Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP.70: Are You Playing Small? 7 Signs You’re Holding Yourself Back in Life and Business | The Ambitious Podcast

Transcript

EP.70: Are You Playing Small? 7 Signs You’re Holding Yourself Back in Life and Business | The Ambitious Podcast · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:00
  Who am I to be successful? Who am I to start a business?
• 0:03
  My identity was really the thing that was going to keep me back
• 0:06
  in business. They're going to figure out that
• 0:08
  I don't deserve to be here. They're going to figure out that
• 0:11
  I'm not smart enough, I'm not advanced enough, I'm not
• 0:13
  experienced enough. There are people who will get
• 0:16
  uncomfortable about you being successful.
• 0:18
  I had to be consciously willing to make other people
• 0:22
  uncomfortable. Am I playing small within my
• 0:25
  business? Am I playing small within my
• 0:27
  life? If I grow and if I band and if I
• 0:30
  really tap into that level of ambition and success and
• 0:34
  achievement that I see for myself, will people still love
• 0:39
  me? Hello and welcome back to the
• 0:42
  Ambitious Podcast. I am so excited for today's
• 0:45
  topic because this is something that I know so many women
• 0:50
  struggle with and even myself I have struggled with, which is
• 0:53
  this idea of am I playing small within my business?
• 0:57
  Am I playing small within my life?
• 1:00
  And I think obviously you listening to this are listening
• 1:03
  to the show because you are just like this show's name.
• 1:06
  You are ambitious, you are driven.
• 1:09
  And I think a lot of the things that I see in many women is them
• 1:13
  asking themselves and reflecting on whether they are ambitious
• 1:17
  enough sometimes. Am I pushing enough?
• 1:20
  Am I growing enough? Am I being seen enough?
• 1:23
  And so you ask yourself questions like what if I and
• 1:26
  meant for more and I'm wasting time right now?
• 1:29
  Or you ask yourself, why do I keep playing safe or keep
• 1:33
  playing small when I fully know that I am capable of more?
• 1:38
  Am I too much within what I'm doing in my life or business?
• 1:41
  Or maybe am I enough? Is this enough?
• 1:45
  And questions also with if I, and this is one that I struggled
• 1:49
  with a lot, if I grow and if I expand and if I really tap into
• 1:55
  that level of ambition and success and achievement that I
• 1:59
  see for myself, will people still love me?
• 2:04
  Will people still be interested in, you know, being in a
• 2:07
  relationship with me, being my friend?
• 2:09
  Like, can I potentially grow too much that I outgrow my
• 2:14
  environment so much that I have to leave everything behind in
• 2:16
  order to achieve the thing that I want?
• 2:19
  And so today's topic was really inspired by so many
• 2:23
  conversations that I have with women, you know, who are peers,
• 2:27
  who just are again, going for big, big things in their life.
• 2:30
  It's inspired by conversations I have with clients about their
• 2:34
  ambition and their drive and trying to understand what is too
• 2:37
  much, what is too little, and trying to navigate that
• 2:40
  spectrum. And it's honestly very much
• 2:43
  motivated by as well, my experience of business and of
• 2:47
  life and wondering what is too much and also what is not enough
• 2:53
  for what I know I am capable of and what's possible for me.
• 2:56
  And so today we're going to dive into a couple different things.
• 3:00
  We're going to start off with giving you some signs and some
• 3:03
  almost alarms I want you to think about or symptoms that are
• 3:06
  going to come up in your business or in your life that
• 3:09
  really are a sign or an indicator to you that you are
• 3:12
  playing small. I want to help you to basically
• 3:15
  have an assessment to go through your life, your business, your
• 3:19
  mindset and say, am I falling into this bucket?
• 3:21
  Am I somebody who is the victim of playing small?
• 3:25
  I also want to unpack why do we play small?
• 3:28
  Where does playing small in our business or in our life kind of
• 3:32
  come from? Why do we end up, you know,
• 3:34
  minimizing ourselves from what we know we're capable of and
• 3:38
  what we can achieve? And I also want to give you some
• 3:41
  questions to reflect on how playing small is actually
• 3:45
  showing up for you. I also though, don't want to
• 3:48
  just give you a checklist of things that are going to help
• 3:50
  you to identify, yes, I am playing small, but I also want
• 3:54
  to give you a way to overcome that.
• 3:55
  I also want to give you some steps and some action items that
• 3:58
  you can take that will help you to really know how to stop
• 4:02
  playing small and fully step into the potential that you know
• 4:05
  is possible for you. So listen, often times, like
• 4:17
  many things in our mindset and many things in business, we
• 4:20
  don't we kind of can't see the forest from the trees, right,
• 4:23
  because we're so deep in it. And so one of the things that I
• 4:27
  find really valuable for myself in business and in life is being
• 4:31
  able to have questions I can ask myself or self assessments in a
• 4:36
  way that allow me to say, OK, do I feel like any of that
• 4:40
  resonates with me? And if it resonates with me, it
• 4:43
  usually the starting point of change for me because often
• 4:46
  times, you know, we're so resistant to someone saying,
• 4:48
  hey, you're playing small in your business.
• 4:50
  So if I said to you, who's listening?
• 4:53
  You know, you're playing small in your life, you're playing
• 4:55
  small in your business, your first reaction might be, well,
• 4:57
  no. And you start to minimize it.
• 4:59
  You start to say, well, do I do I resonate with that?
• 5:02
  Do I agree with that label? But the thing that I've realized
• 5:05
  in business is that sometimes we're not quite ready to accept
• 5:09
  this label. We're not quite ready to accept
• 5:11
  the diagnosis of, hey, you're playing small.
• 5:15
  But instead, we might be ready to have a self-assessment of the
• 5:19
  symptoms. It gets us to this place of, OK,
• 5:22
  well, if all of these symptoms fit for me, there might be some
• 5:27
  truth here. And so the thing that I know,
• 5:29
  and this was something that was passed on from a mentor to me
• 5:33
  and I just, I love the basic, you know, application of it
• 5:36
  because it's so easy to integrate, which is if something
• 5:40
  lands for you, if you feel like something tickles in you like
• 5:43
  when I say some of these signs and if you're like, I feel a
• 5:46
  little bit called out right now, I feel like Kate kind of, you
• 5:49
  know, somehow knows what I'm up to over here.
• 5:52
  If there is an aspect of that that's coming up for you,
• 5:55
  there's a reason. And the tickle test is what he
• 5:59
  called it. The tickle test is basically
• 6:02
  this idea, or some people call it the trigger test.
• 6:05
  If it triggers you, if it tickles something inside of you,
• 6:08
  there's a reason. And that's because it hits a
• 6:10
  chord with you. You have an aspect, even a
• 6:12
  small, tiny amount of that that helps you to know.
• 6:15
  That actually kind of might be true for me.
• 6:17
  And that's the starting point of change it brings us.
• 6:20
  We've done in other episodes, you know, this model of the
• 6:23
  stages of awareness, right? And the the stages of, you know,
• 6:26
  competence and the stages of awareness.
• 6:27
  And what happens is when you're going through and you say, yeah,
• 6:31
  that sign fits for me today or that one doesn't fit for me,
• 6:34
  what's going to happen is you're actually adjusting your
• 6:37
  understanding of awareness of playing small.
• 6:40
  So I want you to kind of go in and ask yourself, as I list
• 6:43
  these out for you, what are these feel true for me?
• 6:46
  And if you feel like you have one or even multiple that feel
• 6:49
  true for you, it's an opportunity to get curious.
• 6:52
  It's an opportunity to say, OK, well, I'm curious, am I playing
• 6:56
  small? And this is going to help you to
• 6:58
  diagnose that. So I want to 1st talk a little
• 7:01
  bit about how this shows up from a mindset perspective, right?
• 7:04
  Because a lot of us typically will attribute playing small to
• 7:09
  being a mindset thing. Oh, it's, it's the mindset of me
• 7:12
  playing small. So one of the things that I see
• 7:15
  is people who avoid visibility you, you literally avoid being
• 7:19
  seen. You don't want to necessarily
• 7:21
  show up online fully authentically or too much.
• 7:24
  You feel like you kind of, you know, are resistant to speaking
• 7:28
  publicly. So you don't love, you know,
• 7:30
  being seen, for example, even on something as small as a group
• 7:33
  call, right? Or you don't believe that you
• 7:35
  have the ability to be seen by masses of people.
• 7:38
  And oftentimes people who are playing small struggle to market
• 7:43
  themselves because they don't feel comfortable to be seen by
• 7:46
  other people. I also see, especially when it
• 7:49
  comes to mindset, and this is a very, very big indicator,
• 7:52
  especially among scaling women, is you will downplay your wins.
• 7:56
  The amount of women that I have talked to you who say, yeah, you
• 8:00
  know, I did sign my highest contract ever, but, you know, it
• 8:03
  wasn't X amount or I, I did, yeah, you know, hit that marker.
• 8:07
  But like, I was hoping to do more.
• 8:09
  Like they instantly have this thing that they're excited about
• 8:12
  for 30 seconds as an achievement.
• 8:14
  And then as soon as they have the awareness that they've
• 8:16
  slightly noted to it, they downplay the rest of it and it
• 8:19
  instantly becomes insignificant. And so they really avoid
• 8:24
  celebration and often times, to be honest, even avoid sharing
• 8:29
  wins. You're not comfortable sharing
• 8:31
  wins, you feel uncomfortable celebrating yourself.
• 8:35
  I also see women from a mindset perspective really struggling
• 8:38
  and questioning their value, their pricing, their legitimacy
• 8:42
  as a business owner. I see a lot of the times that
• 8:45
  they're, they're second guessing everything.
• 8:47
  They believe that there is this true, you know, one way or right
• 8:50
  way of doing things. And so because of that, you're
• 8:53
  second guessing every decision. And most obviously is when
• 8:59
  someone is setting very low or low value goals.
• 9:05
  And what I mean by that is, like every goal that they set is
• 9:08
  often rooted in this idea of it being, to be honest, a safe
• 9:11
  goal. It's not really stretchy.
• 9:13
  It's not something that's going to push you outside your comfort
• 9:16
  zone. It's a very safe goal because
• 9:18
  when you do the stretch goal, it pushes you and it scares you.
• 9:23
  And it means that by setting that stretch goal, you would
• 9:25
  actually have to step into your potential.
• 9:27
  And that's something that makes you uncomfortable.
• 9:29
  So instead, we will set safe, approachable goals as the way we
• 9:33
  do goal setting. And part of it is actually an
• 9:36
  indication of you really playing small.
