14 Ways to Feed Your Creative Muse
14 Ways to feed your creative muse “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to discover those jewels––that’s creative living.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear It’s very easy to get lost in everyday mundane tasks, things you need to do every single day and forgot why you started in the first place. While it does important to show up every day and get things done, it’s vital don’t forget your bigger purpose and remember why you do what you do. It’s essential to feed your creative muse regularly. People aren’t born creative or talented, it’s a myth. In fact, every person on this earth has something that only she can create and share with this world. Although, we somehow let to convince ourselves that creativity is something that is accessible only to several chosen people. You have an access to this creative energy within you all the time. You don’t need more inspiration, looking at what others are doing, somebody else’s permission, a perfect location, and a perfect time to start creating. We need to stop everything outside of ourselves to control our creativity. And learn to look inside of ourselves to find it instead. Even when you find your life purpose and your life calling, it’s still can be hard to do creative work. It’s hard to face a blank canvas, to face the unknown, and not always be sure of how you will create something that has never excited you before. Or whether you will be able to monetize your passion and creative work. There will be moments when you will be afraid to speak about your creative work and sell it. But I personally believe that it’s possible to monetize any passion you have and make a living doing it. A lot of fear will come out when it comes to selling, but you can overcome these fears and live doing what you love. Creative work doesn’t come with guarantees, there will be a lot of uncertainties, a lot of fears and limiting beliefs that you will have to face on your creative journey. It will be hard to put your “imperfect” creative work out there. There will be moments when you’ll feel stuck, and won’t know what you do or where it will lead you. The only thing you need to do is to start, you will figure everything out through a creative process. When you create you feel inspired, but when you wait, you feel stuck and it makes you lose the momentum. As Pablo Picasson once said: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” So what are you waiting for? What are the most common obstacles we have face when it comes to doing creative work? “Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear Your fears are not unique, almost every person on this earth has the same fears: You’re afraid that you don’t have a talent. You’re afraid that might be rejected, criticized, misunderstood, ridiculed or ignored. You’re afraid that everything was done already and that there is no market for your creative work. You’re afraid that somebody might steal your ideas, so it’s better never to share them and keep them hidden in your closet. You might think that your work isn’t important enough to share it. You’re afraid that your work is ridiculous and that nobody needs it. You’re afraid that you don’t have what it takes to do creative work. You’re afraid that you don’t have a degree, are not qualified enough, or even think who are you to speak about this? You’re afraid of upsetting your family, friends, or even people you don’t know. You’re afraid of what others will say about you when you share what you do and your work. You’re afraid of facing your inner demons and limiting beliefs. You’re afraid that you will never be able to create anything extraordinary. You’re afraid that it’s too late to start. You’re afraid of success You’re afraid of facing the unknown. I bet that you have at least several of these fears that are holding you back. There will be many obstacles on your way if you decide to do creative work, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to deal with them. It’s when coming back to your values, big vision, your purpose and creating powerful habits and daily routines will help you to keep creating. What are the most common hurdles to doing creative work? Fear of uncertainty Fear is nothing more than an unpleasant feeling. Thoughts play an important role in maintaining, creating, and exacerbating our fears. When you start creating something, you step into the realm of the unknown. We tend to see the realm of the unknown as something bad, and horrifying. But nothing great can be created in the known, the unknown is the only place where possibilities exist. It’s natural for a human being to be afraid, to search for comfort, pleasure, and the known. Your brain wants to keep you safe. Our fears are there for the reason, they evolved to help us to handle challenging situations. Don’t try to fight fear, avoid it, or respond to it on autopilot. But rather try to make room for it, breathe into it, notice it, acknowledge it and expand your awareness about it. Be pleasant and welcoming with your fear, talk to it. Recognize that you’re on the same team. Genuine confidence isn’t the absence of fear, but a transformed relationship with your fear. I love this speech that Elizabeth Gilbert created to talk about her fears: “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining
How to Get a Trustworthy and Effective Client Testimonial for Your Business?
