One of my clients used to yo-yo from doing a million things to crashing and not being able to get out of bed. Both of these things were survival mode action. The feeling of lack would build up over the course of a few days, a few weeks, and then it would get strong enough and it would propel her into being superwoman. She would get so much work done and then she would crash. And even though there was more to do, she would still crash.
But the fact is, is she was burnt out, her nervous system was shot, and her body needed the rest. So it was like once the lack built up and she had to eventually take action to prevent the lack from getting even worse or getting to the point where it's irreversible, she would spring into action and run on that adrenaline. And then she would crash and wouldn't be able to get up again until that lack spiral got so great that it propelled her back into superwoman mode. I. In this cycle.
It kept her in this burnout cycle. She made mistakes of course, and she took on the worst clients. Needy, horrible, always wanting more, create, trying to get more and more. And of course she bent over backwards 'cause she was in survival mode and she was never really doing her best work. Hello. So today I have a question for you. Do you ever find yourself rushing to get things done only to make mistakes and then end up spending more time fixing them?
Or maybe you're constantly checking your emails and your text, you're worried that if you don't respond right away, you're gonna miss something important. That fomo feeling. So the feeling underneath all of that. That feeling that there's not enough time, not enough money, not enough clients, not enough you to go around. That feeling is what I call the emotion of lack, and I hate to tell you this, but it's slowly killing your business. It's slowly sabotaging you.
So you're going to want to get it under control because it's costing you money, it's costing you time, and it's definitely costing you clients and customers. So today I am gonna show you exactly how this emotion of lack shows up in your business decisions and how it keeps you running on that hamster wheel instead of moving forward. And of course, I'm going to give you some practical tools so you can start making the decisions that'll actually grow your business.
Our life is the result of the decisions we make. So it's so important to be making those decisions from a place of empowerment within ourselves and not from this place of lack. So here's the kicker, though. Most of us, and I say most of us, because I still fall prey to this emotion from time to time, most of us don't even realize that we're operating from lack. We think we're being smart, we think we're being strategic, responsible, efficient, but I'll show you why.
The feeling of lack, that feeling of not having enough is actually making you less effective. And less attractive to clients and customers and less capable of creating the business that you want. So let's start off, what exactly is this emotion of lack? First of all, it's the feeling that you're missing something that you think you need or that you should have. It can manifest as not feeling good enough, or not having enough time or money, clients skills, knowledge, or even charisma.
It's that shit feeling that you get when you compare yourself to someone. I think social media is stirring up that feeling of lack in so many people, and it creates the constant feeling of wanting, of needing, instead of being content and being satisfied with where you are right now. And the feeling of lack. It operates subtly in the background of your day-to-day actions and decisions. It manifests as judgment of yourself and others. Are you beating yourself up?
Are you talking shit about other people? Hello? Negative self-talk. It shows up as that fear of putting yourself out there or those little white lies that you tell when you wanna impress somebody. Or hide something that maybe you're not so proud of.
Now you need to know also that all stress, and I mean all stress is the result of the feeling of lack, so that everyday tension in your neck or that slight clench in your jaw, those are signs that somewhere in your system you are feeling the feeling of lack. Now when you feel lack, your brain automatically goes into survival mode. I mean, the feeling of lack is designed. Our brains are hardwired to notice the feeling of lack.
It is a survival mechanism, and so when you feel it, you automatically go into that survival mode. And survival mode drives short term, instant gratification decisions. And I am no stranger to those short-term instant gratification decisions. I made them most of my life. I very rarely, in most of my life, made long-term decisions. But an example that was not even that long ago was me avoiding posting on social media.
Like once I started leaning into my brand, the truth of where I really wanted to go, leaning into that authenticity and the real me, it became. Hard for me to post, for me to show up and say what I really wanted to say. Now, I could post all day long about all the things that didn't matter to me, things that weren't really me, like that was easy. It was easy to show up as this masked version of who I should be.
