What does alignment have to do with business?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Short answer: everything. Longer answer: keep reading…

First, let’s talk about alignment. I’ve written and podcasted and talked about this before, but how I understand alignment currently is this: you are consciously and unconsciously working toward the same thing. Now, I get that that might be immediately like “woah, too woo” for some people, but let’s actually break that down to make it a little more digestible…

Let’s say that you insist that you want 10k months. But deep down (way deep) you believe that 10k months equal working 80 hour weeks. What you consciously think is that 10k months will give you is so much time freedom, and that’s great because you want that more than anything. But subconsciously you believe that 10k months will require too much time, and so you resist. You are out of alignment. There’s a disconnect between what you think you want and what you truly desire.

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Another example would be deciding to work with 1:1 clients even though you find 1:1 client work exhausting and it doesn’t give you the flexibility you desire. You decide that you “have to work with 1:1 clients first” because some guru on the internet said it and you decided that must be true because they are more successful and make more money than you do. So you force yourself to try and work with 1:1 clients even though it’s totally burning you out and draining your energy — that’s operating out of alignment.

Are you starting to get it?

So why does any of that matter in business?

Because when you are running your own business you get to make the rules! However, most exhausted entrepreneurs spend their time following other people’s random arbitrary rules even if it doesn’t fit what is truly aligned for them. They don’t do the work to uncover what is truly aligned for them, but just outsource all that decision making to someone else because it’s easier to trust someone else than themselves (which you might agree SOUNDS nuts, but you also are probably doing a little of this in your business too - it’s SO easy to fall into that trap).

So how can we become more aligned entrepreneurs?

What will that give us? In my experience in my own businesses and also from working with clients - it gets you RESULTS. Like money, clients, time, etc. All the things you are desiring - and I know that sounds like “it’s too good to be true!” but here’s the thing…

What you want wants you back. But y’all can’t meet up until you are aligned with each other. I’ve had many clients say they want more money but deep down they believe that means working way harder - and they DON’T want to do that (they are already working so hard which is why they even find me as their coach!). So they resist making more money in the current way they are approaching making money because the only way they think it’s possible to make more money is to put in more hours. Yuck.

When we pull back a bit and recognize that there are other ways they can approach their offers, ways that feel better for them, ways that maybe “break the rules” that they thought existed… the work gets easier. More fun. More aligned with who they are and what they actually want to do. And guess what? The money shows up. Because they are no longer associating more money with more exhaustion, but rather create the energetic space for money to flow in.

It’s not magic, it’s alignment.

So here are some tangible steps you can take to help yourself start getting into and operating from alignment.

First, tune out the noise. There is SO MUCH noise online. Podcasts, social media, newsletters, blah, blah, blah. So many people telling you how to do things, how to do it their way, and why their way is the only way to be successful. It’s literally all bullshit, I promise you. There’s a million ways to be successful and a million definitions of success. The mere fact that SO MANY people are selling you paths to success that have worked for them prove that there are a million ways to find what you are seeking. It’s not about consuming more of THEIR content, but instead listening to your own guidance system. It’s much more powerful and effective.

And that leads us to actually defining success for yourself. Because of all the noise we just assume that of course we want 50k months and first class tickets to Bali and whatever else the Gurus have. But like… do you actually want that? What do you actually want? It’s okay if it’s “different” and in fact, it probably will be once you really start to tune in. And that’s great! There are, again, no rules. No judgement. We each have our own paths and desires and that’s INCREDIBLE. Thank the universe we don’t all actually want the same thing - how BORING would that be?  So question yourself here - what do I really want? Why do I want it? What do I think having it will do for me?

With that comes this big idea of letting go of ‘shoulds’. We will ‘should’ ourselves into a dark place if we aren’t paying attention. I should want this. I should do that. I should be here. I should, I should, I should…

What if we just put a big ol’ FUCK THAT on the shoulds? The only thing you SHOULD do is what’s right and aligned for you. Everyone else telling you that you have to build a business their way, or follow their 10 step formula, or whatever can shut the heck up. Truly. A question to start with here when you notice you ‘should-ing’ yourself is… ‘wait, why should I?’ and start to really dig into what is just conditioning and beliefs from other people that aren’t actually true.