How To Get A Trustworthy And Effective Client Testimonial For Your Business? Testimonials are a vital part of your business and brand success and growth. Testimonials shape the perception of your brand and business by your prospects. Specific and well-written testimonials encourage your website visitors to take action and buy that product or service or hire you. You can speak about your products or services non-stop and try persuading your potential clients that you can provide the best solution to their problems as much as you want. But often it’s better to let your former clients speak instead, and share their results and experience working with you. Your potential clients want to see that you’re capable of doing the work, that you’re credible, and that you helped other people to achieve the results they want Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with you speaking about your products and services, promoting and selling. Because if you’re afraid to promote them, and don’t believe in them, nobody will know what you do and be able to buy from you. So it’s essential at the time to work on overcoming your fears and limiting beliefs that you have about selling if you want to improve your sales. Your potential clients don’t know you yet. And it takes some time for new people and potential clients to start trusting you. Are you the person who can provide the best solution to their problems and make their lives easier? They need a proof that your company or business is legit and that you can be trusted. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing other people getting the results you want. Let your former satisfied clients be your advocates and promote your services for you. So if you want to boost the credibility of your business and brand, make sure that you gather and share case studies, testimonials, and social proof from your former clients. It can be text, video, or audio, you can be as creative with the testimonials on your website as you wish. You want to ensure that your website doesn’t just describe the features of your services and how great you are, but that it includes positive reviews from your former clients. Reviews that describe how you, your brand and your services transformed your former client’ lives. It will make your business and brand more credible and desirable among your new potential clients. Testimonials is a powerful marketing tool A positive client testimonial is a powerful marketing technique that is used by both small businesses and big corporations. Well-written, specific testimonials placed all over your website can help to boost the overall trustworthiness and credibility of your brand and business. Testimonials can reassure and prove to your new potential client that you’re actually capable of bringing them the results they want because you helped to achieve the results they want for other people before. Don’t underestimate the importance of well-written and effective sales pages too. Both testimonials and an effective sale page should work together. Often a testimonial or a case study can be a breaking point and push your potential client to take action and book that call, buy the product you offer or hire you. In the past, I made a lot of my own decisions and took action on people’s websites based on their testimonials and case studies. There is something magical in seeing other people who used to struggle as you do now to get the results you want. It’s inspiring, it gives hope, and it makes you believe that it’s actually possible for you as well. If you just starting out, make gathering testimonials, case studies and working with clients your priority. There are no amount of paid ads that can do the same things for your business that great testimonials can. It’s a free marketing tool you can leverage to grow your business and get a new client. In addition to this working with clients will improve your skills, and confidence, and will help you to understand in what direction you would like your business to move. But does every single testimonial is effective and actually does something for your business? Not every positive testimonial if effective ”Alina is amazing!” ”I loved it!” ”The course or the service was great!” It’s the examples of the worst testimonials you can possibly get from your clients. Moreover, they will do very little for your business. Most likely your website users will ignore them, as they ignore stock photos of smiling people on your website. These kinds of testimonials are very vague, non-specific, and inauthentic. They give little or no information at all about your services or products and what they do. What elements create a powerful, and credible testimonial? Trustworthiness – always use the full name of your client, maybe include information like her website, and the location. Include a headshot if possible – it’s very important. People want to see real people. Specificity – the testimonial gives a specific reason why your product or service is good. What problem did exactly your service help to solve? Specific testimonial is more credible, they make your potential clients trust you more. Nobody cares about general copy, general services, and general faceless testimonials. Authenticity – you don’t want your testimonial to sound unnatural, and be written in a non-natural way. Make sure that your former client uses simple language that describes what exactly they liked about your services and what specific results it helped them to achieve. Don’t forget to mention any fears, and problems your client had before they started to work with you. Then you can explain how they were eliminated. You can also address here any objections that people had before they bought from you. Explain the benefits of your service or products – what impact your product or service made had on your clients? How was their life was transformed? This makes your product or service interesting for your future potential client. Add
How to Choose the Best Hosting for Your WordPress Website
How to choose the best hosting for your WordPress website Choosing a good hosting for your WordPress website can be intimidating, especially when you build your website by yourself. There are many great resources and videos out there to help to do that. Although, when I was doing my research I found that is that most of the resources rarely give real and honest pieces of advice, instead they just promote the hosting companies. This is kind of annoying because it prevents you from choosing the real best option for your WordPress website. When I chose my first hosting, I went with the company that was the most popular, affordable, and most of the bloggers out there claimed to be the best hosting I can possibly choose for my WordPress website. I guess that at the time it was kind of okay, it has all the features that I needed, so I went with this company. I stayed a client of this company for 2 years. One of the reasons was that I was lazy to make research to find a better solution and also to migrate my website elsewhere. The company I stayed with was Bluehost. I switched a month ago because my website started to be very slow and loaded for ages on both PC and mobile devices. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why my website was so slow. I spent a week optimizing it, optimizing images, compressing all the files, and installing caching plugins. Even though I did all this optimization work the website was very very slow. It was frustrating and made me lose a lot of website traffic. The speed of your website is everything today. It was while using speed-measuring online tools I found out that the hosting is actually the issue and the reason my website was very slow. If you choose bad hosting, the speed of the website will be terrible. I was worried because I was losing a lot of website traffic because of that. Website visitors are impatient today, they would like to have fast-loading websites, and when it doesn’t happen, they leave, which increases your bounce rate like crazy. It pushed me to take time to make research and change my hosting, and stop paying money for the horrible service Bluehost was providing. I will share with you everything I found out while I was doing my research to help you to save weeks of research and choose the best hosting for your WordPress website company. What is website hosting and why is it important WordPress is a self-hosting platform, unlike Sqaurespace, Kajabi or Kartra which are hosted website-building platforms. It means that it’s you who should choose and connect your hosting and domain name to make your WordPress website functional. There is a learning curve when it comes to using and installing WordPress. Hosted website-building platforms are easier to install and use, but they are also more expensive. A hosting company provides you with a space on a web server to store all your website files. Hosting makes it possible for your website to access and view your website online. All the websites that you visit are hosted on a server. A web server is a computer that connects website users to your website from anywhere in the world. So if you plan to create a fast, reliable website for your business and a solid online presence, choosing a reliable hosting provider is essential. Your choice of hosting provider will depend on how you plan to use your website, on your business and website goals and of course on your budget. Why choosing good hosting is important? It’s essential because website speed and reliability of your website will depend on it. If you have an e-commerce website or a website with a lot of daily traffic you will need a more powerful server to be able to handle this traffic more easily. There are hundreds of options available out there and it can be very puzzling to choose the best one for your business. Choosing good hosting, in the beginning, will save you a lot of headaches and troubles in the future. I will try to explain in simple words the difference between different types of hosting so that you could make the best choice for your business website. I compared the price, functionality, and speed, and read a lot of reviews of different hosting companies. I will try not to use too complicated technical terms and explain everything in simple vocabulary. So even if you’re not a tech-savvy person you will understand everything easily. What to look for in a hosting company There are several important features that you should be looking for when you choose a hosting company for your website. It will your task to go on the websites of different hosting companies and make your research and see what they offer. When you look at all the features hosting companies offer, you need to keep in mind what kind of website you would like to create for your business. Whether it’s a travel blog, a simple business website, a simple blog, a membership website, a portfolio website or an e-commerce website with lots of traffic. Available storage Depending on the type of website you decide to create for your business and your website’s purpose you will need a lot of little storage to store all your website files. If you have a website with a lot of information, pages, images, plugins, and videos you want to make sure that your hosting provides enough memory to store all these files. If you have a simple website that doesn’t need a lot of storage you want to make sure that you don’t spend a lot of money on unnecessary storage that you don’t need. Storage space is normally measured in gigabytes (GB). Most websites don’t need more than 20GB of storage. But if you have a huge website with thousands of images you
How to Overcome the Fear of Selling and Improve Your Sales
How to overcome the fear of selling and 18 tips to improve your sales Why are we afraid of selling “I’m afraid of rejection.” “I’m not an expert.” “Nobody will buy from a stranger.” “Who am I to sell it?” “I don’t want to be too pushy and too salesy.” “I’m afraid of failure.” “I don’t know how to speak about my products and services.” “I’m afraid of criticism.” “Nobody is interested in my products and services.” “I hate selling.” How many times did you say to yourself something like that and limited yourself with this negative self-talk? As I mentioned before selling isn’t something we’re taught to do, so it feels alien to us. I encourage you to go and find out what is the root of your fear. It can be a combination of fears, and some fears you experience are very personal. Being aware of your fears and where they come from is the first step in overcoming them. I will list down below the most common fears you might struggle with. Fear is nothing more than an unpleasant feeling. Thoughts play an important role in creating, maintaining, and exacerbating our fears. The best way to deal with them is to notice them, name them and neutralize them. Maybe you will find some fears or a combination of fears that resonate with you: Fear of being perceived as salesy and pushy. Nobody wants to be viewed this way. And to be honest it almost seems like something criminal. “Oh my god, what if they see that I’m selling or push my products and services too hard?” So what? The truth is that if you never speak about your products and services nobody will ever buy from you and won’t even know what you offer. If the way most business owners out there sell seems alien to you, and it’s not aligned with who you’re, you can always choose your own way of selling and speaking about your offer that feels good and authentic to you. There is no right or wrong way of doing things. There is only one way that works for you and that feels aligned with you and your business. So go ahead watch other people, try different techniques and find out what works for you and your business. If you never try, you will never know. The fear of not being liked and accepted by everybody. Our whole lives we were taught to fit in, not to speak up our minds, and not be different, so there is no wonder we want so desperately to be liked and accepted by everybody. It’s scary to be different, to be seen, to speak your mind openly, to express your point of view. And if you do it, most likely not everybody will like you and it’s okay. On the other hand, it gives you the possibility to find your tribe, connect with them on a more deep level and provide value to them. You don’t need millions of people to have a successful business. And getting rid of the wrong people is the best thing that can do for yourself and your business. The fear of rejection. Nobody likes hearing no, it can be a scary word for many people. But the truth is that rejection is part of being human, a part of being a business owner. It’s in your power to decide how you see the rejection and whether you take it personally. Rarely rejection is about us and tells something about our skills or who we’re. There can be people who are just not the right fit for you, people who don’t need your service just yet, people who don’t know that they need your offer, or people who don’t