Creating The Freedom To Be The Real You Leave a comment
When I started my business, what I craved more than anything was the freedom to be the real me, the freedom to express myself and the freedom to grow.
In this episode, I’m sharing my thoughts on freedom as an entrepreneur as well as what business looks like now as a mum of 4 kids under 5, making a full-time income on part-time hours and feeling safe to show up as myself in every part of my work.
I talk about leaving my accounting job with no proof things would work, the self-belief that kept me going and the kind of courage it takes to back yourself before you have results.
If you’ve ever felt the pull to have a business where you can be the real you, this episode will help you reconnect with what you’re really building for. If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Custom Intro
Today I am sharing with you a recording that I actually just recorded on my iPhone, face the camera. I’d been doing some journaling, and just like thinking about stuff, and then I just felt like recording, so that is what you’re going to listen to. And the reason I wanted to share this in particular is because I wish someone had said this or explain this to me in a way like this earlier on in my business, because being connected with why you’re doing what you’re doing is something that is so important because of the the navigation required to build a successful, profitable business that you enjoy working in. There are obstacles. There are hurdles. So you need to have a strong reason why to keep going. And so for me, when it came to business, I always thought the freedom to be location, independent, have control of my time, that was never why I started my business, and I didn’t resonate with with that, with the need for freedom, until I figured out what I’m sharing with you in today’s episodes. I just wanted to share this in case it resonates with you and helps you to connect into part of your why, part of why you want to have the business and why you want to have it be a business that you feel connected with, not just a business as a job, but a business in a way that allows you to be self expressed and to be you in the world. So I hope you enjoy this episode.
Sam Laura Brown
So today I have a and I have one of these each week a day that is not with any of my kids. So this is I have I work typically three days a week. Well, kind of I want to say it’s more like 10 or 12 hours a week across the three days that the three oldest kids are in daycare. So I have a four year old, two, two and a half year olds, twin boys, and then a little four month old boy. My four year old is a daughter, so the kids are at daycare or at the grandparents. And sees that on a run, I’m sitting here on the deck, all I can see, maybe you can see it in the reflection. All I can see is, is trees like a full 180 we did a renovation of our house in 2021 and put in this big, beautiful, raked ceiling, so that we can fully see out into the tree tops and really just feel so in nature, which I love, and I’m just reflecting on like I’m just sitting here, like getting warmed up, having a cup of tea, listening to a few inspiring things, like all of that that I love to do, and just reflecting on how much I love having a business.
That sounds cheesy, maybe, but that just in a past life when I was an accountant and having to go at 7am on the train and going to work for full day, and I didn’t hate accounting. A lot of entrepreneurs are like I could never work for someone else. I was happy to work for someone else. I liked being around other people, even though I am such an introvert, for sure, and probably I’d say slow to warm up, to be cool in general. I’m very friendly, but I just like, you know, just like to observe before I include myself. And I liked, you know, Friday afternoon drinks and things like that. I didn’t mind working for someone else, but I didn’t feel like me when I was in that job, and the commute was fine. I’d be working on my blog. That’s how I started my business as a blogger, and I’d work on it before I went onto the train to try and get some momentum going, which did eventually work, I figured out how to get momentum while working full time and be able to now be in a place where I’ve been full time in my business, well, working part time, making full time income or more than that, the last few years, for sure.
So anyway, what I love most for me, a lot of people talk about freedom. Time, freedom, great. That’s great. Location, independence, that’s great. I have those things, which is amazing. And for me, those aren’t the main things. And whenever people have talked about like, it’s so good, you know, you want to have a business to have freedom. That never resonated with me until I figured out the freedom that I like the most, which is the freedom to be me, the freedom to feel like I can actually be my true self when I’m at work. Because in my accounting job, I had to pretend that I liked accounting. I had to pretend that I was going to be continuing my studies becoming a chartered accountant, when I actually had no plans to do that because I was trying to get my blog off the ground, I just had to do a lot of pretending. And I felt like, and this is the perfectionism too, I felt like I had to not show the side of me that like, loves personal development and figuring out about a business, and I just had to be this other version of myself, which was fine, but it didn’t feel like me.
