In today’s episode, I’m discussing what is likely to happen as you decide what it is that you truly want this year. You’re likely to dance between both excitement and fear. In this motivational chat, I’m wanting to encourage you to listen to your intuition in order to move past the fear and consider what ideas and opportunities are possible for you this year.
The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
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Review the Show Notes:
The dance between your gut and your brain (2:09)
Letting fear paralyze you (4:12)
Your action step for this week (5:38)
Mentioned in this Episode:
Monday Morning Inspiration: Lifestyle Lessons
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gephardt. Here I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur. while balancing business, motherhood and life. myself along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in yet willing to talk about the hard stuff to to shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight. Welcome back to another episode of the shoot it straight podcast. In last week’s episode, I asked you the question, what do you want this year? I encouraged you with that seemingly simple question. And I told you not to take any specific steps or set any goals. But just to mull over it for a few days and see what the Universe brought to the table.
Then I encouraged you after another few days to ask yourself the second part, the how this year I want more X, how can I make that happen? Again, I didn’t want you to actually make any firm plans, but just to keep your eyes open, because it’s so common to start to see the opportunities that you need, once you have started to focus on it. So hopefully you did your homework and you thought over those ideas this past week. What do I want? And how can I make this happen? I will bet that you have come up with some ideas that you’ve had some things come across whether in conversations or on social media or through your inbox. And I’m 100% sure that if you have been mulling over these ideas for a week or more, your eyes have been opened to some possibilities. I’m also certain that if possibilities and ideas have been presenting themselves to you over the past week, so have two other things, excitement, and fear. And that’s what I want to focus on during today’s episode, this dance between excitement and fear. I can tell you story after story after story from my own life when I was constantly bouncing between these two things, excitement and fear. And if you want the cliffnotes version, it’s this. The excitement was from my intuition.
And the fear was from my brain. This vicious spin cycle between the two was a literal battle between my intuition heart gut knowing and my brain. It’s a painful dance. In fact, it can feel downright excruciating at times when you’re stuck in the middle of it. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can ever avoid it altogether. But I think being aware of what is happening can help you move through this dance even faster. Here’s what this often looks like for me. We know in our gut that it’s time to do something new and different. Our intuition is telling us that it is time. Then comes the excitement, our heart is dreaming, New Visions are being cast. But then the excited flutters often lead directly to deep fear and oftentimes paralyzation why? We are so dang terrified of the unknown. We are terrified of moving into something new. And our brains literally shut down all the excitement with all kinds of fear based stories.
What if I fail? What if I lose money? What if it doesn’t go? Well? What if I’m bad at it? What if no one likes me? What if? What if? What if What if those fears completely paralyze us? And so oftentimes, we choose to do nothing, instead of following our gut and leaning into our intuition. Because staying right where we are is safe. We know what it feels like we know how to survive here. We are comfortable. So the excited fire goes out and we stay put. Because even though safe doesn’t feel as good as excitement, it definitely feels better than failure. The problem with letting fear paralyze you is that you are ignoring the potential of what could be you are ignoring the idea that your life could get better. You are ignoring growth, you are choosing to leave money on the table literally, you are choosing to not even try something that you might love even more than what you’re doing now. Friend, you might get on the other side of this new thing and be even happier than you could have ever imagined. making more money than you could ever imagine and working with better clients than you could ever imagine. Yeah, change is hard, and doing new things is scary. But do you want to let fear paralyze you from the possibility of greatness just so that you can stay in mediocrity? or do you want to go for it?
Because you know, you need to your intuition is speaking to you for a reason. It is called the knowing sometimes that’s what people refer to as the knowing. It’s called that for a reason. It knows the truth, your brain is a liar. Flat out your brain is a liar. And it literally makes up stories all day long. Your gut, your intuition knows, do you want to listen to your gut and follow your intuition? Or do you want to stay in your comfort zone and settle for more of the same? It’s really, truly up to you. So this week’s Action Step is to journal about the idea that you’re toying with. Okay? The thing that is dancing around between excitement and fear, whatever that is, whatever you’re stuck on, I want you to get out your journal, ask yourself this question. And I want you to truly free write your response. What will I gain from going for it and doing this new thing? So I want you to be honest here, list all of the things that could go right. The experience, the relationships, the new skills, you’ve learned, the new opportunities, the increase in income, whatever it is, what would success with this new thing look like? And then I want you to ask yourself, What is the worst case scenario, if I fail, if this ends up being a catastrophic failure?
And I’m going to put air quotes around that, if this ends up being a catastrophic failure? How much money would you lose? Would you still be safe? Would you be embarrassed? Are your kids safe? Free? Write your answer there. And here’s the thing with free writing those the answers to those two questions, okay, truly free write, don’t stop yourself. Don’t write a statement and then think no, that’s not possible, or that’s the wrong answer, or I shouldn’t think that nope, that’s not free writing, ask the questions and write the answers, no filter. So after you’ve answered these questions, you should already be able to breathe a bit easier. That’s the beauty of journaling, it gets the thoughts out of your head and onto paper. So things feel lighter, you should quite literally already be feeling a little bit more clear headed about the whole situation, you should definitely have some clarity. I want you to be honest here. Is the worst case scenario really all that bad. Does the list of potential successes outweigh it? So I want you to read over your answers and see if you have gained that clarity you need my friend, there’s no right or wrong answer. You cannot make a bad choice. But I encourage you to be willing to change your mind.
Maybe you’ve been paralyzed by fear. And this is the very exercise you needed to move past that and into the exciting intuition zone. Don’t second guess yourself. Just go with it. And trust yourself. You really are right where you need to be. That’s it for today, my friend. I’ll see you next week. And if you liked this episode, and you’re interested in getting this kind of inspiration and encouragement in your inbox every week, I encourage you to join my email list to get my Monday morning email called Lifestyle lessons. I’ll have the link in the show notes by now. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at Sabrina gebhardt.com backslash podcast comm find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends shoot it straight.
