Celebrating your business success is a key part of planning your year and your business. Learn how it will reduce burnout, fight the negativity bias, and grow your business. Mug is from Bandofweirdos.com
Today is book talk!
Having a hard day? Me too! When I’m having a not-optimal mental health day my best tool is simple- a checklist! Today I’m sharing my own checklist & helping you make yours.
For Project for Awesome I want to tell you about Together We Rise, a charity who's changing the experience of foster care by providing bags, experiences, and scholarships for kids in foster care.
Today I’m getting my hair cut from Tiffany at Primp N Tease in Elizabethton, TN!
I made delicious vegan banana nut muffins, using the recipe from my FAVORITE COOKBOOK, Isa Does It! Get it here: https://amzn.to/2E91MdK
You need to read the Deepest Well, by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. If you're a foster or adoptive parent, you're going to want to get this book so you'll understand the affect of trauma in the physical health of your child.
If you're a HUMAN you'll want to read this book so you can understand yourself and your loved ones better (and stay healthy). Get it here: https://amzn.to/2L44aEi
Bad news: Most people have experienced at least one Adverse Childhood Experience.
Good news: Neuroplasticity means we can heal the effects of toxic stress.
I'm sharing an overview of the book, but please read the whole thing! https://amzn.to/2L44aEi
Do you have any resources or favorite books about ACEs?
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
We put up our Christmas tree! Take a tour of our tree and all our memory-ornaments and need-favorites like the TARDIS and Enterprise. Do you have your tree up?
Happy December! I’m going to join vlogmas and will be posting a new video each day this month (for at least 22 days ????). This includes the weekly Explore Your Enthusiasm podcast on Wednesdays, a vlog on Mondays and some lessons on motivation, mindset and mental health, along with some more foster parent info, like a peek at our nursery. What would you like to see a video on? My dogs? Vegan baking? Pink hair? ????????????
What my life looks like in one second a day. I use the One Second Everyday app to grab one second and stitch them together. Have you done this? It’s super simple!
Trust yourself about what direction to go.
Trust yourself about who you want to work with.
Trust yourself about what product to make, to launch, to go all in on.
A key element to building a business you actually LOVE and that fulfills you, is to TRUST YOURSELF. But how can you trust yourself through all the imposter syndrome, self-doubt and perfectionism? That's what we'll talk about today.
Trusting yourself and relying on your own intuition and sense of what to do is vital in creating a business you actually enjoy being in, so today we're going to talk about how to trust yourself. Before we dive in, you should know that I actually have a whole book planned about this topic, so we can't cover everything in one episode, but my goal is to help you start to trust yourself more, TODAY, even a little.
By the way, that book I mentioned, I'm thinking about actually writing it, IF it's something you, the person I create for, really want. So if you want a book about learning to trust yourself, go tell me at TaraSwiger.com/newbook. If there's enough interest, and you sign up there, I'll tell you about it before anyone else.
First, lemme define what I mean by “Trusting Yourself” – I mean, rely on your own sense, your own intuition, your own desires vs what other people tell you. Those other people might be your family, friends, your culture. They might be “experts”, teachers, podcasters! Or it may be the indirect messages you’re picking up from other people, like when you compare your business or life to someone else’s.
What I mean by “trust yourself” is, simply this: Recognize that you have your own goals, dreams, daily life and that you have your own skills, abilities, strengths, personality. Then, take all of that, and make decisions that are honoring this, that are a good fit for your life, your desires, your strengths.
In other words, instead of trying to do things the way you feel you “should” do them or the way other people tell you to, do things, from your daily business to your big goals, in a way that is based on YOU. YOU are the standard, not other people.
I can hear you say, but Tara, I can’t trust myself – Imposter Syndrome! Self-doubt! Perfectionism! Self-sabotage! I can't trust myself because I:
Hold myself back
Doubt my intuition
Never think it's good enough
Keep messing up instead of moving forward.
I know, and all of those reasons are why you need to get better at trusting yourself.
You see, those self-doubting thoughts aren't the reason NOT to trust yourself, they're showing up because you don't trust yourself.
Why don't you trust yourself?
You haven't been taught to trust yourself. You haven't been told you're allowed to and you haven't been taught how to do it.
In fact, you've been fed a steady diet of “you're not good enough” your whole life. Even if your parents were the best, most encouraging parents all the time, you still got the message that you needed to be better from teachers, from a zillion magazine articles about how to be hotter, smaller, smarter, less hairy, whatever. Or you read books or listen to podcasts that tell you that you need better habits, better morning routine, better consistency in social media.
