One Shift to Calm Anxiety: Using EFT Tapping to Free Yourself From Your Business
You know how a dog can get anxious when they see their human leaving the house? Yeah, you might be like that with your business except instead of you being left behind, you’re the one stepping away...
And when you do, you worry about who’s gonna take care of this and supervise that while you’re gone. Did someone stock up the bathrooms with enough toilet tissue today? Did someone remember to lock up the back door before setting the alarm?
You insist on controlling everything and because of that, you never find true freedom from your business. You’re suffering from separation anxiety!
So how do you stop being such a slave to your business? In this episode of the Pleasurable Profits podcast, you’ll learn why you feel anxious and the one shift you need to make to calm yourself whenever you step away from your business. And I’ll teach you how one of my favorite tools can help you make that shift.
3:52 - One reason why you have separation anxiety with your business
8:03 - Another reason why you might need to check yourself
11:20 - The one shift you need to make (even if you do nothing else)
14:01 - How tapping gives you emotional freedom
16:23 - An example of how emotional freedom tapping can work for this process
22:21 - A Mad Men clip that exemplifies what it’s like to work with me
Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
As Mentioned In One Shift to Calm Anxiety: Using EFT Tapping to Free Yourself From Your Business
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Transcript for One Shift to Calm Anxiety: Using EFT Tapping to Free Yourself From Your Business
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Today we're going to talk about the one shift you need to make to calm separation anxiety. What is separation anxiety? It is the one mind shift you're going to have to make if you want to step away from your business. My name is Leslie. I'm an embodied sales and leadership coach.
I want to talk a little bit about separation anxiety. I don't know what it is but it seems like I've had the worst luck when I buy dogs. I've had two dogs my adult life and one's name was Jagger, like Mick, and my current dog is Jeezy. Some of you have seen him. You've met Jeezy. I have a thing for rock and roll and rap music obviously.
But here's what both of my dogs have in common: now Jagger was sweet as pie, kind of like how people who have multiple children, you might get this, but Jagger was the perfect dog. When I tell you all he was the perfect dog, he was the perfect dog. He lived to please me and my husband like that was his life. Such a sweetie pie.
Whereas Jeezy on the other hand is just like who he's named after, a drug-dealing rapper. He is messy. He is aggressive. He is always doing something he got no business doing. He is a mess. Be careful what you name your dogs. But here was the thing, while their personalities were different in that way, here's where they're similar: both of these dogs had terrible separation anxiety.
Has anybody ever dealt with this with a pet before? The minute that you are out of his presence, he's freaking out, both of them. It was so bad for Jagger, Jagger would pull hair out of his booty. Jeezy is not that bad but Jeezy, so I'm not alone with this, Jeezy though will get aggressive. He'll bark. He'll go back and forth but it's all because he doesn't want us to leave.
You might be thinking, “What the heck does this have to do with me running my studio or shop?” I'm so glad you asked. Some of us get that same exact feeling that my dogs get when we step away from our brick-and-mortar business, when you step away from your studio, when you step away from your shop, you get that same anxious feeling.
Like, “I wonder what's going on. I wonder what they're doing now that I'm not there to supervise it. I wonder what they're doing now that I'm not there. Who's going to change the toilet paper in the bathroom? Oh, they're going to put it the wrong way. They’re going to make it come under as opposed to over. Oh, my gosh, are they going to remember that they need to lock the back door before they put on the alarm?”
All these things in your mind, we talked about this yesterday, you can't shut your mind off when you're away from your business. This is what is keeping you from finding true freedom in your business is because you have separation anxiety. The reason that you have separation anxiety is because you haven't found your star player.
What's your star player? Your star player is the person who thinks and breathes and has the same passion for your studio or shop that you do. What you really want to do in your heart, I know that you want to be able to take two to three days off a week.
What if we can make it really sweet where you took three to four weeks off per year? I ain’t talking about no janky off, I'm talking about completely unplugged from your business for an entire three weeks, sounds like heaven. To be able to get a full month off and only work in your business front-facing two to three days a week, that will feel like a win.
But what is stopping you from getting there? Well, number one, you haven't ignited that star player because some of you may have a star player on your team but because of your separation anxiety, AKA your control, you are not letting this person step up and do all of the things that they could do in your business. You lack patience to train them.
One of the things that I know used to trip me up all the time when I did have a star player on my team who I was trying to activate was I felt like she should just get it. Some stuff is just easy. Mind body scheduling is tedious but it's easy. It's just pointing at some stuff, putting some dates in, putting a sign in the teacher. It’s tedious but the act is simple.