• 9:39
  Now, this also influences decision making and also
• 9:42
  strategy aspects as well. So, you know, one of the ways
• 9:45
  that I see a lot of playing small is also getting so stuck
• 9:50
  in the weeds of over planning, over conceptualizing, over
• 9:54
  strategizing. You're somebody who is
• 9:56
  researching constantly and you're planning constantly, but
• 10:00
  you're under implementing. You're not taking action, you're
• 10:03
  not actually moving the pieces and getting action and movement
• 10:07
  into the goals that you have. And also a very clear indicator
• 10:14
  is this hesitancy again around movement in action also
• 10:18
  correlating into people getting support.
• 10:21
  And it doesn't necessarily mean just as a business coach for
• 10:24
  something like me as an investment.
• 10:25
  It can also be in hiring team to support.
• 10:28
  It can be in hiring consultants to support you.
• 10:31
  It can be hiring agency to support.
• 10:33
  It really is a hesitancy in investing into the business
• 10:38
  because again, that would be correlated to it growing and
• 10:41
  continuing to expand. So there's look at this comfort
• 10:43
  level and keeping it the way that it is right now.
• 10:47
  And there's often I kind of when we went back to, you know,
• 10:51
  questioning your value as a mindset because of that, the
• 10:54
  action around that is often times people under charge.
• 10:58
  You're under pricing for what it is that you offer and what you
• 11:02
  provide, even though you know it's exceptionally valuable and
• 11:05
  can really help and change people's lives, you really
• 11:07
  undervalue what you bring to the table.
• 11:10
  And you price, to be honest, based off of fear.
• 11:13
  You price off of this concern and worry.
• 11:16
  Is that too much? Are people going to pay that?
• 11:19
  Am I asking too much of my pricing?
• 11:22
  And you make a lot of assumptions around fear rather
• 11:26
  than actually evaluating your business and your offerings
• 11:28
  based off the value that you provide.
• 11:31
  And so there's a lot around the strategy bucket that will come
• 11:34
  up. But the other thing that we also
• 11:36
  know is that this also is not untouched when it comes to your
• 11:41
  leadership in your team. There's also often times the
• 11:45
  person who's playing small really refuses to delegate.
• 11:49
  They refuse to build a team. And even when they are
• 11:53
  overwhelmed and you are burnt out and you're like, I don't
• 11:56
  have any more in me because I feel like I'm working nonstop,
• 11:59
  you still have a resistance to delegation and you still have a
• 12:02
  resistance to hiring. And even when you hire, you may
• 12:06
  be at a place where you kind of micromanage.
• 12:08
  You're not really trusting others with your business and
• 12:11
  you feel like, and I often hear this and this is something that
• 12:14
  for some of you may be very triggering.
• 12:17
  I often hear, you know, no one can do it like me.
• 12:20
  Like I've tried to hire, I've tried to get people in the
• 12:23
  business, but I just really struggle to find somebody who
• 12:25
  can do what I do. And so when you are building
• 12:30
  your team or when you're working even with clients, there's often
• 12:34
  this struggle because you are burnt out because you're doing
• 12:38
  everything alone. And then you also are struggling
• 12:40
  to hire because you feel like no one can do what you do.
• 12:42
  And even when you hire, you're kind of holding the reins very
• 12:45
  tight because you don't believe someone can fully step in and
• 12:48
  take over. And the other thing that I also
• 12:51
  see is people who have lack of boundaries.
• 12:54
  So you are somebody who is not enforcing boundaries, for
• 12:57
  example, with clients, you're not enforcing boundaries with
• 12:59
  team, and you often let the environment dictate how you
• 13:05
  operate the business. So we can see here that there's
• 13:09
  a lot of indicators of quote UN quote, playing small.
• 13:13
  Now, the last being excuses. And this is something I see in a
• 13:19
  lot of different buckets. We have excuses around how much
• 13:21
  time you have. You have excuses around how much
• 13:23
  money or the circumstances of the market or internally within
• 13:28
  the business or your team. There's a lot of reasons why you
• 13:31
  can't grow. There's a lot of reasons why you
• 13:34
  can't scale. And another thing that comes up
• 13:38
  around that as well is procrastination, right?
• 13:41
  Where we constantly see people making excuses as to why they
• 13:45
  have to push off the launch of a new offer or, oh, I have to
• 13:48
  rebrand again. I need to rebrand and, you know,
• 13:51
  really establish the branding or I need to, you know, get more
• 13:55
  clarity and do more planning before I do it because only then
• 13:59
  will I actually be ready to take action.
• 14:02
  And I would say of all of it, the thing that I know is one of
• 14:07
  the top symptoms or indicators of any clients that I work with
• 14:11
  is comparison. And this is when you are
• 14:15
  constantly looking at what are other people doing?
• 14:18
  What are they integrating? What are they doing as a
• 14:21
  strategy? What is their approach instead
• 14:24
  of owning your unique abilities, owning your unique vision,
• 14:28
  owning your unique plan? And I find comparison is such a,
• 14:34
  it's such an entry point for me, for most people around where
• 14:38
  their mindsets at because when someone really, really struggles
• 14:41
  with comparison, it's an indicator of lack of vision,
• 14:44
  lack of trust in themselves. Because I'll be honest, I and
• 14:51
  I'm very blessed in this way. And it's not, it's not something
• 14:55
  that I'm saying from a high horse, but I think it's been
• 14:57
  something that's helped me so much as a skill in business is I
• 15:01
  realize that like, I don't need to look at what other people are
• 15:04
  doing. I don't need to see what it's so
• 15:06
  and so do is their offer. How is that person marketing?
• 15:08
  How is that person branding? Frankly, it's irrelevant to me.
• 15:12
  If I'm doing market research around my industry, it's
• 15:14
  different. But I'm not scrolling on social
• 15:17
  media being like, oh, so and so is doing this.
• 15:19
  Should I do that? Or like they price their offer
• 15:22
  this way? Should that affect my pricing?
• 15:24
  Right. So like there's market research
• 15:26
  and then there's comparison and the thing that I explained to
• 15:29
  clients, they say, well, what's the difference?
• 15:31
  If I'm consuming my competitor, you know, I can say, oh, I just
• 15:34
  like I'm consuming them because I want to see what they're up
• 15:36
  to. I said the difference between
• 15:38
  market research and comparison is the emotion that you feel
• 15:43
  when you consume your competitor.
• 15:44
  If I'm doing market research on my competitor and I'm looking at
• 15:48
  the reels or I'm looking at their offer, their mastermind or
• 15:51
  their coaching or their intensives or events, whatever
• 15:53
  it might be and I am consuming them, I go through their stuff
• 15:57
  and I'm like interesting, OK, great, that's good information.
• 15:59
  And I go about my day. That is very different than me
• 16:02
  going to my competitors page and be like her branding, her price
• 16:06
  is higher than mine or oh, her price is lower than mine.
• 16:08
  Why? And I start to kind of get into
• 16:10
  this emotional reaction. Consuming A competitor
• 16:15
  comparison is not about whether you consume.
• 16:19
  It's about the emotion that you have after or during your
• 16:23
  consumption. And so that is something I want
• 16:25
  to just give as a distinction because I know many people will
• 16:28
  say, well, I do consume my competitors and like, I watch
• 16:30
  them, I support them. And hey, like I am aware of who
• 16:33
  my competitors are and I, I give them their flowers and I root
• 16:36
  them on, but I'm not emotional about anything they're doing
• 16:38
  because really it doesn't impact me.
• 16:40
  And I find that the playing small, we, we stay small because
• 16:46
  we believe that maybe our vision is not enough or what we desire
• 16:50
  for our business is not enough or maybe it's not right because
• 16:53
  so and so is doing this. And so I find that comparison
• 16:56
  one, if I could label one indicator of something I see of
• 17:01
  people who play small, people who compare often compare
• 17:05
  because of lack of confidence. And when you lack confidence in
• 17:09
  yourself and your business, you're going to ultimately,
• 17:12
  because of lack of confidence, play small because you're
• 17:15
  questioning everything. You don't trust yourself, you
• 17:17
  don't have a real vision of where you're going that's not
• 17:20
  influenced by other people. And because that you're
• 17:22
  questioning every piece. So when you're questioning every
• 17:25
  single piece, it's very difficult to build.
• 17:27
  It's very difficult to scale. So I just want to accentuate
• 17:30
  that one because there was a really important one when it
• 17:32
  comes to understanding the indicators of playing small.
• 17:36
  Now say we're listing that off and say we're going through all
• 17:38
  this right and you're like, OK, some of that feels true for me.
• 17:42
  Maybe I am, you know, scared of showing up and I feel like I'm,
• 17:45
  I am afraid to be seen. I know I have the possibility to
• 17:48
  achieve more, but I don't really feel comfortable to tap into
• 17:51
  that. I do struggle with comparison.
• 17:53
  I do feel like I lack boundaries or maybe I am under charging or
• 17:57
  scared to increase my prices because I wonder, will it be
• 18:00
  received well? Is that too much?
• 18:03
  If we feel like we see ourselves within this, the question is
• 18:06
  like, why are we like this, right?
• 18:08
  Why do why do we have this tendency to play small?
• 18:13
  Where does it come from? And so there's a couple
• 18:16
  different root causes as to why we play small.
• 18:19
  And listen, if you guys know me, you know that I am a data nerd
• 18:23
  and I'm also somebody who I find for myself, I love mindset, but
• 18:29
  part of the reason that I love mindset is the psychology basis
• 18:32
  underneath it. And I want to understand why am
• 18:35
  I the way that I am or why do I struggle with XYZ?
• 18:38
  Where does it come from? And so we've had a lot of guests
• 18:40
  even on this show who talked about, you know, childhood
• 18:43
  trauma and talked about the subconscious.
• 18:45
  And so I find that once I have an understanding of the root of
• 18:50
  where something comes from, it gives me context as to how I can
• 18:53
  fix it. And So what I want to do is
• 18:56
  break down a couple of the different psychological
• 18:59
  principles that are the reason we will fall into the pattern of
• 19:04
  playing small. And I want to share this because
• 19:06
  I think sometimes back to again, these symptoms and hey, I'm
• 19:10
  diagnosing myself. I'm somebody who's playing
• 19:11
  small. The thing that I don't want is
• 19:14
  for you to blame yourself. I want you to use this
• 19:16
  information to better understand yourself so that you can use
• 19:19
  this as empowerment to change. One of the reasons that I'm such
• 19:24
  a big advocate for therapy is because when we start to give
• 19:27
  context, understanding of who we are, we're able to then take
• 19:30
  that level of awareness and empowerment and choose to
• 19:33
  change. And so that's what we're going
• 19:35
  to dive into now is going into, OK, well, what are the root
• 19:37
  causes of why I am someone who's playing small?
• 19:40
  One of them for sure is the fear of failure.
• 19:44
  So this from a psychology perspective, is actually called
• 19:47
  loss aversion, which is where our brain is actually wired to
• 19:51
  avoid loss more strongly than it seeks gain.
