Business Minded Bonus 6: When Others Don’t Believe in You

I’m Jody Moore and this is a Business Minded Bonus 6: When Others Don’t Believe in You.

This is Business Minded, a series of bonus podcast episodes designed to help you achieve your business goals, whether you’re a photographer, you participate in a network marketing business, a coach, or any other kind of entrepreneur. Join me where I will be sharing my best tips and practices to achieve what you want to in your business. Let’s go.

Hello friends. Hello fellow entrepreneur friends. This topic today is one that I have a lot of experience with and have coached a lot on. And I noticed that it comes up a lot for business owners. We’re going to talk about when other people don’t believe in you. If you’re married and you have a spouse that doesn’t think you should be starting a business or thinks that you’re fooling yourself. Or maybe you have parents or other friends, maybe you have coworkers from your current or former profession who think you’re crazy. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

And I’m going to talk to you about how to navigate that and how to get your head in the space that will be necessary to be successful as an entrepreneur. So, I want to start out by telling you the truth. The truth is we think we want other people to believe in us. We think we want other people to think positively about us, or to think that we’re going to be able to achieve what we’re wanting to. But the truth is we don’t feel other people’s thoughts. We’re not actually affected by other people’s beliefs. We’re affected by our own beliefs.

What we really want is permission to believe in ourselves. That’s what we really crave and desire is our own approval. It’s just that if other people approve of us and say, “I think that sounds like a great idea that business that you’re building. I think it’s going to be so successful.” Then we give ourselves permission to believe that maybe they’re right. We give ourselves permission to believe that maybe this is a good idea. Maybe we really can be successful. And believing that feels really good. It’s very useful fuel for all the things that we need to do to achieve our goals and dreams.

And so, we look to outside people to do the work of believing in us for us. Now, sometimes we get that. Sometimes we have somebody outside of us that believes in us. I love the stories about young kids who have a teacher that believes in them, especially when other people aren’t believing in them.

I love the ones where there’s a kid who’s having problems, maybe behavioral problems or academic problems and struggling. And a teacher says, “I see this in you. I see this greatness in you. I believe in you.” Those are such inspiring stories because if the child chooses to trust in the teacher and borrow from their beliefs and gives themselves permission to believe that maybe they’re not a problem. Maybe they’re actually really special in many ways, then they can go on to achieve great things. So, I’m all for that.

I’m all for you having a spouse that supports you, that’s lovely when that happens. But also, I don’t want you to be dependent on that. I don’t want you to wait around for that, especially if you don’t have that situation. And I promise you that you don’t need them to believe in you. What you need is permission to believe in yourself. Your beliefs affect the results of your life. Other people’s beliefs don’t affect your results, your beliefs do.

Now, I’m always fascinated at this phenomenon where we give so much more weight to someone else’s opinion than our own many times. I’m not sure why this is. I’m sure it has to do with our egos. Maybe we would call it the natural man. Maybe we just call it our own self-doubt and that we tend to be harder and more critical on themselves than on others. I don’t know. But I do find if there’s a debate going on, am I good enough?

Or let’s keep it about business. Am I going to be able to succeed at this goal I’ve set as an entrepreneur? Maybe I kind of think I am but if somebody else comes along and thinks I can’t, their opinion gets 10 points, mine gets maybe two points. See what I mean by we weight other people’s opinions so much heavier than our own many times? I don’t know if we think maybe they know something I don’t. Maybe they’re smarter than me. Maybe they see something about me that I don’t see in myself. I’m not sure what it is.

But I do notice that we give other people’s opinions so much more weight than our own. So that’s just something to be aware of. It doesn’t change the fact that my belief that I can do this is just a thought and their belief that I can’t is just a thought. So, you guys know a lot of the things that I teach here on Better Than Happy about understanding the difference between facts and thoughts. And people will take facts and put them together into thought form. They will create stories out of facts. This is what statisticians do. This is what we do with data.

