The secret sauce taking the entrepreneurial world by storm.
Natasha Fletcher- Success coach offers her top tips for super boosting your self-love in life and business.
As a therapist and coach, I’ve been working in the behavioral change industry for over 15 years. In that time I’ve worked with a breadth of different people. From mentally unwell murderers to victims of the most extreme psychological trauma such as terrorist attacks and torture. With budding entrepreneurs and 6 figure business owners. Throughout this time the one thing that I have learned with absolute certainty is the most common thing that holds us back from making positive changes or creating huge success in our life is the feeling of not being good enough. Good enough to make those changes or good enough to be worthy of our success.
As a consequence, I’m on a mission to help women in business step into their power and truly love themselves so deeply that they can’t help but show up authentically, and magnetically attract more clients, more sales, and make a huge impact on the world.
Embracing radical self-love and self-acceptance has been a huge part of mine and my client’s journeys and I can’t wait to welcome you into my world of love with these 4 great self love exercises.
Self-love is more than just a feeling towards myself.
It is the practice of choosing myself, putting myself first when I can, making myself important, and being kind and compassionate with myself.
It’s about choosing things, people, and situations that are good for me feel right, and serve me and my business
natasha fletcher
What’s love got to do with it?
Let’s get real and personal, if you don’t completely and totally, I mean absolutely, love yourself you’re going to have a very hard time being a self-employed entrepreneur.
Here’s why, Self-Love requires full acceptance of where you are and what you have to offer, if you’re not in that space you will find that you constantly compare yourself to other self-made entrepreneurs. Wondering what they’re doing, watching their next step and wishing you were in their shoes instead of focusing on your own business.
This is the biggest mistake you can make!
When you compare yourself to other business owners, you give away your power and you lose confidence in yourself as well as in your business. You lose sight of the big picture and what you’re really pushing towards.
And here’s the big question.
If you can’t trust yourself to run a successful business then why should your customers trust you?
Truth bomb time!
Developing and increasing your self-love isn’t all about bubble baths and self-love gifts.
if you want to embrace real, honest and deep self love then you are going to have to do some tough stuff.
Many of us confuse self-love with self-indulgence but real self-love is based on the principles of love for another.
Most of you will recognise that true love is not constantly giving in to the wants and desires of your loved one, It’s not making that persons life as easy as possible or just giving them nice things .
No, it’s doing whats best for them, making decisions in their best interest, accepting them as they are, being kind to them, motivating them and giving them the benefit of the doubt.
This is also self love.
This is what these next three exercises are going to ask of you. They are going to ask you to do something that may feel uncomfortable or might take effort but the end result is connecting more fully to yourself and doing something that your future self will thank you for.
Both our first and last love is self-love
Clean out your wardrobe
But muuuuum, I don’t want to!
Our clothes are often a reflection of who we believe we are and what we believe we deserve.
Old grey underware?- I’m not worth anything better
Clothes that don’t fit you anymore?- I’m not good enough as I am and need to change my body size?
Clothes that don’t look good or feel uncomfortable- I’m not worthy or I don’t deserve to feel comfortable.
Not to mention all of the time you spend looking through your wardrobe for something nice only to start to feel worse and worse about your self as the minutes’ tick by and you have very little in there that makes you feel good
This first challenge is to clean out your wardrobe. Get rid of everything that doesn’t fit (exactly as you are now), you don’t like or you don’t wear.
Keep only things that are practical and comfortable or make you feel fabulous!
Take your old clothes, give them away, swap them or sell them but make a commitment to only buying things that make you feel good as you are.
You deserve to feel and look wonderful.
Make business decisions from a place of self-love
Being an entrepreneur and running a business often feels like a constant merry go round of decision making.
All decisions are yours to make and that can come with a whole lot of pressure and a whole lot of stress.
Often we make decisions based on:
Profit and costs
Other People’s needs
What seems to be the right decision
What “should” be done
When we practice self-love in business it is always about putting any decision to be made through the filter of self-love.
Whenever there is a decision to be made ask yourself:
Will this bring me more ease and flow in my life
Will this support the practice of self love in my life?
Will this help me grow as a person.
If the answer is no to any of these questions then seriously consider whether you want to do this.
Embrace criticism
Self Love isn’t just all about positive thinking, congratulating ourselves, and avoiding anyone with anything critical to say about us. Quite often it’s about recognizing when criticism is warranted and being conscious of the ways in which you can improve as a person. t’s about stepping up and being the person your future self needs.
For example, you might have been unreasonable toward somebody, you might genuinely be lacking in an area that’s important to you or you may be doing something that is holding you back.
Instead of automatically falling into externalizing blame or self-critical thoughts try this little technique
1) Acknowledge to yourself that you have made a mistake or done something wrong.
2) Forgive yourself.
3) Make a plan to do better. That might be apologizing to the person you wronged, it might be working on an area of your life that you want to improve or it might be healing some past hurt that is still being triggered.
Natasha is a successful coach working with fearless entrepreneurs to up-level their mindset, life, business, and impact.