Conquering Fear: The Key to Business Success

For years, I've been trying to solve the problem of I really want to do this, but I'm scared to pull the trigger. I really want to do this, but I'm so afraid it's not going to work out. I know I'm meant to do this, but what if? And I recognize all of these fears because I had them myself.

And at the same time, it didn't feel like I needed to listen to them or that they really were relevant. I had the thought, like, this is a lot of money. Like, what if it doesn't work out? And then I just did it anyway.

And I see that in some of my clients. But the majority of the audience and the majority of the people that I chat with and even the majority of the clients that I have who have made the decision to invest in the startup of their business and in the growth of their business still experience so much resistance and so many roadblocks and so much emotional turmoil that I have been researching this for a long time, trying to understand why. Why is it that you want something so badly and yet you can't make the decision to go out and create it for yourself?

Why is it that you know that this is your calling? You have the education behind you. You have the credentials behind you. And it just feels so scary and so confronting and so far out of your comfort zone.

so unbelievable to you that you could actually be successful, so much so that you spend years sort of circling this decision and never really getting anywhere. And that's the reality that I see. And so I have been researching this and I've been trying to understand this. I have a background in personal training and nutrition, which really did not in any way, shape or form set me up for success in the business realm.

But what it did do was give me a very basic understanding of the nervous system and a very basic understanding of from a physiological perspective, what is happening in the body when we are faced with a perceived or a believed threat. And so this is what this episode is about. I'm going to do my best to explain what's happening and how to override it, how to override this very, what's the word, historic, historical survival programming that we all have so that you can move forward and make these decisions from a very rational and very logical and and very sort of critical thinking perspective versus letting your survival programming drive your life because that's what's happening.

And so just a little bit of a disclaimer, I'm not perfect at this. This is something that I am obsessed with understanding. I'm not, you know, a PhD student. I don't have any, you know, on paper credentials to be talking about this other than the fact that I've spent the last 40, no, the last 14 years of my life, I'm 44, I was doing the math in my head, the last 14 years of my life rewiring my beliefs, my brain, my survival programming so that I can move forward faster without the self-sabotage, without the angst, without the exhaustion of having to override my mental faculties on a daily basis.

I'm not perfect at it, but I have absolutely come a long way. And so I thought this would be a really good episode to put together for you. So take what resonates and leave the rest. So let's start off by just talking about this in a very sort of general way.

It seems to me from my own experience and also from interacting with thousands of practitioners and coaches on a daily basis, that it's no big deal to spend $15,000 on a certification or $2,000 on a certification or $5,000 on a degree or whatever without really blanking, like without that same level of angst and hesitation and fear that comes up when you're faced with a decision that requires you to show up visibly. You'll invest in continuing education, advanced certifications, expensive equipment for your practice, right?

You'll buy test kits and supplements and you'll buy whatever as long as it's sort of under this educational banner but ask you to invest let's say five thousand dollars in a business coaching program that could literally transform your income your life thousands of people's lives and you're suddenly like oh gosh I don't know if this is worth it I don't know if I can spend the money I don't know if I should I have too much on my plate. All of these fears and all of these thoughts start infiltrating your mind.

And you know you need to show up consistently on social media. You know that in order to get clients, you need to position yourself as some type of credible person, as some type of authority in your field. You know you should charge an above average fee. And you know that there are options for you so that you do not have to trade time for money and, you know, compete with every other health coach, naturopath, whatever on the market.

But every time you think about, you know, posting, heaven forbid, on your personal Facebook page or, you know, writing content that has a little bit of an edge to it or doing some type of video where people actually have to see you, putting your name out there, putting your face out there, increasing your fees, your heart starts racing and you find another reason that you're not going to show up on social media. You're not going to do the live. You're not going to record the video.

You're not going to create the content and you end up spinning your wheels for years. And so here's what's actually happening. Your brain thinks that business success and visibility will literally kill you. And I know that might, you know, give you a laugh, but that's what's happening.

So I want to explain the neuroscience. And again, I'm no neuroscientist. Like, let's just be real. But my ADHD allows me to become very hyper fixated on a topic.

