Ep. 15 Embrace Your Emotions: 9 Tips for Navigating Negativity in Your Business

 I am Meegan Care mindset coach and meditation teacher. This podcast is here to help you unwind self-doubt, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and overwhelm so you can step into the confident leader you were born to be women. It is time to bring your purpose into the world in an impactful way without sacrificing your wellbeing.

Are you ready? Let’s begin. Hello my friends. Welcome to episode 15 of the podcast. Embrace your emotions, tips for navigating negativity in your business. If you’ve been in business for a little while, think back to when you were first driven by your idea or by your mission. Do you remember those heady days when you felt so full of inspiration?

Promise, the big dreams that flowed through your heart, and I mean this really sincerely, you know, these are the ideas that take a hold of us and move us into creating a business, offering a service. And during those times, it can feel a little bit like the start of a relationship. You know, it’s all hot and heavy and you can’t wait to be with each other.

Same with your business, and it’s so filled with romantic promise, and I’m really not disrespecting any of this. This is just the nature of relationships and a very normal pattern of relationships. And so I want us to look through that lens when we look at our business. because it’s gonna be really helpful for understanding and gaining some techniques and strategies for working with your emotions when they’re more on that negative side of the spectrum, when your emotions are really challenging.

So you’ve had that, that really romantic early stage of your business and in a romantic relationship. That first year is often that really full on wonderful erotic stage, but now you’re past that first year. And just like in a relationship, you’re a bit beyond that hot and heavy eros stage of the relationship.

And you might start to not always feel so over the moon emotionally about your business. And then the next thought that arises can be for some people, maybe this business isn’t for. me, maybe because I’m feeling this way, you know, I’m feeling a little bit down about it, that it means I’m actually over it.

Maybe I’m feeling like it’s harder than I thought and I haven’t made as much progress as I’d hoped. I seem to be growing too slowly. It’s not what I expected, or you might notice that you are completely overwhelmed by the day-to-day of your business. So this is a really normal stage that we go through with our business.

Once we pass that eros stage at the initial phase of the relationship, then you’re into the, the deep work. You are into the, you know, really establishing your business. And this is often the time if those challenging emotions arise, then we can very quickly go to thoughts about, eh, maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all. We’ll take heart, my friends. We’re gonna go into this a bit more. I’ve got some tips, some tools that are gonna be really helpful to navigate through this.

Number one, we are understanding that, you know, love for your business through that lens of the relationship, that the first months are really erotic. There’s so much passion for your relationship, and then you get into the every day and it can feel a bit more mundane. Or actually when the challenging emotions arise in that second stage is when our brain goes, oh, well maybe this isn’t meant for me.

Maybe I should just close it. But the thing is, just because those feelings are arising, it doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. So really good to be really clear about that within yourself. And then the second point that follows on from this is, We need to stop acting within our business based on how we feel. When I teach mindfulness practice.

I show this diagram and I obviously, I can’t show it to you here, but it’s real simple. It’s just a bar, a line. Horizontally across the page, and at one end of the line is the, I am a puddle to my emotions. I’m completely thrown around by emotions. And then at the other end of that line, at the other end of the spectrum is I suppress my emotions.

I’m the absolute boss of my emotions. I don’t let any emotions sneak through. And both of those polar opposites, Not very healthy. Right. We understand that very clearly. Actually, what a good place to aim for is somewhere in the middle ground. Always. We find it in the middle ground. We find health and wellbeing in the middle ground when we’re looking at at it through this lens, and so in that middle ground is I’m not being.

washed around by my emotions. I’m not collapsing every time a difficult emotion comes up, but also I’m, I’m listening, I’m responding. I’m not stuffing my emotions down and being really rigid and disconnected from my emotions because that’s not healthy either. I’m finding some kind of middle ground, and we do that within our business life as well on the day to day.

so you know, because shit comes up, you might feel low for any number of reasons. It could be something that’s going on in your family. It could be the cyclones that have happened around New Zealand recently. You might actually be having a really strong response to that, and of course, rightly so.

So the key thing here is to create some space with your emotions. And because we don’t wanna base our actions, in our business on your in the moment feeling state, because if you are a woman who’s still menstruating, you’ll know you have those different seasons of your cycle, and so you have the spring and the summer when you are ovulating, you’re in that really high peak time of your cycle. You are more outgoing, you are more wanting to be social, and then you’re coming into the autumn winter, which is more around the premenstrual time. and you know, if you were being led around by your feelings and you were only acting in your business when you were feeling really good on top of the world, you might only be doing good work for two weeks out of the month.

if you follow you, you know how you felt within your menstrual cycles. And so of course we want to layer in self-care. We wanna layer in times when we’re in a more autumn and winter phase within ourselves, when we wanna be more quiet, when we have less tolerance for other people’s needs, we wanna layer in more quiet time and more self care.

