Last week I worked with an amazing new client to get her clear on her target market, her message and her new programs for her business during her VIP day.
She was already working with a coach but everything her coach told her to do didn’t feel right to her.
So, month after month, she felt stuck and stagnant.
And she told me it’s been costing her tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue, not to mention that her self-confidence was really low and she was constantly doubting herself.
Does this sound familiar?
“Jenny” was seriously contemplating quitting becoming a coach because she couldn’t make key decisions in her business that really aligned with who she was.
Jenny had a strong intuitive feeling that she was meant to be working with male clients but everyone was telling her that it wasn’t a lucrative target market.
Then during our VIP together, she was clearly guided to not only work with men (what she’d felt all along) but to also bring all of her gifts to her coaching practice instead of nicheing down like she’d be constantly told to do.
The push – pull of her inner knowing and outside guidance was keeping her spinning her wheels.
And, after working with hundreds of women and growing a successful business of my own this is what I know to be true:
An entrepreneur’s most important skill is their ability to trust themselves to make their own decisions via @sweetpathgirl {tweet it} .
More specifically, it’s the ability to listen to and to follow their own intuition even when their advisors tell them otherwise.
When I first started out in my business, I was terrified of the responsibility of having to make so many decisions all at once.
Everything from picking a business name, a niche, a marketing strategy, what programs to offer so on, felt incredibly scary and overwhelming.
While it’s normal to see what others are doing out in the marketplace, I am witnessing an epidemic where many business owners are seeking answers outside of themselves for very important decisions in their business over their own inner knowing.
And while it’s fine to ask guidance from a coach, mentor, someone you admire, it still doesn’t take away from our duty to run everything through our own inner filter called our intuition or our gut feeling.
Even as an intuitive when I share information for people in their business, I always remind them to run it through what feels right and true for them.
The truth is that no one has the answers to your life or your business except you. You get final say on what happens.
And while it is tempting to ask someone else what they think is best for you, we don’t need to be giving our power away and ignoring what’s most important to us because we are afraid to stand up for what we believe to be true.
Many of my clients are highly intuitive and are building businesses that go against common norms and traditional marketing strategies and at first that can feel really scary.
I want you to know that you can give yourself permission to create and to build a business YOUR WAY. And while formulas and blueprints can be a good starting point, ultimately, it’s your intuition that will guide you to the best way of doing business that’s truly YOUR OWN.
As entrepreneurs, we are the ones responsible for our choices in business. The good news is that this is actually a very empowering situation.
Self-trust is a muscle to exercise and over time, it becomes an incredibly empowering one: to trust ourselves, our ‘crazy ideas’, our impulses, our decision to go against the grain and to carve our own path.
I’ve had to carve my own path in business and I know it’s scary AND it’s also incredibly liberating, empowering and rewarding.
It takes courage to build an authentic and aligned business.
There will be no exact road maps or guarantees.
But you can know that by following your Truth, your Truth will not let you down – ever.
Courage combined with self-trust and following your intuition will always lead you in the right path. Your mind may not agree with you, but your body never lies so follow your Truth and filter everyone else’s opinions through your inner knowing.
I have so appreciated this approach of coaching myself that today I use it with my clients and it makes them feel amazing since they are taking full ownership of their lives, their businesses and their future.
Today, as an intuitive business coach, when my clients ask me what to do, I first ask them : “what do YOU want to do?” What feels right and true?”.
There are so many paths to achieving any particular goal and yet the path that is most aligned with you, is the only one that really matters.
Here are 3 tips to start cultivating self-trust in your business and in your life:
1. Choose to lead with your intuition
Intuitive leadership starts with a choice to incorporate your intuition into your decision-making process. So the first step is to decide if you want to start listening to your inner knowing and explore where it can take you.
2. Start small
Self-trust is a practice and it helps to build your confidence by taking small baby steps with simple things. It can be as simple as asking yourself what you’d like to to have for dinner, whether to invest in a small program, whether to hire a project out.
3. Listen to your body
Your intuition and gut feelings are housed in your body which is an infinitely wise and intelligent resource we often underutilize. The key distinction is that the body doesn’t lie and neither does your gut. When you make a decision that supports your highest good, it will feel expansive and open. Decisions that are contrary to your highest good will likely feel stressful, contracting and make you feel heavy. So at first, observe how a choice feels in your body and take it from there.
Note that when you listen to your intuition, or gut instinct, your mind may try to sabotage you because not all gut feelings may appear logical, linear or “sensible”. That’s totally ok. That’s where the muscle is to take baby steps and see how you feel with every choice you make and to choose the ones that make you feel good.
Also don’t beat yourself up if you don’t like a choice you made or make a decision out of fear and in your head. Just use it as a learning experience and then you get to choose differently moving forward.
And last but not least: Trust yourself. You know more than you think you know.