know you good enough yet to be ready to buy from you. In rare cases it can be about you, but why take it personally? The bottom line is when you separate yourself from rejection and don’t let it heart your ego, your life gets easier and much more full of joy. You start to handle the rejection so much easier too. Fear of failure. It’s similar to the fear of rejection. As much as we are taught to avoid failure at any cost. Failure is nothing more than a natural way of learning. You will experience failures in your business and it’s okay. Failure can teach you much more than success. So don’t take it personally and don’t beat yourself up. Learn from it and move on. Just think about it, if beating yourself up was a good way to change your behaviours wouldn’t you be perfect by now? Failure can hurt, but it’s up to you to decide what to do with it next. Fear of criticism. Nobody likes being criticized for what they do. We can be criticized for our products or services, for the way we sell, or maybe even for our point of view. And if you have a very poor self-image, if you don’t believe in yourself and your service, criticism can hurt a lot. We give our power away to other people and let them tell us if we’re good enough, we let them define us. Remember that you’re worthy and good enough and it’s up to you to decide how you view yourself. People with a strong sense of self-worth and self-image re-bounce from criticism so much easier. They believe in themselves and in what they do and don’t wait for external validation to make them feel good and prove their self-worth. So if you struggle with your self-image it’s probably something that you need to work on. There are many great exercises and everyday practices there you do to help you with that. Try not to take criticism personally. Often in any criticism, there is some part of the truth. Use it as a possibility to grow and improve. Try to learn to distinguish constrictive criticism from hate and be very aware
How to Define Your Core Values to Build a Purposeful Life, Business, and Personal Brand
How to define your core values to build a purposeful life, business, and personal brand It has been a while since I wanted to write this blog post and speak in more depth about values and the role they play in our everyday lives and in our businesses. Defining my core values was the most important thing I did for myself and my business. It changed completely the way I show up online, the content I create, the way I run my business, and how I feel about myself and my personal brand. I find that it’s not spoken about in the online space enough. Everybody is speaking about building a brand foundation, following strategies, and blueprints that will help you to get exactly where you would like to be. The problem with this approach is that it’s too general and it doesn’t take into consideration your unique personality. There can be some universal truths and universal information, but you always need to trust yourself first and check out if it feels aligned with you. It’s probably hard to accept, but there is no unique strategy or magic pill that will work the same way for everybody. It might work for some people, but there is no guarantee that it will work for you. Without knowing yourself, what you value in life and knowing exactly what you would like your business to be about, you will be lost, you will compare yourself, and you will be living by false, somebody else’s values because you didn’t take the time to figure out your own. And then you will wonder why you feel unhappy, why you hide, why you don’t take action, why you don’t embrace yourself, and why your business doesn’t work out the way you want it to. The moment you define your core values, know exactly why they’re important to you and you start taking action every single day based on your values. Your actions start to feel more aligned, and effortless and your life starts to feel more purposeful. Why your core values are important Values determine how you will behave throughout your life. They are like your personal inner compass that guides you, helps you to set a direction, and helps you to stay on track during your journey. Knowing and living your core values is essential for your happiness as a human being. Different people have different values, and it’s wonderful. Your values will be unique to you and different from any person in this world. Isn’t it amazing to have your personal blueprint for your happiness and well-being? Your values define your authentic self. Your most authentic and deepest self is driven by these values. It’s your values that fuel it. This highest self wants more from life and it can help you to live an extraordinary life if you let it guide you. When you take action based on your values, often it may seem effortless, more natural and joyful. As it’s aligned with your inner authentic self. You’re not imitating anybody, pretending to be somebody you’re not, not trying to play a role or striving to be liked by everybody. No wonder values make it so much easier to get into the flow state. It’s very hard to build an aligned and sustainable business and personal brand when you don’t know what your values are and when you don’t infuse your personality into your business and brand. It’s not easy to tap into your subconscious mind and discover your core personal unique values. I hope that you’re ready to make inner work, to dedicate time and effort to discoverer your values. How to discover your top core values “Your values create your internal compass that can navigate how you make decisions in your life. If you compromise your core values, you go nowhere.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart There are many techniques you can use to help you to discover your values. The simplest one is to find a basic value list on the internet, go through it, and choose the top 10 that resonate with you the most and that feel the most aligned. It’s the first step. Remember that there is no such thing as ”right” or ”wrong” values”. You might want to go through several value lists as they all might be different and contain different values. Often after doing this exercise you might discover that there is a huge gap between your values and your actions. Don’t freak out, and don’t beat yourself up. It’s just a reminder that nobody is perfect and that if you never spent any time in your life figuring your values out it was impossible to be guided by them and aligned all your actions to your core values. Then I will recommend spending time every day or every week to journal about them, to think about why they are important to you. The reason you would like to spend so much time thinking and journaling about them is that often we pick up values because of social and cultural pressure, or adopt some from where when we were children. It means that some of your values can be inauthentic and it’s okay. That’s exactly where self-discovery work and journaling will help you to really think deeply about your value list and choose the most authentic values that resonate with you on the deepest level. Don’t be in a hurry, don’t rush. Sometimes it takes time and effort to dig really deep to be able to discover your core values. It’s a process. As you grow evolve and find out more about your authentic self you might find that your values are changing and evolving with you and it’s okay. It’s not a static list that you create once and leave it out there. You need to go back to your list regularly and go through it. See how every value feels and if it’s aligned. My values changed quite
