“I’m not as far along as I should be or I thought I would be.” “I thought I would be further along than this.” “I can’t quite see what the problem is, but I know there’s a problem.” Do these lines sound familiar? If you’re in the middle of a rough patch, perhaps you’ve heard yourself say these things. On today’s show, Phoebe Mroczek tackles dealing with disappointments in business. Maybe this year hasn’t started off or continued on as you expected or hoped it would. This might be one of the most uncomfortable conversations you’ll have all year, but it also could be one of the most important. Are you ready?

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Rough Patches | Dealing With Disappointment In Business

On this episode, I’m talking to you if you feel like you’re in the middle of some rough patch. Maybe the year hasn’t started off or continued on as you expected or hoped it would. This might be one of the most awkward or uncomfortable conversations you have all year, but it also could be one of the most important.

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We release shows every week and you can find me either on iTunes or Spotify. If you’re reading this and you feel like the year is not going the way that you hoped it would, I have a big conversation to have with you specifically now. However, if you feel like business and work is thriving, maybe your relationships and your health and spirituality are all ten out of ten, then great. You still might get something from this conversation. In the unlikely event that you are a nine or below, we’re going to have a very serious conversation.

Before we do that, we are nearing the 100th episode, which is very exciting and I would love to ask you to go and leave a review. It only takes a couple of minutes to leave a review for this show. It helps us grow as a platform, grow as a community and also get better guests. Everyone always looks at reviews to make sure that you are a five-star podcaster and hosting a five-star podcast. Please leave me a review. I would love to shout you out on the show.

I’ve mentioned that we are teasing with the idea, toying around with the idea of having a live tour bringing Unbecoming to your city. If you are a connector, if you are someone who has a lot of people or knows a lot of people or wants to bring people together, if you want to be seen as an expert in your local community, I would love to invite you to apply to be on our tour list. We’ll have a shortlist of cities across the US and Canada potentially. If you can bring together a minimum of 45 people and a maximum of 100 or 200 who knows, maybe even 1,000. If you are in that space and you want to be seen and positioned as an expert in your local community, this could be a great opportunity to do that. You can head over to UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide and apply to be one of our stops on the live tour. I don’t have dates set for you yet, but it’s something exciting that we’re trying to piece together and see if this would be a fit for the community. If we do have enough interest, we might take this show on the road. Please leave a review, share the show and apply to be on our live tour if that is of interest to you.

Let’s go ahead and jump into the show. I’m going to give you a little context for this show. I speak to people or potential clients. I do free calls and I talk to people all the time. People probably like you that are overachievers, high performers, people with a mission and a purpose and people who want to make either their community better, themselves better or the people they serve better. One of the phrases that I hear more than any other is, “I’m not as far along as I should be or I thought I would be. I thought I would be further along than this and I have a problem,” or something along the lines of, “I can’t quite see what the problem is but I know there’s a problem.”

The people who make the shifts first or sooner than everybody else are the people who have actually hit the wall. Click To Tweet

This is the way my brain works. I automatically put them into one of two categories. It helps to compartmentalize a little bit, so I know where to go in that conversation. The first box that I put somebody in is, “The pain of reality isn’t bad enough,” and the second is, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough.” Based on the conversation, based on how that person shows up to speak to me and to ask me questions, I can separate them and put them into one of two boxes. I’m going to turn this over to you. I’m curious where you fall in this and I’ve been doing this long enough to know the signs and which box you fall in. I’m going to throw it to you and see which one you believe you fall into.

The Pain Of Reality Isn’t Bad Enough OR The Path To Clarity Isn’t Clear Enough

From those, we can assume two things. In order for things to change, for you to achieve whatever it is that you say you want, for you to be, do and have those things that matter to you, here are the two assumptions that we can make. Number one is if the pain of reality isn’t bad enough, if that’s the box that you’re sitting in, that means that the pain needs to get worse. It could mean many different things, but for a lot of the people I’m talking to, it means that they might have to burn through their savings or that might require more clients to leave them or even fewer clients accepting whatever product, program or service that they’re offering.

If you are in, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough,” box, then the assumption we can make is that the path to clarity needs to reveal itself but you must be willing to take action. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t want to be sitting in the first box. I don’t want the situation to have to become dire in order for me to make a change. I don’t like pain and I like to remove the chance of pain as soon as possible before it happens or better yet to prevent it from happening. A lot of what I say and what I do with people, especially in personal development, is that we are always waiting for catastrophe.