And I like learning about this stuff because it is really the thing that has allowed me to become a millionaire and really has helped me to bulletproof my confidence. And so we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the neuroscience behind why investing in yourself and stepping into your authority and becoming visible is so terrifying. And how to override that threat detection system so that you can actually have the business and life that you want.

Because it's exhausting. It's exhausting to want something and know that you were made for it and yet not be able to bring yourself to actually fucking do it. Like that's exhausting. And it's sad.

It's pitiful. And it's unnecessary. Like it's unnecessary. I have watched so many women.

I work predominantly with women. I have a couple of male clients, but predominantly women come in to work with me who literally had no power behind their voice, had no authority to their person. And within a matter of months, our webinars, lives, having opinions, being authoritative, like it is possible to override your threat detection system so that you can actually create the business and life that you want and that you know in your bones it is for you. Like you know this.

So let's start with why your brain sabotages your success. So here's what the research shows and here's what my investigation has come up with. And here's what I have been doing for, like I said, the last 14 years. Your amygdala, so that's a part in your brain.

So your amygdala, this is your brain's alarm system, cannot distinguish between a physical threat and a social threat because we are programmed prehistorically, like we are programmed from back in the day, right? So when you were five years old, me, and your kindergarten teacher implies that you are bossy. The words I think she used to my parents, which then got passed down to me, was like, your daughter displays leadership qualities, but she has to let other kids answer. She has to da-da-da-da-da.

Like, in other words, bossy, right? And so I internalized that, that I, that that's bad, right? I'm bossy. That's bad.

I should not speak because I don't want to come across as bossy because bossy is bad. And so then my brain filed that away as being bossy and taking charge equals social rejection equals threat to my survival. And later on in my educational career, in my mind, that became I'm a bossy bitch and was reinforced by the fact that I got horrendously bullied from going into grade nine until basically end of grade 11, like horrendously bullied. So that, you know, fixed in my mind that being myself, being authoritative, having this like vibe about me, right?

This like walking with confidence vibe. I was also a competitive dancer. And so I walked with swagger. Like I showed up with like, if you've ever seen dancers, you know, they have this like edge to them.

And so all of this sort of was internalized to me where it was like being visible, taking charge, having confidence equals being bullied, equals social rejection, equals threat to my survival. And so my nervous system learned that to be liked, to be loved, to have friends, to be a good girl, you know, fit in, not to brag, not to stand up, not to speak my mind, not to be authoritative, not to take charge. It is my natural instinct. I have to like heavily restrain myself to just take charge, figure out the situation.

I am very solution oriented thinking. I don't focus on problems. I'm like, okay, how are we going to solve this? Let's do this.

Let's do that. Like my brain just naturally does that. But I learned that that looks like bossy, that that comes across as bossy. And so I just take a back seat.

I let everybody else do it. Three hours later, we're still in a fucking kerfuffle I super annoyed because I can see the solution And I don say anything because then I not going to be liked because then everybody going to look at me and be like you being a bossy bitch right And so my nervous system learned that good girls don't brag, you know, don't take charge, don't speak up, don't take up too much space, you know, always sound like a little bit of a ditz, always sound like I'm not really sure of myself, like the tone that I'm using now is my like authoritative tone.

And that is not the tone that I would use. For example, if I was with my son's hockey team, with the moms, even now, even at my 44 year old self, right? Because I still, it's still there. That programming is still there.

And I wouldn't be the one to like raise my hand to be the manager. I wouldn't be the one to raise my hand or just like put myself in the leadership role. A, because bandwidth, but also B, because I don't want to put myself in a position where I have to be with other girls and maybe they're not going to like me. So I don't do it.

Again, right? That is thinking that putting myself in that type of situation will kill me. So I don't put myself in that type of situation. And the reason that I don't is because it doesn't actually matter to me all that much.

It doesn't matter to me. And so I don't do it because that would then I'm saving my energy. However, when it comes to something that matters to me, that means a lot to me, you betcha. I just like I insert myself.

I don't give a fuck. I'm just like, yes, you can think I'm a bossy bitch. I don't care. This fucking matters.

