Why We Fear the Very Growth We Say We Want

Have you ever felt like you're treading water in your entrepreneurial journey?

Like you know you're capable of so much more, but every time you're about to expand, something seems to happen that pulls you back?

Maybe you're about to launch something new and suddenly there's an emergency.

Maybe you decide to create another income stream and your entire nervous system seems to scream, Absolutely not.

Trust me. I get it.

One of my coaches once pointed out a pattern I was completely unaware of: whenever I was about to expand and do something new, I would have a full-on meltdown.

At the time, I didn't understand what was happening, I just thought I was having a terrible time.

Sometimes it wasn't even a meltdown.

I’ve fallen ill before important launches.

I've had computers break down right before launches.

There was even a time when my computer caught fire in the middle of a launch.

I've had cars break down before big meetings.

I genuinely started wondering if I was cursed.

No jokes.

Looking back, I can see how often these moments seemed to cluster around periods of expansion. I wouldn't say I'm completely chilled whenever I launch something new now, i still have epic meltdowns, I still spend hours crying, convinced that I'm going to fail, that the launch is going to fail and that nobody is ever going to hire me as a coach again and yes, I still have spectacular public fails.

But…and that's a big but…I keep showing up, I keep doing the scary things and I don't try to force myself through the meltdown anymore.

I've started to understand that sometimes the meltdown is part of my very human process of expanding.

I had a meltdown when I was offered my publishing deal with Pan Macmillan for What’s Your Money Personality.

I had a meltdown the day I finished proofing my book, 360 pages of words, and seeing them ready to go to print. I spent hours crying from exhaustion and fear that it wouldn’t do well and then I started laughing and dancing in celebration for what I had done.

The fear was real and so was the feeling of celebration and pride.

I had another meltdown when I launched a new Airbnb income stream.

And this is what I've learned about myself:

I will often want the safety I know more than the expansion I say I want.

I don't think that makes me weak or that it means I'm sabotaging myself or that there's anything wrong with me, I just think it makes me human.

For me, expansion has often meant stepping beyond a financial and emotional setpoint that had become familiar and familiar doesn't mean good, sometimes familiar means being broke, being in debt, staying at an income level that feels predictable or doing business in a way that I already know how to do, even when I know I'm capable of something bigger.

The unknown can feel more threatening than the familiar even when the familiar isn't where I want to stay because the familiar feels safe to our nervous system.

Familiar situations give us information to work with. We've been there before. We know what to expect. We know how to respond. Even if the familiar situation is uncomfortable it can still feel more predictable than stepping into something we've never experienced before.

So I dont force myself power through when I have my metldowns. The goal isn't to force myself to stop feeling uncomfortable with the unknown. It's to give myself enough safety, support and experience that the unknown becomes more familiar.

So I get support, I work on regulating my nervous system, I continue doing my own healing work around ancestral money patterns and I deliberately surround myself with people who have a higher money setpoint than I do, people for whom the level of expansion I'm moving towards is normal.

I have learned the power of having people around me who make the next level feel possible.

I've also learned that expansion doesn't necessarily feel like confidence, sometimes expansion looks like crying on the floor and then getting back up, sometimes it looks like sending the email while your hands are shaking, sometimes it looks like launching something even though a part of you is convinced nobody will buy, sometimes it looks like having the meltdown, letting yourself feel it, getting support and then continuing anyway.

That's very different from pushing through.

I'm not interested in bullying myself into expansion anymore, I'm interested in creating enough safety that I can experience expansion without needing to run back to what I already know.

I don't want to spend my life choosing the safety of the familiar simply because it's familiar, I want to be able to choose growth, to create new income streams, to build businesses that are bigger than what I've done before and I want my nervous system to learn that bigger doesn't automatically mean dangerous.

To me expansion is not eliminating fear, never having another meltdown, becoming someone who is always confident.

Expansion is learning that I can feel fear, uncertainty and discomfort and still remain present enough to choose what comes next because sometimes expansion is just acknowledging that something is scary and reminding my inner child and inner teen that we know how to survive here and now we're learning how to thrive somewhere new.