• 19:56
  OK, so this means that your body, your mind from a
• 20:00
  psychology basis is literally wired to see taking bold action
• 20:05
  as feeling risky. And what it does is it's it's
• 20:09
  wired to help you to avoid failing.
• 20:12
  Your body, your actual internal mechanism is keeping you from
• 20:16
  avoiding failure. And so this is important because
• 20:19
  we often will see that people believe it is better to stay
• 20:24
  unseen than to risk being seen and failing.
• 20:29
  And this is, to me, unlocked a lot because it allowed me to see
• 20:33
  that, OK, this is not just because I'm not driven.
• 20:36
  It's not because I'm not ambitious.
• 20:38
  It's not because, you know, I lack the motivation to go for
• 20:41
  big things, but my actual internal wiring in my mind and
• 20:45
  in my body is wired to keep me from failing.
• 20:50
  So I have to consciously, which again is why we talk so much
• 20:53
  about conscious and subconscious.
• 20:55
  I have to consciously decide that I am going to plant
• 20:59
  different wiring to be able to get a different outcome, to be
• 21:02
  able to achieve different results.
• 21:04
  Because I know that even though my mind is doing all this to
• 21:08
  protect me, we know that speaking on a stage is not the
• 21:12
  same in the fight or flight feeling as being chased by a
• 21:16
  tiger. So while our brain has that
• 21:18
  operating system because we have it from being chased by a tiger,
• 21:21
  it's not necessarily the thing that is going to work in our
• 21:24
  favor when we're trying to, for example, get into public
• 21:26
  speaking or when we're trying to charge that new price.
• 21:30
  Even though the feeling in our body registers and triggers the
• 21:33
  same response, it's not applicable the same in those
• 21:37
  instances. So we have to consciously choose
• 21:40
  that we're going to fight back to that natural response within
• 21:44
  us, in our brain, in our body, and start to decide by
• 21:48
  understanding where it comes from, what we want to do
• 21:50
  differently. So this can be, you know, for
• 21:53
  example, when we think about failing, we we think about, you
• 21:57
  know, the shame that comes with failing, potentially even
• 21:59
  financial implications of failing.
• 22:02
  We think about also confirmation of self doubt.
• 22:05
  If you are somebody who has any ounce of doubt within you and
• 22:08
  you fail, quote UN quote fail at something, often times we use
• 22:13
  this as evidence to say, see, you know, if I wanted to go
• 22:16
  charging that higher price and that was something that I really
• 22:19
  wanted to do. See, they didn't close.
• 22:23
  It's too much. We use these little aspects as
• 22:26
  evidence to show us that we're trying to play too big.
• 22:29
  And so we have to be really conscious about where we collect
• 22:32
  that evidence and what we take of that to be true and what we
• 22:36
  take it to mean for us. Because if we're not careful,
• 22:39
  we'll actually use that as a reason to play small versus
• 22:44
  using it as an indicator to say, you know what, yeah, that person
• 22:46
  didn't close, but they also didn't close for the other rates
• 22:49
  that we used to charge, right? So that kind of keeping us and
• 22:53
  again, loss aversion, that keeping us from failure, that
• 22:56
  helping us to avoid loss, avoid failure is something we have to
• 23:00
  be conscious of. Now there's action on the
• 23:02
  contrast, though, very, very common among scaling women is
• 23:07
  there's also this aspect of fear of success.
• 23:10
  And I know that when I say this on calls, right?
• 23:13
  I've said this on other people's podcast or I've even done this
• 23:16
  in trainings in our programs. People like Kate who's scared of
• 23:20
  having a 7 figure business, who's scared of making half
• 23:23
  $1,000,000 a year. Like is that actually something
• 23:25
  that people fear? And it is because this is
• 23:30
  actually taken as a principle from the book The Big Leap.
• 23:34
  And it talks about the upper limit problem, which is where
• 23:37
  success can threaten someone's self concept or their
• 23:41
  relationships, IE if I grow and if I achieve too much, people
• 23:46
  might leave me. So because of that, there's this
• 23:49
  discomfort that happens in standing out.
• 23:52
  There's a discomfort that happens in outgrowing your
• 23:55
  environment and ultimately potentially having the
• 23:59
  possibility of being envied by people.
• 24:02
  So what ends up happening is as women and as business owners, we
• 24:05
  self sabotage. When things start to go well, we
• 24:08
  ask ourselves like, who am I to have this?
• 24:11
  Who am I to achieve this? And it's something to talk a lot
• 24:15
  about, especially with private clients, because we have a a
• 24:17
  very intimate dynamic in in our coaching and our mentorship.
• 24:22
  And one of the things that we talk about a lot is the fact
• 24:25
  that when you're going to go for big, big, big goals, especially
• 24:28
  those of you who are wanting you know and see on your vision
• 24:31
  board for yourself, having the seven figure, the multiple 7
• 24:34
  figure business, that's going to come with a lot of change.
• 24:39
  And so it's not to say that I'm going to say, well, you know, I
• 24:43
  don't care about any of those things.
• 24:44
  I had to as well process this fear of being successful because
• 24:48
  I worried that if I became successful, my friends wouldn't
• 24:52
  want to be friends with me anymore.
• 24:53
  Or I thought, if I became successful, would people feel
• 24:56
  like I was relatable? Would they feel like they could
• 24:59
  connect with me? I worried about being successful
• 25:03
  because I even saw in small instances the difference in how
• 25:08
  people would interact with you. So for example, going out with a
• 25:12
  group of people and those people knowing how much money I made
• 25:17
  and seeing how that impacted the way that they might assume that
• 25:20
  I would cover the bill, for example.
• 25:22
  Or even going out somewhere And they're kind of again, once
• 25:25
  someone understood what I did or maybe started following me on
• 25:28
  social, started seeing me talk about the growth of our business
• 25:31
  people assuming how much I, for example, at a certain place that
• 25:34
  I would go to would tip because of understanding how much I
• 25:37
  made. And so even these little again,
• 25:39
  back to evidence, these little pieces made me worry about, OK,
• 25:43
  well, do I want to grow more? Like do I want to be seen as
• 25:48
  different? Do I want to outgrow my
• 25:49
  environment? And it was something that wasn't
• 25:51
  initially A conscious choice. It was something that I was just
• 25:55
  like heads down building, scaling the business.
• 25:58
  But then I started to see as I grew and as our financials also
• 26:03
  grew, that people were kind of, I would say, adjusting their
• 26:07
  behavior to me. And so I recognize that if I was
• 26:10
  going to go for really big things, and if I was going to
• 26:12
  achieve really big things in business and in life, I had to
• 26:16
  be consciously willing to make other people uncomfortable.
• 26:21
  And what I mean by that is I had to be OK that my ambition and my
• 26:27
  drive may not sit good for other people, but that didn't make it
• 26:34
  wrong. And I had to ask myself, is me
• 26:39
  having a certain person in my life going to be the reason that
• 26:44
  I don't achieve? And then the follow up became to
• 26:46
  that, why is that person not in my life as a byproduct of
• 26:51
  wanting to achieve? And truthfully, if I could be
• 26:54
  candid about it, I do think there's an aspect that there are
• 27:00
  people who will get uncomfortable about you being
• 27:03
  successful. There will be people who get
• 27:06
  uncomfortable about you achieving and going for massive
• 27:09
  big things in your life. There are going to be people who
• 27:12
  are uncomfortable that you're doing things that they wish or
• 27:15
  desire to do. So when you go and you step into
• 27:20
  that ambition and you step into the success and that high level
• 27:23
  person that you know you can be and you're kicking ass and you
• 27:26
  are doing things both business and in life.
• 27:29
  This can be you going for a big financial milestone and it also
• 27:32
  could be you, you know, deciding to run a marathon.
• 27:35
  Both those goals are going to make people uncomfortable
• 27:38
  because they look at themselves. And so the person who you want
• 27:43
  to grow with is the person who supports you and like, yes, go
• 27:46
  for it. As long as you were a good human
• 27:50
  and it is not changing your heart and your values are in the
• 27:52
  right place, go for it. And so it's really about asking
• 27:57
  yourself, am I playing small because I'm comfortable with my
• 28:01
  friends circle? I'm comfortable with the ways
• 28:04
  that I'm being treated. I'm comfortable in my current
• 28:07
  environment. And if I grow, there's a
• 28:09
  possibility that my environment, my friends, my people around me
• 28:13
  might change. And you know what?
• 28:15
  You're right, they might change. But the question that I ask is,
• 28:19
  are those friends that I want to have around?
• 28:22
  And so if I could put it simply, if I have a friend with me right
• 28:27
  now and I decide that I want to go have an 8 figure business, do
• 28:33
  I want to have friends that want me to stay small in order to be
• 28:37
  friends with them? And if so, that's a question
• 28:40
  that you have to be able to answer for yourself.
• 28:41
  For me, I said no. I want friends around me who
• 28:45
  push me to do more, who push me to achieve my highest potential.
• 28:49
  And I would want to look at this as an opportunity to evaluate
• 28:54
  success. What does success mean to you?
• 28:56
  And what are fears that you have around becoming successful?
• 29:00
  And is there a possibility, and you'll know this to be true in
• 29:03
  your heart? Is there a possibility that
• 29:06
  you're staying small in your business because frankly, you
• 29:09
  don't want to change your environment.
• 29:11
  You're comfortable with how things have been in your life.
• 29:14
  You're comfortable with your social circle, and you fear that
• 29:17
  if I go too big, I might not resonate with these people
• 29:21
  anymore. And that's, again, a personal
• 29:23
  decision that you have to make and questions you have to ask
• 29:25
  yourself. Now, another thing that we know
• 29:29
  is that there is also an underbelly playing small.
• 29:31
  That is cognitive dissonance. So this is really where imposter
• 29:34
  syndrome comes in because we have this self perception which
• 29:39
  is that like I'm not qualified and it clashes with the external
• 29:43
  evidence of getting clients and the brain is trying to resolve
• 29:48
  that tension. So you've got on one side, I'm
• 29:50
  not qualified and on the other side, you've got successive
• 29:53
  sales closing. So you're like, how does this
• 29:55
  make sense? So instead of adjusting our
• 29:59
  perception, meaning that you are qualified, instead of moving our
• 30:03
  mindset from I'm not qualified to I'm qualified, what ends up
• 30:06
  happening is we will pull back our action.
• 30:10
  We will pull back our behavior to match our old identity.
• 30:15
  So we have this belief that people are going to find out
• 30:19
  that I'm actually not as good as they think.
• 30:22
  And I will say this is something, this is something
• 30:27
  that I struggled with massively in scaling my business.
• 30:31
  I went to a conference and I was asked to speak about marketing.
• 30:35
  And I have never felt this. I've never felt such an
• 30:40
  intensity around not taking up space.