So instead of posting the real me and putting myself out there, I found myself doing things in my business that I didn't really need to do. Like, oh, I'm gonna go back and edit podcasts from two years ago. Like, that is not gonna make an impact in my business. But I thought it was so important because I had to make sure I looked a certain way, right, notices a symptom of the same problem, of being afraid to just be authentically messy.
By putting myself out there fully, completely, totally as me, I was anticipating the feeling of lack. And I was running from the feeling of lack inside of me And I was running from the feeling of lack inside of me. That would come from putting myself out there and not having anyone care. And yes, that is a childhood survival pattern to prevent being abandoned and rejected.
It's an instant gratification choice because I completed other things to make it seem like I was getting stuff done, but I wasn't working for the long term of my business and it was keeping me running in place. To grow your business, you have to make long-term decisions. Those short term, instant gratification decisions, they have long tails and you'll be living out the consequences of them six months, even years from now.
Like those things that you procrastinate on or the endless tinkering with your website not gonna help grow your business. So how does lack show up in your business? Well, procrastination is an obvious one. Procrastination on important tasks like posting on social media and actually putting myself out there, rushing to make mistakes, making decisions too fast. This is a big one.
Everybody always says that you have to be a fast, decisive decision maker in business, but oftentimes when you're making decisions really fast, like you haven't even taken a breath before, you're decided and spun into action. You are also a person who's good in crisis. These are signs that you might be making decisions too fast and from a place of lack. Now if you're really good in crisis, it means when you feel that massive lack, you can spring into action and you're good.
Really great at making those survival mode instant effect decisions. And those are great for right now when everything's falling apart and there is a major crisis. But to grow your business, you have to be able to think further than right now. Another one is that feeling compelled to respond immediately to message. That's a sign that you're in survival mode or taking the big leaps, but always falling short.
The constant worry about money and time again, all this is from that feeling of lack and when you feel lack, it puts you into survival mode. One of my clients used to yo-yo from doing a million things to crashing and not being able to get out of bed. Both of these things were survival mode action. The feeling of lack would build up over the course of a few days, a few weeks, and then it would get strong enough and it would propel her into being superwoman.
She would get so much work done and then she would crash. And even though there was more to do, she would still crash. But the fact is, is she was burnt out, her nervous system was shot, and her body needed the rest. So it was like once the lack built up and she had to eventually take action to prevent the lack from getting even worse or getting to the point where it's irreversible, she would spring into action and run on that adrenaline.
And then she would crash and wouldn't be able to get up again until that lack spiral got so great that it propelled her back into superwoman mode. I. In this cycle. It kept her in this burnout cycle. She made mistakes of course, and she took on the worst clients. Needy, horrible, always wanting more, create, trying to get more and more. And of course she bent over backwards 'cause she was in survival mode and she was never really doing her best work.
And it's probably not surprising to you that her business stagnated and started to go downhill. Another place where lack really affects your business is your communication and you are gonna communicate differently. When you feel lack. The way you communicate with your team will feel stressful and it will put them on edge.
It will also make them not trust you because if you are not feeling certain and you are feeling this place of lack, it makes them feel uncertain and also feel lack, which of course is gonna make them operate from survival mode. And we just talked about how you're not going to get your best work when you're in survival mode. And of course, sales, you know, they tell you in sales trainings never to be concerned about the outcome. You have to let go of the outcome. But if you come from a place.
Of, I have everything I need. I'm in overflow and I can help you. It's so different than when you sell or when you're talking to clients. Or talking to potential partners. When you're coming from that place, the energy of it is just different. People can sense when you're coming from a place of need, a place of lack, and I know you've all felt it.
You felt the difference between I need to get the sale, that salesperson and the one who's not attached to whether you buy or not, but really wants to help you. And networking is another big one. When your networking feels like taking. Rather than connecting, you can know that the emotion of lack is at play. Now. I've been fortunate enough to be invited into some rooms where everyone is there to genuinely help each other.
