If you want to create change in the way you run your business, and the lifestyle it gives you, you have to change the way you think about it.
So many of my clients come to me when they’ve been stuck in the same way of thinking for years.
They’ve been running into the same kind of glass ceiling for years, and they’re ready to make change.
To create the change they want, they need to flip the way they think about the problem.
Over the years, I’ve discovered 5 frameworks that help entrepreneurs and business owners completely shift the way they are thinking about their biggest problems and take huge steps toward the lifestyle they seek.
In this article, I’m going to show you the strategies I use to help my clients:
Overcome self-sabotage
Start prioritising the correct tasks
Build the character skills they need to succeed
Change limiting beliefs
Hit the right balance of hard charging & recovery
Getting Unstuck
If you’ve been battling the same problem for too long, you’re playing it too safe and too small.
This is super common with business owners I work with. They say they want to grow, but actually they’ve become comfortable at their current level of discomfort.
They’re existing in a place of too much order.
To have the life you want, you need to get better at balancing order and chaos.
You’re living in order when you can predict what is going to happen.
You’re living in chaos when you don’t know what will happen.
Too little chaos and you’ll stagnate. Too much chaos and you’ll become overwhelmed. Get your Goldilocks amount, and you’ll experience rapid growth.
Too little order and you’ll always be guessing at what to do next. Too much order and you’ll never change anything. Find your perfect amount, and you’ll have enough stability and safety to lean aggressively into chaos.
Shutdown & Hustle
This is the primary lens I look at my clients through. It’s one which refers to their physical state.
So many business owners and freedom seekers are stifled by the way their nervous system is regulated.
They’re either in turbocharged hustle mode (always frantically busy and never productive)...
…or they’re in shutdown mode where they’re so overwhelmed by the potential of failure that they’re essentially playing dead.
Neither of these states produce freedom because they do not help you:
Think long-term
Engage in creative and generative pursuits
Connect socially
To move my clients toward this state, I give them a bespoke nervous system regulation plan. This focuses on practises like sleep hygiene, breathwork, and cold exposure.
Character Mastery
By the time you’re 25 or so, your personality is pretty much set. You are who you are.
Which sounds kinda bleak, but it’s important to acknowledge the facts.
Psychologists call this the Big 5 Personality Traits, or OCEAN; your Openness to New Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
But what if your goals require you to be more assertive (AKA less agreeable) in the way you act toward your team?
Well the good news is that you can bolster your personality by training your character.
It’s very common that people who come to work with me are highly agreeable (basically they’re nice people) and as such struggle to say what they demand from others.
To overcome this, I help them become more courageous and assertive. These are two character skills which allow a business owner to move to their limit of agreeableness.
Belief Change
When limiting beliefs hit, they hit hard. Part of developing the character you seek is eliminating the beliefs that hold you back.
When someone comes to me with limiting beliefs, they are often trying to change them too quickly. This is why they can’t shift them.
They’ve jumped too far ahead in the process.
These are the 4 stages of belief change. Most people skip the second part.
1 - Acceptance. Accept that you need to shift the belief. Accept reality as it is.
2 - Awareness. Build awareness of the belief and how it shows up with your emotions, thoughts, physical sensations and behaviours
3 - Accountability. Begin taking accountability of your actions. First to someone else and then to yourself
4 - Adaptation. Then change happens.
Light & Dark
We have two sets of attributes. One creates motion. One repairs.
The daoists called these Yin and Yang. Some refer to them as Dark and Light.
I call them masculine and feminine character skills.
If you’re reading this, you are likely intelligent enough to think in abstract concepts. So know that when I say masculine and feminine, I’m not referring to gender or sex.
Culture at the moment praises the masculine: force, assertiveness, courage. But it takes a balance of the masculine and the feminine to create the life you really want.
The feminine is the compliment to the masculine: patience, wisdom, compassion.
When clients begin working with me, we first ascertain which is undeveloped, and if any parts are overly dominant.
If they are a tyrant to themselves, they are over-developed in the masculine skills.
If they are weak in willpower or discipline, they haven’t developed enough of the masculine.
If they exist in constant chaos, they are over-developed in the feminine.
If they can never sit still or be kind to themselves, they haven’t developed the feminine.
Summary
You will likely resonate with some of these frameworks and not others. This is fine - you’re an individual and as such have individual needs.
Think about your current big challenge and then run it through each framework to see which helps.
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