“No! Huh?!” my client said.
Five minutes before that, we started our session. She came in with a problem that felt real, and urgent, and something she thought would take all session to figure out.
The issue seemed practical, too:
Should she be doing more marketing? She thought so. But didn’t want to. Her mind brought up one story after another:
That if you want to grow your business, you should do more than you currently do.
That you can only find more clients when you’re more and more consistently visible.
That if you want your business to go anywhere, you need to take up more space.
It’s what a majority of business advice preaches.
It’s what most people believe.
It’s certainly what she started to believe.
And it’s what her previous very expensive business coach kept hammering on all.the.time.
She didn’t want to believe she had to put herself ‘out there’ more—she just knew she didn’t want to market more.
Without knowing why.
Was it fear?
Laziness?
Something else?
I asked her some questions.
Did the idea to do more appeal to her in any way? (It didn’t.)
Would she still think she had to do more if she trusted that finding more clients had nothing to do with how often she promoted herself? (She wouldn’t.)
If she trusted that what she was doing was already enough, would she want to do more? (Nope.)
She didn’t think about the answers. She just blurted out the first thing that came up.
Then, I asked her to close her eyes and get quiet. And to notice what she sensed in her body.
I repeated my questions. This time, she didn’t give answers. She simply noticed what happened in her body.
Some questions felt tight around her heart. Others froze her shoulders or locked up her throat. And some made her shoulders drop and the tight muscles in her neck relax for the first time in weeks.
Five minutes into our conversation I asked her:
“When all these thoughts are gone, is there a problem left?”
She took a short pause before answering, “No! Huh?!”
She realized that the problem that seemed so big and real just minutes ago had just … evaporated.
How could it be that something so real that she’d been struggling with on and off for the past 10 years was suddenly gone? Without analyzing it, or coming up with yet another plan of action (that she wouldn’t stick to anyway)?
The problem was never her marketing or doubts about whether she was doing the right things.
Once those stories dropped, they took the problem with them.
Stories aren’t as solid as they seem.
When you leave them alone, they leave you.
(Yes, yours, too.)
Love,
P.S. Sometimes, a single session is all it takes.
I rarely offer these, but I’ve opened a handful of spots this summer.
P.P.S. Liked this blog?
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