February 2016 was my best business month to date. I brought in nearly $23K in business while working just 3 days a week.
The whole month felt great and, to be the completely truthful, it felt like the least amount of work I’ve ever done to make money! It felt in flow, nearly effortless, and totally grounded and aligned. So good.
On the other hand, the logic-based thinker in me wants a strategic way to replicate this for myself and also teach my clients how to do the same, so I started looking at all the things that made this month different.
And something very interesting came to light…
I stopped weighing myself this month.
Hmmm….
That got me thinking. Was this related? Or unrelated?
An answer quickly came. As a woman who tends to think EVERYTHING is connected, I believe 100% that there is a correlation here. (I’ll dive into my theory about this below.)
I’m not saying that not stepping on the scale contributed to every single dollar that found its way to me this past month, but I think...no, I know...it’s a key player.
I’ll speak for myself here, but I believe most women can relate: my relationship with my body is always in need of more loving kindness. Always.
As women, even when we’re feeling great about ourselves, our businesses, or our lives, a few pounds on the scale, an overindulgent night out, or a pair of jeans that no longer fit “just right” can totally shift the way we’re thinking and feeling about every single aspect of our lives.
Throughout my pre-teen and teen years, especially, I had a tumultuous relationship with my body and food and too often allowed my happiness and self-worth to be determined by the numbers on the scale.
Lower numbers = Yay! I’m allowed to feel good.
Higher numbers = I hate myself.
I felt I was always battling against my body, instead of working with it.
Luckily, over the last decade a lot has changed for me, for the better. Through heaps of personal development, yoga, meditation, and surrounding myself with positive role models, I’ve come to love, appreciate and honor my body (most of the time, which is all I think any of us can ask for).
But...I was still weighing myself. Every week. A few pounds up, ugh. A few pounds down, yay!
Over the last 10 years my weight hasn’t fluctuated more than 8 to 10 pounds - except when I was pregnant of course! - but I felt I had to have that weekly check-in to keep me “on track.”
I realized that I was still in fear mode around my weight. Yes, after all these years -- the fear was still there! I thought I needed the scale to tell me if I should eat a little more or a little less. Fit in some extra movement or give myself permission to indulge.
So, I decided to do a short-term experiment. No weighing myself for the month of February. If it totally derailed my healthy-ish lifestyle, and I felt like I was ballooning up, out of control, I told myself that I could always go back to my weekly weigh-ins.
Well, I’m here to report that not only are my jeans still fitting just rightandmy entire relationship with my body and food is feeling even more loving and kind, but I also had my BEST month ever! Making $23K in just over 3 weeks.
Here’s my theory behind no weigh-ins = 4x business.
:1: I was focusing on smaller (or at least unchanging) numbers. Every single week I’d reinforce that smaller is better. Smaller numbers are what I want. Do you see how this might hurt your bank account?
:2: It put my happiness in someone...or should I say something...else’s control. I’d have a great week and then step on the scale and be a couple pounds up, and inside my head I’d hear “ugh”. I want to feel good, not crappy. Stepping on the scale was making me feel crappy, so why keep doing it? Or, it was giving me a momentary “yay!” because of my smaller number (see #1).
:3: I was in total fear mode. I felt that I had to keep my body in-check otherwise my health, weight, sanity would “get away from me”. Fear constricts us, it keeps us (and our potential) small. I don’t want to be small -- I want to be BIG (energetically speaking ;-))! Again, can you see how this would affect your income?
:4: It forced me to trust more. Trust my body, trust my hunger, trust my intuition, trust that I wouldn’t go off the rails if I loosened my perfectionist grip just a tad. And, I’m here on the other side of it still in one piece, still in the same pants and with $23K in new business! Brilliant.
:5: That weekly weigh-in bled over into others areas of my life, and made me think about food/my body/weight at times that I didn’t want to be thinking about those things. It even, at times, would lead to totally unnecessary negative self-talk. Essentially, it took up too much valuable mental real estate. Without that weekly reminder of my “goodness” or “badness”, I freed up space for creativity, joy, inspiration, mindfulness and guilt-free celebration!!!
When you’re constantly sending out signals of fear, saying to yourself “I want small numbers”, and letting negativity chirp in your ear, it’s going to have an effect. It has to. There is no other option. The thoughts we think, the things we do, the words we say become our lives.
I wholeheartedly believe in the connectedness of all things, but somehow I didn’t realize that I was sending out beacons that were totally misaligned with what I truly was after. Ahh...the clarity of hindsight.
I was stuck in a deep groove that I’d been digging most of my life up until now, and finally (after 10 years of reading Geneen Roth books) I was ready -- I am ready -- to opt for trust instead of fear. Growth instead of shrinking. Abundance instead of restriction.
Join me.It’s so much lighter on the other side ::wink wink::
With love,
P.S. Want to read more about how I made $23K in 23 days? I wrote an entire post about what it took to reach those numbers here.
