358: Overcoming Your Fears
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What fears do you have in your business? From financial insecurity to personal freedom, fear is a powerful driving force for many of us. Fear comes from both the unknown and the unplanned for, so taking time to assess what’s impacting you gives clarity for better decisions. We break down common fears of running a business and what we can do about them. We also give simple steps to start overcoming your fears and living a more focused life.
Main takeaways:
What is fear
Fear of failure
Lack of control
Fear of injury
Overcoming fears
Main takeaway: Talking to someone about your fears can help you process them and find a way to move forward.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
fear, business, clients, important, pet, set, hiring, life, control, irrationality, day, priorities, running, business owners, people, sitter, price, worry, feel, walks
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Welcome to pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're
Collin 00:05
brought to you by pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon supporters for contributing a little bit of money every month. And we actually just wrapped up our first Friday, meet up of the month, this past Friday. And we're super excited to get together with some senators from across the country to talk about how everybody's business is doing and just kind of spend some time commiserating. And so if you'd like to learn more about that, you can go to petsitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 00:31
As you know, running your own business is a very rewarding process. But it also has challenges. And a lot of times, it's actually filled with fears, whether we know it or not.
Collin 00:42
Again, yeah, that's a good point is that many fears that we have are internalized. And we don't even know the names of them, we just have this general anxiety that we go through life and business, kind of trying to wonder what's going on. This happened to me pretty recently on a meet and greet, where I wasn't quite sure of the connection that I had with the client. And so I didn't feel like I was really on my game from that. And was only till I was sitting back in my car, where I realized that my heart was pounding that my body had actually entered into a fight or flight response. And it was actually flight it was it was fearful of something going on. And I traced it back to the fact that I didn't feel comfortable interacting with this person, they made me feel very uneasy, but it was only after the fact that I had realized that that was that fear was there. So sometimes those fears don't even recognize when you're in the moment. Other times, they kind of have much more omnipresent takeover of your life at times.
Meghan 01:41
Yeah. And so one of those fears is the fear of failure. We worry about our businesses not making it as the CEO, the business rests on you, you are the backbone of your business, you may have staff you may not but at the end of the day, the big decisions, and everything that stems from your business comes from you. So you may stay awake at night stressing about market changes, or is there a recession coming or not or how much money is coming in. Or, on the other side, it could be the fear of trying everything you can giving it 100%. And it's still not working. And that could be something like an event that you put on or an event that you are a vendor at. And you try your best to get out there and meet people and give people your business cards and a fine raffle and giveaways and all this stuff. But you didn't really feel like it was worth it in the end.
Collin 02:34
Right? It can be extremely paralyzing, because then all of a sudden, you go, what if I try everything? What if I do everything perfect? What if I give it my all, and it still doesn't end up working out whether it's an event, whether it's your business, whether it's a new service, you're trying to launch, whatever that is, there can be this very real anxiety that freezes you in place and prevents you from trying new things. Because you're afraid of failure, you're afraid that I'm going to give it everything and it's not going to work out. I think this is a lot more common than we recognize as business owners, because it does rely on us. Because we realize we there's that little voice of going well, maybe there's always something more maybe I can try something new. But sometimes, and I think this is when that that hope runs out that fear kicks in and we start going No, there's nothing else I can do. I've done everything. And it's still not working. What do I do. And really, this really gets back to having a plan. Even a simple not a full binders full of business plans. But just a simple plan simple goals that you want to achieve. And you can get help up from other people to set that plan set that which basically what you're doing is you're setting the path forward. So that path is leading you on and you have steps you have things that you want to achieve so that when those voices start saying you've done everything, there's nothing else to do. You can flip to that plan. You can say no, there's one more step I can take. There's one more thing that I can do.
Meghan 03:59
Or maybe you've gone Nope, that is everything I can do. I have tried, every I've tried a ton of events, I've tried a lot of advertising to get my name out there. I've tried all the hacks for hiring, I've given it 100% Everything that I can, but I'm just I don't want to do it anymore.
Collin 04:19
Yeah, I'm not seeing those results. But the only way that you can know that is if you see those things written down in front of you. So that's where having that plan really comes in and saying a simple phrase, like, at the end of the day, before you go to bed, when you all these worries start to kick in about saying you should have you should have you should have just saying something like I've done all that I can and that is enough.