It seems to me that the people who make the shifts first or sooner than everybody else are the people who have hit the wall. Somebody has died, somebody got sick, they got sick or someone got injured. Something major happened, they lost their house, they lost their spouse or whatever it is. I have always said that I want to intercept people before they hit catastrophe. Here’s the typical situation. We recognize that there is pain. We’re not making enough money, we’re not happy in our relationships, we feel overweight, we got a diagnosis, whatever it is and then they don’t change anything. The pain then gets worse and either they become desperate or in a business situation that could look like taking on clients that you don’t enjoy because you need the money. You keep taking on clients and then you burn out or you call it quits too soon because that pain starts to take over.

Maybe you have to get a job. The pain has to get so much worse that you’re in a toxic relationship and you have to leave. I’m not saying to anyone in a toxic relationship that you shouldn’t do that or you should stick it out. I have to give that little caveat, but I want to acknowledge that neither one is good situations. We don’t want you to feel the pain and not do anything and then continue down the path of pain because that’s not going to get you anywhere. I learned the phrase on my motorcycle trip through Europe. It’s called object fixation. What we focus on, we hit when you’re on a motorcycle. The same can be said for how we are in life and business.

 

What we focus on is what we get. If you’re constantly like, “The pain is not that bad.” It’s almost teasing the universe to say, “How bad can it get?” When people say, “It could get worse.” I hate that phrase because that sounds to me like an invitation, which we don’t want to do. If you’re in box number two, “The path to clarity needs to reveal itself,” and you have to be ready and willing to take action. What we’re not acknowledging is that oftentimes the solution has already presented itself probably many times. With the opposite of object fixation or maybe in the same vein, you don’t see or you don’t get what you don’t look for. There are maybe hundreds of thousands of people in the world that could help you towards that clarity, but maybe you haven’t seen it because you weren’t ready or the pain wasn’t bad enough.

Now an honest question which might get a little pushback. Can you honestly say that you’ve been looking for solutions or are you going to put your hands up and say, “I’ve been looking for reasons why it won’t work?” If you got defensive and said something like, “Of course, I’m looking for solutions,” then I invite you to get honest with yourself because there are many solutions out there. There are many people who have been there, done that and would love to take your money to tell you all about it, but if you’re unable to find the money, then the pain isn’t bad enough. I’m always asking, “Have you tried everything? Have I tried everything? Am I looking at this through every angle, every lens, through every lens at every angle?”

A lot of times we feel because it’s us, it’s our life, it’s our relationship and it’s our business. It’s things that feel personal to us and so to remove that emotion is challenging. If I can hold my life out in front of me, like it’s somebody else like I’m peering into someone else’s life, what decisions would I allow or ask or want that main character to make? I’m not going to tell you to drain your bank account or liquidate your 401(k) or like many people I know, beg your friends for money. I’m not going to do that, but here’s what this episode is here to do. It is here to remind you that if nothing changes, nothing changes. Ask yourself the question, “What is it going to take?”

If you’re now sitting in the second camp of, “The path to clarity isn’t clear enough,” then we’ve already talked about how the path to clarity needs to reveal itself. We can sit and take a more feminine approach to this topic and say that the masculine is go and get it, be ambitious, strategic, logical, whatever. This is not gender, it’s masculine and feminine. The feminine is more intuitive. They sit, wait, ideate, be creative and allow to be in receiving mode, to be in allowance of what is coming for you. We know that in order to have clarity, we need to have that time and space to allow the clarity to fill that space. The second part of that is that we have to be willing to take action. It is this dance, this important and delicate balance of the feminine, which is the intuitive side, the creative side, the receiving and allowing and then pushing into the masculine saying, “Now, I’ve got to take action. I’ve got to go after what I want” and what are you looking for?

If we say that the path to clarity needs to reveal itself, it’s like this solution is going to drop into your lap. Maybe it has or maybe it’s tried but the space wasn’t there. What solution and what clarity are you looking for? A quick little side story, I constantly offer up these free clarity sessions on this show. I try to do it once a quarter or whenever I think about it and when they’re not booked up. I was having a conversation with one of my girlfriends and we were talking about these ten-minute calls and she’s like, “How are you not charging people for this?” I was like, “I want to engage. I want this to be a two-way conversation.”

