Why I Almost Quit
Show Notes/Transcript at https://allisoncrow.com/blbw49/
Today I want to tell you a story, and from this story I want you to think about yourself. From all my stories I want you to think about yourself, of course. This is a story of self-sabotage and resistance, and I didn’t even realize it. As I tell you this story, I want you to think about the ways that resistance subtly shows up for you, and want you to think about your specific symptoms of resistance. With that, here’s a little story that happened recently, and what I love, let me go ahead and tell you the happy ending. The happy ending is that I caught it before I destroyed it. I almost destroyed it.
My name is Allison Crow, and I’m a creator. What that means is that I get off on creating, and sometimes … On different personality profiles, like I’m an Enneagram 7. I’m an ID on the disc profile. I’m an INFP/J, and so part of my natural tendencies are to create and to avoid discomfort. I like feeling good. Hey, by the way, I’ve totally updated my Feel Good Guide. You’re going to want to opt in for that. I’ll tell you more about it at the end. I added a section on how to feel bad.
Okay, back to the story. These are my natural ways of creating, and they’ve always served me. I love creating. I love taking ideas. I am kind of a renaissance person, who, I can’t imagine having worked at IBM for 30 years and getting a watch. I get bored really easily, and I have to create, and of course, I don’t like discomfort.
The way this has shown up in my business recently is with my live event, Camp Star Heart. Camp Star Heart was at the end of April, the beginning of May. It’s something, this is the fourth year I’ve done it. I only do one major, live event like this, and this … I love being in the room at the event, and the first two years, so I’ve recognized my cycle, the first year when I’m creating something, everything is new and it’s challenging. That challenge really drives me. Then the second year I do it, the challenge is over and by the time I get to the third year, I’m literally irritated and bored, and frustrated, and dare I even dramatically say, “I am miserable,” in the creation aspect of it. It’s not new. It’s like cooking the same damn dinner over and over again. Even though I know the outcome is going to be amazing, I would lose touch of the fact that … I would forget how good things are in the room, how good things are for my clients, and how much I actually really did enjoy the event…because I didn’t enjoy the other aspects of it once I’d already gone through the challenge of creating it.
As I’m beginning to think, and as you’ve heard on previous podcasts, thinking what does Allison and Camp Star Heart next year? If I were to do it again next year, what would I do? Well before I could even get to that thought, I actually was like, “This is miserable. All the selling and the enrolling, the dealing with the hotel, all the logistics make me miserable,” and so I had declared that this was the last year I was going to do Camp Star Heart. I was done. Why? Because I don’t, I kind of follow the, follow your feel good in business, and I always want to create things that feel energetically full to me. I don’t want to create from a place of misery, and so I made up this story that was because it wasn’t fun for me anymore, I didn’t need to do it. I was very absolute about it.
Little did I know and realize that was a form of resistance that has shown up over and over, and over for me. It wasn’t a sign that I was complete. It was actually a sign that I needed to get more curious. One of the things I want to put a flag in for you is when your signs of resistance come up, do you automatically fall for them? Are you building a practice of becoming curious about the resistance, or around the difficult feelings, around your objections? I used to be somebody, the unhealthy 7 Enneagram in me, the unhealthy 7 in me would absolutely fight or flee, so I’m in the stress response. I would either fight or flee from these difficult situations.
I finally learned how to calm and soothe my nervous system, and then get curious and creative about my resistance. As I’ve been practicing thinking about my future self’s identity, and exploring what that might entail, I also began sharing this with my colleagues and friends, and as I approached Camp Star Heart, what I realized was that … Can you totally hear Rocky snoring in the background? That’s why the show is sponsored by my dogs, you guys, because this is just real life, and I’ve got two short-nosed dogs that are in my office totally snoring. Got to love it.
