You have always been the hero of your story

One of the most harmful impacts of internalized capitalism is being taught our worth is our productivity rather than our humanity.

For entrepreneurs, this means many of us develop an anxious attachment to our business(es).

Our identity and self-worth become enmeshed with our business, and before we know it, we’ve become fixated on having a “successful” business - no matter the cost. We sacrifice our time, our energy, our relationships, and our well-being at the altar of our business. All the while desperately hoping these bits and pieces of ourselves will be enough to garner a sense of safety, security, and validation in return.

We gradually begin to depend on our business more and more to meet not just our financial needs, but our emotional needs. Our emotional states and feelings of worth influence our business, which mirrors our energy back to us, and this cycle continues until eventually we find our mood dependent on the state of our business at any given time.

Put simply…

when business is good, we’re good. But when business ISN’T good - we feel like we can’t be, either.

This happens because it feels safer, more comfortable, and more familiar to meet our needs and validate our worth through external means. The alternative would be to confront ourselves. To confront our fears that we’re still unsure how to provide for ourselves.

That we’re still unsure of our value. Our worth. Our truth.

We’re still shaky in our confidence. In our belief in our competence and that we have what it takes to play at this level and beyond.

So we choose to listen to Self-Doubt. We choose to believe that others know better than we do. That they have the right knowledge, the right experience, the right answers. That if we can just identify who to listen to, when - the path forward will become clear and fluid, and the constant nagging self-doubt, anxiety, and worry will become blessedly silent.

Our soul craves expansion. Our ego fears it.

When our ego wins out, it manifests as us swallowing our truths, censoring ourselves, and generally playing small across all areas of our life. In this way, we trade our power for the illusion of safety. We begin to outsource our trust from ourselves to others. We do this because deep down we hold the belief that if we were to then fail, it wouldn’t be on us - it would be on them.

This outsourcing of trust happens because our subconscious has done the emotional calculus and concluded that the benefits of safety outweigh the potential risks of letting our soul guide us. Stepping into the leadership role for our life requires us to expand. And expansion requires change. It requires growth. It requires stumbling and falling and being rejected and making mistakes and, well, quite simply: it requires getting messy and imperfect as we trek onwards into the dark of the unknown and unprecedented.

So something to keep in mind is that, while it may feel temporarily comforting to abdicate responsibility (and the potential for failure) from your shoulders - doing so means that you also block yourself from accessing your power and capacity for creation, transformation, and evolution.

When you release responsibility in an effort to remain comfortable, it requires you to also release your power. To remain comfortable, you have to resist growth. Which means you also cut yourself off from all of the energetic resources which would fuel your growth and expansion and exploration.

Trust. Self-esteem. Confidence. Responsibility. Resiliency. Creativity. and Power.

And the awesome, amazing thing is this: it is within your power to change.

It’s within your power to decide what you want your relationships to look like and feel like with your Inner Critic and your Inner Power.

And if you don’t want to go it alone, I’m here to help. Business Liberation Coaching supports you in confronting and moving through your primal fears as you learn how to disentangle your worth from your business, stop projecting your emotional needs onto it, and remember that you never needed anyone or anything else to save you.

YOU have *always been* the hero you’ve been waiting for.

Questions? DM me here <3

In solidarity,

xo Erica M.