This matters. And so you got to kind of pick and choose, you know, when you're going to override your threat detection system and when you're just going to be like, OK, I don't really need to exert the mental exhaustion, the mental bandwidth on, you know, figuring out a way to inject myself into this situation. So I wanted to share that with you because I still experience it, but I'm aware enough to know that that's exactly what's happening. And then I get to choose.

I get to choose. Does this matter to me? am I going to exert the mental bandwidth that it's going to take to override my threat detection system, to brainwash myself into thinking that if I show up as exactly who I am, they'll like me. And even if they don't like me, that's okay too, right?

That takes a lot. Like it does. It takes a lot of mental bandwidth. And so when we're talking about something that actually matters to you, like your career, like your ability to literally transform lives, we have to make a decision like, am I going to put the mental bandwidth towards overriding my threat detection system?

Because your amygdala is real. It's your brain's alarm system. And so when you go and you put yourself into a position that triggers the alarm, you have to decide, are you going to override the alarm? Or are you going to listen to the alarm and slink back and never do the thing so that the alarm shuts off?

You don't have to exert bandwidth and you go back to just living your current existence despite that deep rooted desire to do the thing that you want to do. But when you step into that arena, alarm bells go off. Right. So you have to make that decision.

And so when you go and you put yourself in that arena of showing up, of being visible, of having to make a financial decision to invest in coaching, mentorship, skills, whatever, that is going to then help you develop this business that you want, that you say that you want, you have a stress response, right? racing heart, sweating, anxiety, overwhelmed, as if you are faced with a burglar, as if you are faced with a lion or a bear coming to hunt you down. It is the same response in your body because your brain's alarm system cannot distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat, whether it's real or perceived.

Because again, your brain cannot distinguish between real or perceived. We know this. The research supports this. You can implant memories to people once they're repeated enough and it becomes very real.

And then you can't distinguish between a perception and reality. Like we know the brain is like wild. And so this isn't about waiting to have confidence. This isn't about even you being cheap or having the money or not having the money.

This is biology. This is your brain literally trying to save your life from what it perceives as a life-threatening violation of your social rules of what is good and what is bad. And it's individual. And it's based on your history.

It's based on the way that you were brought up. It's based on your cultural programming. It's based on your religious programming. It's based on whether you were bullied or not.

Like, it's based on all of these things. And so let's just talk about how this can show up for you so that you are really, you know, getting this and taking it in. So the first way is investment paralysis. So you're researching business programs for months or years.

You've been on sales calls with every single person who offers any type of business related coaching program. You've even spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars buying low ticket, you know, entry level things, thinking that like a forty seven dollar whatever is going to be the, you know, the bee's knees, like the ticket to your success. You join free Facebook groups. You watch all the free trainings.

You download every lead magnet. But when it comes, excuse me, when it comes time to actually invest in the one program that could actually change everything, you find reasons as to why you can't. Now is not the right time. Maybe there's something cheaper.

What if it doesn't work? How fast will I make back the money? Like all of these what feel like good reasons come crashing into your thoughts. And so why is this happening?

It's because your amygdala, that threat detection system, is screaming spending money on yourself is selfish. What if it doesn't work? What if people think that I'm greedy? What if they think that I'm trying to be salesy?

What if I fail publicly after investing all this money? Like all the fears that you have are triggering your threat detection system. Alarm bells are going off. And then that is sort of converted into an objection.

Right. So you're you're given an opportunity to and you have to make a decision that doesn't feel comfortable right now for whatever reason. Right. And so then the alarm bells go off.

The fear happens and the fear is then converted into an objection that you can rationalize to yourself so that you don't feel like a quitter immediately off the bat. And then you give the objection and the alarm bell goes off because it's like, OK, safety, we're not going to do that. Right. And that's exactly what's happening.

This is exactly what's happening. And then we have the, you know, the social media freeze where you can't show up on social media. You follow all the Instagram gurus and you've downloaded content plans and content pillars, maybe even mine. And you bought the chat GPT to help you create hooks and headlines.

