July 26, 2024 • 15 mins
As a business owner living with chronic illness, you might struggle with how you see yourself, which can negatively impact your business decisions, growth, and success. Self-doubt, negative self-talk, and unrealistic expectations can lead to burnout, stress, and a lack of sustainable growth. This episode offers insights and practical advice on how to balance self-compassion and determination. By understanding and accepting your self-view, you can make better business decisions, create more effective marketing strategies, and develop a healthier overall mindset. I provided journal prompts to reflect on and improve your self-view, leading to a more sustainable and fulfilling business journey.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding and accepting your self-view is crucial for making better business decisions and achieving sustainable growth.
- Balancing self-compassion and determination helps prevent burnout and fosters a healthier mindset.
- Leveraging strengths like perfectionism without imposing time constraints can lead to more effective and stress-free business operations.
Send Me A Text & Share Your QA's or Thoughts
Loved this episode? Leave a review: https://www.craftedtothrive.com/reviews/new/
Products We Love + Special Guest Gifts → Want to support the show and treat yourself? We’ve created a quick-access list of products I personally use and love, exclusive savings from podcast guests, and other gems that can help you live well and do business with chronic illness. Explore our faves + savings here!
Subscribe HERE to Chronically Profitable, A free exclusive weekly email series designed for creatives and women with chronic illnesses. You'll learn how to make a liveable income with your hobbies, professional skills, and innate talents by building a successful online coaching business with simple strategies that work for you, even on flare days, and feel better living with chronic illness.
To Start and Grow A Coaching or Service-Based Business with Chronic Illness, Book A Free Sales Call With Nikita Here.
Follow Nikita on Instagram
...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Nikita Williams (00:04):
Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness,
the globally ranked podcast forwomen living with chronic
illness who want to start andgrow a business online.
I'm your host.
Nikita Williams and I went fromliving a normal life to all of
a sudden being in constant pain,with no answers to being
diagnosed with multiple chronicillnesses and trying to make a
livable income.
I faced the challenge ofadapting traditional business
(00:27):
advice to fit my uniquecircumstances with chronic
illness, feeling frustrated andmore burned out than I already
was.
While managing my chronicillness to becoming an
award-winning coach with aflexible, sustainable online
coaching business, I found thesurprisingly simple steps to
starting and growing aprofitable business without
compromising my health or mypeace.
(00:48):
Since then, I've helped dozensof women just like you learn how
to do the same.
If you're ready to create athriving business that aligns
with your lifestyle andwell-being, you're in the right
place.
Together, we're shifting thenarrative of what's possible for
women with chronic illness andhow we make a living.
(01:14):
This is Business with ChronicIllness.
So it's really important tothink about how you view
yourself with chronic illnessand how this is going to affect
your business and how you grow.
So I don't know if any of youare like me, but part of my just
makeup has been very much oflike.
I'm driven to like prove peoplewrong.
I'm driven to prove myselfwrong.
(01:36):
I'm driven to do the best I can.
I'm a driven person.
There's nothing like.
It takes a lot for something totake me out.
I've given myself a lot moreself-compassion, a lot more
kindness and understanding, butit's taken a long time for me to
get to this place in my lifeand I've recently been thinking
(01:58):
about this when I'm talking tomy clients with inside of my
program Chronically you andProfitable, which is a 12-month
group coaching high-touchprogram where we teach you how
to create and launch your onlinecoaching business through
sustainable marketing and salesstrategy systems and have a
holistic mind and body toolkitto make it easier for you to
(02:21):
make a livable income, thriveand have better days with
chronic illness, and so withinthis program, we talk a lot
about marketing and sales andall those things, but we also
talk about how we view ourselvesdoing these things.
And it's interesting becauseI've been in business for a long
time now and I've been in thisarena of online marketing before
(02:43):
the bubble of the pandemic andeverybody becoming like what's
this online world?
Let's do this thing To now,after the pandemic to seeing
different business owners andseeing the change of how people
view themselves in theirbusiness, and I have this saying
that I've said for a very longtime I think I started saying
(03:05):
this back in 2018, that businessis personal, and I've added to
that the fact that business ispersonal and when it is, it
becomes easier, and what I meanby that is that obviously, there
are numbers in business, likewe have to know the numbers.
