Fear vs. Authenticity: Choosing Honesty in Business and Life

Storytime with Kate

Ruby and I have just hired a coach for our business.

We've been stuck.

Stuck on marketing, stuck on sales, not getting what we want out of the business we've been pursuing since our early 20s. Building this business has been on the sidelines of our lives going on 10 years.

This work though, our Self Study Practices, the intentional act of deeply paying attention to our inner-worlds in relation to the world around us, and helping our clients do the same, has been THE forefront of our lives for the past 10 years.

And in the last 10 years, here's how that's shown up for us: We've both been through mega-life-transforming breakups, several cross-country moves, and career shifts that scared us shitless. We've experienced the heartbreak of our parents' divorces, the paralyzing fear-come-true of family illnesses, and the infuriating betrayal of trusted employees stealing tens of thousands of dollars from our small businesses.

Thankfully, we've had each other and the themes of the My Self Study Practice to get us through the last 10 years.

The My Self Study Practice is designed to ground you back into your inner knowing over and over again, too. To reconnect you with yourself. To reframe your relationship to yourself so that it becomes loving and kind. To help you discern between healthy fear actually keeping you safe and fear that's just holding you back and keeping you locked out of your vitality, pleasure, and passion.

It's designed to empower you to step off of the hamster wheel of what you 'should' be doing and into the life that you want to be living.

I won't speak for Ruby, but I finally know why I've been feeling so stuck. I've been really afraid.

Afraid of the consequences of digital marketing and it's twofold: fear of being misunderstood, and the fear of my wildest dreams coming true.

But freedom, one of the 9 themes of the My Self Study Practice, is something that's been driving me all my life. 

Ask my mom why she's always called me stubborn. Ask my teachers who told me I had issues with authority. Ask the bosses who told me they wanted me to run their companies when they retired (two men before I was 22). Ask my choir director why I wouldn't take ownership for a mistake that I wasn't making. Ask me why I started a gym that I desperately needed when I was younger that said, "we're glad you're here, no matter how you're here."

Freedom. For me, and for everybody else around me.

Me, as I am, is what I'm going for. In business, in partnership, and when I'm alone. I don't want to hide, and I don't like when other people around me are hiding *unless we're all hiding together and it's our little secret.*

But when I haven't been able to access that inner Kate compass that's guided me towards what's honest, what feels free, I don't know what else to do other than hide.

What hiring this marketing coach has done for me is helped me find that compass again - she pointed to the issue really fast too: I'm afraid.

Ok Kate honey, what do we do when we're afraid? Well, we call a friend who loves me (Ruby), and we tell her the truth.

And then today, she reminded me of who I am and in a bullet pointed list, she showed me just how many things I've done that I've been terrified to do. It's not the first time I've done something afraid, and it won't be the last.

Do it afraid.

So the phrase that's dying for me as of today is, "doing it for the gram." The gram (we're talking social media here - instagram to be specific - a platform that I've used for over a decade to market my businesses and share my stories thats simultaneously given me so much, and eaten away at my inner-compass over the years) doesn't get to be my why.

It's not for the gram, or the followers. It's for me.

It's because this is what I want. I want to write the book that tells people the power is already inside of each of us. I want to be with clients who are taking back their lives. I want to facilitate life-changing programming via My Self Study Practice where I know the vitality already lives.

So we hired a coach, and I'm doing it afraid anyway :)

Ruby and I have been batching and scheduling content to go out on @myselfstudypractice. Please follow us there :) I hope it teaches you something. I hope it makes you laugh. And most importantly, I hope it turns you towards your own inner compass that tells you when it's time, it's time.

xoxo,

- k