Intro: Welcome to The Masterful Coach podcast, with Molly Claire, where coaches learn skill mastery, business mastery, and life mastery at a whole new level. If you’re serious about creating a meaningful coaching business that makes a difference, you’re in the right place. And now your host, master life and business coach, Molly Claire.

Molly Claire: Hey, coaches, Happy Fall! I hope you are enjoying this fall season, wherever you are. I know I have listeners from different parts of the world. I don’t know what the weather’s like, where you are or what the vibe is in the air. But whatever it is, I hope it’s amazing for you. For us, right now, fall in Dallas is just getting cool enough that on my early morning walk, I almost think, “Ooh, I might need to grab a jacket today.”

So, I love that feeling I love this time because it also means I can walk later in the day without melting. Which I love. Walking is definitely my happy place, and I’m really just enjoying it. So, wherever you are, and whatever your happy place is, or that thing that really gets your ideas flowing helps you relax, connect with nature, connect with yourself, God, your higher power, and all the best things in life, I hope you’re enjoying it.

Okay, coaches, we’re going to talk about fear today, we’re going to talk about all the little sneaky ways that fear shows up and give you hopefully some insights to help you to see not only first of all, are you not alone, are you completely normal. But some of the things that you think are a problem may actually just be the way fear is coming up for you and stopping you from moving forward.

So, for most of my listeners, this is not necessarily a new concept, that underlying fears are what keep us stuck, underlying fears is what causes us to self-sabotage and all of these things. So, while this isn’t a new topic, I want to highlight it and focus on it, because these are the things I hear from my clients. “I’m stuck on my niche. I think maybe I need a different niche. I’m not sure exactly what my program should focus on how long it should be, what should be included? I’m not sure what to charge. I don’t know what is the best way for me to market my business, specifically. And I don’t know where to start. I’m overwhelmed with all the things.”

Now this is a very normal experience for any coach building a business, normal, normal experience. And I always say there is value in learning some practical, tangible things, right, regarding niche, ways to market, cost, pricing, program details, all of those things. And yes, yes, yes, I help my clients with those practical things. And if we are only focusing on that piece of it, we miss out on really opening up what’s underneath and helping each of you to move through those places of fear, and doubt and really understand what you’re afraid of, so you can face it.

So, all of these things that you are probably frustrated about in your business, somewhere behind the scenes, there are some fears there. And they’re always going to exist and we don’t have to eradicate them. But the more aware we can be that they exist, the more we can make space to see them, that’s when we can find the real keys to moving you forward. I want to talk about fear of success, fear of caretaking, fear of failure, fear of disappointment and disappointing. Now we could cover so many fears on this that I could be here with you all day. But I just want to focus on these. These are some very common ones that have been coming up for my own clients, and I want to highlight them. As you listen, think about how this applies to you.

Some of my clients as we were planning their 90 Day goal, putting their funnel together or creating their plan to guest podcast and have a signature talk ready, I heard from them that there’s a sense of fear about success. And one of my clients offered up that she’s afraid of being overwhelmed by all she would have to do if she succeeds at this. It’s almost this fear of being in capable of handling everything that comes. Now sometimes when I bring this up, people’s knee jerk reaction is, “Well, that’s not me, believe me, I want the people there.”

But I want each of you to just pause for a minute and see, is there any part of you that fears that you won’t be capable of handling the success? And I also want to offer up to you that what specifically about that success that you wouldn’t be able to handle in your mind is going to vary from person to person. So take the time to figure out what it is for you. And that, I always feel as a starting point, and then we solve for the external and we solve for the internal, right? We can answer all those lingering questions in our mind of what it would look like to handle this amount of people or clients in my business, what are the practical pieces of it? And how do we solve for the internal peace as well?

Let’s talk about fear of caretaking. Now there is definitely a direct relationship between the fear of success and the fear of caretaking in the way I’m talking about it. So, we can be someone who cares for people and cares about people, that when we are caretaking people in an unhealthy way, I’m not talking about those amazing, generous caregivers, right, who are helping to care for those that can’t take care of themselves. But I’m talking about caretaking in relationships, where we are actually taking more responsibility for other people’s life, then it’s really healthy for us to do. This is where we think we need to fix everyone’s feelings, fix everyone’s problems, manage everyone. And we can feel a great sense of responsibility.

Now I highlight this, because I know the kind of humans and amazing coaches that tend to follow me, because oftentimes, we’re attracted to people who we relate to and are similar to, and I’ve heard from my clients this tendency to caretake, and I share in this tendency. It’s a big part of my work and my life and my business. And it will always be there for me and I learned so much from it. And I hope you can, too.

So, when I’m talking specifically about fear of caretaking in relation to fear of success, imagine having your client roster full. Imagine going a little beyond that maybe you have a group, maybe you have a group of 30 people that you’re working with or more, think about that highest number that you have, is there a fear for you that you won’t be able to give everyone what they need from you?

Now, I definitely relate to this. And this time and again has been a slow down for me and will probably continue to be. Now for me, I’ll just share with you what a gift this is, for several reasons. Number one, I typically tend to be a person who can take on way more than is humanly possible. That’s my nature and I have to really work to balance that out. Now some people have the opposite issue and they really need that push forward Neither one is better than the other, just good to have the awareness.

So, it would be very easy for me to go full steam ahead and potentially put myself in a situation where I wasn’t able to give clients what was promised to them. And I know that I don’t ever want to do that. And so on one hand, even though I don’t want to be in an unhealthy place with my clients, where I’m believing I have to solve all of their problems, I have to take ownership of all of their results, and I have to really make myself way more available to them than is practical possible or healthy.

I also see that me having this fear come up, always allows me to take a pause. Because when I take that pause and I see that fear, I’m able to answer for it. Okay, from a healthy, positive standpoint for my clients, what is it that they need from me? And can I ensure that I can provide that. So, it really is a way of preventing me from giving poor service to my clients and also a way of keeping me from over functioning and caretaking my clients, and I know a lot of you have the tendency to do that. So, notice for you, do you have that fear of caretaking, and usually, how this will come up is when you notice you’re stuck or you’re self-sabotaging or your loss or you’re overwhelmed and you have your coach work with you to find out what’s there. You will have that fear come up. So, think about out, let that settle and see where that comes up for you.

Let’s talk about fear of failure. So, we’ve talked about fear of success. What about fear of failure? And I noticed that some people relate more to one of these than the other. Most likely, if you’re stuck with, “I don’t know what my niche should be, maybe this isn’t a good idea. Should I do the webinar? Or should I do this evergreen funnel? What should I do?” And when we’re stuck in that, sometimes we need answers and sometimes we are afraid of making a decision and failing.

Why is that? Because if we fail, if it didn’t work, you might feel embarrassed, you might feel shame, you might have more evidence for yourself, that you can’t really do it. And you might even experience a conversation of self-blame, telling you that it’s your fault, you didn’t succeed at it. So do you relate to fear of failure? How is this coming up for you in these very kinds of sneaky ways, where it seems just like a practical, tangible problem, and it’s actually fear of failure, avoiding that possible shame, embarrassment, and reinforcement that you can’t do it?

Let’s talk about fear of disappointment, fear of disappointing. Now, this can sometimes be related to the caretaking. This is for those of us that tend to take a little bit too much responsibility for others. Or perhaps you have felt like it is always your job to make everybody happy all of the time and you have a deep fear of disappointing people; disappointing the people you are providing for disappointing your family, disappointing your clients, disappointing anyone. And there’s also that fear of being disappointed, specifically disappointed with myself. Check in with yourself. Is it hard for you when you disappoint people? And take it a step further is that disappointment, showing up in a healthy way, where you’re being self-reflective and curious, and possibly making any shifts if they are needed? Or is this fear of disappointment actually coming out in an unhealthy way and stopping you.

As you let these different ways fear comes out settle in, I want to offer up to you a few of the ways this will show up. When we’re really right on the verge of that big thing, that next move in our business and the fear can get so big. Sometimes it can look like doubting, not sure what to do next, not following through, getting sick. Sometimes it can look like bringing new drama into your life, bringing in a new problem.

We’ve got this new little rescue dog I’ve been writing a little bit about on social media. And there are many reasons we sought out having her, it’s been such a gift, she is really learning how to not be fearful. It’s been good for our family, good for our other dog, and also very challenging for us. And there have been times when I’ve thought, now I know I’m having a lot of fear coming up in my business. And every time I noticed that there’s this part of me that wonders if I brought this new little project into our life, just to distract enough, right, so that I don’t have to do as much, that I don’t have to risk failure as much. And this is really the value in this, right? That we can be aware of these things and be on to ourselves, and not just inadvertently allow these things that seem to be getting in the way actually get in the way of our success.

Couple more thing: feeling overwhelmed, in action, right? Not taking the action, over action, doing too much moving too fast doing all the things and not really being effective. Sometimes I also speak about a similar term, which is frantic action, when we are feeling like we’re taking that chaotic action, just to appease the fear and insecurities. So sometimes it looks like doing all the things and sometimes it looks like doing nothing. I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope you have had some insights into you and your patterns and what your fears are.

And yes, get help with the tangible, get help with the practical, learn all about business and marketing and do the things, and make sure that you are aware time and again of what’s going on internally for you. Because if you solve one and not the other, it will always keep coming up time and again. That’s what I’ve got for you, coach. Have a good week, and I’ll talk to you next time.

Outro: Thanks for listening to The Masterful Coach Podcast. If you’re ready for complete support as you build your coaching business, check out Molly’s collaborative community, The Masterful Coach Collective, it’s a place where you’ll have access to the best experts in the biz, community support and guidance as you build your perfect business 90 days at a time. Visit www.mollyclaire.com for details.