What Environment Lifts Your Attitude?

This photo is from 2011. I love the energy of it because of what state I was in when it was shot, on Holmes Beach, Florida. The sun gave me a good kiss that day, and I was super relaxed and enjoying my stay at the beach. Since 1995 when I first honeymooned there with Chuck, Holmes Beach has been the wellspring for inspiring confidence, creativity, as well as memories of those I’ve loved and lost. I keep returning year after year like a magnet, knowing how those stays nourish my spirit and my body.

I chose this photo for the show notes page because it reminds me of how my entire outlook changes when I’m in the right environment. Is that true for you? When you think of how a place can elevate your outlook and mental state, what are the characteristics of that place? Is it while you’re on vacation? Is it when you have a peaceful moment to yourself at home? Is it when you are out for a long walk in nature? Here’s my question: How can you create that ideal state in the absence of the condition? This is what is referred to as “unconditional,” where we don’t use a condition to generate a feeling, good or bad. This “unconditional” state is possible for us at any time because it’s always OUR CHOICE to feel good or bad, but our unconscious and habitual tendency is to use the environment, or condition, to justify the good or bad feeling.

Bam. How’s that for a revelation? I’d drop my mic if it wasn’t in a stand right now.

It’s something to think about, and an important distinction that is incredibly empowering. Your perspective, mindset, attitude, “story,” about what you’re experiencing is completely transformable when you become aware of it and have the desire to have a better experience, regardless of the condition.

Given that this season is themed, “How Beliefs Shape Your Business,” and that I’ve had amazing guests who have brought new light to the concept of mindset and beliefs, I wanted to share two areas where I had beliefs that sustained an elusive, unproductive mindset that held me back from what could have been a much more profitable, successful business. Good thing I’ve since figured it out, and I’m going to help you figure yours out too.

I dug deep to examine why I succeed where I succeed, and why I fail where I fail. I’m going to share two examples of what I’ve learned as well as provide some writing prompts to get you thinking differently about your beliefs and mindset.

Business is a Big Classroom

The biggest thing I have learned having my own solopreneur business is that it’s not your skills, work ethic or products that make for success per se, rather it is the stories and thoughts we believe that live between our ears. Don’t get me wrong, those three things are important, but if your thinking is out of alignment, the amount of energy and work you’re going to have to put forward to succeed is going to be ten times what it would be if your thinking was better aligned.

What do I mean by better aligned? I’ll explain by sharing two mindsets (commonly shared by other solopreneurs, I might add), and how I learned to reframe them so I could be more productive and make my business more successful by helping more people.

A quick note first. Every one of us—you, me, other solopreneurs—has a unique set of natural talents, skills and interests that we are born with. Over the course of our life, we adopt thought patterns and beliefs (which are just thoughts we keep thinking and reinforce with evidence) that cultivate a mindset over time based on external conditions. These default responses are driven by the way our brains work to keep us alive as human beings. So keeping this general context in mind, the unconscious way you are and how you behave is not necessarily your fault, but the result of a survival mechanism that exists in your brain’s limbic system.

The trick is to discover, then replace, those unconscious, unproductive thoughts with conscious, intentional thoughts that create the outcomes you want.

What you may not realize is that when you take full responsibility for your mindset and the beliefs that direct it, with deliberate intention, positive focus and self-directed power, you can then adopt a more powerful mindset that sets you free. (By the way, contrary to online marketing gurus who advertise all over social media, not everything has to be about making a crap ton of money, domineering your market space or being the leader at your “thing,” so relax and make it what YOU want it to be. Fair?)

Story #1: Value Self and Others

I’ll start with the biggest and most critical insight I discovered about myself. Working with a coach, I connected with a deep-seated mindset where I was consistently devaluing myself, my work and my impact. I don’t want to make light of this pivotal moment or be flippant about it. I’m sharing this with you because I know I’m not alone. This was really huge for me. I was oblivious to this mindset, and this is how it was showing up in my business: (By the way, as I go through this list, pay attention to any of those that resonate with you.)

I attracted difficult, cheap clients
I overdelivered on contracts
I did a lot of “free consulting”
I charged low hourly rates
I placed myself in a market space that was way below my skill and experience level
I made everything that went wrong “my fault”
I struggled with sales and “asking for business”
I spent months developing amazing programs and then totally froze when it came time to bring them to market

Fortunately, many of these outcomes are well in the past. A few of them, however, still try to creep into my current reality, and I have to be incredibly vigilant and focused so they don’t get in the way of my ability to perform, serve and succeed in my business. The cool thing about this discovery is that I realized how empowering awareness was. Before my awareness, I had no clue why I continued to experience struggle and failure with certain business initiatives. I kept trying different tactical things, hiring experts to help me, throwing money at solutions, etc. etc. etc. and nothing seemed to shift the mediocre outcomes I was experiencing. I attributed the results to all sorts of tactical or “outside of me” excuses when in fact they were outcomes rooted in a belief system that had me devaluing self and others.

Wow. What a mind-blow that was when my coach helped me see that. And what a burden it lifted! Some people never achieve realizations like this about themselves, and even if they do, they don’t know what to do about it.