Why You don’t Need a Website when You Start Your Business
why you don’t need a website when you start your business. When you’re about to start your business the first thing that comes up to your mind is creating a website. Although, it’s not the best place to start. Creating a website can be intimidating and time-consuming when you are just starting out. Often it’s useless too. You don’t have any audience, don’t know how to drive traffic to it, have nothing to offer, don’t know your audience, and don’t even know yourself yet sometimes. As a person who spends months creating my first website for my first business, looking back today I can say that you don’t need a website when you just starting out. I could have spent this time improving my skills, building my portfolio, working with real people (to prove to myself that I’m capable of doing the actual work), connecting to people, building my audience, and collaborating with like-minded people. Instead, I spent months hiding behind the busy work, learning tech, and changing colours, fonts, and layouts. All this is important, but not when you start. I would recommend focusing on doing things that can bring you, clients, first, and on your self-development. Yes, it’s scary, you might feel like you’re dying inside when you reach out to people first when you put yourself out there when you can be rejected, or judged. That’s why we tend to hide behind busy work. But remember that it’s not busy, comfortable work that will bring you results. When you start you don’t know yourself yet Not many people really know what they’re doing when they just starting out their business, except if they’re marketing experts or people who were in business for decades. Few people do profound inner work during their lifetime. But when the core of your business is you, you don’t have a choice, but to work to discover your true, authentic self first. Everything starts from here. What do you want to stand for in life? What do you value? What is your voice and how you will express it? What lights you up inside? What brings you joy? What makes you wake up every single morning? What is yours why? How do you want to live your life and why? Your business journey should start with self-discovery otherwise you will be stuck in many other areas. Without deep inner work, it’s almost impossible to build a sustainable and thriving business and personal brand. It took me a lot of time to see and experience it. I was so desperate to succeed, imitated others, and put so much pressure on myself. I didn’t know how I could show up and why people will choose me. When you don’t know the answers to all these questions, when there is no clarity, you feel lost, anxious, and overwhelmed. When you feel this way how can you build a strategic, website that reflects you and your brand? It’s impossible! You will end up changing colours and fonts, and layouts every single day. You always need to watch inside first. You can start in a much more simpler way There are a lot simpler ways to help you to start a business. When you’re not sure who you’re, when you didn’t do deep work on your brand foundation when you don’t know how to infuse your personality to create an aligned and authentic personal brand, I think that spending months and thousands of dollars on building a website is a waste of time and money. This busy website-creating work can distract you and hold you back from doing scary work. You might feel that until you launch your website you can’t do anything else. You can’t start showing up, you can’t start creating content, you can’t start writing a blog, or connecting to people. How can you do that if you don’t have a website? But believe me, once you have a website you won’t feel more ready, more willing to do all this hard work, and you won’t feel more confident. You just have to start with what you have, trust the process and believe that you will be able to figure everything out on your way. You can start by creating a simple landing page, blog page, or newsletter form. It takes only several hours to set up, it gives you an online presence and the possibility to connect with your audience. This way you will have an online presence outside social media, and you will be able to change and modify it fast if you need to. Start from doing the things that will create a real difference for your business This one is tricky. We don’t want to feel uncomfortable, be judged and be rejected. We make everything possible to run away from frustration and discomfort. But you will be uncomfortable, frustrated, and lost when you do something you have never done before when you do scary work or work that makes you quit your comfort zone. It’s a normal reaction, and there is nothing wrong with you. Our brain wants to keep us safe, it wants us to keep doing familiar and comfortable things. But if you keep doing the same things you did 5 years ago, probably you will be in the same place as 5 years ago. The more fear or resistance you feel towards something can be a sign that it’s something that you need to do. When you just starting out the things that you might want to do before building your website are: start creating content start building your audience build your portfolio or case studies start building your email list connect with people and reach out first work with real people work on mastering your skills and getting really good at what you do do the deep self-development work on deconstructing your old beliefs and adopting new ones get really clear on who you’re work on getting clarity on your brand foundation Doing all these things
How to Process and Keep in Check Complex Emotions as a Small Business Owner
How to Process and keep in check complex emotions as a small business owner “If you want to master your life, you have to learn to organize your feelings. By becoming aware of them, you can trace them back to the thought process that prompted them, and from there you can decide whether or not the idea is an actual threat or concern, or a fabrication of your reptilian mind just trying to keep you alive.” ― Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery There are so many successful business owners and entrepreneurs who show how successful they are. They are trying to sell you their formula and roadmap for success. Just do it, just set the goals, just show up, just do the hard work, stop procrastinating, just be happy, and earn 6 figures. Most of us fall for these formulas and roadmaps, because we want a simple answer for complex problems, we would like to have a quick fix, a magic formula without the pain of everyday complex work. We’re so afraid to feel lost, not knowing where to move, and not having all the answers right away. But the truth is that if you choose to carve your own authentic path in most cases you will be lost. And it’s totally OKAY! The question is what will you do when you feel anxiety, stress, pressure, sadness, fear, grief, and rage in your everyday life when at the same time you try to build your business? Will you be able to respond to these emotions properly and move ahead despite them, or will you be lost in your thoughts, and feelings, feel stuck and paralyzed, and live in fear? Will you learn to surf the waves when they appear? And they will appear, I can guarantee you that. ALLOW THESE FEELINGS TO PASS THROUGH You’re not supposed to feel happy all the time. You’re not supposed to be positive all the time. Your