It’s Causing You to Leave $$ on the Table

by | Jul 27, 2012 | Biz Tips

I’m a bit fired up this week. 

You’ve probably been guilty of “it” at least once. It’s a common way I see a lot of women-preneurs blocking their own success. I know I’ve been there.

We’ll get to “it” in just a second. 

While conducting focus group interviews with my ideal market over the past several weeks, I’ve had the honor of having women entrepreneurs share with me their biggest challenges in their life and business. 

The top two challenges are:

  1. Time – what to focus on and when, and how to get it all done.
  2. Marketing – what really works and what will create results quickly and without costing a fortune in time or money. 

And they both boil down to leveraging your talent and time to make more money. 
The dark cloud intertwined with this puzzle is something that is creating unnecessary fear. “IT” causes some women to quit. “IT” causes others to totally isolate because they feel alone. IT is causing every women in business to leave money on the table. 

“IT” is COMPARISON. A mentor of mine told me years ago “Comparison is the root of all pain.”

Even if you aren’t the one doing the comparison, your colleagues and joint ventures might be and you are losing on collaborative opportunities. So this affects everyone.

When you are comparing yourself to what you think you “should” be doing, the result is pain in the form of judgment that you aren’t doing “enough.”

When you compare yourself to other entrepreneurs, it’s either judgment that you feel you are better than someone and more often than not, it’s judgment of yourself that you aren’t up to par.

Comparing yourself to other moms, other women, comparing your house to your neighbors, or your Facebook comments to someone else’s status…

…comparison sucks doesn’t it? It’s not who we really are. It’s one way that fear creeps up in our lives. 

I’ll be honest. I’ve struggled with comparison. Being a perfectionist and a bit of an extremist (I won’t do something unless I can kick ass at it), I want to do everything really well. But when I just let go and work hard with focus and intention, then there is nothing to PROVE, there is only innate VALUE to GIVE.

We often compare our low “behind-the-scenes” moment to someone’s center stage highlight reel.

Are you starting to see the insanity here?

This is what can happen when women stop comparing and start collaborating:

  • More success for everyone in our bank accounts, personal fulfillment and confidence.
  • Everyone shines because everyone is doing what they are damn good at.
  • We all get some more sleep and alone time!
  • We focus on the important things in our business that create profit and impact in the world, which supports us focusing on the important things in our life (family, health, joy and spirituality)
  • We see each other and ourselves for the true gifts that we are to the planet.

So how do we stop the insanity and really embrace this? Here are five tips:

  1. Reach out – ask for assistance. This could be a mentor, friend or colleague.
  2. Gratitude – At a minimum, vocalize or write down five things you are grateful for every morning and night. This increases your vibration to receive more great things.
  3. Compliment other people and sincerely mean it.
  4. Be vulnerable – thinking you have to have it all together all the time will isolate you and all we really want as human beings is to connect.
  5. Be happy for each other – When you can truly be happy for someone else’s success (rather than being jealous) then you let the universe know that you are willing to receive that same kind of success. If you look at someone else’s success with envy or jealousy then you invite the pity party in Victimville to take place. 

Remember that your judgments, positive and negative, are only a projection of you and your beliefs about you. 

The Truth: In talking to hundreds and hundreds of women-preneurs over the past four years, I know one thing for sure. We are all amazing. 

Our gifts of how we heal ourselves, our community and the planet ought to be treasured, not grounds for comparison.

It’s honor to connect with you. Now go out there and shine your gifts on the planet regardless of who is doing what. 

In Light and Love,

Angela

P.S. Watch my announcement later this week for a free resource I’m giving to my tribe where I have five top-notch women share their strategies of how to create a thriving business and life. It’s one of my gifts to you. Stay tuned.