Anxiety Doesn't Mean You Made a Mistake
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Recently, a client made a major investment in her business. But her anxiety after entering her card information and clicking checkout was so overwhelming she was terrified she’d made a huge mistake.
Anxiety could, of course, indicate a mistake was made. But, in her case, I suspected it meant something else entirely.
We talked through the reasoning behind her investment- it was sound and she had actually negotiated a very favorable deal for herself.
Then we talked through her anxiety- what was she really anxious about? It turned out the expert she’d invested in had advised her to do something that just didn’t feel right to her. Not that it was unethical or even bad business advice, it just didn’t feel aligned.
“You know, you’re allowed to tell experts ‘no’,” I said. “You can say something like, ‘Thank you. I respect your expertise but this doesn’t feel aligned so here’s what I will be doing instead.’”
She wound up setting this boundary which the expert accepted with grace, and the two went on to work well & fruitfully together.
This conversation stuck with me. I was so glad that my client didn’t decide to immediately interpret her anxiety as evidence that she had failed or made a mistake and instead got curious about it. And, in exploring what was behind her anxiety, she actually came away with incredibly valuable information about who she did and didn’t want to serve- setting her up to create much more effective marketing.
What else do we miss when we immediately assume our anxiety means we made a mistake? I kept this question in the back of my mind as I coached my clients on various marketing blocks. When we got curious about the anxiety, we kept unexpectedly uncovering incredible clarity that had been absent before. The more it happened, the more I pondered what a shame it is that we’ve been so culturally conditioned to disregard our emotions- especially the unpleasant ones.
I saw versions of this story play out over and over again amongst the heart-centered entrepreneurs I know, and over and over again I watched how game-changingly important this updated perspective on anxiety was for them.
So, here is that new perspective on anxiety I hope that you will find helpful too.
We’re wired to be scared of the unfamiliar.
Our brains are marvelously intricate things evolved over millenia to keep us alive & kicking.
You can’t tell me that we developed such rich and complex emotions without an evolutionary purpose. Including anxiety! Though it might feel inconvenient and awful if your anxiety keeps warning you about non-existant danger around every corner, there certainly are circumstances when the caution, avoidance, or evasive maneuvers anxiety nudges us towards are actually quite prudent. Don’t pet the rattlesnake. Don’t take that blind left turn across 4 lanes of high-speed traffic. Don’t give that crypto bro your phone number.
The problem? Anxiety can have an inconveniently broad working definition of “danger.” Like anything new, unfamiliar, or uncertain.
If you think about it, technically, we only have empirical evidence that we can personally survive what we already have. Thus, anything new could easily be interpreted by our survival instincts as a threat. Even if that new thing happens to be something we want or are even actively working towards. For example:
🦕 More views
🦕 More followers, subscribers, & downloads
🦕 More engagement
🦕 More clients
🦕 More money
🦕 More attention
🦕 More people who care about, respect, & adore you
🦕 Healthier relationships
🦕 Healthier habits
🦕 Getting support, mentorship, & guidance
🦕 Even just getting adequate rest
So, if you, like me, have had the odd experience of increased anxiety upon hitting a goal- it actually makes a whole lot of sense. Each level up is a leap into the unknown.
Another way anxiety tends to visit talented entrepreneurs at seemingly odd times is when you know what you need to do to get the thing you want, but every time you go to do it, you become so consumed by anxiety you can’t do the thing you need to do… Like marketing. Fear of visibility, anyone?
Now here’s where I see a lot of entrepreneurs go sideways: they identify the anxiety as the problem, and concentrate on trying to shut it off, escape it, or numb it out.
Here’s why that’s a problem:
🦖 Anxiety, plain and simple, is there to protect you. It’s a complex physiological alert system that you may have a dangerously unmet need, want, or boundary that requires your attention.
🦖 Even if you succeed in getting rid of the discomfort of anxiety, you won’t have addressed the unmet need, want, or boundary spiking the feeling of danger- and thus you’ll be on a constant hamster wheel of evading the constantly triggered anxiety.
I’ve witnessed exciting things happen when entrepreneurs stop running from their anxiety and, instead, get curious about it.
Because when you get to the root of the “danger” your anxiety is trying to protect you from, you can actually do something abut it, and your body gets to shut off the anxiety sprinkler alarms.
Let me walk you through some examples of how I see anxiety showing up to try to advocate for entrepreneurs.
#1 Anxiety is trying to tell you your body needs extra attention to feel safe during an uplevel.
When you drastically change your circumstances- even in ways you want- like more money, attention, success, and freedom- you have entered completely unfamiliar territory. Knowing this, you can anticipate that your body may interpret this lack of familiarity as danger.