mental, and emotional psychological intelligence is determined not by being able to feel positive all the time, but by your possibility to process complex emotions of sadness, anxiety, fear or guilt. When you don’t allow these emotions or think that something is wrong with you because you feel this way you get stuck on these emotions. You bury them inside of you, and everything becomes a trigger. It’s okay to cry when something sad happens, it’s okay to feel lost and not know what your next step will be, it’s okay to feel angry when you see injustice, it’s okay to be afraid when you do something you have never done before, it’s okay fail and move on. It’s important to learn to respond properly to these feelings, instead of just reacting to them automatically. Be aware of these emotions, allow them, and acknowledge that they are there and that they will be a part of your everyday life. But you can choose don’t be stuck on them and move forward. TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR HEAD If you feel really stuck in your thoughts, feelings and fears try to talk to somebody about it. Often everything looks so much more complicated in our heads. It can be a good friend, a coach, a mental health specialist, or even you. You can journal about the way you feel, and talk your ideas out as if you were speaking with somebody else. Often taking everything out of your head makes everything simpler, and helps to see the situation in a more objective way and move on, instead of being stuck on your emotions and thoughts for a long time. It can help you to cope with the resistance you feel inside as well. TAKE THE TIME YOU NEED You don’t need to have all the answers right away. Sometimes it’s a hard pillow to swallow as we want everything to work from the first time, fast, and get instant gratification. But growth and transformation happen in small steps. You expand your comfort zone and you need some time to get used to it. Often if you rush changes, even if it’s positive changes, you are more likely to come back to where you started. We are human as beings who didn’t develop by searching for happiness, but by searching for comfort, a familiarity which helped us to survive as species. If you desperately need instant gratification every single day, set a small simple goal to take action every single day. You will surprise when you will be in one year if you stick to it. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TRIGGERS When we are triggered by something we tend to feel sad and get defensive. Although, in many cases, triggers can be a very helpful tool that can help to improve our lives. Triggers are not random, often they are the signals that try to attract our attention to some part of our lives that need healing or progress. So when something triggers you it’s a very bad idea to ignore it and just get upset. You just need to stop taking everything personally, dig deeper inside, uncover these issues, process them, learn from them, and adapt your behaviour for the future. It will improve the quality of your everyday life a lot! STOP TRYING TO AVOID DISCOMFORT As I mentioned before when you try to grow, try to do things you have never done before, learn something you have never been taught before, and unlearn toxic behavioural patterns that were normal for you as a child you will feel discomfort. Discomfort is not there to punish you, it’s just trying to show you that there is something more for you, that you deserve better, and that you are able to change. So instead of complaining that everything is hard and bad and that the world is trying to punish you, you can choose to listen, learn, and start changing your life. The only thing that is preventing you from changing and living
How to Find the Courage to Put Yourself Out There
How to find the courage to put yourself out there ”The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.” – BrenĂ© Brown I’m not ready. I have nothing to say. Who will listen to me? There are thousands of people who said it before. I’m afraid of what people will say and think of me. I need a website. I’m not qualified enough to speak about this topic. I didn’t figure out my niche yet, so I need to wait before showing up. I need to learn more about business, blogging, social media, and marketing… What if they laugh at me? Everybody thinks that I’m weird. How many times did you want to start that blog, or that business, or speak your mind openly, but you just couldn’t force yourself to do that? All these invasive thoughts, self-doubt, and fears come out and you just stay silent. Probably you even felt guilty and beat yourself up because I couldn’t find the courage to show up. The truth is you don’t need a website, a logo, a niche, or somebody’s else permission when you start putting yourself out there. Before you do it, everything is just a theory. Believe that you will be able to figure everything out on your way, have some faith in your abilities, give yourself a credit, and practice self-compassion. I wish somebody has told me these things when I have just started my first business. Start taking action today Even if you have no idea where to start, start somewhere, start small, start slowly, but just don’t be trapped in your head thinking, instead take an action. The truth is that doing will get you much faster than thinking and researching. When I started my first teaching business I wasted so much time doing trivial stuff. I was building my website, creating my logo, learning tech stuff, and creating endless to-do lists every single day. I wasn’t aware enough to see that I was so full of fear and self-doubt and that I kept pushing away the hardest things I actually needed to do like blogging, connecting to people, reaching to people, and putting myself out there. No wonder I didn’t have any results in business. It’s natural for us as humans being afraid of judgement, rejection, and the unknown. By putting yourself out there you’re executing the act of courage every single day, you train your courage by being courageous. You don’t know what the outcomes of your actions will be, but you still find the courage and do it. I believe that not only it will help to train your courage muscle, but it will help you to start creating a community for your future business. You will learn to embrace and own your story, and your authenticity, and let go of fear to be vulnerable. It will help you to find your unique voice and the way you would like to show up. Isn’t it amazing and so needed before you even figure out your niche, have a website, and know your ideal client?! Always be aware You’re not your thoughts, always remember them. It’s so easy to start identifying yourself with your thoughts and don’t see any difference. Your thoughts can make you feel miserable and make you suffer a lot if you let them. The natural state of our brain is to worry and search for the next bad thing that is about to happen, it’s what helps us to survive as species. That’s why you need to learn to practice awareness. The next time a negative thought will arise, when you try to put yourself out there, just stop, be aware of it, notice how it feels in your body and still do what you wanted. You can even start practising journaling, to help you to analyze your negative thoughts and look at them from the side. Putting everything on paper will help to empty your head. Awareness is always the first step, until you’re aware of something how can you even hope to deal with it? Start small You don’t have to be present on all social media platforms altogether. You don’t need to be making videos, stories, writing blog posts, or posts for social media at the same time. In fact, doing all this at the same time is a very bad idea. If you like me had a lot of prejudices and negative thoughts tied to social media like: “it’s not for me, people go there to just show up, it’s stupid, I don’t need that,” you need to start slowly. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed, and anxious, and expect great results too fast. It leads to nowhere, and you will quit very fast. If you don’t feel very comfortable in front of the camera, I will tell you a secrete, nobody is. It’s a skill you learn, practice and improve over time. I avoided showing my face for so long on social media. I resisted and did everything possible to avoid doing that. If you feel the same, start with some photos of yourself, and small captions, and try microblogging on different platforms. With time you can experiment, try filming short videos, short stories, and maybe blogging. It will help you to figure out what platforms you enjoy using, what platform works for you and what type of content you enjoy creating and what brings you more results. Starting small will help you to touch the ground, to see what you enjoy, find your style, and will help to open up in front of your audience more. Be gentle with yourself and practice self-compassion How many times did you try to do something new that you were very passionate about and failed? Were you blaming yourself for that by thinking that you’re not good enough, that it was all your fault, that you should have never started doing that in the first place and that you were naive
The Importance of Storytelling in Your Business
Telling stories is a part of our everyday communication. People have been telling stories to each other since ancient times, starting with legends, myths, and fairy tales. In every story, we tell there is always something intriguing, something that catches our attention, something that engages and makes us crave more. We tell stories for different reasons: to entertain, to brag, to impress, to create connections, or to educate. It’s a universal language everybody can understand. Storytelling can be a powerful tool in your business. A powerful story used effectively can help you to attract your ideal clients, create emotional connections with them, improve your client loyalty, create a strong marketing strategy, and even increase your profit. It’s exactly your story that makes you stand out and very often can be a turning point for your potential clients and make them trust you more and take action. Good story creates emotional connection Your business, your products or your services were created to solve a specific problem, but the story behind your business or your product helps your potential clients understand the context. It helps to understand if your product or service is worth buying. Make sure to make your story relatable. Don’t be afraid to go deeper, to speak about your whys, be vulnerable, and be real. Your story shouldn’t be perfect it’s good when you don’t try to create ideal stories with a happy ending. It’s exactly realness and imperfection that will help you to create a deeper emotional connection with your audience. Good stories will help you to connect with your audience, make you more trustworthy and see you as a human, not some faceless corporation. You will be more memorable, easier to understand and able to keep people’s attention longer. Being able to evoke emotions with your stories is a very powerful tool. In most cases we make emotional, but not rational decisions in our lives. Good story makes you stand out and be memorable It’s exactly your unique story that makes you stand out, and memorable. It gives you a competitive advantage in your field. Very often as business owners we struggle to find the answer to the question ”What makes me different from thousands of people in my field who do the same thing as I do?” It’s exactly your unique experience and story that makes you different. Here you might want to dig deep and be honest. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable, to share your struggles, to share your path. Don’t try to be perfect, instead be yourself, be proud of everything you accomplished and that led you to where you’re today. It’s exactly what creates an emotional connection between you and your prospects. And even some of your competitors sell better products or services, we know that most of the decisions that people make are emotional, and not logical. It’s your story that can help you distinguish yourself from your competitors. Stories help to understand more complex things around us more easily Stories have always helped people to understand the world around them better. When we knew nothing about science, we already invented simple stories to understand better the world around us and to interpret some complex phenomena. Stories we tell ourselves can shape the way we see this world, the things we believe in and the way we live our lives. We use stories to take some actions or to avoid taking them. Stories can help your brand and business to accomplish so much more than just promoting your products or services and speaking only about their features. Instead, you can tell the story of the creation of these services, describe benefits, and help your prospects to imagine how they would feel or how their life would look like if they do decide to purchase your service. Or tell the stories of other people who benefited from working with you. Can you how is this so much powerful? Stories inspire and motivate Stories inspire and motivate people. It’s not the dry facts and descriptions of your products or services that inspire people and make them want to take action. It’s your story that can inspire your prospects. The success stories of people you worked with. Maybe you have an interesting story about the creation of your product or service. By telling all these stories you show your potential clients why they should care about what you do. You inspire them to see how their life will look like after working with you, or after purchasing your product. They can be motivated and inspired by your story or the stories of your clients. These kinds of stories make your brand and business more human. Stories drive action If your audience is inspired, motivated, and connected to you emotionally, it’s very likely that they will want to work with you or buy your products. As I mentioned before most of the decisions we take as human beings are based on the way we feel about something and our emotions. And if you make your prospects feel inspired, let them see a human with all your struggles, failures, and vulnerabilities, and share your story openly, they will be more likely to relate and buy from you. Final thoughts Today is impossible to find a successful brand and business without a good story behind it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a huge brand or a small business. Stories evoke emotions, help to understand the world around us better, they inspire and motivate us as human beings. Stories make us empathize and relate emotionally. They make us remember businesses and brands we care about. Stories push us to take action. That’s why more and more brands and businesses care about crafting their stories and recognize the importance of storytelling. And that’s why you need to start to learn using stories in your business.