We don’t just look at data. We tell a story with the data. So just be careful about putting things into circumstance land that are actually thoughts and stories. For example, your spouse may say, “This is the data about the percentage of people that have been successful doing what you’re trying to do.” It’s a very dismal percentage, it’s 5% let’s say, 5% of everybody who’s tried to do what you do, succeed. That might be a fact, 5% of the people succeed. But if the story that he or she is telling is therefore there is a good chance you won’t succeed, now we’re in storyland, now we’re in thought land.

I could give examples all day long of this. People love to cite research and data. And I’m all for using that in useful ways. But be careful about how you use it because you can use research and data to tell a story. That’s the purpose of it. That’s the reason we do research, to see if our theories are correct. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still just theories. This is why you look at the field of medicine.

We have research in one decade that says make sure you put babies to sleep on their stomach. That’s the safest. And then decades later they say make sure you put babies to sleep on their backs. That’s the safest. How could that be? Well, because research and data is still somewhat subjective. It still has to be interpreted by human beings who will tell stories to the best of our ability in most cases. We’re not usually trying to be misleading. But my point is don’t start thinking that thoughts are facts.

Okay, so I want to talk about what to do. If you have a spouse, or parents, or somebody else who you really trust their opinion and they’re just like, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. This is a little crazy. This is a little ridiculous.” It is important that you learn to believe in yourself, or to at least believe in what you’re trying to do.

I find that believing in myself is challenging to do because I’m very aware of all my shortcomings. And I know my whole past history of times when I have dropped the ball. I’m just not perfect ever at following through. And I know that there’s so much stuff I don’t know. So, believing in myself, tough to do. But believing in my mission, not so tough, definitely doable. When I think about what I’m trying to do, and this is true no matter what kind of business you have.

If you are a health coach let’s say then your mission might be to help people get healthier and in the process improve the relationship with their bodies and with food. That’s a valuable mission. That’s a good excellent righteous contribution to make in the world. Think about how much good we could do with that mission.

If you sell a product, I used to sell Norwex. I believed in the mission of that product. I believed, I guess we could call it mission. But sometimes believing in your product. I couldn’t always believe in me that I would follow through and do all the things necessary to be successful. But I could believe in the product. I could believe that Norwex is awesome. For those of you that don’t know what Norwex is, they’re like green cleaning products, cloths, and things that you can clean your home with just water. So, we get rid of all the toxic chemicals.

And what I love the most, it just made it so much easier. I didn’t have to haul out a whole bucketful of supplies, cleaning supplies to clean the bathroom. I just had a rag and water. So, I could believe in that. I couldn’t always believe in me but I could believe in the product. I could believe in the mission of what I was trying to accomplish in the different businesses I have worked in. So, it is important that you believe because your thought will create your result.

You guys know the model, circumstances trigger thoughts, thoughts create feelings, feelings drive our actions which creates ultimately our results. So, the belief is important. But you really only need to believe in your mission, or your product, or the tools that you offer.

I remember when I started my coaching practice and I was a brand new coach. And I knew I was an okay coach but I wasn’t an amazing coach, I just wasn’t. I couldn’t coach at the level then that I can now because I didn’t have all the years of practice coaching. But I could believe in the tools that I gained at coach training. I could believe in the model that I teach you guys here. I could believe in all the other tools that I was taught to use. And I knew that I could rely on those tools.

And I believed in the mission of what I was trying to do. I was trying to help people better their lives by bettering their mental and emotional states. So do you see how, you don’t have to believe in you, you just have to believe in your product, believe in your service, believe in your mission, believe in your tools. If you believe in that stuff then you can show up for the rest, you can I promise. You don’t have to be perfect at any of it. You can be actually 50%, at least B minus you can be and still get to where you’re trying to go.

So, belief matters but put your belief in your tools, or your mission, or something like that. Now, another thing I like to do is borrow belief. And I know I just said, other people’s beliefs don’t affect you, it’s only your own belief.

But you can still borrow belief from someone else. It just may not be the person you thought it was going to be. It may not be your spouse. It may not be your mother or father. It may not be your old boss. They are not the ones. It’s okay, you don’t need even most of the people in your life to believe in you. You only need one person to believe in what you’re trying to do.