Meghan 04:42
And that's a powerful statement because you know, we say all the time, I am enough and so applying that to what you actually do in and for your business. It is enough I have given it all I can. I've done all that I can. It is enough
Collin 04:57
and one of the fears that kind of precedes a lot The fear of failure in many cases is actually fears about financial insecurity. So not being able to cover your expenses not just for the business, but also for the personal side as well. So are you going to be making enough money or maybe you're, you're worried about running out of money that you have set aside to run your business.
Meghan 05:18
And a great way to curb this fear is to we say it all the time. Know your numbers, if you are not doing a budget, it is absolutely critical for your personal life and for your business so that you know that you're not operating in the red every single month, do a budget, make sure that your prices are set. So you can earn a real living, everything is going up groceries, eggs are like quadruple the price. Now, car prices are going up, everything is going up. And so make sure that your 30 Minute, visit your hour long dogwalk, whatever it is, that you are making enough to buy the things that you want to by the end, it's
Collin 05:55
never too frequent to reassess this kind of thing, doing doing the budget, not just doing a big annual review of how last year went. But now doing some projections moving forward, doing monthly weekly breakdowns doing a per service breakdown per area breakdown about what that looks like for you so that you know how much you have to cover and what's there. And then budgeting that such that part of that is is setting some money aside to cover the rainy days cover whenever it's not as busy of a month. And that really can start speaking to a lot of those insecurities and can start to give you security is where that's coming from is now you have that little bit of cushion, even if it's $100. It's $100 that you didn't have yesterday, or the week before. And now you have that. And that can set that aside. And we're going to be talking a lot about some common fears and some things that we can do to address them. And that's not to say that, okay, if you do the budget, if you do the if you set the money aside, that that will solve your financial insecurities or your financial fears. But it can go a long way to helping them and alleviating them, because overall fears come what from what the unknown?
Meghan 07:04
Well, and that's why having a plan with each of these fears is so critical, because then you're going to know well, you know, I can go to bed easier tonight, because I know that XYZ are my next steps,
Collin 07:17
right? Well, that's those into actually the fear of competition, we do talk about this of your community over competition, we should be we should be plugged into a bunch of other business owners and bunch of pet sitting and dog walking companies. But there is sometimes that fear of being overtaken by competitors, or especially in these kinds of markets in this kind of economy, not being able to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market and changing world where your relevancy as a business declines because you're not staying up to date. And then you get overtaken by a competitor who's doing something different. It's also
Meghan 07:53
important to know that comparison is the thief of all joy. So while you are looking and noticing at what others are doing, you should not compare your story to somebody else's, they are completely different. You guys did not start on the same page, you are maybe in different chapters of your book. And so comparing your business to the next dog walker down the street, or literally anybody else in the entire world is not comparable to you.
Collin 08:22
Now, I will say that it can be a very helpful exercise, especially if you have these fears, this unknown of who the competitor competitors are, what are they doing, how are things going this nagging feeling like other things are happening, then here's that first step, let's give it a name. Let's start doing something with that. So before you do this, make sure that you have nailed down exactly who your client is, who your target is, and what your niche is of your company, then what you're going to start doing is some market research on other companies in your area, do an example a simple Excel spreadsheet, or just pen and paper writing down names, service areas, information about that company, because you're going to start instead of looking at just like what their prices are or things like that. What I want you to do is start looking at the kind of language that they are using. Sure, go ahead and look at their price points, what what kind of services are they offering. And what you'll start to see and you'll start to develop is that there's actually a lot less competition out there than you think. Because while there are other companies who provide dog walks or pet sitting services, they don't provide them like you do to your clients to your niche the way you do. Now you start seeing this market segmentation come up through this kind of research. And it really will give you a lot of relief. And then what's great is that you can once you find people who overlap with you reach out to them. That's that's where you need to be partnering with for good referrals and good connections as part of your business.
Meghan 09:56
I will say though, that we did this a few days ago and it It is incredibly important to know, this sounds silly, but know yourself. So you were doing the spreadsheet and you were like all about this, getting into people's businesses and the area and knowing who what all that sort of stuff. And I was like, I don't really want a whole lot, a part of to be a part of this. Because I know myself have, yeah, I do often play the comparison game. And it's not really healthy for me. So I kind of let you take that role and enjoy looking at other people's businesses. But I know that I can go down that road very easily of, oh, what are they doing, they're they're offering this, we need to start doing that, or look at how they're putting their ads out there. Wow, that's really great, I want to start using some of that language. And that's not really a healthy way to approach this, you can obviously go and look at others and respect what they're doing. But when you try to really emulate it or or get internalize it and get jealous over it, and they're doing this better than and I'm not doing it as great that's not healthy. So know yourself, before you get into this and how you are going to react to seeing what other people are doing
Collin 11:08
know the purpose of this is going okay, I'm going to coming and doing this just as an assessment of the current pet care and dog walking business market in my area, and get doing some information gathering to see exactly who I'm overlapping with and who I'm not. If this may give you lots of peace of mind like it does to me to understand, okay, that's who we're competing with her. That's who we're also in partnership with, I knew I needed to reach out for them. And actually, we did do that after we're going through this entire exercise of going, I need to call this person because I haven't called them yet. And we have coffee set up for next for next week. So but if that's not how your personality works, then either having somebody else do this, or avoiding this kind of exercise entirely, and just sticking to your core values and principles. And just making sure that you are still connected to the market in some way. And that's where some good asking for not not necessarily just reviews, but also sending out good surveys to your clients to get feedback from them how you're serving them. And doing that regularly can also keep you plugged in to how things are changing and evolving.
Meghan 12:14
But with that survey, though, or really, anytime you're asking for feedback, there is that fear of being rejected. Or even if you're on the phone call with a potential client, and you're getting to the discussion of prices, and you'll start to tense up a little bit because you know, what's coming, every time. That fear of rejection, you know, the fear of having a service or a product rejected by potential customers or other business owners, you know, it's not a good feeling. And hearing no from a client is very hard. Ultimately, we don't like not being needed or being selected by somebody else. You know, we, we want everything we want always to be yes to. But sometimes there is the No. And so we have to embrace the self selection of clients, that you are not for everybody. We often think that we can serve as everybody, all walks of life, all breeds, all whatever. But ultimately, our business is not here to serve everybody.
Collin 13:15
Well in that pre selection of clients that self selection of the clients removing themselves from your client pool before you have to. So instead of viewing this as them saying no to you start seeing it as they are pre firing themselves from your services. When somebody says no to you that first time or maybe the second time they contact you consider that dodging a bad situation down the line, or now you're not going to have to fire them whenever things don't work out. Or that's not somebody you want to work with anyway. Little mind shifts like that in the moment, especially. So it's not I'm not no, they're not saying no to me, they are pre firing themselves.
Meghan 13:53
I think one of the biggest fears that we have as business owners is lack of control. So we want to control everything, it's our business. It's our baby, we built this from the ground up. And so we want to have control over everything. It's that that fear of not being in the know or not having control over the success of the business or, you know, we fear making decisions that may impact the future success of the business we try and do so much. And yet there are a million things that we just simply cannot control from individual clients to individual pets and how they respond to us,
Collin 14:31
to the weather, to the stoplights to all sorts of things that we interact with in the world around us. We don't we don't live in a vacuum. We don't our cities don't. They're our clients don't. Things get cancelled, things get added all the time. And we try and hold on to things so hard because we tend to be control freaks as business owners and entrepreneurs. We started something to control a little bit of our world and for them for a big part of us there. reason we have been so successful is the amount of control we have and can exert over things, how we walk our clients through the process of onboarding, how we control the visits, how we control the communication, and the marketing. All of that does give us a lot of success in our businesses. But ultimately, we have to recognize there's only so much that I can do, right but it but learning to let go like that it's it's definitely not an easy process is one that can take a lot of time, energy and
Meghan 15:31
effort, especially if you're wanting to hire staff. I mean, that's like the ultimate test of letting go is training somebody. And then ultimately setting them free and having them do the visits of the walks and the hikes and whatever by themselves.
Collin 15:46
So scheduling time for some mindfulness work so that you can bring yourself into the present, since a lot of the worry of control is actually worried about future things. Future control, the unknown here, we see that coming back in here again, and we've got a lot of online our brain. So forcing yourself to be grounded. And what that means is just I am here right now, I am here on a Monday, right now at 2pm. Or whenever you're listening to this, that I am right here. Now, how do I feel? What's what's what's what is my heart rate doing? What am I sweating? Why am I so worked up right now what's going on, take stock of everything on your mind how your physiology and your body's doing, and write that down, then what you can do is next to that on a list, write down who has control over that situation. And what you'll find is a lot of this stuff is worrying about what other people are doing or what other people could be doing. And stepping back and going. I don't have any control over what that person does. So I need to, I can recognize that and give myself a little bit more peace. We went through
Meghan 16:55
a marriage class a few years back, and they talked a lot about that as well of, you can't control what the other person says or thinks or does or acts, you can only control yourself and how you respond and how you react. So while we can control certain aspects of our business, there is that fear of oh, man, I can't control a lot of it. But then it's that process, that continual process of having to let things go and what basically what mountains Am I willing to die on? And what can I just let go?
Collin 17:27
Right? Megan, you gave that example earlier of you're on the phone with a new potential client, and this conversation starts going towards talking about price. And I notice my heart rate going up, I start stammering a little bit more, my mouth gets clammy. And I'm worried about what's going to happen, because I'm worried about what they're going to say, I'm worried about that rejection, because I don't have control over how they're going to respond, there's nothing I can do to change their reaction to my price. So what that means is you have to let that go, I have to let that go and stand in confidence in our company, in our services, and my price that exists for a reason. And that it serves an excellent purpose, and speak the price and confidence and let it go as it may
Meghan 18:11
running a business eats up a lot of time. So there is a fear of the time commitment for certain things, the fear of maybe dedicating too much time to a task or, you know, too much effort into something and then you sacrifice personal relationships or interests or hobbies that you have, you may worry that you're not spending as much time on your business as you want to be you know, we get feelings that we're neglecting our personal lives, the business is taking too much time. And we're not able to do what we actually want to be doing. We love our businesses. But then there's this personal side of things that we also want to be doing. And so we feel we we may feel guilty about being away so much missing personal commitments, or holidays or her time with friends and family graduations, weddings, all that sort of stuff. So it's really important to set boundaries. We do talk about this, I feel like ad nauseam. But taking time away, especially if you're a solo sitter and you you don't have help or you don't have good referrals, it is super important to mark off time on your calendar, turn off your phone, set your phone to airplane mode or turn off notifications. You can also make a to do list so you're not working 24/7 Write down the highest priority things basically do a brain dump of you know the everything that you have on your mind and then prioritize it with the first couple of things that are superduper important that you have to do tomorrow and then the other things just get crossed off as they as they get done
Collin 19:38
and recognize what are you putting on your calendar first. I always scheduling things for my business first and then working in my personal life around that or my scheduling my personal life and then making my business fit the life I want to lead.
Meghan 19:54
That can be really hard though that has that's a huge shift in mindset and priorities and infrastructure of your life.
Collin 20:02
But it is priorities, isn't it? I think I've said this before. I don't have to fake I don't have to create I don't have to do a brain dump when my kid hits his head on the wall, I don't have to sit there and go, Okay, how does this align with the visit that I've got to do later? And what does this mean? I know immediately I know what my priorities are, if they're crystal clear in those moments, not to go to those extremes. But I know that you're listening to this, you know, those moments where if something happened, you would know crystal clear what your priorities are in that exact moment. And you can bring that clarity with you. And through your days, just based off of what goes on my calendar first. Is this really getting me closer or further away? And understanding that? Not everything you said, and not everything has to get done today? And that it's okay, if I don't respond to that email right now.
Meghan 20:52
I'm still working on that one. Because everything has to get done all of the time. Right now.
