3 lies you tell yourself that hold you back

Why would anyone want to hold themselves back from the things that they truly desire? We don’t do it intentionally, of course, but all of us do it. It’s called self-sabotage. One of the ways that we do this is through the stories that we tell ourselves, and for some reason, we choose to believe them even though at the core, they aren’t a truth. So today, I’m going to chat to you guys about three lies that you tell yourself that hold you back.

Hello, and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact.

Doors to the Mind to Money Mastermind are officially open. If you would like to find out more about the Mastermind, you can check out more in the show notes for today’s episode.

Lie number 1 – I don’t have time

The first lie that we tell ourselves is that I don’t have the time. If you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you will know that I am launching my Mind to Money Mastermind at the moment. One of the people who I spoke to about joining said they would love to, but they don’t have the time. Let me let you in on a little secret. Everyone has the same amount of hours in the day. Now, of course, I understand that many of us have obligations that limit the amount of time that we can commit to other things. For example, you might have children, animals, a house that you’ve got a clean, family members to care for. I’m not taking away from any of those other things that you do need to do, but like a shared before, everyone does have the same amount of hours in the day.

When you say I don’t have the time, what you’re really saying is I am choosing not to make this a priority right now. And I get it. There have been some amazing opportunities that I have wanted to take up but I have said no to as I have children. But when you’re saying no to something and something that you really desire, it just means that you aren’t choosing to spend your time doing that thing. Sometimes that’s perfectly fine. You make a deliberate choice not to do something because you want to be spending the time with a partner or your children or whatever it might be. But if it truly is something that you want, something that you want to do, a change that you want to make in your life, you need to create the time to make the thing happen.

Let me share an example of how this has played out in my own life recently. I have so many things that I want to do, and one of them is that I want to launch a second podcast. I’ve been talking about this for at least six months, maybe even nine months now. It is really important to me. So why haven’t I done it? The truth is I just haven’t prioritized it. I know that running a podcast takes time, a lot of time, and yet most weekends, at least one day of the weekend, I’ll step out onto the street and I’ll have some afternoon wines with our amazing neighbors. We live in this incredible community and I get along with my neighbors so well. We have so much fun having a wine on the street, watching the kids all play together. But the point that I’m trying to make is I’m saying that I have no time for this second podcast, but yet at a total impromptu moment, I can go and take hours out of my weekend to go and hang out with friends of mine.

This is something that I love to do. I’m not taking away from that at all. But I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that I am choosing not to prioritize recording the podcast. I could easily spend that couple of hours having a wine with my neighbors recording the new podcast each week. The other thing is that I get my nails done fortnightly. I love to have gel tubes at my nails. But every time that I go and do this, it takes at least one and a half hours out of the house, away from my kids while my hubby is looking after them. Again, if I chose not to get my nails done, that would be enough time for me to create the space to record this podcast. So the fact that I continue to choose these other activities over recording a podcast simply means that I am choosing to prioritize my time differently, and right here, right now, I am loving these choices.

But the point that I’m trying to make is that if you really want something, I challenge you to critically look at how you spend your time. Marie Forleo says that you will make time for what is important to you and sometimes, the things that you want to do are going to be inconvenient. Really look at how you are spending your time and ask yourself the question, is this an area of my life that I am really ready to change? If you are, then you might need to make some uncomfortable decisions around how you choose to spend your time. If something is really important to you. You will create the time for it. At this point in time, I want to remind you that you are the CEO of your business and your life. You’re not a victim to it.

If you have too many clients that you can’t fit anything else in, you can make a decision to change it. If you have too much housework or you don’t have enough support with your children, again, can you make a decision to change it? You only get one life, so decide what is important to you and then make that a priority and recognize that if you are wanting to write something significantly different in your life, end up leveling your business, getting that dream body, whatever it might be, you are going to need to carve out space to make that dream a reality.

Lie number 2 – I can’t afford it.

The next big lie that we tell ourselves, I can’t afford it. Now, of course, there are times that we literally can’t afford things at that particular point in time. An example. I would love to pay cash for my dream house on the water right now, but at this exact point in time, I literally don’t have millions of dollars sitting in a bank account just yet, although I do know that the day is coming. Sometimes we literally don’t have the financial means to invest in something that we want. So when we say I can’t afford it, sometimes there are circumstances where that is a literal truth. But often saying I can’t afford it is code for I don’t value it or I’m scared to invest. That’s what we’re going to be focusing on today, is situations where, really, you could afford something, but you don’t want to draw down your savings or you don’t want to stretch yourself financially. I can’t afford it is code for I don’t value it. So when you are going to make a big investment decision, am I going to talk specifically about business at the moment, so building that new website, hiring the team member, investing in the mastermind or working with that coach? We’ve got to a point where we are ready to leap in and make that investment, and just as we’re about to do it, what pops up fear? Fear. So why does fear come up when we are going to do something that we strongly believe can help us uplevel or that over a long period of time, is something that we’ve chosen to do. We start to question, what if it doesn’t work? Or, what if I don’t continue to bring in the revenue that I’m currently bringing in and it end up in over my head? What if this is the wrong decision? I’m making a major investment decision at the moment for my own business, which is looking to bring on a team member. I am noticing that this fear is playing a major role. Why is that? Our brains are programmed to keep us safe, so of course, it’s going to feel scary doing something different to what we’ve done in the past. What we’ve done in the past feel safe. It is known. Doing something different is going to feel scary. So how can we navigate through this fear of saying that you can’t afford something when, really, you can.

