Why You Flinch When People Give You Feedback (And How to Stop)

Intro/Outro: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a Sought after Entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and here's your host, Kathryn Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, Superstore, that your tuning this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive into today's topic because [00:01:00] I wanna share with you how I sort of navigate receiving feedback. In my business and how that has changed over the years.

And if you're somebody who naturally tends to people pleasing and or can find yourself, turning yourself inside out to meet market demands and market needs, then you're gonna want to pay attention to this particular episode because that's exactly where I used to exist, where a lot of what I created and a lot of what I put out and a lot of what I did.

Was from the perspective of what do I think the market needs? What do I think the problem is that they have, and how can I fit what I want to create into a box that meets that needs? And obviously when we're creating and we're putting things out into the world and we're a business, what we create needs to be something that people want and need.

But I don't [00:02:00] think it has to be. The driving force that it's been for me. And I think a lot of people, again, that come from that people pleasing perspective. And what I mean by that is we create for what we think people want and need. And then when we create and we put it out there and people join our programs, buy our products, buy our services, whatever it might be, and they provide feedback that is constructive feedback.

Maybe some of it's negative feedback, maybe if it's, some of it's a lot of praise and how much they love it. But we find ourselves turning inside out and quickly jumping to fixed change and revamp what we're doing because someone provided maybe a negative piece of feedback and or provided feedback that was constructive that could very well support improvement within our business.

But what. For me, what was really exhausting was how [00:03:00] quickly I clung to that critical or constructive feedback and then wanted to change what I was doing because I didn't want to receive any more critical or constructive feedback in that way. And that was really exhausting. And maybe you are experiencing this right now in your business where you feel like you are, you're bracing yourself.

To constantly react and constantly be on guard for what might come up, who might ask for a refund, who might complain, how they might complain, and you're in this sort of clenched state of bracing, and I spent many, many, many, many years there. I remember when we opened our brick and mortar, and I might've shared the story before, but I remember when we opened our brick and mortar.

And we had our first quote unquote complaint. It wasn't really a complaint. It was a customer that had come in and [00:04:00] noticed that some their wine had gone sour. And that can happen, right? We're producing, uh, something that's drinkable. And everything has to be very sterile. Otherwise, you could get sour wine.

You could get wine that goes bad. And I remember my husband saying to me, Catherine, it's one person that's a percentage that is very, very, very. Okay. Uh, in business, right? Of course, if you were getting like 50% or more of these complaints there, then there would be an issue we'd need to look in, even at maybe 30%, but less than 10%, less than 5%.

Sometimes you just have to chalk it up as maybe it was a dirt dirty bottle. Maybe it just didn't get sanitized correctly. Maybe the dishwasher we ran it through was out of, uh, detergent at the time, we just didn't notice. I mean, there's a lot of things at play, but it wasn't a systematic thing that needed to be [00:05:00] fixed because it was one person, and I'm sharing this because.

My natural tendency then was to be like, what do we do? What do we fix? How do we fix this? This, we can't have this happen. We have to be perfect. So there's a people pleasing aspect, but there's also a perfection aspect, and then there's control and certainty that also plays a factor in all of this, and it's really, really, really exhausting as a business owner.

I'm speaking from experience when we're trying to control everything, when we're trying to perfect everything and keep everything perfe perfected. And also trying to manage and control the experiences of our customers and our clients, which we cannot do. There will always be somebody that has a complaint, feedback, it doesn't work for them, whatever it might be.

And when we can shift from basically being very reactive and revamping the business and the offerings and [00:06:00] all of those sorts of things with one level of feedback. We can approach things from a more nimble, grounded, sort of resilient place, which is that much more peaceful within the nervous system. And I wanna share another story with you 'cause I think it's, it's really important and how I'm now navigating this in my business and how it's really helped me relax, like actually relax in the business where these things don't really.