When I started my coaching practice eight years ago my husband was really supportive of me going. He was like, “Okay, I can see that you love this and it seems to be really good for you so go do whatever you need to do.” But other than that, I didn’t have really a lot of people in my life who understood what I was doing. The rest of my family were like, “We don’t know what this weird land is that Jody’s explored into but whatever, whatever makes her happy.” But I don’t think that any of them were critical of it necessarily. I think they were just like, whatever, I don’t really get that.

So, I guarantee there were people probably from my old corporate job, well, first of all, nobody’s really thinking about me as much as I think they are. So that’s good to remember, most of them were like, “We don’t really care what you do.” But if any of them had ever gotten wind that I was building a coaching practice I guarantee there are some that would think that’s silly, that’s ridiculous.

To this day, even with the level of success that I’ve had there are people out there who think coaching is fake therapy, or it’s a scheme or whatever. People have all kinds of judgment. They don’t believe in what I do. They don’t believe in what I’m offering. So, I’ve had plenty of experience with this. And the way that I still believed in where I was going is I would borrow from one person. So, I did know other coaches. I only knew one or two at the time but I knew a couple who understood the power of this work.

Kris Placky who first introduced me to this work and she’s a very intelligent, successful, amazing woman. And she believes in this so maybe it’s okay. I borrowed from her belief. And she believes that I could be successful doing this. So, I borrowed that belief from her. That’s actually one of the things I love about coaches. I borrow belief from my coaches all the time. I borrowed belief from Brad Jensen that I could lose the 25 pounds I wanted to lose.

I borrow belief from other people who are usually in many cases very knowledgeable about the area. And I tell myself, alright, remember, we put 10 points in other people’s opinion. So, if I can find one person that – they don’t even have to believe in me. They just believe in the tools and the work, then I give myself permission to believe it. Now, you don’t have to wait for that, you can do it yourself. But there’s nothing wrong with borrowing it.

Just don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself that it’s not your spouse. Maybe your spouse doesn’t understand it. Your spouse clearly doesn’t get it. We don’t need him or her to believe in it. We can do that. We’ve got us.

The other thing I do is I borrow belief from just examples around me. I look at other women who have kids who are entrepreneurs, who are doing good work in the world. And I go, “I’m a woman like her, I have kids like her. I am trying to juggle being a mom, live into my values and be available to my family and build this business. And she’s able to do it. It’s possible I could do it.” So many people don’t do this. They use other people’s success as ways to doubt themselves. They think she’s doing better than me, she’s ahead of me. Why would you want to do that?

Use other people’s success as a reason to believe that it’s possible for you because if it’s possible for another human being, it’s possible for you. They live in the same world you do, if they could do it, it’s possible you could do it. You’ll do your own version of it of course. But use other people’s success as evidence of what’s possible, is one of my most favorite things to do.

Last thing I want to say about this topic because sometimes when I coach people on this they’re like, “I know, if I believed in myself better it wouldn’t bother me that my sister’s judging me. So, I just need to believe in myself and I don’t know how. I’m not believing hard enough.” And we say all these kinds of things. I’m like, “Listen, you’re always probably going to have some doubt.” Most people I know always have at least some doubt, if not, tons of doubt.

And I know people at all different levels of success, people that you would never believe that are what we would call uber successful in many ways, still have doubt. The doubt doesn’t really go away.

But I like the way Abraham teaches this which is it’s sort of like two ends of a stick. And on one end you have the doubt, you have the fear that you can’t do it, that you’re not good enough, that it’s not going to work, that it’s the wrong timing, etc. And on the other end of the stick is belief, all the things we just talked about. It’s possible that I could, other people have. I have these great tools. I have this great mission. I have this great product. I can believe in all of that. That’s on the other end of the stick, the belief end of the stick.

And all you have to do is keep the belief end a little bit stronger than the doubt end. It doesn’t mean that doubt won’t creep in. It will. I never really launch anything in my business, sell something in my business, try something new in my business without doubt coming along. It always comes. I just notice it. I choose not to give it tons of time and tons of attention. I’m also not mad that it’s there. I don’t do deep dives into it. I don’t really give it tons of airtime.

I just notice it kind of rise up within me. I notice my head go to the place of that’s never going to work. People are never going to want that. You’re never going to be able to do it. That’s what it says. Sometimes I get a flash picture of a worst case scenario. I’m going to try to sell something and zero people are going to buy. Or I’m going to launch a new program and somebody’s going to be offended and I’m going to be cancelled.