And you've, you know, you bought the camera and you've have the tripod and you've done all these and maybe you've created a couple of pieces of content and you post maybe once a week or you post motivational quotes because those are safe and you post recipes because those are safe. And the thought of sharing your actual expertise or talking face to camera about your services, having an opinion online so that other people could hear your opinion makes you feel physically ill, like you're going to vomit, like you can't bring yourself to do it.

And your nervous system thinks, if I post about my knowledge, people might disagree with me. They might think I'm showing off. They might call me a fraud. It's safer to stay invisible.

I can't tell you how many times I'm on a training, a course, a live, a webinar, whatever, and I'm interacting with you all in real time. One of the most common questions I get or one of the most common fears I hear is, how do I deal with the haters? How do I avoid being canceled? And I'm like, you haven't even done anything yet.

Why are we talking about this? Like, why are we having a conversation about you being canceled when you literally have never even posted. You've never created content. And so this is your nervous system.

This is your threat detection system trying to keep you safe because you are legitimately afraid of a potential threat that, you know, hasn't occurred yet. And that's very real. And so this is, again, this is your brain coming up with reasons to protect you. You better not have an opinion because somebody might not like it.

And then, you know, when you were nine years old or 14 years old or 21 years old, you had a conflict with someone and they reamed you out and you felt shame and embarrassment for three years after that. Like, I know it might sound ridiculous, but this is real. Like, this is very real. And it's stopping you from having the business and life that you want.

And then we have authority anxiety where you have more training and more experience and more credentials than half the people in your field. Maybe you have 20 years of experience. I've chatted with nurses and doctors and PhD people who were like, do you really think that somebody is going to want to work with me? And I'm like, don't you have 20 years of being an OBGYN and you want to put a program out for, you know, postpartum for a thousand dollars and you're concerned that people aren't going to pay it?

What? Like, what? That doesn't make sense to me, right? That doesn't make sense.

Like, if any other person heard that, they'd be like, what's wrong with you? Like, it doesn't make any sense, but it's very real, right? This is the authority anxiety problem where you have more training, more experience than most people, but you still introduce yourself as just a nutritionist or I'm still learning or you downplay your expertise because your nervous system has learned that claiming authority is dangerous. Showing up with confidence and charisma and power and like putting your sort of stake in the ground is dangerous.

Your brain thinks if I position myself as the expert, people will expect more from me. They'll scrutinize everything I do. They'll discover that I don't know everything as if everybody knows everything. It's safer to just, you know, play it down, right?

Because maybe when you were 11, somebody told you to stop bragging. And that's like stuck with you, especially if you're a highly sensitive person, right? Especially if you've gone through any trauma, which like at this point, who hasn't, right? Then we have the pricing panic.

So you know you should charge more for your services, but every time you think about raising your rates, you feel like sick, like you can't do it. You convince yourself that nobody will pay, that clients can't afford these higher prices, But really, your amygdala, your threat detection system is terrified because you don't want to be seen as greedy or money focused or all you care about is money. All you care about is money, right? All you care about is money.

Because when you were 27 years old and you know I don know something happened to you and your friends turned to you and said all you care about is money Like why That stuck with you So it could have been said one time It could have been a reinforced theme in your home right That like rich people are bad and money is greedy and you should just be happy with what you want, what you have and you know, whatever, whatever, whatever that narrative was for you so that your nervous system has now internalized this threat.

Good women don't care about money. Like you shouldn't care about money, right? Makes you selfish. charging for your work makes you selfish.

You should just give it away for free, right? People won't like you if you think too highly of yourself and don't be a show-off and don't be ostentatious. Like all of these stories have now been internalized so that when you bump up against anything that triggers that internalized alarm bell, right? Your nervous system, your brain, your amygdala goes alarm, alarm, alarm.

We are now bumping up against people. People will think you're greedy. We better not, you know, that's a threat. We better not move in that direction.

So you don't raise your prices and your business suffers and you don't make any money. And that sucks. And that sucks. Right.

And it's exhausting because you want to make money in your mind. Rationally, you want to make money. Right. You rationally, you know, when I one of the biggest fights that my ex now ex-husband, but back then we were married.

