Dare to Dream Bigger

DTDB 005 – How To Stop Feeling Scared About Speaking Your Truth In Your Business

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Do you ever feel scared about speaking your Truth in your business? Do you worry about how people might react? Do you secretly feel scared of rejection – or worse – if you let people see the ‘real you’ and what you really think? Does that stop you from stepping up and playing bigger in your business?

In this episode of the Dare To Dream Bigger business podcast I’m sharing insights and insider secrets from over a decade as an NLP Trainer and entrepreneur, having been there, done it and got all of the t-shirts on overcoming those fears (and making mistakes!). Plus you’ll get my personal 3-step strategy for turning that fear into compassion, clarity and confidence, so you can inspire those who resonate with your message to join you and take action.

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And when you’ve listened to this episode, I’d love to hear from you – via the comments:

• What action are you going to take?
• How could you work with the 3-step strategy to turn fear and worry into compassion, clarity and confidence, when communicating your message?
• And how might you act differently in your business, if you felt confident in your Big Idea and no longer felt scared of how people might react to you speaking your Truth?

And click here for the fear-releasing meditation I mentioned in today’s episode.

And have you got your free place on next week’s 5 Steps To Taming Your Inner Critic video training yet? It can make a massive difference, when you need to feel confident in your message.

Liked this? Help spread the word:

Don’t change who you are, just to keep your customers – or competitors – happy. https://t.co/lC0HbgyqdX #entrepreneur #startup #DTDB

— Clare Josa (@clare_josa) February 16, 2016

Your Big Message is too important to let fear get in the way. 3-step strategy to set yourself free https://t.co/RKfqVnqzmX #entrepreneur — Clare Josa (@clare_josa) February 16, 2016

With love, Namaste,

Clare x

Mentor To Passionate World-Changers, Author Of The Dare To Dream Bigger Entrepreneur’s Handbook

P.S. Are you an Academy member yet? Rates go up in just a few days. Here’s where to grab your lowest-price-ever membership – for life: www.ClareJosa.com/Academy

Make sure you catch each episode – plus member-only bonuses:

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Dare To Dream Bigger business podcast with Clare Josa, mentor to passionate world-changers and your host today.

Now, I want to talk to you about something that’s a really big issue for entrepreneurs, but which most of us are not talking about. We feel secretly scared about speaking our truth in our business. You see this coming up in so many ways. Maybe we’re not quite edgy enough in the articles we’re writing. Maybe we stand up on stage and we tone down our message so we won’t upset the audience. Maybe it’s something about us not really stepping into those future soul shoes, and we keep playing small when we’re secretly dreaming about making a bigger difference in the world.

Another way I see this come up time and again is with people wanting to be generalists. They want to have everybody in their target market, and they are terrified of saying, “Actually, I specialize in working with these people.” Why is it? We have a natural human need to be loved, accepted, and liked. I totally get it. I feel it with you. We’ve all been there.

Sometimes when we stand totally authentically, living and breathing our big message, our big idea, our big vision, our big why, the difference we are here to make, there will be people out there who don’t like it. Now, they might not like it because your message might not resonate with them or, as I find happens all too often, they might not like it because they secretly know that they’re not being authentic, they’re not standing in their big soul shoes, and they’re not being true to their message. It’s easier for people to attack than to look in the mirror.

I’ve covered in one of the earlier episodes that all criticism is born of someone else’s pain. If people don’t like your message, the chances are it’s their pain that’s causing them to react, not actually your message. You haven’t done anything wrong, unless, of course, you’ve behaved without compassion, and we all fall into that trap. Then we need to go and do our apologies and put it right, where we can. But, nine times out of ten, when people react to your message, it’s because you’ve hit a button inside them that’s causing them pain that they didn’t want to deal with, and it’s probably nothing about you.

Now, the other reason people can react is they might genuinely disagree with you, or they might not understand the message you’re putting across. That’s cool. If they disagree with you, debate can be one of the best ways for you to hone and refine and totally understand your big message. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong just because you disagree. One of the beauties of living in the free world that I’m privileged to be part of is that we are allowed to have our opinions.

If it’s that your message isn’t clear, then listen to what they’re saying. They could have real gems in there that you can take onboard to help make your message even clearer and more inspirational the next time you present it. But, I know it can still be scary, and sometimes when I step up, I still feel that fear too.