This is why it is so important for entrepreneurs to cultivate practices that bring their bodies back to a sense of safety regardless of what’s going on externally. The particular tools that achieve this are different for everyone, but I prefer somatic practices- ones that directly address the experience of the body- to help keep my nervous system calm no matter how new or uncertain my circumstances may be. Breathwork, yoga, meditation, horseback riding, and roller skating are some of my favorite practices to keep my body feeling safe, capable, confident, and competent. There is something very powerful about practices that help you regulate your breathing so that your body doesn’t stay in or accidentally slip into its emergency response mechanisms.
The alternative, I’ve found, is a body that is stuck in fight or flight in response to any new circumstance- no matter how wanted. And, as my mentor Cera Byer likes to say, when your body is prioritizing fight or flight, it targets its resources on your muscles rendering you “fast and dumb.” Not the ideal state for a CEO.
#2 Anxiety is trying to warn you that your resources are being drained and you need to protect yourself by setting a boundary.
Sometimes anxiety is there because something is wrong. For example:
🦖Your client is pulling you too far out of scope.
🦖You priced the offer far below the amount of work and energy it requires from you, so now you dread delivering on the offer and selling more of it.
🦖Your client is so combative that you’re spinning for ages after the hour allotted for your session.
🦖 You’re offering work you can do -and sell- but you don’t actually enjoy doing it.
🦖 The deadline is way too aggressive for you to get enough sleep, movement, socialization, and downtime.
You can avoid the resulting anxiety all you want, but the longer you do, the longer the energy leak goes on draining you miserably dry.
Or, you could explore the source of your anxiety and get creative about how to rectify the situation. For example, in response to the above scenarios:
🦕 You can tell the client that upon reviewing your contract you realized their latest request is out of scope and you either a) don’t have capacity to fulfill the request or b) would be happy to handle it for them for an additional fee of __ and an extended timeline of __.
🦕 You can immediately raise the price on the offer. You can also edit the offer and set expectations for a much more reasonable workload. (Word to the wise: you can do both! Offer less for more. Because the better you feel about delivering on your offer, the easier it will be for you to sell it- because you won’t be secretly resenting your customers.)
🦕 You can go ahead and fire your client. Check the terms of your contract, and bow out as gracefully as you wish.
🦕 Stop marketing any offer you’re not stoked to deliver on. Take the sales pages off your website. Or leave em up and double the price.
🦕 Communicate with current clients about how much time you actually need- possibly renegotiate terms to keep the folks who already bought happy. For sure change timeline expectations on your sales page and in your marketing moving forward.
The momentary discomfort of sitting with your anxiety is more than worth it when the trade-off is a well-paying business that allows you to offer only the work you most enjoy to the people you most enjoy serving.
#3 Your anxiety is trying to tell you that you need to stop right now and rest.
This summer, I realized that my avoidance behaviors were sneakily designed to drown out anxiety about an annoyingly obvious reality: I was tired AF.
Acknowledging how tired I really was was incredibly inconvenient given the 17 clients I was juggling in exchange for more money than I’d ever seen before. So, I kept working every single day - none off - for months til I couldn’t anymore because my body absolutely fucking crashed.
The anxiety confused me at first. Hadn’t I just met a bunch of big business goals? Wasn’t I getting recognition & praise for my work that felt really good? Didn’t I enjoy my work so much? Yeah, but my numbing behaviors, procrastination, and avoidance were getting a bit ridiculous.
Then I finally understood. It was the first break I’d taken from my regular work in all of 2024. I was in the Mojave Desert, not even resting, since I was horsesitting a 6-horse ranch in the deadly heat of August by myself save for the dogs & cats that were also depending on me to keep everyone alive and healthy.
I rose at dawn every day to feed everybody and muck the 6 corrals, treat various wounds, and perform increasingly intense rituals to try to protect the horses from the viscious summer flies.
At noon, the horses needed supplements and their water tanks checked, cleaned, and refilled. At sunset, the horses needed to be turned out as I fed everyone and mucked the corrals again.
Not exactly rest, but oddly, it felt like it was. I lapped up the peaceful quiet of my life and my mind until I got swallowed whole by a blisteringly painful migraine that wouldn’t allow me to keep food nor water down and left me weak for days even after the pain subsided- not ideal for wrangling 6 rambunctious, gorgeous giants in the inescapable desert heat.
The migraine was an odd blessing. Light, scent, and sounds were unbearably painful. So I couldn’t indulge in my normal numbing tactics of games on my phone, TV, or wine. Unoccupied, my mind grasped that what I’d been avoiding facing was the reality of my burnout. I needed weekends off at the very least. Something needed to change about my most taxing client projects. And I needed to stop focusing on or even marketing anything other than what I really, actually wanted to deliver: my Marketing Confidence Cheerleading services.
I’d arrived thinking I was most afraid of the long drive and rattlesnakes. But the thing I actually feared the most was recognizing the extent of my own exhaustion.
This clarity was invaluable.
I came home and implemented the following changes that have brought immense spaciousness and peace to my days and calm to my spirit:
🏜️ I took Thursdays off my scheduler so I get to take 3 days off a week now.
