How Can You Overcome the Fear of Failure and Grow Your Business

What are you harvesting?

In a beautiful Summer Solstice Ceremony my mentor, Sarah Jenks asked us this question.

What are you harvesting?

Summer is a time of harvest. And the truth was, I wasn’t sure.

I am a lifelong learner. It is something I value greatly and love about myself. I teach and reteach myself constantly. I seek out teachers. I am always in a cycle of upleveling, learning, growth, and tinkering. I strive to know myself on a deep level – what do I desire? What makes me truly happy? How can I bring more ease to this?

But there is a dark side of this pattern. I never harvest.

I garden and garden and garden. Fertilizing, weeding, watering and then I let the produce die on the vine while I plant something else. For years this is how I ran my professional life. How I tried to grow my business.

The truth is, if I’m honest, this is rooted in perfectionism.

Perfectionism is a trauma response.

Where we become so concerned with getting it just right before we put our work or ourselves out there.

Perfectionism keeps us safe from the fear of failure and the fear of being seen.

Because if we can find fault, so can everyone else. But the truth is perfection isn’t real to anyone else because perfection is subjective.

Think of it like loading a dishwasher.

Stick with me here. I consider myself a professional dishwasher loader. My husband will stand there and proclaim there is no more room, meanwhile I can do a little rearranging and magically all the dishes fit. PERFECTION!

But what if you’re someone who views perfection as having no overlap because it is your belief this is how things truly get clean? Meanwhile I’m of the belief that perfection is having to wash nothing by hand that could otherwise go in the dishwasher. It’s completely subjective. Who is right? Does it matter?

So back to never harvesting.

I have learned a myriad of things from experts in a lot of various fields – online marketing, Business Strategy, Accounting, Finance, Nutrition Coaching, healing Ancestral Trauma, personal finance, on and on and what do I do with all this knowledge? Mostly, I keep it to myself.

I fear that I’m not expert enough to share it. That someone else will do it better. I may weave some of it through my work, but mostly I have stood unchanged in my approach fearful that if I put any of it out there without being “an expert” myself then someone will come along and point out all my flaws. This helps no one!

How often do we do this? Avoid taking the next step to grow our business? We hide in the broom closet with all our life changing, genius gifts unseen to the world because we don’t want to be judged, seen as too much or worse told that we aren’t qualified. Underneath it all is a feeling of not being worthy or not being loveable. We seek to become an expert, so we finally are loveable and worthy.

We stay constantly gardening because we feel it’s never the “right” time to harvest.

As a result, our crops rot.

Our energy, money and time go to waste. We stay “safely” small.

But what if it is no longer safe to stay small? What if it is time to harvest? To grow and expand ourselves and our business? To launch the business? To scale the business? To hire support? To share our dreams, passions, and talents in a bigger, bolder way? How do we even begin? How do we sort through the chaos we have created to see our gifts with clarity and new awareness?

How do we move past our fear of failure and our fear of being seen so we can grow our business?

FIRST, WE ESTABLISH SAFETY.

This will look different for different people. It can be through acknowledging when we first feel unsafe and using a nervous system regulating technique to ground ourselves in current reality. If you don’t know what that is, close your eyes and breathe in your nose for 4 seconds, then out your nose for 4 seconds. Do this 4 times. How do you feel now? More regulated? Calmer? See, you do know! Our nervous system will help to keep us safe. It’s tough to make a business growth decision when we aren’t operating from a place of calm and safety.

It can look like finding a trusted partner, friend or mentor and having them walk alongside you. (I would love to be that partner!) This has been the route for me that has shifted things the quickest and with the least discomfort and greatest ease. It also helps hold me accountable, which as a gardener I need so I actually harvest the crops!

SECOND, WE CREATE SPACE TO LISTEN.

For my husband this looks like starting his day with a workout or a walk so he can be with himself, clear his mind and start his day on a positive note. For me, it’s journaling and spending time in meditation and conversation with my soul. Again, this is a process unique to everyone. The important thing is learning to hear your soul and consistently showing up to listen. Your soul knows what is aligned for you. That goes for growing your business too!

THIRD, WE CREATE CLARITY AND EASE THROUGH PROCESSES.

With the space to hear our soul, we can start to identify areas where we are creating unnecessary chaos and things become clearer. Again, this is where it can be helpful to have a partner working with you to point out what you may be too deep in the weeds to see and to help you develop a process to move out of chaos and into alignment. Intentional processes create ease and allow us to grow our business sustainably.

Where are we making things hard on ourselves? Where are we creating chaos to sabotage our forward progress? On a call recently Kate Northrup shared this quote, and I immediately wrote it down – “Financial chaos and avoidance is a way of giving away your power.” I repeat, Financial chaos and avoidance is a way of giving away your power.  That one is heavy for me. I know it intimately. I witness it all the time with my clients. I deeply desire to help women stop giving away their power in this way.

FOURTH, WE GO FOR IT.

Yep, even if it’s not “perfect”. Even if we aren’t “ready”.

Perfection isn’t real and we will never be ready. If the path is clear, you’re on someone else’s path.

As my dear friend Lisa DeAngelis wrote in her book Embracing the Unknown: Exploring the Pathways to Change, “Ultimately, it’s not whether choices are right or wrong. It’s just about making them.” She recalls a big choice making a move to a new city. Everything seemed uncertain at the time, but she decided if she had to move again in three years, so be it. I think we as entrepreneurs can take that advice. We get so caught up in the “right” step that we don’t take a step at all. Even a seemingly “wrong” step is movement in a direction that will teach us something.

So, we go for it. We harvest the crops. We put the product out there. We share the idea.

And we take a deep breath. We listen. To ourselves, our clients, and our cheerleaders. We celebrate the harvest. We embrace the summer energy.

Happy Summer Solstice! What are you harvesting?