What’s the number one thing that constricts your growth in life and business? Some would say lack of money, not enough time, scarce resources, not knowing how to do something or not having a team to do it, not having clients or leads or any number of other things that a business owner needs to make things happen. And the answer is actually none of them – it’s fear.

Fear is the number one thing that blocks you from taking action. I know that because it affects virtually every entrepreneur to some degree at some point in launching, building and growing their business. If you find yourself unable or unwilling to take an action that you know or believe will be beneficial, the root in there somewhere is fear.

Fear is a powerful emotion that underlies, and even dictates, your business choices and actions. It shows up as gremlins, saboteurs, resistance, worry, doubt, fear and a lot of other negative expressions that can deter you from taking action.

But when you understand what’s actually happening with the fear response, and have the tools to overcome it, you begin to harness all the force and energy you’re using to fight the fear and start moving forward with confidence in your business. 

Like the boogeyman, fear gets a whole lot smaller and a lot more manageable when you can call it out in the light of day for what it is – and there are ways that you can actually harness the personal power that fear holds hostage from your consciousness in some very practical ways. It’s about reclaiming your energy for positive momentum.

I asked people to let me know their fears on my FB page and I got some really interesting responses. One person said that the fear looked like giving lots of energy and creative, productive focus and feeling like it wouldn’t pay off and would be going nowhere. Someone else said that it was trying to get your business going but running into other people who block your success by making you feel like a scorned child. Someone else said that it was having family say “I told you that you couldn’t make it”.

In teaching a recent teleclass on Face the Fear and Grow Your Business, I heard a lot of other fears. Fear has a lot of names – the economy, taxes, health insurance, not knowing what to do so doing nothing, balancing family with business needs, not having enough space, feeling lonely in self-employment, risking financial security and facing all the potential consequences of that… there are a lot of fears out there and all of them will slow you down or even prevent you from taking action!

As a business owner, it’s not just your fear but also the fear of your customers because they’re all in the fear of what they’re faced with – it’s probably part of why they hire you (to resolve something that they fear). Your awareness of this will help you to actually not only navigate them for yourself but for your customers.

Here are some different scenarios that you might not recognize as fear until you hear them to see that they are fear in action.

• You might avoid taking unnecessary risks out of the fear of failure or success.
• You might spend more time perfecting your products or services than actually working with clients.
• You spend so much time preparing and perfecting that you forget about working with the clients.
• You might work with any client who has money because you’re in scarcity so you’re in fear so you’ll work with anybody who has money.
• You’ll feel vulnerable to other people’s controls so you’ll respond to other people’s opinions, attitudes, thoughts and actions.
• You’ll make decision based on your fears of what could happen in the future, from the ‘what ifs’ rather than being present with what is right now and making choices from strengths. (In that case, you’ll probably sabotage your progress anyway.)
• You’ll probably focus on material things and how to be right rather than operating and expressing your true power if you’re afraid of negative reaction or challenging response.
• You might be really self-focused instead of thinking of others. If you’re so worried making an income, you might not be thinking about all those leads as people that need you.
• You also might look for validation from other people to feel like you’re on the right path. You’re trying to avoid feeling fear or being wrong.
• You’re looking for that external validation that you’re right in your decisions.
• You’ll focus on the flaws; you’ll find the things that you didn’t do quite right.
• You might even misinterpret what other people say to feed the perception that you’re not quite making it. That justifies that somehow you’re not enough and you have a reason to feel a fear about what you’re doing because you’re looking for validation of the experience that you expect to have.
• You’ll be driven to do your work. The reason for that is you’re actually seeking to fill the deficiency or the void or the fear that’s happening in the rest of your life.
• You won’t trust that you can actually do what you think you can and you may feel abandoned by the Universe when things don’t go as you expect. You’ll take it personally instead of exploring the opportunities in those kinds of moments.
• You’ll give up a lot faster because you don’t know that you can actually handle whatever happens. The obstacle has a lot of power to take the situation down; the fear can take you down.
• You won’t be present with what ‘is’. Instead you’re going to have resentment about what’s already happened or possible be in fear about what could happen. In either case, that’s energy that’s getting siphoned off of the present moment and that takes away your power to reach your greatest potential in that moment.

