Face your fears like a 5 year old!

I broke a promise.

I typically go live every Wednesday at one o'clock EST to bring you my tips for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs on mastering your mindset and creating the success in your life that you truly desire. 

If you noticed, you know that this week I did not go live. (I DID post a video, though.👆🏼)

I kind-of want to apologize. I say “kind-of” because I’m not really sorry, and here’s why: I want to give you permission to change your mind, if you want to. On Wednesday my kids had an in-service day at school, so they were home with me. And I promised them that I would take them shopping in the afternoon. So to me, success looked like being 100% present with my children. 

As an entrepreneur, and/or intrapreneur if you are working in a corporation, you already know the importance of work and life and integrating them instead of dividing them. And you know what that means for the long term success of anything you're trying to create. So while I did make a promise to the universe, my followers, and to myself, I broke that promise intentionally. And I'm okay with it. I also want you know that you can be okay with breaking a promise, too, if you do it intentionally, with purpose, and if it is truly  in alignment with what brings you joy and what success means to you. 

I also want to share what I think will be an empowering story for you.

Last night, my daughter came in bed in the middle of the night. She had a horrible dream, she had a dream that she was outside playing and there was a cute little puppy. She went over to pet it and when she did it turned into a lion and it bit her face, her hands, “all over”, and she woke up terrified. 

As I was falling back asleep after I put her to bed, I realized how powerful of a story this could be for ALL of us.

We all know that a nightmare isn't real. We know that the nightmare is just a story in our minds, it's not real. However the terror we feel when we wake up—our hearts beating our palms sweaty—it feels REAL. So what I did with my daughter was, as she was laying in bed next to me, I asked her to tell me about her dream. (Because I knew if she said it out loud there would be a part of her that would realize that it couldn’t be real, even though I knew in the moment she was feeling real fear.) She told me in detail what her dream was about. And I said, “Okay, how can we change this story to make it a happy one?” “I don't know. I don't know. I just keep thinking about the lion,” she said. 

“Okay, well, what if the lion stayed a puppy?” And she was okay with that.

“What color would the puppy be?” Brown. 

“Would it have curly hair? Or would it have straight hair?” Straight. 

“And when you go over to the puppy does it look your finger?” Yeah. 

“Do you play with the puppy?” Yeah.

And she started to get more into it. I asked her to tell me more. What I wanted to do was activate all 5 of her senses to help her really visualize the dream in a completely new (and safe-feeling) way.

We brainstormed some more until I knew her feelings of fear had passed. Eventually I put her back to bed and when she woke up in the morning she said she had so much fun thinking about the puppy when she was falling back asleep.

As entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, CEOs, we have legit fears.

We have fears when we have to fire an employee, when we have to make a huge investment in our business and we're not sure if we're going to get the return, when the market crashes and we don't know what to expect. We feel real fear, but we also have the power to look at that story, say it out loud, question whether or not it is 100% true, see if it holds any weight, and change it. 

By choosing to change the story we can literally change our energy—release what is actually happening physically in our bodies—and become a slightly different version of ourselves. When we strip ourselves of that fear we’ll make different decisions, take different actions, get different results. That's when we step into our power. That's when we become leaders. And that's when we change the frickin’ world.

Ah, the things we can learn from a five year old! 

I’d love to know what you think! And tell me, what is one fear you have right now that you're ready to look at, recognize, refute, and prove that it's not real. And create a new story around what is possible for you.