Meet The Thief that Steals the Expansion of your Impact and the Expression of your Creative Genius

If you are a creative woman sharing your gifts to make a difference, but struggle with expanding your impact, let's look behind the curtain to catch the thief that stills your growth past your business initial momentum, not allowing you to make a bigger, bolder impact.

You've been on a mission to share your gifts with the world. You've created a business, took training, did your business foundation and have been growing slowly but steadily until you are in momentum.

And now it's as if you were standing at the edge of a cliff. Suddenly you are afraid to leap. Will your wings open? Do you even have them? It's as if you've open Pandora's box. All kinds of doubts, inner voices, fears and anxiety are emerging as you try to stretch... preferably without breaking!

Congratulations! First of all it's important to recognize that you are in that 1% of unique, brave, out-of-the-box women who dare to be the change they want and to embody their purpose.

Now, let's look at that cliff.

What do you say to yourself when you pull back from the edge?

Does it sound like this:
"It's too much too soon...but I really want it...tone it down or you'll alienate lots of people...but it doesn't sound like me... Oh, just let it be. You got a website to fix, a new platform to learn and a marketing funnel to finish."

How did you start with a connection problem and ended with a logistical one?

When we humans face problems that seem to huge, maybe even abstract and that cause anxiety, we usually bypass them to deal with more specific problems that seem solvable and are "out there" so it's not as scary.

You end up focusing on the external problems. After all, there are plenty of them: dealing with technology, website breaking down, site being attacked, learning code, finding new ways to reach out to new prospects, the marketing funnel, easy systems to engage affiliates. We could go on. The to-learn and to-do list is endless.

Spending your day fixing these problems make you feel productive. These are the tasks you are supposed to be doing for your business development, aren't they?

But you begin to notice that there's a force pulling you back, that problems become sticky or the actions you take are not as effective as you thought in moving you forward.

What's going on?

"The Thief" is at work. It is stealing your gifts from reaching new or bigger audiences. It is stealing your confidence. It is doing hidden damage and it's time to look within.

THE THIEF: PERFECTIONISM
Before you roll your eyes believing that you've heard about this and know what it is, I am giving you three self-evaluation questions to test if you really know how Perfectionism is the top thief stealing your gifts in your life.

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SELF-EVALUATION
Choose 1 answer from each question below. Go with the one that gets your guts.

1. What is the greatest anxiety you experience when you have to "go out there" and share your unique gifts, innovative approach or brain-blowing message?

A. Fear of messing up.
B. Fear of Failing.
C. Fear of being rejected or attacked.

2. What is the number one thing you keep procrastinating?

A. Sharing your struggles, the messy parts of your journey or any story that may throw doubt on your competence. You imagine all those strangers reading this, and you want to look good, to stand in your authority, so you start another draft.

B. Visibility. Doing that video. Going for Podcast interviews, etc. Every time you have to do it, you deal with doubts and anxiety, rewrite your message too many times. It's too much effort and too much time.

C. You feel that you are straight-jacketing your genius. You want to be authentic, but you catch yourself holding back, not sounding like you at all.. and then wonder if you are betraying yourself in your marketing.

3. What is the one thing that makes you secretly uncomfortable when you are connecting with new prospects or clients?

A. Making promises that you can help them succeed. You "know" you have helped others, but there's a feeling in the background that you are making false promises.

B. Tooting your own horn. You have authority and credentials; yet mentioning them feels like bragging and there are more important qualities that qualify you and are unique to you, but you fear bringing them to the table.

C. A feeling that you have not totally overcome your problem, that there are aspects or levels of your challenge that you are still trying to solve and therefore you don't have the authority to help others.

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So here's the result of your evaluation.
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If you chose ANY of these responses, Perfectionism is your enemy.

Let's check how Perfectionism is messing your capacity to expand the impact of your gifts in the world.

In this article I'm focusing on the first evaluation question. Feel free to ask me anything about the other two items below in the comments and I will answer. If there's enough interest, I'll do a series.

FEAR OF MESSING UP
Your anxiety escalates when you have to make your uniqueness, message or approach visible to a larger audience.

"What if they don't buy it? What if you mess up and someone challenges you? What if you get haters that attack you? What if only crickets are heard after your deliver? What if they outright reject you? What if you are too much or not enough in your delivery?"

What I've discovered about these fears can be sum up in a few paragraphs:

Firstly, human creative genius thrives on mistakes. No mistake = no success.

We learn what works by finding out what does not. This applies to all human endeavors, from learning to walk to business success.

When I'm doing a collage and the paper breaks or a spot of paint falls on the wrong place, I stop and smile. YES! I smile. And the reason I stop is not that I'm upset. It's that I'm being presented with a perceptual opportunity. It's as if Spirit took the brush from my hand and showed me a new, surprising brushstroke that took my collage to the next level.