• 30:44
  I was going first in the sense of the order in that day and I
• 30:47
  was going first. And then there's another speaker
• 30:49
  after me and the speaker after me have been involved in billion
• 30:52
  dollar businesses. Like we were talking with AB my
• 30:55
  friends, OK, BA billion dollar and billion dollar businesses
• 31:00
  had helped some of the biggest brands that literally probably
• 31:04
  sit on the shelves in your kitchen and in your cabinets
• 31:06
  today. And here I am, little old Kate
• 31:10
  in my brain then going on stage and I have to talk about
• 31:14
  marketing before what I consider to be like the NFL player, the
• 31:18
  OG is coming on to talk about marketing right after me.
• 31:21
  And in that moment, I think they're going to figure out that
• 31:25
  I'm not good. They're going to figure out that
• 31:27
  I don't deserve to be here. They're going to figure out that
• 31:30
  I'm not smart enough, I'm not advanced enough, I'm not
• 31:33
  experienced enough. I had all of the things go
• 31:35
  through my head and I was physically sick.
• 31:39
  Like when I tell you, I literally was like, how the heck
• 31:43
  do I get out of here? Talk about fight or flight.
• 31:44
  I wanted to get the hell out of there because I didn't believe
• 31:48
  that I deserve to be there. Even though I had so much
• 31:51
  evidence. I was asked to be.
• 31:52
  Let's remember the evidence here.
• 31:53
  I was asked to be on the same stage as this person.
• 31:56
  That alone should have been the evidence that I needed, that I
• 31:59
  deserve to be there. But me being invited to come
• 32:04
  speak here wasn't evidence yet. Me, you know, having this person
• 32:09
  who was an incredible speaker and business owner say, hey,
• 32:13
  your talk was amazing. I took notes.
• 32:16
  Nope, Kate in her mind was still like, I don't deserve to be
• 32:19
  here. I'm not good enough.
• 32:21
  I feel so uncomfortable, I'm embarrassed.
• 32:23
  I feel like I don't know anything.
• 32:25
  I feel like this is not valuable.
• 32:26
  I had all of the spirals happen. And So what I realized was my
• 32:31
  identity was really the thing that was going to keep me back
• 32:34
  in business. And once I started to have a
• 32:37
  heart to heart that speaker and I got down and literally sat
• 32:40
  down and had dinner and just kind of relaxed after this,
• 32:43
  everything was done and my nerves had settled.
• 32:45
  And they told me that they took notes on my talk.
• 32:49
  I thought, OK, this is a really bizarre feeling.
• 32:52
  And I said to him, I don't feel worthy of being on the same
• 32:56
  stage as you because I know how successful you are.
• 33:00
  And I said, I was so nervous. I was so anxious.
• 33:02
  And I took it to mean all these things.
• 33:05
  And what I realized was he had said to me, it's not because
• 33:10
  you're having imposter syndrome and it's not because you don't
• 33:14
  deserve to be here. The reason you're feeling this
• 33:17
  way is because you care. You care about the information
• 33:20
  you're teaching being valuable. You care about the fact that you
• 33:22
  help people in the audience. You care about impacting people.
• 33:25
  You care about them having a good time.
• 33:27
  You care about them getting their questions answered.
• 33:29
  So we have to be careful as well that care doesn't translate to
• 33:35
  lack of confidence. Again, going back to what we
• 33:37
  said at the beginning, not taking certain things for how we
• 33:40
  feel or things that are coming up.
• 33:43
  But in that moment, it was so apparent to me that even though
• 33:46
  I had all this evidence to say that I, and even for me saying
• 33:49
  this still makes me to this day feel uncomfortable.
• 33:52
  Even though I have so much evidence to say that I'm great
• 33:54
  at what I do. And even though I have so much
• 33:55
  evidence of client results and you know, clients building multi
• 33:58
  $1,000,000 companies and growing to seven figures and three
• 34:01
  calls. And you know these great
• 34:03
  speakers taking notes on my talks, even saying this makes me
• 34:06
  uncomfortable. Which is why I'm telling you,
• 34:08
  I'm not telling you this from a high horse.
• 34:10
  I'm telling you this because I still have awarenesses today,
• 34:13
  but I recognize that if I don't shift and constantly tap into my
• 34:16
  identity and acknowledge what makes me uncomfortable,
• 34:19
  acknowledge the narratives that I have, acknowledge where I'm
• 34:22
  keeping myself small. If I don't acknowledge it, I
• 34:26
  can't possibly take action to overcome that.
• 34:31
  And So what I've now done is understood that myself
• 34:34
  perception is going to be the reason that I stay small because
• 34:39
  I have so much evidence. Just like, again, remembering
• 34:42
  cognitive dissonance is the disconnect between who we
• 34:44
  believe to be versus who we truly are.
• 34:47
  And so while yes, there can be, you know, this evidence for you
• 34:50
  and your business that so many things are are working or so
• 34:53
  many things are telling you that you are going to be successful,
• 34:56
  that you are going to achieve. If you don't actually believe
• 34:59
  it, you will not achieve any of it.
• 35:01
  You will literally self sabotage to keep yourself small because
• 35:06
  your identity has not caught up with the evidence that you have
• 35:09
  from your business or from your life.
• 35:11
  And so it's aligning the identity with the action and the
• 35:14
  execution that's really essential for long term
• 35:17
  sustainable growth. Now the other thing that we also
• 35:21
  know that is talked about a lot within cognitive behavioral
• 35:23
  therapy is low self worth and understanding what our core
• 35:26
  beliefs are. And so we also have these deep
• 35:29
  rooted beliefs. Often times when we play small
• 35:32
  that I'm not enough or success is not for people like me.
• 35:38
  And So what ends up happening is that we actually are going to
• 35:41
  start to operate from avoidant behaviors.
• 35:43
  So the beliefs we have are often shaped by our childhood and the
• 35:48
  childhood experiences. We have societal messaging
• 35:51
  that's impacting us. We have cultural norms that are
• 35:53
  impacting us and sometimes we truly believe that it is safer
• 35:59
  not to try than to confirm that I am in fact, not good enough.
• 36:04
  And one of the things that I will share a story of that kind
• 36:06
  of, you know, came up for me around this and how it impacted
• 36:09
  me playing small was that I wouldn't say, you know, I, I
• 36:13
  grew up in a middle class family.
• 36:15
  So I also want to acknowledge the privilege that comes with
• 36:17
  that. But I wouldn't say for me, it
• 36:22
  wasn't that money was ever not a topic in our house.
• 36:24
  Like, I wouldn't say that, you know, money was ever flowing and
• 36:28
  it was a non conversation by any means.
• 36:31
  And so because of money being such a big thing within my
• 36:35
  childhood, I, to be honest, never really thought that I
• 36:40
  would be somebody who would build wealth or who would build
• 36:43
  or be able to have abundance of money because I didn't come from
• 36:48
  abundance of money. So I thought, who am I to be
• 36:51
  successful? Who am I to start a business
• 36:53
  First off, but second, who am I to have a successful business?
• 36:56
  Who am I to make lots of money when I don't come from money and
• 36:59
  money's always been something that's been difficult.
• 37:02
  And on the flip side, I also had this around education.
• 37:05
  I do not have a degree in business and yet I help people
• 37:08
  build multiple 7 figure businesses.
• 37:10
  So I had a lot of, you know, belief again, around childhood
• 37:13
  experiences that when I was a child or when I was a kid, I was
• 37:18
  passed along from my parents that like education was your
• 37:21
  credential. Education was the thing that
• 37:24
  determines your value. So like I came from a very
• 37:28
  education based family. Like everybody went to school,
• 37:31
  everybody went to university and got degrees.
• 37:34
  And so there was conversation about like, was I going to be an
• 37:36
  optometrist? Was I going to be a doctor, a
• 37:37
  lawyer? Like it was very much about
• 37:39
  education. So when I then go in and I'm
• 37:43
  having the success in my business and I'm seeing this
• 37:46
  growth happen and I'm like, OK, whoa, this is something that I'm
• 37:50
  like, I, I can't be successful at this because I'm not
• 37:53
  educated. So like I, I cannot, as someone
• 37:56
  who doesn't have all these degrees, possibly have success
• 37:58
  and movement in this because I don't have the credentials to
• 38:00
  back that up. So like for people like me slash
• 38:04
  people who don't have degrees in business, I can't teach business
• 38:08
  because again, cognitive behavioral therapy will tell us
• 38:11
  that the childhood experiences impact our beliefs, but we have
• 38:14
  to be aware of what those beliefs are.
• 38:17
  One of the parts I love about therapy is understanding what
• 38:20
  have I been programmed with. We want to remember that when
• 38:23
  we, you know, come into this world, we don't have beliefs
• 38:27
  about what is right or wrong. We don't have beliefs about what
• 38:30
  is true or not. Instead, those are things that
• 38:33
  are given to us. The two things I talk about all
• 38:35
  the time is the fact that a lot of our mindset and our belief
• 38:38
  systems are a one of two things. They are either caught or they
• 38:41
  are taught. So they're actually more caught
• 38:44
  than they are taught. But you watch your parents and
• 38:46
  what they believe to be true about money, what they believe
• 38:49
  to be true about success, what they believe to be true about
• 38:51
  growth. And so if you don't understand
• 38:55
  the programming and frankly, the things that you have picked up
• 38:59
  along the way, you might not again, be consciously aware of
• 39:02
  how those are impacting you playing small and you keeping
• 39:06
  yourself where you are. And so the thing that we also
• 39:10
  know is that things are taught to us, which is again, things
• 39:12
  that your parents used to say, for example, you know, one of
• 39:15
  the things that was something small, but it was just again,
• 39:18
  no, I'll intent, it was just something that came from my
• 39:21
  parents was the fact that money doesn't grow on trees.
• 39:24
  That was something I remember being said all the time as a
• 39:26
  kid. We would leave the lights on in
• 39:28
  the house or we would like, you know, leave the water running,
• 39:31
  whatever might be. And they would say, hey, you
• 39:33
  know, close the door. The air conditioning is on.
• 39:36
  Might doesn't grow on trees. You know, we're not we're not
• 39:38
  paying to heat the outdoors or, you know, for example, the
• 39:41
  water's running, you know, might doesn't grow on trees.
• 39:43
  That idea of money is not in abundance was always something
• 39:48
  that I learned in childhood. So because of that, it's such a
• 39:51
  small thing, right? We think, OK, well, it's just a
• 39:53
  small comment, my dad said, or it's such a small comment, my
• 39:55
  mom said. But that has an underbelly of
• 39:59
  beliefs. It has an underbelly of a core
• 40:01
  value there, which is the fact that money is not in abundance.
