045: The Magic of Receiving Your Dream Business

What is this concept of receiving your dream business? You're going to open your eyes one morning and there in the mail is your dream business? Somebody has just given it to you like a lottery win, or like a special gift for your birthday? On one hand, if only things were that easy! But really if you think about it, the reality is we want to be the person who builds our successful business - have all of that amazing self-worth and pride wrapped up in the fact that you've created for yourself a phenomenal life and a business that helps others and sustains you with incredible income.

However, there doesn't have to only be two ways; the really, really easy one and the really, really difficult, hard, struggling one. Receiving your dream business is a way of life, just as receiving all the happiness that you deserve and that you would enjoy is.

It's taken me a long time to understand what the concept of receiving is.

In my life achievement has been inextricably linked with struggle, with hard graft, with intense work and focus. Now finally leaning in to receiving my dream business is something that has me feeling incredibly lit up and excited. I can't wait to dive into this on today's episode. Are you ready to? Then let's go.

Welcome to Action Taker Tribe. I'm your host, Jo Ingram, and today we are talking about the secret to receiving your dream business. When we're talking about receiving, let's just think what that means for a minute. We're not talking about doing the hard struggle and striving - you know, where you work hard, and you do more just to get ahead. We've all been there in our lives, and we all know how that feels. Certainly, I felt a high level of burnout back when I was in corporate and also when I first started building my business. I never really understood the concept of receiving and how to actually make that happen. Perhaps, like me, you're also really used to high levels of resistance when it comes to easing into anything, let alone building a business.

Really what it's about I've now learned is allowing. It's not forcing, it's allowing.

When it comes to building a business as a coach - as a new heart centered coach - you probably got a massive shock, just like I did, when you realised all the things you have to do. You have to consider how to build your social media and get consistent posting. You have to create great offers that excite and enthrall your perfect client. And of course, you need to get total clarity on who those clients are. Those are all things that I've done for myself, and I help my clients do, but there's one element that you have to learn first and foremost, and that is that you are worthy of success. Now I'm going to say that a second time, because it is so important.

You are worthy of success.

How does that make you feel? I know it makes the tips of my fingers tingle when I say that to myself and I'm still getting a little bit more comfortable with the idea of worthiness. In case you’re not putting two and two together, if you're in a state where you're not receiving, not comfortable receiving or allowing; you're in a state of resistance that's just making you work harder and do more to a point where it just feels like an uphill struggle, it's related to low self-worth. The ideas about negativity when you're building your business; that you're not good enough, that you're not going to get there. Ultimately not feeling worthy of abundance and success.

The way I see it is that we put these walls of resistance up that are manifest in this hard work, not feeling like you can do it, feeling a sense of overwhelm, moving from one unfinished task to the next, comparing yourself to others and coming up short, finding it hard to ask people to pay you for your services. There are so many ways in our business that this can actually come to life, but that feeling of resistance leads to a lack of allowing; allowing things to happen for you, allowing people to do things to help you, allowing yourself to believe that you've got this and you're going to have everything that you planned. Ultimately this puts you in a position where you just can't receive.

This resonated with me so, so powerfully when I started to move my business into alignment with ease and grace. Anyone that knew me before - going back a year, two years, five years - would be so surprised to hear me speaking like this as I have always been the ultimate action taker. Being someone that takes phenomenal action has put me in such a strong position through many times in my life - going from a position of infertility to having my baby twin girls born with the help of an international surrogate took phenomenal faith and action. Knowing that I was leaving corporate and allowing events to unfold to a position where I was laid off and immediately pivoted into this new business again took great faith as well as action.

What I hadn't understood and am only building in now is that there's a difference between hard striving action and easy inspired action. More and more in my business and my life now, I lean into the inspired action, which is about flow, ease, grace, excitement, enthusiasm, and not just a long to-do list where you wake up in the morning and start a hard slog towards the end of the day, falling into bed exhausted, dreading the fact that you've got to do it all again tomorrow if you want to succeed.

