Why birthing anything new is hard to do
First up, let me introduce the newest team Basso member…
Hugo Basso was born on September 23rd, 2020. Since then we’ve been doing the sweet work of getting to know each other and figuring out how to make our way.
In other words, he’s teaching us just how he’d like things. 😉
Spending time with my newborn is giving me some aha moments on running our small businesses. Here’s my first insight…
Birthing something new in our business can be downright painful and is often filled with a range of feelings from stress to fatigue.
Now, I've launched many new things myself (including my latest book!) and have supported many small business owners in doing the same, so I’ve personally seen this first hand. Plus, many of my mentors who are successful 7-figure business owners report a similar experience despite years of doing it. It seems to be true across the board.
What I didn’t understand before is why this happens. Watching my reactions to my newest family addition has shed some light on this.
WHY CREATING SOMETHING NEW IN YOUR BUSINESS IS HARD:
- Loss of control: like it or not, most of us try to maintain a sense of control, or at least choice, in what’s going on around us. It helps us feel safe and secure that, no matter how crazy things are, we can exercise some free will. When you are birthing something (or someone!!) new, having choice is often out the window. The new situation usually comes with some amount of needs or have-tos that are outside of what we’d like or want to do. It’s only when we finally surrender to what is, rather than fighting against what’s needed, that we can make progress. Even though we may understand this intellectually, giving up this control can feel hard.
- More work: face it, doing something new is more work than doing what you’ve always done. We all wish it wasn’t so! But if it was easy to pop out something new and make millions at it, we’d all be millionaires. Instead, it often takes more effort than we'd like to create that new product/service/website or whatever new thing we are trying to birth. Like it or not, that new thing only comes when you carve out time or money to get it done. That can be hard to swallow and even cause paralysis as we waiver between our desire to bring in the new and our stories about lack of time or money.
- Doubt our abilities: nothing brings up our inner fears faster than creating something new. No matter how much inner growth work you’ve done, that little voice will come roaring forward asking who you think you are to do this or planting seeds of doubt that it will work. Learning to move forward despite this voice is mandatory to get anything new birthed, but it's not always easy to do.
It’s not just we humans that feel birthing pains, all around us you can see that new growth comes at a price. Many plants only grow after a fire burns through the forest. Insects often lose their very skin or shell as they grow. Animals display the same kind of effort and pain that we humans do in bearing their young.
It may be that the effort and pain we experience to bear something new makes us stronger and more resilient for what’s next. So embrace it and become a better version of you.
The good news is that the pain soon passes if you let it. Sure, it’s hard in the moment and may even feel unbearable (believe me, I felt this way on both my book & the baby!!) But like all life experiences, this too shall pass as they say. And it really does.
So if you can remember that and brave birthing something new you can get to the joy on the other side. Trust me, it’s worth the journey.
As always, I love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Email if you have experienced something similar, or totally different!