Collin 20:58
We mean yesterday. Yes. Yeah, that's right. It is this real drive, I got that email, I got that phone call. I better get that because what if they're calling somebody else and then they don't call that lead back, and I miss out on that visit, and I don't get the money. And then I can't pay my bills. And then my business fails, is catastrophizing, it is catastrophizing. And what that does is that sucks away our time, because then we never get pulled away, to do other stuff, because we're just shoveling our time, energy and attention into this business that we're running. And then we look up and we realize our business is running us. And while there are priorities that you have to set in your business, you do have to set time away to do taxes and to file things and to pay things do us, those have to go on there. Absolutely. But there's a lot of other stuff that they that you have to work around that with your personal life as well. And that whatever that looks like, quote, unquote, balance for whatever that is, whatever priorities you have determined that you want to put as number one or two today. That's for you to decide. And that helps drive a lot of this fear of time commitment, because we don't understand what our priorities actually are. Putting those on pieces of paper, talking about them to other people will give you a lot of clarity on that.
Meghan 22:12
Speaking of taxes, there's always that fear of legal issues. So the fear of facing lawsuits or taxes or you know, regulatory issues that may come up in your state, every time we go to vote, there's potentially a new law that comes into effect that you may need to know and you may have to comply with, you know, you filed your taxes. But did you do it? Right? Are you sure you did it? Right? I feel like every year we go to File, and it's like, Okay, how much are they going to hit me with this year, a
Collin 22:43
quick prayer as you put the papers into the mailbox?
Meghan 22:47
Did you remember to renew your business license?
Collin 22:50
Or what if I get sued for something in my business? And honestly, a lot of these come from the fact that many of us don't know, the regulatory issues around the kinds of businesses that we're running? What are the requirements? What are the licensing requirements to run my kind of business, in my county, in my city? What are what kind of things do I need to have? And so we can get to this point where we're running a business. But have we asked all those good questions? Have we gotten talk to the city council? Have we done and talk to a board? Or can we talk to somebody to help us understand what we should be doing in our business? Because the key here is, is preparation and seeking help? I did not go become an attorney first, and then start this business. And maybe you did, maybe you did in which you call us. But but like working with a tax professional, somebody who can who walk you through those guidelines?
Meghan 23:45
Well, and then also setting reminders in your phone. So obviously Tax Day is basically the same day every year. But what about your quarterly taxes? Or what about your every other week payroll or your workers comp or your insurance that may automatically renew every year without you knowing about it? There's all these things that speaking from personal experience, but there's all these things that are important for your business that you need to keep up with. And if you don't, if you don't set reminders, you may miss them and then you may pay penalties, right so
Collin 24:16
right now if you have an iPhone, sorry if I trigger this but you can say something like hey Siri, remind me every November 1 to check my business license with the city. Bingo, you will get a repeating reminder every November 1 to see if your business license has been renewed with the city or whenever you need to do those kinds of things. That's a great way to these these things that come up periodically but not often enough to for you to stay on top of them and remember them I just think like this around the house to like setting reminders to change air filters or check different aspects around furnaces and things like that, because I don't do them every day, but I need to they happen infrequently enough where I will forget them and the Part of staying on top of the legal issues with our businesses is staying on top of legal issues with our businesses by remembering when they need to happen. So invest in help, especially when it comes to these kinds of issues, these legal issues that help is more than worth it to answer those questions and guide you through that process,
Meghan 25:19
we have two more fears we're going to talk about. But before that, as pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years, they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. And because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections, and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pedalers Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at Pet sit llc.com. You can get a discount. If you join by clicking membership pet Souter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com. One of our pretty recent fears is hiring and managing employees. So yes, so you are no longer basically in control of everything. Because you have people that are out there in the field. And you may be out there in the field as well. But people who are out there in the field by themselves doing the visits or the walks or the hikes. And so it's a really big fear of hiring the wrong employee or not being able to manage them well or motivate a team effectively. And they just keep leaving you every few months for each. We want to grow, we want to bring on help, but we realize it's a lot of work. And so that's where that worry starts to come in. When I was pregnant with our kids. And I was about to give birth, I continually reminded myself of millions and billions of women have done this before me. And millions and billions of women will do this after me. So I can get through this. And so that's something else to remind ourselves of so many people. So many businesses have hired before us so many will after us. And so it's just kind of one of these things of Yeah, it's hard. It's tough, but it's not impossible. Can it be frustrating? Yes, but it's not impossible. So set good processes. Take your time, review your job ad every few months. So you know what's in there, review your questions that you ask and your actual process that you go through. Can it be refined? A little bit?