I remember thinking to myself when she was making mistakes on this like, “Man, did I make the wrong hire? This stuff is simple. Why can't she just get this and get it done?” My lack of patience would make me do what? I'd be like, “You know what, get it back to me. Run it back. It's just easy for me to do this thing and go and schedule myself.”
See how fast I did that? As I’m putting it up, I'm looking at her at the quarter of my eye like, “See how simple this is?” Now she’s feeling even worse because I've given her look like, “Are you d*mb?” kind of look. Who wants to work for somebody who lacks patience or makes them feel small when really they just need time to grow?
We forget some of us have been doing this for almost 20 years. Some of you have been in your businesses for 15 years and you're just now getting your star player activated. We cannot expect that star player to take 15 years of knowledge and learn that in 3 days or even 3 weeks. You are so efficient at what you do because you've been doing it for so long. That lack of patience, I had to develop that because nobody wants to work for somebody who's crappy and going to make them feel small.
I always tell my clients, one of the reasons you pay me is because I've done a lot of d*mb stuff on my path to multiple six figures, multiple locations, over 30 employees. I've done a lot of d*mb stuff on the way to get there. Trust me, lack of patience will take you out of it.
The other thing is your inability to cast vision. People follow people, they only follow people who know where they're going. If your people don't seem to be following you, if they don't seem to be able to catch on, if they don't seem to have the passion that you have for your business, I want you to check yourself and say, “Man, have I made this vision clear?”
Without a vision, it's hard to motivate people. There's this thing, and I'm going to talk about this later over this week or maybe next week, but there's this thing where we think that people can just sense what we're doing and they just want to be a part of it naturally because you're out there changing lives with what you do. Your studio changes lives. Your programming changes lives. I know cannabis changes lives, child.
With my menopause baby, them 1906 jobs changed my life. You are out here doing life-changing things. You're like, “Why doesn't my team just get it? Why don't they just want to do it?” I've cast a division, but you haven't learned what motivates them to do it.
Your motivation comes from a place that you birthed this, this is your baby. Also, you get the most of the profit. Well, I shouldn't say that because some businesses out here are, I call it salary poor, you’re team poor, you’re talent poor because you pay your people more than you pay yourself. But for the most part, we’re getting the majority of the money. You have to figure out how you motivate your people.
In order to do that, we have to get away from the belief that I'm the only person who can do this in my business. I'm the only person who cares about my studio. I'm the only person who can convey my curriculum. I'm the only person who can upsell. I'm the only person. I gotta be the one to do it because nobody cares like me. That belief shift, you've got to commit to changing that today.
Here's what I told myself, this is when it clicked for me guys, and it took too d*mn long to click, this is why I'm doing this for you so you won't take as long as it did for me, when it clicked for me, I used to tell myself this all the time, not only can she do this job just as good as you can, there's a possibility she can do it better.
You have to believe that this A-player, your star player that you hired not only can do just as good a job as you, they could possibly do it better. Now you’re probably thinking and saying, “Leslie, that’s a lie. Let me log off. That's a lie. Nobody can do it like me. Pop your collar.” Well, you could pop your collar and you're going to still be a slave to your business.
That may feel good for your ego, but it ain't doing nothing for time freedom. Because the truth of the matter is a lot of times, people can do it better than you because they're focused on the job. Whereas you, the chief everything officer, are focused on too many places. You're trying to be the marketer, you're trying to be the influencer on TikTok, you’re trying to teach classes, you're trying to roll the weed in the back, you're trying to do too much and your star player is only focused on one thing.
The first shift, the one shift, if nothing else that you do is focus on leading yourself, selling yourself, coaching yourself to say, “The person I hired is capable. The person I hired can do this just as good as I can,” and you know what the bonus is? They probably can do it better and when they do better, my company moves forward faster. When we move forward faster, we get to the bag quicker. We're able to make more money.
The beautiful thing is that separation anxiety will start to diminish because the only reason you're scared to leave other than your own control issues that you're going to coach yourself through, we’re going to coach ourselves through this, I'm right there with you, when I feel myself all graspy, the immediate thing I say is “Why don't you want to let go of this, Leslie? What in your ego is telling you that you must hold on to this? You're going to get the time freedom, but you're going to make more money. You're going to be able to unplug and spend time with the people you really care about. But you got to make that shift.”
