Vicky Shilling 0:00
No one is buying my offer because I'm not qualified enough. What is a more helpful belief here instead? This is, I do think the mind blowing thing when you do it with clients, like their whole physicality, changes their face, changes their tone, and we're literally just looking to change the thought. We're looking to tap into something quite simple.
Finola Howard 0:19
That's Vicky Shilling, Self Belief. Business Coach for wellness professionals and I asked Vicky to join me today to talk about belief, belief in yourself, your beliefs, and how they frame everything you do. We do a belief busting exercise in the episode, which will reframe how you look at their impact in a more active light. We talk about experimentation, curiosity and why your offers aren't selling. This is a jam packed episode, so let's dive in.
I'm Finola Howard, Business Growth strategist with a joyful heart and your host of the your truth shared podcast, I believe that every business has a story to tell, because that's how the market decides whether to buy or not, and your story has to resonate with who you are and with the people you want to serve. And this podcast is about helping you reach the market in a way that feels right to you. So if you're an entrepreneur with a dream you want to make real, then this is the podcast for you, because great marketing is your truth shared.
Today, I wanted to explore this idea of self belief, or belief in the self as something that often gets in the way of success for entrepreneurs, and may be getting in the way of your success for entrepreneurs, and it's something I talk about in my book, and it's also something I talk about with clients as well, and it comes up quite a lot, but the thing that I kind of want to explore a little bit today is about changing your belief system so that actually becomes an action you take instead of a situation that you're in. So who better to bring on to discuss this with you than a self belief coach, believe it or not,
Vicky Shilling 2:08
and I want to introduce you to the wonderful Vicky Schilling. Welcome Vicky. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you're here. It took us a while, but we got here. Yeah. So let's start a little bit about your story, because I like how you follow the truth of your own path and work with work with the space that you're in. And consciousness is a very strong part of this journey, I think, and it's something I'd really like to speak more about, is this idea of consciousness, idea of the importance of self awareness to impact what we do in our businesses, but I'll pass it over to you to tell your story a little bit. For the first 10 years of my working career, I worked in the classical music industry. I was based in London. My parents were both musicians. I spent lots of time doing music things and being the orchestra girl while I was at school and at university, and that continued into my professional life. So it was 10 years working in professional orchestras, yeah, and it felt like a really good fit, like, that's what I would always do, that's what I'd always wanted to do. And then we hit my 30th birthday, we hit the point in my career where, certainly in the international touring side, I was in an agency. So things started to become all about the money. It was quite high pressure, high stress, you know, and realizing that my body was certainly telling me wasn't particularly happy. I was really struggling with irritable bowel syndrome, IBS, cramps, bloating, needing to rush to the bathroom, really not being able to understand what it was, what I was doing. Was it something I was eating, you know, triggering all of that, and really reaching a kind of point where I just really wanted to tackle that. I didn't want to keep feeling like that. I didn't want it to dictate whether I was going to be able to take jobs or travel or whatever. And started to really look at my own health and well being. Really look at what I was eating, making adjustments. And just entered this whole world I'd been in this little bubble of music before that, and entered this whole world of health wellness. Joined Instagram, you know, signed up Pinterest and trying to, you know, look, what is it? What are the changes that I can make? And just seeing all these amazing people that were often career changing themselves and were setting up as nutritional therapists or health coaches, retraining as yoga teachers, you know, having kind of similar epiphanies, I suppose to me, realizing that corporate world was burning them out, was not not doing them very well, their body a favor, and really making those kind of changes for themselves as well. So I started a blog. I always loved writing, and then started, you know, always loved cooking as well. So it was sharing recipes, and really just, it was really interesting you use that word, like, kind of like journaling it, and like chronicling the whole thing, that's really what it was for me. I never intended to change career. I was really just searching and.
