154: Why You Can Experience Frustration With Success & How to Transform It Into a Win

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I am recording today from a completely different location. We have moved into our new house now. Every other room besides my office is set up. I am sitting in a spot where I won't normally be sitting but I am sitting in my office and I'm looking out the window and I have a new view. Yay for that. It has been a long time coming.

Today I want to talk about that a little bit in conjunction with releasing my book. Many things have gone on in my world over the last couple of months and I realized that celebrating them and acknowledging my achievements does not come easy. In fact, sometimes it feels very unnatural to me.

I wanted to share that with you because I think sometimes celebrating, acknowledging, and sitting in our achievements and success is super hard and doesn't come easy. I think to most, it doesn't come easy and feels unnatural. I did a little exploring as to why that is. I came up with some reasons and then I came up with some ways that I've figured out how to do it so that it does feel a little more natural and I want to share those with you.

As I go through this, I also want to share some of the facts surrounding the past couple of months and how they've impacted how I've felt or how I've chosen to have them impact me. I'm recording this, it's October 31st, I'm recording it on Halloween, which also is somewhat appropriate because there's a little bit of fear in celebrating success and it can be scary and I'm going to hit on that too. Let's dive in.

Also when you're listening to this, I want you to think about the fact of celebrating you and how do you put yourself in places where you can celebrate you and your success. If you haven't already purchased your ticket to She Thinks Big Live, you need to go do so. You need to go do that. Go to andrealiebross.com/live and get your ticket.

The day-long workshop, conference, and event are going to be held in January in Indianapolis and it is going to be a place to celebrate you and your success. Doing that being surrounded by other women who also want to celebrate and I think it's just going to be an amazing time.

The feeling that you will experience when you're in that room is going to be like no other. Head on over there andrealiebross.com/live. Also, get that VIP option because that will really make it even extra special. So let's dive in.

First of all, I don't think the reason that celebrating our successes actually has anything to do with my childhood or your childhood, in fact, but if I look at my childhood, the difficulty of this, I don't think has anything to do with childhood. In fact, in my childhood, we celebrated regularly.

My mom was a big celebrator. My parents are big celebrators. In fact, that bothers my husband that we celebrate so much. But I think in my adult life, my husband is not a big celebrator. Rather he's like a put one foot in front of the other and keep going. In fact, he found it really difficult during his medical training, residency, med school, joining a practice, becoming a partner, he found celebrating those milestones extremely difficult, and I can remember having conversations with him about how he should be feeling a certain way that he wasn't.

I don't think my challenge in celebrating has anything to do with childhood. It could have a little bit to do with the household I'm living in now. But I think what it has to do with most is that I don't necessarily think about my own celebrations regularly. I think about my client's celebrations every day but when it comes to me, I have to be prompted by my coach on “Hey, Andrea, what are we celebrating?”

Here are some reasons that I think celebrating becoming a best-selling author, becoming a new homeowner, and even celebrating the milestones that I met along the way of the journeys of both of those were difficult.

Before we dive into the reasons, which are really just thoughts, I want to share with you some of the facts, specifically some of the facts around this book launch. The release of the book that took place over the summer and into the month of September was not at all what I expected.

Here are five things that happened that contributed to this book launch that were unexpected and really created a lot of negativity and animosity for me. Number one, Amazon changed their algorithm a little bit and at least it changed it to the point where it affected my launch.

My publisher said to me, “Listen, we need to get this book trending on Amazon. The way to do that is to do a 99-cent behind-the-scenes secret launch of an e-book.” I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to just sell an e-book at 99 cents for a day. I wanted people to have the real book. But we did it. We had the 99-cent launch. That was number one.

Once you had that 99-cent launch, and you sold what they guesstimated would be an X number of books in particular categories on Amazon, then your book would be trending and it would be searchable on Amazon. You'll be able to find it if you went in the search bar.

But here's what happened to me. I totally hit all the numbers. I went beyond the numbers. I had plenty of 99-cent book, ebook purchases, but when I went in and typed She Thinks Big into the Amazon search bar, nothing came up and nothing came up on Wednesday, on Thursday, and Friday. On Saturday when I went in, when you typed in She Thinks Big, guess what came up? A workbook that I did not write that was an infringement on my copyrights that was produced by AI.

To backup, by the end of the day, Wednesday we should have been able to find my book in the general Amazon search bar but we couldn't. Saturday, you still couldn't find it. But you could find an infringed, plagiarized, copyrighted, not-so-great book workbook. By the end of Saturday, there was another one. Within those seven days, there were a total of four workbooks, none of which I created, all of which took material from my book and made it into their own using I think AI.

