Maybe you’re just like so many of the clients I’ve worked with and you feel like you’ve been working so hard yet not getting anywhere. One of the things I often hear from the entrepreneurial and ambitious women I have the opportunity to support is that no matter how hard they work, they can’t get ahead. The work they’re doing feels burdensome. They want a sense of accomplishment and freedom from this burden.
The thing they invariably learn is that to have freedom, you have to think differently about your life, which will ultimately lead you to take different actions.
The first step is to level up your mindset and identify and overcome the fears and limiting beliefs that are holding you back. After that, you should put together a new plan that embraces your goals and gives you time to accomplish them.
Once you’ve done those two things, you should now begin to see the problem wasn’t that you needed to work harder; you needed to work differently.
Build new traffic patterns for your brain
Think about it like this. During all your hard work trying to make happen what you thought you were supposed to make happen, underneath, something else was trying to happen.
That something else was the next best version of you and what you needed to do was to give her space, but instead, you were blocking her with your expectations, assumptions, and limiting beliefs. Once you’ve cleared all of those away, the next best version of you can become who she needs to be!
As you’ve worked to redirect your negative thoughts to more productive ones, you’ve actually rewired the neural pathways in your brain.
This is science. This isn’t as “woo-woo” as some people make it sound. This is literally how the brain works. (I knew there was a reason I loved neuroscience so much in college!)
When we start doing things a different way, our brains prune the synapses we aren’t using anymore and strengthen the pathways for the activity we’re doing more of — and that strength even carries over to similar activities. The more challenging and emotionally involved the activity, the better we’ll remember it and engrain it for the future.
So as you get rid of thought patterns that aren’t serving you and begin to focus on new ones, eventually, you’ll become a new version of yourself.
Redefine what freedom means to you
So, what does rewiring your brain have to do with creating freedom and achieving greater success as an entrepreneur?
When you run your own business, you can create your own freedoms, and when you’re free, you can live up to your potential. Entrepreneurs often choose their path because they want what they consider freedom in four main categories: Time, money, relationships, and brain power — our four most valuable resources.
But these freedoms are more about how a person manages their mind than how they manage the resource itself.
According to business mentor and coach John Olivant, freedom is a universal human desire, but attaining it is the hard part because it is all in your thinking. He explains that the way we define freedom regarding our resources affects how we think about them.
Let’s examine our thinking about the four main entrepreneurial freedoms.
1. Freedom of time:
As a business owner and entrepreneur, you constantly juggle time constraints. You may have once fantasized about having the freedom to do whatever you wanted with your time, but now, you may feel like that was an impossible dream.
However, that’s all in your thinking. You can manage people who demand your time, and you can choose how much free time you have and what you do with it. If you think you should be available all the time to clients, staff, and family, that’s not a problem with time but a problem with your thoughts about time.
2. Freedom of money:
When I talk to my clients about money, most just tell me they want to make more. I ask, “How much more?” But they don’t know. They don’t even give themselves permission to establish a number. Setting a number is scary. What if they don’t achieve it?
But is the real goal with money having piles of it or just not having to worry about it? Olivant says most people would choose the second option.
Want more tips? Download the FREE resources available in the Think Big Toolkit!
3. Freedom of relationship:
Whom do you want to do business with? Who do you want on your team? You get to choose these people because you own your own business. Not only that, you get to choose how you want to think about and interact with those people.
How to have a relationship is often far more important than whether to have it. We can learn and grow a great deal just by working through difficult situations with people.
4. Freedom of brain power:
This is the ultimate freedom. No one gets to tell you what to think, what opinions to have, or how to feel. You get to think about what you want right now and direct your energy and brain power toward what you choose. And ultimately, you get to feel free right now — that feeling is only a choice away.
How you use your brain is your most important freedom because it shapes everything else. When you’re choosing how to think and feel about things instead of just reacting, you’ll be unstoppable!
Shift your thinking about freedom and unlock greater success
As Maxime Legacé once said, “The fruits of entrepreneurship are meaning and freedom.” And it is often our mindset about meaning and freedom that holds us back or allows us to skyrocket our success. Even if your version of success is different from everyone else, your ability to attain the results you want is fully dependent on your ability to manage your mind and redefine what freedom looks like for YOU.
To learn more about creating real freedom in your life as an entrepreneur and rewiring your brain for success, my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and into the Extraordinary, has a complete breakdown of how you can incorporate a new way of thinking into your life.
If you are a successful entrepreneur but have even an inkling that there is another level of success and you are meant for more, my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and into the Extraordinary, is for you.
In it, I’m giving you permission to want more, be more, and achieve more, and I’ll give you the tools to bring it into your reality in a way that works for your life.
Don’t wait! Order your copy today and start taking steps to create focus, flow, and freedom in your life and business so you can tap into the next level of success.
For MUST-HAVE planning tools that work seamlessly with the book to help you stop overthinking and make confident, quick decisions to get what you want — every single time, download my Think Big Toolkit. (I couldn’t fit everything in the book!)
