How shame shows in entrepreneurship

Who do you think you are?

This was the first thing I heard when I had my first conversation with the mentors from the first program for entrepreneurs.

It felt like she voiced the thing that I was most afraid of.?

When I started talking with people about Parentool, they told me that nobody would trust me to do it because I’m not a parent yet.

Why would you choose parenting?

Aren’t you even a mom?

Who will believe in you?

My answer would always be that I have the experience of being a kid, and Parentool was born from that experience. Plus, I will have parents on the team to help us translate the idea into the experience.?

But what I never told them was how much their words hurt me.?

My life experience has been one full of bullying, criticism, beating, and emotional abuse.?

‘’It would have been better if I hadn’t born you.’’

‘’You will never do anything good with your life.’’

‘’Look at you! Your body looks disgusting.’’

And so many others.?

This created a foundation based on shame.?

Shame usually speaks through fear, perfectionism, and inner criticism. ?It makes you believe there is something wrong with you.

The thing is that when you start a business, you take the full YOU with you. You take your past experiences, feelings, and ways of relating to what happens around you.

This shapes the glasses through which you look at the world, business included.

This is how shame shaped the glasses of my entrepreneurial journey:

• Fear of showing up accompanied by ‘’Who do you think you are to talk about this subject?’’; ‘’You are cringe!’’ Etc. This kept me in the shadows and away from sharing my journey with others for a long time. You might know it as fear of being seen or impostor syndrome.
• Procrastinating in making hard decisions.
• Blaming others for my current situation without taking responsibility. This often led to feeling resentful and guilty.
• Not being able to set big goals - if you don’t plan them, you can ''achieve'' whatever you want. But if you plan and don’t achieve them, the inner dialogue starts playing the ''what does this say about you?'' game.
• I stayed in the victim mindset and waited to be rescued instead of being the leader in my life.?
• Not fully opening up to my team when things didn’t work out?
• People pleasing in relationships with team members, collaborators, and partners?
• Putting everyone else’s needs above mine which ultimately led to poor results in business due to overwhelming?
• Difficulty in pricing the products/services and asking people to pay for my time
• Taking every negative feedback as criticism and an attack on my identity
• Fear of failure

What else would you add to the list?

If this is useful, I will share with you how I navigated shame in the next edition of this newsletter.

And speaking of the newsletter, I'm moving it to Mailerlite. If you want to keep receiving behind-the-scenes information, you can subscribe here.

Hugs!

Petruta

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