We're all familiar with the discomfort of trying something that's new and unfamiliar. For me, the most common uncomfortable emotions that come up as an entrepreneur are insecurity, overwhelm, boredom, frustration and confusion.

When these emotions show up, we can be tempted to think that this means we're doing something wrong or that God is trying to tell us something.

In truth, it just means we're doing something new!

If we can learn to not only allow but welcome these emotions, there's no limit to what we can build and accomplish. Let me teach you how to do this.

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Hey there.

Welcome back to burning brightly.

Last week, we talked about the idea of opposition in all things, right?

the fact that we will never be able to create a life full of joy and goodness.

Without encountering.

Some difficulty, some hard.

Sad things.

And how this is actually a wonderful balance.

So if you miss that episode, go listen.

I think you're going to find it fascinating.

But this week, I'm going to give you some concrete tips for managing

the pain and discomfort that come with building a business or putting

ourselves out into the world.

Because like we discussed in episode three.

That primitive brain will start shouting at us when we do unfamiliar or scary.

Or seemingly painful things.

It will tell us to stop it.

So we're going to talk about managing that discomfort when it comes up for us.

Now.

I fully acknowledged, there are an infinite number of negative

and uncomfortable emotions that will come to the surface for us.

When we go on this.

Amazing miraculous entrepreneurial journey.

But we're just going to tackle five of them today.

And these five tend to be some of the most common that I hear from people

that I coach people that I help and for myself personally, as well.

Those five that want to learn how to manage the discomfort of today.

Our insecurity.

Boredom.

Overwhelm.

Frustration and confusion.

So if you can relate to any of these or you think you might

relate to any of these, as you start building your business.

You're in the right place.

Now all of these emotions come up for me, honestly, almost daily.

And if you can learn some of the things that I have learned in how to

embrace them versus pushing them away.

We're escaping them.

You will be well on your way to fulfilling your dreams.

Whatever you want to do, because you know how to embrace this negative emotion.

Okay.

First of all, though, I want to start off by talking about

escaping emotions for a bit.

Now we know that humans are very emotional beings.

It's one of the things that sets us apart from animals.

We have a full array of emotions, just hundreds and hundreds

of them, probably thousands.

And negative emotions.

Like I mentioned last week, feel kind of crummy inside our body.

And that primitive brain wants us to get rid of them.

Stop feeling badly.

Right?

Let's fix this because it might kill us.

If we just keep going like this.

So the word we use as life coaches to describe any action

we take to avoid emotion.

Is called buffering.

We We use this word buffer to describe when we are creating a

separation between us and boredom or frustration or confusion.

And we do so by scrolling social media.

By eating food.

We don't need by sleeping unnecessarily by zoning out in front of the TV.

Any number of things, guaranteed.

You know what your favorite buffers are,

right?

It

it might be your favorite Netflix series when you're supposed to be doing something

else or it might be, you know, all of a sudden you're on Instagram for 45 minutes.

You're thinking, how did I even get here?

That is buffering because your body is feeling some sort of negative

emotion and it's diving into something automatically to escape it.

I want you to start noticing when you get an urge to do this buffering.

Okay.

We can actually learn to sit with this urge and to acknowledge

it and to just let it be.

Instead of giving into it.

That's what you have to do if you want to stop eliminating junk food.

Right.

I very often compare building a business to getting in shape or losing weight

because there's so many parallels and one of them is the urge to just

go eat ice cream every single day.

It's probably an urge.

You're going to have to allow in your body and ignore.

If you don't want to be hugely overweight because ice cream every

day is probably not great for anybody.

Same thing with building a business, you are going to have to feel some of

these urges to do things that escape you from that negative emotion and

sit with them and just allow them.

Now not giving into these urges is akin to.

Allowing a toddler to have a meltdown in.

The grocery store on the floor, right.

giving that toddler candy.

That's how I love to think about it everyone knows giving into the

ranting and raving toddler is the worst thing you can possibly do.

It just reinforces the negative behavior.

That is what we do every time we give into an urge.

So just like a toddler, when we give in, we are reinforcing that urge and

saying, oh, just show up and ask for ice cream and I'll give it to you.

We need to teach our brain that no, you're going to show up and ask me for this.

And I'm going to say no, my rational brain is going to win here.

And I will just sit with it, let it run its course.

And every time it will get easier and easier to allow

those urges without giving in.

