094. How to Create the Emotional Elasticity to Bounce Back

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, hello, ladies. How's it going? I hope you're doing well. I am having a great day, just wrapping up the week. I'm recording this on a Friday, and I always love Fridays. Don't we all? But I use it as a day to create content and to do some evaluation, look back on the week and do some celebrating. So I hope you're celebrating today, too, if it's Friday, as you're listening to this. But I guess celebrate every day, right? We can celebrate any day. And it's beautiful, but very windy fall day here. So it's one of those days where all the leaves are start falling off the trees. But it's a great day to be indoors because the wind chill is just chilly. Anyhow, I want to just dive in, dive right in and talk about emotional elasticity today and how to create emotional elasticity so you can bounce back from failure and disappointment more easily. Because as you may have noticed, in your entrepreneurial journey, there is a lot of disappointment. And you probably have heard the saying that any success that we have in business is built upon a mountain of failure. So failure is inevitable. And we're going to talk about that today. But why I wanted to talk with you about this is because, as I have said, studied successful female entrepreneurs, and as I have thought about and documented my own journey, and as I have talked to tons and tons of women entrepreneurs, watched my clients, I've noticed the importance of what I call emotional elasticity. And this is extremely important in determining how quickly, how enjoyably and how easily we create the results and the money that we want and how easily we get to our goals. So that's why I want to discuss this idea today, because it's taken me more than a decade in my own business to learn this concept and learn how to become emotionally elastic. And if I can teach it to you today and you can go forward and intentionally create your own emotional elasticity, then you're going to be able to experience your entrepreneurial journey with so much more joy, so much more ease, and you'll enjoy so much more success. However you define success, I guarantee it. So I want to start out first by defining this whole idea of emotional elasticity. So emotions are our feelings, right? Which are simply Vibrations in our bodies caused by a thought or a belief or a story that we have. So a thought is a sentence in our mind, right? A belief is those sentences practiced over and over. And a story is also just a series of sentences in our mind. And then they cause an emotion, right? A feeling, that vibration in our body. And I'm going to give you an example of that. Just a moment. And elasticity is defined by Merriam Webster dictionary as the. There's three definitions that I really like. The capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation. So springiness, right? And elasticity is also defined as resilience, which is an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. And thirdly, elasticity is defined as the quality of being adaptable. So this idea of emotional, of our emotions that are, can bounce back, be resilient and be adaptable, right? So that's emotional elasticity. So an example I'm going to give you from outside of the business realm is an example is you're hiking in the forest on a beautiful fall day, just like today, minus the 25 mile per hour wind, right? And you're going along, you're enjoying your hike, and all of a sudden you hear rustling of leaves and twigs breaking in the forest off the trail. And you look in the direction of the sound and you don't see anything. You have a thought immediately in that moment, right? It's a bear and he's coming to eat me. The bears are super hungry this time of year. I'm going to die, right? So when you have that thought, it creates a biochemical reaction, a vibration in your body, a chemical, that chemical reaction, right? So you feel the emotion of fear and, and that adrenaline just begins pumping through your body to your limbs, right? Your heart starts racing and you may even turn tail and run to get the heck out of there, right? So as you're looking for a place to hide, you're running away. You look back and you see this, the source of the rustling as a cute little squirrel darts out onto the hiking trail and runs across the and off into the forest on the other side of the trail. Then your thought is, oh, thank God, it's just a squirrel, right? So then that thought creates another feeling, another emotion. The vibration in your body turns from fear to relief as your body exhales and your adrenaline subsides and you continue on with your hike. So that's kind of an example of emotional elasticity. So you, you, something happens, you have a thought about it, you have an emotion, that emotion of fear. And the adrenaline starts racing and then you get new information, it's just a squirrel. And you have a thought, oh, it's just a squirrel. And then the feeling of relief or whatever, and then the adrenaline subsides and you continue on with your hike. So that's kind of what I'm talking about. Now think about this, how this shows up in our businesses, right? This similar scenario, this is how I've seen it show up in my business. And so maybe you can relate. I create an amazing event or a class or have this brilliant idea that of something I'm going to offer to my audience, I'm really excited about. I'm convinced that everyone is going to want it. So I create it, I set everything up, I go out and I market it as best I know how. And I have this goal. I'm going to bring in, you know, X