040: Get Aligned Or Go Home!

Have you reached a point in your business where you're feeling like you're not making progress, perhaps because you're not committed enough? You don't seem to show the consistency that other people do, whether that's in building your social media following, or creating your offers - something just seems off.

I'd like to say to you today, perhaps it's not a lack of commitment, but actually a lack of alignment that's causing the problems. Alignment has to run through every element of your business in order to be successful, but oftentimes we don't even understand what it is or how to recognise it when it shows up. So today we're going to focus on what alignment is all about and just how vital it is for your success. So, let's dive in.

I have a Facebook group - perhaps you're even a member of it – and inside of that Facebook group I've tried lots of different things but none of them have stuck. Not because they weren't well-liked, but mostly because I wasn't entirely clear why I was doing them. Apart from being helpful and showing up I didn't seem to have a strategy.

I wasn't really aligned with my true purpose.

Perhaps you've experienced something similar where you've made a start and started to do something with good intentions, and yet it's drifted away because, well, something just didn't gel. You didn't really know why you were doing it, or even what you were seeking to achieve. I've also experienced real burnout since starting to build my business only a year ago. Burnout's a phrase that’s often bandied about, but what it meant for me was that one day I just couldn't do it anymore.

I'd been working a series of 17-hour days. I'd done all the things. I’d decided that I was going to launch my business and be mega successful in three months without really giving any due consideration to my energy levels, how I needed to divide my time with my family, and also what I really wanted in my heart - which was to have a business that made me happy. Again, it was actually a lack of alignment that was causing the problem. It has taken me many months since to truly understand how important alignment is for running your business and also how important it is to get it right at the start.

So, first of all, let's talk a little bit more about what alignment really is, or at least how I define it.

Alignment is where you're in your lane going forward and knowing that that's exactly where you want to be.

Alignment is being in a sense of flow, just having that inspiration strike and moving in the direction that lights you up. Alignment is having values that line up with everything you're doing within your business, so you feel at peace, you feel motivated, and things simply happen. It doesn't feel like a massive effort anymore.

Alignment is incredibly important for these reasons. First of all, without it, you just lose motivation and give up. Let's look at my Facebook group example - without the alignment of knowing what I was doing and why I was doing it, I simply stopped, even though the task itself wasn't that difficult.

For instance, showing up live once a week - not a difficult thing for me to do and surely you could do similar, and yet I just didn't do it. Something that felt like it should be easy wasn’t easy to actually implement and the reason was because of the lack of alignment. The motivation wasn't there so you just give up so much more easily.

Also, you just don't build a sustainable business. That's because your interest will wane if it doesn't come from your heart. It's like the consistency just isn't possible. You're just not going to show up for your business if you don't feel that alignment. It's so important and I'm sure that you understand and feel the same too.

I'm going to break it down a little more because there are two types of alignment that I have realised are incredibly important to me building businesses.

The first one is the alignment of your mission and your purpose. What you do for your business has to resonate with your authenticity. If you want to dive into your mission and purpose a little bit more tune in to episode 36, where I go into a lot of detail about your personal story and why it is so critical to your success.

This is where you will resonate with your perfect future clients. It's where you're going to create amazing transformation and it has to run through everything you do. It's your mission, your purpose, your personal stories, what you include in your content, and indeed how you craft your offers, the actual transformation that you give to your clients.

It's everything.

When I put it like that, it really isn't any surprise that being aligned is fundamental.

It's OK if you're not there yet. If you're somebody in the beginning stages of building your coaching business, starting to build your first courses, starting to really dive into who your avatar is. It's OK to be where you are right now, but also understand that as you build your business, finding that alignment is mission critical. It's the thing you should be doing more than anything else. It's the thing that sits above it all.

Are you aligned with what you're creating? Is it in alignment with who you are? Your authenticity, your personality, your hopes, dreams, desires, experiences?