So, it begs the question, how do you get from a place of low self-worth, not feeling like your business is going to succeed, to a place where you're actually in the flow and everything is happening for you?

I've come to realise that it's all about cleaning the basement. Hear me out on this one. If you see your business as building a tall, strong building up into the sky - as tall as you can dream it - every action you take starts to place bricks and shimmering glass as it rises up. But what happens if you have not taken care of the foundations and the basement first? Well, of course, you're going to build a wobbly building that's going to be unstable. It's going to blow around in the wind. It's going to fall down if the ground shakes.

This is exactly what I was doing before I had my moment of burnout and completely changed my approach. I was building that building up to the sky. I was striving so hard to put level one, level two, keep going, keep going, but I hadn't taken care of the basement. No wonder that after a while the weight and intensity of those levels I was building were just too much weight to bear.

I didn't truly believe that I had that much self-work to do. I felt that all it would take me is the energy and the enthusiasm to push, push, push, but of course that takes so much willpower. Anyone can find willpower for a while - ever tried to quit chocolate or to start running? I have done both with only very limited success when it's all about willpower, but where the change really comes is about cleaning the basement and starting to understand what it is about your own personal lack of self-worth that's keeping you stuck.

I've been so fortunate that at the point of recording this I've just come back from the most amazing coaching retreat, where I was part of the support staff, in which the participants were going through the most dramatic transformation. I had the opportunity to see that despite the many different stories and the many different life events that had happened for each person, underlying all of it was a lack of self-respect and self-worth that made it so hard for them to go forward and get all the joy and pleasure out of life that they do deserve. It also gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own personal stories and I realised that I have taken on board the belief that I am worthy as long as I'm achieving, as long as I'm working harder, as long as I'm doing more.

We all have these events that happened in our childhood that give us these beliefs.

For me, as the eldest of three girls, I was always lauded for my academic achievement. I was the first member of my family to go to university and I soon learned that every time I achieved something academic, everyone was so proud of me. No wonder I wanted to work harder and strive more; no wonder I attach my self-worth to that specifically. Without ever really evaluating whether it was true, I continued to go through my entire life believing that I was only worthy if I was also achieving.

Of course, with this new self-awareness I can see how this would have been so damaging for me when I started building my business - that and comparing myself to others and coming up short with what my own expectations were for how my business development would go over that first year. If I wasn't nailing every single goal that I put there for myself, I started to feel that I wasn't good enough and I wasn't a success.

I do believe that all of us are worthy before we do anything - we're worthy first. And then we go out in the world and great things happen.

Now realising this for myself has been incredibly freeing. I really am so focused on cleaning the basement, of getting my foundations right, so as I do start leveling up, building my building tall into the sky, it's strong on amazing foundations. Foundations of a belief that I am good enough, and I can do this. That's there for all of us.

Let's talk about a few ways that you can actually start to get there, because it's all well and good talking about things in theory, but the reality is there are a few simple things that can start us on that journey towards self-worth and getting your basement cleaned up too. The first one has helped me tremendously. It's following the advice of Abraham Hicks when it comes to meditation. If you haven't heard of Abraham Hicks, look them up online, they are one of the leading voices when it comes to the law of attraction. The daily podcast is essential listening as far as I'm concerned.

I talk frequently about meditation as a way of gaining neutrality of thought. Whilst you're stuck in negative thought patterns about building your business, it's very hard for you to get that basement tidy and start to feel worthy of the success that you deserve. You can't get there from where you are. Abraham Hicks describes it as holding your cork underwater with negative beliefs and as soon as you can relax off of those negative beliefs, the cork will automatically float to the surface. Your vibration will rise and all the good things that you want will start to come into your life. The route to getting that cork to float is meditation.

It's not about going from feeling really negative to feeling overjoyed. It's just about gaining neutrality.

I've been doing meditation for a while and I tended towards guided meditations, but now I'm diving into the idea of unguided meditations, that are just about allowing the mind to settle. The best way of doing this is to actually focus on a sound. Esther Hicks likes listening to the hum of the air conditioning unit and just simply focusing on the sound to the exclusion of all distractions. I've actually found that listening to the sound of a ticking clock, which I found on YouTube and listened to through my headphones, incredibly useful at doing the same thing. Just focus on the sound.

