Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 199 | How Pressure is Blocking Your Business Growth
Transcript
- 0:00Erin Gray: Welcome back.
- 0:00Erin Gray: I am so glad you're here.
- 0:02Erin Gray: Today I want to talk about something that is really near and dear to my heart, something that I'm very passionate about.
- 0:07Erin Gray: I have spent the last seven years becoming very intimate with this activity because it was missing in my life, and I believe that it is missing in a lot of women's lives, especially high-achieving women, women running businesses and carrying all the things, and that is play and pleasure.
- 0:23Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
- 0:24Erin Gray: I wanted to share a quick little update with you.
- 0:27Erin Gray: I am coming back to YouTube.
- 0:29Erin Gray: It feels really aligned for me where I am right now.
- 0:33Erin Gray: I have someone that I'm super excited about that's helping me edit and put everything up there for you guys.
- 0:39Erin Gray: You know, as a consumer, I love to watch people on YouTube, you know, when I listen to podcasts.
- 0:45Erin Gray: And also, you know, for me being on there to connect with you.
- 0:48Erin Gray: Like I love connecting.
- 0:50Erin Gray: Video is another way that I love to connect so that you can see me face to face and have these conversations in a deeper way.
- 0:57Erin Gray: I want to say that the episodes will be released on Thursdays.
- 1:01Erin Gray: This is going to allow more continuity across all of the platforms and everything that I am giving and sharing with you guys.
- 1:09Erin Gray: So I just want to say thank you for being here, for listening, for growing alongside me, for all of the changes that I've made along the way as I've, you know, learned and iterated and refined.
- 1:22Erin Gray: I just want to say thank you.
- 1:24Erin Gray: If you're new here, I want to say welcome.
- 1:26Erin Gray: So you can listen to me here like you continue to do.
- 1:30Erin Gray: And if you want to, come visit me and join me on YouTube.
- 1:33Erin Gray: I'll be there as well.
- 1:34Erin Gray: You know, many of us have been conditioned to believe success, or we've even accomplished or or achieved success through pressure, through discipline, through seriousness, through pushing what I call being always on and always connected.
- 1:49Erin Gray: Like my two-year-old, which is, ugh, I just, I still have a little bit of guilt when it comes to this, cringe a little bit when she knew my phone number because I was always on the phone talking to employees.
- 2:00Erin Gray: I was always on, always connected.
- 2:02Erin Gray: A two-year-old knowing my phone number.
- 2:04Erin Gray: Like it's crazy to think about that.
- 2:06Erin Gray: But I think a lot of us are always on, always connected.
- 2:08Erin Gray: And if we aren't physically talking, we're in our heads thinking about our business.
- 2:12Erin Gray: And we have had a lot of success from this energy, right?
- 2:15Erin Gray: We have a mountain of evidence because we have created the success in our lives from this place.
- 2:21Erin Gray: I know I resisted play for so long because I just had so much evidence that, you know what, it it worked this way.
- 2:28Erin Gray: And I want to say here that there isn't a right or a wrong way.
- 2:31Erin Gray: Like anything that I give you, this is the way you actually have to do it.
- 2:35Erin Gray: What I always want you to come back to is how does this actually feel in my body?
- 2:39Erin Gray: When you are prioritizing play, when you are prioritizing pleasure, that feels so much better in the body than it does pushing and forcing and not allowing yourself to have fun.
- 2:52Erin Gray: So that is what I would encourage you throughout this podcast to really think about is there is no right or wrong here, but what actually feels better.
- 3:00Erin Gray: And I want to define play and pleasure because they are different and I know we can use them interchangeably, but play is actually the act of doing and pleasure is the act of receiving, which I think we as women can get so much better and building that muscle.
- 3:14Erin Gray: So play is you're actively engaged for enjoyment, recreation, amusement, spontaneous exploration rather than for what they call a practical or a serious purpose.
- 3:24Erin Gray: It's often characterized by freedom, by imagination, and fun.
- 3:28Erin Gray: And pleasure is a feeling.
- 3:30Erin Gray: I think about play as like the action and pleasure is like receiving the feeling, right?
- 3:35Erin Gray: It's a feeling of enjoyment, of satisfaction, of happiness, of joy, of sensory delight.
- 3:41Erin Gray: Experience when something is enjoyable, comforting, and or rewarding.
- 3:46Erin Gray: So just remember, play is like what we do, and pleasure is what we, it's like an internal feeling if it's what we receive.
- 3:55Erin Gray: And I think so many of us have learned that if we relax too much, it's it's coming from this energy of fear.
- 4:01Erin Gray: If we relax too much, if we enjoy ourselves too much, if we have too much fun, right?