number of wonderful women into this event or program, whatever. And I start my launch. I'm emailing, I'm posting, I'm doing live videos, I'm doing all the things that I think is going to create the result that I want, Help me get to my goal, right? And then as I'm going along, I discover no one is signing up. And then my doubt creeps in. So I have a thought about that, right? I have a thought, oh, maybe I was wrong, right? Doubt creeps in. I begin to question what I'm doing. I have a thought that no one wants this. And then I hold on to that thought, I believe it. And then I start to feel defeated. I slow down my efforts. And then of course, as I slow down my efforts, then less people hear about my offer. Maybe a couple sign up, but far less than I expected. And then I end up disappointed. And then I let that disappointment and those thoughts that I suck and no one wants what I have to offer. Normally what happens is I'll let them. Well, what I used to do, I'm hopefully better at this now, but I have these, the thoughts I suck. And no one wants what I have to offer. And I allow them to spin me out for like three months until I realize I need to really create some clients and make some money. And then I decide to get back out there, meeting people, connecting, offering my help. Then clients start coming, revenue starts flowing, and then, you know, I'll decide to create another thing. And the cycle repeats. That's how we create a lot of angst and difficulty for ourselves, right? And so there are times that I have been in these, you know, have let those things happen and spin me out in that low quality cycle for months. And then I started to develop and intentionally become aware of this idea of emotional elasticity and began to develop my ability to bounce back from disappointment and unrealized expectations. Because the truth is, my friends, we are going to have disappointment in our entrepreneurial journey. We're going to have expectations that don't get met, clients that don't come, events that don't go well. Right. It's just part of the deal. We aren't going to just hit it out of the park every time. And in fact, more times than not, we are going to have disappointment and unrealized expectations. So we get stuck and become inelastic when we hold on to these expectations and then we turn them into these awful stories about us that don't serve us right. So we have the option to change these stories and reframe them one disappointment at a time oftentimes. And I thought this from time to time myself, that I have these, you know, I'm using my air quotes here, deep seated beliefs before we think we have to like reprogram these deep seated beliefs before we can ever recover. Right. And move on. And sometimes that might be the case. And if you find yourself in that place, it could be time to see a professional licensed therapist, right? But in most cases we can just choose to reframe the story, retell the story and what it, what we make it mean and think differently about what's going on moment by moment. So I have six, I think it's six steps here. Yes, six steps for you today on developing how you can begin developing your own emotional elasticity, your ability to bounce back emotionally when you are in a time of disappointment or unrealized expectations. And so the first thing, the first step is to allow the disappointment, right? Just allow it. It's okay to be disappointed, except that you expected X and you got Y. You don't have to be positive poly about it. It sucks. It's disappointing. This is not what I wanted. It's okay, allow yourself to have the temper tantrum, right? And, but just accept also, here I am. This is what happened. Now what? Right? When you accept where you are, when you accept what happened and that you feel disappointed, that you might feel ashamed, you might feel humiliated, just accept that that's all true and feel it, then you can see past it. I think so often we, we want to avoid these tough feelings of disappointment, of humiliation, of being ashamed. But when we allow them and just feel them and realize that we are not going to die as a result of them, then we have so much more power, right? We can see past where we are. When we resist all these feelings, then they stick around longer and they become bigger and we try to avoid them and push them down even more. It just becomes a not pleasant cycle. So just allow them, feel them. It's okay. I'm disappointed, I'm ashamed, I'm humiliated. Okay, this is where we're at now. What? Right? So that's number one. Number two is just be aware of your expectations and how hard you're holding on to them. I've done this myself many times over the years. And one time I remember having an expectation that I was going to meet a financial goal. I was just so sure of it, right? I was going to meet this financial goal in my business and I missed it. And I missed it by a bit. Little lot, a long shot. And I was just holding on to this disappointment so hard and making it mean so many awful things about myself and how unworthy and awful I was and how, you know, I wasn't meant for this or whatever. All those things, all those places we go. And then I received some coaching that changed everything that I want to share with you. And I hope it'll change everything for you too. And it helped me bounce back from almost immediately. So I was telling a co, my coach about this and she said, what if you were simply wrong? What if you were never supposed to make that money this time around? What if you were supposed to learn something instead that in the future will help you serve your clients, will help you make that