182. Disappointing Results

Erin Aquin:

Welcome to the Love and Success Podcast. You are listening to Episode 182, Disappointing Results.

 

Today we're going to talk about disappointing results. As entrepreneurs, we've all had them and I think that I've mentioned parts of this particular topic before but as we've been talking more about magic and intuition and manifestation in the last few episodes, I want to really bring back in this idea of learning how to deal with disappointment and experience disappointment, like the magical, amazing spiritually aligned entrepreneur that you are. 

 

I work with a lot of coaches. I work with tech leaders, I work with doctors, I work with people in all sorts of fields that essentially are the generators of their livelihood. And I mean, that could be said for anyone even in a corporate environment. If you work for someone and you don't show up for work for two weeks, chances are you will not have a job. You will not get your paycheck. 

 

But I think for entrepreneurs, so much of what we've really been talking about here in this podcast, over the last bit of time, is learning how to trust your intuition, learning how to really hone in on that gut, instinctual sense and follow through with some of those ideas and experiments. And I know that for a lot of people, this all sounds very lovely. You all can get very excited. The beginning of a project is when we're dreaming about how amazing our results will be. 

 

I know a lot of us like to set goals and really work towards those things. But what I want to focus on today is dealing with not hitting your goal, dealing with results that you think about and feel disappointed by because for an entrepreneur, this can create a ripple effect if you actually trusted your instinct on something you really believed in. You gave it your all heart and soul but then by the end of the experiment I'm in the middle of a project but what is the result you were hoping for and believing in that can really screw with our self concept? 

 

I have worked with so many entrepreneurs even when I was only doing relationship coaching and the ripple effect of feeling disappointed, if not dealt with in a way that is actually supportive to you and helpful, can have ripple effects out in the world. I know entrepreneurs who have told me that they were disappointed by something and then didn't get out of bed for two weeks. And I know that this stuff can seep into the weekend to your family to have deeper consequences than just the fact that you didn't hit a particular goal. And that is really the opposite of what we want to do. And that's why I think it's really important that we talk about this. 

 

As I am recording this podcast, we're deep into the final quarter of the year. And this is a time where I know a lot of people are thinking about their year end goal, like where they wanted to be when they began the year in January. Big dreams, big goals. If you are not on track to hit that goal right now chances are you may be dealing with some of this even preemptively even though there's months to go in the year we've got two months left. You may even be dealing with preemptive disappointments so I’ve your back. I'm here with you. Take a deep breath. And let's really explore this. I want to give you a little bit of a transparent look at my business. I'm going to do an episode on how we've gotten to half a million dollars in just a few years. That will be coming up soon. 

 

But I want to start out by saying that my business is literally one failure after another. It's like one experiment that didn't work after another one that didn't work. But at one point I looked through my online store where people pay me and they buy their coaching with me. They work with me one on one, they see that page. If they take a class of mine or folks who are going to be taking the Manifesting with Tarot Cards class coming up in November, they will see that page and it's an archive, or we could call it a graveyard, of all the shit that did not work in my business. From my day one coaching programs, I even have yoga classes that I used to sell. Yeah, for five or six dollars. I think the most expensive one was 9 dollars. I would have to look but I could probably say I sold less than 40 or 50 of those classes total in the whole time that I tried it so I want to give you a sort of this behind the scenes look at like my walk moments. Because those are much more plentiful than the things that worked. 

 

If I look at the products in the store, or the graveyard as we may want to call it, those are the things that actually have worked in my business. Probably 10% of what's in there. I tried a lot of shit. And you know and I'll also be honest, a lot of it was not a strategic play. Like it wasn't like I think this thing is gonna make money. So I'm going to try. That's never really been my strategy. For better or for worse. I know my private clients and my mastermind folks appreciate that. You know, I'm not super salesy, and I'm not really all that strategic. I just kind of follow the things that I think will be fun to do and are joyful to create, and I love to create, so I'm always up for experimenting with a new idea. 

 

I also realize that for many entrepreneurs, that can be rough. If you do not think of yourself as a natural creative person, then making the effort required to create something and then have it not sell or not sell very well or not sell as many as you would hope to sell that can feel like a huge blow. So I want to say first that I've had many and will continue to have many, many things that just don't work. For whatever reason, if nothing else to let you know that you're not alone and you can still be really successful standing on your mountain of failures. It's really possible. 