They're coming from this place of overflow and abundance, and I always feel so inspired and high when I leave without even having any alcohol, and it's so different than some of the other networking events I've been to where you leave feeling drained, depleted, and you just hope that you never see half of those people again. So again, that cycle of lack is you feel the lack, you go into survival mode. You start making instant gratification decisions, which create more lack.
And so this becomes a self perpetuating cycle. Until you get your system out of that feeling of lack, you're going to continue this cycle. So it's always important to take that pause. Remember when I said if you make decisions too fast, stop, take a breath. Allow yourself to actually check in before you make a decision. If you automatically start talking right away, if you cannot pause before you speak, that's a sign that you're in a feeling of lack and in survival mode, uncomfortable silences.
If you, they're uncomfortable for you. That's a sign of the feeling of lack and the emotion of lack is a key reason that your success zone stays small. And when your success zone is small, you can't maintain those higher levels of success of joy or your ability to be the wolf. Be 100% who you are. Expanding your success zone requires it requires you addressing the emotion of lack at its root. When you're making those short term instant gratification choices, you're outside of your success zone.
Let's look at this in another way. When you push outside and beyond your current success zone, it is like trying to pour five gallons of water into a one gallon container. No matter how hard you try. Most of it's gonna spill out, and then you spend all this time and effort trying to scoop up the water and put it in the container, but the container just can't hold it no matter what you do.
So that's your ability to be authentic, your authentically yourself, you to be able to be an operating in joy and feeling good, and the ability to hold and maintain the amount of success you want. People experience those feast and famine cycles. It's why they can't break through certain revenue plateaus the container, their success zone just simply can't hold it. Now, expanding your success zone means increasing the size of the container so that you can hold more of everything you want.
If you ha if your container could hold five gallons. You wouldn't spill any of that effort, any of that extra water, you'd be able to actually hold it and put it to good use. Now, understanding about the feeling of lack, that's one thing. But how do you actually deal with it? So I wanna give you a tip right now that will help you to deal with it. And depending on how big your lack spiral is, this could take a couple minutes, it could take 45 minutes.
I don't know how long it's gonna take for you. I've had lack spirals where I had to do this exercise for an hour to get out of it. And the reason why. This is so important to get out of the lack spiral is so that. You can start making decisions like today, this morning I woke up after a dream. I was stressed. I had lack.
I had that feeling of lack, and so I needed to take time to get out of that feeling before I went about my day, because then everything was gonna be motivated by short term decisions, instant gratification. I wouldn't be able to progress forward. So the 15 minutes that I used to get out of that feeling of lack. Was so useful in me getting everything else done and having the rest of my day run smoothly. So what I did this morning is I jumped on a trampoline for 15 minutes.
So jumping up and down releases stress. It also releases endorphins that make you feel happy. So that's one thing you can do. The other exercise that I was just speaking about that I wanna teach you is the, what do I have right now? Exercise. So you're gonna ask yourself, you're gonna start with something so basic that you take for granted. Like I have air to breathe. So you're gonna say, I have air to breathe right now. I have air to breathe right now. I have air to breathe right now.
And notice, don't just say it, but notice that you have the air to breathe and saying the words right now is incredibly important. So I have air to breathe right now. And just keep saying it until something else comes up in your mind that you notice that you have. I like to start with things that are so small I don't even realize I have them. So I will often go from, I have air to breathe. Eventually I'll realize I have a heart that pumps my blood.
Right now I. I have a heart that pumps my blood right now, and I'll keep going until I can see something else that I have that's so obvious that I have it, that I take for granted. So it could be I have feet to walk on right now. I have feet to walk on. I. Right now, and you keep working with this until you start to feel calm and I like to work with things that are inside of me, so body parts, organs that are working for me always in the background.
And then I will move to, I have the ability to figure out problems. Right now I have the ability to pick up the phone and call somebody for support or help. Right now I have tenacity Right now. So keeping it internalized to what you specifically have so it's not an external thing, will really start to bring you out of that feeling of lack. If we start saying, oh, I have a roof over my head, I have a chair to sit in. Those things are great.