The number in your bank account is directly correlated to how you really feel about yourself. Click To Tweet

I’m not sitting here at the microphone every week talking to you about something. I want to hear from you what’s important to you and what you’re struggling with so that I can tailor and refine the content to be as valuable as possible. I’m not charging at the moment for that. She was like, “Are they always booked up? They must get booked up so fast.” I was like, “It depends. It comes in waves.” I often ask myself, if I’m talking to the right people on this show, because unless your business is thriving beyond what you thought possible, my belief is that you should be booking in for these calls. I know that whenever a free call comes out and to be honest, my mentors and coaches don’t even give out free stuff. If they were, I would be consuming it because I want to take action and there’s always something that I can be learning and maybe that’s the clarity. It’s wrapped in this free session with me, with somebody else.

If you’re somebody who doesn’t take action on things like that because you’re afraid that you’re going to say the wrong thing, you’re going to look dumb. Someone’s going to know the truth about your business or you don’t even know what to ask. I feel like that’s a cop-out. It’s frustrating to me to see good people tuning in to the show. They’re sharing it online, they’re doing all the things and then they’re not booking in for our call. If you’re willing to consume the free stuff, that also tells me you’re willing to stay anonymous and in the background. When the offer presents itself, you don’t pull the trigger.

Pulling The Trigger

My mind goes to two places. The first one, if you’re not willing to pull the trigger, you’re not willing to book the session or whatever it is, what else are you not pulling the trigger on in your life? That’s where my head goes. What’s the impact of that on your life? How’s that working out for you? If you’re not willing to take the action in one area, something simple and it’s free, what else are you selling yourself short on? How else are you not showing up in the way that you need to show up in other areas of your life? In other areas, how are you not standing up and speaking out for the things that you want and putting your dreams first?

Our Netflix episode has had so much good feedback even though the audio sucked. Many people were like, “Thank you.” It was inspiring to hear somebody else taking action and going after what they want and doing all of the things that we all talked about how we want to do. We oftentimes coach people on all those things that we’re supposed to be doing ourselves. Maybe you’re not pulling the trigger because you’re afraid to look dumb, to say the wrong thing, to be vulnerable, somebody is going to know the truth about your business or whatever. Even the confusion and not knowing what to ask is still playing small because you might get the question wrong, but the conversation right. Oftentimes, if you listen to the Netflix show, I talked all about the outcome wasn’t important in the same way that the question that you’re asking might not be that important.

It’s you taking a stand for yourself and going through the motions and having that decision at that moment where you say, “I am going to put myself first. I deserve this. My dreams are important and what I do matters and I matter.” Because when you’re not pulling the trigger, nothing changes until something changes. If you’ve been sitting in this pattern of not taking action on something, go now and take action on it. If you’re sitting in this pattern of not finishing or completing something, go out and do something with the sole intention of completing it. It doesn’t matter what that is, but you’ve got to prove to yourself that you can do those things that you don’t think you can do or you’re not currently doing. Even if it’s one area of your life, which we all know that it’s never in one area of your life, it’s in all areas. How you do one thing is how you do everything.

 

If you’re not pulling the trigger on a free coaching session and not just with me, this is a metaphor for anything else in your life. However, I would ask you, “Where are you not stepping up? Where are you not playing bigger?” Number two, when I’m talking about how you’re not booking into this thing, I’m not attacking you per se. I’m hoping in a very kind, gentle bubble-wrapped way, maybe not so much bubble-wrapped, but trying to give you some perspective that even these seemingly insignificant decisions that you’re making carry a lot of weight. When you’re not willing to pull the trigger on this free coaching session, I also think that it’s a complete worthiness issue and that’s hard to hear. You might be reading this and starting to nod, “Yeah.”

Fortune Favors The Bold

You don’t think that you’re worth ten minutes of free time because even if you’re like, “She’s going to try to sell me something,” which I’m not. Even if that was a thing, it’s like, “How does that conversation go in your head?” It’d be interesting to unpack that because I guarantee if you’re doing it with me, you’re doing it with all the other people that matter in your life and it’s causing your relationships to suffer in whatever area. I have said so many times, but I think it’s relevant and important to bring back. The number in your bank account is directly correlated to how you feel about yourself. If that’s you and you’re sitting here and you’re nodding or you just had an a-ha moment because you realized for once that you aren’t giving as much of a crap about yourself as you should be. You’re unhappy with the number that is staring back at you or that you keep logging into your bank account wishing that number would go up, I totally get it. The great news is you can change that if you want to because we all know the phrase or the quote, “Fortune favors the bold,” and I love that.