Those are three things already. Number one, the 99-cent launch, which I didn't want to do, number two, didn't show up on Amazon, and number three, they were plagiarized workbooks. Now I have to report these workbooks and I seek legal counsel from my attorney. At that point, she tells me, “Oh, and guess what? Someone has filed to trademark Time to Level Up,” the name of this podcast. That was something else that I really wasn't expecting. That was the fourth piece of this unexpected puzzle.

Finally, the book shows up on Amazon. I get two of the plagiarized workbooks down, not the other two. We can go into why that is later. Then comes what I'm calling the real launch when people could purchase the hardcover or the paperback. On that day, my email gets hacked and I cannot access my personal email through iCloud for 12 hours.

There is no reason for that except when you call Apple support, they tell me they're doing maintenance on my email address. Really? On the day my book launches, you're doing maintenance? I find that really hard to believe. I had no access to email that day. That was a fifth thing.

Then lastly, Amazon has what's called an author page where you can put your bio, and some endorsements or reviews. Nope, nope. The author page was down for two weeks and I wasn't able to create my author page. All of these things happened and in this time when I was supposed to be celebrating, these things were happening. It was like a cloud over my head.

Meanwhile, we're building a house and things are going around in the background with that. So I realized that celebrating is extremely hard and sometimes it's even extra hard because my thoughts about those facts were impacting how I felt.

That's just the background. But now I want to dig into six reasons why celebrating can be really hard. Here's number one. You're really forced to move on quickly. This was a really extra busy time for me. It was super fast-paced. I had tons of to-do lists. I had lots of projects, I had ideas, and I was creating nonstop.

I was creating web pages, landing pages, links, and processes around the launch. It left little or no room for pausing and appreciating what was going on. I was forced to move on from each mini-celebration really quickly. Number one reason why celebrating is hard, and I want you to think about this is if you're moving on too quickly.

Here's the second reason why I think celebrating is hard. This was really, really relevant for me. Number two, you're getting caught up in your thoughts. I had so many thoughts about all of the facts. I was super anxious and I was worried. That could have, should have, would have showed up all the time. Those thoughts, “I should have done it this way,” or “I wish I could have done it that way,” not only did they just show up but they distracted me and created a lot of feelings that I typically don't want, feelings that I know not to indulge in.

Then eventually, I would move on from whatever that thought was that was creating the feeling, but I often felt depleted. It did not leave me wanting to focus on whatever the next step was. It definitely did not leave me wanting to celebrate my win.

But here's the third thing. The third reason why celebrating is hard: Imposter syndrome. Now impostor syndrome is all about self-doubt, comparing, and perfection. It's easy to fall into this trap when you're really usually so focused on other things that it becomes hard to recognize that this is what is going on, that you're experiencing impostor syndrome.

But yet if you experience impostor syndrome, this is exactly why it's important to celebrate wins and achievements. The number one reason why it's hard to celebrate is that you're often forced to move on quickly, number two is that you're getting caught up in your thoughts, and number three, impostor syndrome, which leads me to number four: when you're caught up in your thoughts and things are moving quickly, celebrating is hard because sometimes you're experiencing decision fatigue or burnout.

I talked about this in a recent episode, I talked a lot about decision fatigue. When you're in that spot, when you're feeling a little awful burnt out, when you're feeling the feelings of stress and anxiety and overwhelm, you often can feel exhausted and depleted, and putting energy towards celebrating your achievements is like the last thing that's going to happen.

But in reality, this is the best time to pause and reflect on your achievements. If I did do that, which I did at times, it really reminded me of why this is important, the celebrating thing is important because it brought joy to us over a situation which was exhausting.

Here's the fifth reason why celebrating sometimes is really hard. Being in the spotlight might not be your thing. On the day of my launch celebration, so we had a big party here in Indianapolis, about a week after the “real” paperback and hardback launched, we had a big celebration, on that day, I even said to several people, “Why am I doing this?” Because the spotlight was on me.

When the spotlight is on you, it's really easy to minimize your achievements. You tend to discount things and shrug things off is no big deal. I actually had my own coaching mastermind call that day, that same day of the celebration, October 4th. [Jeanine] who was on the mastermind call with me.

She said to me, “Andrea, you gotta own it. You gotta own it.” She was right. Not minimize it, but on it. It. The whole reason we were having a celebration was because two of my personal friends said, “You have to celebrate this. It's not an option.” I was minimizing and they said no.

When you minimize the wins, and keep on going without celebrating, you create a pattern and a habit. I might have been in that pattern and habit, but I've been trying to get out of it.