But. Very likely, you’re still gonna have to show up to some degree. And so not letting your emotions lead you is a very helpful piece with this. And how you do that is number three, and that is that you start acting based on your values, your vision, and your commitment to service to your clients. . And so especially if you are in a place where challenging emotions are arising, then this is the time to reconnect with your values, your business values, your personal values, your vision, your commitment to service, your commitment to your clients, and allow that to lead you forward.

So a couple of years ago I had one of my family members was going through a very difficult time and I was directly involved with this, supporting this person, helping them to, you know, put one foot in front of the other, get the support that they needed, the help that they needed. And they were really struggling for a long period of time and, and emotionally, mentally struggling.

And so I didn’t feel. .great. It’s difficult, you know, when someone we love is going through something really difficult, if you’re an empathic person, it’s gonna show up in your emotions as well. Layered on top, of course, is the worry for this person. The concern about getting them the support that they need.

Worried about what their future will hold. And during that time I was still working. Of course, I was still working, I was still seeing clients, I was still running my business. It was not easy. You know, some mornings were pretty tough, and that was the time when I had to get reconnected with my values, with my commitment to service and my commitment to my business.

And I allowed that to lead me because, you know, 50% of the time there I wasn’t feeling great within myself. But of course, when I sat down with a client and worked with a client, Put some space with that. I could bookmark that and put it to the side. And actually it was really helpful to help me stop overthinking the situation with my family member.

And so what I see a lot of is that we’re waiting for our emotions to get good, to get on the good side before we take action. But if you. .have First of all, the values and the commitment to your business. You understand what those are? You are connected to those. , and then you also have some structure. You know what your business is about.

You know how things work within your business. You can lean into that structure to support you. If you have a schedule, you lean into that schedule to support you when your emotions are in a really negative place, because we can’t. Well, I don’t think we want to be right closing our business down just because we are having an off few weeks.

And this is very different to somebody who say, going through a deep life crisis. Right? I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the general ups and downs of being human and the fact that we, we need to accept that we are gonna feel difficult emotions. We are gonna feel sad, we are gonna feel grief.

We’re going to feel worry. , and that’s a normal part of being human, and it is not something that we necessarily need to fix before we can take action that is effective within our business. And then number five is realizing that it’s really normal when we’re. thinking about our relationship with our business, that just like romantic relationships, that they have mundane, boring parts.

The parts of who’s gonna clean the shower this week? Who’s gonna empty the dishwasher? I don’t wanna do it. I do more than you. You know, that old thing that we get into that you’re gonna have those mundane sorts of feelings about your business. You, you have to do the admin work, you have to put your GST return through.

You have to do those things. Maybe don’t light you up, especially in the beginning. If you’re a solopreneur, if you’re a sole operator, and I know many of people that listen to this podcast are, and this is a situation that we are in, and so rather than turning away from it and ignoring it, understanding that it’s like one of those things that we need to build into our schedule.

So we are just doing it on the routine so that it doesn’t end up being something that we have to think about. Wait until we feel good about procrastinate, about avoid, and then, you know, that builds up that emotional tension. You just get in there and do it cuz it’s on your schedule to do it. And another subtle piece with this is that when you’re

out of that early stage, out of that eros stage with your business and you’re in that second stage, you’re doing that deep work. You’re in that more mundane stage. Stop expecting your business to give you all the good feelings. Stop expecting your business to behave like it did, to give you all of that rush, that adrenaline, that eros that it did right at the beginning.

It’s not gonna be like that when you’re in the middle. and you wouldn’t expect that of your partner either, right? A few years in, we have a mature understanding of what happens in relationship that that eros phase right at the beginning when it’s all passionate and you just wanna be in each other’s company all the time, it’s really natural that that doesn’t sustain in the same way.

Yeah. And our relationship. And same goes for our business. So you wouldn’t put all of that pressure onto your partner to give you all of those like really hot, passionate feelings from the beginning times of your relationship. You wouldn’t put all that pressure on your partner, right, to carry on with those, to provide you with those feelings.

Three years in. And so don’t do that to your business either, right? There’s going to be mundane aspects to your business, and the way to be with that is to actually create pockets of time where you are having time out, where you are doing something really creative in your business that can often give you a lift.

Do things that bring you joy. . But the big thing is, is that mental, psychological reframe around. Am I just expecting something from my business where we are not in that stage anymore? We’re in the stabilizing stage, the deep work stage, and number six, remember that you can still do amazing work even if your feelings are in the toilet, even if you feel shit.