And you see, a lot of those messages aren't wrong – if you can't do addition, you DO need to get better at addition before your teacher gives you an A. If you aren't consistent on social media, you do want to, well, you need to get better.
But there's an important distinction. You can need to DO something better, more consistently, more successfully, but that doesn't mean you first need to BE better.
Think about how you'd explain it to a kid. Yes, you need to get better at math. But that doesn't mean you're not already a good enough kid. You have all the internal worthiness you need, in order to get better at math.
This is about growth mindset. You can listen to episode 49 if you have no idea what I mean about mindset, but the short version is: A fixed mindset says that you are what you are and you can only do what you're already good at. (Which means that if you can't do something, YOU suck). Growth mindset says that you can learn anything, grow and change. So if you can't do something, you just need to learn it. You are still worthy and good and capable. There's a whole book about the research around fixed vs growth mindset, it's called Mindset by Carol Dweck and I go into this more in episode 49.
So you see, if you've been taking all the messages your whole life that tell you how to improve, and have looking at them with a fixed mindset, then you're right – how the heck can you trust yourself? You have no idea what you're doing!
But if you realize that you are capable of growth and change, then it is ok to both be imperfect and to trust yourself.
Ok, so you can trust yourself, but SHOULD you?
First, we gotta acknowledge that trusting yourself is not a sure path to easy, failure-free success. There is no way to get success without some failures. There is no easy, sure path to reaching your dreams – not trusting yourself, not following someone else’s rules.
I need you to really absorb that. You will have setbacks, you will have failures, you will have bad days no matter which path you choose.
So much of our “which choice is best” comes down to us trying to avoid failure. And of course! Failure sucks!
But as my biz mentor, Liz, told me, “I think you just need to become MUCH more comfortable with rejection and failure.”
That’s the thing – in order to have success, you have to accept that you will make mistakes, that some things won’t go well, that you may be wrong.
If you’re going to experience setbacks either way, you may as well trust yourself, because you’re going to be more aligned, and more centered during it all.
You see, if you follow someone else’s path, or you try to make other people happy, or you try to push yourself into someone else’s box…you’re going to be miserable AS you move towards your goals. It’s going to be that much harder.
But if you give yourself some grace, if you find a way to do it that works for you, if you go after your OWN goals and not someone else’s, you’re going to enjoy the process. And it’s ALL process.
The benefit: You’ll keep going longer. When you try to make your biz or life fit someone else’s ideal, you get burnt out and you quit sooner. But if you’re going about it in a way that fits you, that focuses on your strengths, that gives you enthusiasm and energy, you’re going to keep going with it.
And that is the difference between “capital F” Failure and some small failures on your way to success: How long you keep going. Remember my dad’s advice to me when I quit my dayjob “You haven’t failed until you’ve quit.” So if you can find a way to do it in away that feels good, you’ll keep going past what feels like failures, you’ll find your way to your goals.
How do you start trusting yourself?
Ok, now that you know you can trust yourself despite self-doubt, despite setbacks and failures, how do you do it? Well, like I said, this is a much deeper topic, if you want to learn more go sign up at taraswiger.com/newbook. But let’s hit on some of the steps and how you can start exploring them:
Get clear about what YOU want. You want to be sure you’re working towards goals that matter to you and not just goals you think you “should” want. I help you do this in Map Your Business – we look at the really big picture, and then break it down into a doable goal and then the steps you’re going to take to get to that first goal. If you’re not clear about where you’re going, it’s going to feel impossible to trust yourself.
Explore and accept who you really are. A lot of the feedback I get about trusting yourself comes back to: I want to be different. I want to be better. But honey, you have to accept and embrace who you are, you have to start to find the value and worth in that, so that you see how trustworthy you are. This can start by exploring your personality and your strengths. This includes knowing how you respond to expectations (which I cover in ep 61 about the 4 tendencies), what motivates you (check out the Enneagram), and what your strengths are (I really like the strengthsfinder test and system, it’s backed up by tons of research). I’ve taught a lot about the 4 tendencies but not as much the other systems I use, lemme know if you want me to do podcast episodes on strengths and the Enneagram.
Look at all the ways you are trustworthy. Trusting yourself and listening to yourself is a skill that you’ll get better at the longer you do it. You’ll build that skill in part by proving to yourself that your trustworthy. Do this by celebrating your successes – make a list of what you’ve already done and accomplished in your whole life. Have you made a sale? Set up a shop? Made one product? Kept a baby alive? Graduated? Make a big list, and even focus on the smaller stuff, especially that stuff you listened to your gut about.