• 40:04
  So those have a way of working themselves into our mind and
• 40:09
  then showing up in the way that we approach our life and our
• 40:12
  Business Today. And we have to be a conscious of
• 40:15
  what those are so that we can kind of start to decide for
• 40:17
  ourselves versus just what our programming came with, what we
• 40:21
  actually believe to be true. And also rewiring that because
• 40:25
  if we don't, we're really capped by a loop of programming that's
• 40:29
  going on in our subconscious, IE 95% of our brain.
• 40:33
  If we don't actually unpack. What did my mom or dad say to be
• 40:36
  true about success? What did my, you know, parents
• 40:39
  say about wealth or building money or abundance or resources
• 40:43
  that are available to us? Like what was the belief?
• 40:46
  Do I believe that to be true? And if I don't believe it to be
• 40:49
  true, what is my truth? What is my belief around that?
• 40:52
  Now the other last two that I will say is there's also another
• 40:58
  psychological principle that's called maladaptive cognitive
• 41:01
  distortions, which basically is that many entrepreneurs fear
• 41:06
  doing something imperfectly, so they don't do it at all.
• 41:09
  So this is really where playing small feels like your ability to
• 41:14
  be able to control the situation.
• 41:16
  So like I'm going to wait till I have it all figured out is
• 41:19
  actually connected to if I can't do it properly, I'm not going to
• 41:22
  do it at all. So when we play small, often
• 41:27
  times we are more in the driver's seat than if we went
• 41:31
  big because by going big or going for big goals or setting
• 41:34
  those big targets or those stretch, those stretch
• 41:37
  objectives for you, that would be connected to you potentially
• 41:41
  having an aspect of lack of control.
• 41:44
  And so because of that, if we're like, we'll know what I need to
• 41:47
  be able to control it because if I can't control, it won't be
• 41:49
  perfect. And if it's not going to be
• 41:51
  perfect, I don't want to do it. There's this fear of the mess.
• 41:54
  There's this fear of the uncertainty.
• 41:56
  There's this fear of the unknown.
• 41:58
  And it keeps us in this loop of perfectionism.
• 42:00
  Perfectionism is a very, very easy telltale sign of somebody
• 42:05
  who plays small. Because you feel good when you
• 42:08
  can control all the environment around you.
• 42:10
  You feel good when you feel like, OK, everything is good in
• 42:14
  my business, in my life. It's not stretching me.
• 42:18
  And that's because I can control it.
• 42:19
  So if I can control it, everything is safe and I am safe
• 42:23
  if I say OK, great, go for the stretch goal, you're like, I
• 42:26
  can't control how that's going to unfold.
• 42:29
  I can't control what that will become.
• 42:31
  I can't control the success or the perfection of that.
• 42:34
  So no, I'm good. I will wait until I get to a
• 42:38
  place of control. I will wait until I can really
• 42:41
  be certain that I'm the driver's seat and that ultimately 9 times
• 42:44
  out of 10 keeps you from taking any action.
• 42:46
  OK, so I want to take a quick little brief interruption from
• 42:48
  today's episode to let you know about something really exciting.
• 42:51
  And I want to 1st preface, there is nothing here that I have to
• 42:54
  sell you. This is about something that is
• 42:55
  entirely free that I think would be a massive support for you if
• 42:59
  you are someone who's loving all things Ambitious podcast.
• 43:02
  So we have created an absolutely incredible community that is
• 43:06
  called the Ambitious Network. This is really a place where
• 43:09
  coaching and masterminds meet high level networking of other
• 43:12
  women who were just like you. So a little bit of what you can
• 43:15
  anticipate, this is a place for you to grow, to connect, and
• 43:18
  ultimately to get the support that you need to elevate your
• 43:20
  business. And so some of the things you
• 43:22
  can anticipate inside #1 live Hot Seat Coaching.
• 43:25
  This is literally live coaching in the way that I would do
• 43:27
  inside of our masterminds and our different offers only inside
• 43:31
  of this community, entirely free.
• 43:32
  You'll also get the opportunity to get access to exclusive
• 43:35
  giveaways that are not available anywhere else.
• 43:37
  So these are things like giveaways of different books and
• 43:40
  resources that I'm obsessed with that have really helped me in my
• 43:43
  journey of business, but also things on a larger scale, like
• 43:46
  some of which have been six months of private coaching type
• 43:50
  of giveaways. So all of this to be said,
• 43:52
  massive, massive amount of resources being given inside and
• 43:55
  also trainings and resources, tools of frameworks and
• 43:59
  downloads and worksheets and master classes that are going to
• 44:02
  be things that will really help to take you and your business to
• 44:04
  the next level. Now, it's also not just about
• 44:06
  me. I have an incredible network and
• 44:08
  a community of other entrepreneurs who also want to
• 44:11
  give back to you if you've loved their interviews and their
• 44:14
  discussions on the Ambitious podcast.
• 44:15
  So we have guests that are also providing resources in the
• 44:18
  community that will only be available inside the ambitious
• 44:21
  network. But there's also the networking
• 44:23
  aspect. And this is a place for you to
• 44:25
  not Only Connect with other women about what's going on in
• 44:28
  your business, what's currently working or not working in
• 44:30
  today's current market. It's a place to share wins, but
• 44:33
  it's also a place to connect with me and get my feedback and
• 44:36
  support for you and your business.
• 44:38
  Now all of that to be said, this is a, as I said, mastermind
• 44:42
  meets networking. And I really have created this
• 44:45
  as a community that I want to be something you've never gotten
• 44:48
  anywhere else. It's not this low ticket
• 44:50
  membership that you feel like you're paying for.
• 44:52
  You know, this graveyard of resources that the person has
• 44:55
  they don't know what to do with. And it's also not that Facebook
• 44:57
  group that you're inside of that you feel like you get tons of
• 44:59
  notifications, but you don't really want anything that's
• 45:01
  inside of it. It all feels surface level.
• 45:03
  We want to give you the ability to have mastermind meets high
• 45:07
  level networking all in one place.
• 45:09
  And the ambitious network is where you're going to find that.
• 45:11
  So how you can get inside? If you want to go to the show
• 45:14
  notes beneath, you can click a link to join join us inside the
• 45:17
  ambitious network. And if you also want to connect
• 45:19
  with me on Instagram, I'm also happy to chat with you about it.
• 45:21
  So if you DM me the word ambitious, we'll be sure to chat
• 45:24
  a little bit more about the network for you and give you the
• 45:27
  link to get inside. So all of that to be said, I
• 45:29
  don't want to take any more time away from today's episode with
• 45:31
  so without further ado, let's get back into the show now.
• 45:35
  The last piece is nervous system regulation, which is really when
• 45:38
  a person like yourself will perceive a threat, even if it's
• 45:42
  just emotional, and the nervous system will shift you into
• 45:45
  fight, flight, or freeze. So when people have the idea or
• 45:49
  the thought of being more visible, growing, having more
• 45:52
  responsibility, it can actually trigger their emotional state in
• 45:56
  their body to shut down and not allow you to move forward.
• 46:01
  This is why we talk so much about nervous system regulation,
• 46:04
  because if you don't have regulation, you can't keep your
• 46:07
  body at a baseline to allow you to take scary action without
• 46:12
  your body feeling like it's truly a threat.
• 46:14
  And again, remember, our body doesn't know the difference.
• 46:16
  Your body doesn't know the difference between being chased
• 46:20
  by a tiger and speaking on stage.
• 46:22
  Your body doesn't know the difference between being chased
• 46:24
  by a tiger and you, you know, stepping that price to the, to
• 46:28
  the level or the price point that you actually want to be
• 46:30
  charging. So with knowing all of this, we
• 46:33
  have to take in these principles to say, I have an awareness now.
• 46:38
  I know that my programming is part of this.
• 46:40
  I know that my brain is wired to avoid failure.
• 46:45
  I know that if my brain does not align my identity of who I think
• 46:49
  I am with the evidence around me that it will always default to
• 46:53
  the identity that I have within my mind.
• 46:56
  So by having this understanding and by having this clarity, what
• 46:58
  we can do is we can start to actually start to plant seeds
• 47:02
  and reprogram that. Get clarity of the programming
• 47:04
  and where it comes from. Get clarity of what do I believe
• 47:07
  is my identity today? What is that that kind of
• 47:10
  disconnect between who I believe I am versus the results in my
• 47:13
  environment. So by understanding this, we can
• 47:15
  start to take back control. So I want you to ask yourself
• 47:19
  some of these questions. There's five questions here that
• 47:21
  can be a prompt for you to kind of start the self reflection
• 47:24
  process. First being, am I holding back
• 47:27
  my voice, my ideas, or maybe even my presence because it
• 47:31
  makes other people more comfortable?
• 47:34
  This question is really going to help to reveal where you're
• 47:37
  silencing yourself and actually how that is happening in
• 47:41
  relationships, how it might be happening with clients, how it
• 47:44
  might be happening with a lot of different dynamics within your
• 47:46
  life and business. You can ask yourself, what am I
• 47:50
  avoiding because it feels too big, it feels too bold.
• 47:54
  I feel like I'd be too visible. It's too much.
• 47:57
  Even though I'll be honest, I really want it.
• 48:00
  This is going to uncover what are hidden desires or hidden
• 48:04
  fears that you have that are actually the thing that might be
• 48:07
  blocking your expansion. Asking yourself, am I saying
• 48:11
  that I'm not quote UN quote ready when I'm actually to be
• 48:15
  honest, I'm ready. I'm just very terrified and very
• 48:19
  scared of being seen or judged. This is the question that's
• 48:24
  going to challenge those of you who have perfectionism, who have
• 48:27
  this illusion of needing more preparation and again, more
• 48:31
  quote UN quote control. Ask yourself the question, where
• 48:35
  am I downplaying my skills, my experience or value?
• 48:39
  You'll even see in today's episode that I'm saying I'm
• 48:42
  still uncomfortable doing this. I'm still working on this.
• 48:45
  I'm still always in a lot of things that we talk about here,
• 48:48
  still myself, a work in progress.
• 48:51
  I've made leaps and bounds from where I started, but I still
• 48:53
  have a lot of work to do because even I find for myself this one
• 48:57
  rings true for me and I'm still working on it.
• 48:59
  I downplay how good I am because it makes me uncomfortable.
• 49:04
  So for me, that's something I'm constantly flexing the muscle of
• 49:07
  to try to stretch myself to get out of that pattern.
• 49:10
  And last but not least, if I fully believed that I was good
• 49:15
  enough, that I was as good as other people say that I am.
• 49:18
  If I really truly embodied how successful I could be, what
• 49:25
  would I do differently? And so I asked myself a version
• 49:30
  of this when I'm feeling stuck, which is if if I believed all of
• 49:35
  the incredible things that other people say and believe to be
• 49:38
  true about me, if I fully embody that, and if I fully believe
• 49:41
  that to my core, what would I do differently and how would I show
• 49:44
  up differently? And this is going to shift your
• 49:47
  perspective from fear to your worth.