- 4:07Erin Gray: Or we rest too much, somehow we're gonna fall behind, we're gonna things are gonna fall apart, they won't get done, or insert whatever your brain is trying to give you to not allow yourself to have fun and pleasure.
- 4:20Erin Gray: And what I have actually come to realize in my own life and in helping clients actually leaning to this more is that we're not actually underperforming or feeling the way that we feel because we need to do more, right?
- 4:34Erin Gray: We feel this way because we have become disconnected from our bodies, from joy, from having fun again, right?
- 4:42Erin Gray: Like when we started our businesses, I'm sure most of, if not all of you, started your business to make more money than wherever you were at and to have fun and to enjoy your life.
- 4:52Erin Gray: And along the way, somewhere we have become disconnected, disconnected from our body, from joy, from spaciousness, from luxury.
- 5:00Erin Gray: And I don't mean luxury as in the handbags.
- 5:02Erin Gray: If that's something that you love, great.
- 5:04Erin Gray: But what I mean is like allowing your nervous system space to be disconnected for things that actually like what are we doing all of this for?
- 5:13Erin Gray: Like, what actually makes life worth living?
- 5:16Erin Gray: Like we have a business, we're generating income to have fun, to enjoy ourselves.
- 5:20Erin Gray: So when we disconnect from pleasure, what often happens is business feels heavier than it actually needs to be.
- 5:27Erin Gray: That's like what I call like living in our heads, not actually in our bodies.
- 5:31Erin Gray: So, how that actually shows up, because we are living in our heads, we start forcing things, we start trying to make analytical, logical decisions.
- 5:39Erin Gray: We overwork, we create things from pressure.
- 5:42Erin Gray: I talked about this, the root center in a couple previous episodes.
- 5:45Erin Gray: I'll put that link in the show notes.
- 5:47Erin Gray: Like we're creating things from a forcing, pushing, go get it energy versus and more so masculine energy versus this feminine energy of receiving, of allowing, of having fun, of enjoying ourselves.
- 6:01Erin Gray: And so we aren't actually stepping.
- 6:04Erin Gray: I don't think that we are actually stepping in into our most powerful selves because I think our true power actually comes.
- 6:12Erin Gray: And yes, we dance in the feminine and the masculine energy, but I think a lot of our power comes from that very feminine energy, that receiving, being regulated, having your nervous system feel calm, feeling open and creative, like safe and connected.
- 6:27Erin Gray: When we feel joy and when we feel freedom, when we feel fun, like that's life force energy.
- 6:33Erin Gray: It's coming from within us.
- 6:35Erin Gray: It wants to be birthed and you know, come up and out of us, right?
- 6:39Erin Gray: It's not something that we are trying to like seek and get from somewhere else outside of us, which I think a lot of us are doing because we feel so depleted on the inside.
- 6:48Erin Gray: So when we are telling ourselves, oh, well, when our business hits X or when profit does this or when whatever, insert whatever it is for you, then we can actually relax.
- 6:58Erin Gray: We are moving the goalposts, we aren't actually enjoying ourselves now.
- 7:03Erin Gray: And so I want to say that play matters, pleasure matters, having fun matters, laughing matters, walking outside, grounding yourself.
- 7:12Erin Gray: Like it's been so beautiful outside the last couple of weeks.
- 7:15Erin Gray: Like I've been living in the hammock.
- 7:17Erin Gray: Like, what are the things that you love to do that are so fun and joyful for you that aren't attached to some money number, that aren't gonna get you to some place?
- 7:25Erin Gray: You know, I think a lot of times we even take play and then we make it have to have like an ROI.
- 7:30Erin Gray: It doesn't need to have an ROI.
- 7:32Erin Gray: The ROI is I feel good in my body.
- 7:34Erin Gray: I feel rejuvenated.
- 7:35Erin Gray: Like there isn't a number, and although it can, right?
- 7:40Erin Gray: But that's not the goal.
- 7:41Erin Gray: The goal is just to have fun and enjoy yourself and to feel pleasure and receive and to have fun.
- 7:48Erin Gray: So I also want to say here that sounds so simple, but like taking a lunch with no phone, whether it's taking yourself out to lunch or if you work from home, eating at the kitchen table, away from your desk, not answering any phone calls, not reading a book, not watching a YouTube video, not listening to a podcast?
- 8:07Erin Gray: Like, can you just sit and enjoy yourself and enjoy a good lunch for you and nourish your body?
- 8:12Erin Gray: Really start to become more present in your body and allow and notice the sensations that you feel.
- 8:19Erin Gray: When are you contracting?
- 8:20Erin Gray: When are you feeling tightness in your chest?