There are statistics and statsand everything, but all of those
(03:27):
things are run by the complex,beautiful nature of humans and
when we get down to the basis ofeverything, even our marketing
and sales and messaging and ourwords has everything to do with
the human psychology of how wedo think and be people.
That oftentimes we neglect tosee how the way we view
(03:51):
ourselves is showing up in theway we operate, in our
businesses, in our lives, in ourcareers.
If you're in a corporateenvironment, right and depending
on how we view ourselves deeplyaffects the things you actually
do, deeply affects the goalsyou actually have, deeply
(04:13):
affects the motivations and theintention behind what you do,
which, therefore, can have aneffect on your results, and I
often ask my clients to reallyassess really how they view
themselves living with chronicillness, and a lot of it means
potentially looking at, maybe,how you believe people view you
(04:37):
and asking yourself are thesebeliefs that you have either,
over time, started to believe,or are these beliefs you've
assumed other people havethought of you and now you have
lived in them as a reality ofwhat others you believe, others
view of you?
Are these your criticalthoughts of yourself?
One of the biggest shifts thatwill happen when you really just
(04:59):
become aware of who you are,how you view yourself, negative
thoughts, certain pieces ofadvice you will therefore filter
through.
So let me give you an example.
(05:34):
The advice for majority of usanybody, not just us like living
with chronic illness, like anybusiness owner, is to I got in
the very beginning like get allthe blood work done which
granted it needed to happen, andthen try all of the things all
at once.
And it's okay if you fall, it'sokay if you get exhausted, it's
okay if you have to hustle yourway through it, it's okay if
(05:55):
you have to sacrifice more time,more money, yada, yada, yada to
figure it all out.
And as I look at my journeyliving with chronic illness.
The reason why I believed thatto be true is because of the way
I viewed myself.
The way I viewed myself waslike it doesn't matter how hard
(06:16):
a situation is, I will figure away, I will figure out a way to
make it work.
I don't care if it causes morepain, if it's harder, I will
figure out a way, because I'mdetermined.
I'm almost like tunnel visionright, and to a degree that
served me really well.
I definitely believe thatserved me to not give up and not
(06:37):
allow doctors to gaslight meand all of these things.
But to another degree it causedharm.
It really did.
It made me choose and decide onthings and try to force myself
into a situation of healing orof knowing, without allowing the
(06:58):
time that is required for meand for my body and my
circumstances to truly actuallyget the answer.
Now I'm saying this and I'msharing this because I truly
believe the way we viewourselves directly and
indirectly affects our resultsin our business and the results
(07:21):
we get for our clients right.
I believe there is a fine lineof caring and being a passionate
for our clients and a fine linebetween being everything to our
clients, trying to prove and doall the things for our clients,
and here's the reason why Ihave seen million dollar coaches
(07:41):
, business owners, literallyshut down their businesses
because of not really takingstock of how they view
themselves truly and seriouslyright.
What I have found like, themore you give yourself the space
to be real with who you are,the more space you give yourself
to create the path or the spaceyou need to actually grow
(08:03):
sustainably.
And this is why I truly believethat those of us living with
chronic illness really can takea lesson from those who are
still in business, who have, youknow, really high level of
income and profit in theirbusinesses and are sustainably
living their life and running abusiness, versus the advice of
(08:28):
so many in the industries,specifically in coaching, who
are no longer in this businessanymore or who have taken the
longest sabbatical and now haveleft everything because of
burnout, because of notacknowledging how they view
themselves and how this could beshowing up and hindering their
growth in their business.
And this might be way meta forsome of you who don't even have
(08:51):
a business yet or not there yet,but for those of you that do,
this is for you to think about.
Right, you know you don't needto be making a million dollars
to grow your businesssustainably now when you're
making $10,000.
Let me say that again you don'tneed to be making a million
dollars to decide now that youcan grow your business
(09:11):
sustainably at $10,000.