Hope that

Okay.

So it's important to realize that for most of us, this desire to escape

negative emotion is so ingrained that we do not even notice that we

are buffering or that we are trying to escape the negative emotion.

And till we tend to see negative outcome come from that, right?

Like all of a sudden we've gained 20 pounds.

We can't figure out why.

Oh, then we realize we've been holding onto a lot of stress.

And in order to escape that stress, we eat.

Or in order to escape that stress, we stay up too late, scrolling on social

media and we're exhausted the next day.

Right.

The trick is to acknowledge when we're buffering.

Before we see some major majorly negative consequences of it

and stop it in its tracks.

Now, one of the most incredible quotes that I really enjoy about mine management

is by Victor Frankl, the very famous author and concentration camp survivor.

And he says this.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space in that space lies our freedom

and power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

So what this means is that in order to find our greatest growth and

happiness, we need to tap into our power to choose and stop being reactive.

Start being proactive.

We need to elongate that space between stimulus.

For example, I'm bored.

And response, for example, I'm gonna hop on Instagram and scroll.

Right.

All of our power lies in that space, but sometimes it's so non-existent

that we just think I'm bored.

Instagram.

Or I'm stressed chocolate.

elongating that space.

We allow our rational brain to step in and say, whoa, this goes

against what we're trying to do.

We're not trying to scroll Instagram all day.

We're not trying to eat chocolate all day long.

Let's stop and acknowledge what's happening here.

Okay.

So in order to illustrate this example of elongating, this space, So that you

can allow your rational brain power to choose is let's go with the chocolate

example, locking the pantry and putting the key in, an inconvenient spot.

Right.

do it.

That would make us pause and say, wait a minute, do I really want

it bad enough to go walk upstairs and find it in my closet and then

bring it down and lock the pantry.

Right.

Another example that I've tried before.

With the social media is hiding my social media apps in a random folder

where I have to go search for it instead of it just being front and center on

the, on the first page of my phone.

Right?

these hacks are things that our rational brain will help us discover in order to

put it back in the driver's seat instead of just constantly and automatically

going towards these buffering behaviors.

Okay.

Okay.

So let's go back to the discomfort that building a business requires

and talk about those five emotions that we're going to encounter.

Right?

So one insecurity.

This is so common, especially for women and especially for women of faith.

I just encounter it all the time.

Okay.

First things first.

We must not forget that God is calling us to this thing.

Even if you just kind of, sort of feel like it's the right step for you.

I promise you.

That God is leading you that direction.

You don't need a heavenly manifestation to know that it is something that God wants

you to do with your time and talents.

So please remember that.

And then

And then your insecurity becomes irrelevant because God

has asked, of course, you'll step up to the plate, right?

We also like to think that promoting ourselves feels kind of icky.

I hear this and see this a lot with women or that we can't possibly

have enough talent or skill that someone would actually want what

we're putting out into the world.

The solution for insecurity and frankly, all of the negative emotion

we'll talk about in this episode.

Is to discover the thought that is causing it.

Hint, I just gave you a bunch about, I can't possibly have the talents

promoting myself as achy, et cetera.

And then ask.

So what, so what if that is true?

So many times we have a negative thought, like I don't have enough talent.

And we immediately want to run away.

Or if we tell a friend or a loved one, they'll say, what are you talking about?

Nonsense.

You have tons of talent.

But it still goes against what we're really thinking.

And that is, I don't have enough talent and we have to just take

someone else's word for it.

What if you just accepted it?

You're right.

I don't have a lot of talent.

So what.

Does that make my calling from God irrelevant.

No.

So what if you're promoting yourself, feel a little icky.

So what if you are feeling called to do this thing, or even just

curious to discover it or to.

Look into it a little bit more.

Then you have everything you need to go out and get it.

That's it, you don't need some magical boost of confidence.

You don't need some magical hat.

That's going to make you not insecure.

Unfortunately insecurity is just kind of part of the game, but you do need to

question the thoughts that are causing it and not believe that they're true.

Insecurity honestly, has not ever fully gone away from me either.

And I just don't expect it to, it does morph and kind of manifest itself

in different ways as you progress along your entrepreneurial journey.

So that's important to realize it, it might lessen at times and then come back.

When you try to do something else.

But just get comfortable with it.

Acknowledged that, oh, this is what insecurity feels like.

And then go out and build your business anyway.