Anyways, as the week to Camp Star Heart came up, and I was able to begin to feel the energy of Camp Star Heart, I got curious. I was like, “What is it that I don’t like?” I was like, “I don’t like doing all this stuff.” Beforehand, and I realized, am I the one that actually has to do it? I began, not only there, but meanwhile, I’m working with Elyse to produce this podcast, and I’m bringing on Stacey Harris to help me with marketing, and I’m really leaning into the future version of myself, the woman that I am becoming. Rocky, he is totally sawing logs you guys. Sorry, not sorry.
Okay, so I’m realizing, “Oh, I don’t just want support.” I am, like the soulful mogul version of me, she has high-level support. I began having these conversations, and exploring them, and exploring in my mind, and in dialogue with my colleagues, my coaches, and even my clients, like “What does it look like to delegate and to allow someone to help you?” I think you could actually go back to Episode 2 of this podcast, which is one of my favorites. It’s like the money sin that we’re committing and we don’t even realize, and for those of us that are givers, we tend to, we can have a tendency to over give and not receive, and so when we’re blocking that receiving or when we don’t allow help, which many recovering overachievers do, people pleasers do, high achievers do, we tend to want to do everything, and so for some of us it’s a learned skill on how to allow high-level help.
I began experimenting with this in my mind, experimenting with it in life, noticing my resistance. Well, come to Camp Star Heart this year and as we’re in the room … This is the other thing, I share behind the scenes literally days after I’m going through the stuff with my clients, and so I’m talking about the process of how we are going to have Camp Star Heart again, how I had a major insight around resistance, and how resistance shows up for me.
One of the people in the room said, “I heard this quote about Frank Sinatra that said Frank Sinatra doesn’t move pianos.” I don’t know who said it. Wish I could give credit to it, but Frank Sinatra doesn’t move pianos. At that moment I realized that one of the reasons that I almost quit is because I’m not a piano mover. I’m not a piano mover. I’m my own version of Frank Sinatra. I’m Allison Crow. I’m coach. I’m leader. I’m teacher. I’m speaker. I’m connector. I don’t do the minutia very well, and part of our building our companies, and part of me building my company was bootstrapping, right? I’m good, it’s the whole good to great thing like I am good at a lot of things. It’s my zone of goodness, not my zone of genius. It might even be my zone of excellence.
Can I write a sales page? Totally. Can I negotiate all this stuff with the hotel? Totally, but is it the highest and best use of not just my time, but for me, it’s my energy, and so when I’m doing those things it actually doesn’t give me a sense of accomplishment. It creates a heaviness, the heaviness of energetically moving a piano.
I loved that analogy, and thought, “What is my virtuoso, and to really become the soulful mogul, to become the woman I know I’m called to become?” I’ve got to pay attention to my resistance and not just a eliminate resistance from my life. I cannot eliminate certain aspects of my business, but I can learn to get help. I can learn to delegate that. Yes, that freaks me out. I’m a person, so I remember that I’m resilient. I remember that I’m in process. I remember that it’s okay for me to be imperfect, and I remember that I can learn new things. I am learning to allow high-level support, and I’m already loving it.
I’ll tell you more about that in just a minute, but I want to pause here. At Camp Star Heart we did talk about some of the ways that resistance shows up. I just got off a coaching call with some of my growth and achievement members, and we talked about ways that resistance shows up. Resistance can show up as boredom. Resistance can show up as really buying into the difficult thing that we’re doing. Resistance can show up as illness. Resistance can show up as pride and ego. Everybody probably has a slightly different version of the same ways that resistance shows up. I want you to notice how does resistance show up for you. If you think about it, this directly correlates to how we respond to the stress response, right? Technically, scientifically … Here we go, Allison Crow scientific speak.
Technically resistance is a push back on the energy, and it creates “stress”. I love this, you guys this is all in the new Feel Good Fairy Guide. Who knew how perfect that would be? The stress response, and how we respond to it, so do you fight it? Do you push back? Do you avoid it? If you’re an Enneagram 7, we tend to avoid it. We tend to just ignore it, push it under the cover if you’re conflict avoidant.
