17-years of owning a profitable business brings experience and knowledge.

Being an Entrepreneur also brings me happiness, a sense of accomplishment, gratitude, and financial security. Do you want to know what else comes with that 17-years of experience? Overwhelm, grief, restlessness, the feeling of not being enough, doing enough, working hard enough, and the fear of failing to be as great as God tells me I am. When I think about it, I have spent a great deal of time paralyzed in some sort of needless fear.

The way my transparency is set up...

I like to keep it real, or, I'll just keep it. To say none of us have fear is ridiculous. We are all looking for ways to overcome the fear but the real issue behind the fear is the unknown that we're afraid of dealing with. In my years of mentoring and coaching executives, celebrities, adults, and youth I notice that a lot of the pain is tied into the, "what if" of the situation.

What if this relationship doesn't work out and I waste my time?
What if I don't fit in and people ostracize me?
What if I become too successful and don't know how to handle it?
What if I lose the friends and family I started with?
What if this/that/it just doesn't work?

Am I the only one tired of generic solutions?

Now, you know I'm not the only one who's aware that there is no new advice to give. There may be new people and new ways to receive old information but the information is still not new. It all depends on your level of trust in the person giving the advice you are seeking. What I've seen is people become popular overnight on social media and get so excited at the newfound popularity that they don't think about the advice they dish out. You have people doing all of this ritual to overcome fear when it's really quite simple but does require some work on your end.

Are you ready to change your mindset?

There hasn't been a year that I have not been overwhelmed, felt a sense of hopelessness, or felt like I was going in the wrong direction in my business. I've always had people around me who have had stronger minds than me who will remind me that fear is needless and not a part of my daily life plans. TRUTH: My debilitation game is STRONG. I can have one thing go wrong and it ruin my day. Then, overwhelm will take over and I'll find myself second guessing everything I have believed to be true about my amazing self. In that same string, my COME BACK game in strong as well.

Can I tell you what I do to overcome the fears of, "what if"?

I throw myself a 22-minute pity-party. I feel like 22 minutes is enough time to go to the depths of self-hate without having to worry about falling into the depths of depression
I ask myself to acknowledge and identify the real fears behind the "what if" I'm dealing with. (Example below)
You say you don't have time to journal but have you missed the latest episode of Queen Sugar, Game of Thrones, or whatever other show you watch on the idiot box? I work out a lot of my issues surrounding fear through my journals
I keep people around me who don't allow me to dwell in the fear of the unknown. That support system is small but reliable
I watch my words because I'm aware that words mean things and I want to be mindful about what I speak into my life

I have always been afraid to be in a relationship.

I've helped people transition to death, I've rescued sex-trafficked teenagers, and I still have not ever had a really healthy relationship. I didn't even know what that was supposed to look like. As a result, I had a lot of fear surrounding my most recent engagement. Sure, I had known my fiance for years and we had been friends but the "what if's" came right on in and almost caused me to self-sabotage the relationship. At the root of the fear was really, "What if this really works out and I don't have a reason to be unhappy anymore?" Months later, I'm still engaged and learning that it's totally okay to not fight, argue, or find reasons to pick at another person. My fear of it not working has been replaced with finding moments to show love instead of acting in fear. It's going quite well for me.

The root of my fear as an entrepreneur was basic, "What if I can take care of my family without depending on someone else to take care of me?"

At the root of every fear is a reason for you to push forward. At the root of every part of the pain is the possibility of pushing through to pleasure. Fuck a cliche - you're worth pushing through the pain is what you need to tell yourself over and over again. You will thank me later for it. I'm always around if you need me.

I love you, and there's absolutely, positively NOTHIN' you can do about it.

Jayla The Self Esteem Queen