When I was writing a couple of things out, what I wrote down in my notes was, “Luck favors the bold,” and I was like, “That’s not the right phrase, is it? What is the right phrase?” I looked it up and I was like, “Fortune favors the bold.” Here’s the thing, we all know that we get lucky when we take bold action. When I have prepared for an interview or something along those lines, I know that I can show up to the conversation and be present. We find intuition and our gut and all of those things that need to come out. The truth of who we are comes out when we’re present. It comes out through intuition and it comes out through our gut.

Making bold decisions forces us to be in the present moment. If I told you that we had to shave your head right now, I guarantee you will not be able to think about anything else. You wouldn’t be able to think about your business, your marketing funnel, your email marketing copy, the next client that’s showing up in two weeks or whatever. Because at that moment as I was buzzing your head, you would be in the present moment. That’s what those decisions feel like. Now that I’m thinking about it, there is a Chinese belief that just one piece of human hair holds 30,000 worries. Whenever you get a haircut, know that you are chopping off lots of worries.

Let’s ask ourselves a couple of questions. Number one is, “Does the pain need to get worse?” If you’re sitting in camp number one, what needs to happen for you to get out of that box and do the thing that you want to do? Are we going to sit like waiting ducks waiting for the next worst thing to happen to us before we make a change? “No.” I have a girlfriend of mine who said the other day, “I want to start off this next month as though it’s January 1st. Can I do that?” I’m like, “You can do that.” Why does it have to start on Monday? What if our week started tomorrow and we started to get clear on what needs to happen as though the catastrophe already happened? Let’s remove that part. Let’s step right over and leapfrog the catastrophe into what needs to happen, into what we want in life.

The truth of who we are comes out when we are present. Click To Tweet

The second question if you’re sitting in that second camp about clarity, “The path to clarity hasn’t revealed itself yet.” Are you even ready to find it or are you even looking for the right path? When I say that, I think to myself, a lot of times, I’ve been resisting this clarity because if I have the clarity, that means I have to do something with it. If I have the clarity to where I’m going and we all know it’s never going to happen that way. However, if we can see the path that’s on our path and if we can see our path and we have that clarity and let go of the attachment to the outcome, then all the other pieces are going to fall into place and who knows where that would lead?

It all starts with clarity and from that clarity comes bold action. If you don’t know what the next right step is in your business, then you need to find someone who can give that to you. You need to find someone who will sit down with you and map it out and that’s probably a coach. I know that the investment that everybody talks about, coaches are expensive. Yeah, the right ones are. What’s it worth to you? What’s that clarity worth to you? If I handed you a big ball of clarity now that you knew for the next two years exactly what to do every single day to get you to your goal, would you take it? How much would you pay for it? The first question is, “Would you take it?” That’s the best first question because a lot of people say they want it but I don’t think they actually do.

What would you do with that big ball of clarity? How much would you pay for it? What could that be worth? That could be worth to some people $20,000. To other people, that clarity could be worth $1 million. That clarity could be worth tens of millions of dollars if you follow the plan, you get that momentum and you build something worthwhile, something that’s fun and meaningful. Are you ready to find or are you even just ready to look for that clarity? If your answer is no, own that. I sat for so long on this little roundabout being like, “I want clarity so badly, but the truth of the matter was that I couldn’t handle that clarity.” I didn’t know what I would do with it or if I was willing, able or experienced enough to do what it took to make those bold steps, to take that bold action.

Now I’m like, “Bring on the clarity. Bring on the action steps.” Because I’m constantly searching for little quick wins to remind me of who I am and what I’m here for. Here’s going to be my offer to you. If you are sitting here fist-pumping, getting excited, being like, “I want clarity. I’m in that camp.” I want to give you an option. I want to tease you a little bit and let’s see how this experiment goes. If you’re ready to find this path to clarity and you truly are ready deep down at your core, I want you to message me on Instagram, let me know and ask me. I will give you the link to my calendar. You can go to my Instagram, @PhoebeMroczek.