Looking and sharing, trying to find answers, doing Yeah, and realizing that that actually there are other people out there that I really enjoyed connecting with. I really enjoyed the creativity of the writing and the kind of accountability that I created in designing the website and, you know, emailing people, and realizing, actually, after a while, a lot of people were asking me questions, not about what did I eat, or how was I being healthy, or what was happening to me, you know, physically or mentally. They were asking, how did you start your website, and how did you use social media? And how did you start getting paid, you know, running your blog, and that's what I was really enjoying helping people with. So it turned into a bit of a pivot at the same time as meeting an Irish man who wouldn't leave Ireland. So I decided maybe this is a chance to see where this might take. Me leave the classical music industry behind, or put it to the side for the time being, and just see where this kind of blog the six Did it scare you to leave a dream behind? No See, people ask me that. You know, it must have, you must have been very brave. You might have, must have felt scared. It just felt
like I had to do it, like I needed to do it. It wasn't really a decision necessarily, you know. So I was very lucky. I was living in a little flat in London that my dad actually owned in the end, in my last few years in London, and that little flat has been very good to him in relationship breakups. And he said, you know, if anything goes wrong, you just come back to the little flat, it'll always be there for you. I felt like there was that kind of safety net. And, you know, the industry I'd always be able to go back to. But it was, it was experimenting, both in our relationship and just with what I was going to do with work. So yeah, it was a real chance to, obviously, I'd say to people, I don't recommend that you have to leave the country in order to reinvent yourself. But it was a chance to have a bit of a blank slate as well, that I wasn't music Vicky. I could be, you know, healthy eating. I could be blogging. I could be digital marketing. I could present myself in a completely different way. I met a nutritional therapist, and we started running women's wellness retreats together. I started bringing together and running events for other health bloggers. It was just a chance to kind of just,
Finola Howard 7:12
oh yeah. I like this idea of experimentation, of not being afraid of experimentation, because so often we get stuck in a mindset that
Vicky Shilling 7:25
we think we have to do things this way. But there was, you didn't have a fear of the experimentation, because you had a plan B. I suppose I had a plan B, and I was very lucky. You know, I'm very transparent about the kind of privileged position I was going into. I was moving in with my my boyfriend at the time, now, husband, who had an apartment, he was able to pay his mortgage. You know, it did give me a little bit of time to experiment and see, well, what can I do here? How could I earn money in a different way? How can I experiment with this and bring in income in different ways? And for a time, I was kind of, you know, doing a little bit of music, and then a little bit of coaching, training with my coaching, doing the retreat, seeing what money they made up. You know, it was very experimental. Were you conscious that this is what you were doing at every point I'm How can I do this? Will I do it this way? Were you consciously doing it, or were you going with the flow of it?
I'm not a terribly go with the flow. Kind of No, that's why I'm asking.
So no, I think I I realized when I was complete, that's, you know, that kind of blank slate point. The best thing I could do, really, was work maximum 30 or 90 days ahead. I couldn't really map out a whole year. It wasn't sure exactly what it was going to look like, but the best thing I could do was, you know, get a really good planner
Speaker 1 8:47
and map out what I wanted to try and achieve. I would like my money to come in from these ways. I want to coach these people. I want to make some money from this retreat. I want to run an online workshop. That's what I'm going to do, that's what I'm going to focus on, that's what I'm going to promote, that that's what's going to happen in each month, and then stand back and reflect and look at that and see how that went. Sometimes, see, this is the, this is the piece that I loved in our conversation when we first chatted, which is generally in the wellness industry, there's a there's a space of nurturing, of caring, of flow of intuition, and I'm very strong and intuition as a very
Finola Howard 9:25
important part of a skill set,
but it also has to be tempered with pragmatism and this so you're quite unusual in a wellness space to be this pragmatic and sometimes quite tough, which is in contradiction to this nice, soft, well, and I, I'd like to just explore that with you, because I don't believe they're mutually exclusive, and I think you are evidence of that. No, it's interesting use that word contradiction, because I do think there's a lot of what is generally termed, the kind of feminine energy, you know, like.
