I hear it all the time from fellow entrepreneurs. To just push through and ignore uncomfortable emotions (like anxiety or fear) to get things done.
Push the emotions aside, ignore them, push them down, and everything will be fine.
Ignoring emotions isn’t the best way to go about things and could cause you to stay stuck in your business.
If this is you, it’s okay. I totally get it.
But there’s another way to go about it.
Our culture is built on doing. Grinding. Putting your head done and just getting shit done.
But if you’ve been falling into that trap I’m willing to bet that you’ve been feeling frustrated and feeling doubtful about making your business work for 3 months or more.
If pushing down and ignoring your emotions worked, any entrepreneur who ever experienced and acknowledged their fear and anxiety would be failing miserably (which isn’t true). And only those business leaders who were emotionless would be successful.
We know this isn’t the case. Otherwise passionate people like Gary Vee wouldn’t be successful. And people like Brene Brown who talk about owning shame and imperfection wouldn’t have the following and success she has.
There is another way to go about things. One where you aren’t stuck stuffing down your emotion and ignoring how you feel most of the time.
There’s a way to succeed where you don’t have to be “fearless” but one where you ultimately end up fearing less.
Your emotions are giving you information that’s important.
Ignoring them is like ignoring half of the data on your computer screen.
You’ll end up making choices that are only half-informed.
Your emotions indicate when:
- You’re making the right choices in your business
- When you’re going off track
- When you’re surrounded by amazing supportive people
- When you’re beating yourself up unnecessarily
The problem is that we haven’t been taught how to use our emotional navigation system (seriously, this should be taught to kids in school).
Emotions are valuable.
Yet they can also overwhelm us and make us feel out of control.
But the old advice of “just push them away and get on with it already” ends up creating a mess.
Why?
Because emotions don’t just disappear when you push them away.
When you push them away they just sink out of your awareness and start influencing your behavior and choices in ways that you’re not aware of.
That’s when they begin to wreak havoc.
Here’s what this looks like:
Let’s say you feel anxiety about posting on social media.
Instead of taking that feeling out and examining it and learning what it’s there to teach you – you ignore it, push it away, and “just go do the thing”.
This causes an internal sense of resistance.
That resistance makes you wonder if you’re doing something wrong as you tell yourself “I shouldn’t feel resistance to this”. Which makes you feel WORSE about posting on social media.
This begins to create resentment about the things you have to do in your business. Which makes you feel more stressed out about it all.
And this stress tenses up your nervous system which tells your brain “This isn’t working. Posting on social media isn’t safe. What’s wrong here?”.
Which then causes more anxiety about posting on social media.
It becomes a viscous cycle.
Do you need help learning how to use your emotional navigation system to your advantage? To feel grounded and solid in yourself and not reactive and out of control (or totally shut down)?
Send me a DM on Instagram, or a message on my Facebook Page I may have something for you that can help.