Shake me, I think like they used to. And if you've been in my world for a while, then you know, in May I launched a new suite of AI specialists that I had created, and I did that to support small business owners. And I programmed these specialists with my 25 years of experience, all of the marketing frameworks, ethical marketing stuff done with integrity, authenticity, and I built this suite of [00:07:00] specialists and invited a group of beta members to come into this.

Experience with the idea that I really wanted to capture their feedback because like anything with tech, really anything in business, but particularly tech, nothing is gonna go according to plan. And you're gonna see very quickly how you can't control quote unquote perfection. There's gonna be glitches, there's gonna be things that don't work.

Uh, you name it, right? And I did that. Knowing I was gonna get sort of the feedback, and I have received many, many, many amazing feedback of how amazing it is, how awesome it is, how brilliant it is, and I've also received feedback like there's a glitch with this one. It keeps telling me I don't have enough credits.

All these sorts of things that shouldn't be happening. Also, I've had people say, you know, the output that it provides is like, there's [00:08:00] so much depth there that I'm actually overwhelmed by it. I don't know what to do with it. And I'm sharing all this with you openly because I also think that as business owners, we don't really share when things aren't going right or when we get this constructive feedback or that we even integrate.

Receiving constructive feedback in our business and what that feedback is because then we won't look perfect. And what if people don't want our product and service? Like how dare I or don't Like I would never want to put out in the public that somebody had sour wine. 'cause then nobody would want to come by the wine and or how I would never wanna share on a podcast like I am right now that.

Yes, the system that I've created isn't perfect, and there are things that we're working through, and also people have their own experience with it, and not all experiences are things that I need to jump through the hoop for, meaning if someone's feeling [00:09:00] overwhelmed by the output. Is that because the, the output in the system is like having a hard time or is that the person receiving the output that stress bucket might be too full?

Or the day they went in, they were busy running around and they had no time in the first place, and then they were hit with all this depth and they're like even more overwhelmed. Right. Katherine in the past would've taken every single one of those, particularly the critical ones, and tried to perfect the system, and I would've turned myself inside out to perfect the system in order to please every single one of my clients and customers.

And that is a feat that. I don't think we should be striving for. I think from the perspective of yes, wanting to deliver on what we promised, but also understanding that we are human and also understanding that we can't control everybody's experiences, but we also don't know what everybody's kind of going [00:10:00] through.

So recently I received some feedback that the output. Was, uh, too lengthy, right? It was overwhelming. People didn't know what to do with it. And I was receiving that from a few different people, which is totally cool. And I'm taking that feedback at sort of face value of what it is, and then also trying to sift through what can I do with this?

And then what is my role to do with this? And why I am sharing this with you is because, again, Catherine in the past would've tried to turn ourselves in inside out to try to perfect it. Catherine, in the past would've also internalized. All of it as critical, right? It's not good enough. It doesn't measure up.

The outputs are shit. Whatever stories Catherine wanted to tell herself, whatever stories I wanted to tell myself I would've, right? And if you're familiar with human design or Jean Keys, I have Gate 18, which is the gate of judgment. In a lot of ways, I see through the lens of a critical eye, I can spot [00:11:00] flaws in systems, in what people are saying, all the sorts of things.

Society, you name it. I spot the flaws. And I can also then architect a path to innovate that flaw and flaw. I don't want you to take that as a bad thing 'cause it's, it's not, it's just where can we improve on, on systems. Right. And I have that gate in my human design, but I also have that as my vocation in the genies, which is 18.55 being.

The projection field. So people literally projecting all of this onto me, right? And me receiving it and from a not self-esteem, me then trying to turn myself inside out to try to fix all of the problems that arise. What I've learned about tech is that there are things that we can prioritize and there's things that we can't prioritize, right?

Like you've gotta put things on a priority list because. If we tried [00:12:00] to again, meet everybody's needs, we would just be spinning and we would lose a sense of who we are, which is partly my story in a lot of ways, right? Is turning myself inside out to appease everybody, manage everybody's expectations, manage everybody's experiences.

How I'm approaching this now is. Knowing inherently how phenomenal these specialists are, I literally just wrote a sales page for a client of mine using my high ticket sales page writer. I know it's phenomenal because I also experiment with other resources and tools I've received from other people, and also like experiment with something like Chacha, bt, or code or whatever, by just prompting providing information, you name it.

And the way that I've programmed my specialists, I've done it through the lens of my experience. My frameworks, all of it, my examples, all of it. [00:13:00] And my output on these specialists are so much better than anything that I'm getting on chae or code. And I'm not just saying that because they're my specialists.

Like I said, I use other people's resources just so that I can have a baseline of like. Am I actually speaking truth when I say that the output is far superior to what I'm seeing? Yes, I can because I'm using the other systems too. So this particular client came to me. She was totally okay with me utilizing AI to write things and different things like that, and I decided I'm, because I've been receiving feedback that it's sometimes it's overwhelming and or.

It's providing input and output too quickly, yada, yada, yada. I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna do a quick test and experiment, which is often what I do now, is run it through my system. Like, okay, cool, I'm gonna receive that feedback and then I'm gonna sit with it rather than be reactive to it, rather than [00:14:00] go into self-critical mode of like, oh, maybe your stuff isn't great, or whatever, right?

Rather than go there first. I sit with it. It. And then I go, okay, I'm gonna experiment and actually test this to see what is the deal here. And I quite literally put the same thing into Chacha Boutique Code, another tool that I had and my tool, and it is far superior. And this is the thing that I want you to take away from this.

Not that my specialists are superior. But the underlying pattern that I'm seeing from a consciousness perspective when it comes to using these tools, and that is we're still approaching our work and our business from a place of, I just need to turn stuff out. Right? It's kind of that grinder, that hustler like, this is gonna help me do it faster, quicker, better, because I've equally had the feedback where someone said, well, why would I use this?

[00:15:00] And pay for this when I can use chatt. And that's a, that's a valid question if you're looking through the lens of, I just want this to churn out stuff for me and content for me. And if you don't have a perception of what makes copy really great, and that is the key, right? When you hire an expert and you hire a specialist, you're hiring them for a skill.

And then are you hiring them for the skill or are you just hiring them to do work for you, which is two very different things in the past, like I said, I would've just tried to appease that client, and so I might've gone in and revamped all my specialist or broke my system because I was like, well, this person's not happy when in reality.

I wasn't standing behind the work that I was doing and, and this test again, just sort of proved that point for me, is that, yeah, go use Chacha BT in Claude. Right. But [00:16:00] ask yourself what you actually want. And I think that's even the more underlying sort of root here, is that if you're approaching ai, these tools, or you're approaching hiring a copywriter or a marketer or whatever you're hiring people for, maybe you're hiring someone to paint your house and you're like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hire the guy that says he can paint my house in five seconds.

Versus the guy that's like, Hey, I've got all these years of experience. It's gonna take me a week and um, I'm not available for another three months. And you're like, I want this done now. And then you get the guy to come in who says he can do it in five seconds, and it's a shit job. It's the same using AI tools.

And these are the questions you need to ask yourself in business, in life, because this. Is only being amplified through the lens of ai. And I see this, it's the intersection between consciousness and AI tools and it's so amplified to me. I can see it so clearly now where. We're still [00:17:00] operating from that place of just do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

And wow, AI can get this done faster for me. And why would I hire you or pay you when I can just use an AI tool? Well, if you can get the outputs that produce the results for you. Then use whatever the heck you want to use. No one's trying to convince you to use me or anybody else for that matter. And that's the way I sort of approach it like from a feedback perspective is a, how is the feedback being delivered?

What is the actual feedback? Because if it's just this is overwhelming or I don't understand the output that you're, you're giving me and or I could just use chat GBT and it, it creates a lot of things for me. Cool. I'm not in the business to just want to create things for you. I don't wanna add more work to people's plate, but I also don't want more noise out in the industry or industries.

Right. I think we're already bombarded with [00:18:00] information, and I know a lot of creators have talked about this, but Rick Rubins one of my favorite people because I think he just brings this point of view to things that is just so unique and different, but also very grounded. With a lot of spaciousness, and one of the things he said is like, AI doesn't have a point of view.

You still have to be the orchestrator behind it. So while my specialist or any other AI tool out there is, um, beneficial to help you in crafting some of these things, it still has to have a point of view. And you are the orchestrator, you are the point of view number one. Number two is, is if you don't know what is good taste.

And stuff that's actually gonna produce results for you. Then having somebody that knows that to me is really beneficial to have in your corner, whether that's me or anybody else, whatever you're using it for. But I think that's the other perspective of it, is that why would I use this? Why do I find value in this?

What's the point of this? Like [00:19:00] right if, if you're asking those questions to an expert or a specialist. To me, the question that you should be asking from a feedback perspective is, can you show me this is the input that I have or output that I receive. Sorry. And can you explain to me what. All of this is like, why this is beneficial, where I could use this, why I'd want to use this here, right?

When you can understand the way somebody thinks, rather than just hiring them to like check things off and you know, do fulfill like a time thing for you, you're gonna get that much better insight into why things work, how they work, that sort of thing. And so. If you feel like every time you get sort of a piece of feedback and it stings a bit.

'cause I think it will, right? I think sometimes it does. Now, from my perspective, I'm very neutral when I get feedback. I don't really. My, my, my feathers don't really [00:20:00] get ruffled. And I, and I say that honestly before they used to, I'd get annoyed, very defensive, right? Trying to prove my point back without really trying to understand and listen.

And now I come from that neutral place of really being able to see through the feedback and really understand where people are coming from. When I say a level of consciousness. That thing being amplified with AI even more, right? There is a we, we have a consumption issue and Rick Rubin talks about this, right?

Is like if you want to be a creator, create rather than consume, but so many people are still on that cycle of consumption. Consumption, consumption. And I see this with AI and the tools that are out there where. They're using the tool and spending hours going back and forth with AI rather than actually creating, and they're in, stuck in the same loop and or they're producing a bunch of things that are [00:21:00] just kind of mediocre, that don't really spark insight, creativity.

And you see it now, like I can see it so very clearly with the content out there that there is a sense of. Mass production being amplified when I feel like that was the reason why I was hesitant to go down the AI route to begin with was because I didn't want to play into mass production. I was somebody who was like, it's quality over quantity all the way, right?

I want depth, I want creativity, I want nuance. And if we're only looking. Things through the lens of how quickly can I, this produce something for me? I wrote 10 emails in two minutes. I'm creating a bunch of stuff, like for what I think is the question that I ask myself. Like for what you know, I think it's that excess of information, the excess excessive production, the mass [00:22:00] production.

If we look at like fast fashion, it's the same sort of thing. And that's where I start to see. The levels of consciousness, but also how we're integrating with ai. And if we approach AI this from the same level of consciousness, we're just gonna get more of the same meaning. If you're approaching AI from that place of.

Go, go, go, go. Do, do, do, do, do. I have to create consistency. I'm just gonna produce, produce, produce, and you're that machine that's just constantly in production mode and you actually don't have a sense of what works and what doesn't work in your business, then you're just gonna get more of the same. It's just that you're going to probably be able to produce that much more stuff than maybe you did in the past.

And that's where I'd love for us to shift, right? If we think of someone like Rick Rubin, he talks to a lot of creators, right? People who are in that sort of creator consciousness [00:23:00] that are creating from a place of what wants to actually flow through me, and then what am I going to do with that? And when we know that foundation, then we know.

What feedback we want to take on, and I think for a lot of years I didn't know. What I really wanted to create, what really wanted to flow through me. 'cause I was constantly creating from a place of what do people want, what can I fix, what problem can I solve? And therefore, when I got the feedback that I quote unquote, wasn't meeting the standard.

Of somebody, then I flinched and I would doubt what it was that I was doing, rather than being in that rock solid foundation of like, I know I created this and it's brilliant. Is it perfect? No. Is it gonna break down and have meltdowns and hallucinate? Yes, but AI does, right? So you can use chat, you can use code, [00:24:00] all of them.

We'll hallucinate from time to time, which is why from a creator's consciousness and perspective, you still need that point of view. You still need to know what feels true and right for you. However, if you're a business owner and you're wanting to attract more clients and make more sales and all those sorts of things, there are ways to do that in the way in which you write and communicate.

And if you don't understand what that is. Then how can you be critical of it, I think is kind of where my, my brain goes, right? Um, and I've experienced this lots with writing copy for people, which is why I'm often really detached from the copy when I write it, because I've had many, many business owners who will go in and edit a whole page, or they'll say, this isn't it, or, I don't like this phrasing, or whatever.

Without coming from a perspective of trying to understand or trying to discern like, why did this person write it this way? Why did they position it this [00:25:00] way? And then when I explain that, oftentimes they're like, oh, I never thought about that from that perspective. But when we just go in with a critical lens to just offer feedback 'cause we don't like something.

But we don't actually know why we don't like it, and or it kind of goes maybe against our way of receiving information. For example, if our system is overwhelmed, then it's gonna be hard to take in information, right? If I am overwhelmed and my system is overwhelmed, then receiving a bunch of information is gonna be hard.

And so there is some truth maybe to the feedback that maybe the outputs are too long or whatever it might be. However. I can't manage everyone's experience, meaning I don't know what they're going through beyond just that. Also, when you're confident in what you've created, not saying that it's perfect or anything like that, you become less reactive to all of the feedback and you [00:26:00] know exactly where you want to prioritize your energy.

Also, what feedback is worth sort of receiving and taking on, and what feedback is not. Right? So when someone tells me they're overwhelmed with something, or you know, I don't know what to do with this, or, this isn't helping me because now I don't have the clarity, or this is too much, or whatever it is.

Then I start to ask the questions of like, well, what's going on actually in your reality that's causing the overwhelm and that's causing you to not have the clarity? Because the way that I would approach something, if I received an output from Chacha BT, or Claude or whatever, let's just say that I didn't like, I would just work with it until I liked it.

And I would ask the questions I needed to ask, rather than my system sort of shut down and go, this isn't what I want. Right. I would get curious and I would work with it, and that's part of being the orchestrator or part of being quote unquote, the person that has the point of view that like. You can't outsource all of your [00:27:00] power to these tools simultaneously.

You can't outsource all your power to a mentor or a guide or a guru simultaneously. You can't outsource all of your power to the strategies and tactics that you think are gonna fix and save your business. And that's what's so interesting about AI is that to me, it's just amplifying a lot of the collective conscious patterns that we see That.

Often are the root of why we're stuck or unhappy or not where we want to be because we're outsourcing our power. Well, I was using that specialist and. It didn't gimme what I wanted and I'm gonna shut down. Right? Or it's too overwhelming to receive. If something, an output came to me that felt overwhelming or too much information, I would just say, Hey, this is a lot of information.

What would be the top 10 highlights from what you just shared? Right? That's where my brain would go, and that's where my, my approach would go. But again, if my system is stressed, [00:28:00] I could see why I would maybe get frazzled if I was getting all that information and therefore wouldn't be able to think critically and or creatively in order to get the output that I actually wanted.

And this is why this is important from a feedback perspective, because I think when you're rock solid in your foundation, you know what you deliver is. Amazing, right? Like you're confident in that, but you're also equally open to receiving the feedback. You can hear the feedback in a much more. Grounded a neutral way without the defensiveness, without the needing to jump in people please.

Right. It's like, thank you for your feedback. We'll consider it. Not all feedback needs to be moved on, but I think there is a point of people pleasing, but I think below that as. Also is the scarcity of like, well, I don't wanna lose the client, right? Or, what if that client doesn't buy from me again? Or what if they decide this isn't for them?[00:29:00] 

And all of that doubt and that worry just perpetuates more of it, but also then keeps you in that cycle. That's so very exhausting as a service provider. Business owner, product seller, whatever you are. Right? I think it just gets to be very, very overwhelming and exhausting. And if there's anything, like I said you could take away from this episode is when we're creating from a place that's truly grounded in what we want to create and what wants to flow through us and we know and can stand behind that, and we've embodied that, nothing can really rock us.

Right? Nothing can really sort of like. Knock us off that our, our footing because we know what it is. And when someone says something like, well, I don't like the, what it produced, I don't like the output or whatever. I don't like, the output doesn't really give somebody much information anyways, which is a whole other episode, right?

I'll record a whole other episode on how to give [00:30:00] feedback, but also how to give it in a way that you get actually what you want. Um, because I think a lot of times we come with that sort of complaint. Things aren't working, this isn't good, da dah, dah, dah, dah. But it doesn't really give anybody any insight to like, why, right?

When someone says, I don't like it. Well, what don't you like about it? Then do you actually understand how to write sales pages that actually sell? Because again, I'm not in the business to just help people write sales pages for the sake of writing a sales page to put up on, on, on the internet. Like that's not why I'm, why I do what I do.

And so I think also that's a reframe in someone's perspective because I do think people say they want the results and they say they want to attract clients and all of the things, but then. I'm not saying they're not willing to do what needs to be done because I think that's an old school way of thinking, but I think that they, they don't actually understand what needs to be done and therefore they're just going through the motions.

And that [00:31:00] to me is a, is default conditioning in its finest and that we're just going through the motions and we actually chalk up value. Productivity with what we accomplish and what we complete rather than the results. And if you've come from corporate, likely you've experienced this depending on the corporate culture you were in.

But if you, if you were in a fast-paced tech startup company, they might've had things that measured your KPIs and all those sorts of things. But in a lot of corporate environments, at least the ones that I've observed, there's often really no measurement of like. From a results perspective of driving actual results in the company that's often not measured.

It's usually very performance based, like how much work you get done, productivity, like are you a good team member, do you communicate well? All those sorts of things like, which are all important to some degree, but when I actually think about results in a business, like I want to get results in my business and also be fulfilled in the work and also.

Create [00:32:00] really epic things, but I think a lot of people don't look through that lens. I think they're just looking through the lens of. Checking things off a to-do list, um, is the best way that I can approach it. And that's the thing I see very much now with the amplification of AI is like, it's just amplifying that.

And then also not really knowing what actually matters to move this needle in your business. Literally like do you know on a given day what actually is required to move the needle and. If so, then you'd likely not be spending a lot of time on the things that don't matter. Um, so I wanna just sort of leave you with that.

I wanted to just talk about how I navigate feedback in a much different way now, and also how that has shifted. I think the way that I create in a lot of ways, right? Not being sort of this tethered to all the people that are asking for all of the things and um. Demanding of all of your [00:33:00] time and, and that sort of thing.

And I think it's just really important to, one, I think be open to the feedback, but also really trying to understand where the feedback is actually coming from. And then two, when you're really confident in the work that you've done. You can back it up, then you can approach the feedback from that perspective.

Like, do I actually need to prioritize this today? Is this a, a fire I need to put out today? Because I think many of us are in that survival where everything's a fire and I've gotta put it out right now in this moment. And if I don't, I'm gonna lose clients. People are gonna be unsatisfied, they're gonna gimme a negative review, whatever it is, and I just want you to know that there are ways to handle.

Navigate all the feedback and everything in your business in a much more grounded, calm, nimble, neutral way where you're not in that reactive state. And then also not internalizing that in sort of a critical way. So hopefully this episode has been helpful. I've shared a lot [00:34:00] of different stories with you, um, and jumped around a bit in terms of consciousness and AI and all of those sorts of things.

