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Building A Business is Shadow Work.

artists creative entrepreneurship element: water emotional blocks healing shadow work Feb 04, 2023

You’ve probably heard the saying “relationships are a mirror.”

What that means is that being close to people reveals you to yourself. Reflected in your responses and reactions to a partner or close person you see your old wounds, your insecurities, your trust issues, your anxieties.

The more you care about the relationship, the more you feel you have to lose, the scarier it can be, and the more your triggers may show themselves.
You don’t always feel them when you’re alone. Sometimes it takes having something (or someone) you don’t want to lose to illuminate the issues that were always there, just below the surface.

 

Your sacred work is just such a relationship, just such a mirror.

Especially when your work is deeply personal, creative, when what you do feels like it’s a part of you.

When we're building a business from our soul work, it can bring up all of our deepest fears.

We care about the work so much, we want other people to care about it, we want to share it, and we want desperately to make it our livelihood and our life.

We want to be able to earn a (generous) living doing only the work we truly love, making a real difference in the world, using ideas, inspirations, and creations that feel birthed from our very souls. We spend hours (a lot of hours) creating our work. These things aren't just our "jobs". They're also our creative expression, and it's vulnerable to show the world something you made with your own two hands, and ask to get paid for it.

There’s a lot on the line.

And suddenly our insecurities, trust issues, anxieties, our feelings about worthiness and worth and what’s possible for us all come swimming to the surface.

 

These aren't usually triggered when you’re a happy hobbyist.

But the second you decide to turn your sacred calling into a BUSINESS? Suddenly there are the shadows, rushing at you like something out of a nightmare.

And just like in relationships: you can stay stuck in a pattern, blaming others, breaking up or cutting people off, having the same relationship experiences over and over again and moving through the world thinking other people just suck...

OR,
you can open up to seeing yourself as the common denominator, and commit to healing so that you can have healthy close relationships in your life.

 

In order to succeed, your business will demand that you heal your relationship with shame, with fear of uncertainty and visibility, with self-worth, with trust, with scarcity.
It will show you all the areas of survival-level-thinking and feeling that must be healed if you want to grow.

If you let it, your business will show you the difference between playing to win, vs. just playing not to lose.

 

When you see yourself reflected in this way, you can decide that business just isn’t for you, and quit. OR, your business gets to be a vehicle for healing if you rise to the lessons it’s teaching you.

 

(This is why WATER work is one of the things that sets Elemental Entrepreneurship apart from any other business framework I’ve ever encountered.)

If you're experiencing this...

If your business has you questioning everything, triggered, overwhelmed, and ready to throw up your hands and quit...

This isn't wrong.

It's literally the deal. It's what business does. Just like any other relationship, if you feel triggered af, you have an opportunity to look at yourself and lovingly, compassionately make new choices.

That doesn't mean you're bad at business.

Here's something not a lot of other business training will acknowledge: You’re a human first. 

You can’t “check your emotions at the door.” They’re coming in, whether you want them to or not.

 

So, now that they’re here, sitting across from you, staring you in the face, what do you see?

And what are you gonna do about it?

 

 

Big love (for all your big feelings),

Cera

 

 

PS. If you need help navigating your emotions in business or life, I'd love to support you. Click here if you'd like to book a call to discuss coaching with me. 

Click here if you'd like to work on your business in my incredible group business coaching membership, The Elemental Entrepreneurship Coven.

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