Fight, flight, freeze, do nothing, so those of you who are perfectionists, perfectionism can be a form of resistance. Then the other one, I have, I talk about frothing. It’s one I made up, thanks to a friend, who when she gets in the stressor spot, she froths. To find out about that you’ll have to get the new Feel Good Fairy Guide, and if you’re already on my list, I’m going to email that out. I’ll email that out right after I record this. It’s really good. It’s really simple, and it’s really much more mature and updated than the one I did in 2013.
Allison, take a breath. You, take a breath too. Listener, take a breath. Let’s breathe together. Let’s check in with our bodies, and check in with our wisdom, and notice. Not with judgment, don’t judge your stress response. Don’t judge the way you resist. Get to know it, and so I have learned that the ways that I resist are by avoiding. I avoid the discomfort of having help. I avoid the discomfort of having somebody do things differently than I do. I avoid the discomfort of having to tighten things up. I think it’s so funny. This podcast is an example. Here are some more behind the scenes. I’m just going to let it rip with you today.
As I bring Stacey on, Stacey Harris is from Uncommonly More, to help me with my marketing plan, which I am in love with. It is totally infused with Allison Crow. I always thought a marketing plan … I made up a story, so I fought the story by saying, “No, I know how marketing plans work. You’re going to want me to do all your shit.” What I love, that Stacey has done, is Stacey has taken all my shit and recreated it, and it’s fun. She’s actually… I see her watching my organic conversations, and then she nurtures me and says, “Hey, do a podcast about why you almost quit.” Hello, she’s helping me see me, and deliberate. She’s like a sous chef, so I get to be the chef in the kitchen, but she helps me chop it up and make it good, so that when I deliver it, it is tasty, bitches!
Okay, I know I kind of sound drunk. I’m not, but I am a little drunk on energy. I’m drunk on the feel-good of coming through this resistance, and trust me, coming through resistance isn’t always easy, but it is so damn worth it in the end.
Thinking about what your resistance patterns are, how they show up, fight, flight, freeze, froth. Froth is drama. What are the ways, right? I see a lot of people do this. I see the frothing. Frothing is what I call drama, or drama is what I call frothing. It’s when we would rather feel the bad of one thing, to then feel the deeper discomfort that we’re avoiding.
One thing I know, I think I have a whole episode about it, is the ways that we outsource discomfort. I have found, and you all, we’ve all heard those cheesy but so true sayings of like what got you here won’t’ get you there, anything we want is beyond our comfort zone. I have been hearing that shit since I was 20 years old. I am 47, almost 47 and a half. I’m finally just now getting it. I was so uncomfortable with discomfort that I didn’t even know how to begin to feel it. Now that I’m present to it, and aware of it … I’m really uncomfortable with the fact that sometimes I’m doing these audio podcasts and cannot annunciate clearly, I do that for all you perfectionists, just to give you permission to just get it done and get it out there, and then make it better.
Yeah, the podcast, the marketing plan, and instead of just going on autopilot, which is easy I think for some of us in the achievement phase of our business to do, but to really give it the curiosity, can I make this better and it still be fun? What if I were to make it better, if I were to allow it to serve my people more, what could I do? Meeting it with curiosity instead of just a decision, and I find that when I make decisions through curiosity, I’m able to move through my resistance. Even the slight shifts in my identity, in my business, in my podcast, they’re coming from an inside out place, but they are coming with meeting my resistance, instead of ignoring it.
I even wrote this morning … I had this really good morning and then all of a sudden I felt irritation, and I have felt irritation the last couple of weeks. It could be the jack-hammering in my back yard, but I think it’s deeper than that. What I noticed in my journal this morning was that I kept wanting to not be irritated. I just wanted to feel good, right, very good, a lot of attraction stuff. I get it, feeling good is always worked. All the sudden I had this little hit from my guides, or from my inner wisdom that said, “Allison, just meet your irritation. Meet your resistance.” It was like, “Hello, there, there irritation. I see you. There, there, discomfort. I see you. I welcome you. I am willing to feel you.”