BUT...

This culture shames us when we make mistakes. As a result, it kills our creative genius. Why would it do that? The Public Education structured around the 1940s was not designed to empower us as unique creators and innovators. (That was left to private, expensive schools for the rich.)

The goal of public education since it's inception was to generate a lineup of workers who could read instructions, do their sums and get mass production going. Now, of course, this type of education is obsolete. We leave in a time of innovation and corporations are currently finding it hard to find creators because they shame us out of it.

Why am I talking about the past?

I believe that we need to look both at the past and at the current culture to understand the hidden influences in our deep personal fears.

Our individualism often backfires and we find ourselves alone with our fears and shame. But when we understand that they are old narratives embedded in our psyche and energy field, then we actually find more effective tools to address them.

Consider then that you may still be trapped in the shaming of your bold, bright, beautiful true colors, of your creative genius and your fear to show your"freak flag" --which means that you carry a narrative with a belief that says "if I show my authentic self, I will be punished or rejected."

So when you delay, keep fixing details, endlessly rewrite, procrastinate, play it safe or hold back your magic mojo for fear of being rejected -- that is Perfectionism at work.

The "Story Field" carrying the Perfectionism beliefs and fears does not show until you try to break past the limiting boundaries installed in the field.

And those limits are definitely triggered when we go beyond business momentum to reach a wider audience.

And that Perfectionism is the result of a narrative installed in your psyche through our cultural domestication that says that if you make a mistake, you are a loser. If you fail, you are a loser. If your presentation is not top of the line and everyone loves it, then you are a... you got it. A loser.

And that is drivel. Every successful leader in the world has made numerous mistakes and has failed numerous time. It's how they got to be successful.

This is specially true of those leaders bringing in new ideas, innovations and ushering in transformation.

It's powerful to recognize that you are dealing with what I call "Story Fields" the energy patterns of old narratives that create a field that interferes with the way you see the present, creating disturbance and activating old limiting stories that hold you back.

WHAT TO DO?
You need to find and flip that "Story Field" to a new operating narrative in which mistakes=success. Once this new story is activated in your daily life, you will thrive and grow with ease and grace right now, just as you are.

This does not happen overnight. The early shaming installed an energy pattern with a narrative that became attached to your identity. So you need to consistently practice changing the narrative and the energy pattern.

I help women do this through consistent creative rituals, ceremonies, energy work and creative projects using the yin or feminine way that is more organic to us.

CELEBRATE FAILURE AS BREAKTHROUGH

Secondly, I realized at some point that the fear of failure is a cover-up. It hides the fear that you are not enough. And that is an old "Story Field" attached to your identity because of labels, judgments, prohibitions or even abuse from your past.

Of course you can fail! But that's not the point. Failure is the way through. Failure is not about "bad results" or not meeting goals. Failure is a breakthrough.

Every time I have failed in the way I went about something, in that very failure, I discovered a new method, approach or understanding that became a Growth Asset.

The reason you have gifts, talents, skills or a body of knowledge to share is because you have failed and that failure illuminated something that has now become a tool or system --a Growth Asset.

So why are you making failure the boogy man?

Let's go back to our cultural domestication. Think of getting an "F" at school. It was the ultimate humiliation and proof of your inadequacy. It brought shame to you and your family. It got you punished. It made you a loser.

That's the metaphor of how failure has been presented to most students in our society because in general a culture with a 1% of ultra rich people and 99% of people struggling economically wants that 99% to be afraid to fail so that they do not try to break through the limitations imposed by their class, gender or other conditions that keep them oppressed.

That was a mouthful, I know... but hear the river of passion talking through me. I love collage because life is a collage and we need to connect the dots between the personal and the political, the past and the present to reveal the layers of the collage we are creating with our work and life.

WHAT TO DO?
Firstly, set your intention to expand your impact in a new direction. Do not set it to succeed ~unless you've redefine success (which I help my clients do).

Instead set your intention to discover the best path for YOU to share your gifts with your value-match clients.

Did I just hear you release a breath you did not know you were holding?):

The boogeyman dissolves when we are fluid with the results and specific with our connection.

When you are fluid, you are co-creating with the universe and leaving space for the Unknown to build bridges. This relaxes your anxiety because the Perfectionist is always pressuring you to "make it happen" ~but a fluid goal acknowledges your Creation Partners, accepts that you are not alone and that things change and we need to be in the flow. This sends the Perfectionist into your Inner Healing clinic!

When your get more specific about your connection, to whom you are truly talking, who can really hear, accept, embrace and work with what you are saying? Who is ready to take what you offer and use it as a bridge to where they are going? This specificity helps you release a great part of the anxiety of stretching your reach.