Because if you view yourself asa person who's determined and
you're going to get stuff done,it doesn't have to be tomorrow.
Determination doesn't mean thatthere is a time limit or a time
space of when that's going tohappen, and that's really the
shift.
See, for me, as a verydetermined go-getter kind of
(09:33):
person, it used to have a timelimit.
It was like I got to figurethis out in the next couple of
weeks because I ain't got timefor this.
Right, I've got other things toprove which ultimately led to
more pain, more hurdles, morestruggles, more not learning
versus being like, yes, I amdetermined, I'm a go-getter, I'm
(09:54):
a pusher-thrower, if you will,but I can do that at a pace
that's sustainable, that allowsme to have the capacity to
implement, to learn to implement, to learn to digest, if you
will, and to tweak as I moveforward.
This is part of the reasons whyI believe a lot of those of us
starting out our business reallyneeds to have more of a mindset
(10:16):
or thought of ourselves as amillion-dollar CEO in our
business now, even if you don'thave the goal of being a
million-dollar CEO person, it'shelpful because a lot of those
people who are still doing thatand doing it sustainably I'm
going to keep saying that caveatare doing it with the thought
in mind that time is a goodthing.
(10:37):
Determination in time while inhappening right now is a good
thing, persistence is a goodthing, right, and so if you view
yourself as a person that is aperfectionist type A, you've got
to do all of these things.
If you take the good things outof being like, being a
perfectionist means you'reprobably super organized.
(10:58):
For example, being aperfectionist means, like you
are, you pay close attention tothe details.
Being perfectionist sometimesmeans that you want to have
everything right, even thoughwe're imperfect and things are
going to go wrong, but you havea high standard.
But oftentimes we add a timelimit to that, we add a time
(11:20):
cadence to that, and I want youto think about if I view myself
as a perfectionist, can Irelease the time frame and give
myself the space and the graceto learn and grow and implement
while being a detailed orientedperson, while being focused,
while being the person that islooking at all of the things and
(11:42):
giving myself time right In agood way, not in a
procrastinating way where youjust can't like pull the lever
because it's not perfect, but inthe way that you're learning to
implement and take action rightAt a pace of your knowing.
So sometimes that might requireneeding help.
(12:04):
Sometimes that requires leadingout and looking for mentors who
know or have been where you are.
Sometimes it means just beingin community of like-minded
peers who are willing to giveyou ways of thinking of things
in different angles.
Sometimes it's a coach whodoesn't give up on your vision
when you feel like it's time toand it's not yet, because your
(12:25):
perfectionist brain and yourgo-getter proven it brain says
this isn't it?
So I must move on, right.
It's so important for you totake some time to really think
about how you view yourself,because the first step to a
successful business is beingreally aware of who you are and
who you're not, and that helpsyou at least be real with
(12:48):
yourself, right?
It helps you be real withyourself.
It helps you give yourselfspace to make decisions that are
in alignment with where youwant to go.
So I want you all to thinkabout this.
I want you to take a second andtake some journal notes of the
things for you to think about.
Here are some journal promptsto help you when it comes to
thinking about how you viewyourself.
(13:09):
Think about this Do I love whoI am?
What aspects of me do I love?
What aspects of me kind of irkme?
What are things that I wish Ican improve?
What things am I impatientabout?
What things get on my nerves?
What things do I wish were donealready?
(13:29):
What things are done that I'mproud of?
And this could be related toyour life personally or in your
business.
Right, when people say negativethings about me or I perceive
they're saying negative things,what are the three top most
common negative thoughts that Iusually ruminate on?
And do I believe that thosethings are true for me?
(13:51):
And if not, how would Idisprove?
Like, what's the evidence?
And if I do believe it's true,is it necessarily a negative
thing or is it a place forgrowth?
So those are just a fewquestions to ask yourself that
might help you to prompt you inthis.
Like summer going into the endof the year timeframe, sort of
(14:13):
like how are you viewingyourself?
And the last question I'll addis like is any of this showing
up in the way I make decisionsin my business?
