I was being anonymous, but I feel like that kind of stretches the muscle a little bit to state my opinions on things that matter, but it helps, it helps.

Jo: That’s fascinating, I’ve seen a whole new side of you! {laughing}

Holly: Anonymous, Reddit, comments! {laughing}

Jo: Yes! My son uses Reddit a lot and I am like: isn’t that just totally… and he says: no, you have to know which track routes to go on. I’m terrified of the place…

Holly: Yeah, you have got to be anonymous. I mostly participate in women’s related subreddits, where people are very civilised, but every once in a while, I will comment in one of the default subs like Ask Reddit or something like that, one of those. And that’s where I get the shitty comments and try to stay anonymous and change my usernames, but, it has really helped me to stretch my muscle in terms of saying things that I know I am going to get down-voted for, I know people are going to comment and be vicious. So, it helps, in a weird way.

Jo: That’s really fascinating. Quite a few years ago wen I was much more active politically, as in would go door-knocking and stuff like that, I was a proper political activist in those days rather than just the keyboard warrior that I tend to be more often than not now. But, I can remember being involved with a group that was all about encouraging more women to get into politics, and one of the programmes that had at the time, that I was really critical of, and didn’t want to get involved in, basically was this weekend intensive training where these women who were would be politicians were given this ordeal of fire, of just being criticised and pilloried for the whole weekend; because it was kind of saying you have to get used to this kind of treatment. Because I am all kind of soft and oh no don’t do that! Let’s all be nice, and let’s be kind… I tend to be much more of an advocate for: let’s have community, let’s have support, let’s be able to work through the concerns, but that being said, from both are experiences I think there is an element of: we need to grow the, almost like our Teflon coat, we need to grow our resilience to these things; because there is an physiological thing that happens to us when we are verbally attacked, it is very similar to a physical attacked, it is the same response. And learning how to tolerate that and bring our, I suppose one of the things that it seems to be of being online is that we are all a bit trigger happy when it comes to that. It is like: oh my god I can’t believe you said that, that’s awful and I feel personally attacked if someone is disagreeing with my opinion. There has been some really fascinating research into this phenomenon, which is why we are so bloody angry online, and get so upset and find it so distressing; but maybe there is something about if we have small amounts of exposure therapy to that, and we can develop a bit more of a tolerance. I am not saying this is a good thing and something to be encouraged and that we should all be out there like gladiators in this hideous online arena, but maybe there is something about doing some training exercises like: once a week I am going to go in an anonymous Reddit forum and test. {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} Commenting on one of the default subs and getting blasted for it. It sounds silly and it sounds weird, but I really do feel like it has helped, so.

Jo: I can totally see why it is helping, I can totally see that. That’s fascinating, I almost want you to take me into the shadowy world of Reddit…

Holly: I have just got my husband on Reddit, after years of being on it myself, so we sat down, and I showed him some of the subs and he is really excited by it, so {laughing}. I don’t think he is commenting yet, he is just subscribing to stuff and reading stuff, so you can also do that, there is good stuff on there and there is also a lot of crazy stuff on there.

Jo: Yeah, I think that’s the bit that scares me, I don’t want exposure to the insanity that’s out there. So, what are the other things that and happen? I can remember my very first website, and I can remember having pictures done and I got my husband to take them in the back garden, and I wore a business jacket, a suit jacket — have you ever seen me in a suit jacket? Have you ever seen me in a button-up shirt or something? That is just not me! So, he took these pictures, and I built this website modelling it on everything I had seen, so it was like I was looking for: what are the rules? I am here in this new place, this new internet world, what are the rules? Because I want to follow the rules and if I don’t I might be cast out. So, I was following all the rules, and it was the blandest bloody website ever, I mean it was a picture of me wearing my little business jacket, smiling at the camera, there were oodles of pictures of women in cornfields, with big floppy hats on, those generic life coach images. And nobody paid any attention, at all, which actually at the time was fine, because I don’t think I could have handled anyone noticing it, but the only time my business started to get any kind of traction, was, I have talked about this before, I kind of got to the point where I was so exhausted, and so kind of despondent, because nothing was working, I got to the point where I was: sod it, I will just show up as me; because I haven’t got the energy to put on the suit, and the jacket and look all perky and all of that anymore, and that was when people started to take notice and then it increased a little bit. The more me I am, the better my business, because people can then decide: either I am for them, or I am not.

Holly: Yes.

Jo: It took me a long time to get to that and I do also think there is something, I am almost 47, and there is something about the older I get…

Holly: The less you care.