You do not have to feel a hundred percent secure or even 50% secure

to go out and do something scary.

You can do it feeling completely insecure.

And just say, so what let's just try it.

In fact, the power that comes from doing something that you

don't feel qualified to do.

Is unparalleled.

It's pretty incredible.

I challenge you to go try it.

Okay.

So number two, negative emotion that we are going to feel when

building a business is boredom.

This might sound kind of counterintuitive, right?

Especially you start adding something into your already busy life.

You're thinking, how am I going to feel bored?

It's not a super obvious negative emotion, but here's the cold hard truth.

Being an entrepreneur or your own boss involves doing lots of

things that are lame and boring.

Ask me how I know.

Here's a few examples.

Taxes.

Okay.

Do we need any more examples?

No taxes are boring and lame.

I'm sorry if you're a CPA there, they're boring.

Legal structures, creating an LLC or an S-corp or whatever, like creating your

business in a way that's going to be legally solvent and protect your assets.

That's boring to me.

Choosing the right email service provider or another software.

Boring.

Like all of these things are not things that spark my creativity and make

me feel like, gee, I just can't wait to go out there and package my 4,000

product to send out to a customer.

There are things that become routine that become mundane that become boring.

Your journey will be chock full of tasks that do not feel inspiring.

Or creative or magical.

Do them anyway.

Show I like to think that these boring tasks are the currency.

To creating the life of your dreams.

I will happily sit and choose to decide between email service providers or package

my millionth product to my customers.

If it means I get to build the business of my dreams, of course,

because in between all those boring things, there's going to be awesome.

Bursts of creativity and magical amazingness.

But it will not be all of it.

There will be plenty of just regular, old, boring stuff.

So don't feel like that means something has gone wrong.

I know you will be able to outsource some of these boring things as you grow

and get more capital to invest in your business, but just accept upfront that

some of your task will always be lame.

Even if you're a super successful CEO who makes millions of dollars, you

will still have to do things you do not like, and that are kind of boring,

but have the integrity to do them.

Anyway, just set a timer, get it done.

And then you can move on to the fun stuff.

third negative emotion we encounter in building a business

is overwhelm shocker, right?

In case you've forgotten.

Let me just tell you this.

All emotions are choices.

We When we're not used to managing our mind, we believe that our

emotions just come and go without our.

Consent or control, but that's not true.

We know.

From coaching that we can manage our mind and we can also manage our emotions.

I Overwhelm is actually one that I choose purposely not to feel very often.

For me, it makes me very impatient and cranky.

It makes me feel like I have to hustle all the time.

And I do not make time for my family when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

So when I feel it coming up, I get very intentional about my thoughts.

I analyze them.

I write them down.

I get coaching from someone else if I need to.

And I figure out how to flip that overwhelm on his head.

So some common thoughts that I've noticed that cause overwhelm for me

are, I'll never get all this done.

Right.

very often an all or nothing kind of mentality.

Like, oh, all this to get done.

I'll never do it.

Or there's only one of me and this huge to-do list.

I can't balance being a mom and building a business.

It's too much.

Or why did I sign up for all this?

And then once I've acknowledged the thoughts that are causing the overwhelm,

then I get to work creating the thoughts that will take me out of it.

And I personally think that overwhelm is very connected to a victim mentality.

When I feel overwhelmed, it feels like everything is being done to me and

I am not in control of everything.

And I really dislike that feeling.

Instead, I want to step into empowerment and choosing how to spend my time.

My energy.

Everything I have to give to my business on my family.

So instead of thinking I'll never get all this done or there's too much to do.

I might think I don't have to get any of this done.

What do I choose to do?

Is there a deadline I'd really like to accomplish in my business?

Is there something I really like to be present for my family?

I do that.

Or instead of there's only one of me, I might think.

I can recruit, help all around me.

Is there something I can.

Offload to my family or something that I can pay someone to outsource.

instead of why did I sign up for this?

This was a terrible choice.

I can remind myself, God called me to this business and he has faith in me.

So why don't I.

Let's go.

So I want you to try some of those thoughts on or something similar

that might sound true to you.

And then just step back into your power and out of that victim

mindset of being overwhelmed.

Okay.

Number four, negative emotion that comes up during your entrepreneurial

journey is frustration.

I feel like if you're a mother you're very, very familiar

with this emotion, frustration.

I feel it on the daily.