So this is, granted, easier said than done. This is why I have a coaching practice! Because people need support with actually doing these things, tuning in, listening to themselves, and taking aligned action.

It feels so much easier sometimes to assume that Guru X has the answers in their sweet little 10 step framework, and if you could just execute it then you’d be a gazillionaire in two weeks. But here’s the thing - you’ve tried to execute those steps before and it hasn’t worked, right? Chances are some part of it ISN’T in alignment for you. And that doesn’t make YOU wrong, that makes IT wrong for you and that’s OKAY. Because there’s a path that is perfect for you, perfectly aligned for you, and your work is to continually come back to it and keep going down it. That’s the magic.

Let’s create a more aligned business with my Aligned Business Audit.

This is a low investment workbook that I go through every year (and you can do it more often, there’s sections for monthly and quarterly too) to ask yourself the hard questions and dig into what is working and not working in your business, as well as what a more aligned business would look like.

What does an aligned business look like for you? Share with me in Instagram!

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I’m not going to sugarcoat it —Mindset Coaching sounds kind of… vague.

In fact, I’d argue that most coaching sounds kind of vague. What do you actually do? What does it really help with? And how do I know if it’s really the right next step for me?

Well, here’s what coaching IS NOT: It’s not strictly strategy, it’s not consulting, and it’s definitely not one-size-fits-all. A valuable coaching experience DOESN’T say “here’s my 5 step formula, go implement it.” In fact, that’s a huge disservice to YOU. How I see coaching is like this: how can I help you become the best version of YOU (which is determined BY you - not me.)

And yeah, that’s inherently harder to define with tangible outcomes and clear cut formulas. But that’s okay - because when you decide to work with a coach, you deserve to be seen as YOU, the whole, complex human. Not someone to shove down a pipeline and form into another version of everyone else.

I have a lot of experience of going that route. In my first business as a designer and even in this business as a coach — it’s SO EASY (dangerously easy!) to get caught up in this idea that “so and so” has a “5 step formula” that will get you results like yesterday. 🙋‍♀️Raise your hand if you’ve ever been victimized by a course or coach that guaranteed results and even though you showed up with the best of intentions…

You got nothin’.

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And then — be honest — did you decide that happened because you aren’t good enough? Worthy enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough? Disciplined enough? Was it all your fault that this generic course or coach didn’t get you the results they promised you should want?

This is a like triple edged sword because here’s the thing:

You can decide to live at cause and take responsibility over your results and say “yes, it was my fault — I didn’t do the work the way I was supposed to and therefore no results” and leave it at that. Yes, I’m a terrible person who’s destined for failure and never going to make it. How does that feel? Shitty? Yeah.

You can also decide to pull the victim card and say that the coach or course manipulated me and promised me everything and once I started the program I realized it wasn’t even what I wanted and they sold me a pipe dream and they’re evil and I suck for falling for it. How does that feel? Also shitty? Yeah.

So the truth is… It’s a little of both, and.

You can take responsibility over buying the program and not doing the work. You can even say you ‘fell’ for the marketing and really did believe you WANTED those things. But don’t just leave it at “and I suck” because that doesn’t get you anywhere new. What if instead of you decided to dig into things like…

• Why didn’t I do the work? What made me not want to do the work? What made me find ways to stay busy to avoid doing the work?

• Do I even want the results they are promising? What would make me NOT want the results? What do I think the give and take is to get those results and am I willing to do that?

• Is this something that even feels good or aligned for me? Do I want to be doing XYZ thing that the program entails every day? Is that how I define success? Do I even know how I define success?

Do you see my point here?

THAT’S where mindset coaching comes in.