Jo: Yeah, the less I care. {laughing}

Holly: You know, my mum always wanted to say that to me when I was a kid: when you grow up you won’t care what anyone says about you, I don’t care what anybody says about me. And I was a teenager, and she would say this to me and I remember thinking: damn! I really, really, want that. And it felt like it took so long for me, and I obviously still haven’t got to that point, because I still care. I read a bad review of one of my books and I am like: [sad] but I can handle it. But, I remember reading this blog post, maybe about eight or ten years ago, it was such a good post, it was about how every woman when she is in her 30s, she gets visited by the “I don’t give a fuck fairy” or something like that. And this fairy sprinkles her magic dust on you and you no longer give a fuck what people think about you. I am going to try to find it and I will link to it in the show notes, because it was so funny, and it was so good, and I read that about a time in my lie where I was starting to not are as much about what people thought about me, it was like: oh, I am so glad I have arrived! {laughing}

And I haven’t completely, not 100%, but it is so much easier for me now to say things, and to put out videos, and to put out books. I mean my first books were really scary to put out, my first walking book where I walked 100 miles and it was really, really, hard and I shared all of that, I shared about crying at the side of the trail, that was a big thing for me to put out there and I have two 1* reviews of that book, and it hurts. But, I did it, I put the book out there, so I am taking the action now. And I find this building kind of resilience muscle to putting our stuff out there, is a lot like taking little steps outside our comfort zone, and I think that taking little steps outside our comfort zone in any area of our lives, can help with business, obviously we need to be taking steps in business. But, even little stuff, like last weekend I went on this wild camping course in South Wales, and I have always wanted to go wild camping, but I have been too scared to do it because I don’t know how to do it.

Jo: Is that when…?

Holly: You are not in a camp ground, you are in the wilderness, the wilderness of Britain! {laughing}

Jo: You have to be in the woods?

Holly: We ended up going to this little place alongside a stream, it was really woods-y, it was in the black mountains.

Jo: Do you have to be near a stream?

Holly: Well, we need a water source, so.

Jo: See, I am just about at the level where I can cope with glamping. Wild camping is just like: what!

Holly: This was my dream, but I was too scared of it, but a couple of months ago, I just sat down on google and said: I am just going to google it: is there such a thing as a wild camping course? And, indeed, there is. So, I signed up with this guy that I had never met before, and I was so afraid, because I thought: I am going to be in Wales which has bigger hills than I am used to, it is going to be strenuous, I am going to be carrying a big backpack. I was so afraid that I was going to be slowest, shittiest hiker in the group, and I was the slowest, but not by much. It was hard, it was challenging, it was amazing, and I am so glad I did it, but I think that step outside my comfort zone, being afraid of: what will they think of me if I am slow? What will they think of me if I need to take a break? What will they think of me is I have a blister on my heel…? I had so much of that crap coming up, but I did it anyway and that little stretch outside my comfort zone I absolutely believe is going to help me with business. I came back on Sunday night, and, Monday, I felt like a different person, because I had conquered a lot of my fears and that has a ripple effect.

Jo: That’s, for sure, I can remember when I went on my first kind of course aboard, when I flew to Santiago and went on this retreat, and in my mind, one of my biggest fears is that I was going to be the oldest person there. Because I had a Facebook group and there were lots of people in there and I could see they were all millennial and they are all going to be super-energetic, and really, really, successful. And yes, there were, some people who were more “successful” than I was, there were people there who were younger than me, there were people there who were thinner than me, there were half a dozen yoga teachers there, and I was just like: oh my god can I just look at you, because you look so amazing… But there were also people who were older, people who were just starting out on their journey, there was just a whole collection of really lovely humans. Not all of us like being…it is a really nice feeling competent and feeling like you are on solid ground with what you are doing, but to grow we have to get out of that place, we have to go again and again back to the beginner place, the: I haven’t got a fucking clue what I am doing place. And so, I think that all of our conversations seem to come back to resilience.

Holly: It is, it is about building the resilience muscle of doing the stuff the we need to do to run our business, even if we have that fear: Will they like me, what will they think about me?

Jo: It is, it is helping people work through their fears. So, could we give people some practical tips, some kind of baby steps that they could take?

Holly: Go on Reddit! Be controversial, have an opinion in the default subs, so that’s ridiculous but yes, that would help. Anything you can do to take a step outside your comfort zone, with YouTube, maybe you want to start doing videos, but you are scared of comments, you can put the video up and disable comments, that’s an option, that might be your first baby step. And then, as your channel grows you might want to enable comments, and that could be your next step. Little things like that, so think about the things that you want to do and do an easier version of that.

