When you’re an entrepreneur, the biggest hurdle you’ll likely ever face is your own mindset. I experienced this myself and you know what’s crazy? When I was starting out, I thought all this talk about mindset was a bit ‘woowoo’ and wasn’t something that affected me, I wanted to take action instead.
I truly believed that I didn’t have any mindset issues – but it really was the case of I didn’t know what I didn’t know. The truth is, in order to achieve success, we must first shift our thinking and overcome doubts and limiting beliefs we may have.
I know how doubting yourself, and believing that you can’t do something, or you’re not good at something can hold you back from moving forward, or even getting started with something you know in your heart you want to do!
Common Limiting Beliefs
Let’s start with some beliefs you may have about yourself. I’m guessing that this will sound familiar:
“I’m awful in front of the camera”
“I’m not pretty enough, too old, too big, etc”
I actually hated being in front of the camera when I first started out, and you know what? It held me back. It stunted my growth, and I had to get over myself. Now it’s a lot easier!
I’ll probably never feel 100% comfortable in front of the camera and I’ll never want to become an actress, but I feel okay doing it. It’s not stressing me out anymore like it used to. Like with everything, practice makes perfect, and your ‘first’ anything is nerve-wracking, right? So if it’s something that could potentially build you a successful online business, doesn’t that make it worth it?
You’ll have heard this saying before; “growth happens outside of your comfort zone”- and it’s so true! When you’re holding yourself back from doing videos because of some self-limiting beliefs, you’re doing your students a disservice. You’re keeping them from getting to know you better, from getting to trust you, so then you can help them through your offers. Because let’s face it, in the online world, there’s nothing that builds trust like video content, and avoiding doing this can seriously hinder your growth.
Maybe you’re also secretly afraid that people will judge you. Well, people will judge you no matter what you do, so you may as well just DO IT. That’s partly why you’re worried about being bad on camera right? You’re worried people will think you look awkward and laugh at you.
The reality is that people wouldn’t be laughing at you, they might recognize that you are nervous and give you some encouragement, or they might even make a joke to make you laugh and feel more comfortable. Or they feel you’re more relatable because you’re not perfect.
Or maybe you believe in:
“This will never work for me”
“Other people can do this, but I couldn’t”
This is the fear of failing. You might do all the right things to create your offer and sell it, but if subconsciously you don’t believe that you can do it, it’s probably not going to be a big success. This is definitely something I’ve been struggling with. In my head, I was all for thinking big and could see the success, but deep inside of me, there was a limiting belief I had, that I didn’t have it in me to be really successful.
When I started my own business, I thought I was smart enough. I had a lot of experience, I’d been working in advertising for over 15 years, and until then everything had come to me pretty easily. I was good in school, university was easy, getting a job/promotion was easy.
But the truth is, I never aimed big. I always stayed in my comfort zone, or when I went outside of it, it was never too far. I didn’t come from a family of entrepreneurs, and I had always been told that it’s better to be safe and have a good, stable job, and to work hard so that you didn’t lose it.
So that’s what I did. I was the ‘good kid’, who never had any problems, and went to college and worked really hard. When I left my job in advertising to start working freelance, it was the first step towards freedom. I basically did the same job, but now I earned more money, and I had the opportunity to take longer periods of time off to go traveling, and I wasn’t involved in things like office politics anymore.
However, I wasn’t in it with my heart. Every assignment was just a temporary job to earn money – and that’s not very fulfilling, right?
When I started this business, (teaching yoga teachers about marketing) I was suddenly so passionate about it. I could see this bright future and I was so excited about what I did, but this did bring up a whole different set of fears and stress! I was scared that I would fail, that I wouldn’t earn enough money to be able to pay my rent, that nobody would be interested in my offers, etc.
Guess what? I did fail, and I made mistakes. For example, I hosted a webinar and the sales page wasn’t even ready so I couldn’t tell my attendees (who were live on the webinar!) where to go to sign up for my program. Talk about embarrassing!
I’m a bit of a perfectionist so making mistakes like that, (or failing in general) really gets to me. Actually, failing is something that everyone is scared about, throughout our whole lives, in fact. The thought alone of failing is scary.