And so I felt very disconnected from myself when I was in that job, and now as a coach. And so I coach, perfectionist, entrepreneurs, and I feel like it’s just such the perfect blend for me of like, all the things I love, business I love figuring that out, personal development. I love like, that’s how I got into the business world. Was finding personal development podcasts and then finding business podcasts through that, and being like, oh my god, business is just where you can actually do personal development in such a tangible way that I just really loved, like, how measurable it was, and just different things like that. So I could really and I can, like, use my brain. I love having a job, if you will, where I feel challenged. There are some people who are like, you know, I had such a great day today at work. I did nothing.
It was so crazy that for me, never my ideal day when it comes to work, my ideal day when I’m working is I felt so engaged and I this challenge that I’m figuring out, even if it’s frustrating at times, like that was something I was figuring out, whether it was for myself or for someone else, like I love having a role where I feel challenged and I feel like I’m growing like that, freedom to be me, to self express, and the freedom to grow like the freedom to be able to change and develop and like, for those of you who have followed me since the beginning, which I know there are a few of you who have, I have grown and developed so much since then, I feel like a completely different version of myself. Some cool things are the same, but I feel like the things I’m doing today, my past self never thought I would be able to do, even just recording a video like this, where I’m just chatting and then just going to share it, that felt so foreign.
But having the freedom to be me, and having the freedom to change and grow and develop, has been such a gift to myself, like the courage that it took to be able to put myself on this path. There were a lot of moments of feeling my legs trembling and needing to take the leap and needing to back myself when I felt like there was no evidence. But also, and I know a lot of my clients relate to this of like, you deeply believe in yourself and then you have so much self doubt at the same time, and it’s like trying to reconcile the two things. I knew I could do it and I was also so scared that I couldn’t, but I had to back myself when it came to investing in myself, for example, when it came to leaving my full time job when I wasn’t yet making an income, I had made like, $3,000 in total from my business, and I went to a part time job, but at that point I was, like, veering off fully the corporate path.
I had a law degree, a finance degree, a Diploma of French, and then here I was saying, Hey, I’m going to leave this accounting job at a top firm so that I can go and be a receptionist, so that I have more time to work on this business that’s making no money like that’s what I did, and I’m just proud of past me for being willing to to feel the feelings that came With that, to feel the fear and support myself through that, and get supported through that as well, but I had to be the biggest supporter. No one could take the leap for me, or take the many leaps that were required to get here, to the point where now I’m just sitting here and it feels like it just feels like normal life. But when I really sit and reflect on all of those, like micro moments and big moments too, but all of just the little courageous acts of like going to an event, for example, like I got asked to speak at a school, and I was terrified, terrified to do that.
And I remember on the morning of it, it was about an hour drive from my house, and I was like, I hope I crashed my car. I hope something bad happens to have me avoid having to do this, speaking, which would be even worse than whatever could happen. Thankfully, I didn’t manifest any of that. I did it. It was so scary, and I’m so glad that I did it, but just so many moments where I felt so uncomfortable, even just initially showing up and posting anything, I kept everything a complete secret from everyone in my life, everyone in my life, everyone no exceptions for like, the first year, it took me so long to tell anyone, even my husband, Steve, we were dating at the time when I first started, and like, I didn’t tell him I couldn’t even, like, it was so hard to even do it just with myself, like I was just so judgmental of myself that to think about sharing it with someone else who could judge me, even though I knew they probably wouldn’t. But then I didn’t know that, because I was judging me so harshly.
So anyway, I just am so appreciative of having the freedom to be mean in my work, and the freedom to grow and to change and to develop and to change my ideas on things and develop them into to be scared to do something one year and then have it feel completely normal to do it the next year, just because of how I’ve up leveled. And to now as a mom of four, to now be in a position as well, where, because I have done so much work on my perfectionism and my mindset and also on my resilience, like there’s so many skill sets within entrepreneurship, so my resilience and tenacity and growth mindedness to be able to go, Okay, that didn’t work. What else could work and could I learn a new skill here, instead of just being like, well, I’m not good at that. So much of that skills like marketing, sales, coaching, like there’s so many skills I’ve developed, and just the mom that I get to be now is so different to the mom I would have been before, or if I hadn’t set myself on this path and done those courageous things and really fought for or stood for the freedom to be near my work and the freedom to grow and change.