The last reason that celebrating I identified as being hard, is because when you're a high achiever, when you're a business owner, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're a listener of this podcast, it can be difficult to cut yourself some slack and permit yourself rest. There's no rest for the weary.

When we don't rest, it is hard to celebrate. Keeping yourself constantly busy does not allow the time and space to reflect, to appreciate, to acknowledge, to celebrate, therefore, things just keep going.

Let's review these six reasons. Number one, you're moving on too quickly. Number two, you're getting caught up in your thoughts. Number three, you're experiencing impostor syndrome. Number four, you've got decision fatigue or burnout. Number five, you're minimizing your achievements. Number six, you have a belief that there's no rest for the weary.

But here are four things that I started to do, that you can start doing immediately, and that will make a big impact. Number one, pause and reflect. This may be hands down the biggest thing that you can start doing right now. Taking time to pause and notice after achieving something or doing something hard that you've been procrastinating on, wrapping up a big project, writing a book, or moving into a house, allowing yourself a moment of compassion is super important. Allowing yourself a moment to pause and ask yourself, “How am I feeling?” is super important.

About 10 days ago, I actually spent three days by myself in a bed and breakfast in New Hampshire in between two different retreats that I was at, and when I put on and that really gave me time to pause and reflect. It gave me time to pause and reflect on how I was feeling in what did I really desire. What did I want to happen?

Have you built in time to pause and reflect into your schedule? The She Thinks Big Live conference workshop event in January is a time to pause and reflect. That's the kind of thing, that experience allows you to do that. Again, go get your ticket at andrealiebross.com/live.

The second thing that you can do right now is you can acknowledge and you don't even have to acknowledge out loud, you can acknowledge in writing. Sometimes I think it's easier to celebrate on paper than it is in public. Are you writing down your achievements? Are you doing a thought download? Do you have a nice journal, even a little notebook, or even the notes on your phone where you're allowing yourself to brag about yourself? Bragging about yourself in writing, acknowledging it is super important.

Now, the third thing, if you want that acknowledging to the next level, go tell someone. Having a support system that has your back, that wants the best for you, that celebrates you even when you have difficulty is so important in life. If you have some of these people in your life, tell them about your wins. Let them celebrate you while you celebrate yourself. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell your colleagues.

I just hosted a retreat for my mastermind people and so many of them, I think I can picture about half, four out of the eight acknowledge that they never tell their family anything about their business, the good, the bad, or the ugly. Your family needs to know. There's no way they can support you if you don't tell them.

Then here's the last thing. One way that you can combat these six reasons for difficulty in celebrating, the last way I'm going to share with you is to reward yourself. There is nothing like an amazing reward. It doesn't need to be fancy, expensive, or elaborate. It can be a day off. It can be a cup of coffee. It can be a massage. It can be you deciding you're not cooking.

All of those can be rewards and all of those are so necessary in order for you to celebrate, for you to pause long enough to assess, for you to not experience decision fatigue, for you to recognize what is happening.

Okay, my friends, four things you can start doing immediately: number one, pause and reflect. I did that in New London. Number two, acknowledge, and I did that in writing more than anything else. Number three, tell someone, and I got better at this. I'm not great at it, but I'm getting better. Number four, reward yourself. I definitely did the no-cooking thing, I definitely did the bodywork massage thing, and I'm starting to do more of taking the days off thing.

Something else that I just want to throw in here. If you're not celebrating, one of the reasons might be because you have created a glass ceiling. You've created a ceiling for yourself, one which is really hard to go beyond. I've been reading a lot of Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap book because in that book, he talks about moving your own ceiling, and when you move it and when you realize that you can step into things that are bigger, maybe better, definitely achievements, celebrating becomes a lot, lot easier.

Okay, my friends, let's celebrate together. Let's celebrate in January at She Thinks Big Live. You may be listening to this when it's still the early-bird discount, I'm not sure, but head over to shethinksbigthebook.com to get yourself a copy of the book and head over to andrealiebross.com/live to get your ticket to She Thinks Big Live and you can bring a copy of your book and I'll even sign it.

Alright, until next time, level up. Who do you know that needs to level up too? Share this episode with them. Tag them. Help them celebrate. By sharing this episode, you are helping them celebrate something that they should be celebrating. Who do you know that needs to celebrate? Share this episode with them and then let's come celebrate together in January.

I hope that if you publish a book, you do not have to experience all those things that I experienced. I hope it goes smoothly. But if it doesn't, remember it will get done in the end. Okay, I will see you all next week.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.