Collin 27:34
Yeah, this is definitely a one of the fears where what what fear does is fear focuses all of our attention immediately into something in front of us, then we have to decide, what do I do with that attention that my body is bringing me to? It's focusing everything over here on hiring, okay, what do I do with that? Do I allow it to consume me and just sit there and repetitively go over and over and over and over, and I just am like a hamster on a wheel. But I feel better because I'm obsessing about this fear. And it's fueling me to fear more. That's certainly one way to respond to that. And I would, I would present that that's really not a helpful or healthy way to allow fear into your life. Instead, looking at something going, my body, my physiology, and my attention are being brought hyperfocused over here to hiring right now. And I'm scared, because my body's trying to protect me from being hurt. So what do I do? Okay, I can refine that I can take this fight or flight response. And I can do something with that energy and place that into motion. And now, go over the details, review the questions, get some help, really refine that process as much as possible and craft it well. But all of that starts with knowing what you want out of it. And what's your long term goal with hiring? Are you just hiring to hiring to have a body you will not get good results from that. But if you're hiring, to build a team to support your community to provide better pet care, just understand what you're connected to in that moment, so that you are working towards something instead of just trying to prevent yourself from being hurt, because that's certainly where we're not, we don't need to be hiring out of that. Because then you're gonna be saying no to possibly amazing hires. But because we're so afraid of being hurt, we end up pushing them away. And we don't actually progress the way we want to whether
Meghan 29:28
you have a team or are solo. There is always that fear of injury. We use our bodies to do this to provide this service. And so since we run our businesses with our bodies, or our staffs bodies, we have that fear of falling or getting hurt. You know, it could possibly be career ending, if not planned for, you know, you had gone out for a jog a couple years ago, and you completely fell and broke your leg Go on your foot and like all of your toes. Yeah,
Collin 30:02
my right ankle it was such it was actually not broken. I had to go to the ER for this but it was not broken. But it was with a hairlines with a broken but yes, my ankle popped out of the socket so bad that from my basically mid Shin, all the way to my toes was completely black and blue. And like a purple in that green like that really, really disgusting, really.
Meghan 30:24
Anyway. So
Collin 30:28
not just myself, but we've seen this several times just this past year alone where somebody slips on the stairs and fractures their shoulder or breaks their ankle like I almost did. And they go now what, we still have to work to make an income, I might if I'm not moving and going to visit, I'm not making money to now. And now again, here's us catastrophizing, I'm not making money, I can't pay my bills, I can't get in clients, my business is going to fail. And we just go straight back to that. And
Meghan 30:57
so what's really important is to build those partnerships, yes, we can reach out to them, we cannot say that enough, you need an emergency backup, if you have a team great, do you just have more than one person because what if they get hurt, and then you get hurt, you know, it's building that team or building that referral network of other great pet sitters and dog walkers in your community. Because it may not just be an injury, it could be a fear of missing a visit, or maybe your car won't start or there's a traffic accident or something else will who will do the visit for you. And like I mentioned a minute ago. Here's the thing, though, just having one may not be sufficient, you may need two or three people you can call if you are really in a pinch.
Collin 31:41
And if you are laid up and injured and you actually cannot work, consider getting or having beforehand, obviously, because doing this in the moment isn't really possible. But if that is a real fear of yours, of not being able to make an income from injury first, make sure that your protocols that your safety nets are all in place to get prevents you from getting to that point to have the proper training knowledge and or team to prevent those kinds of injuries. But secondly, again, if this is something that is consuming you have I am worried about losing my business because if I get injured, I can't work, consider the investment of having something like disability insurance, so that you can continue to make some money in some sort of way from some sort of income while you're healing.
Meghan 32:29
It's also important to note here of irrational fears versus rational fears. So a lot of what we talked about on this list are pretty rational fears. But when it's when it becomes irrational is when we start to obsess over it and we really get into this hamster wheel mode of well I don't you know catastrophizing? It and I can't get out of this mindset of am I going to have enough money am like am I spending too much time on the business? Am I not taking enough personal time, all of these things we start to, you know, go over in our minds, and it leads to insomnia and just really taking it to a whole nother level of irrationality
Collin 33:08
when it when it starts to impact your life. And that's a really big sign of, okay, something's going on here. But
33:14
that irrationality, it's not that it's not a legitimate fear. But the real aspect of irrationality comes from the fact that there is no immediate danger, there's no immediate threat to you. And yet, we're still worried about it. So that's where this fear of the unknown fear of the future, a lot of the things we've talked about can get to that point. Yeah, if you have $0, in your bank account today, that is real, genuine fear, worrying about the possibility that you might have $0 in the bank in three years from now, is trending towards irrational, but it's again, what do I do with that energy?