Any of these scenarios is something that is fairly common for entrepreneurs to experience. The good news is that fear ONLY shows up when you’re in motion! (Otherwise, it has no reason to be activated, right?) ;+)

There’s two ways to consider this transforming the fear, and you get to choose your path – it can be that you just get used to working in the fear so it doesn’t bother you as much (you don’t know that you’re working in fire) or it can be that the fear actually gets managed and minimized or even eliminated.

You can use the fear to focus on being in the ‘now’. Ask yourself: ‘what can I do right now to propel myself forward?’ instead of worrying about what could happen or what’s going to happen tomorrow. If you’re in the present moment and you’re not reacting to something that isn’t right now and you take even one action, you break the hold the fear has on you energetically.

Even more, if you can ‘break state’ with the fear by singing, by having a conversation with a friend (or a stranger), by doing just one thing different… the grip of that particular fear energy gets broken. Where there is light, there can’t be darkness. If you can crack the door energetically to something that is beyond the fear, you’ve already started moving and shifting it. In this case, there is less fear because you have a lot more light – and things are never as scary as they are in the dark! ;=)

I commend you for taking proactive action to acknowledge and overcome one of the most powerful motivators in the human psyche – fear – in order to grow your business. The investment of your time and energy in perusing this material can pay off in ways that you may not be able to imagine now… but you’ll know it when fear comes up and you’re able to use it as generative energy to get more of what you want in and through your business.

Download the Face Your Fear and Grow Your Business 60-page ebook for $27 here: http://www.mycreativecatalyst.com/pages/products.html

Download the 2.5 hour audio from the Face Your Fear Teleclass for $39 here: www.LynnsClasses.com

© 2010 Lynn Scheurell All Rights Reserved

Lynn Scheurell works with entrepreneurs who want to accelerate their personal evolution through focused clarity. Going beyond what they expect, know and find familiar can be chaotic and overwhelming; Lynn’s unique way of facilitating conscious awareness helps people naturally quantum leap their growth for powerful life and business transformation. See www.MyCreativeCatalyst.com f

After doing what I do for more than a decade and working with thousands of entrepreneurs, I’ve come to recognize a few core questions that clients come to me to get answered.

Each of them is big and has potentially huge ramifications when truly considered and become a focal point for significant transformation as a result of taking action.

• Why am I stuck?
• How do I know my purpose?
• What am I supposed to be doing?
• What makes me special / unique?
• How do I know I’m doing the right things?

And, the one that only the most courageous ask…

·         What am I missing?

Answering these questions is vital for an entrepreneur to make meaningful progress toward their business goals.

The ‘new’ model of entrepreneuring is powered by the entrepreneur’s soul and deeper purpose because your business can grow only as fast as you do. 

Your business is a reflection of what’s happening in your internal world. You, as an entrepreneur, get to see the results of your innermost beliefs quickly because your business results show them in a real-world way.

That being said, I need your help.

I’m creating an avant-garde brand-new program designed to support entrepreneurs in knowing their soul’s insights with undeniable clarity.

Please send me the question(s) you ask yourself about your business, who you are in your business, who you are here to be in your business by leaving a comment below or by going to www.JustAskLynn.com.

What challenge is holding you back from shining your light brighter and expressing yourself in business more boldly?  Where is your business limited? Where do you feel constricted in your business?

I really want to know – I’ll be using this information in this new program, which will be rolling out shortly.

Thank you in advance for your question(s)… again, please leave a comment below or go to www.JustAskLynn.com to let me know the business boogeyman that is draining your energy from making progress in your business.

To Your Clear Success In Every Way ~~~

Lynn

by John O’Donohue

May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.

May you never put yourself at the centre of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And you never become functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.

© John O’Donohue. All rights reserved. For more info, please see http://www.johnodonohue.com.

Today is a powerful 3 day in a 3 year (March, 3^rd, 2 + 1 = 3) – it’s a big day!

According to numerology, three is the number which represents the Universe – think man/ heaven/ earth or mind/body/spirit or past/present/future. Good things come in threes, right?