Incredibly, what opened up for me once I had the “aha moment,” was an entirely new perspective on who I was, how I showed up for people, and how I felt about the value I created through my work. I started focusing on how much growth, income and clarity my clients got out of working with me and how I still felt that I underdelivered when the opposite was true. I felt like a different person. I felt like I didn’t have to keep trying so hard. Like whatever I did, it just wasn’t enough. That I had to keep working harder, doing more, giving more, and filling gaps that weren’t even real.

Mind you, this was all energetic and attitudinal. Meaning, it was all thoughts between my ears, but it created my entire reality. Here’s another example of how it manifested quite recently: I’ve been working on PappyClub for months. I was operating with this “thought” that all of the content (and there’s a lot of content I have planned for PappyClub) had to be totally complete before I went live with it and started welcoming members. A friend helped me have a huge breakthrough in my thinking about the “appropriate time” to launch PappyClub and said, “Terry, focus on doing demos of PappyClub.” It was brilliant, because that strategy is enabling me to share it with people and get valuable feedback plus a few great testimonials. It’s taken months off of my welcoming members into something that I am very passionate about. This another manifestation of a devaluing-self mindset that was keeping me frozen and from stepping out and sharing my value with those looking for my exact solution.

Writing Prompts:

Assess your opinion about valuing self and others. Explore if you also share some of the thinking I have had that’s resulted in the outcomes I’ve listed.
Write your own testimonial. Write about how you help and serve your clients and what an impact it has had on their lives and businesses. Be specific and don’t let the judgment creep into your acknowledgement of your awesomeness.
In what other areas may you have an undiscovered mindset or belief system that is causing repetitive struggle or failure? What is an area of your business that you may be trying to throw money or marketing tactics at to improve when what really may be causing the struggle is a flawed belief system?

Story #2: Selling with a Smile

This story is about sales, and if you loves sales and selling comes naturally, but dislike something else about your business, just replace the sales model in this example with that think you dislike.

If you’ve been a longtime listener of this show, you’ve heard me mention my aversion to sales many times and how it has been a struggle for me in my business pretty much since day one. I take full responsibility for my struggle being in action around sales, however, I discovered the story I held about putting myself out there with my work and it was a big aha moment.

When I was a kid, I heard a stern statement from my dad repeatedly: “Children should be seen and not heard.” I’m sure it was partly because he had pretty much had it by the time I came along after my three siblings had chipped away at his paternal patience. Plus, with my mother in a wheelchair and very ill for the first five years of my life until she passed away three days after I turned six, my dad had a lot on his plate working full time, taking care of her and raising us four kids, one of them little and with a LOT of energy (uh, yeah, that would be me).

As a then six-year-old, I made the connection that “being a bother” (aka making a lot of noise, demanding attention like kids often do, etc.) stopped me from receiving love from my dad. So, my six-year-old brain decided that if I stayed quiet and didn’t bother him, he was happier and would love me. A six-year-old decided how I was going to be for the rest of my life! Here’s the kicker: most of us are running around operating under decisions we made before we turned six, seven or eight years old! And we wonder why we struggle, fail, or achieve success only to crash and burn later. Yup. That’s mindsets and beliefs at work. Ones we need to reframe.

To this day, I still resist reaching out to cold leads. I dance around the conversation of doing business together. I have read just about every book on selling—heck, I even WROTE ONE!—to realize over recent years what belief was at the root of my struggle. Now I have the key of awareness to unlock the reframe. That awareness is that I resist selling (aka bothering people) because of a six-year-old’s decision AND the sense of devaluing self. Together, they made a Molotov cocktail for struggle and lackluster results in my business.

But now, things are different. Selling is so much easier and natural for me because I don’t look at it as selling, bothering or interrupting someone. I feel valued, I feel the value of my prospect, and my outreach is grounded in mutual discovery of how to help. I look at it as uncovering possibility. I look at it as a way to inspire possibility. I look at it as a way to provide relief, even if it’s measured in small doses, and you can too.

Writing Prompts

Describe the “feel good” parts of your selling and outreach tactics. What parts do you enjoy? What parts yield the greatest success? And that can be success in identifying “bad fits” early to success in closing a new client.
Write out the things you believe to be true about your selling practices. Negative ones will sound “judgy” like your mom or dad is saying them to you about your sales efforts. From not doing it enough to not doing it a certain way, etc. Be as specific as possible and notice the nuances regarding your mindset around sales and putting yourself out there.
Describe how you feel and what comes up when you think about prospecting, outreach and having sales conversations. Write down all of the “beliefs” you have that may be behind each emotion. For example, you may feel “smarmy or sleazy” when thinking about selling to someone. What is the belief behind that feeling? Could it be you don’t believe in your product? That you don’t believe in your ability to deliver a quality solution? That you are charging too much for what you’re selling? Explore what’s there and write it out. When you’re done, take each one and reframe the belief you have about it. Such as, “I have solved many problems for my clients before, and I know I can do it again and even better.” Do this for each one and review these reframe statements before doing any outreach so your mindset is more aligned with success.

Well, there you go. I trust that sharing my stories and how I’ve reframed my unproductive beliefs to support what I’m up to have been helpful. Remember, if you are ready to reframe the beliefs and mindsets keeping you from living the solopreneur joy you want to live, join PappyClub. Inside PappyClub you’ll get exactly what you need to figure it all out, and you’ll get me to help you along the way. Pretty awesome, right? So get yourself into PappyClub and let’s get you living the solopreneur lifestyle and income you want.