Keep showing yourself trustworth by showing up for yourself and your goals, every day. Every day that you work on your goals, that you listen to yourself, is building the muscle.
Tap into that inner voice. I do this through journaling, you can do it by asking yourself questions, by paying attention to your feelings, through prayer or yoga or any number of ways. Start to pay attention to what you feel about a situation and then listen to it. You can start small or big, but make a note when you’re listening to yourself and then be sure to note down what the outcome was. I have sooo many examples of how you can start small, lemme know if you want to learn more about it!
It’s my hope that you realize you can take your strengths, your experiences, your knowledge, your curiosity, and use it all to pursue your biggest dreams, to make it happen. I help people work through this and am diving deeper in some Starship-only resources this year, so if you’d like to learn more both about how to set goals, follow through, improve your marketing and do it all while trusting yourself, sign up to be notified when the Starship opens again at Taraswiger.com/starshipbiz.
Are you traveling or working for hours in the kitchen or just trying to escape family this week, for American Thanksgiving? Me too, so I thought this week we could take a look at the best of the past episodes. If you'd like me to keep you company during your holiday prep, you'd have plenty to listen to. These episodes will come in handy as you're wrapping up 2018 and planning for 2019. They are the most-downloaded, the most-shared, and the episodes more people tell me totally changed their business or their perspective.
Today I'm going to recap my biggest and best episodes, so those of you who have just found the show know which ones to go listen to, or those of you who have been around for a while can listen again and get reinspired. If you missed these, I really recommend you listen to them, as together they form a foundation of business and life transformation.
These six episodes are both the most-downloaded (each has over 2000 unique downloads) and the ones I truly love the most, which just reaffirmed for me that I should keep talking about what matters most to me, because it matters most to you too!
A quick note: In some of these episodes I talk about the Starship, which was totally overhauled this year! If you want to learn what the Starship is now and be the first to be notified when it opens again, head to taraswiger.com/foundations and just remember that what you hear me say in past episodes may have changed since then!
Just click on the header for each episode to find their audio, video and written transcription.
In this episode I walk you through the process of not just creating a checklist for yourself, but really focusing on what you WANT in your business and your life. It's just 13 minutes, so give it a listen here.
This is one of my most-asked questions: How to you get back into business after a break? How can you make a totally fresh start after a bad year, or a bad week, or a bad review? Even if you've never met a goal before, you can start fresh TODAY, and that's what this episode walks you through. You can find it here.
Here’s a dichotomy: You want to listen to your customers and your audience, to give them what they want, to create an awesome business. But yet, needing their approval has you frozen or afraid or feeling kinda needy. How do you balance this?
In episode 189, I break it down for you – how to unhook from needing approval, while still listening to important feedback. This was a HUGE business lesson for me in 2017 and this episode inspired more feedback than any other episode, you can listen in here.
Right in line with not seeking approval, let's get over the fear of disapproval! Are you unsure of your next step, because you’re afraid of the reaction you’re going to get? Are you avoiding rejection, because you want to have the approval and acceptance of your customers and audience? Yeah, me too.
This was a really different episode, in it I shared the lessons from the book How Emotions are Made, by Lisa Feldmen Barrrett, PhD. It helped us understand how to keep emotions from screwing up your business or reacting rashly, by understanding how they're made. The author has done so much research on emotions and the brain and how emotions actually form. Realizing all the pieces that go into making an emotion, can help you understand how to work with your emotions. The big lesson, that emotions are “constructed, not automatic” shifted your perspective a lot, based on the feedback I got. Listen in here.
This episode was written in response to a question I got from the Starship: If Stretch Goals are good, how do you know what the right amount of stretch IS? How much is too much? What is ridiculous and what is a good kind of challenging? This episode helps you figure out if YOU are the kind of person who's motivated by a crazy goal or a doable goal and then helps you set some goals from there. Find that episode here.
This is the episode I refer people to most often, because we ALL struggle with what to say when someone asks us: Why does your thing cost so much? This is so so vital for the health of your business and your mental wellbeing. The more confidence you have when discussing your prices, the more sales you'll make. In this episode we talk about how you can get really confident and grounded in your prices, so you can share with confidence and make more sales. Listen to it here.
So there you go – the Top 6 episodes of the podcast, and the ones that will help you transform your business and your life in the coming year!
What if I’m not good enough? What if they call me a fraud? What if everyone figures out I don’t know what I’m doing?
Hello, this is Imposter Syndrome and girl, we all deal with this all the time. So in this week’s episode we’re going to look at what it is, what it means, and how the heck to move past it.