 

I'd like to think my business is living proof of that. But it's also so valuable because you start to shift to think about things that I don't really even call them failures. I'm calling them failures here on the podcast. Because that's the language that most of us understand, but the way that they actually operate in my mind, I do think of things that didn't work as just experiments. 

 

It's just things that didn't work. And I've even adopted this idea. If you've ever seen a pinball machine, where you get the bonus round and you get the bumpers so you can't actually go into the gutter, the bumpers come out and you just have this moment where your ball can't be lost. You can't lose your turn. And I think about the things that didn't work, more like that. I have called them in my love and Success Program. I call them wins in disguise. They are literally the things that 10 years from now when my business is at a whole different place. I can be very grateful that something like a random class or random program that I thought was such a good idea back in 2019 before the world changed, I will be very grateful that that didn't work out. Because whatever I learned from that experiment went on to inform and bring me into the place that I'm not. So all of this to say if you feel like you're failing right now, I see you. I've been there, I will be there again.

And it does not necessarily mean I want you to really hear me say this, it does not necessarily mean that there is this big problem in your business. I will bring a spiritual perspective in and if this resonates with you, I hope you will adopt it. I like to think that the things that don't work out the way that we had hoped, if we are willing to process the disappointment from that, if we are willing to look at the situation as though it happened for a reason and there's an important insight or lesson to share. Please look for that because it's a gem hidden somewhere in this situation. 

 

If you commit to solving that puzzle, it will always inform the next better thing and you know I have to say not to toot my own horn here, but I'm a master at being disappointed and showing up. My husband Steve, I'm not sure if he's impressed or worried about me about this but he has said very often that my ability to feel disappointed and still get out of bed in the morning and do the damn thing is impressive. And I realized like this is actually a skill that actually happened with a client a couple of weeks ago who was not feeling great. But we had scheduled a three hour intensive where we were to do all the content for her upcoming program, like a month's worth of marketing for her program which is going to be amazing. And by the end she said that the thing that was maybe the most mind blowing about the day was how much she was able to show up and create with me even though she didn't feel good. And this is very similar to being able to work while feeling disappointed. It's a commitment to the long game rather than sinking in a momentary feeling.

 

Now we're going to talk about how to process disappointment as well. But I think that if there's a little trick to this, my if I had to kind of reverse engineer what I do that allows me to feel disappointment, but still, you know, show it for all my clients like there's no problem or teach a class when there's not a lot of people. Or I didn't meet my goal, which I know can really like fuck people up. Be like a really jarring thing for some people. The reason I'm able to do that is because I actually really believe in and care about what I am teaching. 

 

I decided years ago when I first started doing this, that what I have to share is valuable and it comes through the human vessel. That to me is really important. You know I am not highly educated. I came from a family where we really struggled financially for much of my life. I had a lot of love in my life, but I didn't have a lot of the support that I think people often believe is the key contributor to running a successful business. I was an entrepreneur for 17 years before I started my coaching practice. And I think the reason that I've been able to accelerate my success in a way that not all of my peers had been able to do at this point is because I was on my own for so long. I had to feel disappointed and get up at 6:30 in the morning and go teach yoga. Like I had to go and put my attention on my clients not on the way I was feeling and I think that is a skill. Probably there were times where I was just bypassing totally just like not thinking about it and being distracted and doing what I had to do. Hate there's a time and a place for that. For sure. 

 

What I've learned in the last couple of years is that feelings don't just appear on their own. Feelings are a direct result from what we're thinking about and where attention is being placed. So a very easy way for you to maybe shift gears temporarily, is to do what I do. And put your attention on the value congruent. So for instance, if you are someone who likes to have monthly goals, and you get to the end of the month, and you miss your goal by 1000s of dollars, 10s of 1000s of dollars, there's a time and a place to allow yourself to feel disappointed about that. Be real with yourself and give yourself some space to process it. Go for a walk and take amazing care of you, the human who is allowed to have a natural feeling of disappointment. 