Whilst Abraham Hicks suggest that you do this for 15 or 20 minutes a day, I've got to be honest with you, I'm doing five, and even that feels excruciating some days. My mind wanders off here and it wanders off there, it's already jumping into all the tasks I need to do for the day, what I need to buy from my shopping list and all the other things in between.

I had originally thought that I was doing it wrong, but I now know that this is completely normal. All you need to do is every time a thought distracts you is just come back to the sound, just keep coming back, allow the thoughts to float away. And you know what? Within that five minutes that I do that meditation for, I think I'm nailing maybe one minute, one and a half minutes, where I am truly detached, and I'm going to keep practicing. I know that when I finish that meditation, I feel calmer, and my vibration is definitely raised.

The other way to start accessing self-worth is through appreciation and gratitude. It's about what you are happy about rather than focusing on things that are getting you down.

The reality is that you're doing so much better than you think you are.

If you want to hear more on how to access better thoughts about how your business is going at the moment, tune in to episode 43, where I really dive into that in detail.

The beauty of getting a raised vibration is it doesn't have to be about the thing that's bothering you most. If you're getting really worked up and frustrated about where your business is at the moment, and you're starting to feel a sense of lack and can't even imagine being in a state of ease, flow and receiving, then simply look elsewhere. This is one of the things that was a complete revelation to me - that if I don't like something I'm looking at, just look at something else.

When it comes to building your business, if you're looking at your progress and not feeling good about it, then ask yourself what can you appreciate right now in this moment?

Look elsewhere to feel uplifted. This doesn't have to be hard. Look at the sunshine. Think about taking a warm bath, the hug from a loved one, perhaps it's simply the colour of a flower. It's that simple. Just move yourself into a state of appreciation.

I really like journaling about my appreciation, and I try and do it every morning, even if it's just three or four simple bullet points on a page. Try to evoke that feeling of appreciation, and as your vibration rises, everything else that day will start to feel easier too, even those hard things for your business.

This brings me back around to this idea of striving and struggle when it comes to building our business.

The reality is that although things need to get done, when you do them in a state of flow, it doesn't even feel like work.

I love that phrase, that if you're doing something you love, you'll never do a hard day's work in your life. As I'm working more and more with my energy, tidying my basement, learning how to meditate, I find that as I take action for my business, it's inspired, it's in flow and it's a hell of a lot of fun. I'm finding new connections and enjoying conversations. I'm allowing the path to open up in front of me a little bit more and not feel the weight of the world on my shoulders that I have to do everything, I have to work hard.

Instead, I truly believe that receiving your dream business is a state of mind.

It's taking the action that feels easy. That creates synchronicities. That opens doorways. That takes you on meandering paths that you never even imagined would be the direction that you'd go until suddenly you can see that you are making progress and moreover, you are lit up and loving it.

I’m literally feeling super tingles in my fingers right now and I'm so thrilled to be uplifted and uplifting. Building a business is an energy thing and as you get into alignment with your high vibration, I promise that you're going to start to see that progress and that momentum, you're going to be excited to take action, and your dream business will be well on its way.

If you're someone that this really, really resonates with, and you know that you've got to do the best you can to get your business up and running this year, but you don't want to struggle - you want to feel supported and uplifted - make sure you get on the waiting list for the New Coach Business Accelerator.

It’s starting in October and we're going to go back to basics - we're going to raise our vibration and get the confidence back to succeed in getting the foundations for our businesses right. Whether you've struggled with how to monetise your purpose, working out who really is your perfect client, or dreamt about crafting an offer that you can't wait to tell people about, this is going to be the perfect place for you. I can't wait to share more information about it. Drop into the show notes and simply click on the link so you can be the first to know. I'm going to have an early bird offer too, so don't leave it too long.

So, from me to you, have an inspired action week. Take care. Bye now