I get a flash of whatever in my brain thinks would be worst case scenario at that point. And I just kind of am amused by it. I’m just kind of like, I mean maybe. It’s possible. Any of these things are possible. But if so when I would figure out what to do next. I would figure out how to pick myself up and move on if that happened. And also, the worst case scenario is usually not very likely. Odds are it’s not going to be anything that dramatic.

So, after that happens, after I have a worst case scenario, I give myself permission to picture best case scenario. Some of you don’t do this. Some of you use your imagination to picture everything that could go wrong. And we have very vivid imaginations in this area. And I want you to put that imagination to work picturing everything that could go right. When your brain says, “What if it doesn’t work, what if it fails?” Then I like to go, “I know, but what if it does work? What if it succeeds?”

And remember, what all of us are trying to do is so much bigger than ourselves. What if this really helps someone? What if I really make an impact in someone’s life in this way? What if more people want help as a result of this? What if I exceed the goal I have set for myself? What if I get called next week by the TED Organization and they want me to come and give a TED Talk?

What if, if you’re a photographer, Oprah calls and wants me to come and take her family photos with her and Stedman and their dog? What if – picture best case scenario you guys. What if it all goes amazingly well? What if The Today Show calls me and says to me, “Heard that thing you taught and we want you to come and talk about it on our show? Can we fly you out next week?” What if, I mean if we’re going to what if, we can what if on the doubt end of the stick. But let’s what if on the belief end of the stick too.

Now, I know for some of you, you have fear that comes up on that end too. We call this fear of success. But I don’t personally think anyone’s afraid of success. I think that they’re afraid of success and then something. If they got called to be on The Today Show then they would be afraid that they would mess up on The Today Show or people would judge them or something like that. We have this fear of exposure, some people because of again, the fear of judgment, or fear of our own mistakes and our own shortcomings.

So, to me that’s all still fear of failure, especially if you’re careful about the way you define success. Success is not just achieving your business goals. Success is loving your life along the way. Success is growing as a person because of the work that’s required to do whether you succeed or don’t succeed. Success is like I talked about before, learning how to not be on a rollercoaster of highs and lows but ride the rolling hills of just subtle disappointment and being happy that things worked out.

Success is emotional maturity. Success is also balance in your life. Success is learning how to take care of yourself and not let the business take over other things that you value and prioritize. Success is living into your values and living from abundance not from scarcity. So, success is something that I recommend that you really think about. But you are allowed to believe my friend, anything you want to, literally anything you want you’re allowed to believe. No one can take that away from you.

And I don’t want you to wait on other people to believe for you. If you can find one, great, if you can’t, call me up. I promise I can believe in you, whatever your goal and your dream is, I can find evidence that it’s possible. Have a coach. We don’t need anyone else to believe in us.

This was my mantra over and over again. Again, when I was first going through coach training and then I was practicing coaching and I was building this business. And people around me just didn’t understand it. Many of those people by the way, I should say, are now certified life coaches, for the record. But some of the people around me did not understand it, some of my friends etc.

And what I just told myself over and over again was, they don’t need to understand how powerful this is because I do. I don’t need them to believe it, it’s okay, they don’t get it. They haven’t experienced it like I have. I had experienced the power of coaching. I had experienced the power of the model. I had experienced the amazing good righteous changes that occurred in myself and therefore in my life, and in my relationships, and every other way as a result of coaching.

And I knew the power of it, so if other people didn’t, it’s okay. If they don’t think that what you’re doing is smart, it’s okay. Let them just sit back and watch what you’re capable of.

Alright you guys, thanks for joining me today. I’m going to be talking about Business Minded in a couple of weeks so stay tuned. You’re going to want to join me. We’re going to work together all next year and it’s going to be amazing. I will be scheduling some information calls where I will be telling you all about it, so stay tuned for details about that coming very soon. Make sure you’re signed up at jodymoore.com/business to get all of those notifications, otherwise thanks for joining me. Please share this episode if it was helpful to you and I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.

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