017. How to Get Over Success Resistance

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck, and this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Well, hello, hello, my friends, and welcome to the podcast coming at you from snowy northern Colorado. We just got, like, I don't know, six inches of snow yesterday. It felt like so much. It's always pretty inside. Then you have to go and shovel it. So my kids shoveled some of the driveway, and I shoveled some of the driveway, and it was a lot of snow. I had to take a hot bath last night to recoup my back. My back was so sore. But today, and the kids had a snow day yesterday, it was a lot of the balancing act of being a mom that works at home. Their school was delayed two hours today because it was like 10 below zero when the kids would normally be going to school. So, yeah, they're finally out of the house and I'm back to work and ready to get this podcast going. So what I wanted to talk with you about today is success resistance. And it's something that I see in myself and in my clients and so many people that gets in the way for all of us at some point, whether we're making a million bucks or 1000 bucks or even no bucks yet. It affects entrepreneurs at all levels, and I think it especially affects women a lot, too, because we have these preconceived notions of what success looks like and how success should work. And then we come up against this resistance to it, which is simply just our thoughts about success that go unquestioned and cause us to hold back and stay small from the full expression of ourselves and experiencing all the goodness and success and financial gain that we're capable of because we're afraid of what will happen if we do become successful. And so I love talking about this topic because it's so pervasive and it affects us as entrepreneurs at all levels. When these thoughts go unexamined and they are unintentionally running in the background, they really can get in the way. I know for me, I've seen this come up most recently in the past few years, as I have seen scaled my business. I had kind of a ceiling for the first, I don't know, 10, 12 years of my business where I could not break, like the 50k mark. And I thought it was like a ceiling or a money block. You know, we hear that about money blocks and ceilings or deep seated beliefs or bad money mindsets. And so it sounds like so scary and so big, but really all success resistance is as simply thoughts that you're having over and over and stories that you're telling yourself about how success happens and what it should look like. And so like I was saying in the early years of my career, for me success has always meant hard work. Like it should be hard, right? We should be working lots of hours, having lots of effort and like 100% devotion to work. And I hear this from clients a lot too, so I don't know if that resonates for you, but that was really the story I was telling myself early in my career. And so the trouble was that I was doing all of those things. I was working really hard, working lots of hours, making lots of effort and very devoted to my work, you know, in sacrifice of all other things in my life, like my health, you know, relationships. And when I was doing that, the trouble was I did not feel successful. But so this is part of my story that at that time in my life I didn't feel successful. I didn't, I was earning good money, but I didn't feel like it was enough, like I wasn't successful enough. And so that scarcity was coming in. But I didn't really realize that this is what was happening until the Twin Towers came down on 9 11. I was living in New York, in the New York area. And I lost a lot of, I lost a few friends and a lot of neighbors when that happened. And thank God, you know, I wasn't personally affected, but a lot of people around me were. And so that really was like, I don't know, we call it like the two by four to the forehead, right? And it was a time for me that really kicked off a lot of self reflection because the question I had to ask and answer for myself was if I went to work today and didn't come home like my friends and my neighbors did, is this how I want it all to end? Is this what I want for my life? Am I where I want to be? And the answer was no. And so I knew I had to make some changes. But that began my own work of examining the stories and the thoughts I had around success. Because what I was doing at that time was I was living what our culture and I was in New York and so I was living with the culture of New York City, you know, what I was picking up from that and the culture of the university. I went to get my MBA in the area, in the New York area. And I watched my colleagues, my graduate school colleagues get jobs in these big fancy investment banks, and they would work 80 hours a week and sleep under their desks. And everyone thought this was so amazing, and I'm earning six figures. And we, you know, that was the culture. And so. But I just did not like that. Like, I could tell I was buying into that, but I didn't feel successful, and that's not how I wanted to live. And so, you know, my predominant thought, like I said at that time, was that success takes hard work and lots of time. And that, you know, I was defining my success by how much money I was making, and I didn't feel like I was making enough, and so I must not be working enough. And so those were some of the stories that I was telling myself, some of the thoughts I was having, some of my predominant thoughts. And then when the towers came down, I was like, no, this is not where I want to be, and this is not how I want to be building my life. I was young at the time, so think. So I began to redefine for myself what success meant and what I wanted to think about it. And so I invite you to think about what are some thoughts or stories that you're telling yourself about being successful and about having money and earning money and creating money and what that means. And I talk to my clients about this a lot, and I hear thoughts like, well, I've never been successful before, so what makes me think I can do it in the future, right? Or I've never. Or in order to earn, earn lots of money, I'll have to work all the time and neglect myself and my relationships. I hear that a lot from women that don't want to pursue their business because they're afraid they'll, you know, they will have to give up on their family and they will have to sacrifice their relationships, their marriage. And so those are all thoughts. Those are not facts. Right. Clients have told me that they. Their thoughts about successful people are that rich people are jerks, or it's easier for other people to make money, but it's hard for me. Or thoughts like, I don't deserve to be successful because fill in the blank, right? I don't have the degrees, or I'm not the best in my field, or I'm not, you know, I don't have a book, or what are, you know, all the ways that we tell ourselves we don't deserve to be successful, or thoughts like, I'm not good enough at what I do, I could be better. I'm not the best, so I don't deserve to be paid a lot of money for it. Or I don't feel like I've struggled enough. Like, this is kind of one that I'm working on now. What? Truth be told, like, I, you know, like I. Like I said earlier, my. My predominant thought was that success takes hard work. So I'm, you know, I'm like, okay, the more money I earn, it should just be harder and harder, right? Well, the exact opposite