Special Guest
Alexander Lovell, PhD of Moving Beyond shares a regret that sometimes morphs into fear that temporarily cripples him from taking the next step.
Storytime
I spent $14K for a coaching firm called Growth Tools to teach me how to make my business fail, and I don’t regret it.
It was a high-ticket marketing your business coaching program. And it had all the red flags.
Too good to be true promises.
A salesman who told me everything I wanted to hear.
A marketing coach who said I was the easiest case she had ever seen.
A Money Back Guarantee.
“Fine. Let’s do this,” I said as I gave the salesman my credit card number. I felt sick to my stomach.
Yup. I fell for the scam. Big time.
And the worst part, it wasn’t the first time.
The last red flag, the one I ignored the most, was the contract I signed, promising that I would complete their task-list. 800 items!
Yeah. . . Duh. . . my eyes skirted right over that one as I signed my soul to the marketing devil.
Over the next three months, I spent 6-7 hours a day being the good student and checking items off their task list:
25% of my mailing list unsubscribed.
my website traffic decreased by 50%.
my client caseload dropped by 67%.
my business revenue dropped by 74%.
I started getting complaint emails (I’d never ever gotten complaints before).
my frustration and desperation increased 1000%.
Whenever I cried (yes, I literally cried) to my coach about my failing business, she just said, “I promise, you’re getting there.”
When I hit the 3-month mark, the date when I could ask for my money back, they said no. I’d completed only completed 727 items on their list. They gave me two options, I could quit coaching with them, or I could pay them $1000/month to continue.
I reported them to the BBB. (I wasn’t the first one). They severed communications. I never did get my money back.
I wallowed in self-pity, eating regret for breakfast for the next three months.
Then, one morning during morning coffee with my ancestors, I put my cup down on the ancestor shrine and bumped the picture of Reverend Phil Laporte, my very first spiritual teacher. As I propped his picture back up on the stand, I heard Phil’s gentle and playful voice inside my head, something he said often.
“Stop shoulding all over yourself, it doesn’t smell good on you.”
I immediately took a shower. A long one. As I washed my body, I let all my regrets and woulda/shoulda/couldas about Growth Tools go down the drain.
Then, with my wet hair still tied up in a towel, I opened an account with Substack.
I’m a writer damnit. It’s time I really write.
Since I started with Substack in December of 2023, my subscription mailing list has grown by nearly 75%, with a paid subscriber list bringing me over $2000/year in revenues I didn’t have before. I have made friends from all over the world who engage with me daily. I even had a reader/subscriber, who has read my newsletter for nearly 20 years invite me to come stay with her in Munich, Germany!
Most importantly, I get up every single day excited about my work and watching my business grow in ways it never has before. No coaching program needed.
Lesson
As a young adult, when I’d have a big decision to make and found myself stuck in over-thinking and indecision, I’d often call my parents for advice.
My parents never gave me that advice. Never.
I just wanted them to tell me what I should do, or at the very least what they thought would be best for me.
Instead, they listened. They asked me lots of questions. They got me talking, a lot. And when I had talked myself out and finished by saying “what do you think I should do?” They always, always answered with the same one line. Every time, they gave me the same non-answer.
You already know what you want to do.
In hindsight, I’m grateful that they never ever swayed my opinion about anything big in my life. They wanted me to make my own decisions, even if they were mistakes because they wanted me to work my way through those mistakes on my own terms.
They gifted me with self-agency, and they challenged me to trust myself. And when I didn’t trust myself and I made a decision I “regretted” I always learned something big from the “mistake”.
for every contraction, there is an equal and opposite expansion
If there has been one lesson I have learned about all my life’s regrets, it’s that for every contraction that comes in the form of guilt, shame, embarrassment, and regret, there is an equal and opposite expansion that comes in the form of growth, evolution, self-acceptance, and realization.
In terms of Growth Tools, I learned to stop looking to marketing firms and business coaches to tell me how to run my business. As a result, I’m having the most fun of my life, doing my business my way, on Substack.
You already know what you want to do.
I started really listening to myself and my passion. I put away all the marketing advice I’d gathered from a half dozen coaching programs over the last several years, and I focused 100% on what makes me happy. Writing and working with clients.
I’m happier now than I ever have been in my entire professional life. And my business is changing in ways I never imagined possible.
Homework
🔒 Mini-Course Mini-Lesson #4 - How to Two-Step with Shame, Guilt, & Regret
Are you are constantly haunted by the ghosts of decisions past and those woulda-coulda-shoulda thoughts that make you scared of making decisions for the now or future. (psst…guilt and shame is just FEAR in disguise). When fear wears the mask of guilt and shame, the result is over-thinking and inability to make a decision, triggering a FREEZE response. This kind of fear turns into over-thinking every choice and action.
Learn my favorite affirmations - and the MindfulSense actions to go with them - to heal your relationship with Fear’s three amigos: Guilt, Shame, and Regret.
Personal Coaching
If you are dealing with your own intense regret that has spun you into a spiral of guilt, shame, and embarrassment which is crippling you from moving forward…and you are stuck in the contraction and looking for the expansion, I can give you both perspective and practice to help you process through it all.