When I created the intuition breakthrough blueprint just over a year ago, it’s an online course that empowers and inspires entrepreneurs to turn their intuition into their biggest business asset, even if you’re living in a logical, left-brained world, I asked a lot of entrepreneurs what are your blocks about trusting your inner wisdom. Aside from the obvious of, “Well, I don’t know how to connect with it, and how do I know it’s right?” the next biggest block that came up was, “But what if my intuition says something that will upset other people?” When you connect with that deeper source of wisdom deep inside to create the changes and make the decisions that can help you really create breakthroughs in changing the world, one of our deepest, quietest, least talked about fears is upsetting people.

How do you get around that? Well, I had another experience of it this week. I spoke my truth and, to be fair, I probably didn’t use as much compassion as I should have done, but I was in a hurry and, you know, I made a mistake on that – hands up. I spoke my truth, and the person reacted incredibly badly behind my back. In the olden days, that would have floored me. I’d have spent most of this week picking myself up, trying to work out what I’d done wrong, trying to change who I was.

These days, I’m happy to apologize for anything I said that was not done with enough compassion, but I stand by the truth of what my intuition was telling me, and I have to accept those consequences. Actually, I’m okay with that. It’s all too easy to dive into the drama. It’s all too easy to want to win people around. It’s all too easy to do what most of us do, which is we stop being true to who we really are because we’re scared of what will happen. We’re scared of rejection. We’re scared of the response.

But you know what I found over the years in my business and with the thousand and thousands of entrepreneurs I’ve worked with since 2002 is the more you align with who you really are, the more you connect with the big reason you’re here, and you live and breathe from that space, the more you magnetize to you those who will be inspired by your message. Those who aren’t inspired by your message, they will have a Marmite reaction, potentially. This English yeast extract spread I’ve talked about in my podcast before where you either love it or you hate it. You cannot be true to who you really are and also be a crowd pleaser.

When we connect with our inner genius, and we really step on our path, it ought to come with a health warning. You are going to need to know how to handle this. I want to share with you today a three-step strategy for turning that fear of speaking your truth in your business and being who you really are into compassion, clarity, and confidence. These are the techniques I’ve used with mentoring clients and students for over a decade.

The first one is when somebody comes back at you. You’ve stood in your soul shoes. You’ve been truly authentic. You’ve spoken your inspirational message with passion, and somebody lobs a custard pie in your face. Obviously I’m talking metaphorically, I hope.

The first thing is to take a step back and to realize that their outward behavior says more about them than about you. Remember, I said all criticism is born of someone else’s pain. Step one of this strategy I call the Woolly Jumper Test. In the Woolly Jumper Test, you take their feedback, and you try it on for size. It’s like your granny made you a jumper and she thinks you’re still six, and you kind of can’t get it over your head, but you have to try it on for size anyway just in case it’s a perfect fit because sometimes that feedback holds absolute jems from it. I’ll cover that in a moment.

Sometimes it’s actually nothing to do with us. Sometimes it is born from their inner pain. Somehow it’s like we had some kind of soul deal with this other person that we were going to press a trigger button for them, and it’s something that’s ready to release in them, but they’ve been avoiding. That’s okay.

Try it on for size. If it fits, consider moving on to one of the other steps. If it doesn’t, compassionately let it go. Set a boundary, but let go of the drama. Let go of the emotions. Let go of the stories and reclaim your power to choose how to respond.

Step two is looking at how did I co-create this. Obviously, you didn’t get inside the other person’s head and force them to send that nasty email or talk about you behind your back or throw that custard pie. But, the fact is that everything we do in any relationship at any level is some kind of a dance. You do something. The other person sees it as an input. They do. They process it in their internal sausage machine inside their heads. They do something. You see it as an input. You process it in your sausage machine, and so the dance goes on.

When you look at how this person has responded to your message, to you being authentic, is there anything in that dance that you could have changed? You can’t change them. You can only change you. Whilst you can’t always choose the circumstances, and sometimes people do throw balls from left field and it really catches us by surprise, we can always choose how to respond, both inside and outside. It’s the only thing we have any control over.

In these situations, I ask myself, “Can I sleep with a clear conscience at night over my role in this dance?” If not, there’s something I need to put right. If I can, it’s back to letting go.

Step one is the Woolly Jumper Test. Step two is how did I co-create this, and is there anything I would do differently next time?