Guess what? I’m 233 episodes and 4 years into this podcast and I still worry I’m not good enough. I got a bad review earlier in the week I’m recording this, my first ever, and I thought: Yes, they’re right, I’m not good enough.
Thankfully I thought through how I’d talk to a client about this and I realized, “Wait, hold up! This is imposter syndrome.” I hopped on Instagram and sure enough, you all feel this all the time. In fact, I did a little question pop-up on my Stories and got more responses to this than anything else I’ve ever asked. You guys told me you wanted to know: What the heck is it? Does it mean anything? And above all: What can we do to get over it?
I think Wikipedia actually explains this really well:
“Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.”
What does it mean when you feel it?
It means your human. That you are challenging yourself to do things beyond what you used to do, so you worry you’re not good enough, because you haven’t “proved” it to yourself and others yet. Or you have proved it and you’re just not giving yourself credit for it.
In other means, it doesn’t mean you should stop. It is not a “sign”.
How do you get rid of imposter syndrome? How do you deal with it?
Recognize that you’re feeling it and that you’re not alone
First, you have to recognize it for what it is. This step alone can dramatically change the impact Imposter Syndrome has on you. Because by naming it, you realize it’s a way of thinking (that is very common!) and not FACT.
How can you start recognizing it?
Notice when you are backing away from something or stressing about something. Ask yourself – why am I afraid right now? What am I afraid others will say?
Then, say to yourself: It’s ok to feel this way, it’s ok to be afraid, I can do it anyway.
Just asking the question “why am I afraid” will often show you that you’re afraid of…
Someone calling you a fraud
Someone judging you
Not being good enough
Failing because you’re not good enough.
THAT is Imposter Syndrome.
In other words, it’s not necessarily true that you will be “found out’ or that you aren’t “good enough”, you are just afraid that you’re not good enough. There is a big gap between being actually bad at something and being judged to be bad at something.
Good news: JUST naming it can help reduce the effect of Imposter Syndrome!
An estimated 70% of people experience these impostor feelings at some point in their lives, according to an article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science. So seriously, you are NOT alone.
In a 1978 paper, Pauline Clance and Suzzanne Imes first identified Imposterism, in their paper Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving women (linked up below). They also found that “the realization that they were not the only ones who experienced these feelings” relieved the feelings. They concluded that “simply extracting the self-doubt before an event occurs helps eliminate the feelings of impostorism.”
In other words – recognize the feelings and realizing you’re not alone helps eliminate the feelings!
Grow your self-worth
Do you minimize the value of what you’re great at?
Yeah, most of us do, because it comes easily to us, we think it doesn’t matter.
But it does. And if you devalue what you’re good at, you’re going to think you’re not worth much.
In times of high Imposter Syndrome, do a few things to boost your feeling of self-worth:
Start keeping a list of what you’re good at, what others compliment you for.
Keep a folder full of nice reviews/comments/etc
List all of the times you were new at something and succeeded.
List times you failed, but were fine anyhow.
Reframe your reasons to intrinsic motivation
Researcher Queena Hoang found that moving your reasons for doing something from external motivation to internal motivation, lessened the Imposter Syndrome. She published her results in the paper The Impostor Phenomenon: Overcoming Internalized Barriers and Recognizing Achievements.
What does that mean? Change your reasons from “I have to do this” (external) to “I want to do this for me” (internal).
Some other examples:
“If I want this business to succeed, I need to keep going.”
“I know I can do it.”
“I am doing this for women everywhere.”
In fact, it’s this last one that helped me overcome my recent flash of Imposterism. I realized that if I let reviewers who don’t like my voice silence me, then I am telling all of you, the world at large that you should be silenced if people don't like you. Which is pretty much the opposite of what I believe. I believe everyone (and women and communities who have traditionally been silenced) should share their voice, their art, their expression, whether others approve of it or not. That we should not be silenced by the critics.
So next time Imposter Syndrome rears its head, look at what listening to it will communicate to your children, your friends, the world at large. Will you send the message that you have to be perfect before you can succeed? Will you communicate to our daughters that unless they have unshakable confidence they can’t go after their dreams?
Uh, no. So move forward, honey.
I hope these strategies help you overcome your Imposter Syndrome, but above all I want you to remember: You can feel like an imposter and do it anyway.
You don’t have to get rid of it completely, but learn to be able to act even when you do feel it.
I follow my enthusiasm by reading…a lot. And once a month, I share (some of) the books I read last month and the books I intend to read this month. You can join the informal book club by sharing your own list with me on Facebook and find all the posts here.