One of the most blowout fights we had, he was helping me grow my business at the beginning, my online business at the beginning, was over my fees. And I was, because I was doing one-on-one business coaching at the time, this was like, I don't know, 2014 or something. And he was saying to me, you need to raise your rates. I think I was charging something like, I'm not even kidding, like $497 a month for like weekly business coaching.

Like I would speak to them for like an hour a week. And I think I was charging like 500 bucks a month or some ridiculous number like that. And he was like, no, you have to raise your rates. You have to double your rates.

You should be charging at least $1,000 a month. And I could not do it. I broke out in hives. I had an anxiety attack.

I was sick to my stomach. My digestive system shut down. Like all of these physical symptoms started to happen to me when I even sort of broached the subject of going from $497, which felt safe to me. Like that felt reasonable to me.

Like that didn't feel like I was price gouging people and that didn't feel whatever. It didn't feel confronting to me at all. But to charge $1,000 a month for somebody to just talk to me, like I didn't feel like that was worth it. Right.

Which is funny because, again, just like you, you have the ability to, you know, this was life transforming. Right. You have the ability to transform somebody's life. And so we had this massive blowout.

And I said, OK, I'm going to do it, but I'm going to do it slowly. So I went from $4.97 to $5.97, $7.

97, and I incrementally increased it over the course of, let's say, six months, I think it was, like the rest of the year, so that I didn't trigger my threat detection system, right? Because with pricing, you have to be able to say it out loud without your energy changing. Well, if my threat detection system is going off, there's no way that I can show up and be like, yeah, it's $1,000. Take it or leave it.

Like, I know what I'm worth. It's a thousand dollars. Right. That won't happen.

Like, I can't. I'd be like, it's it's like it's a thousand dollars. But like, if you if you can't do that, I understand. Right.

Like, that's how most people are, because their threat to detection system is going off. And when you're charging for your work, when you're charging for an outcome, you can't show up like that. It decreases trust and makes people skeptical. And they're like, are you sure?

Like, are you even qualified? You don't sound too confident in yourself, right? And this is really what's happening. And then we have the launch that never happens, right?

That cyclical like, well, I'm just going to push it back and I'm going to push it back. And I see this a lot in the clients that I work with. So you've been getting ready to launch. you've been in let's say you've been in working with a program and then you know this thing happens so you have to put it on hold and then that thing happens and you have to put it on hold and you know your pet gets sick so you have to put it on hold and like all of these what feel very important to you and probably are very important to you although sometimes it's self-sabotage right all of these things happen so you delay your launch for months or even years you've rewritten your program content 17 times.

You've changed your program name six times. You change your ideal client avatar, you know, 11 times. You're still not sure about your pricing. There's you're creating reasons, whether you realize this or not, you're creating reasons to procrastinate.

Your brain is keeping you in preparation mode because launching, showing up feels like stepping into it. Like you literally feel like you're going to die. It feels like stepping into a battlefield. And I see this, like I said, in the clients that I have where, you know, they working with me is like a predetermined time and they wait until the last two weeks of their allotted time to do things.

And it's for this reason. It's because for whatever happened to them growing up, whatever whatever sort of psychology they have, whatever their belief system is that they have, it's very intense and it is causing them to procrastinate. It's causing them to stay stuck. It's causing them to not do the work because any level of doing the work is triggering their amygdala.

It's triggering their threat detection system. Even doing the work knowing that they're then going to have to put it out into the world is triggering their threat detection system. And I can say this and it's not, it's funny. I just like got nervous.

I was like, oh, am I being rude? Am I being mean? No, I'm not. And here's why.

Because I've been doing this long enough to witness, to bear witness to two exact scenarios where we have one person who is going through a traumatic event in their personal life and is still prioritizing doing the work and showing up. And we have another person who's going through a traumatic event in their life and can't prioritize and can't show up. And I see this every day. I've witnessed it myself.

I'm the one who's gone through traumatic events for extended periods of time. and I'll wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning to do what I need to do because it matters to me.

And so I can separate those two things where I don't then use it as a reason that I can't. And or they're not, they haven't sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? They haven't, let's just say, strengthened their resilience, their mental capacity, their ability to do more than what's right in front of them. And that's okay too.