Step three, this one is really, really important. You hear it a lot in the spirituality world that everything is meant for your growth. When you’re going through the brown stuff, that can be a really hard message to hear. Here’s a different way of looking at it that’s actually useful from a business point of view for entrepreneurs: What can I learn from this?

Maybe when you tried the woolly jumper on, there was something in there that was useful. Maybe you need to refine your message. Maybe somebody caught you being unauthentic, and they’ve pressed one of your buttons. Maybe you’ve been hanging around with the wrong kind of people on social media. Maybe you need to up your game.

What can I learn from this? Taking out the drama, taking out the story, taking out the he said, she said, that whole dance, what can I learn from this? Learn it. Put it into action. Let go. And move on.

Those are the three steps of my strategy, which I used even most recently this week.

• One: The Woolly Jumper Test.
• Two: How did I co-create this? Can I sleep with a clear conscience?
• Three: What can I learn from it? Are there actions I need to take?

Then it’s really, really important. Your big message is too important for you to let your fear get in the way. Now that you’ve got a three-step strategy for dealing with it when somebody does come back you, let’s deal with the fear. It’s time. It’s due. You need to practice speaking your truth. It’s a habit.

I would suggest you practice it with the tiny things first. Don’t start straight away with the 11 out of 10s. Practice your truth with compassion, with clarity, and confidence. I call these The Three Keys to Speaking Your Truth. Yes, you might get that Marmite reaction. But, in business, if you don’t stand for anything, then you stand for nothing. And, if you’re being true to who you really are, there will be people who don’t like you.

I’m curious. What could you do today where you could practice speaking your truth with compassion, with clarity, and with confidence?

• The compassion comes from speaking from your heart rather than your head and from having no agenda other than to spread love, freedom, and choice.
• The clarity comes from being in total alignment with your message, really understanding your big why, your big vision, your big mission, your big message, your big idea, whatever it is that you’re here to create. Practicing articulating that in a way that inspires people that they find easy to understand.
• The confidence, it comes from practice.       When you know you’re coming from your heart, and you know you’ve tried out the Woolly Jumper Test, and you know that you can sleep at night with strategy step two, and you’ve learned from feedback in the past, that will give you more confidence.

It’s not about you being right and others being wrong or others being right and you being wrong. It’s about you being you. That’s all that matters.

I’ve got a bonus for you today. It is a ten-minute fear-releasing meditation. It’s normally part of my Intuition Breakthrough Blueprint Program, but I’m going to give it to you as my gift today because I really want you to tackle this. You’ll find the link on the show notes page, www.DTDBpodcast.biz/005. There’s the link on that page to go straight to download the meditation. It will make a huge difference for you on getting grounded, on reconnecting with your heart, getting out of your worry and story head, releasing the drama, feeling compassionate with clarity and confidence.

I’ve got another bonus for you as well because one of the reasons we feel scared about speaking our truth in our business is that inner dialog, our negative thoughts, the critic on our shoulder. Come and join us, starting on the 22nd of February, we’re going to be running this live. If you’re catching this after that date, just come and join us anyway. The videos will still be there. It is a five-part video training, less than ten minutes a day, and it’s called Five Simple Steps to Tame Your Inner Critic. I’m going to taking you through, each day, a different aspect of how to handle that negative self-talk so that you can feel calmer, happier, and more confident.

Again, it’s on the show notes page, DTDBpodcast.biz/005 or you can go there direct, DareToDreamBigger.biz/innercritic. It’s going to be an amazing journey, which I can’t wait to share with you. If the stories you’ve been telling yourself about being scared to really, really step into your authentic soul shoes with your business is something that you know have been secretly getting in the way, come and join us. Taming your inner critic is the first step to setting yourself free from that.

I’d love to hear from you today over at the comments on the show notes. What action are you going to take as a result of these strategies? How could you work with the three-step strategy to turn fear and worry into compassion, clarity, and confidence when communicating your message? And, how might you act differently in your business if you felt confident in your big idea and no longer felt scared of how people might react to you speaking your truth?

Come and find me. Get your fear releasing meditation. Join us for the taming your inner critic five-part training over at DTDBpodcast.biz/005. I would love to hear from you. If you have any top tips you would like to share with our listeners on how to stop your fear of being authentic and speaking your truth stopping you from growing your business, come and tell us. I really hope you found today’s episode useful. This is Clare Josa signing off from the Dare To Dream Bigger business podcast. I’ll be back next week with your next episode.