Because most people don’t have anyone to ask themselves those types of questions and they certainly don’t ask themselves those sorts of questions. And those sorts of questions are what help you truly grow into an empowered, confident, and aligned business owner.

So now that you understand a bit of what mindset coaching isn’t, I want to explain a bit more about how I see mindset coaching and how it has helped my clients. Now this isn’t like the Webster dictionary definition, this is how I help MY clients, okay?

I help my clients develop a strong sense of self-trust.

Which is important and trickles down into things like…

1. Taking aligned action and trusting that what you want is meant for you

2. Creating boundaries, setting expectations, and creating an actually sustainable business

3. Feeling more confident in your offers, your expertise, and what you bring to the table

4. Releasing the need for external validation and instead looking to your own guidance system

5. Tuning out the noise of “shoulds” and doing things the way you were divinely made to do it

Now that sounds a little nebulous, so if I had to try really hard to summarize it:

I help business owners do whatever the fuck they want to do.

And does that mean they make more money, or work the hours they desire, take every Friday off, never send an email newsletter, create schedules that actually work for them, etc.? Totally. I literally mean whatever. The. Fuck. They. Want. To. Do.

And if you find yourself — right now — thinking that’s not possible, then there’s a really strong chance you would benefit from having a mindset coach. Most of us have been raised to think that there’s a set of rules we must follow. That there’s 1 way to do everything and that someone outside of us must know the answer because who are we to know anything? Most of us are conditioned to think that we are unworthy of the things we truly want, and wrong for wanting them. Most of us have been taught to fall into line, not stand out, and be grateful for what we are given.

But all that is actually bullshit.

And not going to help you on your entrepreneurial journey one bit.

So, what a mindset coach can do is help you clear out that bullshit and create the things you actually want in your business (and life!).

Check out how I can support you with that by clicking the button below!

How can a mindset coach help you? Share with me in Instagram!

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I want to talk about something that I personally struggle with, and that I know a lot of you out there struggle with as well: celebrating our wins.

There are probably a million reasons why we don’t take the time to do it: maybe we’re really freaking busy, and it doesn’t even cross our minds to pause and reflect and celebrate.

Or maybe we don’t think whatever that milestone is really something that matters yet. Or maybe we’re too busy remembering and focusing on this mistake, or that mishap, to take any time to celebrate the good that occurred too.

I get it. Personally, I’ve always been “good” at things and a lot of my successes in other parts of my life, like school for example, just felt sort of like a given and not something to necessarily celebrate because I never felt like I worked particularly hard for it — things like getting good grades or whatever. And things that maybe I did have to work hard at I wasn’t like the top performer or achiever, I didn’t celebrate that either because I didn’t like win or get first place or get recognized.

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Maybe you feel like that too? And it’s totally normal if you do like it’s not in most people’s regular practices to sit and congratulate themselves. If it’s too easy then I shouldn’t be celebrating it because I didn’t really do anything, but if it’s hard and I don’t succeed perfectly, well then I shouldn’t be celebrating it either, right? Because I didn’t do amazingly or win.

It’s a weird paradox but either way, it ends up with not enough emphasis on what you did do and not enough celebration around who you are, what you’ve done, and how you’ve shown up. 

My challenge to you to is to take more time to celebrate yourself, your wins - big or small, and just be in that place of hell yeah I did that about anything and everything you do. Show up with confidence and gratitude and a celebratory attitude and watch how much more shows up for you to celebrate.

When I do get in a good routine of celebration I notice a few things: first of all, I get more confident overall.

So we all know someone who’s a bad example of this: they’re so over confident with everything they do, and what they are doing seems so mediocre to you and everyone else and you’re like, wait… why are they celebrating themselves so hard right now?!?!

And in knowing that person, we’ve probably built up a bit of a story that if we showed up really confident, really proud like that - that we would BE that person.