There's no shame in that. It's just, that's the reality, right? The reality is, is that this traumatic thing is happening and they don't have capacity to do anything more than handle what's right in front of them. Cool, that's fine.

But all of these things can be changed. They can be changed if you choose to change them. And then we have the perfectionistic prison. So you spend three hours writing one Instagram caption, then delete it because it doesn't sound professional enough.

You record the video over and over and over again. You have, you know, 17 different certifications and you still don't feel qualified enough to do anything. Your amygdala is trying to protect you by making you perfect before you're visible because perfect means safe from criticism. This is what's happening.

And this might be triggering to you, but it's the truth. It's the reality. And you can try and fight it. But why?

Just acknowledge it. And then you get to also make the decision as to, you know what, if this is really what's happening for me, maybe this isn't really for me then. If you're like, right, maybe this isn't really what I want. Because if you're not going to put the effort to override your threat detection system, then you might as well just stop now.

And I say that with genuine love and kindness and compassion. If you're not going to put the time, energy, and effort into overriding your threat detection system so that you can actually do what you say you want to do, then you might as well just stop now and go do something that doesn't trigger the alarm so that you can actually do it. And so why does this happen? I've sort of mentioned it throughout this episode.

Childhood programming, early experiences create these neural pathways. If being assertive and visible and ambitious and too much, too much led to any type of rejection or punishment, anything like that, your brain wired that as dangerous, as unsafe. So now in your adult form, in your well-educated, well-credentialed adult form, decades later, your nervous system still responds to authority, visibility, and self-investment as a threat because that neural pathway has been solidified.

It's like a paved road, right? You can break up a paved road with like a jackhammer or whatever tool, but that's what's happening. That's what's happening in your brain. Online visibility feels like standing naked in front of a crowd of potential critics.

Your amygdala, your threat detection system cannot tell the difference between posting, you know, a social media content and being physically exposed to danger. For women especially, taking authority and investing in yourself could trigger deep programming. We were taught that, you know, good girls don't brag and don't take up space and don't put yourself first and don't prioritize your needs and make sure that the man has what he needs and the children have what they need and so on.

Right. So your nervous system interprets business success as violating these safety rules. Right. Which, again, alarm bells feels dangerous.

Spending money on your business feels different from spending money on education because business investment implies that you believe in your own success. It implies that you're going to then separate yourself from the pack. It implies that you are going to put yourself first. Being educated is OK and does not trigger alarm bells because we're all programmed to be educated.

The school system, post-secondary, you know, you have to be educated in order to have a good career and a good life. So like education is OK, but making oodles and oodles of money, being in business for yourself, especially if you're a woman coming from a very traditional background, is absolutely not OK. You don't stand out. You blend in.

Right. The minute you stand out, alarm bells. Your amygdala sees this as arrogance. Arrogance is bad.

You don't want to be arrogant, especially as a woman. That's bad. And so here's what I really want you to understand. Unless you're going to decide to override your amygdala threat detection system, you will never move forward despite really wanting to.

And again, I know that sounds harsh, but it's just the truth. You're going to stay stuck in research mode and preparation mode and someday mode. And at some point, maybe in five years, maybe in 10, maybe you're listening to this and it's already been five years and it's already been 10 years. you're going to look back and you're going to realize that the threats weren't real.

Right? That they're not real. That even if somebody criticizes you on the internet, you're not going to die. Your family will still love you.

Your kids will still love you. Nothing bad is going to actually happen to you. And you'll regret all the time that you spent hiding when you could have been helping people and building the life that you want So the women that you see succeeding online it not that they don have the threat detection system Obviously we all do The difference is, is that they learned to feel the fear and sort of acknowledge it for what it is, just an archaic threat detection system. It doesn't fucking mean anything.

And then go for it anyway, post anyway, invest anyway, get the help anyway, show up on social media, do the launch despite feeling nauseous about it the whole time. Because again, you are deciding to override the threat detection system the same way that when you walk into your home and that alarm system is going off, you punch in the code to shut the fucker off. You can do the same thing. You have to just create a code to shut the threat detection system off.

