Ep #24: What Is Your Relief Point?

Hey everyone, I'm Chris Plackey and this is how to Lead for Female entrepreneurs and founders. Because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hello, hello. Welcome to the podcast today. How are you? I'm so glad you're here. How are you doing? It's 2019, holy smokes. It's just August. My kids are about to go back to school, I have twins and they're starting high school. I can't even believe it. So. But man, this year has gone by quickly. So we officially have five months left in 2019.

I've been digging in, I took a little vacation and I've spent the last few days really digging in into this next five months and what do to achieve and where am I on my goals and what I set up for myself this year? For those of you who've listened to my podcast for a while, you know that this was a big year of change for me. I took the whole old podcast down, launched a brand new podcast, got completely focused and dialed in on working with gorgeous women just like you, female entrepreneurs who are seven figure earners and running businesses that are in the multimillion dollar space and really focusing on the challenges that come with.

Just your own overwhelm and your lack of confidence with, you know, managing people and dealing with the human capital part of your business. So it was interesting. I came back from vacation and kind of cleaning out my desk and getting myself just really reorganized. Moving forward, I've made some shifts again in my.

And am now really excited about working with women personally through one on one coaching in a group environment which I launched the first of those this week. And what an incredible group of women that I get to talk with every week and support and help through their unique challenges with leading and growing and managing their team.

But it's interesting because I notice even in myself and then of course with my clients, this running theme about relief and how we tell ourselves that the relief is coming.

And it's funny because when I first set myself up for this year, I joined my own mastermind with my coach, Brooke Castillo, and came back from that and I set my goals and I put a piece of paper on my desk and I told myself, okay, I was going to work with 50 women like you by October 31, 2019. So I came back from vacation on the 1st of August and I looked at my list and it was full. So I had achieved my goal by.

July 31st instead of October 31st. So that's super exciting, right? But it's so interesting because I've been looking at that list since I put it on my desk on November 1st. I taped it there. It's all ratty and it's got coffee stains on it. It's really hysterical. But it's. It's really cool. And.

Then when I came back from vacation and saw that I had actually filled it out, it was so interesting to realize, like, oh, okay, yeah, I did that. And I had been telling myself since November, oh, I'm gonna feel this relief, right? Like, oh, once I have worked with 50 people, I will feel some sort of something, right? I will have met my goal. I will have said what I said I would done, what I said I would do, right? That the relief was in the future as I looked at that list. And then, of course, I looked at the list, and I was like, oh, well, that's great. I guess I gotta scrape the tape off my desk now and move the list and put a new list there. There wasn't a thing that came. In fact, 50 women working with 50 women over the last seven months, or whatever that is.

Was very grueling. It was hard. I loved every minute of it. I wouldn't trade anything, but, holy smokes, I worked hard for that. And with great to go all in and work with so many people and realizing that the joy of the work. This is what Thomas Sterner talks about in his book the Practicing Mind. The joy is in it. It's in the practice. It's not in the achievement of the goal, Right? It's always in it. And so I coach, obviously, women every day, and we talk about their challenges. And it really struck me over the past week in listening to my own brain and then listening to the conversations that my clients were bringing for coaching about how there is this sort of subtle belief that we have that relief is coming and we all have a relief point, right? And I think it would be really interesting for you to do this exercise. What is your relief point right now? What are you telling yourself when this happens? You will feel relief, right? When I make this much money, when I have this much money in the bank, when I have this many new clients scheduled to work with.

When I have resolved this issue with this employee, once I've hired this particular position, I will feel relief. I won't feel the pressure. Once this person is fired, I will feel relief. Once I have this conversation with this person, I will feel relief. But if you go back and you watch your own life, a Little bit on a replay. I want you to notice that there might be that moment where you're like, oh, great. I now have the $200,000 I wanted in my savings account. I now have the employee I've been searching for. But it's a moment, right? And so for me, there's always relief available if I remind myself. There's always peace available if I remind myself that the relief doesn't come from the thing. The. The relief comes from the way that you think.

And as an entrepreneur who is, you know, involved in a lot of responsibilities, not just with your job, but with your life and your family, every single one of my clients, I'm either talking to them not just about their business, but also about their aging parents or their growing children or their community work or. Right? There's a lot of things that you are already involved in because of the nature of who you are. And so there will always be another thing that you're taking on. There will always be another effort that you want to go through, and you perpetuate that, you push yourself into that. Like, I made the commitment to work with 50 women. Nobody made me do that. That was a choice, and I was excited about it and still am, and now I'm very proud, right? So your.

Tendency is always going to be to want to.

Indulge your growth because of who you are already. So why don't we just tell ourselves the truth, that relief is not out there. And if you have a relief point that you've put in the ground, like, this is when I'm gonna feel the relief. You're just setting up a tension between where you are today and where you think the relief exists. And from that point backwards, if you think about it that way, it's tension, right? Like, I can't feel better until I have the thing. Till this thing is resolved, till this is over, till this much money's in my bank, till this many clients say yes.

And that, unfortunately, is just setting you up for being uncomfortable.

Chronically.

Because the relief point will always move, right? I just talked to my coach, and I took the 50 names off my desk, and I scraped off the tape. And then do you know what I did? I put a blank sheet of paper on my desk with another bunch of spots on it.

So if I tell myself I'm only going to feel relieved when I Now work with 40 clients by the end of the year.

