Today on the Up Level Project Podcast, I’m talking about cool ways to grow your business and how “pressure” is one thing killing your business.

Overcoming internal and external fears as one of the key growth strategies in building businesses.

Let’s dive in…

And here’s the finished podcast episode.

Unpacking Pressure:

• Types of Pressure: Internal & External

• Where pressure comes from

• Ideas on how to become aware of pressure

• How to get rid of pressure

External pressure includes stuff where we’re comparing ourselves with others through social media, etc., thinking we should be further along, doing something that we’re not.

This creates a feeling of OMG, I should be doing this, I should be doing that!

A cool way of realizing pressure around external forces is to realize if you’re using phrases like, “I should be,” or “we should be.”

What this actually means is that you’re going against “what you want to be doing” in growing your business!

Internal pressure deals more with internalized feelings where one feels, I have to be perfect and things have to be perfect at all times, or else I’m not happy.

As a result of too much internal pressure, it actually makes one not perform well.

So, this striving to be ‘perfect,’ takes the fun out of business, makes work hard, and you’re super anxious as a result, so nothing gets accomplished.

Situational changes to growth in business, as soon as we make these feelings go away, where we’re sort of conditioned to behave in a way Corporate America or teachings in our schools, etc., that you need to work, work hard, push further, really, hustle, do your thing, creates a lot of internal pressure.

Bottom Line: Pressure robs us of our creativity, makes us anxious, gets us all stressed out, makes us do all the busy work, overwhelms us, and then work becomes counterproductive, and counter-intuitive, and we really need to let that go.

Cool ways to grow business by overcoming the pressure:

• Become aware of where you’re applying too much pressure, stifling growth

• Identify fears around the project you’re working on

• Dig deep into your fears and come up with solutions

• Exercise daily and try enjoying your work vs. being busy with busy work

• Bascially, do what feels aligned with your circumstances and who you are

Video transcript

Hello, there everyone and welcome to the savvy business show.

My name is Hanneke, I am your Business Coach and also the creator of the mastermind the Savvy Business Mastermind program where I help women to grow their businesses in a supportive way with business coaching, community, and some hard core business strategies.

So I was really looking forward to doing this live with you guys today, but unfortunately I had something creep up on me last minute and I have to dash and be on a client call. But thank goodness, we have technology so I was able to pre-record this conversation that I wanted to have with you today about relieving pressure and getting this whole pressure thing off of yourself, because it actually doesn't serve you in your business.

So I'm going to put that on. If you have, any questions for me: if anything any a-has come to you, I want to hear about it, so please do pop those questions for me in the comments below, and then I will grab them afterwards. In the meanwhile, I am gonna switch this over for you. Alright.

[Video switches to recording]

I am so excited to talk to you about this topic today, because this has been something that's been coming up in my masterminds. It's come up with my private clients, it's even been it so privileged and the last couple of months or so in my own business and I've had, some massive a-ha’s around the whole pressure topic.

Right, so what we're gonna, discuss here today is: I were first gonna unpack pressure and to talk about where pressure comes from. Then I'm going to give you, some ideas and some ways how, you can just notice it, because I think that's the something that's missing. We sometimes don't notice when pressure is actually rising.

So we’ll cover ideas of how you can become more aware of it, and then I'm also going to share a couple of ideas of how to get rid of it.

OK, so that's what we're, going to cover today, and just before we dive into that, remember that if you are currently struggling with, any pricing or sales strategies - like if you're doubting your prices, if you're feeling sleazy about selling, I am having a workshop next week Friday, May 18 to help you to specifically get more confident in your prices and also your sales process so that you can sell in an authentic way. If you're interested in that, I've sent a link below [in YouTube], or feel free to ask me a question about it, and I'm happy to share all about. I'm also still enrolling people in my, mastermind programs.

Okay, that was that, we needed to get out of the way, now, we can dive into pressure.

Okay, so the way that pressure showed up for me: so there's sort of external pressure that gets put on to us in this internal pressure so let's discuss external pressure first, okay?

So with external pressure: that's the stuff that we'd pick up where we're comparing ourselves with others. Social media definitely doesn't help and it gives us this idea of like, we should be further, along or we should be doing something that we are not, and that will start to feel like ‘oh. my. god. I should be doing this I should be doing that’, so a very cool, way for you to start to realize, when you're feeling pressure around external forces is if you're, using the word ‘I should be doing something’ right or, ‘we should be’. As soon as you're doing that, that means you're actually going against, what you want to be doing, so just paying attention to that one little world word and I'll come back to how we can then move through that, but let's go to internal pressure cuz, this one I feel like is actually way more prevalent for all of us.

And I'll share a story, for instance what has happened to me.

When I was little, I did music and I did ballet. And those are two very strict forms of art where you are constantly only being given one shot to do something perfectly, and as a result of the of this just having one shot to do something perfectly, I internalized that ‘I have to be perfect’.

[Alarm interrupts the recording.']

Oof that was loud! Sorry, that was my little reminder. I might need to shut that off next time…

OK, so sorry, um… Internal pressure.

So as a result of this having to perform stuff once and then also I was in boarding school, where you have to behave in a certain way, otherwise you get in trouble. It’s a very strict environment.

And then, also just being someone who wanted to achieve at school, I internalized a lot of that as ‘I have to be perfect’ and ‘things have to be perfect at all times’ and ‘if I'm not perfect, then I'm not happy’.

And so I wanted to control the outcome.