is true. And so I have these thoughts like, well, it's. It's not hard enough. I don't feel like I've struggled enough. Or we think I'm ashamed of being this successful. I'm ashamed of having lots of money. And we also think that it's not going to last. This is another one that I deal with, like, oh, yeah, I experiencing all this success, but it's not going to last. The jig is up. It's all going downhill. That's part of that resistance, or being embarrassed to talk about your success, or maybe thinking you haven't done enough to deserve it. These are thoughts that I have experienced, that I hear from my clients. And this is all part of resisting success. Because if we have these thoughts running in the background, then we are always going to be holding success at arm's length, right? Because these are all painful things that could happen that our mind is telling us could happen if we're successful. And so we are going to be just holding that success at arm's length and not allowing ourselves to really just step into the full expression of ourselves and our business. We stay small, we hold back, we shy away. Right? But what I want to encourage you to think about is just you, the fact that you get to define what success is for you, and you can create it on your own terms in a way that feels aligned to you. And I know that to be true because that's what I've done. That's what I've been doing over the last 15 years, 16 years now, of having my own business. I decided early on that I was going to do it in a way that was aligned for me. And I didn't really maybe have that, I don't know, a set plan or whatever, But I decided that I was going to create a life and a career and a business that would allow me to live according to my values. And that's what I decided after 9, 11. You know, I decided that the life I was living was not the life I wanted, I wanted to be closer to my family. I wanted to meet a partner for life and I wanted to enjoy a more enjoyable existence. And so that is what I created by questioning the definition of success that I was living by. And you can do this too, right? So for me, in the span of three years after 9, 11, I moved back to my home state of Colorado, where I am now. I met my husband, I moved to the mountains near Vail. We lived in the Vail Valley. I moved there to be near him. I started my business, I got a puppy, and I hiked and skied as much as I wanted to. And we started a family and I built a business that would allow for all of that, right? I built a business where I could earn money and still take my dog on two hikes a day. And that I was really proud of that. I'm still really proud of that. And so I created all of that by just questioning those beliefs and questioning why I was trying to succeed in the way that everybody else was. I've been able to create all that I have because I've been willing at every step of the way to examine and re examine and have awareness of my thinking. And like I said just a minute ago, I still am dealing with limiting thoughts. We all do. That's because we have a human brain. And our human brain, the primitive part of our human brain, is designed to keep us safe, to keep us from harm, right? So stepping out in a risky business venture as an entrepreneur, our brain thinks that's very risky. So it's always going to try to keep us safe and to give us thoughts, present thoughts to us that will keep us small. And so these thoughts, that these limiting thoughts will continue to come up and that's okay, right? It's not. The, the point of this is not that we eradicate our quote, unquote, I'm using my air quotes here, bad thoughts, but it's having awareness of them and why they're happening. So we're aware that we're thinking that success requires hard work, right? We have the awareness and that's the key. And then we can question them, right? Is it really true, is it absolutely 100% true that success has to be a product of hard work? Well, I don't know. Let's try it out. How is it possible that I could define success in a way that isn't hard work? Maybe I could define success. As for me, the way I define it now is that I am in the process of building a million dollar company while doing Work that I absolutely love, that I believe has an impact on the world, on the community, on women entrepreneurs. And I'm able to do that while also being present for my children. I get up with them and am present with them in the morning before they go to school. I'm present with them. I close up shop at 3:30 when they get home from school and I'm able to take them to activities, whatever. I don't work on the weekends, so I'm present with my husband and my family on the weekends and my children for me. And I still have time to take care of my body and connect with friends and family, have good relationships. That for me is how I define success. I have created a life and a business that is aligned with that. And so that comes as a product of this process of, number one, having awareness of what you are thinking success should be or should not be, questioning those thoughts that our minds like to present to us as truth. And then remembering that you get to create your reality. So what is the reality that you want to create? Right. Because it first begins as a thought, a vision. It first begins as a spark of possibility in your mind. And then you get to fan that flame, grow the strength and the viability of that flame, and then create the plan to bring it into the material world and make it happen. That's how we get past success, resistance, and that's how we identify it and conquer it, really, or get out, not necessarily get over it. Because. Right, like I said, those thoughts are always going to be there, but it's about tolerating it and growing in strength and growing new beliefs about what success is for you. And if you need help with that, you know I can help you. This is totally my jam. I love helping entrepreneurs and women successful see their lives and their businesses in a different way and in a way that creates possibility for you. Possibility to have a family and a life and relationships and an amazingly successful business. I know it's possible. I see it every day with my own business and with my clients and with my colleagues. And so I know it's possible for you too. So go out there, get her done. You can do this. And remember, it all starts with that awareness and those thoughts. So I hope you have a fabulous week and please reach out to me. And if you feel so inclined, I would love to invite you to write a review or leave a review of this podcast. And if it means something to you, feel free to share it with your friends and family. And let's just keep the ball. The movement rolling here of women doing business in the way that's most aligned, that creates money for themselves and their families and also creates an aligned, joyful existence for all of us. So that's what I have for you today, my friends. I hope you have a fabulous week and I will see you next time. Take care. Bye. If you like this podcast and want to take this work deeper, I invite you to coach with me one on one. It all starts with a conversation. Let's get on a call together and I'd love to learn more about you and your business, and together we can identify what is standing in the way of creating the business and life you envision. And then we'll create a plan to get you there. So visit my website@melissamkellogg.com and find a spot on my calendar. I look forward to seeing.