Every week I will personally respond to one question received via email or social media. If you send me a question, you do not need to give your name. If you have a question, you are not alone – there are others who want to know the same thing! Please submit your burning question to: clientcare@businesswomenontop.com to participate.
Question: I’m worried that I am not doing ‘enough’ for my clients. I am an over-deliver kind of person in my personal life and I see this happening in my business. I feel guilty for charging money for my services and then I give way more than what is expected. I feel controlled by my clients expectations now. Why do I keep doing this? . How do I get past this feeling of ‘not being good enough’? ~ Katelyn
Answer:
Oh I totally get that feeling of ‘not being good enough’ in both personal and professional life. It’s such a fixable thing but it does take some digging deep and reprogramming the internal conversation. The results are so worth it though.
(You can check out a great article I wrote called: How Big is Your But? The 7 ways you sabotage your own success.)
You must learn to love yourself.
When we rely on others to make ourselves feel good, loved, liked, happy and so on, we automatically lose control over how we feel. The reality is that we are in total control of every emotion we experience and it is up to us to feel good about ourselves.
Here is an exercise that should help. I call it ‘going through the ages’.
You can buy super large post it notes that stick to your wall. Go through your entire life year by year, as far back as you can remember, and write down what thoughts, feelings, events, occurrences that come to mind. You may not remember every year but that’s ok. There will be some years that are monumental and life changing moments: good and bad. Write them all down.
Be open and don’t judge what comes up, just write them down. Leave it for a few days, then go back, or write down as memories come flooding back to you. You will start to see events that affected you, moulded your thoughts into what they are now. There will be ‘first time’ events, ‘last time events’, ‘I wish I didn’t remember events’ and ‘Wow, I forgot that happened to me!’ ones too.
Now you can see where and when the erosion of self-love occurred. You can isolate those moments and fix them, understand them and move on from them. Only then can you reframe the moments and their meaning to you now. For example, did you fail a test, get laughed at, got in trouble, your first boyfriend/girlfriend, first child, divorce, death and so on.
Every moment plays a major role in who you are today and the way you think. You have then opportunity to reframe the painful ones so that you can change the way you think and feel about yourself and the world around you.
To stop this feeling of ‘not being good enough’ you need to stop seeking the attention and love from your clients.
Doing this improves your client relationships, and that will improve your relationship with self and you will have a stronger, more abundant business.
Tracey D’Aviero is a veteran VA and Founder of Your VA Mentor. Tracey trains and mentors professional women who are brand new to the VA industry or who have been struggling to make their business successful.
Her mission is to educate professionals on how to build and grow successful and profitable virtual businesses in the VA industry by implementing systems and smart principles.
Contact Tracey for speaking engagements, group training or private coaching at www.yourvamentor.com