money that you thought you were going to make in spades going forward? If that were true, what would the learning be? And in that moment, it switched everything for me. I was wrong. And that's okay. That's okay to be wrong, right? I had an expectation. It didn't happen. I can't go back and make it happen. I am where I am. This is where I'm at. And that's okay. And so just that switch really helped my grip on that disappointment just loosen. And I was able to let it go and instead move through it and get all the learning. Because that's really where the power is. The power is in the learning, right? And so that leads me to number three, which is reframe failure forever. We get so caught up in avoiding what we call, quote, unquote failure, whatever that means, that we focus on it so hard and we end up creating it, which is the crazy part. We know what, what happens when we focus on something so hard, we actually create it, we actually go right for it. It reminds me of when I used to mountain bike a lot, which I had to quit because of all the blood, sweat and tears. I would be going down a trail and I knew I you see a huge rock coming, you know, I'm going right for it. And I knew that if I focused on the rock I was going to hit it and go ass over tea kettle and bleed and cry, right? And I had to try so hard, I remember trying so hard to focus on where I wanted my bike to go, which was in the dirt that was on either side of the rock, right? I had to focus so hard and train myself and I worked so hard to look at where I wanted to go and not hit the rock because every time I looked at the rock, I hit the rock. And so it's the same thing with failure, right? If we're concentrating on hitting failure, we're going to hit it every time. Or when we're concentrating on not hitting failure, our reticular activating system, right? We're going to hit it every time. So what if instead there's no such thing as failure? Like poop. You could decide right now failure doesn't exist. There's no failure, there's only learning, right? It's just like a scientific experiment. A scientist has a hypothesis, they create an experiment, they do the experiment, they don't fail, they just learn, right? They get different results. They either got the result that they thought they would get or they didn't. And they don't make it mean it's a failure. It's just data, it's learning, right? So we go and we go out and we experiment some more. We learn and we experiment some more. So what if instead there's no such thing as failure, there's only learning. But our minds will say, this is the thoughts that I have when I, you know, was changing my thinking about failure. It's like, okay, well if I'm making no money and, and I go broke and I end up living in my car and I starve to death that I would consider failure, right? That's what our bl brains tell us. All these horrible worst case scenarios. And yes, that could happen, it could totally happen. But instead of just letting it happen, what if I'm learning all along the way, which is what I would do. What's what you would do too, right? We're learning all along the way. And then we adjust, we iterate, we get a job, we go work at Starbucks, whatever. And we iterate and we get better. And I know you, and I'm willing to bet that you have figured it out in the past and you will figure it out again this time or any other time that you think is a failure. And you'll figure it out long before you're living in a box on the street and starving to death. And even if it got to that point, there still would be something for you to learn there, right? There still would be something to be grateful for, even if it's only the breath in your lungs. So what if there was no failure? What would you be doing, right? What would you be going for? And so that leads to number four is focusing on the gain. We can develop emotional elasticity and bounce back quicker when we're focused on the gain on, on our progress toward our goal, on how much we've learned, how far we've come, how much closer we are to hitting our goal. And I do this a lot. I'll like, go back and play with numbers because I've been in business for 18 years, so I have lots and lots of financial data on my business. And so I love to go back and like, you know, create charts on it. Helps me to see the gain. Like, you know, for the first, I don't know, 10 or 12 years of my business, I was, you know, making in the five figures and just kind of going along, making the same every year, right? And that was great. I was making money, I was profitable. And then all of a sudden, when I decided I wanted to make a hundred K and go for six figures, then all of a sudden you see this like hockey stick effect, because I had intention and I put intention and desire and decision behind that goal. And it's fun to see how I've created it, right? Not that it's been easy and not that it's been a walk in the park and sunshine and daisies all the time. There's been a lot of learning, you know, quote unquote failure. But I can focus on how far I've come. I'm not to my ultimate goal, right? But I can focus on how far I've come and it helps me and it will help you to get back up, dust yourself off and get back to work. Number five is don't take it personally. I would suggest, ask you to consider, strongly suggest you just make it a policy to stop allowing your disappointment mean something about your personal worthiness or what you're quote, unquote meant to do or not do, or what's meant for you. You do not have to allow your mind to go there anymore. Just make it a policy. We're not doing that anymore. That's just not how we're thinking. It's