I’ve shared this before on the podcast and I want to share it again. The way that I decide if something is my intuition telling me that something is wrong or whether it is fear that’s popping up is I asked myself, is this feeling a short-term feeling or a long-term feeling? As an example, and again I know I’ve shared this example before on the podcast, but when I think about public speaking, I know that it is something that is going to be great for my business to speak in front of audiences and to share my messages. So often I’ll say, “Yeah, sure. I’m happy to speak at that event,” and right before the time comes to actually do it, this awful feeling creeps up inside me and I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. To me, that isn’t my intuition saying you’ve made a terrible mistake, because over a longer period of time, the logical side of my brain says, “Yeah, this is the right thing to do,” and that last minute feeling for me is just fear.

The same one, I’m making a big investment decision. If there is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long period of time, be it joining a mastermind, working with a coach, investing in upleveling my website, writing a book, which I’m doing at the moment, any of these things I’ve been thinking about for weeks, months, years. When I actually go to pay the invoice, I get that feeling, that awful, nervous feeling, but I remind myself this is fear. This is not your intuition speaking. Whereas if there is something that I’m looking to invest in and right from the start it hasn’t felt right and it’s never felt right, then I start to question whether that’s my intuition. If I’ve always had a bad feeling about something, maybe that’s for a reason.

If you find yourself saying that you can’t afford something when really you can, maybe you just need to explore if it is your gut or your intuition speaking, or if it is fear popping up trying to keep you safe in your cave. I do want to remind you of one thing here too, which is that if you’re wanting to create a different outcome in your life, you need to do things differently. A part of shifting is transitioning through a feeling of fear and a discomfort of changing.

Lie number 3 – I am going to fail

The last lie that we tell ourselves is I am going to fail. Today I’m going to speak about it in the specific context of making a big decision in your business. Perhaps it’s around an investment. Perhaps it’s around shifting the way that you do things. The more that time goes on, the more I am truly starting to believe that there is no such thing as failure. Here’s a thing, I have made a lot of mistakes in my business. I continue to make them all the time. Does that mean it’s a failure? Sometimes in the moment, it can feel like it is. I can feel like a failure. I can feel like I’ve failed in a particular investment, in a particular hire in my team, in a particular decision to do something in my business. But after the dust has settled, I always find that there is a silver lining in times when things don’t go to plan.

There is always a very powerful lesson to be learned through mistakes. Sometimes, the more painful, the more that mistake cost you, the bigger and more prominent that lesson can be. So I am now choosing to frame even my poor decisions as a powerful learning point. So with that context in the back of my mind, I’m starting to feel like it’s impossible to fail because even if something doesn’t go to plan, there is always something to be learned from it and a way to move forward positively. It is impossible to progress forward in life without failing or without making mistakes.

If you want to create a loving relationship, you have to take the chance that when you start a new relationship, it might not work out. If you move to a new neighborhood, you have to take the chance that it might not be a good fit. But the alternative is we stagnate. We stay exactly where we are. We don’t take chances. We don’t take risks. The irony is, is that staying safe, to me, can actually look like failing too. There is no such thing as failure. So this is another lie that we tell ourselves. If these three things that we have spoken about today are all lies, what is the truth? The truth is you are the boss of your life. You can choose to create the time to do the things that you desire. You can choose to attract into your life, the money to invest into the things that you desire. No matter what unfolds, at the core of the word, it really is impossible to fail.

You only get one life, so live your biggest and boldest and most beautiful life. The Mind to Money Mastermind is kicking off very soon. If you have been listening and seeing about the Mastermind and wanting to find out more about it, please make sure you click on the link for the show notes for today’s episode. This Mastermind is a truly transformative container where we learn all about using your mindset to create more money in your business. Inside the Mind to Money Mastermind, we navigate through upleveling your business in two ways.

Firstly, the practical strategies. We talk about marketing, about launching, building your team, but we also spend a lot of the time inside the container, focusing on the mindset blocks that keep you stuck where you are, including some of the ones that we’ve spoken about today like I don’t have enough time and the fear of failure. If you would like to be in this high ticket community, make sure you read more about it in the show notes for today’s episode and we can jump on a call with each other and see if it’s going to be a good fit for you at this point in your business journey.

If you have enjoyed today’s episode, you are going to love the Mind to Money Mastermind. Inside the Mastermind, I’ll share with you the tools, systems, strategies, and support you need to break through your next income and of course, profit level. You guys know how important I think profit is, not just that sexy sales number. I will also be teaching sales for scaling your six-figure service-based business towards the seven figure mark. The Mastermind is an adaptive program tailored to support the community as they are scaling. There are no fixed framework because this is all about the people who are on the inside.

Inside the Mastermind, there is accountability against your strategic priorities, making sure you are staying on track towards your big business goals, and like any community, the magic is in the community. We’ll support you through the tough times, celebrate your wins, and share advice to help you get the results you want faster. Inside the Mastermind, we’ll be teaching you how to create an unshakable money mindset, how to build your dream team. We’ll be talking about launching online courses and digital products, giving you pricing and product strategies to make sure you are charging and earning your worth and helping you to build your business in an aligned way, giving you more time and freedom to do the things you desire. To find out more about this epic community, you can click on the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

Thanks so much for listening. If you love this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. Also make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week. I look forward to talking to you again next week.