These thoughts are they showingup in the way I make decisions
about my marketing, the way Imake decisions about my
marketing, the way I makedecisions about my offers, the
way I make decisions about mycollaborations, my sales?
Those are questions to askyourself.
All right, loves.
(14:34):
That is it for today.
I want to keep it really brief.
I've been, you know, doing thesummer briefs here and there,
kind of thing.
That's where we're on abiweekly schedule, but I can't
wait to see you in the nextepisode.
That's a wrap for this episodeof Business with Chronic Illness
.
If you would like to start andgrow an online coaching business
(14:55):
with me, head to the show notesto click a link to book a sales
call and learn how to makemoney with chronic illness.
You can also check out ourwebsite at wwwcraftedtothrivecom
for this episode's show notesand join our email list to get
exclusive content where I coachyou on how to chronically grow a
profitable business whileliving with chronic illness.
Until next time, remember, yes,you are crafted to thrive.
Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness,
the globally ranked podcast forwomen living with chronic
illness who want to start andgrow a business online.
I'm your host.
Nikita Williams and I went fromliving a normal life to all of
a sudden being in constant pain,with no answers to being
diagnosed with multiple chronicillnesses and trying to make a
livable income.
I faced the challenge ofadapting traditional business
(00:27):
advice to fit my uniquecircumstances with chronic
illness, feeling frustrated andmore burned out than I already
was.
While managing my chronicillness to becoming an
award-winning coach with aflexible, sustainable online
coaching business, I found thesurprisingly simple steps to
starting and growing aprofitable business without
compromising my health or mypeace.
(00:48):
Since then, I've helped dozensof women just like you learn how
to do the same.
If you're ready to create athriving business that aligns
with your lifestyle andwell-being, you're in the right
place.
Together, we're shifting thenarrative of what's possible for
women with chronic illness andhow we make a living.
(01:14):
This is Business with ChronicIllness.
So it's really important tothink about how you view
yourself with chronic illnessand how this is going to affect
your business and how you grow.
So I don't know if any of youare like me, but part of my just
makeup has been very much oflike.
I'm driven to like prove peoplewrong.
I'm driven to prove myselfwrong.
(01:36):
I'm driven to do the best I can.
I'm a driven person.
There's nothing like.
It takes a lot for something totake me out.
I've given myself a lot moreself-compassion, a lot more
kindness and understanding, butit's taken a long time for me to
get to this place in my lifeand I've recently been thinking
(01:58):
about this when I'm talking tomy clients with inside of my
program Chronically you andProfitable, which is a 12-month
group coaching high-touchprogram where we teach you how
to create and launch your onlinecoaching business through
sustainable marketing and salesstrategy systems and have a
holistic mind and body toolkitto make it easier for you to
(02:21):
make a livable income, thriveand have better days with
chronic illness, and so withinthis program, we talk a lot
about marketing and sales andall those things, but we also
talk about how we view ourselvesdoing these things.
And it's interesting becauseI've been in business for a long
time now and I've been in thisarena of online marketing before
(02:43):
the bubble of the pandemic andeverybody becoming like what's
this online world?
Let's do this thing To now,after the pandemic to seeing
different business owners andseeing the change of how people
view themselves in theirbusiness, and I have this saying
that I've said for a very longtime I think I started saying
(03:05):
this back in 2018, that businessis personal, and I've added to
that the fact that business ispersonal and when it is, it
becomes easier, and what I meanby that is that obviously, there
are numbers in business, likewe have to know the numbers.
There are statistics and statsand everything, but all of those
(03:27):
things are run by the complex,beautiful nature of humans and
when we get down to the basis ofeverything, even our marketing
and sales and messaging and ourwords has everything to do with
the human psychology of how wedo think and be people.
That oftentimes we neglect tosee how the way we view
(03:51):
ourselves is showing up in theway we operate, in our
businesses, in our lives, in ourcareers.