Well, first things first: I am of the strong belief that if you can recognize that person, you can’t be that person. It’s just not a possibility for you. In the same way that I believe if you can recognize skeezy sales tactics, you can’t be a skeezy salesperson.

There’s enough self-awareness that will prevent you from ever being a cocky know-it-all type of human. However, right now,  you’re steering so far the opposite direction, you’re overcorrecting SO HARD, that you’re not even letting yourself feel good about the things you SHOULD feel good about.

Because you should feel good about the things you’ve done and accomplished. You should celebrate that first client, or the first time you see a PayPal payment pop up on your phone, or the first time someone finds you on Pinterest, or whatever cool thing is happening for you right now in your life and in your business.

And you should linger and live in that feel good-ness, because that helps cultivate enough confidence to keep going, keep pushing, keep trying, keep putting yourself out there and keep growing your business.

I strongly believe that confidence is the key to so many things in life and in business. But we’re taught time and time again to compare ourselves to others, or that we’re not good enough, or creative enough, or smart enough. That we’re too old and it’s too late, or we’re too young and no one will listen. By taking the time and creating a practice of celebration we can help combat those voices and those fears and say hey, no, I did this thing today, or this week, or this month, and that’s really freaking cool and I’m proud of myself. And because I did that, I know I can do this other thing too. So watch me.

Along with the confidence, I’ve noticed that a practice of celebration also renews my commitment to what I am doing overall. So, for example, let’s say I want to do a 30-day fitness challenge - which I am currently doing. I could say on day 1 or day 2 or somewhere early on - well it’s just getting started. I’m only 2 days in and I’m already ready to quit. It’s only been 2 days, WOW, what a failure. And that negative attitude and negative thoughts will inevitably bring me to a point where I choose not to continue the challenge. What if instead I could move that to a celebration and say to myself - oh HECK ya here I am again - day 2, freaking crushing it. Day 2 of the rest of my life! Day 2 of being a freaking FIT PERSON here we gooooo gonna do this dang thing.

What if I celebrated that progress instead of criticizing it? That would help me to feel more committed, more inspired, and more likely to keep on keepin’ on, right? The thing that happens in the long term is that we get sort of addicted to the feeling of celebration, which I think is the good kind of addiction, right? Like in the same way you get a runners high or a release of endorphins after Orange Theory or F45.

You can allow your brain to start to see and find opportunities to feel good, to celebrate, because you’ve taught it that there is always something good worth recognizing, right?

Now that may sound super sappy and yes I’ve been guilty of totally being that silver linings kind of girl, but there’s a really cool feeling if you keep up with this celebration practice that’ll inevitably happen: you’ll face a situation that previously would’ve really thrown you for a loop. Maybe it’s a flat tire, or a bad date, or you burnt dinner, or that mean relative said something rude about your business. And you’ll feel the old emotional reaction, right? Like you’ll recognize in the back of your mind: oh I should be upset. Or oh, this would’ve made me cry in the past. Or, oh, that’s frustrating…

But that’ll be it. You’ll have built up this arsenal of good, of celebration, or joy in who you are and what you’ve done and strength in the knowledge of what you can do, and that moment will sort of roll right off. It’ll be slightly discouraging or annoying or upsetting, but you’ll be in a whole new place to look at it and think, huh, this moment doesn’t have to define me.

Remember how I did this and this and this yesterday or last week or last month? That is who I am. That is who I want to be. That is who I celebrate. Not this stupid thing. This doesn’t matter. I’m choosing not to let this matter.

I get how maybe you’re hearing this and you’re like, wow we just did a big jump from like celebrating wins to changing our whole selves - but being someone who celebrates themselves IS being someone who isn’t affected by the day to day bullshit. They’re too busy living all their wins, and preparing for the next ones, right?

How can we make this a bit more practical? First of all — start creating the habit. This can totally be a baby steps type deal. When I started my business it was just a matter of keeping a happiness folder where nice comments, nice tweets, nice emails, etc. all got screen-grabbed and saved so I could review and celebrate them regularly, especially in moments of feeling like unworthy.