You don't have to convince anyone. You are not talking to everyone. It does not matter if 10,000 people dislike what you are saying. You are not talking to them. You are addressing those who are already convinced, who love your Freak Flag and resonate with your story and gifts.

You are aiming to reach a much smaller number of people who are qualified for and interested in your approach. You don't need to convince them. In fact, being your bold, authentic self will magnetize them to you, just as you are.

Did I hear a sigh of relief?):

Secondly, acknowledge that business and life are a laboratory. This is the playground for your Creative Genius.

When we have just gotten good results and now want to expand, there is a temptation to hold on too tight, to not experiment.

Instead, you want to design experiments based on your Essence, priorities, vision and gifts and in how they match your clients needs.

What have you noticed in your clients' journey that brings out your genius? What has worked more that you love to do?

Try one thing. When it does not work, before you give up, look at the patterns. What exactly did not work? Why? Ask your prospects or clients. Small BETA groups are great for this exploration.

Seek to understand what part did not work and why and address that. Now your laboratory becomes a compass and a Growth Asset.

When you look at your data, track down your emotions, self-judgments and assumptions. Do you get attached to failure, thinking that you ARE a failure? Do you create drama about your data?

I've been through so many failures! I started observing the roller-coaster of up and down that was my desire to serve as long as I was measuring my impact and value ONLY by my results.

And I realized that I took anything that did not work as PROOF of my inadequacy. That's why I felt "down" when something did not work. I curled inward and felt abandoned by the universe. I felt stupid. I felt rejected.

Finally it dawn on me that the problem was not the "bad results." It was my interpretation of those results. I had my identity attached to being a good... (fill in the blanks: a good girl, good daughter, good mother, etc.) And when the result was not what I wanted, it confirmed my fear that I was not good enough.

I could go on, but I think you are getting the gist of it.

FIND THE CORE PROBLEM TO DISSOLVE IT

The problem is not "out there." It is "in here." You've stretched as much as you have through your courage and devotion. But to stretch more without breaking, it's time to dig deeper wells.

It's time to make the time to look at the stories of your shame, the fears you carry in your identity and the secret sense that your gifts are not really that valuable, that you are not that good, that you do not deserve success or that you really can't go about helping people change because you don't really make a difference.

These are deeper fears and beliefs that trigger your Perfectionist and ~believe it or not~ they make the obstacles "out there" sticky.

When you look at the core problem it feels huge. Shame of shining, self-value, trusting our gift's value, self-authority: those seem huge issues. They seem almost abstract, too general, too big.

So we avoid them and try to address stuff that is more "doable." But avoiding the inner issues does not diminish them. Instead they make the external problems sticky.

In other words: they don't go away. The problems multiply --or if one is solved another immediately rises. Why? Because you need them. They are serving as masks for your hidden fears.

THE CORE WORK IS INNER WORK

The core work you need to do in order to free the genius in you, express your magnificence and joyfully deliver your bold, bright, beautiful gifts in your message to an ever growing audience- that work is inner work.

It is all about the stories you carry, the judgments that have been dumped in your identity and the cracks in your self-value, confidence and sense of relevance.

These stories hold beliefs and fears that are stealing your magic mojo from those very prospects that would resonate with your bold genius.

Clear those up, and you will be able to smile at your mistakes and failures, knowing that they will become Growth Assets that enrich your offer to the world.

When you no longer attached mistakes and failures to your self-value or the value of your gifts, you have caught and vanquish the thief: Perfectionism.

You will notice that you no longer struggle. You enjoy your work and each mistake or failure becomes a step leading you forward with ease and grace.

You feel a steady, core value within yourself that keeps you anchored in your delight, uniqueness and authority.

You are always ready. You love to connect and communicate with your Tribe and it feels like an adventure that constantly enriches your life.

This is what I help you do: Clear the field by giving you an Internal Foundation for Stretching into Success that is woman-friendly and engages your creativity to help you shine without shame, drink deeply of your own value and stand rooted in your self-authority ~while connecting with your Tribe and delivering your message with fierce passion and honesty.

If you want to work on your Internal Foundation for Success, then get on the waiting list for my signature program:

"You are the Gift!
Share your Creations with the World"

While you wait for the program that starts on June 1, 2022 ~ you will get early bird notices for discounts and the ebook "My Shiny Story" where I share my hard-earned secrets for discovering and releasing the hidden obstacles that stand on the way of your power to share your gifts joyfully with the world.

Sing up for the waiting list here:
https://storyloversclub.newzenler.com/f/sheroe-journey

I'll close this message by affirming this:

Growing into your next expansive impact can be a joyful adventure that engages your Creative Genius and helps you grow wings from within.