I started my business in May of this year. I’ve only made 3k. It happened in one day in person, and I haven’t made any money since.
I have been trapped in an Ego Trip.
An Ego Trip is a cyclical pattern designed to keep you stuck in constraint.
It’s your job to figure out the depth of the constraint and liberate yourself from it.
These past few months, I’ve been exploring hard.
I have released a lot of limiting beliefs around my worth, sense of fear, and my “inherent” lack.
I’ve also manifested (or rather created) a new reality for myself.
I moved into an apartment in Detroit.
It has so much natural light! My plants love it.
Despite these great big steps, there has been something in business particularly that has been holding me hostage. As the universe unfolds events, experiences, and people into your life, it lets whatever is in front of you become your guide. To this I have been a great student.
Recently, I stumbled upon a writer named Isabel and she’s been saying the ideas that have been in my head. It inspired me to write again.
The Ego Trip I want to talk about here is The Fear of Being Seen and what to do about it.
Let’s dive in…
The Fear of Being Seen
I used to be a people-pleaser. I spent 4 years at university studying some subject someone else told me I was good at and therefore interested in. I didn’t hate my experience, but it wasn’t me.
I was oblivious to the story I was telling myself. The narratives we tell ourselves underneath the surface are the biggest indicators of our perception of the world.
These narratives that operate within us on are based on impressions we had of the world as a child. In my case, I was very young when I betrayed the voice in my head for the voice of someone else.
I write about this here: Betraying Yourself Is Not Virtuous
This act of self-betrayal left me outsourcing my decisions in life to people I thought knew me better, were wiser and older and could help guide me on my journey through life.
While this sounded great as a young child who didn’t know how to navigate the world and was scared… my Ego Trip left me disconnected from my being, my true nature, my intuition.
The narrative that kept me trapped the longest has sounded like:
I care what people will think of me, therefore I will say, speak, think, and act in a way that creates a good perception of me.
Which is really not true. This is a better narrative.
I care about what people think of me because I judge myself. Self-expression has led me to shame, awkwardness, and disconnection. People don’t “get” me. Therefore it’s best to hold back, my self-expression is not worthy or good enough for others.
As silly as this feels to write aloud, this narrative has dictated the last 10 years of my life. It controlled my behavior as a people-pleaser, a fawn, it has drained my energy, kept me feeling low, and left me feeling hopeless.
This narrative told me that there was something wrong with my fullest self-expression. It told me that my true essence was never to be revealed. This narrative made me feel disconnected from others, judged, criticized and alone.
This Ego Trip (the cyclical pattern that kept me stuck in constraint) was rooted in negation.
All Ego Trips are rooted in the premise that you are inherently broken, flawed, or missing something AND that if you can change or control your outer circumstances you might find what you lack.
This is the Life-Lie I believed.
How does this relate to my business?
This Ego Trip with its deep narrative kept me from expressing my ideas, opinions, stories, achievements, and goals online.
It stopped me from building out the front-end of my business.
Content became hard to make.
My mind raced with judgment and criticism about every post, project, solution to a problem or idea that entered my head.
I would get a wave of excitement start building out a project and my ego would shut it down because it “wasn’t good enough or worthy” to show the public.
This stalled me from building out the backend of my business.
My ego shut down my ideas telling me that they wouldn’t work.
It told me that others could do XYZ but I couldn’t.
This wasn’t the only narrative I have had to break free from, an Ego Trip about lack was huge and sometimes sneaks back in, but this narrative rooted in The Fear Of Being Seen has kept me from actualizing my ideas.
shifting gears
As I shift into a new reality where my ideas are no longer attached to my self-worth and being, I’ve instead decided that it would be fun to see me create an idea, a novel perspective, and watch how many lives it touches. I am on a mission now to keep a flowing river of ideas that served me and can therefore help others so that all they have to do is reach out their hand and a solution is there.
Step one in actualizing your ideas is sharing them publicly.
Getting the shitty posts out there, collecting feedback, iterating on ideas that strike a cord, and making them clear, actionable, and fun.
For me, this means writing essays like this, or sharing my tweets publicly.