If you personify, if I personify these things, as soon as I say irritation, I welcome you, and then I even started off my coaching call with my clients, I was telling them the story, and I was like, I was kind of role-playing irritation, and allowing it to come out, and allowing it to come out in a holy container. Instead of just a vomitous, dramatic irritation, I was creating a holy container for my difficult feelings, for my irritation, for my anger, for my discomfort. In, as my friend Tracy Lee says, better out than in, when I put it out into that holy container, it begins to diffuse.
For me, I think on one level I really do trust that everything is perfect. Sometimes I get curious and I question, like my husband said to me one time, he was like, “You’ve been doing this for a long time. You haven’t hit this goal or this goal. What do you think it’s going to take?” He’s not necessarily asking in a curious way. Sometimes I’m like, “yeah, what is it going to take? What is going to make the difference?” Number one, I can notice where I’ve come, because I’ve come a long way. Number two, if I want to get to the next place that I want to be at … Actually, we talked about it today on the call, it wasn’t level up, I want to level out.
As I increase my capacity, what is required of me? Oh, I find that the answer is to increase my capacity to feel the discomfort, to meet my discomfort, to not be frozen, to not fight, to not flee, or to not froth when the discomfort shows up. If and when, because I am resilient, and so are you, we can get to the other side. That is truly where the next level, the next achievement, the next expansion, the next connection, the next impact, that thing that we desire is on the other side of it. Too often we quit.
Lovingly I want you to notice where are the things … I don’t want you to have any regret, I really don’t, but I want you to be able to be the kind of person that by just living you get insights. That’s what I’m here to do, remind you how brilliant you are, and how you can see and learn from just the experience of being alive, and so I think of the times when I did quit without regret, and I notice, “Oh, here’s why I quit. This is what didn’t work for me.” All of that has led me to where I am, and if I’d like to create a slightly different trajectory it’s going to be about paying attention to resistance showing up, and meeting my resistance, not with a giant samurai sword to slash it and burn it, and lose it, but to meet it with a holy container. To meet it with sacredness. To meet my resistance with kindness and compassion, and curiosity. To maybe even meet my resistance or anxiety with celebration.
Here’s what I did at Camp Star Heart. I realized that if I was going to have Camp Star Heart again, and I was going to love it, and not just love the four days in the room, but love every day of the year, the rest of 2019 and 2020, I was going to need to have help. I hired somebody on the spot, in the room, who is an event planner. One of my clients is an event planner, and she raised her hand and said, “I’ll do it.” Already, we have negotiated the contract and I have already handed things off to my client to help–because she loves to move pianos.
I’m super excited. Now I’m not saying this is easy for me. There’s going to be some discomfort along the way, but I’m going to do exactly what I’ve shared with you today. I’m going to meet it with curiosity. I’m going to meet it with compassion. I’m going to notice my discomfort, but already, just realizing that the Allison I’m becoming has high-level help, the more I feel into that, the more it feels really juicy. It feels really juicy to think about new possibilities. It feels really juicy to think about the new possibilities with hiring Alyce and Stacey. It feels really juicy, it feels really risky. These are all financial investments that I’m making in my business, but for the first time, I’m not just making a financial investment of a class or a coach. I’m actually delegating work that I’ve done in the past to somebody who’s more energized by doing that work than I am, which leaves more energy for me to be the maestro of my own work.
How does resistance show up for you? I totally want to hear. Take a screenshot of the podcast, if you’re listening on your mobile device, or just throw out a status. Let me know how resistance shows up with you. You’re going to have to hashtag it, #betterlifebetterworkshow so that I can see it. I’ll look for you. I’m so curious, what are the ways that you find yourself in resistance? What insight did you get from this podcast that will help you meet that resistance with grace, so that you can actually realize, manifest, and create your deepest dreams and desires?
Love to you all. Thanks for listening. See you next week.
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