Vicky Shilling 10:00
Say, Go with the flow, and everything being cyclical, and things like that, where actually there's a lot of
great, powerful energy still there that can be harnessed. I definitely think there's a lot that I channel that is more of that masculine energy, a lot more of that, you know, the kind of rigidity, the discipline, the
kind of
keeping to a keeping to a plan and following through in order, really, for me to be able to see whether the experiment works. That's what I try with my clients, to say, we will never know whether your fear will be realized if we don't actually give it a go. Like, let's just give this a go for 30 days or for 90 days. You know, I work with clients with that sort of frame it. Yeah, let's experiment. Let's see what happens if we try on a different belief. If we try something different, we try promoting you in a different way. We try selling a different product. Doesn't mean anything if it does or doesn't sell, it's just information. It's just data for us to play with. So it's that's lovely, so you de risk it, and you take the emotion out of it, that it's not a reflection on you, the person you're simply de risking it, that we're experimenting for a defined period of time, that you can then adjust based on the data, based on the information. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it is often holding that mirror up and saying one of my favorite coaching questions, what are you making it mean? What are you making it mean that last time you tried to sell that program and it didn't sell? What are you making it mean that nobody is commenting on your Instagram posts at the moment? It doesn't mean the things that you're often we're associating with it, but it's very natural and normal, because we've come with, you know, a whole lifetime of stories and beliefs that we carry with us, and we interpret things in a way where we think we are being rejected or we are failing, and it's really just looking, holding that mirror up and saying that that isn't what's happening here. Maybe we can just look at it in a different way. Maybe that is what's happening, but maybe not. Maybe there's a different way of looking at it, because we know, running our own businesses, being entrepreneurs, having that kind of attitude, we have to be quite resilient to learning and growing and showing up and keeping going, even if it didn't work out exactly how we wanted the first time or the second time or the third time, yeah, but it means,
I think, when you present it like that, there's less to fear, yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's certainly what I've been doing more recently, is showing a bit more of the behind the scenes and calling it exactly that a self belief business experiment. I'm going to I'm going to test this out. I'm going to test out how new beliefs impact my sales. Impact my the way I show up impact you know, what I'm willing to do in my business? Because I know, because I see it in my clients, and I see it in myself. The stories I've carried, I carry with me, and they carry with them are the reason why some of the practical things feel very difficult, or they don't do them, or they don't follow through them on them, or they don't work in the same way that they seem to work for everybody else. And I think that's a lot to do with the stories we're carrying in our heads, mostly to do with the stories in our heads, like it's really interesting, because in my work,
Speaker 1 13:02
I talk about, we talk about identity and we talk about positioning. And identity and positioning are very strongly rooted in belief and self limiting beliefs. So if we frame it, we get, if we frame it in the way you're speaking about it, in a in allowing the self belief to rise, you know, without the baggage of conditioning and undermining and maybe old stories, then what will happen when we rise like, can we create this new belief? Of this is now possible for me, because I'm about to step into this space, yeah, and that can feel very scary as well, because often our beliefs have become like our identity. They've become who we are and how we yes and how we show up and how other people interact. The idea of stepping into a different way of believing means different things might happen. Maybe people will interact with us differently. Maybe people will get different results. Maybe that will impact our relationship with our partner or our family or our friends or, you know, things like that. And sometimes, again, we have to look at that. We have to look at that really honestly, rather than thinking, Oh, it's because of the algorithm, it's but, you know, kind of getting into the nitty gritties, because I don't have a good funnel. It's not, it's got nothing to do with those things. Yeah, it's got to do with how you're thinking and where you might, I try not to use,
Vicky Shilling 14:15
instead of limiting beliefs, I say is protective beliefs, you're protecting yourself from what you think might happen on the other side of that action, same as, I don't say self sabotage, I appreciate that's how people see it, and they get very angry and frustrated with what they are doing or not doing. But again, it's it's a protection mechanism, and if we can be compassionate and really look and get curious about what's going on here, then we're able to come up with, Okay, well, let's experiment what what could What else might be true here, and let's go and build some belief, um, build some evidence for that belief instead. Again, I love the Let's experiment. Let's experiment and how we see ourselves. Let's experiment on how we in, how our beliefs make us act in certain ways to protect ourselves. Yeah.