 

But if you are working with other people or your customers or clients, the easiest way to shift your attention and your energy and your feeling is to remember the value that you're bringing to them. A thought that really has supported me is I'm just going to help this one person on this one session right now. Not going to go thinking about my bigger mission in the world at this moment. Sometimes that's helpful, but like, the thing I can do right now is help the person in front of me. The way to help the person in front of me is to be present with them, to love them and to give them everything I've got. When that becomes the focal point, there's not really a lot of room to feel disappointed or you know, it can be happening on the radio. It can be happening in the background like the radio playing in another room. 

 

There's a spiritual quality of presence and I think if you don't regularly practice meditation, this is a really good reason to start. But when you learn how to meditate, you understand that you can decide where we place your attention. Most of us just kind of let our attention run around like an untrained monkey, like monkey mind is a very popular saying in the meditation world. But if you are able to sit for 10 minutes a day and continue to bring your attention gently back to a single focal point. The breathing concept of release or letting go over time, you will be able to do the same thing or interact with other people. You'll notice when your brain wants to take you into the past and attach it to some result you didn't get that makes you feel disappointed. 

 

Or you'll notice when your brain wants to or you'll notice when you feel pulled to the what ifs of the future and what that result is going to mean three years from now what if it all implodes? Now, you can just notice it as a meditation, when your mind goes there. Get back to the person in front of you. Very important to tell how we deal with disappointment. If we have to do it, we have clients to see or you know, our children. For me sometimes I don't really have the space to be disappointed right now because I want to just direct them and enjoy their company. 

 

But the second piece that is also very important, is you must give yourself the space to feel the disappointment. And you can do this in a number of ways. I love to go for a walk. I don't love to process emotions that instill I probably wouldn't do this part as a meditation, just personal preference. But I love to go out for a walk and really get my body moving. And then bring my attention to the situation to the margin with which I did not meet a goal or the thing I hoped would happen when I did this event. That didn't happen. And I'll just let myself have a minute. Feeling what it feels like to be disappointed noticing the sensations in my body for me, it's often like it's often like vibrating around my sternum. A little tugging on the sternum like something's trying to get out my heart. sounds dramatic, but that's often what it feels like for me. I'll just keep placing my attention back on that place noticing any movement and color.

 

 Anything that feeling has to teach me and you can do that as well. Moving or sitting still based on your personal preference because I love a spiritual ritual you know I do. I will often give myself something to ritually release the disappointment. So it may be as simple as lighting a candle in the morning with my normal morning ritual, and saying something like this represents the disappointment I felt about not achieving this goal. I now transmute that disappointment into energy that can better benefit the world around me. And something I'd love to do is I will actually then spend a little bit of time writing and doing a deeper evaluation of what happened because you have to remember that a lot of times we pick goals and it's very arbitrary thing our goals are really just for us to be creative and to give ourselves a little bit of challenge like sometimes just to stretch. So let's say you're teaching a class and you want 50 People to attend and only 10 do- you have to allow yourself to feel the disappointment after you have been squashed.

 

What maybe didn't connect to those 50 people who are definitely out there waiting for you? This to me is the most helpful thing you can do to support yourself even while you feel disappointed. You don't have to feel good to evaluate. So another kind of misstep I see a lot of people make is believing they have to be all good and totally confident and totally bolstered to deeply examine their experiment. You don't. You can feel like shit. You can be letting the waves of disappointment come up and still get very valuable information. 

 

I have a client right now who's a newer coach. And we were talking about consultations. We were talking about you know, when she gets on the phone with someone and they say no to working with her for whatever reason, time on, right fit whatever it is. And I was telling her that a technique that I use that I'm in I kind of created for myself years ago. I think about the nose and being just as much as my coaching so but then every no is worth $15,000 And you can do this to think about every person who didn't come is worth $1,000 to treat that like it's very valuable information. You now need to find them because that gem you find might spark the next experiment and it is a foothold on your path to success. 

 

So I hope that this has helped you reframe your disappointing results. Results actually can never be disappointing. They are just the results we get whether or not we feel disappointed. always comes back to what we believe what we believe should have happened differently but didn't. So give yourself space and grace. And I'd love to hear what you think. You can find me over on Instagram @erinaquin and I will talk to you again next week.

 

Things are changing over here in the Love and Success Universe but for a limited time I am offering the how to get what you want relationship masterclass completely free you can head over to https://courses.revitalizeyourrelationship.com/get-what-you-want-masterclass-lp . This skill is essential to having more love and success and I hope you enjoy it.