It’s developed into a daily gratitude practice, where I spend time reflecting on various things I am grateful for and one of the categories is celebrating wins. They can be business-related, personal life related, health-related, whatever. I make sure to spend a little time every day reminding myself that I am AWESOME because I did this thing, or am doing that thing, or accomplished this other thing.

What I’d like to see or hear about you doing is developing your own way of celebration. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic or huge, but something that you do say THIS is for that thing I did.

An example would be that Will and I will be going out for a drink or something anyway, but if something noteworthy has happened we’ll say ‘oh let’s get this beer to celebrate XYZ.’ like we did that when we finished moving all of our belongings to our new place. Were we going to go out and get a beer anyway? Yeah. But we made sure to say that hey this beer is a celebration of getting that thing done. Good job team! Yay us! 

I want to wrap this up by saying again — this applies to you. This is FOR YOU to hear. If you’re reading this it’s because in some way you were meant to read it, and this isn’t one of those ‘I’ll do it later.’ or ‘I’ll do it when I make 5k’ or ‘I’ll do it when I get booked out’ type things. These are the steps you do to GET 5k. To GET booked out. To GET whatever it is you want. You gotta start where you are right now and feel good about what’s around you, what you’ve done, and start feeling like the powerful amazing person you are. Not then. But now. So this does apply to you. This is something you should start to bring into your life and your business. Celebrate what you’ve done, celebrate what you are doing, and be ready to celebrate more and more because good things are coming to you.

Let's hear it! What win are you celebrating? Share with me in Instagram!

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We’re talking boundaries. I’ve shared about this a bit in the past and now with my Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) certification complete I wanted to revisit the topic and add a bit more to it.

One of the first lessons about NLP was learning to operate from cause versus effect. We think we are at the effect of whatever happens to us - good or bad.

We think things like, “Oh well, I can’t run a business because I couldn’t go to school to learn how which is my parents’ fault because they didn’t have enough money which happened when they lost their jobs….” And so on.

Feel familiar? It’s kind of like a victim complex in a lot of ways, which I shared early on in the podcast I realized I was operating from. (You can listen here)

What ends up happening is this way of approaching life is you are completely disempowered. In living at the effect, you basically have given up your ability to DO anything and the world is just happening to you.

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NLP teaches us to instead live at cause. To recognize that we are at cause for our situations, our surroundings, our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings, etc.

It’s an empowered stance — one that you have control over and can change or adjust or tweak because you are at the root of everything.

So in that same example, you might switch your belief to, “Okay well actually I can run a business because I do have access to the internet and I can spend my free time learning and growing and I will prove that you don’t need a college education to be a millionaire.”

That’s understanding your circumstances, whatever they may be, but instead choosing to be at cause for getting the result you want. 

Okay, so why am I sharing all of this? Because it has a lot to do with boundaries, actually. Back in season 1 of my podcast, I shared about my issues with boundaries. I shared that a lot of the problems stemmed from me not feeling capable of saying no to people, be not establishing rules that I operate from and by, and just a general sense of disempowerment. 

What changed for me during that time is recognizing that a client wasn’t a bad or rude or mean person, but they had not been informed of acceptable ways of communication or timelines BY ME.

I was at cause. And while the circumstances may still have felt difficult for some reason, at least by recognizing how I was at cause, I was able to change my behavior and implement boundaries to protect myself from then on. I took an empowered stance and DID something about my situation.

Do you see how that works?

So step 1 in creating boundaries in your business is to recognize that A) you need boundaries and B) you’re at a complete and total cause and you can implement boundaries to control situations.

This is so that YOU can feel happy and fulfilled and like your energy and space is protected and whole.

You’re not burnt out or drained or overwhelmed. It is no one else’s responsibility to do that for you, but it should be one of your top priorities to do for yourself.

Okay. With that said,

Now what?