If you're in a corporateenvironment, right and depending
on how we view ourselves deeplyaffects the things you actually
do, deeply affects the goalsyou actually have, deeply
(04:13):
affects the motivations and theintention behind what you do,
which, therefore, can have aneffect on your results, and I
often ask my clients to reallyassess really how they view
themselves living with chronicillness, and a lot of it means
potentially looking at, maybe,how you believe people view you
(04:37):
and asking yourself are thesebeliefs that you have either,
over time, started to believe,or are these beliefs you've
assumed other people havethought of you and now you have
lived in them as a reality ofwhat others you believe, others
view of you?
Are these your criticalthoughts of yourself?
One of the biggest shifts thatwill happen when you really just
(04:59):
become aware of who you are,how you view yourself, negative
thoughts, certain pieces ofadvice you will therefore filter
through.
So let me give you an example.
(05:34):
The advice for majority of usanybody, not just us like living
with chronic illness, like anybusiness owner, is to I got in
the very beginning like get allthe blood work done which
granted it needed to happen, andthen try all of the things all
at once.
And it's okay if you fall, it'sokay if you get exhausted, it's
okay if you have to hustle yourway through it, it's okay if
(05:55):
you have to sacrifice more time,more money, yada, yada, yada to
figure it all out.
And as I look at my journeyliving with chronic illness.
The reason why I believed thatto be true is because of the way
I viewed myself.
The way I viewed myself waslike it doesn't matter how hard
(06:16):
a situation is, I will figure away, I will figure out a way to
make it work.
I don't care if it causes morepain, if it's harder, I will
figure out a way, because I'mdetermined.
I'm almost like tunnel visionright, and to a degree that
served me really well.
I definitely believe thatserved me to not give up and not
(06:37):
allow doctors to gaslight meand all of these things.
But to another degree it causedharm.
It really did.
It made me choose and decide onthings and try to force myself
into a situation of healing orof knowing, without allowing the
(06:58):
time that is required for meand for my body and my
circumstances to truly actuallyget the answer.
Now I'm saying this and I'msharing this because I truly
believe the way we viewourselves directly and
indirectly affects our resultsin our business and the results
(07:21):
we get for our clients right.
I believe there is a fine lineof caring and being a passionate
for our clients and a fine linebetween being everything to our
clients, trying to prove and doall the things for our clients,
and here's the reason why Ihave seen million dollar coaches
(07:41):
, business owners, literallyshut down their businesses
because of not really takingstock of how they view
themselves truly and seriouslyright.
What I have found like, themore you give yourself the space
to be real with who you are,the more space you give yourself
to create the path or the spaceyou need to actually grow
(08:03):
sustainably.
And this is why I truly believethat those of us living with
chronic illness really can takea lesson from those who are
still in business, who have, youknow, really high level of
income and profit in theirbusinesses and are sustainably
living their life and running abusiness, versus the advice of
(08:28):
so many in the industries,specifically in coaching, who
are no longer in this businessanymore or who have taken the
longest sabbatical and now haveleft everything because of
burnout, because of notacknowledging how they view
themselves and how this could beshowing up and hindering their
growth in their business.
And this might be way meta forsome of you who don't even have
(08:51):
a business yet or not there yet,but for those of you that do,
this is for you to think about.
Right, you know you don't needto be making a million dollars
to grow your businesssustainably now when you're
making $10,000.
Let me say that again you don'tneed to be making a million
dollars to decide now that youcan grow your business
(09:11):
sustainably at $10,000.
Because if you view yourself asa person who's determined and
you're going to get stuff done,it doesn't have to be tomorrow.
Determination doesn't mean thatthere is a time limit or a time
space of when that's going tohappen, and that's really the
shift.
See, for me, as a verydetermined go-getter kind of
(09:33):
person, it used to have a timelimit.
It was like I got to figurethis out in the next couple of
weeks because I ain't got timefor this.
Right, I've got other things toprove which ultimately led to
more pain, more hurdles, morestruggles, more not learning
versus being like, yes, I amdetermined, I'm a go-getter, I'm
(09:54):
a pusher-thrower, if you will,but I can do that at a pace
that's sustainable, that allowsme to have the capacity to
implement, to learn to implement, to learn to digest, if you
will, and to tweak as I moveforward.
