Stepping into your full potential

When we are scared to show up for ourselves, it's because there's a smaller, younger part of us that's just a bit scared.?

Think about the six or seven-year-old version of yourself. That version of you wouldn't have known how to show up for themselves. That's not what we learn until we get a bit older, and even then, some people never learn it so they can never do it.?

Back then we didn't know how to stand up for ourselves, we didn't know how to ask for what we wanted and then if we were knocked back, we didn't know how to deal with that. So, that showing up for ourselves, we don't like doing!

Think of times when you stayed in bed reading, because it was nice and safe and cosy. That's quite typical for children. Playing on their own because they didn't want to ask anybody to join in. We get really scared. That inner child still spends a lot of time scared.?

The inner child is what I often coach - scared business owners or career people that cant understand ‘consciously' why they trip themselves up, self-sabotage, procrastinate, compare themselves and get overwhelmed. It's very rare that the ‘adult self’ is scared. The adult is like, ‘I want to achieve this, and I'm going to do that, and that's how is it going to feel.’ Whereas the inner child is scared of being visible. It's the inner child that's scared of going on a podcast or showing up on social media. So if you think, ‘Oh, I'd love to be interviewed by Vivienne’, your inner child will probably be scared, ‘What have you got to say? You couldn't possibly go on there, people might laugh at you or pick on you or think badly.’ That fear might come from something that happened in childhood where you stood up and felt scared, or even watched someone else do that and decided you wouldnt ever do that!?

We create beliefs based on experiences, fears and desires. Sometimes they're not even our own!

Doing the times tables, out loud, back in school - I've got real problems from doing my seven times table! I get to 21…28…35…42 and then I freeze. Everything after that, I lose the plot because somebody laughed at me, and I made that mean that I was no good at maths. As it was, I went on to go into accounting, which is quite hilarious.?

Something we've had somewhere in our past makes us scared to not show up as ourselves, which, of course, we have to do in business so that we can show our business. We might not be confident in what we're doing, or that we are showing up at the right price. There's a whole load of not showing up for ourselves. It's a massive subject and I could talk on it for hours. This is our scared inner self.?