But in my business, this one comes up for me when things do not go as expected.

So my main solution is to change my expectations because I very

often cannot change reality when things are not going as expected.

So I just changed my expectations.

Now I'm going

Now I'm gonna tell you a little story.

So you can see an example of how this worked for me once.

I recently tried out a new software for my business.

That seemed amazing.

Everything I read about, it sounded like it was going to be able to allow

me to combine three or four of my current software programs into one.

So I wouldn't have to pay for all these separate ones.

I'd just pay for one and be able to do it all under one roof.

Things wouldn't have to communicate with each other.

You just seem to so much more simple.

So I signed up for it.

I paid for a year in advance to the tune of about $1,500.

And then I started playing with it and the software was kind of a wreck.

There were bugs everywhere.

It suddenly made my business tasks so much harder and more complicated.

Every time I sat down to do something, it took me twice as long.

Add onto that the learning curve that always comes with learning a new software.

I was flooded with frustrating thoughts like this.

Wasn't supposed to be like this.

This was supposed to make my life easier.

I'm wasting so much time.

I wanted this to be easy.

And this has just been a big catastrophic mistake.

I even lost a few potential clients because my website wasn't working as

expected when I launched something.

So I was allowing myself to just drown in frustration over the software catastrophe.

Right.

But I finally decided this.

I can beat my head against the wall.

Or I can decide that this software trial was always supposed to happen like this.

I had been thinking about using the software for a long time, so

trying it out finally taught me that it was not the right one for me.

There were too many bugs, too many issues.

I decided that instead of expecting the software to be perfect since it obviously

wasn't, I could just expect it to be a train wreck and decide from there.

Do I want to invest the time in figuring it out despite the

bugs, or do I want to bail?

I ended up deciding I didn't have time for the bugs.

I bailed.

And I went back to my previous software.

It wasn't my favorite experience.

It was very frustrating and I felt like I wasted some time and energy, but I

quickly learned that fighting against what is will only yield frustration.

And I didn't want not want to sit in frustration in my business any longer.

So I moved on and chose to think, well, that was a catastrophe.

Next.

So that's the trick with frustration is just to stay in control of.

Your own expectations that you cannot always control external circumstances.

Hey, and final emotion that comes up when we build a business that

we have to manage is confusion.

Confusion and insecurity or hands down.

The most common, negative emotions that new business owners face one.

and security comes from.

I'm not ready for this.

I don't have the talents for this.

And confusion comes from, I just don't know how, which is legit.

Right?

You might not know anything about building a business, but it doesn't really

matter because you can learn anything.

phrase I don't know is kind of a rallying cry for those first few months

or even years of business, or anytime you pivot and try something new.

But try this thought on for size.

You're not actually supposed to know how, because you've never done it before.

It's brand new, which is exciting and fun, and you get to learn so much.

Being a new becomes with lots of learning.

And how exciting for you that you get to develop something new, a new talent,

new skills you get to grow in a way that you never have probably before.

And you're going to become a whole new person on the other side of this.

It's pretty amazing.

When you think about it like that.

So I personally have spent the last eight years.

Building multiple businesses of different kinds.

And I have encountered confusion, aplenty.

But I've also learned so much that just thinking about it

kind of makes my head spin.

I know how to build a website on at least three different platforms.

I know how to create email marketing funnels and automations.

I know how to manufacture products internationally and domestically, and

then sell them on a retail website.

I know how to pay taxes.

It was boring, but I know how to do it.

I know how to open a business banking account and set up an LLC.

I know how to make an edit videos and podcasts and other marketing materials.

It kind of blows my mind to think of all the things I've

learned in the past eight years.

And I want you to think about that future you who will also be so proud of all

you've done and accomplished and learned.

So do her a favor today and just acknowledge that the

confusion means nothing.

It just means you're new.

Welcome to the club.

Don't allow yourself to stay there.

You can choose to be confused, or you can choose to just decide and move forward.

As a final thought to this episode, I want to remind you that there's nothing

wrong with any of these emotions.

There are normal part of the human experience.

They don't feel great, but they will come and go.

Allow them to be there, but do not indulge in them.

Just process them.

Indulging in emotion actually fuels inaction.

It keeps you stuck and makes you not want to go anywhere and just spin.

Processing emotion.

Fuels progress.

So move through these negative emotions.

Feel them process them and then get back to work.