Finola Howard 15:00
Yeah, in a lot of the digging that I've done in my own journey, sometimes the the approach for me has been about letting go of beliefs. But I like this idea of both of these things, of letting things down, letting baggage down, letting old beliefs down. But actually,
Vicky Shilling 15:20
I like this idea of turning that into an action, not just a letting go. Yeah, I think it's a bit when you say it like that, it reminds me of when they get people to try and stop smoking, you know, you try and replace that with something else. So you don't just stop smoking and it disappears, and it creates a vacuum, because then it feels that's part of a habit that was there, that actually it's the same thing here, that we're not
we can't just let go of completely and leave a big gap where there was a belief that was kind of a foundational stone of how you then showed up and did your work and interacted with people and got visible whatever it is. We're trying to replace that with something else, something that is more opens up the possibility of having more actions and more positive outcomes for you, particularly in your business. If that's
Finola Howard 16:09
I like that, that's interesting. You've taught me something now a reframe for me, because so I wrote this book, and it was called, what if? Okay? And the learning from it was, well, the journey of it was reflecting on all the things that may have stopped me over the years and picking them off one by one. And that was my own journey as an entrepreneur. For 25 years of being in business, and in the process of writing the book, you know, there was still stuff that still had root, you know, and I had to work through it in order to finish the book, and then when the when the book finished, it was like, that vacuum, you've just named it for me. That vacuum was it made me go, now, what, what's next? So I'm in this what's next. It's really exciting. But I know I've consciously had to go, this is this exciting time for me. This what's next thing that I shoot? What happens? What's next? Yeah, but that's a good reframe for me. Thank you. That's good, yeah. And you do, you have to kind of look at, look for ways to do that, and you're in control. You get to choose how to think and feel about it. It could feel like a negative vacuum, or it's, it could feel like a positive vacuum there actually, great. You know, I've got, there's lots of possibilities here. What is it? They say, there's kind of memes and things, you know, oh, no one's listening so, you know, or, hooray, no one's listening. Like, great. What are the opportunities here? Yeah, I love that. Wonderful. So
Speaker 1 17:32
would it be possible for you to have a look at this protective belief you had, this belief busting exercise that you shared with me? And I think that could be really powerful for people listening, if that was possible. Yeah, absolutely. So it's kind of a six step process, or a five step process, really. We start off with a context. So we start off with a situation that perhaps you find yourself in currently, or something that you you generally find quite,
Vicky Shilling 18:02
maybe, quite triggering. Maybe there's something that has happened. So I would take an example of you have maybe put out an offer and no one has bought it.
We need to look at that context again. It completely neutrally. That's just a neutral reality. I put out an offer, and no one has bought it, that, you know, no emotion attached to it. It's just a neutral situation. Then
the first thing we do then is look at, maybe, where the emotion has come in, what is the protective belief that's come in here? Usually it's very, kind of black and white. It's very,
the protective voice is often very matter of fact. Well, it just means this. It just means that. So can you in one sentence, describe how you are now choosing to interpret that reality? So let's say the context is you put out an offer, it's not selling, or it has not sold. What's the protective belief here is the protective belief,
no one has any money, or no one wants to buy from me, or I
I'm not qualified, so no one wants to work with me. So again, you can see the kind of slight extremes of those beliefs. But really, when we which we're trying to really, like, nail it down, if we put it into one sentence, like, what is the protective belief here? What is it that we are choosing to interpret about this actually? Why is that protective?
Because usually what is happening is
you are trying to protect the belief that you've attached to it. So let's say you put an offer out. No one bought it. The protective belief is
I'm not qualified enough, and, you know, I need more qualifications if anyone's going to work with me. That's protective because it puts up a little barrier there to say, the reason that I have not so.
Anything there is or or if I keep trying to sell without getting some more qualifications, that's what's going to happen. Then, you know, then I'll sell, then I won't keep experiencing this rejection. Maybe it's rejection or failure, if that's how it's protecting you from rejection, yeah. So it's belief kicks in. Oh, well, you're not really qualified. You know, are you? No one's ever going to work with you if you're not qualified. So maybe you should just go back and do a bit more studying. More studying first. That's a very, you know, in the awareness space, that's a very common one, incredibly common. So, yeah, that must be the reason that no one is buying. For me, I need to have another qualification. And again, it like you say, it's protective, because it's stopping you continually promoting that offer, because you already actually can help people with the qualifications you already have, but it's avoiding the rejection, the failure, maybe the embarrassment. You know, whatever it is, we've got kind of a little list that I go through, 10 different things that we try and avoid, and that's why I call it protected belief. It's trying to protect you from something.
Finola Howard 21:01
It's also a very common thing in NLP. This idea of one of the basic tenants in NLP is that we we accept the other person's worldview because their worldview is protecting them. It's a basic tenet of NLP. So yeah, get it. Yeah. Cool. Next step, please. Next step.
Vicky Shilling 21:20
How do you feel as a result of having this belief, of holding that belief? So if you are the belief you are holding is I need to be more qualified if anyone's going to buy for me. How does that make you feel?
I am not very good, perhaps, at explaining my emotions sometimes. So I often give my clients in emotion wheel. It's quite easy. You can Google that kind of search for that just a bit more vocabulary, rather than just mad or sad or happy. You know that actually more vocabulary with that. And try and pick like three words, three emotions that that when you say that sentence to myself, to yourself, I'm not qualified enough, therefore no one's going to pay me. What emotions is that making you feel? My guess is, I'm just having a look at the wheel. Now, maybe it's insecure, inadequate,
excluded, perhaps frightened. You know, words like that, like, how is that making you feel? I think again, it's I've always fascinated by this kind of cycle of, is it thoughts, or is it feelings that we have first? Do we, do we feel first, or do we have the thought first? And how those are kind of interlinked, but actually being connected with how is that making me feel? How do I feel in my body? What is going on when I say this to myself.