If you build a business that is in alignment with who you really are, every day is going to be easy. Everything you do is just going to feel natural. Now who doesn't want to be aligned if that's what we're talking about?

I told you that I define two types of alignment and the second one is about being aligned with your vibrational energy. It's where you start feeling lit up, you feel in the moment and you're taking inspired action. This is where the burnout came for me a few months back because I was taking action - boy, was I taking action - but it was a hard, striving action. Do it, do it, do. it was my mantra, and I was trying so hard until I just became exhausted by the effort.

When you have incredible aligned vibrational energy, you're feeling high vibe, you simply find everything so much easier. It's the difference between that low, icky, inauthentic feeling, where you're unproductive, you're inefficient and you're just simply not getting the actions taken to move your business forward - compared to feeling in a state of flow, that everything's simply happening, a minimal effort often results in maximum impact.

I'm sure you've heard the saying that says, if you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life.

It's that personified. It's doing what you love, which I know is incredibly important to you, as it is for me, but making it easy, being in the zone, doing what you're enjoying and seeing the results.

I describe myself as a recovering overachiever, a perfectionist on the mend. I've always been so hard on myself having such unrelentingly high expectations and discovering this truth about vibrational energy has been something that I have embraced with both hands. I hope that you are also on the path to understanding that as a heart-centered entrepreneur, raising your vibe and working that as much as possible is going to do you no end of favours as you go through the process of building your business, working with your first clients, and then scaling. It's certainly taken me a while to understand that I need to be aligned in this way - not the pushing, doing, striving, but the flow, the enjoyment, the inspiration.

So how do you get there? How do you get aligned vibrational energy and stay high vibe? Well, I've made a few podcast episodes about this, and I've gone into a lot of detail, but I'll tell you again how I do it for myself. Number one, you take a step back.

If things aren't working out, it's feeling hard, you're feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, just stop.

A lot of this I get from Abraham Hicks. If you haven't heard their amazing daily podcast, please do tune in. I've got incredible value from what they have to share on this subject, but not continuing to do what's stressing you out is law of attraction 101. When I take a step back, I lean into my self-care. I just love the fact that simple meditation, journaling, a woodland walk, some deep breaths can transform how you're feeling in the moment. Then when you come back to your work, everything seems to have shifted and suddenly the alignment has come. You can do what you wanted to do in a state of flow and pleasure.

It's no surprise that often when you work in that zone, it resonates so much more with your audience and clients. Just do more of what lights you up. Lean into the tasks of your business that you feel like doing.

Sometimes we're a slave to our own to-do list, right? We look at that list and think you have to nail every single thing that's on it in the order in which it appears. But that just isn't the case. So frequently, that's what can lead to that sense of overwhelm or perhaps for you it's procrastination or frustration. Abraham Hicks advice on the matter is to write everything down that you need to do for that project and then start with the one that just calls to you - because surprise, surprise, once you do, you actually feel like doing more. Even if you don't, at least you've done that one, instead of starting at point A and working all the way through to Z in that specific order, even though you don't want to. Because that is going to be hard and you're probably going to give up. Or, if like me, you persist despite all the warnings, you'll end up with burnout.

So now is your opportunity to build alignment into your business. It’s an opportunity to avoid the pitfalls that will lead you to give up or that could lead you to burn out.

Also remember when you get aligned, it's so much easier to get clients. If you're not aligned with your perfect avatar or who you want to transform, how on earth can you resonate and create the best possible value and experience for them?

So today I implore you to get aligned or go home. Simply show up for your business today in a way that allows you to be true to yourself - both your energy and your mission. Seek alignment, whatever that means to you, and allow yourself to build your business in a way that's sustainable and enjoyable because we deserve it.

This is why we're here - to make a difference and enjoy the journey.

I hope that you're enjoying your summer and if you're not able to work as hard as usual, or are taking some time off, please do enjoy it. Go with the flow and take action when it inspires you. To you and your inspired progress, have a great week.

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