It’s Me. Hi. I’m the Problem.

There once was a Buddhist monk, Suzuki Roshi, who was watching over his students while they were meditating.

As the story goes, he dropped a gem of wisdom on them in this open, expansive state.

That gem was, “Each of you is perfect the way you are and…you could use a little improvement.”

This quote came to me when I was working with a client the other day. It’s remarkable how the shit you are going through as a coach and therapist is exactly what a client will bring to a session.

Both my client and I struggle with perfectionism. As you might know, perfectionism is a defense mechanism. Old school psychobabble term there, but it’s descriptive enough for you to follow my train of thought here.

It’s a way to protect you from getting hit with shame or criticism.

Business building is a beast because it stirs up stuff around worth, intelligence and security. I don’t know many solo-entreprenuers who aren’t concerned about presenting themselves in the highest professional light in order to easily build trust with their audience and ensure plentiful sales.

So when my client opened up about how they still hadn’t written the copy for an upcoming blog and also podcast, I nodded my head in agreement. I too was procrastinating on writing articles for Substack so this reflected my own business journey in a spot on sort of way.

I think both of us have great things to offer the world. I mean, this article is pretty brilliant so far right?

So what’s the deal with stalling out and playing small?

Why do we (and so many other one-person businesses) hesitate sharing our offerings?

Ready for a wha-bam-o wake up call?

It’s not our business model or strategy that is halting our progress.

It’s us.

It’s our fear of rejection, judgment and criticism.

Those are the three go-to shitty experiences that I believe sinisterly (that is a word, I looked it up!) influence our approach to business building and success. No one wants to feel the discomfort that goes with each of them, so we spend a lot of energy (mental and emotional) trying to prevent them from happening.

Perfectionism is big part of our prevention plan.

Now imagine if rejection, judgment and criticism didn’t sting so badly.

Imagine if you had the ability to deal with the potential discomfort of these three experiences.

Your mental and emotional energy would no longer be drained by worry and hustle and tension (physical energy is in this mix too) and you could just go straight to showing up and sharing what you’ve made.

The energy drains happen when we skip over Suzuki Roshi’s wisdom.

We are fine right now.

We are good at this moment.

Instead we focus on the last part of his teaching - “and you need a little improvement.”

Rick Hanson, the Buddhist neuropsychologist, says, “our brains are like velcro with bad stuff and teflon with good stuff”.

Let’s get one thing out of the way - we ALL need improvement, but…if we could slow down on the perfectionism as a means of addressing our goals, then we have a better chance of following through on taking action.

As a business owner, it seems reasonable to have Write a Blog and Record a Podcast on a to-do list. I mean there are 19 other things on that list too, but those two weren’t out of the ordinary.

So why didn’t my client follow through on either of them?

Perfectionism.

It’s a sneaky-ass approach let me tell you.

Perfectionism led them to believe that the blog and podcast had to be on the money. They couldn’t fuck up and write something that was circuitous and they couldn’t stumble or ramble when recording the podcast.

Their perfectionism was trying like mad to keep them safe and it was also THE THING that was jacking up their ability to take action in their marketing.

And we are all smart here so we can put 2 and 2 together and see that without taking action in your marketing - you will not build an audience and you will not make money.

It is not the BLOG or the PODCAST that is the problem.

It’s the person behind the blog and the podcast that is the problem. Hence the TSwift title to this article.

So what is the cure? What’s a better approach?

Two things. First, helping your nervous system feel safe without the need for protection through perfectionism. Next, working with the perfectionistic part of your personality. Helping this part of you relax back from the fear of rejection, judgment and criticism.

All of this is about the person running the business and not about the task on the list. And since you are the person running your business, we need to focus on your personal mental and emotional experience of being a business owner.

All of your internal beliefs, thoughts, habits, feelings - those aren’t just reserved for personal interactions. Those show up in every area of your life. So when you are stalling out and feeling stuck or unmotivated and discouraged - those are feelings themselves as well as your reaction to the way you are feeling.

The key to getting unstuck and encouraged is to work with yourself. Work with your reaction to the task on the list.

If you are a service oriented entrepreneur then doing your inner work will stabilize the foundation of the business. And when you feel stable inside you make more grounded and clear decisions for the outside stuff in your business - the policies, your fees, work hours, etc.

So, you are doing great right now and…you might could use some internal shoring up.