• 49:51
  And it's going to inspire you to take empowered action, to start
• 49:55
  aligning again the action with the identity.
• 49:59
  And so the thing you'll notice here, especially with this last
• 50:01
  question, it's not about a matter of you being like, well,
• 50:05
  I didn't believe I was worthy yesterday and I'm going to
• 50:07
  believe I'm worthy today. It's not that quick of a switch,
• 50:11
  but you can play in curiosity and ask yourself, if I was to
• 50:16
  step into that, if I was to acknowledge for just a moment
• 50:20
  how great I am, how incredible I am at the what I do, the amazing
• 50:25
  results that I can get for people.
• 50:26
  If I was to really, really step into her and that embodiment,
• 50:30
  what would I do differently today?
• 50:32
  How do I show up differently? How do I take action
• 50:34
  differently? How would I execute differently?
• 50:37
  OK, so 5 questions there to really help you to start to
• 50:40
  unpack. And as a recommendation, take
• 50:42
  these, journal on these, allow yourself to sit with these and
• 50:47
  see what comes up. Because I do this as a practice
• 50:49
  often to help myself to kind of unlock where I even for myself,
• 50:53
  I am playing small and it's brought up a lot of incredible
• 50:56
  awareness for me. So with all this, let's get into
• 50:59
  some steps about how do we actually change it?
• 51:01
  If I feel like I, I now know the symptoms of playing small, I
• 51:04
  know where it comes from. I have, you know, these
• 51:07
  reflection questions to see maybe where I could change,
• 51:10
  where are opportunities that I could start to evolve.
• 51:13
  How do I actually change this? How do I actually stop playing
• 51:15
  small? So the first thing you have to
• 51:17
  acknowledge, and this is the basis of all changes, you have
• 51:20
  to recognize that you have a pattern of playing small.
• 51:23
  You have to actively say, you know what, Kate, I am playing
• 51:26
  small. And listen, I have said this
• 51:28
  myself. I have says to my mentors and
• 51:31
  I've said, listen, I, I recognize, for example, after
• 51:34
  that speaking event I told you about, I was like, I do not see
• 51:38
  myself the way other people see me.
• 51:40
  And I need to figure out how to believe in myself and my worth
• 51:46
  without necessarily having it get to my head or change my
• 51:48
  heart was kind of the question that I asked.
• 51:51
  So it starts with recognizing and that's because we need the
• 51:54
  self-awareness to be able to have any kind of change.
• 51:58
  Many people don't realize they're playing small because
• 52:01
  they just label it as they're not quote UN quote ready or I'm
• 52:04
  just being realistic. And so when we are finally able
• 52:09
  to label our behavior, it creates this psychological
• 52:13
  distance from it, right? So you can have the separation
• 52:18
  finally of I am not somebody who is small, but I can see myself
• 52:25
  having behaviors that would lead me to play small in business.
• 52:30
  So not I am smaller in business or I am a smaller business or
• 52:34
  I'm not enough, right? That there's an identity there
• 52:37
  of the person you are. We want to shift that into
• 52:40
  looking at playing small as a behavior you're doing, right?
• 52:44
  So what we shift from is I'm doing this, not I am.
• 52:49
  This is the reframe that we're looking for here.
• 52:53
  So what it's doing is it's allowing and opening the door
• 52:56
  for you to have new choices. When we add these labels to
• 52:59
  ourself, when we believe that we are not enough, it closes doors.
• 53:04
  Our brain doesn't even go there because it's not going to
• 53:06
  entertain anything else because it has something already.
• 53:09
  It's decided as a label that it believes to be true.
• 53:12
  So when we remove that label and instead reframe it as playing
• 53:17
  small is a behavior, not an identity, it allows us to start
• 53:21
  to open up to, OK, well, what could be possible.
• 53:23
  And so you will notice once you start to acknowledge playing
• 53:27
  small and, you know, acknowledging the way that these
• 53:30
  behaviors are coming up for you, you're going to start to notice
• 53:33
  when you're shrinking yourself, even just being aware of today's
• 53:36
  symptoms and the awareness of the roots of where they come
• 53:39
  from. You already, now I will tell
• 53:41
  you, if you change nothing about the way you move forward after
• 53:44
  listening today, you will already now in your brain have
• 53:48
  new awarenesses that you will not be able to Unsee.
• 53:52
  So when you go back into your environment and you have a
• 53:55
  conversation, let's just say around increasing your price and
• 53:58
  you're like, oh, no, I can't increase my price.
• 53:59
  You're like, I remember Keith said that on the on the podcast
• 54:03
  and was talking about it. You have this awareness now that
• 54:06
  is planted in your mind. So it's tapping into that so you
• 54:09
  can really deepen that awareness that will allow it to become
• 54:13
  more effective and more impactful for you.
• 54:15
  So you'll catch yourself most likely with things like, you
• 54:19
  know, I'll wait or I'm not ready or who am I to?
• 54:22
  When you hear those things, that's the trigger for you to
• 54:25
  say, ah, this is me playing small.
• 54:27
  I'm not ready to blank. It's potentially you looking to
• 54:31
  limit yourself because frankly, it just feels uncomfortable.
• 54:34
  So the first step we have to look at is being able to catch
• 54:36
  it, being able to catch and recognize the pattern as it
• 54:39
  presents because just listening today is not going to be the
• 54:42
  difference of, oh, I used to play small.
• 54:43
  Yesterday I listened to the podcast and don't play small
• 54:46
  anymore. This is not about me giving you
• 54:48
  some prescription that poof, you're not playing small
• 54:50
  anymore. I wish that existed and if you
• 54:52
  ever find it, let me know and shoot me a gem.
• 54:54
  But for me, this is a matter of recognizing and having an
• 54:57
  awareness because it allows you to constantly adjust and refine
• 55:01
  in the moment, in action, day after day.
• 55:04
  So we want to look at that step one.
• 55:06
  But Step 2 really is then identifying the root of the
• 55:09
  fear, identify the root of the belief.
• 55:12
  What am I really afraid of is going to happen if I show up
• 55:17
  fully? So like I told you, I had, you
• 55:19
  know, resistances around what would happen to my friends, how
• 55:22
  I'd have to be ready to be seen in a different way on the
• 55:25
  Internet through content, you know, what it could mean, for
• 55:28
  example, for a relationship, if I was to go for that really,
• 55:31
  really big thing that I wanted. And so this really matters
• 55:34
  because we want to remember that every small thing that we're
• 55:36
  doing is ultimately trying to protect us from something.
• 55:39
  It's doing it in the intention of preserving us.
• 55:42
  And when we identify the fear of where something comes from, it's
• 55:45
  actually going to reveal to us the limiting belief we have or
• 55:49
  potentially even the trauma response that you have
• 55:52
  underneath it that's keeping you from changing or adopting a new
• 55:55
  behavior. So when we actually have an
• 55:58
  awareness of why we are avoiding, it's going to create
• 56:02
  leverage that we need to actually create a change.
• 56:06
  So instead, when we understand where it comes from, we can
• 56:10
  start to take more conscious decisions in our life and in our
• 56:14
  business than the reactive decisions of just whatever our
• 56:18
  natural response is, is what we're going to do.
• 56:20
  Because as I mentioned to you with, you know, again, my
• 56:22
  programming as a child, if I didn't consciously decide to
• 56:26
  say, well, where does it come from?
• 56:28
  What did I believe about money? And what was I raised with us,
• 56:30
  the beliefs of what I was supposed to believe to be true.
• 56:34
  If I didn't dive into that, it meant that my natural operating
• 56:38
  system said, hey, mite isn't growing trees.
• 56:41
  Money is not available to US. Money is not in abundance.
• 56:43
  That was my natural programming that came with me into
• 56:46
  adulthood. So without addressing it, that
• 56:49
  was going to be my natural reaction.
• 56:51
  That was going to be my natural response to situations in
• 56:54
  business. So you want to ideally be able
• 56:59
  to reflect on the patterns that you have.
• 57:01
  And it's not about shame, it's not about defensiveness, and
• 57:04
  it's not about it being right or wrong or this is what this has
• 57:07
  done to me. It's just about having and aha
• 57:12
  moment and realizing, OK, great, this is what I know is my
• 57:15
  programming. So now that I have an awareness
• 57:16
  of this, I can choose something differently.
• 57:18
  I'm going to consciously choose that.
• 57:19
  I don't believe that to be true. I'm going to consciously choose
• 57:22
  to adopt A different belief or core value in my life and in my
• 57:25
  business. So as I said, the reflection
• 57:27
  questions and even, you know, some of the things we talked
• 57:30
  about today, The reason I want you to journal on this is just
• 57:34
  having an understanding of where things come from in itself will
• 57:38
  be the empowerment to allow you to have a new set of lenses from
• 57:42
  which you approach the rest of your day-to-day and the rest of
• 57:44
  the week of your business, the rest of your month of your
• 57:46
  business. And as a result, take different
• 57:48
  actions to support it. So we then look at Step 3, which
• 57:53
  is actually creating a plan, a safety plan, a nervous system
• 57:57
  regulation type of support for you, which is that we want to
• 58:00
  recognize if you want to grow within your business, your mind
• 58:05
  and your body needs to feel safe to grow.
• 58:07
  It's not just about a strategy. And you know, I help people with
• 58:12
  strategies all day every day. But I will tell you there are
• 58:16
  people that self sabotage the strategy that could be insanely
• 58:19
  impactful for them because they're just not comfortable
• 58:22
  with the level of how much they're being seen, the level of
• 58:24
  exposure, the level of what it would require of them as an
• 58:28
  individual in order to step into that level of success.
• 58:32
  So it matters because when we make big moves, remember our
• 58:36
  body feels it differently and understands it differently.
• 58:39
  Then we might know it to be true.
• 58:40
  Again, remember being chased by a tiger, not the same as
• 58:43
  speaking on stage, but our body doesn't know that.
• 58:45
  So nervous system regulation comes in because it helps your
• 58:48
  body to stay present, to stay grounded while you're doing
• 58:52
  things that are very stretchy and that are very difficult.
• 58:55
  So, you know, even one of the examples being I was getting
• 58:59
  into doing breath work and I was starting to, you know, tap into
• 59:02
  this as a as a tool for regulation.
• 59:05
  And even that even breath work was something that, you know,
• 59:08
  was very stretchy for me. And it is a nervous system
• 59:11
  regulation tool. But that allowed me in those
• 59:14
  moments I was like, listen, I'm safe, you got this, I'm safe.
• 59:18
  Like you're fine. It feels uncomfortable.
• 59:21
  You are fine. And I often when I get really
• 59:25
  anxious about things that I'm doing, I will launch something
• 59:28
  and have nerves around it. I will go to speak and I get
• 59:30
  really, really anxious beforehand.
