Maybe you’ve just finished your coach or healing training. You’re excited! And daunted. You’ve never built a business before. Or perhaps you’ve been working in your business for a while now, and you need to try something new, like shifting your niche or launching something significant.

Maybe you have an opportunity to partner with someone, bringing new visibility to yourself and your business. Or perhaps, you’re about to undertake something big – like the writing of a book or developing a membership site.

If you find yourself here, you may’ve wondered - at least a little - am I up to this? What if I’m not?

Fears of Every Kind

Marketing and growing your business can bring up a lot of fear and worry for coaches, healers, and other creatives. Sometimes those fears are known. For example, I’ve had clients say to me – I can’t post on my personal page. My family doesn’t know about my mediumship skills or my intuitive work or my true opinions on social issues. I don’t like to talk about my offers, because I don’t want people to think I’m pushy.

Other times, often, fears languish in the subconscious. For example, I’ve had clients that have finished websites, or manuscripts, or offer pages and aren’t sharing them. They think it’s because of one thing - but underneath, there’s a belief system or fear they didn’t realize they had.

Sometimes the worries are small – what if the launch doesn’t go well? What if no one signs up for my webinar? What if I hurt someone by being more vocal in my opinions?

Other times they’re bigger - What if I sink all this time, money, heart, love, and passion into this, and I don't get more clients? What if my business doesn't take off? What if I have to go back to my old job? Or I can’t pay rent?

Those fears can feel really, really big.

Stepping Out

Recently, I was asked to contribute in a super visible way to something much bigger than my business. I feel this is a natural next step for me. The opportunity humbles and excites me. And, yet, if I'm honest, when I got the email, I also felt a strain of …what?

Ah…plain old fear.

Fear I’ll mess up, flub up, or otherwise forget something. Fear I won't be connected to my heart while doing it (which, for me, means not doing it well.)

And there was a fleeting worry that I just wouldn’t be able to do it. That I’m not cut out for it. Maybe, a part of me thought, I just don't have it in me to do this thing the way I really want to be able to show up and do it.

This last one is the least specific and the most seemingly pernicious. When facing something big and visible and even scary in your business, there can be that fear. Like you don’t want to be exposed or shown to be inadequate.

The X-Factor Factor

I sometimes think about those poor souls on The X Factor. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones who, during the try-outs phase, step to the mic and tell the judges that they've dreamed of singing their whole lives. Ever since they were little, all they can remember is they’ve wanted to sing.

And then, they start singing. And, oh, it’s pretty bad. Usually really bad.

My heart hurts because the judges roll their eyes. Because the producers have purposefully selected these auditions along with other ones that will assuredly end up in the finals. Because it’s intended to make us all laugh and yet it’s not funny.

When I watched these performances in the past, I assumed those contestants were crushed when it happened. Sometimes they seemed to be. I saw it in their faces.

And yet, other times, they seem strangely collected. Unruffled by the whole experience.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize. Those contestants weren’t completely inadequate or insufficient for purpose.” The show needed them, and they needed the show. It just wasn’t in the way they expected.

All is From the Source of Love

The Divine works this way.

When facing something daunting in your business, you might find yourself thinking the results need to look a certain way. That it needs to go in a particular manner. You forget, assuming you’re in charge. You try to control the outcome. And then, if or when, things don’t work out like you expected them to, it hurts.

You don’t know the bigger plan for your business. None of us do. Sometimes we get hints. We try things and they work. We try other things, and they don’t. It’s the fear of them not working in the way you expect them to that can keep you stuck. It can keep you from trying in the first place.

But what happens when you remember that everything in the world comes from the Source of Love, including your business?

How could that open you up? How would you approach your would-be clients, those that need your help?

Feeling Free

What if the experience of utter failure were an act of love as well? What if something wonderful was made from the experience?

It might just refuel you. It could help you remember the reason you started this business in the first place. It might release you.

It might just bring you home.

I think about those contestants.

Maybe having faced the worst thing that could happen to them, ever, and having lived through it, they feel suddenly free. They feel free to give up and move on from what they've been pursuing. Free to set it aside for a moment.

Or what if, miraculously, they feel free to keep on singing with no further expectations. They can sing simply for the joy of it. Because, despite having been judged and found somehow inadequate, it's something they love,

What might they do with freedom like that?

What might you do?

Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash