When You Feel Resistance

Rebel Therapist

I help therapists and healers who have private practices to add a second part to their business models. I show you how to create a niched and outcome based program that you can get known for and offer to people all over the world.

Learn more about that and get on the notification list at https://rebeltherapist.me/create.

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I realized I need to tell you something today:

Even if you are doing your marketing right, you probably won’t enjoy it all of the time.

This is sort of a part 2 to my last podcast episode.

Here’s a summary of that in case you didn’t hear it or you’d like a quick recap:

Reactive marketing is when you feel like you urgently must take action to make more money, to get more people to sign up for your work, or to fix something that seems broken in your business.

You know you’re in reactive mode when you believe you’ve got to do something NOW to market your work.

If lots of your marketing activity is reactive marketing, it isn’t going to be very effective and it’s going to burn you out. When you’re reactive, you’re not tuned in to the people you want to serve, you don’t have access to your more creative parts, and you aren’t taking action from a thoughtful strategy.

Relaxed marketing is what we want to be engaging in at least 90% of the time. Whether you’re creating content, reaching out to referral partners, running free live events, pitching to podcasts, or writing website copy, whatever it is that you’re doing during your marketing time, you want to engage in it with a more relaxed nervous system.

You’ll come up with better, more attuned work when you do that. And you’re going to be able to make better decisions about what your overall marketing strategy looks like.

I received emails from some of you letting me know that the episode really resonated with you.

You loved being reminded that you’ll do your best work when you’re tuning into the people you’re serving, and NOT when you’re in panic mode.

The next thing I need to share involves a lot of nuance:

Even if you engage in relaxed marketing practices, You might still not enjoy marketing some of the time. “Relaxed” might not be the way you feel when you’re sitting down to your marketing activities.

Two things happened today that reminded me to talk about this nuanced truth.

One is: I sat down to do some of my own marketing work. I was not in urgency or panic, and I WAS tapped into the needs of the people I am here to serve.

I also didn’t feel relaxed.

I felt a bit of dread, a bit of anxiety, and a strong urge to find something else to do.

I felt my heart rate speed up a bit. I felt the fear that I might not have a good idea to share. (Yes, Even though I’ve got a huge list of ideas that I’ve been storing up for years).

I had the thought “I hate this part.”

We have a pillow that lists dozens of emotions, so that we can look at it and identify which ones we are feeling in the moment. Yeah, it's the kind a therapist might have in their office. In that moment I identified “inadequate, avoidant and worried.”

Then in order to properly procrastinate, I opened Instagram and I saw a post from one of my favorite writers, Clementine Morrigan. She writes on personal growth, trauma, polyamory and other stuff, and she’s a leftist.

Here she’s talking specifically about writing, but I want to apply this to how it can feel to work on marketing your wonderful work.

Clementine says:

“I find writing viscerally uncomfortable. Sometimes it is excruciatingly painful. It almost never feels good. The thing that is most important to me and that I have dedicated my life to is extremely difficult and unpleasant for me to actually do lol. Your calling might not feel good. I don’t think anyone tells us that. Pleasure and ease are not the only indications that a thing is worth doing. Sometimes our most important and rewarding work feels bad."

So I read that.

Then I thought of you. If you heard my last episode and felt excited to commit or recommit to some regular, more relaxed marketing practices, you might have then sat down to do your marketing work and felt something other than relaxed. Just like I often do. Maybe distressed or avoidant or inadequate or afraid.

So I realized I NEED you to know you’re not doing it wrong. Sometimes doing the work of marketing is not joyful even when you’re doing it right.

I NEVER want to make you feel like there’s some perfect way to run a business that will have you in ease and riches all of the time, and that you just haven't discovered it yet.

Marketing your offers can bring up so many feelings.

Now I want to talk about some ways to move through the discomfort and stick with it anyway.

Here are some things that work for most people most of the time:

Know that you’re not alone if you sometimes have a hard time in doing the work of marketing.

Remind yourself of your personal reasons for marketing your offers. Perhaps you want to work in new ways or make more money or shift your schedule or create your body of work.

Remind yourself of the reasons why your work matters to the people who need it.

Write those things down and look at them when you are struggling.

Give yourself tons of credit.

Remind yourself that you are doing brave and vulnerable work. You are claiming the value of the work you offer the world and telling people that it matters. You’re reaching out to the people who need your help and you’re willing to be uncomfortable to do it.

Remind yourself that by marketing your offers, you’re doing the work of growing your business. That’s part of taking care of yourself. Your younger parts are watching you and feeling taken care of. Depending on your life situation, you might also be supporting other humans with your business.

Don’t let a marketing session go on for too long, even if it is going well. Save some energy for next time. We hunger to get into a flow state where we don’t really notice time going by. In that state, it feels like words are writing themselves or whatever action we’re taking is happening without effort. We still need to stop or take a break after a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise we may feel so depleted that we have a hard time creating again next time.

I heard that tip from Kelly Diels who I interviewed on the podcast.

EbonyJanice Moore, another mentor of mine who I interviewed on the podcast, speaks about reserving some of your energy. She follows the 80/20 rule, meaning that 80% of her waking time is put towards living, healing, connecting, and other things outside of productivity. Only 20% of her time goes towards any kind of work. She avoids working more than four hours a day.

Bring something pleasurable into the experience of your marketing sessions in order to counteract your negativity bias. Bringing in a positive association begins to tell our nervous system that this activity is not all bad. For me, moving to a cozy spot in my house, playing my favorite instrumental mix or changing into my most comfortable clothes can give my nervous system the message that something good is happening.

Have a starting ritual. This could be a gorgeous, involved ritual, or it could be as simple as making yourself a cup of coffee.

Those things work for most people most of the time to keep doing the work of marketing. Notice what works for you.

One more note about that last episode:

If you heard my last in my last episode, you heard me talk about how much I love taking care of my indoor plants. I compared relaxed marketing to my plant care rituals, in which experience a lot of pleasure in tuning into each plant.

I left something out because it didn’t really add to the story. Now it’s relevant.

A year and a half ago, I had 75 houseplants.

When I was getting ready to move across town, I decided to give away about 50 of them.

I realized I was starting to feel a bit burdened by my indoor jungle.

Now I’ve got 24 houseplants, and that’s a fun amount for me.

There’s a difference between engaging in a really fun hobby and running a business. We can experience joy and pleasure in our businesses, and we’re going to feel discomfort sometimes.

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/230