And there's very much, there's easy ways to do that. And so the solution is to retrain your threat detection system, which is what I've been doing for the last, let's say, 14 years. So how? How do you do this?

Number one, realize that it's biology and it's not personal failure. It actually has nothing to do with you. It's the way that we were all programmed as physiologically as humans. When you feel panic about investing in something or showing up, being visible, posting about your expertise, raising your rates, just remind yourself, oh, this is my amygdala.

This is my threat detection system trying to protect me from a threat. The threat's not real. It's totally fine. I am safe.

I am safe over and over and over again in your brain. Uh-uh. This is safe for me. I'm going to shut the threat detection system off.

I am safe. I am safe. I am safe. Understand that investment reduces the threat.

So here's something like fascinating. When you invest in learning business skills, how to turn your education into magnetic marketing, messaging, how to put together a webinar that converts, how to put together emails, how to do the tech, how to handle tricky clients, how to handle when somebody disagrees with you on social media, how to handle when people post dumb shit on your ads, you can just hide the thing. We don't have to even discuss it. Like when you invest in learning the skills that you don't currently have, that threat detection system doesn't even get turned on.

You're actually reducing your amygdala's threat detection. Why? Because competence and capability equals safety to your nervous system. So right now, your threat detection system is going off in spades because you don't actually have the skills that you know that you need to be successful.

And so what's happening is that your amygdala is going threat, threat, threat, threat, right? Like your threat detection system is alarm bell, alarm bell, because you are going to go enter into an arena that you are not yet yet skilled to do battle in. But you have to make that decision to actually go into the arena and acquire the skills so that you can go and win the battle. Right.

You have to make the decision first. But because your threat detection system and some of some of your threat detection systems are stronger than others, some of them are easier to override. But let's just say your threat detection system is very strong because you were bullied and because, you know, you grew up in a very traditional household, very conservative household, whatever. Right.

You're now having to override those alarm bells even to just make that initial decision to invest. So when you learn these skills, like how to write compelling copy, your brain thinks, I know how to do this. It's less dangerous to post because you actually have the skill and you feel a level of competence. and when you feel a level of competence, that then makes you feel more confident, right?

More confident in your ability to go into battle, to face the threat. When you understand marketing strategy and you feel really good about your marketing strategy, your nervous system relaxes because you have a plan, right? It makes sense right now. You're freaking out because there's no plan.

You're just throwing spaghetti at the wall. That's not safe. That's just a mess, right? When you practice your webinar, when you practice your enrollment script, when you neutralize it in your body, because you have practiced it so much, it now becomes muscle memory.

There's no threat there, right? There's no threat. I remember the first time I had to go and learn how to do an aerial. An aerial is a no-handed cartwheel.

And of course, you're scared out of your mind because you're not using your hands. I can do cartwheels. I can do roundoffs. I can do all those things.

I was a dancer, gymnast. and the fear that you have, but then you do it incrementally, right? First, the way that I was taught to do it, I literally had, I'm sure they have straps for it now, but this was back in the day. They would tie a sweatshirt around my waist and they would literally haul me over.

Like if you think about a cartwheel, they would have the sweatshirt around the waist. And so that way they could literally raise me up. I was in a dance studio. It wasn't like in a gymnastics place with like the straps and stuff.

And so they would, it was very innovative. And so they would haul you over and it felt safer so that I could actually try it because somebody was there to catch me in case I fell so that I could feel what it feels like in my body to do it. It's the same thing I'm learning how to golf right now, which is the most frustrating thing I've actually ever done because I have to feel what it feels like in my body in my swing. And so if I think about it too much, my swing is no good.

But if I don't think about it and I just let my I don't have enough muscle memory right now because I haven't done it enough. I haven't put in enough reps. And so every time I go to stand at the the tee and hit the ball, I feel embarrassed. I feel nervous.

And I have to override that feeling every time and tell myself it's OK. Nobody's watching. It's OK. Nobody's watching.

So the way that I do that is I go seven o'clock in the morning, right when the, oh my gosh, what's it called? Not the golfing range, the hitting range, whatever it's called, the shoot, the driving range. Oh my gosh. Hi, perimenopausal brain.