Collin 33:53
Do I sit and fixate on it and allow it to impact me? Or do I do something about it?
Meghan 33:58
And that's why it's so important to have a friend or somebody else you network with, or a spouse or whoever to really just bounce these things off of because they can kind of bring you back to reality and say, Hey, this is not something you need to be worrying about. Or this is a you know, we need to work through this because this is serious,
Collin 34:17
or I keeps hearing you say the same thing over and over and over again. It sounds like you're really worried about this. Is this a fear that you have? If so, let's figure out something that we can do about that. And one of the most powerful things that you can do if if this isn't you, maybe if you have a friend like this or some connection, if you have somebody who is genuinely fearful about things or has all these worries, what you can do is just repeat back to them literally the same words that they're telling you. A lot of times when they hear it back in somebody else's voice verbatim what they just said. It's a like a light switch, where they can start to recognize where some things that they can focus on or where they can let go or how things echoing. So if you sit down with a friend, maybe you're the one with bringing the fears. And you can say, I just need you to repeat back to me everything that I say for the next three minutes. They'll do it. And you can just be listening back to what you're speaking to, and then writing down what those fears are. And you can really find, again, I say that word a lot. But when we are fearful, because it's a lot of the unknowns of futures, we have to bring clarity to that in whatever way that means for us. Because once we have that clarity, we can actually do something about that.
Meghan 35:33
We've walked through a lot of specific examples of fears. But in general, what are some of the processes of Overcoming our fears, we have a few examples here. The first one is identify your fears. So write down specifically what you are afraid of and try to understand the root cause of these fears. Maybe it's something that we talked about today, maybe it's not something at all. And then the second one is seek community support. As I just said a moment ago, this is super important. Talking to someone about your fears can help you process them, and you can help you find a way to move forward, you're not just stuck in this hamster wheel, you can move through the feelings, the emotions, and get a solution for what you're really needing. And which is also why creating a plan is super important. Make a plan to address your fears head on, break down the steps you need, maybe its goals you want to do things you want to accomplish. It'll help you to try to mitigate some of your fears, and really set those achievable goals that you need. But a
Collin 36:31
plan doesn't do you any good unless you do the next one, which is take action. And this is where I mentioned, am I going to fixate on it and get frozen in place. Or I'm actually going to keep moving forward and putting things in place to make this happen. So take small steps towards those goals. And this actually each step that you take helps you build confidence as you overcome these fears, little by little, and then be flexible. As with all things in life, one of the fears we had was I don't have control Well, learning to be flexible with things that happen. So be ready to pivot and make changes as needed as maybe new fears comes up. Or as you realize, oh, that actually wasn't what I was afraid of or things change. Don't be afraid to reassess this plan and change it as necessary.
Meghan 37:18
And then once you've accomplished something, even something very small, celebrate it, even the small wins are still wins and they help keep you motivated and build confidence that yes, I can take on more I can do these things because I've already done this and this and this. I have drank my cup of water in the morning, every day so I can get up and start my day and it'll be a great day or I
Collin 37:40
saved $1 today and that's a success towards me. overcoming my fear of financial insecurities.
Meghan 37:46
If you still feel like you can't get out of the rut, you still have the fears, it may be time to seek professional help. If your fears are affecting your ability to run your business every day or you have trouble getting out of bed. You may consider getting a professional a business coach or a therapist or just somebody else that you can talk to. If you have found a great way to overcome the fears in your life or your business. Please let us know you can email us at feedback at petsitter confessional.com or Facebook on our Instagram. We are at Pet Sitter confessional.
Collin 38:18
Thank you to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode and our amazing Patreon for supporting the show every month. Again if you want to learn more about that what that means go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Meghan 38:30
We hope you are doing well. And thank you very much for listening today. We will talk with you next time. Bye