So, yeah, three. Try and pick three. If you can three emotions, how do you feel as a result of holding that belief? Step four,
when you hold now you know you hold this belief, and when you're feeling like you are feeling just, just described,
what are your behaviors? What do you do, or what do you say, or maybe, what do you not do, and maybe, what do you not say as a result of this belief? What? What is happening? Because you are hanging on to the I need to be a bit more qualified. I need to go and get that extra qualification in order for someone to pay me. So I'm guessing things in that box might be
spending all of your days searching for the next
facilitation course and qualification that you're going to be doing instead of actually promoting your current offer. Do you know what comes to me When? When? When we're
Finola Howard 23:35
digging into this kind of
Vicky Shilling 23:38
example that you've given, and I love that you've given this example, but this belief and these emotions are actually bigger than the reality. They're completely disjointed, aren't they really from the context, which was, I put out an offer and it didn't sell, which is just, you know, one little, very normal experience that we all have on our entrepreneurial journey, we put something out, and it doesn't immediately get snapped up, and, you know, our hands have been bitten off for it straight away. But you're right, what we uncover doing this is enormous, yeah, a lot deeper, yeah.
And the ripple effect. Then when we can see how it's making us feel the behavior, then that trickles down into, well, I don't show up on my social media. I think about sending an email, and I keep perfecting it, but then I never send it
like I say, you spend lots of time searching for the next qualification, rather than actually maybe going out to a networking event or speaking up bravely and boldly and telling people what you do, currently do, and what you are currently qualified to help people with.
So again, when we can see that written down in a box, it's not to be angry about, it's not to beat ourselves up about. It's just to understand, oh, I can see why. Like, if I have this belief and if I'm feeling like this, it's very normal and very natural that that is what I am doing or not doing as a result, when you're doing this with clients now, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 25:00
Uh,
Finola Howard 25:02
like, are they? Is this a revelation? Like, is it like, for me, consciousness is critical for success. Right in business, it's just because it does this thing of making you look at what you're be doing and behaving and and when you're conscious of it, you can actually move straight to action to change it. And I know that about myself is when I see it, I just go to fix it. It's just my nature. I automatically want to do that. But are they gobsmacked? Or has the level of consciousness in the world raised
Vicky Shilling 25:33
more? Or do you think we're still in that space of hiding in the forest of lack of awareness? Um, I think I see both. I'd say it's kind of 5050, I think there's some people, maybe a bit more, like me, who are very much like, it's a practical problem. It's, you know, it's nothing in my head. And I think for them, when they see it like this, they're like, oh, okay, that's there. That's what's really going on. That's what's really happening. Sometimes it's quite,
it's quite, quite funny. We can, we can kind of laugh at what we're seeing we put down on the page, because, like, like you said, Can you see how ridiculous is? Can you see where this has gone and how this is kind of, you know, tabulated this very neutral, normal experience that everybody has and where it's gone in your head. And then you're right, there are some people who have done a lot of inner work. They have done a lot of self development. They are very aware, and so really, this is more helping them
hone down all the different things, perhaps, that they've learned and see it in black and white, and how it's affecting their business, how it's actually showing up here in their work, because they might have done that again in their own wellness journey, in their own you know, they might be helping clients with that, that kind of self development, awareness and not I find it quite fascinating. Often they haven't realized how much it then carries over into how they show up for their business. So there can be both sides, yeah. But of course, it carries over, yeah, because we're just the same human being showing up. Yes, okay, all of us.
Finola Howard 27:07
Yes, okay, next.
Vicky Shilling 27:10
Then again, just to really show that ripple effect, if you are feeling like that, you are, you've described it. You are behaving in a certain way. What are the outcomes? What are the tangible outcomes that this is this belief is now holding and creating in your life because you are searching around for another course, not promoting yourself, hiding and not going out to those networking events. What happens as a result of that? Like, you know, I am making less sales. My audience is not growing. People don't are confused and don't know what it is that I currently do. All I do is network and spend time with other people who are training like me, rather than people that actually want to buy my current service.