• 59:33
  And now I will tell myself, like, you're going to do great.
• 59:37
  You're going to go serve people, you're going to go support
• 59:40
  people in the audience. You're going in and you're
• 59:42
  making it about them and everything is fine.
• 59:45
  At the end of the day, regardless of how this goes, you
• 59:48
  are enough. And it's giving yourself and
• 59:50
  giving your mind what it needs to feel comfortable, to take
• 59:54
  action, to feel comfortable, to progress.
• 59:57
  So when your body feels safe, that is the only time when your
• 1:00:03
  brain is actually going to take aligned action.
• 1:00:07
  So the thing with with, you know, many of us when we feel
• 1:00:11
  anxious, when we feel nervous about something, what does our
• 1:00:13
  brain tell us to do? It's like, don't do that.
• 1:00:15
  That's terrifying. Don't do that.
• 1:00:17
  Don't raise your price. Don't ask to speak on that
• 1:00:19
  stage. Don't go say that you'll speak
• 1:00:21
  in front of 100 people. No, this is this is something
• 1:00:24
  that's like, no, my body is telling me we are not OK.
• 1:00:27
  Do not do it. And it sends your brain signals
• 1:00:30
  over and over and over again. No.
• 1:00:33
  But instead, when we can regulate our body and say, hey,
• 1:00:36
  I hear you, I see you, we're fine and you take back control.
• 1:00:41
  What you're doing is you're giving the body what it needs to
• 1:00:44
  tell the brain. Let's do it.
• 1:00:47
  It allows you to be able to perform regardless of how the
• 1:00:49
  emotions in the body feel. You can use nervous system
• 1:00:53
  regulation to bring yourself to baseline and by do that, allow
• 1:00:56
  the brain to come to baseline and not prevent you from taking
• 1:00:59
  actions that are actually going to support you and your goals.
• 1:01:02
  So when you use these tools like breath work, it could be somatic
• 1:01:06
  practices or any of these before big decisions or big actions,
• 1:01:10
  you're going to feel calm instead of frozen.
• 1:01:12
  You're going to feel calm about, you know, potentially having
• 1:01:16
  more visibility or growing more tapping into that big goal.
• 1:01:20
  And so I want to also invite you that when you have these moments
• 1:01:23
  where you're like, I want to go for this big thing, but it
• 1:01:25
  scares the crap out of me and I literally feel like I'm going to
• 1:01:27
  poop my pants, which also like literally been there, have felt
• 1:01:29
  the exact same way. When you feel those moments,
• 1:01:32
  it's an invitation to get into your body.
• 1:01:35
  You're not going to think away your anxiety.
• 1:01:37
  You're not going to think away your stress.
• 1:01:40
  So it's a matter of tuning into your body, allowing your body to
• 1:01:43
  regulate, and then using your words to help your subconscious
• 1:01:49
  brain. And we talked about this in TJ
• 1:01:51
  Fry's episode. So if you haven't listened to
• 1:01:52
  that about the subconscious brain, I highly recommend it.
• 1:01:55
  The TJ Fry episode, he talked about talking to himself.
• 1:01:58
  He's like people talk with the fact that I, I seem like I'm
• 1:02:00
  crazy because I'm talking to myself and saying thank you.
• 1:02:04
  Thank you for the feeling you're giving me.
• 1:02:06
  Thank you for bringing us to my awareness.
• 1:02:07
  Thank you for XYZ. We sometimes feel weird talking
• 1:02:13
  to ourselves but I do it all the time.
• 1:02:16
  I will say you are safe, you are enough, you deserve this, you
• 1:02:20
  are worthy of this. I will tell myself because I
• 1:02:23
  have moments just like you where I don't believe it, but by
• 1:02:26
  having nervous system regulation and then pairing that with
• 1:02:29
  programming my own mind, it allows me to move through those
• 1:02:33
  sticking points. They're not necessarily going to
• 1:02:35
  go away. They may decrease in the sense
• 1:02:37
  of the frequency of them. They might decrease in the sense
• 1:02:40
  of the intensity. But even though they might not
• 1:02:42
  go away, I can remember that when they come up that I am
• 1:02:44
  still in the driver's seat because I can regulate my body
• 1:02:47
  and use that to baseline my mind and give it new thoughts versus
• 1:02:51
  what it automatically had as a reaction.
• 1:02:54
  Step 4 is you must create stretch goals.
• 1:02:59
  You must create things that are a play with possibility, not
• 1:03:05
  just what is proven. So you'll often hear me even
• 1:03:08
  when we talked about the quarterly planning, we talked
• 1:03:10
  about safe and stretch goals. Safe goals and stretch goals
• 1:03:14
  give you this container from which to achieve.
• 1:03:16
  So often times someone who's playing small, if they say I'm
• 1:03:19
  going to go for this big goal, the natural thing that happens
• 1:03:24
  is, oh, but I can't do that because I haven't done that
• 1:03:25
  before, or I can't do that because I don't have evidence to
• 1:03:28
  say that that's possible. So what I want you to think
• 1:03:31
  about is when we set a stretch goal, it's your play with
• 1:03:34
  possibility. And again, this is not to say
• 1:03:37
  that you can't set a safe goal, but we're using this as a safe
• 1:03:40
  as the floor and the stretch as the ceiling.
• 1:03:43
  That's really the basis of how we can allow ourselves to step
• 1:03:48
  into something bigger, to step into more achievement.
• 1:03:51
  And so that stretch goal that you're setting is also setting a
• 1:03:54
  new identity for you. Because if I say to you double
• 1:03:57
  how much you made this year in business, that's your goal for
• 1:04:00
  next year. If that makes you feel
• 1:04:03
  stretched, if that makes you feel a little uncomfy, or take
• 1:04:07
  your current pricing and double it.
• 1:04:10
  If that made you uncomfy, that is something that allows you to
• 1:04:13
  say, OK, what does that feel like in me?
• 1:04:15
  How does that register in my body?
• 1:04:17
  What kind of thoughts come up for you if I say to double your
• 1:04:20
  revenue next year or double your prices?
• 1:04:22
  So what it does is it gives us a curiosity and an opportunity to
• 1:04:26
  step into that new identity. And so there's actually kind of
• 1:04:30
  a nerd side to this. So I want to share this with
• 1:04:32
  you. Why we do this?
• 1:04:34
  Neuroscience shows that novelty and challenging the
• 1:04:38
  neuroplasticity of your brain. So structure of your brain, you
• 1:04:41
  can actually build new wiring for courage, resilience and
• 1:04:45
  creativity. By setting stretch goals, you
• 1:04:48
  are literally rewiring your brain to actually create
• 1:04:53
  different pathways and different opportunities for possibility as
• 1:04:58
  a result of being courageous, resilient, and creative.
• 1:05:01
  You're actually creating new neural pathways by setting a new
• 1:05:05
  stretch goal for yourself because you're tapping into new
• 1:05:07
  possibility and it's causing your brain to create new
• 1:05:10
  pathways of possibility and growth and thought patterns and
• 1:05:15
  ways of perception of looking at your goal.
• 1:05:17
  So when you set goals that feel comfortable, it doesn't really
• 1:05:22
  help to stretch you and create new ways of thinking because
• 1:05:25
  you're so used to already having those initial pathways of how
• 1:05:27
  you think about your goals and how you're going to achieve
• 1:05:29
  them. So the ways that you will know
• 1:05:33
  that you're actually making progress with this is to set
• 1:05:36
  those stretch goals, not live within the safe goals.
• 1:05:39
  And you're acting on these ideas.
• 1:05:42
  You're taking action in accordance with them.
• 1:05:44
  You're not just ruminating on them and thinking about them.
• 1:05:48
  And the other piece is also looking at micro action, right,
• 1:05:51
  which is Step 5, taking a micro action toward the direction of
• 1:05:55
  being bold within business and life.
• 1:05:58
  Small steps done consistently have the ability to rewire your
• 1:06:02
  brain. And so boldness in business is
• 1:06:07
  not just about like I, you know, made this much and I'm going to
• 1:06:11
  just, you know, decide. I went from, you know, $5000,
• 1:06:14
  I'm going to make $5,000,000. It's not about that.
• 1:06:16
  It's about taking small intentional steps in your
• 1:06:19
  business, in your life that will ultimately allow you to gain
• 1:06:23
  confidence and gain evidence around what you're doing.
• 1:06:27
  And that ultimately is what we use to build momentum, to
• 1:06:30
  achieve more and more and more. The thing that I will let you
• 1:06:33
  know is that the micro actions are necessary to be able to
• 1:06:37
  build that big, big business. If you're playing small, we need
• 1:06:40
  to allow you to take small, uncomfy action, not these huge,
• 1:06:44
  massive leaps of action because confidence is not a prerequisite
• 1:06:49
  to having a big business. Confidence is something that is
• 1:06:52
  a byproduct of action. The reason I am confident in
• 1:06:55
  certain areas of my business is not because I was the most
• 1:06:58
  skilled at it, is not because I was the most exceptional at it.
• 1:07:01
  It's because I took action and used that to give my brain and
• 1:07:06
  my body evidence. OK, great, we did that.
• 1:07:09
  We were uncomfortable, we did it.
• 1:07:10
  Here's what happened. Let's move forward and I'm
• 1:07:12
  gathering all this evidence from all the action I'm taking.
• 1:07:15
  I'm not going to become confident by thinking about what
• 1:07:18
  it would be like to increase my price.
• 1:07:21
  I'm going to increase my price, get on a sales call, pitch it
• 1:07:24
  and use that as the confidence to say I thought it, I felt it,
• 1:07:27
  I was scared, I said it anyway, I pitched it, hey, guess what?
• 1:07:31
  It closed. So it helps us to really build
• 1:07:35
  up and bypass, frankly, the brains fear center.
• 1:07:42
  It's not about the fact that we will not feel the fear, it's
• 1:07:46
  feeling the fear in doing it anyway.
• 1:07:47
  And I know this is something people talk about all the time,
• 1:07:49
  you know, be scared and do it. But this is not just a, you
• 1:07:53
  know, motivational saying. There's literally science to
• 1:07:55
  back up that when you feel terrified of something and you
• 1:07:58
  feel scared and you act through it anyway, it actually builds
• 1:08:02
  that resilience within your mind and it decreases the level of
• 1:08:06
  fear. You're able to operate in an
• 1:08:10
  environment with fear. I was talking to somebody who
• 1:08:12
  was in the military and I said to him, you know, when you were,
• 1:08:15
  when you were in the military, were you still scared?
• 1:08:18
  Would you? How like, were you still scared
• 1:08:20
  going out every single day? He said yes and no.