And it has been a wild ride in many ways. And I love that. Like when I was in my accounting job, and I could see, so we’re sitting, if you’ve worked in a corporate job before, we were in, like an open plan office, so you’re sitting, I’m gonna have two people next to me, like in their desk with our computer set up, and then around the corners of the room are like the edges, all the partners would be in there, in their office, behind their glass, what’s it called walls, and they’d have their desks in there. And the certainty of like, if I just continue here and just keep working here, I’m just going to be sitting doing this same thing, but in that office right there, as much as the perfectionist in me loves certainty and loves that sense of like I know exactly what’s going to happen. That bored me, the thought of, I know exactly what’s going to happen, and as much as I like to think, I like certainty, I didn’t. I didn’t want the certainty of that.
I wanted the possibility that comes with uncertainty, the possibility of the unknown and not knowing what’s going to happen, and will the business work or not work, or like, what are all the things and will it end up being completely different to what I’m imagining? And even though that’s uncertain, it was so much more engaging, and I felt so much more alive in the challenge of that and the opportunity of that, then in the safe certain thing, which, by the way, now a lot of those jobs are not safe and certain, as they never really were at the time, just the perception of that, but I really had to stand for possibility and backing myself when I had no proof, really that I could do it, and no proof yet that it was working in terms of, like, objective metrics, but to just be able to, now as a mum, be able to be such a more a self expressed version of myself, such a more confident version of myself, and to be able to include my kids as well.
So my husband’s a paramedic, so you can see, like when an ambulance goes by, the kids are like, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and like listening to the ambulance because they’re just about age. But I think all kids love them, and they get to know my daddy drives an ambulance. For me as a life coach and a business coach. Like, I can’t, like, they can’t see me out in the wild, like, so to speak, the same way they can with their dad. So like, what I like to do is in my home office, I like to have, like, on the weekend I had Lydia in my office with me, and I wasn’t even wanting to work, but she asked, could you do some work so I can sit next to you and color in? And I was watching some videos on like AI in business and things like that, and which I’m really interested in at the moment. And she was just like, there being able to see me learning and growing and doing what I do and and not just that, like seeing me be like, engaged and alive when I’m thinking about my work.
And I think for our kids as well, it’s such a gift for them that Steve and I both love what we do for work. I think modeling that work is something where you get to explore your interests and you get to be you and like that. We both not even that. We say that we just live that. I think that is such a gift, and that would not have been the case if I hadn’t taken those those leaps and put myself out there in ways that made my legs tremble and I never was like, trying to, like, shock my way into the growth. It was just like, hey, go a little bit beyond what’s comfortable, and then a little bit beyond that. Until now, I’m in a completely different reality. My past illusion is now my current reality. That’s how delusion works. When you’re thinking about like manifestation and all of those things, which I love, that if you’re going to be realistic, then you’re just going to get more of your same reality. But being delusional, being willing to be delusional, which can be. Hard. If you identify as a smart, intelligent person, it can feel dumb to be delusional. It can feel like you’re not doing the responsible thing.
A lot of perfection is that come up of like this. This is irresponsible to be delusional. I need to be realistic. What that really is is we want to be safe. We’re trying to be safe and not be disappointed, because we don’t believe we can handle our own disappointment, and we can’t handle ourselves when we’re disappointed, like we can’t meet ourselves there, and really just being able to be in a place now where I’m able to just live like hey, and I’m still making mistakes in figuring things out and like and that I love have. I love that I like. I love that about business and about personal development, that it isn’t just like a math test where it’s like, here’s the answer, tick, you got it right? That’s it like. It’s so much more nuanced and evolving and complex and simple. It’s just engaging, and I love it. So for me, when it comes to business, my freedom that I had to stand for and fight for, wasn’t about, and some people is different. But for me, it wasn’t about, I want time, freedom. It wasn’t about I want location, independence. I wanted the freedom to be me, and I wanted the freedom to be able to learn and grow and evolve.
Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the waitlist for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today, go to samlaurabrown.coms/pgsd.
