I cried IN PUBLIC listening to a voice message this week

I was listening to a voice message from a friend (she's on the Sunshine Coast, we stay connected by voice messaging back and forth), and she was talking through the last two years of a relationship.

And as she described where they are right now, she said something brought on tears as I walked the DC trail… the tears that you can’t hide! 

She saw how their whole relationship had moved through three stages. The conception of it.

The pregnancy of it. And where they are now… in the thick of the “birth

My tears were partly for my dear friend (big empath here!!!)  who has held out for the type of relationship she is now in and the stage they are navigating… and partly for myself and my experience in my business… and what I witness in clients. 

Every offer you've ever launched. Every program you've built from scratch. Every time you've changed direction, restructured, or stepped into a new version of what you do.

All of it moves through the same three stages, and its both exhilarating and fucking hard!

Conception is the idea stage.

There's juice in it. You can feel what it might become before you can fully articulate it. The excitement of a new direction. You're thinking about it in the shower, at school pickup, in the middle of other conversations.

This is the easy part to love (even when there is little doubts, will it hold/work), you are still overjoyed! 

Pregnancy is where most people quietly lose the plot.

It's long. It's uncomfortable at times. Progress is invisible. You stop being able to see the end clearly. The thing you were so excited about starts to feel like a burden… like a tab open in your browser that never gets closed, sitting in the background of everything else.

And then the doubting dialogue kicks in.

This is the stage where most people abandon things. Not because the idea was wrong. 

Because pregnancy is relentless (NOTE im speaking from my experiences, three pregnancies, one loss and while of course there were moments I loved feeling my body grow, feel my boys flutter and move within me, it was more hard than easy - morning sickness, tiredness like id never known, both my hips going and not being able to walk) and there is no evidence yet that it was worth it.

I had a client this week who is deep in it. She's been working on something for years. Real time, real money, real energy poured into it. And she is at the point where the fear of getting to the end and having it flop is louder than her belief that it will work. She said the doubting dialogue in her mind sounds like: You thought this was a good idea, and it sucks.

She hasn't abandoned it. She hasn't stopped. But she's not excited about it either. She's just committed to pushing through one dedicated day a week, nothing else, until it's done. Because doing it in pieces wasn't working anymore.

That's pregnancy. Not inspired most of the time. Not abandoning it. Just deciding to see it through anyway.

Birth is the most intense part.

It requires everything you've got. And it almost never looks the way you imagined.

I've had two births, and they could not have been more different.

My first was with Eli. It was completely out of my control. Frightening. Everything was new, not trusting I could do it, the pain, and then a delivery of my boy not breathing… I came out the other side shaken, and my baby in NICU, I didn't feel like I had led any of it. It happened to me.

My second was with Carter. I had decided who I was going to be in that birth before it started. I used hypnobirthing. I connected with my body. I knew my practices, and I trusted them completely. At one point, the doctor asked me to lie on my back. I complied, but the rush of pain that flooded in, it took out of my zone… I declared I am not doing that again. Not rudely. Just firmly. I knew what I needed, I knew my body and my baby needed me to be standing, and I held to it.

That birth was the most extraordinary experience of my life. (Granted, I had a previous experience to learn from, which lady, in business, we often do too!) 

Same process. Completely different experience. The difference wasn't the circumstances.

It was the decision I made about who I was going to be in it, the choices I made… the leader of it, not just the person it was happening to.

The last phase of any significant business move feels exactly like this. 

The final push of a launch when you're exhausted and the doubts are loudest. The moment you step back from the day-to-day and genuinely don't know if it will hold. The week a new program goes live, and you're waiting to see if it lands.

You can be the person it's happening to. Or you can lead it.

I'd love to hear if this resonates with you and if you can now see there is a part of your business in one of these stages? 

Because if you're in pregnancy, seeing it for what it is and deciding whether you're committed to seeing it through. There will be highs and lows, and having a team support it (it's long, and the support to see you through is key!)

And if you're in birth…  if you're in the hardest, most intense part, that's not a sign you got it wrong. It’s just the part where fears and doubts speak the loudest. What past experience can you remind yourself of where you saw it through, and trust you can do it again! 

Hold to what you know. Lead it.

With love,

Mira