I hate to break it to you, but you will fail. Me saying that might shock you, but failing is part of success. You’ve heard of the saying “success is falling down 7 times but getting back up 8”, right? If you fail or make a mistake, you have to get up and try again.
The next limiting beliefs I want to address are money-related;
“Yoga should be free”
“Asking for money is greedy”
Here’s the thing – no one works for free – so why should you? We work to make a living. We provide a service, and someone else pays for that. It’s an exchange of energy and it’s totally natural.
Maybe in the past it worked that a master taught yoga for free, but never to many students and of course he or she must have had the means to live and eat and have a place to stay as well. In any way, that’s not our society today. Today it’s very normal to be paid for your work, it’s what’s expected, and if you want to be a part of this society, that’s how it works – you need to be able to pay your rent.
You aren’t greedy for asking for money, because in any ‘normal job’ you get paid a salary, you get paid to be there, and if you want to continue to share your teachings, it needs to be sustainable. Asking for money could also help your students get better results. I know that may sound strange, but hear me out.
When people have to pay for something, they are committed. For example, when I have to prepay for a yoga class that’s happening in the evening, I’m gonna show up, right? When I didn’t have to pay in advance, I might skip the class because I’m too tired and just want to chill out and watch Netflix.
It gets even more interesting when you have a high ticket offer, like a coaching program or an online course, where people have to invest more money.
My experience is, (I’ve heard this from others as well) that students in my higher-priced programs are much more motivated, and thus are more likely to actually see results. They do the work and they are committed because of their investment.
Asking for a higher price can actually help people more than offering something for free. Up to a point, of course, you don’t want to outprice yourself or ask for a ridiculous amount of money that nobody can afford, but you can probably ask for a price that’s a little bit higher than your first price and it’ll be totally fine.
Our next limiting belief is around equipment;
“I can’t do an online course because I don’t have the money for expensive equipment”
I have one thing to say on this – start with what you have. You won’t know what you need or want until you try. You don’t need the best of everything, and actually, you could buy the best of everything and not understand how to work them because they’re so advanced, (like cam-recorders or microphones) and then take even longer to get started!
The most important thing here is for you to just get started, and faffing about with equipment is going to delay you. Just like earning money, spending money is necessary too. Yes, you’ll need to put some money into it before you get something out of it!
Just think, starting an online yoga business is certainly a lot cheaper than buying a traditional brick-and-mortar studio. Teaching yoga online doesn’t have to be super expensive, and once you’ve got most things set up, there are very few ongoing costs. So buy that course, get what you need to start your business, and get going.
Ways To Push Past Limiting Beliefs
I’ve addressed a few limiting beliefs here that are very common. Now I want to share some general tactics with you for pushing past those limiting beliefs and move forward with your yoga business!
Step #1 Face Up To Your Fears
Write down all of your doubts, worries, and beliefs you have about starting your business. Awareness is always the first step. You need to be aware of the thoughts you’re having, and getting them down on paper can often free up our minds because we no longer have them circling around in our heads over & over!
Step #2 Decide On How To Tackle Your Fears
This is probably the most important stage. Nothing will change if you don’t do anything about it, so after facing up to your fears, next you need to tackle them and find ways to make that belief become less and less of a problem.
For example, if you’re worried that you don’t have a clue about how to set up a website, take a course! Or if tech is REALLY not your strong suit, hire someone to get your website up and running so you can start focusing on what you ARE good at.
Step #3 Plan It Out
Now that you’ve identified how you’re feeling and what it is that’s holding you back the most, and how you’re going to combat it – hold yourself accountable and come up with a plan.
Give yourself timeframes to get things done by. For example, I use Asana to plan out my whole business. It allows me to see what needs to be done by when, set deadlines for myself, and take action!
Plan out the things that scare you, give yourself a certain date to enroll in that course, or set aside an hour to film your first online lesson.
Waiting for perfection is never as good as making progress.
I hope that this has helped you address some of those limiting beliefs you may be experiencing.
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