5 Types of Stories to Tell in Your Business
5 TYPES OF STORIES TO TELL IN YOUR BUSINESS I already mentioned the importance of using storytelling in your business. In this blog post, I wanted to speak about the different types of stories you can tell in your business. You can use different types of stories to inspire and create an emotional connection with your audience. You can use stories on different parts of the website, and on different pages, on your social media, on your blog. It’s a very powerful tool everybody should leverage in their business. Inspire people with your business mission Instead of a boring mission statement, you can tell a real story of how you found your business. Help your readers to see who you are. When you’re open, and vulnerable, and help your audience to find out more about you, they will connect more to you. It can be a perfect story to tell on your About page. You can speak about what inspired you to start a business, the obstacles you overcame, what exactly led you to where you’re now, lessons you learnt on your way and how did it change you as a person. Don’t be afraid to share your failures, nobody needs a perfect story. As we all know that it’s not possible to have a perfect life and a perfect business. It’s exactly your failures and difficulties that make you real and relatable. You can share things you genuinely care about, things that drive you every day and give you the power to keep going! Maybe without even knowing it, you will help or inspire somebody with your business mission. It’s so important to inspire your audience. It will lead to emotional connection as well as will drive action on your website. Share success stories or case studies of your clients Nothing motivates people more than seeing other people with the same problems get the result they want to achieve. It makes them curious, and impatient to get the same results. When you share success stories of real people and how they benefited from working with you, it creates a lot of trust among new people who arrive on your website or social media pages and they have no idea who you’re and what you do. A good success story should contain a photo of a real person, a description of problems this person had and what she wanted to achieve before she found you. The second part should be all about the benefits and specific results you helped this person to achieve. Use stories to educate You can use stories to educate, explain your point of view or explain complex notions in a simple way. Stories help to understand complex things as well as to keep attention better, than just dry facts. If you educate your audience well and share relevant information, they will be more loyal, they will trust you more and they will come to your website over and over again to get great information. It shouldn’t necessarily be real stories, it’s totally okay to use imaginary stories. You can use these stories in your blog, on your social media platforms, in education videos or in some other materials you use to attract your ideal client. Let people imagine working with you Don’t just describe the features of your services, and speak only about yourself all the time. As I mentioned before nobody wants to read it. People are searching for a solution to their problems, they want to know how they will benefit from working with you. Let them imagine what working with you will look like. Where they will be in 3 months after working with you? How they life will change? What benefits and solutions to their problem they will get if they choose to work with you? Numerous studies show that people’s desire to buy a product increase tremendously when they hold it in their hands. But if you’re a service business you can increase their desire by telling a story about your services. It will create desire and will make your offer irresistible. When you write these types of stories always keep your ideal client in mind. Try to imagine what they want, and what exactly will make them choose you over others. Share Your personal story In addition to your brand mission story, you can add your personal story. Speak more about you in relation to your business. Be human, share your struggles, values, things you believe in and things that are important to you. You shouldn’t try to please everybody, and to appeal to everybody when you tell your story. Try to be yourself, be true to yourself, and speak from your heart. When we open like this, we attract our ideal client who relates to us, and who has the same struggles or doubts. From my own experience, I can tell that it’s hard to do. It will feel uncomfortable, and you will want to hide, but don’t let these feelings prevent you from sharing your real story. When it’s getting uncomfortable, it means that you come out of your comfort zone and grow. Final thoughts Telling stories is natural for us as human beings. If you just starting out, it can sometimes feel that it’s not for you. But if you want to learn how to write good stories, you need to try and fail sometimes. Great stories will help to grow your business, captivate people’s attention, and connect to your audience.