Most people don’t feel over the moon passion and purpose a hundred percent of the time. It’s actually more like 50% of the time, right? Just know that you can be feeling mundane, you can be feeling worse than mundane and still do good work. You don’t need to be feeling high ecstatic to do amazing work in your business because that’s not the reality of life.

Life is 50 50. Shit is gonna happen. We feel shit some of the time. One of the biggest things that we can do to relieve stress on ourselves is to be realistic about that fact that shitty things happen, that we can’t avoid them all the time, and that that’s life. It’s how you relate or resist those feelings that takes it from pain, like the pain of loving and living into suffering.

And number seven, don’t spend too much time trying to coach yourself into a better feeling state. Please don’t spend an hour in the morning trying to coach yourself into a better feeling state. Just do something. If you need to do it, go for a walk, meditate journal, but then actually get on and do the work.

Connect with people around you. Make offers to help people, and you may just find that by doing this that your feeling state actually naturally shifts as a result of you taking action, irrespective of how you’re feeling, which you know, if it does, it’s an added bonus. And if your feeling state doesn’t shift, just from the mere fact that you’ve taken action, you’ve connected with people, you’ve talked with people, you’ve done some good work, taken steps to do some good work.

If your feeling state doesn’t shift by doing that, that’s okay. , you’ve still done some great work in your business today.

We shift our, our perspective, give ourselves a reframe, and then make choices according to our needs, our values, our structure. Oh, and that was actually number eight. So this whole emotional stuff and how we feel within our business, it’s a spectrum.

It’s not on or off. We’re often in the murky grey of life. And look, you can still build a really successful business from any feeling state. Most of us if you are listening to this podcast, you’re probably a little more like me, where you have a strong connection to your feelings. You’re empathic, you’re sensitive.

So you understand your feelings state. And so I think when we are that way, we have to get. Real with ourselves more often because for whatever reason we don’t have that mechanism where we can or have like shut off all of our emotions. We’re actually, we are living them day to day. So it’s how you be with them, how you be in a healthy relationship with them.

That’s key. And because you are developing a healthy connection to a deeper intention, your values. , your commitment to service. This is what you let lead you in your business rather than relying on a high feel good state. And then number nine, what happens is that as good feeling states arise, they are the cherry on the top and totally enjoy them.

Play with them when they arrive. Revel in them. Let yourself be play. Enjoy those good feelings when they do show up. Don’t worry about what’s around the corner. Let yourself be playful with them. That could be a phase where you are thinking about a new project. When you are getting really creative about your offers is when those inspired good feeling states arise.

And just like the analogy of the relationships that I’ve been using. , all of you know, long-term relationships will go through death and rebirth, death and rebirth as we go through where we feel more distant and more connected, more distant and more connected. And so same goes for our business. We’re gonna go through times where we feel more mundane about it.

Kind of a little ho hum. And then we get reinspired and we have this new, this new piece to bring through. It’s a similar thing. Death and rebirth. Death and rebirth. Death and rebirth. So we don’t expect to always be in that spring, summer phase in our life where we’re always Pollyanna, always super, super happy.

I’ve never met anyone like that. Not who’s really, really connected with themselves. And if you are that person, all power to you. Fantastic. I love it. I wanna spend some time with you and hang out cuz you’re gonna be a great person to be around. But most of us will be, you know, somewhere in the middle. We’re gonna have good days, we’re gonna have bad days, and just because we are having those negative emotions arise doesn’t mean that anything has gone wrong and doesn’t mean that we have to stop taking action that is moving our business forward.

Hey, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Kind of ran with it with the analogy around relationships, but I think they actually, there’s a lot of correlation there. We coach a lot on this in the impactful women coaching program, and so this coaching program is for. small business owners, we are getting really clear about mindset.

We are getting rid of all the bullshit that holds you back from really showing up with courage and confidence and taking your business. Where it needs to go, where it wants to go, where your dreams are leading it. And we get real about the hard stuff, you get so much support in the coaching container.

I have, you know, seen women come into the coaching program and we’ve been coaching, we coach every week. Maybe you show up feeling really overwhelmed, really down about your business, and the support that you get in the group brings us back to ourselves and it relieves the anxiety that we feel when we feel those difficult feelings, and it then means this is so key that those feelings are no longer holding us back.

That we can move through with the actions that we wanna take, with the vision that we have for our business, no matter where our feelings are, you’re gonna get really good at that. If. You join my coaching program called Impactful Women. We start in a few weeks on the 8th of March. Interested to find out more.

There’s a link on my website under this podcast, or you can just DM me on Instagram. Would love to have a conversation with you about it. Okay, my friends have an amazing week and I’ll talk to you real soon.