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Thinking Like a 5-Year-Old
When you were a kid, you believed in all kinds of crazy shit, you weren’t worried about tomorrow, and you sure didn’t GAF what other people thought when you stepped out of the house in some cut-off jorts, a power ranger tank top, and fuzzy blue cookie monster bedroom shoes.
Yes! The world was your burrito, and you were living for it.
And then, suddenly, all of that fabulousness is gone.
Poof! Gone.
We grow up and start caring what other people think, and most of us lose all the weird quirks that made life so much fun when we were younger.
We trade it in for adulthood, where most of us, at some point or another, feel stuck in a hellish nightmare that won’t end, whether it’s in a relationship that isn’t serving us, a job we hate, feeling lonely because we haven’t found our tribe yet, or, worst of all, waking up every morning and just going through the motions of another day.
Was this what your crazy ass 5-year-old self had in mind when you were livin’ la vida loca?
Hell no! So, how did so many of us end up in precisely those same situations?
What We're Conditioned To Believe
As kids, we have much more freedom to do and believe whatever we want. When we get older, most of us start picking up on all the subtle and not-subtle messages about how we should live our lives.
For me, it all started with being responsible. Being surrounded by well-meaning people like friends, family, teachers, and mentors who offered up their unsolicited advice about how I should I live my life and what it should entail.
And, wouldn’t you know I listened to them because I trusted them. They were and still are good people who were trying to help. But their help came back to bite me in the ass big time.
The more I listened to other people, the harder my life got.
I slowly stopped trusting myself, and I started living based on other people’s expectations.
And it left me feeling miserable.
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So, why am I sharing this with you? One of the main things I see as I’m working with new coaches is that when we’re starting, most of us look to everyone else for direction.
We feel overwhelmed and confused and don’t believe in our ability to determine what’s right for our coaching businesses.
And that leaves most of us feeling wicked unhappy.
But what if you could change all that, and it was as simple as channeling your inner five-year-old? How might your life and business change?
Doing Business Your Way
Having Fun
When you were five, you probably lived for fun; I know I did. Unfortunately, it’s usually one of the last things we think about when starting a new business. It gets crowded out by more predominant thoughts and beliefs like anxiety about whether we’re doing this right, fear about being seen or made fun of as a new coach, doubt about whether or not we can pull this off, and confusion about what we should spend our time doing.
These thoughts are normal, but they often don’t leave much room for fun. And, as you might’ve imagined, it doesn’t leave us feeling like we got this.
Now, I want you to step away from all that and think about doing something in your business for fun. It could be coaching someone and helping them experience a breakthrough or writing or recording a piece of content you’re super proud of.
It feels pretty damn good, right? To let go of all those worries and enjoy what you’re doing?
How might your business grow if you prioritized that feeling of fun? To make joy and happiness a priority in the work you’re doing? And, to constantly check in with yourself to prioritize those emotions over all the other ones that usually run the show?
I guarantee that your business will take off. And here’s why.
People want to be part of enjoyable, good experiences. It’s infectious. And, if you, as a coach, create a business where fun is one of your main goals, clients will be attracted to you because they want to experience that fun too.
Fun is infectious; your business reflects you and the incredible light you bring to the world. You didn’t start it because you wanted it to feel like a chore or something you had to do. Make a conscious effort to add more fun to your work, and I promise you that you will sign clients and your business will grow.
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Imagination
All right, you’re finding ways to make your business more fun; what’s next? Remember when you were a kid, and your imagination ran wild? You might’ve had an imaginary friend, believed in magic, or spent an entire weekend pretending you were someone else in another galaxy far, far away.
This was normal when we were young. Yet, as we age, many of us have a harder and harder time imagining the unknown and believing the things we can’t see or hold in front of us. And that’s where we get stuck.
Much like fun, imagination is the key to unlocking your creativity in your business. What do I mean here? I want you to imagine your ideal business. Would you be making 50 million dollars a year, traveling around the globe, meeting thousands of people excited to hear about what you have to offer, and changing lives on a massive scale?
Or you’re more of a homebody. None of that appeals to you; you want to work one-on-one with clients, replace your full-time income, and enjoy the peace of living out in the country in nature. Ahh, solitude and bliss.
Imagination is directly correlated with play; when you’re playing with the possibilities, your brain does its best work. There’s no pressure to perform or develop the “best” idea. You’re just thinking about your dreams, playing make-believe, and enjoying how good it feels.
Doing this suspends judgment and invites curiosity. And that’s when you go from thinking about all the reasons something won’t work to playing around with the possibility that they could work.
And this is the fuel that ignites your business. Entrepreneurship is one big experiment. Growing a business requires trying different strategies and figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t. Wash and repeat.
This process is a lot easier if you’re approaching things from a creative, playful perspective where you’re just having fun. Your brain is less likely to see what you’re doing as a potential failure, and you’ll have more fun and achieve more.
Starting and growing a business entails a lot of imagination, to the point, people might question your sanity. But that’s okay because every big thing that anyone has achieved once started as something imaginary, whether it was electricity, cell phones, computers, or lasagna.
Imagination is your friend.
Doing Business Your Way
The last thing on the list is doing things your way. My niece, who is two years old at the time of writing this, has a powerful personality (love it!) and marches to the beat of her own drum. She does things her way. Just the other day, she chose an outfit that included an Elsa nightgown, a purple fuzzy pullover, some leggings, and a shoe of a kind. She wore this for the day, and I couldn’t have loved it more!
She picked out what made her happy and then went with it.
And that’s the ultimate goal in your business. To believe in yourself and your abilities as an entrepreneur, stop looking to other people to tell you what to do. Instead, start trusting yourself to figure out what’s right for you.
Here’s why.
When you do business your way, you enjoy it more, look forward to it, and have more fun, and as a result, you sign more clients.
When you don’t do business your way, you dread it, don’t get the results you want, waste time and money, and feel stuck.
I know because I spent the first nine months of my business not doing things my way. I looked to everyone else for advice on what I should be doing.
I listened to everyone else, and it left me feeling overwhelmed, confused, defeated and pissed most days.
Not exactly the kind of energy that makes it easy for people to work with me.
When I started listening to my inner guidance, call it my intuition, subconscious, whatever suits your fancy, I started enjoying my business again.
And that’s when I started seeing results.
I’m not suggesting you stop learning; instead, start paying attention to how the strategies and business practices you’re learning make you feel. Do you immediately love the idea, and it makes total sense, or do you clam up and get a tight feeling in your throat?
Your body will tell you what’s right for you…IF…you listen to you.
YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHAT” S RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS.
The sooner you can learn to trust yourself, your ideas, and the decisions you’re making, the quicker you’ll start seeing results, and the more you’ll fall in love with your work.
Five-year-olds don’t spend their days hustling or worrying about what their life will be like at 25. They live for the moment, prioritize fun, believe in a lot of wild shit even when people tell them it isn’t real, and march to the beat of their drum.
The sooner you channel your five-year-old badass, the quicker you’ll get what you want in your business.
I’m rootin’ for you!