The driving range. I go right when it's open, you know, during the week because it's less busy and I feel less embarrassed. So my threat detection system is weaker and I can override it because maybe there's only three people and they're, you know, at the end of the row and it's no big deal. This is real.

There's no difference between me doing that in golf and you, you know, having to post on social media. And so this is, you know, exposure therapy, you have to do it, right? You have to sort of start small and do it in a way that doesn't create alarm bells. This is why I teach my clients to beta launch.

This is why you can have like a low key launch where you can even do it behind the scenes. You don't have to post on social. You can do it behind the scenes via email where literally no one public facing sees it. You can do it in a way that doesn't set off alarm bells for you.

You just might not know that because all you're seeing are all these people with a decade's worth of experience doing these big launches when like I have clients who have 100 people on their email list who were just sending emails and doing sort of a workshop behind the scenes. Nobody public facing would even know that it's happening. and the reason that we do it this way is because that does not trigger alarm bells. Where if it's too much for you to post on social, don't fucking post.

It's fine. Let's just run ads. We'll run ads and barely anybody sees that because you're only targeting your ideal client and your aunt Sally and your best friend Jenna won't see it on your personal page and therefore the alarm bells don't go off. You have to do it in a way that starts small without triggering your alarm bells.

If you don't feel comfortable charging $1,000, I don't actually care what you charge. Charge a hundred bucks if that feels better to you. No big deal. We don't have to set off alarm bells.

You don't have to push yourself so far outside your comfort zone because then you'll never fucking do anything. And what's the point in that? Like that's silly. So we have to sort of find this middle ground where you expose yourself enough to push yourself to do the thing, but not enough to raise the alarm.

That's how you grow. That's how you get started. That's how you achieve success. And so you literally, you, you literally strengthen your nervous system to be able to handle little bits at a time so that you create this like resilience so that your alarm bell doesn't go off.

You can't go from charging $97 an hour to charging $10,000 alarm bells are going to go off and then you won't actually do it. So we have to do it gradually and we have to do it slowly and we have to do it in steps to really build up the stamina in your nervous system so that those alarm bells don't go off. And that's the only way to do it. And as you do that, you will start to become aware of these stories and these beliefs and these values that have been told to you, ingrained in you, and you can work on acknowledging what they are and rewriting them, rewiring them.

And the only way for you to rewire them is to execute on them. You're not going to rewire your brain that it's safe to show up if you never show up and reinforce that it's safe, reinforce that you won't die. I literally have clients in my Facebook group who are like, I just did my first Facebook Live and I didn't die. I'm like, yes, you didn't die, of course, because it's just a Facebook Live.

But it feels life threatening. And I'm not making light of this. It's very real. And it stops so many smart, qualified, capable, well-meaning, passionate people with loads of education from actually having the business and life that they want.

So I hope this helps. I hope that that you've recognize that your fear of investing in your business, about showing up online, about having hard conversations about what you want to do, stepping into your authority isn't about you being good, not good, ready, not ready, confident, capable. It's about none of that. It's about your nervous system that's trying to protect you based on outdated programming, based on your past programming that has now sort of set the programming for that alarm, right?

The same brain that kept you safe as a child and as a teenager is now keeping you stuck as an adult. And so here's the beautiful thing. You can change it. You can retrain it.

Every time you feel the fear and do it anyway, post anyway, invest anyway, charge what you're worth anyway, you are literally rewiring those neural pathways. You're teaching your amygdala that success and visibility is safe. It's safe and it's good. It's safe and it's good.

Your clients need you. They need what you have to offer. They're suffering right now while you're waiting to feel brave enough to help them. Brave enough, capable enough, confident enough.

It's the right time enough for you to help them. Your Ramygdala thinks it's protecting you, but it's actually preventing you from living your purpose and building the business that could change everything. So I hope this helped. Please share this with peers, colleagues, friends, whoever.

Whoever is wanting to do more, wanting to have the business, wanting to have the life, wanting to make the decision to create change, and alarm bells are going off.