You Don't Have to "Pay Your Dues" 💵

Hello, Natalie Moore, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist here, and today's topic is why you should not pay your dues. So I just got out of a session with a client and we were talking about unconventional mindset strategies for success, and one of the things that came up was this myth that our society has kind of collectively bought into that one needs to pay their dues first, or I've also heard the term earn your stripes. There's lots of different phrases for this kind of mentality in order to attain success in the future. So what I told my client is that anything like that that you hear has more to do with the person saying it than it has to do with you. So anyone who tells you that you have to pay your dues most likely thought that about themselves in terms of their career trajectory. They had thought that they had to pay their dues in order to earn a sense of success. So I won't go into too much detail about where this comes from because that could become a rant in and of itself, but that has more to do with this masculine and also even a Judeo-Christian approach to looking at life, where it's all about earning things and deserving things, and that you need to show that you've earned and deserve things through spending either a certain amount of time, energy, or money on things which tend to be the more masculine metrics of success. But I want you to focus now on kind of balancing that out with some more feminine ideas of success, which have more to do with trust and intuition and really feeling into what is in alignment for you. So kind of going back to that old mindset, so the old mentality is you have to pay your dues. So this actually comes from a place of fear and scarcity. It's feeling like you have to struggle or suffer or prove that you've earned something, as opposed to coming from a place of love and trust. So I actually feel even a change in my body when I say those two different things. When I think about fear, I think about needing to control a certain outcome, and I get kind of tense. Whereas if I think about love and trust, I kind of— my shoulders get soft and I feel more open in my heart space. And so what I really want you guys to focus on is asking yourself What do I really want for my business, for my career, for my future? Do I want to have to pay my dues, or do I want success and opportunities to open up like gates, just inviting me in? So the example I use, the fun analogy I used with my client was, have you ever driven up to some kind of building or apartment complex where you drive up and just the weight of the car kind of creates these gates, that just open really slowly to let you in. That's what I want you to envision for yourself, for your success and for your opportunities. Just imagine that these gates are opening up for you with ease. So this also ties into the idea that success has to be— there's so an old myth that success has to be hard. So I don't think anyone is going to say that success is easy, which it's not necessarily easy, but the steps to success can be done with ease. So think about that for a minute. I'm going to say that again: success is not easy, but the steps towards success can be done with ease. So the example I gave for my client was that if I thought that being a therapist was hard, was hard work, and that being a successful therapist was really hard, then I would be bringing a lot of unnecessary effort into my work as a therapist and into my work in getting clients. And how that would impact my work and show up in my work is that I would bring a lot of unnecessary effort and tension into working with my clients. I would feel like I had to do something to make them better or to fix them. But if I come in with the idea of being a therapist is not easy, but it can be done with ease, then I come in knowing that I can guide my clients, I can help them, I can listen really closely to things that they say and point out things that I think would be really helpful for them and trust that they'll make changes in the right direction towards their health and well-being. Same thing goes with my practice. If I thought it was really hard to get clients, then I might exert a lot of unnecessary effort and tension in getting clients. But what might happen is that, sure, I might get more clients, but what if they're not the right fit for working with me? And what if they're not ultimately going to be the people who benefit the most from my work? Then I'm working with people and then more resistance and more tension shows up because then we're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole when it's not the right fit. Versus if I just open myself to receiving ideal clients who I'm going to be best poised to serve, then they come in, they're happy, I'm happy, it's a good team, it's a good working relationship. And then what ends up happening if you help people, they're going to tell more people about you and thus you have more clients who are also a good fit for working with you too. So what I really want you to do is to really challenge this notion of, do I have to earn my stripes? Do I have to pay my dues? Or can I do things with more ease? And can I invite more opportunities and more success my way? Kind of embracing more of a feminine energy as opposed to a masculine one. Not to say that one is better than the other, but we just need to balance these out a little bit more. So if you have any questions about this or want to get some individual guidance from me, I'd love for you to give me a call. My number is 323-558-2055. I'll leave it below, and you can find out more about me at my website, awakentheself.com. And please subscribe to my channel and like this video. You can also leave a comment below if you want to ask a question or leave a comment. Okay, I hope this was helpful and look forward to seeing you in the next video. Bye!