And I think what I'd love to leave you with today is if you look at yourself and look at what. Where you're at in your business, and if you can see the lens of maybe where you're approaching things from, older conditioning or conditioning that you thought maybe you had released and let go of and or maybe how you're still approaching your marketing and your copy and business and success and client attraction and all of that from that place of just do, do, do, do.

If I just work harder and push harder and get more done, then. I'm gonna create the success that I want. And if we're approaching these tools and all the things from that lens, we're just gonna continually create the more. And if you don't know what that is, I'm working on something really cool that's gonna help you kind of identify where you are on that sort of consciousness perspective, where your business and your work actually lives within that [00:35:00] consciousness scale.

And then also the marketing that you've been using. Where that lives. Because to me, if that's incongruent, which then comes back to the feedback, right? When you're in alignment with that, you're in alignment with the human. I'm at this level of consciousness, level five, let's say, creator, and my work lives to help bridge people from level three to level four, level four to level five.

And I get feedback that's in level one survival. I'm overwhelmed. I can't do this. What's going on? Right? That's level one. That's survival. I'm operating in survival. Then I know I'm not flinching because the work that I do and where I am doesn't exist there. And so for me to then go down to level one and meet somebody there, if your work is to do that, cool.

But if it's not, then to go down and meet someone there and to appease the overwhelm and the scatteredness and the spinning and the survival and how am I gonna do this and all of that. [00:36:00] That's just gonna exhaust and deplete your energy, but also it's pulling you. Into a place where you're not a match anyways.

And again, this isn't from a hierarchical place. This is just where your work lives and where you live, and who you're really here to sort of serve. That doesn't mean that from time to time we're not in survival. There are things that can happen in life that will put us there. Absolutely. But I'm talking about like consistently where you live and where you exist.

So if you had a bad day and you were overwhelmed and that was like a one-off, cool. You have the tools and practicality to get outta that. Cool. Right? But I'm talking about like consistently living there and that's where you, when you start to see through, through that lens, you're like, Ooh, this is somebody that's wanting.

That external validation. They want, um, you know, success and accolades that's outside of themselves. They're giving their power away level three in a lot of ways, level one, two, and three in a lot of ways. When that's happening then, and [00:37:00] they're asking for your. Gifts and whatnot to live there with them.

Nada. Right. You can see where that comes through and it's, it's like, thanks for the feedback, but you don't always have to take it. And that's I think, a really beautiful place to be. That acceptance of like, I am not for everybody and I can't manage everybody's experience and it's really not my responsibility to.

Get anybody to do anything, right? So it's not my responsibility to get you to shift from a three to four or a four to five. It's not, it's not right that, that, that falls in the hands of, of you as an individual and. I'm here to just guide. And I think a lot of mentors in that capacity are, um, I'm not here to handhold.

I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm not here to build the business for you. Um, and I'm not here to be available to you 24 7. And that's a whole other podcast that's gonna come because [00:38:00] I think, um, there is that expectation sometimes with the people that we work with, that they're available when we need them, when we're finally ready.

Right. Um, and that's a, that's a tough place to be in. And again. I used to be really uncomfortable. I used to get really uncomfortable when I had to say no to people. I don't have the time. Sorry, I'm not available. Sorry, you need to give me another week. You need to gimme at least a month's notice or whatever.

Right. I would hate to ask for those things, but I'd also hate to say no, and that's the people pleasing coming through, but that's same with the feedback. Okay. I'll do that for you. Okay. I'll fix that for you. Okay. I will. Right. So anyways, I hope this episode has been insightful for you, and if you have any questions, just let me know.

I'm always here in the dms. Happy to answer those for you, and I cannot wait for next week's episode. Cheers. 

Intro/Outro: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next [00:39:00] time, keep showing up as your authentic self.