363: How to Use Static as Fuel

Feeling “static” in your business can be uncomfortable. You know that agitating, distracting, antsy feeling. But what if that friction isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. What if it’s actually usable fuel?

In this episode, Erin looks at Static from a new perspective, as an internal alarm system: loud on purpose.

Imagine if Static wasn't there to punish you but to get your attention and point you toward what matters.

If you’re a vision-led entrepreneur who keeps bumping into the same problems with team issues, messy systems or decision paralysis, this episode will help you stop treating Static like an inconvenience to meditate away and start treating it expecting to hear wisdom.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why your Static might be the most trustworthy signal in your business (even when it feels inconvenient).
• How to decode what that agitated, stuck, or antsy energy is actually trying to point you toward.
• A simple lens that clarifies what you’re no longer willing to tolerate, and what you’re ready to protect.
• The small move that shifts static into momentum without forcing a total overhaul of your business.

If you want to go deeper, the “Heal Static” process is detailed in our best selling book Superbound: Live the Life the Universe is Dreaming for You, including a bonus meditation to help you work with this energy instead of fighting it.

Get your copy in hardcover or as an audiobook at https://besuperabound.com/book.

And if you want masterful support turning your Static into an aligned plan (without bulldozing your nervous system in the process), you’re invited to book a focused consultation-style session at https://superbound.com/consultation.

Transcript

Welcome to the Superabound podcast, where vision-led entrepreneurs learn to build a generous business without sacrificing what matters most. You are listening to episode 363: How to use static as fuel.

Hello and welcome. I am feeling very spicy today. Um, normally I save that energy for my other podcast. Um, that is called the coaching mixer that I record every few weeks with my co-host Elena Mccernan. Um, that one is very fun and primarily, you know, it's really designed for people who are coaches, consultants, um, working in a space where your energy is really important. It's a part of what you bring. It's essentially your product. Um, not to quantify it, but or or minimize it, but um that podcast is a really fun one where we give a lot of our unfiltered opinions about our industry over uh a cocktail. Sometimes an alcoholic cocktail, sometimes non-alcoholic. Um, I've been having a lot of fun with that. We go very deep sometimes. Uh, I promise you it's not just it's not us complaining the whole time. We are, you know, trying to talk through issues that will hopefully give other professionals in that space food for thought, things to consider. Um, but because I kind of have that outlet for my spice, um, I often kind of bring a much more grounded, um, energy to this particular show. Um, I don't have that energy for you today. I have something different because even though I'm I am just drinking water um I have been thinking a lot about static and how we can use that static as in in many ways most people when they come up against static and static for those of you who have not read my book Superabound that I co-wrote with my husband Steve Hosy Um, static is really the energy that we get into when the internal landscape feels hard. Um, anytime you have internal alarm bells going off, I would classify that as static. And for some people, it tends to manifest as feeling like confused, overwhelmed, irritated, angry. um paralyzed, stuck. It can look like procrastination. It can look like constantly questioning the next decision. And you know, static for a business owner when you are the person or an entrepreneur when you are the person who has to make a decision and then follow through with it. Static of course is something that we don't often honor. It is not something that we see as like a a beautiful and valuable part of our process. We see it as a hindrance. It is like the it is like trying to hike up a mountain. This is what I always say, hiking up a mountain with bowling balls in your backpack instead of necessary resources. And a telltale sign that you are moving through some kind of a static state is um it doesn't feel good. It feels like you know for me in my body today right now as I'm talking to you it feels like agitation, nervous energy. Um I'm ready to fight somebody. I'm ready to, you know, not really, but you know, I I want to vocalize my opinions and be bigger. Um, it has like a really potent but not pleasant energy behind it. And I will say that for myself personally and I know for many of my VIP clients when we feel this way there is often rightly so the impulse to like get away from that. So the second I feel this way I'm like okay I need to stop. I need to go you know do a grounding meditation. I need to go, you know, work out really hard and just kind of like flush this energy. It feels like a activated nervous system response. I need to flush that out, get rid of it. But as I was working on the book uh with Steve a few years ago, I like to run little personal experiments with myself. I started to wonder what would be different if instead of trying to run away from or flush through that staticky energy, that tension within me. What if I started to change my mindset because I am a coach and mindset is very important to the work that I do. Change my mindset around how I look at static. So rather than seeing it as a problem I needed to solve or something I needed to get through or resist, I started to play with the idea that what if I started to listen more deeply to what that energy is asking for, what it needs with no responsibility to respond to it, with no responsibility to have to move forward with what it told me, but just to see, you know, what's what's happening below the surface when I give myself the time to experience it. And this is how I started to develop the process that I go to great lengths to detail in the book Superabound um called Heal Static. I've talked about healing static and that process many times on the podcast. When you get the book, um I actually have a bonus meditation that Steve um helped me create where you will go through that process that you can do it as a written exercise if you're more comfortable kind of journaling and processing in the the mental uh sphere or as a meditation if you want to do this in a little bit more of a a quiet way. So, I won't go through that today because it is detailed in the book and and there's a meditation you can get with the book bonuses. If you don't have the book, um, just as an aside, you can find out all the places you can get it at buperabbound.com/book.