- 8:23Erin Gray: When are you feeling that pressure?
- 8:25Erin Gray: When are you feeling more relaxed?
- 8:27Erin Gray: When are you feeling more in your feminine energy, allowing and receiving?
- 8:32Erin Gray: So these are all things that aren't distractions in our business, which comes from a very lack energy.
- 8:39Erin Gray: This is play actually adds to.
- 8:42Erin Gray: It is an addition to.
- 8:43Erin Gray: It is coming from a place of abundance.
- 8:45Erin Gray: And what I want to say here too is that when we are connected to our bodies, when we are connected to pleasure, we are magnetic, right?
- 8:54Erin Gray: That is something that like oozes out of us.
- 8:57Erin Gray: People sense that because our nervous system is calm, because we're having fun, because it feels good to be around people that like to have fun and they are enjoying themselves and they're not taking themselves so seriously.
- 9:10Erin Gray: Think about when you are in your feminine energy, how much I downloads you receive and ideas come and intuition gets stronger.
- 9:18Erin Gray: And I don't want to say necessarily louder, but it definitely gets stronger.
- 9:21Erin Gray: We get tapped into our intuition.
- 9:23Erin Gray: I definitely get more downloads when I am playing and when I'm just being in my natural state, which I think a lot of us is our feminine energy.
- 9:32Erin Gray: It's not to say that we don't go in our masculine, right?
- 9:34Erin Gray: There are things that we do in our business that are very masculine energy, but a lot of it is more so in it.
- 9:39Erin Gray: Our baseline needs to be more in that feminine receiving energy.
- 9:42Erin Gray: So we can stop gripping so tightly.
- 9:45Erin Gray: We can become more available for different solutions and ideas and our creativity.
- 9:50Erin Gray: And this matters in our business.
- 9:51Erin Gray: I think that the business world, you know, I grew up in the financial industry, I grew up, you know, in the construction industry, which is a very masculine dominated, those two industries were very masculine dominated.
- 10:03Erin Gray: So I grew up in very like pushing and outward masculine energy.
- 10:07Erin Gray: And I've had to retrain myself and my body to be in more of this feminine.
- 10:11Erin Gray: And I think we have been kind of sold a bill of goods that like that's what business is supposed to be about.
- 10:17Erin Gray: I don't think it actually is.
- 10:18Erin Gray: I mean, I've worked with a lot of men that felt very stressed, even though that's the way that we've been taught to be, to go, to do, to, you know, constantly be moving for something, towards something.
- 10:29Erin Gray: But even with them, I could see it in their nervous system, how they felt stressed.
- 10:35Erin Gray: So, how can we be more in our feminine flow?
- 10:38Erin Gray: How can we be playing more?
- 10:40Erin Gray: What can we be doing?
- 10:42Erin Gray: And if you're sitting here thinking, Erin, I don't even know where to start, that's okay.
- 10:45Erin Gray: That's exactly where I was.
- 10:47Erin Gray: I was like, what did I?
- 10:48Erin Gray: I had to ask my mom, like, what did I actually like to do as a kid?
- 10:51Erin Gray: And she was like, Well, you always like to swim, you like to be outside.
- 10:54Erin Gray: And I think that this is a space for you to also allow yourself to try a lot of different things.
- 11:00Erin Gray: You won't know until you like it, or you try it until I should say, do it, right?
- 11:04Erin Gray: You won't know until you do it if you actually like it.
- 11:07Erin Gray: So allow yourself one or two different activities a week to get into to see what do you actually enjoy doing?
- 11:13Erin Gray: Maybe it's walking.
- 11:14Erin Gray: Like for me, it's walking, it's traveling, it's being in nature, it's lying in my hammock, it's reading a book.
- 11:21Erin Gray: And it doesn't always have to be a business book either.
- 11:24Erin Gray: It's like, what are the things that you truly enjoy to do?
- 11:28Erin Gray: Like allow just sitting on the couch watching the birds outside my backyard.
- 11:33Erin Gray: Like, what are those things that bring you true joy and play with this and allow yourself to see what are the things that you actually like?
- 11:42Erin Gray: And I think so many of us are actually trying to create or build and grow our businesses from a place of deprivation, right?
- 11:52Erin Gray: You get to do that win, you get to have that win.
- 11:56Erin Gray: You don't, you haven't earned that yet, versus from this place of true self-love, abundance in all areas, abundance with time, abundance with money, abundance with self-love for ourselves.
- 12:09Erin Gray: And so when we are feeling deprived, when we are feeling less than full, right?