Find me on Instagram and send me a message saying, “I am ready to find that path to clarity.” Give me a, “Yes.” Give me whatever you need, but commit. I need you to signal. I need you to take that big bold step and tell me that you’re ready for clarity and I’m going to send you this link. Get booked into my calendar and I promise you, deep down girlfriend promise that if you’re clear on wanting help and you’re willing to do the work, I will give you all of the advice and guidance that I possibly can. If I’m not the right person, I’m going to tell you. I will refer you out to the right person. That is very much my personality. I know what I’m great at and I know what I stay away from. If you’re going to approach me with some problem that I can’t handle, I can probably direct you to the person who can help you.

 

What this is going to do to the audience, I would guess it’s going to be about 1% of people are not going to take me up on this. I’m happy to extend my calendar out as many days as I need to help every single one of you. Ninety thousand people, that’s a lot of hours. Here’s the thing. I’m putting this out there to see who has lasted this long in the conversation and who’s willing to go there, who’s willing to look vulnerable to reach out to me, not just send me an email, but reach out to me on Instagram. Signal that you have a question, that you want something and I need to know who the big, bold action takers are. Those are the people that are going to change the world because nothing changes if nothing changes.

If you’re sitting in a pattern of not taking, not asking for what you want and not going after those things that are important to you because you don’t think you’re worth it. Even if you know on the surface you’re like, “I know I’m totally worth it,” because we can sit there and pamper ourselves, paint our nails, meditate and rub our crystals together. At the end of the day, what matters is how we deeply feel inside of ourselves and what that background music is playing in the back of our head. What patterning we have in our head that is running the show? If it’s a toxic playlist, then there’s no point in trying to outmuscle the next person. That’s the way we’re wired. We’ve got to re-wire this whole thing. It all starts with a decision and reaching out.

This was a little tough love for you. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. I want to bring it back to the two camps of people. If you’re feeling like you have not achieved the things that you want to achieve in your life up to this point or in your business wherever you are, then I can put you in one of two camps. The pain of reality isn’t bad enough or the path to clarity isn’t clear enough. I want to encourage you that pain is a very powerful motivator. Why not avoid the pain where we can and take the easy way out, which is to go to the path of clarity, to take big and bold action? You’re going to come back to this episode. Many months from now, we’re going to have the same conversation. Now that you have no savings, you have no clients, all your masterminds are imploding, your product is not selling. You might have to get a job. You’re feeling the pressure from your spouse. Maybe your kids are asking you to come to school for PTA meetings and you can’t afford to take that time off.

Maybe you can’t afford to watch things like The Bachelor because you have so much to do, so much work to get done and you’re spinning your wheels because you don’t know which way to go. If that’s you and any of that resonates, I want to encourage you to take me up on my offer. The other thing is the path to clarity. The path to clarity isn’t clear enough and if that’s you, then let’s get that masculine-feminine stuff working for you so that you feel like the intuitive side of you is waiting for the guidance. Maybe this is your sign. If you needed a sign, here’s your sign.

We can get that clarity for you, but do you even want the clarity that you say you want? If you don’t, it’s time to get honest with yourself about why you don’t. If you do, then let’s get honest about what needs to happen to get you from point A to point B. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for being here for a tough-love conversation. If this resonates with you, share it with people that matter to you. People that need some tough love. Maybe they’ve come to you and told you that their businesses aren’t doing as well or they’re struggling with one area or aspect of their life or business. Give them this show and if somebody referred you here, give them a big hug because they care about you. They want you to get the information to take that next big bold step.

Lastly, I want to invite you to book a session. Let’s do it. Let’s do a ten-minute call, you and me and let’s figure out what is going on here, what program is running the show and let’s get you out of the pattern that you’re stuck in. Let’s get you off the roundabout. Let’s get you into a better question, whatever that looks like. All you have to do is go to Instagram, message me, @PhoebeMroczek and say, “I’m ready to find some clarity. Can you send me the link to book into your calendar?” That’s it and I cannot wait to talk to you then and also to talk to you on the next episode. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. I will see you soon.

Important Links:

• The Unbecoming Podcast on iTunes
• The Unbecoming Podcast on Spotify
• @PhoebeMroczek on Instagram
• www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/tourguide
• www.UnbecomingPodcast.com/itunes
• www.Instagram.com/phoebemroczek
• www.unbecomingpodcast.com/98