Those are the kind of outcomes, again, not to be angry about, but to just see the flow. What this is, where it's come from. Really, it's, you know, coming from one rather protective, overprotective belief, this is what's happening, and that the ripple effect and the outcomes and the knock on effect into your your current business, and then to really when you can see all of that, that final step is to look at what is this risk? I mean, we talked about this a little bit at the beginning, didn't we? What is the risk that you are trying to protect yourself from? Again, I've mentioned a few of them. Is it rejection? Is it conflict? I find quite a lot of people, certainly in health and wellness industry, are very conflict averse. So maybe promoting themselves feels like that might create conflict, or you're wrong, or you're not good enough. Certainly the qualification. But why is conflict a bit um, because I think people are afraid that perhaps, if they post on social media, or they put up a poster, you know, in their local community center, this is what I'm doing, that people will say, You're wrong. It's not good enough. You haven't got the right qualifications. You You need to be doing X, Y and Z. I certainly, I know in that world of health and wellness, there is a lot of
kind of discrepancy between who, you know hierarchy, who's got this certain qualification. You're allowed to talk about this, you're not allowed to talk about this. And actually, I generally find
the people that I work with know very much what is in their realm of expertise, what they are and aren't allowed to say. And actually, I find the fear of creating conflict or being attacked or being criticized is a big fear and a big reason that they won't show up be authentic, say what they really think, say what they really think their clients need, because they're they are afraid that that is something and again, might be a pattern that they've had in the past, when they've spoken up, when they said what they wanted, when they have articulated who they are and what their real opinions are, maybe in a school environment or a university environment or a previous work environment, or in a relationship in their family, they're criticized. They're taking down a peg or two. They're told not to speak up.
And so that's the experience and the beliefs that they've built up, that it's not safe to do that. But do you think that's more?
Finola Howard 30:08
Do you see that equally between men and women in the wellness space?
Vicky Shilling 30:12
I don't work with a huge number of men, it has to be said, of the men that I have worked with, I would say there is less conflict. Comes up as a lot less as a worry, I would say probably their more fears are the embarrassment, the failure, the kind of being seen to,
you know, not, not know what they're doing.
But yeah, less so is it? Is the, is the,
Finola Howard 30:39
does this come then from that whole female thing of the nurturing versus the proactive, the active, no, the the passive versus the active. Is it? Is it more in that space? Do you think,
or is it relevant?
Vicky Shilling 30:57
I think when I teach people about how to promote themselves and stand out and get noticed and get booked. A lot of what we talk about is sharing something of yourself, you know, sharing what you truly believe, sharing something that perhaps is slightly against the grain or slightly controversial. And I do think that does bring up a lot for people. I do think that a lot of people are very afraid to do that, and to find even experiment and find a way, find a point where they can do that. And yes, I think a lot of that does come from those of us who have been brought up as female being conditioned into good girl mentality. Be liked, be kind, don't create conflict, don't say things that are going to upset other people. Yeah, what like? Why would you actively
create that as an opportunity, that as a risk for yourself that you know? Don't do that, and that's if we've been hearing those messages from childhood. Suddenly, then when you're told in the marketing space, stand out, say what you really you know is a complete gear change, and so we have to get really honest with what belief Am I holding here, what do I think is going to happen if I really say what I think, if I really tell clients what I think they need, if I really am honest about my journey or whatever part is, what do I think is going to happen? So if we logically and emotionally because you are asking what they feel
Finola Howard 32:22
look at like, be brave enough to look at our own beliefs. We're actually this is an exercise that's quite empowering and is would be quite transformational in how we think about like, it's not one belief we're holding off, by the way, everyone
Unknown Speaker 32:37
this is just
Finola Howard 32:39
exhausting,
Vicky Shilling 32:41
but, but you can get through them absolutely, yeah. And we can go, we can do which we flip to the other side then, and try and turn this into something more helpful. Yes, oh yes, please.
Again, like we go through, it's kind of like six steps. The first step being the same thing. We're just going to write down the same neutral context, which is, I put an offer out and nobody bought it. There's our neutral context. Again, we're going to start from the emotions this time. How would I like to feel about this context? What is available to access right now? Again, there's no point. I know some people say,
you know,
affirm to yourself and go straight into huge, wild emotions. You know, I'd like to feel really excited, and so no, that's not available to someone who is absolutely beating themselves up, thinks they need more qualifications, things that thinks that they're not good enough. That's not available. But how would you like to feel? Okay, I've put this offer out. Hasn't sold yet. Might be a word I'd insert in there. How would you like to feel about that? Can you access
curious Can you access playfulness? Can you access inquisitiveness,
you know? Can you access just interest in it?