And now I want to tell you something, that's actually quite funny, when I go back into when I started doing music, when I started doing badly, the ballet exam I ever too, I got the highest grade of our entire class. The next, year I had that pressure on myself and that expectation that I have to be the, best again - and guess what - I didn't do so well in that exam. Every single exam report after that would state that ‘the student showed signs of nervousness’.

It's the same thing for me - not so much with music. I used to sing as well and I used to love singing but then I started to make it like ‘it has to be perfect’ and I took all the fun out of it. and then I messed up, and - that's a whole different, story that we’ll get into another day.

What I'm trying to tell you is: putting all this pressure on myself made me actually not perform well.

So let’s fast-forward a little bit into how this plays out in your business, if you're putting too much pressure on yourself.

So this striving to be perfect having to ‘should be’ something that it's not takes the fun out of business, right? It takes the fun out of it, it makes it very hard work. It makes me take it very seriously

And so when I'm in that mode in my business, I typically don't enroll clients easily, and things actually go so good in my business I actually scorch my business when doing it because I'm white knuckling everything, and I'm trying to control all the outcomes, and trying to get it perfect.

And by doing that I'm making myself super anxious, and I'm not accomplishing anything, and it's not a wonder that I'm not doing it, because if you think, about it if this, is what's going on underneath the surface, and I'm anxious and I'm not enrolling people as fast as I would like, that's not the point but, so I'm anxious right and I'm I'm like controlling that I have to have 500 people, and I'm upset because I'm not getting the numbers that I want on social media.

If I'm operating from there, if you were to meet me in the street, you'll probably pick up on that vibe. You're not gonna know what's up, but something is gonna be: ‘like hmm, I'm not really that interested in working with her’.

Right as soon as I let that go, things start happening and I think this is where all of us have been conditioned in a very wacky way because when we look at corporate America, when we look at what they teach us at school, it's like you've got a work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

And you've got to really push hard, you’ve got to hustle. You're going to do your thing and all that if you're a real person or a really high-achieving person is gonna give you a lot of internal pressure and when you have all that internal pressure things are not gonna happen for you. You are actually going to work against yourself, because as soon as you're in that anxious mind set, you are focusing on how to solve problems instead of focusing on everything that's going right, and letting your creative juices flow.

Right, so pressure robs us of our creativity. It makes us anxious, it gets us all stressed out, it makes you do all the busy work, it overwhelms you. There's so much that pressure does that's so not good for you, and is counterproductive, counterintuitive and you really just gotta let that go.

So how, do you let that go?

Okay, so the first thing is to become aware of where you're applying too much pressure. Where are you trying to control so much that in controlling or in applying all that pressure, you're actually stifling its growth right?

Normally how you're gonna feel this - for me how it shows up in my body, is that I have this grinding feeling right inside here that makes me realize that, that I'm applying pressure. I am not in a good zone right now.

So how, do you then get out of it?

First of all, I'm going to go and look at: what are the fears that I have around this project that I'm working on?

And normally, clients will go like: ‘I'm not gonna be successful’, ‘I'm not gonna make enough money’, ‘I'm gonna not have enough clients,’ ‘My business is gonna fail’ and then you want to go further than that, okay?

Why are you afraid of that? What's gonna happen if that happens?

And normally when you dig into your fear like that you're gonna come up with solutions and you're gonna go ‘okay, well if this happens, then I will be able to do that.’ Or, you know ‘my business fails then I'll probably just get up and start another business or go and get a job, but I can fix that for myself.’

So then, once you've released your fear - that’s we call that - or at least, once you've been able to identify the fear and then come up with some solutions, then you have to go: ‘Now that I've done that, I am actually going to get more curious, about what I'm doing. What feels exciting to me right now to work on? What is gonna make this project more fun? How am I going to just see where this lands?

Things that also work for me to take off pressure is to exercise daily and to make sure that when I'm sitting at my desk I am in my zone which, means I'm actually really wanting to sit here versus just being busy with the busy work.

Okay, so those are just a couple of ways for you to identify where the pressures coming from external internal and then, also going and releasing that pressure off of yourself.

Because as I just proved through, my story, it doesn't work, okay? This whole story that we're all being conditioned like, we gotta hustle hard, we’ve got to grind, we gotta be so busy is BS, okay? Leave that behind.

Start to work in a way that feels more aligned with who you are and what your circumstances that works well for you, and things will start to get better, alright?

If you want more ways to release this pressure, feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to share more, and as always, you can join my newsletter underneath the link.

If you want to get these videos to right to your inbox, with no spam, and want to stay up-to-date with all of the upcoming events or masterminds, or anything fun like that.

Right I'm gonna be sharing these weekly. You're going to get them either as interviews, or just me, and next time I promise I will be live! I'm so sorry that I couldn't be live today. So you can do that.

Also if you're watching this on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel.

If you found this very helpful and you have a friend that needs to hear this information then, by all means please, do share this video with them as well and remember in the comments you can ask me any of your pressure questions.

I want to hear from you guys, I'm excited to interact with you, and I look forward to seeing you on the next round of The Savvy Business Show. Bye guys!

How can we work together?

If you liked what you read here, and you’re curious to learn more about business coaching, you might also like this other article I wrote: How can a business coach help me?

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• Accelerate your growth with this free handy download

• Read my bestselling book, The Up Level Project

• Join my group accountability program: Business Growth Achievers

• Work with me: Book a 1:1 consultation with me here