- 12:15Erin Gray: Maybe even empty, we're trying to create overflow flow from this place, from burnout, from deprivation, from not allowing ourselves to have what we want along the way, which is such a sneaky little way that we beat ourselves up.
- 12:30Erin Gray: So at some point, we have to start asking ourselves new questions, right?
- 12:33Erin Gray: If we want to have a different outcome, we have to take different action, which is always going to come from a different way of being, our identity, which comes from our thoughts and our beliefs and our feelings, right?
- 12:44Erin Gray: So, what are some questions that we could ask ourselves?
- 12:46Erin Gray: Like, what if joy was actually productive?
- 12:49Erin Gray: Like, make your brain answer these questions, like this, I resisted this for so long, versus what if joy actually was productive?
- 12:55Erin Gray: What if it actually allowed me to get me to where I wanted to go even faster than how I did it before?
- 13:00Erin Gray: What if pleasure actually enhanced my business instead of stifling it?
- 13:05Erin Gray: What if play was actually part of wealth?
- 13:07Erin Gray: Because when you think about it, when you think about play, when you think about having pleasure, receiving pleasure, think about where you are on the vibrational scale.
- 13:14Erin Gray: You are at a much higher vibration.
- 13:16Erin Gray: So what if these things were actually true?
- 13:18Erin Gray: What if this version of success that I actually desired actually required more softness, more letting go, less trying to control, more trust, less force.
- 13:29Erin Gray: So today or this week, what I want you to do, and I invite you to notice is where in your life have you become too serious?
- 13:36Erin Gray: And I want to say this here too.
- 13:38Erin Gray: I always tell my clients where we notice where maybe we aren't, you know, like let's say you aren't being playful in your business, there are areas in your life where you are being playful.
- 13:48Erin Gray: And what I always encourage my clients to do is graft from that place.
- 13:51Erin Gray: So if you notice you are playful maybe with your partner or your spouse, your husband, use that, right?
- 13:57Erin Gray: There's different thoughts and feelings and beliefs there that you're doing that with him that you're not doing in your business.
- 14:03Erin Gray: So really sit down and think about what is the difference?
- 14:05Erin Gray: What am I telling myself that I get to do that with him that I don't get to do that in my business?
- 14:09Erin Gray: So ask yourself, where in my life am I being too serious?
- 14:13Erin Gray: Where am I delaying joy or withholding?
- 14:15Erin Gray: I should even say withholding joy until some later period of time.
- 14:19Erin Gray: Where am I waiting to feel successful before allowing myself to have just pleasure?
- 14:25Erin Gray: Like you don't have to earn, like I always say, you don't have to earn the fun.
- 14:28Erin Gray: You get to have fun just because you're a human that exists on this planet.
- 14:31Erin Gray: Where could you actually bring more play into your life next week?
- 14:35Erin Gray: Like sit down and ask yourself, like, what are the things that I used to love doing as a kid?
- 14:39Erin Gray: And start doing those things.
- 14:41Erin Gray: Like schedule it in your calendar.
- 14:42Erin Gray: If that's like that's where I had to start.
- 14:44Erin Gray: I had to start scheduling fun.
- 14:46Erin Gray: And I know it might sound crazy, but I had to start scheduling fun in my calendar.
- 14:50Erin Gray: So start doing that because what I have experienced in my own life, the next level doesn't actually come through grinding harder.
- 14:56Erin Gray: It comes from feeling more alive.
- 14:57Erin Gray: And so if you are a woman who wants to have more fun in her life and her business, or if you're someone who's like, Erin, I don't even know where to start, that's okay.
- 15:07Erin Gray: I didn't either.
- 15:08Erin Gray: I had to like figure out how to play.
- 15:11Erin Gray: And I know that sounds really crazy, but like that was an exercise that I spent time doing.
- 15:16Erin Gray: Like, what does play even look like?
- 15:17Erin Gray: If you're not trying to focus on making money, like how does that work?
- 15:21Erin Gray: Like I really had to work on just having fun for the sake of having fun.
- 15:25Erin Gray: I want you to know that I'm here for you.
- 15:27Erin Gray: If you want a strategic partner, someone that can guide you in your business, help teach you how to have fun, enjoy this ride that we call life.
- 15:36Erin Gray: You can apply to work with me.
- 15:38Erin Gray: I put the link in the show notes for you.
- 15:40Erin Gray: As always, you know, take what I tell you and take one little bit or piece or nugget.
- 15:46Erin Gray: And like I said, journal this week.
- 15:48Erin Gray: Like, how can I have more fun?
- 15:50Erin Gray: What can play look like for me?
- 15:52Erin Gray: How can I incorporate it into my business?
- 15:55Erin Gray: And I'll see you in the next episode.