How can I experience the joy of what I get to do every day?

I get to sit here and talk to women all over the World and help them. I mean, I won the lottery every day.

And so when I talk to my clients who are, you know, literally exhausted and haggard and just their, you know, I could see it in them. And they're telling me, well, as soon as I'm able to do this, as soon as I'm able to, you know, move my office, as soon as I'm able to get this trip out of the way. No, the relief point is today by telling ourselves the truth, which is I am a woman who chooses hard things. I am a woman who loves a big goal. I am a woman who works through.

Everything.

And finding the relief that you so much crave outside of you find it here.

Right? If I make the decision to achieve a goal, it's as good as done. I can already feel the relief. I don't have to wait to feel better. I can feel better today. But what we have to do, right, you know, I talk about all the time. There are really five relationships you have to develop as a female entrepreneur, ongoing. You have to develop the relationship you have with your money. You have to develop the relationship you have with your time and your team, your business as it sits outside of you and your brain. And now I believe that your brain is your most powerful and least utilized performance tool. Your brain is the directional force for your outcomes. And so I have to be coached regularly. All of us do, right? Like, if I know this, and I've been teaching this for 15 years, for those of you who've only just figured out or found this podcast or others that are helping you, introduce you to the idea that your thoughts really are so important to the results that you get. This is an ongoing practice. And that indulgence of believing that relief is outside of you and will come when you get, you sell the business, you get the funding, whatever it is, it only perpetuates this tension that causes emotional health issues. Like, you feel uncomfortable, you feel worried, you feel scared, you feel anxious, you feel frustrated, you feel overwhelm, and that's because you're in too much anticipation of feeling better outside of you. Six months from now, two months from now, 30 days from now. I want to invite you to recognize that first of all, we have to tell the truth, that we are women who accept and drive ourselves with. With intention to achieve big things, and that's amazing and badass, and let's own it.

And because we do that, there will always be another big goal.

And that's okay. How about we don't. How about we don't have a relationship with that as a burden, we just say, yeah, that's pretty amazing.

I did this already. Now I'm gonna go do this instead of, oh, I did this, and now I gotta do this, and. But once I get that done, I feel so much better.

No, you won't, because you know why? You're gonna set something else up. So we have to practice recognizing that, first of all, the growth. We're always in growth. We're always challenging ourselves. And that means there will always be this level of kind of disquiet, like, oh, I wonder what I'm doing. But indulging that in a negative way is not helping. It's more like saying, yeah, of course I feel a little, like, eager and anxious about a blank piece of paper on my desk, but I'm also excited and intrigued to figure out and find out who are the names that I'm going to put on this list. Who are they? I can't wait to find out. I love thinking that. So much better than I will feel. So I will feel so much more relief. I will feel so much better once the list is filled.

Do you see? And that's what Sterner talks about, is like finding the joy in the practice. Let's find the joy in understanding that. Right now, I don't track my revenue very well, but eventually I will. And I'm learning it. I'm learning all I need to know about revenue right now. I'm learning everything I need to know about managing people. You know what? I don't really know how to have a difficult conversation with an employee right now, but I am learning. And that's what this is all about, is the growth.

And I have, by my very nature, signed up for it.

And get out of the habit of indulging the burden of not being at the relief point. There is no relief point. So your exercise, if you are so willing, is to actually sit down and answer the question. What are you telling yourself right now? Is your relief point or points? Right. Like, it's just onto myself, right? Oh, once the kids go back to school, oh, and everything's going to be so much better.

I don't know. I've been at this enough years now to know. That's kind of funny that I think that.

Because I think I remember thinking, once school is out, I'll be so relieved.

I feel like that's the case. Right. So what is your relief point? Where does it exist for you? Not just what is it, but in from a timeline. So if you put it down there, right, like oh, well, my relief point is when I go on vacation, which is October 12th.

So that tells me there's tension between where you are now and there. That will be very disruptive and unnecessary.

So we could also decide to say I'm so excited about my vacation and I'm also super, super excited about everything that I'm going to accomplish before then versus life doesn't begin until I start that vacation on October 12th. Okay, so just be honest with yourself. What are you telling yourself is your relief point?

This is the kind of work I do with women who are running successful seven figure businesses because.

This is important for not just you, but the success of your business. I watch too many women become overwhelmed and burdened by their own success. They stop enjoying it. They stop enjoying their jobs, their company. They. They don't enjoy some of their lives because they don't have a good boundary system between themselves and their business and their lives.

So if you're one of those women who is leading a successful business, but you're not experiencing what you wish you could experience from that, and you feel a little underneath it, especially when it comes to managing the human capital part of your business, then you may be exactly who should be working with me. Now, I only work with people through an application and a consultation process, but I always want to make sure that you know that you are able to go through that process.

See if what you do and what you're looking for aligns with the kind of client that I coach. So if you want to go through and check that out, go to chrisplackie.com appointment. There'll be a series of questions that you can answer and those questions will help you know. Also, if you're in the right place and from there will go forward with either scheduling an appointment or I will absolutely direct you to a resource. If it's not me that can help you with what you're looking for. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

Hey, don't miss a thing. Make sure you join my community@chrisplackie.com connect. Once you join, you'll get all the information on exclusive and private experiences that I'm offering to my clients. I can't wait to see you there.

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