Three is also the number of communication, words / images and creativity. Using powerful communication in creative ways is a path to freedom in life and business.

The shadow side is that when we withhold either our creativity OR our communication, it creates a negative energy that can become trapped emotion or create dysfunctional patterns that result in stress for ourselves and others. It is through words that we know others to form relationships and create trust. And from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it is through our creative communication that we persuade people to take action for their best good which may be counter-intuitive to their natural resistance to change.

The energy of three (and especially THREE three’s!) is to reach our potential through optimism, enthusiasm and life artistry in living our personal truths. This is deceptively simple because it actually requires cutting through the noise, persona, distractions, opinions, judgments (from ourselves and others) to embrace every part of who we are – even those parts we don’t want to acknowledge.

When there is a part of us that lives in shadow, there is energy that is being not only underutilized but that is taking energy from our present moment to ignore it. The more we do not acknowledge in the shadows, the greater the psychic debt and the more energy it drains living in the present. These shadow areas are the invitation for healing and doing ‘the work’.

Part of the energy of three is innovation, fresh ideas and new ways of understanding, which can result in a sense of being scattered or distracted. This combined with communication energy can set the stage for rumor, gossip, hearsay, trivial conversation and a focus on the superficial words or rushing through dialogue as opposed to relating to the powerful energy creating them. That creates a shallow perspective where it’s easy to connect to the obvious when the substance that we crave is actually deeper. Today (and this year!) is an opportunity to practice conscious language. 

Conscious language is spirit made audible through vibration. In using language consciously, be aware of the words you choose because that is what you are focusing on and choosing to give life force energy in creating. For example, do you say “before I forget” or “while I remember”? Which feels better? Do you laugh and say “that kills me” or on a day that isn’t going well, do you say “I wish today was over with already”? In either case, you are wishing away your life. Remember, by using language as the powerful tool it is you call into being what you desire to manifest.  (Note: the word want implies lack while desire is much deeper – notice where you are wanting and where you are desiring in your life and business.)

Three is the number of children (1 is father, 2 is mother and 3 is child); this again relates to your own potential healing as many of your most limiting patterns are the ones you inherited or imprinted as a child. Release the patterns that no longer serve you, or aren’t even yours, in order to consciously open new energy pathways in life and business. Metaphorically, this also relates to the projects that you create in your business as your symbolic offspring so pay attention to what you’ve already created to see if it requires nurturing or if it’s time to let it go. And if you have not yet created a signature product or program in your business, now is a good time to ‘birth’ it.

3 is also the number of appearances which, in the case of business, is about your branding. Make sure the image that you are presenting to your potential and current clients is accurate and the one you want them to have of you; if it’s anything less than authentic, it creates a situation where you either have to live an inauthentic persona or have inauthentic relationships that will not produce the results you desire.

Lastly, as referenced earlier, three is the energy of mind, body and spirit. This is the time to create clarity within and conscious alignment between these vital parts of your being: your intelligence and intellect, your physical body and your soul, or radiant energy that is your inner light. Pay attention to each individually to discover where to honor what needs nurturing and attention as well as expressing gratitude for what is… then pay attention to how each relates to the other.

When all three of your bodies are in harmonic alignment, you can feel it and your life flows easier.  The convergence point between the physical and ethereal worlds is the heart. Love is the second most powerful energy there is – the first is your choice in expressing, receiving and savoring it.

So make the powerful choice to be your best self through aware love for yourself and others, create a new relationship with those parts of you that have been in the shadows, use conscious language in manifesting your desires and take advantage of the creativity and communication that is available to you today and throughout the year as your path to freedom in life and business. 

Please leave me your comments about how your 3/3/2010 is going below!” And that may work for FB too? “Please let me know how your 3/3/2010 is going – I’d love to hear!

Lynn Scheurell works with people who want to accelerate their personal evolution through focused clarity. Going beyond what they expect, know and find familiar can be chaotic and overwhelming; Lynn’s unique way of facilitating conscious awareness helps people naturally quantum leap their growth for powerful life transformation. Download a free e-guide “Own the Wisdom Within: Five Keys to Using Life’s Turning Points for Transformational Success” at www.MyCreativeCatalyst.com.