We also have an audio version for those of you who prefer to listen rather than read. You can take me with you on a walk or on a drive or whatever and I will teach you that process. But as I was kind of doing that, listening to the wisdom, learning to kind of work through this state, something that I didn't necessarily expect is how often when I listen to the wisdom of the static in front of me, when I listen to the spicy feelings, they were pointing me towards something that actually mattered. So this, you know, I I actually learned this concept way back when when I was studying Chinese medicine, the idea that no emotion is inherently good or bad. It is how we let it move through us. And you know said in a more physiological perspective when we don't allow ourselves to process something you know when we feel a flight or fight response and we don't kind of give ourselves the the time and the space to let that wash through. That's when things can get a little weird, right? that's when we can have um issues that can affect our mental health, physical health, spiritual health, all of that. And so I played with this idea, what if the static that I was experiencing was always offering me at least one nugget of wisdom? What if there was always a little bit of gold within that discomfort? And even as I'm saying this to you, I actually just feel my shoulders dropping. I feel myself relaxing. Feel a little more of the good humor coming back. You know, um it's trusting that when an alarm bell goes off within you, it's always trying to tell you something. And I share this in the book, but it's kind of like we've had experiences in our house where the fire alarm goes off. And sometimes the fire alarm or the alarm system, the carbon monoxide alarm is going off because a little tiny piece of dust made its way up into the filter and our system sensed something and went off. When that happens, it is annoying. It is loud. It is scary. It happens. You know, we had a malfunction with our system last summer. The alarms were going off at two in the morning, but we've also had issues where there was carbon monoxide one time slowly building up in our basement. The alarm went off and I at first I kind of assumed, oh, it's an issue with the system again. But it was actually alerting to us to something very dangerous. You will notice that there are not different degrees. It is one alarm. It is always loud. It is always scary and it's meant to be that way. Your system kind of does the same thing. Um when when I get fired up about something, I have probably the same response as I would if I was in actual danger. That is just something that I have come to understand. It doesn't change the intensity in the in the moment, but what I've started to do is play with this is energy that's available to me. The static that I'm feeling is alerting me to something and it could be something that is changing in my community that I really don't like. The question then becomes, what do I want to do about that? And I think the takeaway here for business owners is, you know, if you're having the same issue come up in your business over and over and over again and you feel immensely frustrated and you want to burst every time you get the same email asking where this file is or you, you know, have a team member who's always late. Instead of just saying, "I should have a more grounded experience about that," maybe say, "What is this static telling me?" I want to just also clarify, I don't mean that this is licensed to have an outburst. Um, when I feel this way, it doesn't mean that I go and like yell at someone. Hopefully, hopefully I don't do that. It's happened before, but you know, I try I try to have a mature and professional response in my business. I don't think it's ever happened. Um, but this is not licensed to go freak out and say, "Oh, my static is telling me to be is telling me I'm angry, so I should spew that anger out everywhere." That is not what I'm saying. I'm saying you trust that the response within you is happening for a reason. And if you are willing to when it is situationally appropriate to do so, it means you can use a technique like healing static to go within and find the wisdom that that experience is sharing with you. Um because I I don't I can speak maybe more for my clients. Most of them are women. A lot of times we have been trained out of having those responses and we say I should be more generous. I should be more gracious. I should feel more grounded. I should never get flustered about anything that goes wrong in my business. And my coaching on that to my clients is often maybe you should feel that way. Like what if that feeling is trying to point you towards a path where that recurring issue finally gets dealt with so you don't have to do it again. So in this way I have started to really see static as another form of fuel. It's always telling us to do something about what we are not content about. And I've just watched so many people in not entrepreneurs necessarily, but so many people in other walks of life who really talk themselves out of taking a step to create a different situation for themselves. This is where I think mindset is one of the most valuable skills that anyone can train themselves on. Um because if you are just sitting and complaining to yourself or you're complaining in a group with other people who all feel the same way as you, but nobody is doing anything to actually change the thing you're complaining about. It feels like you're doing something. It feels like, yeah, we're all really mad about this and yeah, someone should really do something about that. If you're an entrepreneur, you're the someone. I really believe this. I think entrepreneurs could save the world because we are people who can take a problem and create a solution. Not by,