Pay attention to your triggers. Pay attention to what takes you from feeling good and in flow to suddenly terrible and grumpy.

Your emotions are a reflection of your inner world, so if something is affecting your emotions that drastically, it’s time to recognize that it’s not working, it’s not sustainable, and it’s time to evaluate if we can adjust something here and implement a boundary.

Here are some examples:

Does one certain client’s email in your inbox trigger a wave of panic? It may be time to see how you can be at cause instead of at effect here. Instead of just feeling those feelings about the client and getting resentful and avoiding your inbox — connect with them and share what needs to be changed or adjusted about your relationship.

OR if it’s too far gone consider not working with that client at all — because that wave of panic affects all the tasks surrounding seeing that email. You probably become less productive right after and spend time thinking about it instead of other more pressing tasks.

Does seeing an unread email or Instagram notification pull you out of flow? Okay again — how can we move to being at cause here? You can control your notification settings or you can control where your phone is when you are at work.

Instead of getting mad at emails coming in or Instagram blowing up, instead of letting yourself get distracted and go down the rabbit hole — establish the boundary of when you get notifications or when you check your email. Be at cause!

Does sitting down to do one certain type of task send you into a total frustrated frenzy? Last example for now — but one more time how can we be at cause for this? Is this task a requirement? Does it have to be done by you? Can you pinpoint exactly what it is about the task that upsets you? Can that be eliminated?

There are so many opportunities here to be the one who controls the situation versus continually riding the emotional rollercoaster and blaming the tasks or the clients or the social media platform for your issues.

BOUNDARIES, friend.

These are all signs, all triggers, and instead of just continuing full steam ahead, why not pause and dive inward and see what’s really going on?

Because feeling shitty all the time in your business isn’t sustainable, isn’t in alignment, and is making everything way harder than it has to be.

EFFORTLESS people! It’s a vibe. Okay?

What happens when you bypass all the red flags and alarm bells going off every day is eventually you land in the land of burnout and overwhelm and exhaustion and everything sucks and you have half a mind to just throw in the towel. And we don’t want that!

You have so much goodness to bring into the world, my friend. I encourage you to bring this question into your business and honestly into your life: how am I at cause for this? We’re not looking for wishy-washy answers like BECAUSE I SUCK but instead for real concrete steps that happened that arrived at this situation.

Real-life examples — getting frustrated in traffic and too many red lights. Great, how can you be at cause for that frustration? Could you have left 5-10 minutes earlier so that you wouldn’t be in such a rush right now that the red lights and traffic would trigger you?

Okay, what about getting pissed at your spouse or roommate for not cleaning up their dishes? How can you be at cause? Have you voiced to them that it upsets you? Do they know this is a pressure point for you?

Chances are they want a nice relationship with you too and if they learn that this is something that upsets you they will try to adjust their behavior too. Right now they don’t even know you’re upset, and therefore not paying you any special mind which in TURN is making you MORE upset and perpetuating the cycle.

In a lot of ways when I first learned of this concept it felt like giving people excuses or letting people off easy and I rejected it. When I dove deeper I realized it was because a part of me liked feeling like “oh they just don’t get it.” There was a satisfaction in that. The victim complex strikes again, right? The reason is that truly your subconscious will not make you a liar. So if you believe that the world is out to get you and nothing works out ever, then… that’s what will be reflected back to you and as sick as it sounds your subconscious will feel successful in doing its job and proving you right.

HOWEVER when you move to being at cause and you set the boundaries and parameters for what’s acceptable… then your subconscious will work to prove THAT correct.

And you will only live with people who are clean and you will only work with clients who respect you and it’s not magic or woo woo or wishful thinking. It’s saying THIS is what I am available for this is what is okay and this is what I accept and EXPECT. And maybe a little magic haha

I’m kidding. It’s not magic. I mean it is magic but it’s also just the freaking amazing power of your mind and NLP and living at cause.

What are the ways that you will incorporate boundaries into your business? Share with me on Instagram!

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