not things we're going to say to ourselves. Because that line of thinking does nothing for you in any way, shape or form. If you have a desire in your heart and you feel like that was that's inside of you for a reason, to do the work you're doing to serve the clients you're serving, then that is what you're meant to do. Does it mean you're going to do it perfectly and successfully right out of the gate? No. Does it mean you're not going to have disappointment and unrealized expectations? No. But thinking that it's not meant for you or you're not worth success or you're not worthy of having your own business, that does nothing for you in any way, shape or form. It doesn't serve you. It will never make you better. So just stop it. Don't allow it anymore. If you wouldn't allow another human to speak to you that way, don't allow yourself to speak to you that way either. Or if you wouldn't speak that way to a loved one or you know, a young person in your life, don't speak to your yourself that way either. So just don't take it personally. Because it's not personal. You are meant to do and achieve and have the greatest desires of your heart. You are. You just are. And I know that because you are a hundred percent worthy. You are 100 worthy the day you were born. Okay. Endowed by your creator. Okay. Number six is to practice a posture of possibility and receiving. You know I love alliteration, so there you go. I invite you to practice a posture of possibility and receiving. This will help you to bounce back and create greater elasticity when you reframe your stories. Instead of telling the story about how you're bad at business and not this is not meant for you. Maybe you're meant not meant to do this. Instead reframe it. Focus on the gain. Focus on the learning. Practice believing and receiving that you are capable and that you can create what you want. That you are a woman that is resilient and bounces back quickly because you believe in you and you have your own back. Fiercely. You are like mama bear with yourself. What do you need to be thinking and what thoughts and believe beliefs do you want to practice about yourself that make you emotionally elastic and resilient and allow you to feel that Possibility and be receptive. I think this is really the most important work is like, what do you need to be thinking about yourself and believing about yourself to bounce back, to become emotionally elastic? More emotionally elastic, right? More resilient. Because when you discover what those thoughts are and you already know them, it just takes time. Getting quiet with yourself and writing them all out. Write them in your journal where you have them in black and white, and you can begin to practice believing those things and thinking those things about yourself. Some of the thoughts for me are thoughts like, I can do hard things, like, there's no failure, it's only learning, and I love learning. Thoughts about how strong you are, how capable you are, Thoughts about how far you've come, right? So practice those and know what they are and they'll change. They may change every day, but find a thought that you can hold on to each day that you can practice that will help you to bounce back. Because things are going to happen. It might be happening every day, right? What are the thoughts that are going to make you emotionally elastic today, more resilient, allow you to bounce back and get back out there in the arena and help the people that need your help. And this is what's so great about having a coach, is that a coach can help you to reframe your failure, focus on your gain, not take it personally. Make sure that you are in that place of possibility and receptivity. Right? Can help you to work through and process through that disappointment and help you bounce back quick. And that is something that I would love to help you and work with you on, because I know that you have an amazing future, you have an amazing mission, an amazing change that you are making in this world. And I don't want you to get stuck and caught up in these, telling yourself these horrible stories about yourself. We want you to bounce back quick and get back out there because we need you. We need what you have to offer. We need your wisdom, you, your capability, your experience. So I just encourage you, get back out there, get back in the arena. You're that much closer to achieving your biggest goals and making all of your dreams come true. I guarantee it. And I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day and I'm here for you, cheering you on all the way there. All right, Have a great week, ladies. I'll see you next time. Bye, ladies.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but we are nearing our 100th episode. Woohoo. I would love to hear from you. In celebration of our 100th episode. I am wondering if you would share with me a question you would love to ask me or a topic you'd love to hear me cover on the podcast. And I'd love to hear how this podcast has impacted or served you over the last two years and 100 episodes. So I have a really cool new app that I'm trying. It's called Speak Pipe. And so there's a link to Speak Pipe in the episode description and show notes that you can just click on and it'll take you to Speak Pipe. And you can ask a question or suggest a topic that you'd love to hear me cover on the podcast and share with us how this podcast has.

Impacted or served you.

So you can visit www.speakpipe.com doing business like a Woman podcast and record your voice message, and we may even feature you on the podcast.

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