Can you access creativity? Around around this, okay, right? Okay, it hasn't sold. Is there something, you know, a different way that I can approach it instead?
Are you able to be inspired by that? Again, that might not, that might feel too far away, but like, is there something, there a different emotion that you can access instead? How would you like to feel when currently your offer is not selling, and if you were feeling that way, the next step, if you were feeling those different, curious, maybe inquisitive about it, what might be possible for you to do or say, if you were channeling that as an emotion instead? And it's really amazing to this is, I do think the mind blowing thing, when you do it with clients, they're like, like, their whole physicality, changes their face, changes their book, their tone, again, the sort of excitement levels, and we're literally just looking to change the thought. We're looking to change and, you know, tap into something quite simple. So what might be possible? Well, if I was curious about it, I might try promoting it again, or I might try and talk about it in a different way, or I might.
Uh, post more. That's it. I might post about it more. I might ask someone if they would do it as a skill swap and give me some feedback or a testimonial. I might actually mention it when I have to, you know, talk at a networking event and actually say I've got this current offer. At the moment, you know, a lot more might be possible. And again, next step, well, what might be, what might be a good outcome, or what might be a possible outcome if you started behaving like that? Well, chances are, if you talk about it more, you post about it more, you know, you do a bit of a skill swap and get some feedback on it, you're going to get more inquiries about it. You're going to get more clicks on your website. You're going to, you're going to feel more excited about it, and you're going to, that's going to that's going to continue and have a ripple effect, and you're going to reach more people. Maybe you'd, I don't know, come on a podcast like this and talk about what your offer is, and that would grow your audience somehow. You know, there'll be so many more possible, likely outcomes from changing the emotion and changing the possible behavior. So what we need to get to in the next step is what is a more helpful belief? And again, it needs to be something that you can say you believe is true right now. So what is rather than what we've got? At the moment, no one is buying my offer because I'm not qualified enough. What is a more helpful belief here instead, do you want to have a go? What would be a more helpful belief in instead,
nobody's buying my offer because I haven't told enough people about it, yeah, yeah. And I would like to think most people could say, yeah, that's, that's, that's probably true. I can, I can hold that. So if that is your belief, now I haven't told enough people about my offer yet? What is the first step? What is the first doable thing that's that helps support this more conscious, this more helpful belief? Okay, well, if I haven't told enough people about it yet, what could I do today? What can I do in the next 10 minutes? What can I do? What is available to me this week to help
Speaker 2 37:01
and you then you have, you have enormous list. It's like, How can I tell more people about it? Well, I could, I could post more on social. I could do a live and I could email my email list. I could reach out for to people that maybe I've worked with before, and I know that would really love this. I could, you know, you get a full list of 50 things you could do. And that's and then, for me, with the action, don't get overwhelmed with that big list. Just pick one tiny thing, like one thing that Phil is available to you, that you have enough courage for right now, and do that one tiny thing, because I that's important that you have enough courage for right now. I like that. Yeah, yeah. And we very much. The way I've been trained with the self belief coaching is
Vicky Shilling 37:41
that we work around courage based goals, that we don't just write down a list and say, right? These are all the things I'm gonna do to promote my offer now this week, because we have to tune into, am I feeling courageous enough for that today, some days we're feeling on fire. We've had a really good client session and met someone who's really fired us up. We feel great. And then we do we can do those stretchy things. That's when I say to my clients, right? Get those emails scheduled, get those, you know, posts recording, jump on live, right? That's the time to do those things. And then some days when we're not feeling it at all, and maybe the stretchiest thing that we can manage to do is
Finola Howard 38:14
stretchy pants. That's why I
Vicky Shilling 38:16
say I love scheduling things. I'm like, if you're feeling great, schedule things, you know, for the next few weeks, and then you can hide under the duvet. Under the duvet one day and know that the email is going out for you anyway. So, like, that's quite a nice way of doing it.