you know, making the problem go away, but finding creative ways to move beyond it. U maybe solving issues. I'm thinking about something um that's happening in my my personal world right now and I'm watching a lot of people around me complain about it, but I'm not seeing a lot of people step up and take action. So, this is why I think sometimes static is is very helpful. I do think it's actually just a natural state. You go from the comfort zone into something new, you are going through static. You stay in the comfort zone too long, sometimes your visionary self is going to say this is not ultimately supporting the big mountain that we are climbing. So that is what I wanted to share today. Feeling a little less spicy. I'm feeling a little more relaxed. And truth be told, this podcast today was part of the action I took. I was like sitting there. I'm like, I have to record a podcast. I don't think I have anything helpful to say. I'm kind of feeling a little riled up right now. And I thought, what if I just reminded people that their static is always trying to tell them to do something. They're not you're ironically we think static that another word for um another meaning of static is like being still you know when you think you can be in motion or you can be static which means still that's not the intention but I think it's kind of a fun play on words for the concept in this moment um don't stay static. The way to get out of your static is to stop being static. Don't stop moving. If you are upset about something, tell the person you're upset with. Create the system that will support that mistake not happening again. In your personal world, if you're, you know, always you you leave social situations feeling dejected and sad, don't go in those social situations. You know, this is I think this is also really speaks to your static. I've never said this before, but I've been thinking about it. Your static is often um kind of a reflection of your personal filter. So, something I've learned in my spiritual practice this year is the the thing that gets me from totally relaxed to incensed like really bad is when I feel disrespected. When I feel or when I feel like someone else is being disrespected. Um, that to me is just like one of the most terrible things you could do to not respect the value in another person or not respect um the value in the world around you. To just be ungrateful or entitled and then disrespect someone else just makes me very upset. It's hard for me to hold it together when that's going on in my presence. But that static I feel when I watch those things going on is a reflection of my personal filter because I've spent so much time stepping away from or sometimes putting up a very firm boundary around spaces, people, situations, industries where I don't feel respected or where I've been very openly disrespected. Um, so it's kind of a different way of thinking about static. Not as static as something to get through or go through, but also as like what is my static showing me about my filter, about what I don't want to have to tolerate in the world, about what I don't want to have to live with. Your static is your first alarm. And if you hear it, you respond to it, you take action towards it, hopefully you won't find yourself in the middle of a much bigger emergency. So that is what I want to leave you with. And if you felt like this was helpful to you, I would be very grateful if you shared this episode with someone in your life. They can be an entrepreneur. They don't have to be an entrepreneur. Um, I would really love, my static would really love for more people to hear this and think about it and start speaking up about things that really need to be spoken to to devise solutions rather than just complain about the problem. Um, we can all do this in our own way. you know, it doesn't mean you have to go speak up about everything in in the world if you don't have the capacity for that. I still think that there's a a reasonable way in which we all have to also take time to self-invest and we can't always do it for everything at all times. But I think if everyone actually supported their own static through acting more than they complain, I do think we would have everything covered. I think a lot more bases would be covered. I do think the world would be a much better place if we were all actively believing that it was not someone else's responsibility to make a situation better, but our responsibility. So that is what business owners do. We are responsible for our lives. Uh we're not responsible for everything that everyone does. So don't hear me and take it that way. But in your world, if there's something that is not sitting right with you,

do something about it today. Take a step. Correct a mistake within your business once and for all. Have the hard conversation with a team member who doesn't seem to be aligned with what you are doing anymore. I am here to help. if this seems like something bigger that you know my my gentle and very generic nudge out in a podcast can can't really cover if you do need to come up with a more supportive plan that's more aligned with your vision I would be very happy to invite you to a discovery session I am doing these special sort of mini retreats with people. Um whether you've worked with me before or you've never worked with me, um we have a whole good chunk of time to sit together, come up with the plan. I'll coach you. I will teach you some mindset tools. And it will really be a space for you to maybe say things out loud that you've never said and think about the direction that you want to take your work in the world with full masterful coaching support. You can learn more about that and sign up for a session over at besuperabound.com/cconultation.

And I will talk to you again soon. Take care.