You can say that because it might help you get there, but those are things that could in theory, be taken away. So working with qualities that you know you have and your body parts that you know are working for you. Those things are things that people can't really take away, so it helps you ground down into the feeling of what you truly have. It won't feel like it's on slippery ground. And like I said, this exercise may just take a couple minutes. It may take 45 minutes.
I've had spirals of lack where I sat saying I have air to breathe for like 35 minutes before I could even access and fully recognize that I had anything beyond that. But once I started to, then it moved much faster and I was able to move to a place of neutral in about 10 more minutes. But here's the thing, you will get to this place of neutral, and once you get to the place of neutral, you have the option to keep going once you start to feel okay. Like you're no longer lacking anything.
You can keep going and keep talking about what you have, and you can talk about, I have connections. I have the ability to connect with people every single day. You know, you can talk about these things that Become bigger and bigger and you can start to realize that you have more and more.
And if you keep this exercise going past the place of neutral, you might just slip into a feeling of gratitude, which is a high vibration frequency, a high vibe feeling that will help you to feel good about what you do and help you make those long-term decisions. Making long-term decisions requires you to feel neutral or an elevated emotion. We often cannot access the ability to do that when we're feeling lack because we're in that survival mode.
And so if you work yourself up to this place of gratitude, you are setting yourself up for success. It's important to know that you can't just jump from the feeling of lack to gratitude. A lot of people try and do this like, oh, just do your gratitude exercises. But when you're in a lack spiral, you cannot. Go from a lack feeling to an abundant feeling without going through neutral first.
For those who are old enough to know how to drive a stick shift car, you know, to switch gears, you have to go through neutral first. So that is something that's really important. In this exercise is not about getting to gratitude, it's about getting out of lack. Getting to at least neutral and then moving from beyond that.
Now you might have a habit of lack, and if you have a habit of lack, if your general state of being is a state of lack, you might need some deeper work than just this exercise. This exercise is gonna be incredibly useful if you start your day with it every day and work yourself up to gratitude and do it multiple times a day. You can start to rewire that feeling of lack, but you might need deeper work.
And a sign that you have that feeling of lack is you're always waiting for the bad thing to happen, or you always notice what's wrong and never notice what's right. And understanding and noticing the habit of lack, of course, is the first step. And when you catch those little moments where you're just noticing what's wrong or you're picking somebody apart, I. Do the what? Do I have? Exercise. Bring yourself back to neutral. Get in the habit of doing that, and that will begin to rewire.
But if you need the deeper work, or you want the deeper work because you want that process to move faster, there are advanced mental techniques that can help you rewire that pattern. That client that I spoke of earlier, we were able to recalibrate her nervous system, and now she takes those steady steps towards the growth of her business. She works less, she makes more, she's not making mistakes anymore, and she says no to those shitty clients.
Now again, dealing with the feeling of lack is one of the most important things to being able to expand your success zone. And of course, I've already explained to you why expanding your success zone is so important, so critical to your business growth. And I have a guide out there which goes over and breaks down this exercise. The what do I have? Exercise. And it has more information about the feeling of lack. It's called the Three Secrets the Business Gurus Never Talk About.
You can grab that at Be the Wolf Gift. Dot com, so grab that. That'll get you on my mailing list if you're more interested in those advanced mental techniques. That's some of the stuff that I do with my clients because I work with them to permanently rewire these patterns so that the new behaviors are automatic. It's not just a pause and then I can do better, but I have to catch myself every time. It just becomes an automatic part of how they operate.
Again, grab that guide, be the wolf gift.com. That'll put you on my mailing list. You'll get access to more information about all of this stuff, and you will learn more about the feeling of lack, and you'll have a written copy of that exercise that what do I have exercise that is so useful to getting out of those lack spirals. Okay. Thank you everybody for listening and we'll see you next time on Be The Wolf. And remember, of course, when you unleash the power of you, humanity evolves.
Take care everyone. Bye.