This is part of the reasons whyI believe a lot of those of us
starting out our business reallyneeds to have more of a mindset
(10:16):
or thought of ourselves as amillion-dollar CEO in our
business now, even if you don'thave the goal of being a
million-dollar CEO person, it'shelpful because a lot of those
people who are still doing thatand doing it sustainably I'm
going to keep saying that caveatare doing it with the thought
in mind that time is a goodthing.
(10:37):
Determination in time while inhappening right now is a good
thing, persistence is a goodthing, right, and so if you view
yourself as a person that is aperfectionist type A, you've got
to do all of these things.
If you take the good things outof being like, being a
perfectionist means you'reprobably super organized.
(10:58):
For example, being aperfectionist means, like you
are, you pay close attention tothe details.
Being perfectionist sometimesmeans that you want to have
everything right, even thoughwe're imperfect and things are
going to go wrong, but you havea high standard.
But oftentimes we add a timelimit to that, we add a time
(11:20):
cadence to that, and I want youto think about if I view myself
as a perfectionist, can Irelease the time frame and give
myself the space and the graceto learn and grow and implement
while being a detailed orientedperson, while being focused,
while being the person that islooking at all of the things and
(11:42):
giving myself time right In agood way, not in a
procrastinating way where youjust can't like pull the lever
because it's not perfect, but inthe way that you're learning to
implement and take action rightAt a pace of your knowing.
So sometimes that might requireneeding help.
(12:04):
Sometimes that requires leadingout and looking for mentors who
know or have been where you are.
Sometimes it means just beingin community of like-minded
peers who are willing to giveyou ways of thinking of things
in different angles.
Sometimes it's a coach whodoesn't give up on your vision
when you feel like it's time toand it's not yet, because your
(12:25):
perfectionist brain and yourgo-getter proven it brain says
this isn't it?
So I must move on, right.
It's so important for you totake some time to really think
about how you view yourself,because the first step to a
successful business is beingreally aware of who you are and
who you're not, and that helpsyou at least be real with
(12:48):
yourself, right?
It helps you be real withyourself.
It helps you give yourselfspace to make decisions that are
in alignment with where youwant to go.
So I want you all to thinkabout this.
I want you to take a second andtake some journal notes of the
things for you to think about.
Here are some journal promptsto help you when it comes to
thinking about how you viewyourself.
(13:09):
Think about this Do I love whoI am?
What aspects of me do I love?
What aspects of me kind of irkme?
What are things that I wish Ican improve?
What things am I impatientabout?
What things get on my nerves?
What things do I wish were donealready?
(13:29):
What things are done that I'mproud of?
And this could be related toyour life personally or in your
business.
Right, when people say negativethings about me or I perceive
they're saying negative things,what are the three top most
common negative thoughts that Iusually ruminate on?
And do I believe that thosethings are true for me?
(13:51):
And if not, how would Idisprove?
Like, what's the evidence?
And if I do believe it's true,is it necessarily a negative
thing or is it a place forgrowth?
So those are just a fewquestions to ask yourself that
might help you to prompt you inthis.
Like summer going into the endof the year timeframe, sort of
(14:13):
like how are you viewingyourself?
And the last question I'll addis like is any of this showing
up in the way I make decisionsin my business?
These thoughts are they showingup in the way I make decisions
about my marketing, the way Imake decisions about my
marketing, the way I makedecisions about my offers, the
way I make decisions about mycollaborations, my sales?
Those are questions to askyourself.
All right, loves.
(14:34):
That is it for today.
I want to keep it really brief.
I've been, you know, doing thesummer briefs here and there,
kind of thing.
That's where we're on abiweekly schedule, but I can't
wait to see you in the nextepisode.
That's a wrap for this episodeof Business with Chronic Illness
.
If you would like to start andgrow an online coaching business
(14:55):
with me, head to the show notesto click a link to book a sales
call and learn how to makemoney with chronic illness.
You can also check out ourwebsite at wwwcraftedtothrivecom
for this episode's show notesand join our email list to get
exclusive content where I coachyou on how to chronically grow a
profitable business whileliving with chronic illness.
Until next time, remember, yes,you are crafted to thrive.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com