🏜️ I set a firm boundary with a client about payment before continued access to my work.
🏜️ I gave notice on a project that no longer felt aligned.
Strangely enough, upon taking these actions, my anxiety has significantly subsided- as has the urge to play on my phone, binge TV, & consume unseemly amounts of wine.
Now here’s an odd sentence: thank goodness that agonizing and inconvenient migraine episode forced me to face the source of my anxiety. I’m extremely grateful.
#4 Your anxiety is trying to warn you that you’re taking responsibility for what isn’t yours.
Many of us in marginalized identities have been socially and culturally conditioned to derive our safety from people-pleasing.
We are discouraged by our trauma histories from standing up for ourselves, enforcing boundaries, or negotiating past the first (often shitty) offer.
Entrepreneurship - and setting the terms for access to us - turns this old survival strategy on its head. What kept us safe from our oppressors now keeps us underpaid and overworked and perpetually discouraged in business.
We have to relinquish the illusion of control over other people’s reactions, emotional states, and approval.
Until we do, marketing is a terrifying, anxiety-invoking prospect. How do we show up in a big, expansive, VISIBLE way and offend no one, provoke no one, and convince everyone that we’re worthy enough to do what we do and charge what we charge for it?
When we decide it is merely our responsibility to show up in alignment with our values, marketing gets way less scary. Trolls can be as nasty as they want. People can think we’re too expensive or not qualified enough or delulu in our vision for our business. It won’t change our belief in ourselves and the value of our work. We also know we’re worthy of badass boundaries to protect our energy from haters hating and skeptics dragging down the vibe.
#5 Your anxiety is warning you that you’re following someone else’s map rather than your own inner compass & it’s leading you astray.
Sometimes the shoe doesn’t fit and neither does the template. Or someone else’s social media strategy or launch formula. And that is OK.
When you take the wild dive into the chaotic unknown of entrepreneurship, it can feel comforting to have rules to follow and boxes to check to return us to some safe sense of “doing what we’re supposed to.”
But here’s the truth: trying to adopt someone else’s special sauce doesn’t help you find yours. And, if you’re a chronic pain babe like me, you literally can’t follow the plans and strategies and advice of folks who have a very different level of energy they can rely on each day. Solopreneurs can’t follow guidelines constructed for full marketing teams. We all have unique situations and contexts and it is my firm belief that the “right” marketing strategy for us works with our situation and context. It doesn’t require superhuman feats or overriding our needs and boundaries.
It may require you to say “no” though. To trust yourself, your intuition, and your knowledge of your work and your people over advice that feels wrong.
No one is going to give you permission to innovate in your own unique way. By definition, you’re doing what’s never been done before. You are being courageous and brave in ways many people will not understand. Luckily, you don’t need to convince them that trusting yourself is the safest choice of all. You do have to heal enough to believe it for yourself. To trust that you got this.
#6 Your anxiety wants you to recognize that you’re not meeting your needs now, as it is, so how much worse will it get when you add MORE clients and MORE work to the mix?
If now, with your current client count, your current workload, you’re struggling to get enough sleep, downtime, socializing, movement, health maintenance, fun, and joy in… When exactly are you planning to get those needs met?
People often tell me they won’t feel safe enough to rest until they hit the sales goal… But then you’re going to have to deliver MORE than you already are. Babe, that’s a recipe for burnout and your body doesn’t want that for you!
Your anxiety is actually a really helpful signal that you need to be taking better care of yourself NOW before you’re fully onboard with making the kind of sales you want.
This is a super important initiation.
If you want the capacity to hold lots of people, lots of money, and lots of responsibility, you need to make it a top business priority to protect your energy now. Adequate time off. Boundaries around how accessible you are. Limits to when you check notifications and answer messages. A pampered, well-nourished, joyfully moved body that is loved, attended to, and cared for. Permission from yourself to say “no” to bad fits and walk away when things are no longer working.
That is how you make space to welcome in what you DO want.
Please get support with this.
As excitingly expansive as this new perspective on anxiety may be, please set yourself up for success by getting support.
This is deep shadow work. As we unravel our toxic conditioning, a lot of grief is often involved. Not to mention how much courage and vulnerability it takes to be an entrepreneur. It’s rewarding, but it’s a lot. And you should not expect yourself to go it alone.
You need support. Not because you’re weak or broken, but because you are asking the extraordinary of yourself.
I highly recommend you find therapists, guides, coaches, and mentors whose vibes, qualifications, and communication styles light you up, lift you up, and inspire your confidence and self-trust. (Please be cautious of any such leader who tries to motivate you with shame or conformity.)
And if you could use a Marketing Confidence Cheerleader of your own, I have some open spots for 1:1s or you are invited to join my Squad 🎉of excellently eccentric entrepreneurs cheering each other on as we do the impossible in real-time.