Jo: Baby steps towards it rather than thinking: I am going to jump into the middle of the icy cold water without armbands, just do whatever baby steps you can do to dip your toe in and maybe go paddling and then maybe go up to your knees… I also think there is something useful about spending some time whether it be journalling, whether it be meditating, kind of looking at: What are the things that I am afraid of? What is my inner critic, what is my inner child…what are the parts of me that are scared of doing this, what are they scared of? And are those things real?

Holly: And I say all this all the time, because we have a tendency to sweep that stuff under the rug because we think that will make it go away, you have got to pull the rug back, pull that stuff out, look at it and do the work to transform it, because if you try to shove it down it is still going to be there in the background.

Jo: It will just come up in another place, and another way, and it is like: ah suddenly I am afraid of doing this as well now then, great. So, I think definitely looking at the other fears, are they true? What can I do to support that part of me through this process? I am big fan of community, I am a big fan of getting alternative opinions, because that opinion that you have in your head: everyone is going to think I am an awful person for doing this, that can seem so definite, they probably aren’t. Everyone won’t think that, maybe one or two people might. Getting a good reality check on those things, and then I think getting some support as you are actually doing the thing.

Holly: Exactly, if you are freaking out, if you have written the copy but you are scared to put it up, get support with that.

Jo: Yeah, for sure. And celebrate as well. Something else that we are really rubbish at doing.

Holly: I am too, but even if it is really, really, tiny: you put a video up, maybe you disable comments, that’s still a win. That’s still a good thing, that’s still a visibility thing. I was also thinking with my podcast, in the beginning I just did interviews, it was about me showcasing other people’s wisdom and experience and knowledge, and it took me a while before I started doing solo episodes and now I am exclusively doing solo episode, and then the co-hosted ones with you and Joanna. So it is a lot more of me, rather than me showcasing someone else. That was a process, that was a journey, I started out with what was easy, which was interviewing, and then I kind of moved my way up. Even with the interviews, I remember I had a spreadsheet with three categories of people on there that I wanted to get as guests, I started with the easy people, and then the mid-range people, and then I had the people that scared me. I worked my way up through that list. Start with what’s easy but take an action. And if there is something that you want to do, but it is so, so, scary think how you can make it easier.

Jo: Yeah, break it down into sub-steps, or baby steps towards it, keep that kind of north star goal in mind: what will it be like when you have done that, when you have achieved that, when you have sold out the calls, when you have got a coaching practice, or when you have got your first 100 subscribes on YouTube, or when you have written the book, or you have published it? Whatever that might be, what might that feel like, what else will be different, what will be impacted, keep going back to the reason that you want this thing.

Holly: What’s it going to give you? How is it going to change your life?

Jo: And that can magnetise the action towards the goal, quite often when we get really stuck on the scary bit, mentally we just get stuck on it and so we withdraw. Imagine yourself once you are past that scary bit, on the other side. When you are walking out of the dentist rather than thinking what it is going to be like while you are sat in the dentist’s chair. Imagine walking out, imagine what is going to be like when you see that PayPal balance when you have sold out a course, or whatever it maybe, and get some support. Find your people and get some support.

Holly: Yes, yes. In whatever way that looks like for you, it could be a mastermind group, it could be a Facebook group of friends, it could be Skyping with a business friend, it could be…there are so many different ways that you can get support.

Jo: All right, I think we have solved or at least covered it extensively. Anything else that you feel that we have not really touched on?

Holly: No, not really. But I would really like to encourage anyone listening to this: think of one thing you can do, no matter how tiny, one little baby step action you could do today or this week, that will take you outside your comfort zone, even if it is just a little bit, and help you build that resilience muscle and do something different, and new, and scary.

Jo: And keep doing it, little steps every day, it really does add up.

Holly: Yay!

Jo: Thank you I am so, so, impressed, wild camping and you are secret Redditt commenter {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} You thought you knew me, but you have learned so much more today.

Jo: Thank you. this has been great it has been really interesting. You might have to show me around Redditt some time.

Holly: I am happy to show you! {laughing}

Jo: Thanks everybody for listening take care.

Holly: Thank you. Bye.

 

Holly: So, that was today’s episode, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of it, how it shows up for you and what you have done to take action despite having these fears. You can email me at: [email protected] or find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and get in touch.

I would also love for you to join me in my private Facebook group: Business Mindset Alchemists, so we can continue the conversation there.

Jo and I have just been talking at you for the last 45 minutes or so, so it would be lovely to hear some feedback from you in the group.

So, if you head over to https://www.hollyworton.com/group you will be redirected to the Facebook group and you can tell me what you think, I would love to know.

Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode leave a quick review on Apple podcasts or iTunes, it would mean the world to me.

Next week I am back with another solo show, and that’s it for now, remember to visit hollyworton.com/259 for the show notes on this episode.

See you next week.