• 1:08:22
  There's always an aspect of fear, but the difference between
• 1:08:25
  somebody who comes into wanting to go into the military versus
• 1:08:28
  someone who's been in it for a couple years or who's gone
• 1:08:30
  through training or boot camp is the fact that they desensitize
• 1:08:34
  you to fear. And it's not because they talk
• 1:08:37
  about the fear and talk about what's going to happen.
• 1:08:40
  They throw you into it. They literally create
• 1:08:43
  environments to expose you to fear constantly and allow you to
• 1:08:46
  act through it so that you have all that evidence of all those
• 1:08:50
  times you were also scared and had to be able to show up and
• 1:08:53
  perform. And once you have all these
• 1:08:55
  moments, you can look at if I was scared then, but I did it.
• 1:08:57
  I was scared then, but I did it. I was scared then, but I did it.
• 1:09:01
  And you collect all that when you go out again and again and
• 1:09:05
  you are, you know, out with other peers, you all still are
• 1:09:10
  scared. But you have so much evidence to
• 1:09:12
  say, I was scared then and I took action.
• 1:09:14
  And so you use that action as your evidence to take action
• 1:09:16
  that day. And that's the same thing.
• 1:09:18
  That's true for business. If you are somebody who feels
• 1:09:21
  like you have, and this is what I feel has helped me.
• 1:09:25
  If you don't have a track record of taking bold action, of course
• 1:09:29
  you're scared to take a bold action.
• 1:09:31
  At this point. I have taken so many bold
• 1:09:33
  actions that I'm like, yeah, I'm scared.
• 1:09:35
  Yeah. This is nerve wracking for me.
• 1:09:37
  Yeah, this makes me uncomfortable.
• 1:09:40
  But I've done a lot of things in my, you know, business and in my
• 1:09:43
  life now that were really scary. And I use those as reference
• 1:09:47
  points to help me to know that I'm going to be fine and that
• 1:09:50
  everything's going to be OK, even if I feel so uncomfortable
• 1:09:53
  and that I could literally crawl out of my skin.
• 1:09:55
  I know that when I'm nervous, I, I tap into, even though I'm
• 1:10:01
  doing something brave and I'm doing something bold, I've so
• 1:10:04
  much past bold and brave that I can use as my evidence to move
• 1:10:07
  forward. Step 6 is we have to rewire the
• 1:10:11
  narrative. So update your story of the
• 1:10:14
  identity that you've been living in.
• 1:10:16
  So your behavior, remember, is going to follow your perception,
• 1:10:19
  your identity of yourself. So if you see yourself as
• 1:10:22
  someone who is not ready, you will truly take action in
• 1:10:24
  accordance with the fact you're not ready.
• 1:10:26
  So being conscious of, you know, language we use with our self
• 1:10:30
  talk affirmations, you know, even using coaching like mindset
• 1:10:34
  coaching, NLP training to create lasting change and, and become
• 1:10:38
  somebody who really has the true identity of the person that you
• 1:10:43
  want to become. You know, we've talked about
• 1:10:44
  that quote that George Bryant passed along, which was you
• 1:10:47
  don't have the business that you want because you haven't become
• 1:10:50
  the person to run it. Often times you are not
• 1:10:52
  achieving the business that you want to have because you
• 1:10:55
  actually don't have the identity that you are the person who can
• 1:10:57
  have that business. You don't even believe that you
• 1:11:00
  could have the level of growth that is possible for you.
• 1:11:03
  And because you don't believe it, all your actions are
• 1:11:05
  following suit with that. So you have to tell yourself
• 1:11:09
  that you are somebody who shows up fully, that you're somebody
• 1:11:13
  who is scared but does it anyway.
• 1:11:15
  You are somebody who is 321 go and you acknowledge all the
• 1:11:19
  discomfort, but you move and you don't take time.
• 1:11:23
  You don't ruminate on it and you don't just think on it, but you
• 1:11:26
  have an awareness of what you think, how you feel and you go.
• 1:11:29
  And so once you start to have this self talk, you can program
• 1:11:34
  again. I really recommend you go back
• 1:11:36
  to listen to TJ Fry's episode. It's incredible.
• 1:11:38
  But the subconscious, you can reprogram your brain of who you
• 1:11:42
  are because if you don't, your brain is just taking evidence
• 1:11:45
  from your environment and allowing that to determine who
• 1:11:48
  you are. So we can actually rewire who I
• 1:11:51
  believe to be and give your brain evidence to shift how you
• 1:11:55
  talk to yourself and most importantly, who you believe
• 1:11:57
  yourself to be at the end of the day.
• 1:11:59
  And last but not least, which is step 7, reflect and celebrate
• 1:12:02
  your wins. What you track grows and what
• 1:12:06
  you celebrate is what will expand.
• 1:12:09
  And this is everything. I want you to celebrate a $7.00
• 1:12:13
  offer being sold. I want you to celebrate a $7000
• 1:12:16
  sale. I want you to celebrate the fact
• 1:12:18
  that you've got DMS that are coming in, a single DM that came
• 1:12:21
  in that day. I want you to celebrate the fact
• 1:12:23
  that a post you created did well.
• 1:12:25
  I want you to celebrate everything small to big.
• 1:12:29
  And This is why I see with scaling women is they only
• 1:12:31
  celebrate when they feel like they're worthy at a certain
• 1:12:33
  level. And even then, there's often
• 1:12:35
  times with these massive achievements, you know, I had a
• 1:12:38
  client who was going to be like, OK, I'll celebrate when I get to
• 1:12:41
  7 figures. And so I remember we hit seven
• 1:12:44
  figures and I was like, OK, I can't wait to see the way she
• 1:12:46
  celebrates this. And she's like, yeah, you know,
• 1:12:47
  it's good. But I definitely want more this
• 1:12:49
  year. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
• 1:12:51
  hold up. Give yourself a second to just
• 1:12:54
  even calibrate to this level of celebration.
• 1:12:56
  When you celebrate your wins along the way, you're creating
• 1:13:01
  momentum. You're creating again, a
• 1:13:03
  rewiring within you that actually helps you to see that
• 1:13:08
  risk is connected to reward. I repeat, celebrating your wins
• 1:13:14
  is helping you on both small scale and large scale to
• 1:13:18
  associate that your risk is connected to a reward.
• 1:13:22
  So because of that, the reflection and the
• 1:13:24
  acknowledgement of the celebration reinforces you are
• 1:13:28
  making progress and it motivates your future action.
• 1:13:32
  It motivates taking more action on the things that are scary or
• 1:13:36
  more action on things that can make you uncomfortable.
• 1:13:39
  So what this does is the positive reinforcement increases
• 1:13:43
  the dopamine within you and it's going to fuel that resilience.
• 1:13:45
  It's going to fuel that motivation.
• 1:13:48
  So you want to acknowledge also as well, not just the outcomes,
• 1:13:53
  but also who you were and what you did in that instance.
• 1:13:57
  So one of the things that I also really focus on is I acknowledge
• 1:14:01
  effort, not just achievement. I acknowledge courage, not just
• 1:14:07
  the outcomes, I celebrate momentum that I build over time.
• 1:14:12
  So another thing I want to invite you to is also not just
• 1:14:15
  acknowledging the aspect of done, the aspect of achievement,
• 1:14:19
  but also acknowledging the process of who you need to be
• 1:14:21
  and what you did in the in the pursuit of that thing.
• 1:14:25
  So today we covered a lot of ground on playing small.
• 1:14:30
  We talked about understanding symptoms of is this you?
• 1:14:34
  We looked at where does this come from?
• 1:14:36
  So where is the root of why we play small and how did I get to
• 1:14:41
  be this way? And why am I playing small?
• 1:14:43
  We looked at reflection questions to help you to journal
• 1:14:46
  and reflect on who you are right now.
• 1:14:50
  How is this presenting in your business, in life, and how you
• 1:14:52
  might want to invite that to change?
• 1:14:55
  And most importantly, we just went through the seven steps
• 1:14:57
  that you can take and the seven areas of focus that you can put
• 1:15:01
  into action that will help you to start to step into that
• 1:15:04
  larger version of yourself, of your business that you know deep
• 1:15:09
  down is either who you want to become or what is ultimately
• 1:15:13
  possible for you. But you know that you're for
• 1:15:15
  some reason, you're getting in your own way.
• 1:15:17
  You're playing small in the way you show up in business, You're
• 1:15:19
  playing small in the way you're showing up in life, and you're
• 1:15:21
  ready to do things differently. So listen, I would love to hear
• 1:15:27
  from you. What was something that landed
• 1:15:29
  today? One of the things we talk about
• 1:15:31
  a lot on Ambitious is that there is such an incredible
• 1:15:35
  transformation. It's part of why I do coaching.
• 1:15:37
  There's an incredible transformation that happens when
• 1:15:39
  you're witnessing something. So when we have an aha moment
• 1:15:42
  and no one else is there to witness us, we can just kind of
• 1:15:45
  hide and pretend like that didn't happen.
• 1:15:46
  When you're witnessing it, it actually allows that
• 1:15:49
  transformation to register on a deeper level.
• 1:15:52
  So what I want to invite you to is to share this, share this
• 1:15:54
  even, you know, potentially with a friend if you want to slide
• 1:15:57
  into my DMS and say, Kate, I listened to this episode and
• 1:16:00
  here's what I've realized. Here's how I was playing small.
• 1:16:03
  Just even sharing that will allow you to have a deeper
• 1:16:06
  acknowledgement and transformation around it.
• 1:16:09
  And most importantly, I would love to just hear in general
• 1:16:11
  from you in any way feedback. You know there are certain topic
• 1:16:14
  that you would love for us to cover.
• 1:16:16
  Do you feel like you want a little bit more mindset?
• 1:16:18
  You want more strategy? One of the things we love is
• 1:16:21
  that we get to talk to you after these episodes.
• 1:16:23
  And I love when you guys slide into my DMS.
• 1:16:25
  I honestly just like, I can't tell you how much it fills my
• 1:16:27
  bucket to chat with you. It helps us so much to really
• 1:16:31
  curate the content that we put onto the show to make sure that
• 1:16:34
  serves you for where you're at right now in your business, in
• 1:16:36
  your life. And what we can do to provide
• 1:16:39
  either education for myself or from our guests to come on as an
• 1:16:43
  expert to give you what you need to help you to tap into that
• 1:16:46
  next level, you to really help you to unleash your ambition.
• 1:16:50
  So all of us to say, I hope today was helpful.
• 1:16:52
  I hope you took lots of notes. Again, remember, your homework
• 1:16:55
  is, yes, of course, to put these action items into place, but
• 1:16:58
  also to remember that those reflection questions are there
• 1:17:00
  to help you to go deeper with this level of awareness.
• 1:17:03
  So I cannot wait to see you on the next episode.
• 1:17:06
  And, as always, stay ambitious.