It’s not that I didn’t share ideas in the past, but it’s going to be an active self-observation to notice the judgment or criticism that arises when I hit publish.
When I make the thoughts in my head, those “genius” ideas, real what happens?
Will the judgment come? And if so, can I zoom out of the world of negation to know it’s not true?
Yes.
I’ve done that work.
Step two in actualizing your ideas is creating a container in which others can fully integrate those ideas themselves, which in my view is the purpose of my business.
business as self-expression
The vehicle to help people transform their lives using solutions that have helped you, is through business.
I’ve idolized a few creators who I’ve recently met.
Jack Moses and Cameron Hogan to name a few.
This idolization or “putting on the pedestal” was my higher self trying to tell me that I could do that too.
When we put people on a pedestal it means we haven’t fully accepted that part of ourselves yet. We see something in them that has significant resonance but “could never be us”.
In reality, it is the very resonance and attraction to that person and their ideas that lead us to discover that we are in fact just like them.
How can we be like that (whatever you admire about someone else that makes you want to “worship” them) for ourselves?
Those two people were full of abundance, pure love and light. They moved through the world effortlessly and actualized their ideas into creations that helped change humanity.
The more I started to ask myself “what is it about them that I am attracted to?” The more I realized that it was my higher self wanting to evolve into those qualities.
I see my business as a way to do that.
To take ideas that have served me and create a container for people to integrate them.
This is why, after graduating college, I had an intuit hit to get myself out of pain.
To pick the most pressing problem facing my longevity and solve it.
Then another intuitive hit to help others with my new knowledge.
Then the day came when I started this business.
Having no idea what I would do, how I was going to “make it” or what my life would look like, I dove straight into entrepreneurship.
Business for me (unconsciously) has been the channel to express myself fully.
I intend to show others that they can do it too.
overcoming avoidance
I see now that the avoidance I was facing was the Ego telling me I was unworthy of doing what I wanted, sharing my ideas, and building my dreams.
Overcoming this narrative looks like remembering my true nature as a human being.
My essence is vitality, health, wealth and creation.
Humans are sentient beings. We are timeless, limitless, and boundless.
As I step into this new reality, the one where I return to myself, tap into my divinity and share my innovations with the world via a one-person business, I must continue integrating and practicing living in my new found freedom.
Integration looks like trusting myself enough to flesh out ideas even if they aren’t “perfect” and writing them in essays. The second part of this dual integration is trusting myself to create the flowing river of ideas in containers so that people can take them and integrate them for themselves.
Creating value for people is a new endeavor and one I am committed to witnessing transform my life and the life of others.
integration = Embracing Duality
I’ve noticed that there are really two or more parts of me that I tap into in order to do things.
There is the part of me that loves to flirt with ideas and think about connections and create novelty. This part of me hates doing and would much rather fill her time with being.
Then there is another part of me, the one who wants to get the business up and running, and has the discipline to sit and do “the boring tasks” for hours. This part of me has been blocked by the Ego Trip, but also by the part that loves to flirt with the idea but never bring it into reality.
Integrating both of these parts of me will be my next challenge.
can I actualize the ideas into essays and then take those ideas and build a project or product (a container) for those ideas to help others?
This is integration practice I am committed to embodying in the next year.
Can I watch the river of ideas that come to me, flow out of me in service of others?
After being able to recognize my Ego Trip and the constraints of the narratives holding me back, I know that this Izzy 3.0 is capable of building things that feel comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. That I am capable of being more dynamic and dimensional than I had originally perceived myself to be.
actualizing ideas is a test
The ultimate test of integration will be getting to witness the levels to which my ideas change people.
Are my essays inspiring others? Yes, great.
Are my projects, and products changing lives?
I can’t answer that question if I never bring my ideas to actualization.
In this next chapter, I will discover what it means to get out of my own way, to let go of the fear of being seen, to invite the opportunity to write, capture, and share ideas to others so that they can benefit.
I am excited to embrace this challenge, and I hope you follow along to see it!
One of the first ideas I am actualizing is the I Love You The Same Community.
This community will meet once a week to discuss whatever is arising and hold space for each other with unconditional love.
If you would like more info about the community details and ground rules, learn more here.
I love you,
Izzy