Yeah, it's very powerful. Vicky, it's very powerful. It's tapping into how our brain works, empowering us to to take that information in and then do something about it, and then actually change our beliefs so that as time goes on, that belief diminishes over time, exactly, yeah. And then you can let it go. It's actually will one day have gone Yes. And I do always ask clients that when we see it in that initial one, I say, Do you want to continue with this belief, because it's doing a really great job protecting you. Do you know what? It's keeping you from selling, it's keeping you from promoting. It's keeping you so safe you are not going to get rejected, or it thinks it's going to get you not rejected. You know, it's doing a great job keeping you safe. But mostly clients are like, No, I want to shake this one off. I want to actually loosen it. And actually, the ironic thing is, when I was saying that is sometimes we end up experiencing the thing we're trying to avoid, the risk we're trying to avoid anyway, like we're technically being rejected because we're not promoting our thing, so we feel the rejection anyway. So why don't we just give something else a go? Why don't we just try on a different belief, try something different and in the potential that there's much more likely outcomes if we actually are visible. You know, get seen, get excited. Talk about in this, in this particular incident. So, yeah, thank you for that. And I know that you have gifted us access to this process, so I put it in the show notes with people, and it's called, tell me again what it's called, paralyzed.
Finola Howard 40:00
To progress. Yeah, yeah. Good naming thereby
Speaker 2 40:05
worksheet, and there's a little audio guide that goes with it as well, to really help you be kind and compassionate about why this is happening, where that belief is coming from, why you might be feeling stuck or unable to do the things that you're like. I know it should be doing these things and move you forward with one of those little doable steps. Can I ask you one other question? Because it was part of our conversation, and I wanted to just touch on it. One of the things that we said was that some people aren't ready for the work. Can you say a little bit more for that about that?
Unknown Speaker 40:36
I think
Vicky Shilling 40:39
when we discussed it. The
question is, how uncomfortable I suppose, are you with where you are at right now? I think when I see business owners or prospective business owners, people who are brilliantly qualified, but you aren't yet making the business work in the way that they want, it's a question of how uncomfortable are you with where you're at right now? Are you willing to let this continue still for weeks, months or years, and keep trying to
blame and point the finger at the more the practical things? Oh, I'll just keep fiddling around with the website. I'll just, you know, I'll just take another course. I'll, just do a bit more tidying up on my branding, or I'll just do another social media course and try and figure out the algorithm. Or is it now so uncomfortable that you have tried all of those things and you realize there is something else here, and that you're also not willing to give up on the idea that you know you can really help people. You know you want to have this brilliant impact, and you know you want to run your own business, that that is something that you feel, that the kind of healthy, true inner mentor part of you genuinely knows it you are, you are capable of, but the protected part is is just too loud right now. That is when I think people, clients, come to me when they're like, I've done all the things. I know what I need to be doing. I get, I understand the principles of business. I am getting in my own way here, and it's so uncomfortable now. I'm bored of my own, you know, rhetoric. I need, I need to do this work. I need to understand. I need to have this. Well, my approach, then, is that we have a kind of light hearted experiment for 90 days to go, right? Let's, let's play with some other beliefs instead, and just see what happens. Oh, I just love that, because it means that,
Finola Howard 42:34
you know,
one of the things that I notice is that,
Vicky Shilling 42:39
and I mean, you've reframed it again, for me, is that some people aren't willing to do to the work, and that sounds very judgmental, but maybe it's just they're not ready to do the work. No, and it's good protection. You know, it's just okay. That's fine. That the protective voice right now is just very loud and very, very protective. And like you say, you just, you aren't, you aren't ready for that. And there is absolutely no judgment, because that's literally your survival mechanism. And again, I have, I do have no judgment, because when I go into these things with clients, I am not a therapist, you know, I'm not a counselor. But what we do with self belief coaching is acknowledge there is a history here. There are things that have happened in your family. There are things that have happened in past, work situations in your childhood that you are carrying with you now, and that are going to affect what you do. And sometimes that box is one that you perhaps, alongside kind of therapy or counseling are willing to open and talk about and see how it's impacting and able to move forward. And some people are not ready for that, and in the same way, they're not ready for therapy or counseling, and that's fine. That's that's for them to decide when that point comes. Yeah, we are where we are. Yeah, that's okay, yeah. What would you like people to walk away with today
Unknown Speaker 43:56
that
Vicky Shilling 44:00
your self sabotage or your inability to do the things you think you need to be doing in your business is not because you are lazy or incompetent or you need a local qualification, it is it's protection. And when you can be kind and compassionate and curious about that and maybe experiment with some different ways of thinking, then you're going to see really big change.
Finola Howard 44:25
Thank you, Vicky. Really powerful. Really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
And that's it for this episode. Everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Make sure to connect with Vicky on Instagram and do download her paralysis to progress audio guide and worksheet. I'll include a link in the show notes for you. I think it will be a game changer for you. So thank you for listening to your truth shared. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with your entrepreneurial friends and help them grow their business to even greater heights. And until next time, let's keep growing. You.