If you are committed to saying the next time you feel like, “Oh, it's just easier for me to do it. Oh, I like the patience to train this person. Oh, my expectations are unreasonable. Why can't they just get this?” You're going to say to yourself, “No, this person is smart. They're capable. They have what it takes to do this job. I'm going to trust that they can and I'm going to believe that not only can they do this job, they can do it better than me.”
If you commit to that mindset shift every day for the next week, you're going to see some space open up for you in a way that maybe you felt some constriction before. The last thing I want to leave with you is an embodiment tool that could help you with that.
One of the tools that changed my life was tapping. It's called EFT. It’s Emotional Freedom Technique. It does exactly what the name says it does. It gives you emotional freedom.
Now look, you know me, I’m an Enneagram 8, I don't believe half the things that anyone tells me about anything. Can I just say that? If you ever feel like I don't trust you, don't take it personally. I don't trust 99% of people I meet until you show me otherwise. In my world, you're guilty until proven innocent.
This is why it’s totally unintentional, go to therapy, I got my go-to-therapy shirt on because guess what, I'll be in therapy in 30 minutes because these are things I have to work on too. I just don't want you to feel that way. But this tool here was so accessible to me when I was trying to make that shift of letting go of some control so I could get freedom in a healthy way, in a way that I had mental freedom, not just time freedom.
Because you know what, you could be on vacation and technically have time freedom but if you're checking your phone, you're all in your Slack, you’re all in your WhatsApp the entire time, you ain't free. You're not really free. Tapping helped me to get some freedom around it. I would find myself like, “Okay, Fridays are my day that is like my sabbatical.”
I try not to do any work on Fridays or very little work on Fridays. On Friday, I'd be sitting there like, “Oh my gosh, I'm not going to do any work today. But I feel that rising up in me, wanting to check the cameras, wanting to run reports, y'all know what I'm talking about, wanting to send just a message on Slack just to be like, “Is everything okay?” Just trying to insert myself when I should be pulling myself out.
I literally would tap on that. The way that tapping works, if you've never tapped with me before, is that your body has meridian points. Essentially, when you think about acupressure, when you apply pressure to trigger points in your body, they relieve the pressure around it. EFT is like acupressure for your emotions.
You always start with the side of your hand and what we call a setup phrase, which is literally you're just getting it out. A setup phrase sounds like, “Here's my problem, but I'm going to be okay.” In this instance, when I was struggling to let go of control in my business, my setup statement would look something like, “Even though I'm anxious about stepping away from my business, I know it'll be okay.”
Some people say, “Oh, I deeply love and appreciate myself,” or “I know I'm safe.” But for me, I like to keep it simple. I literally just say, “Even though I’m feeling anxious about leaving Susie in control of the studio, I know things are going to be okay.” You say that phrase three times because you're just being honest about the situation.
Because sometimes I think the anxiety that we feel is because we can't put words to our feelings. This is giving you an opportunity to verbalize, get it out so you can move some of that stuck energy by just saying it. There's so much power in just saying things.
We say that three times and then we go to the meridian points. The top of your head, if you think about a baby where they have a soft spot, that's where you're trying to get into. I have weave so I have to get in the tracks really good here. It’s the inside of your eyebrows, the outside of your eyebrows, under your eyes, so kind of like in your tear wells here, under your nose, above your chin, and your collarbone, and right here on the side of your ribcage, those are all your points.
Once you set your setup statement, “Even though I'm feeling anxious about leaving my business, I know things will be okay. Even though I'm feeling anxious about leaving Susie in charge, I know she's going to do a good job,” whatever you need to affirm, get the fear out there, affirm what you want. How do you want to feel, say that.
We get to the top of the head and you just literally start to pour out all of the things that you're worried about. What could be some things that you're worried about? What could you be worried about why you're not wanting to leave that person in control? I'm worried that she won't have the enthusiasm toward our customers that I do. Then you go to the next point.
What else are you worried about? I'm worried that she won't close sales while I'm gone. What else are you worried about? Well, being that she's not closing sales, I'm worried that our revenue is going to drop. Why am I worried about revenue dropping? What happens there? Well, then if the revenue starts to drop, we might not make enough revenue to make payroll.
What else are you worried about? I'm worried that if this revenue starts to drop, I'm going to be behind the ball and I'm going to have to come back in and put myself back on the schedule to get it back up. What else are you worried about? you keep going and putting what are you worried about? What are you concerned about?
You do that hitting all those meridian points until you feel like you've gotten it out. You feel like you've said everything you need to say, you've addressed every concern you have, you've gotten it out. Sometimes you can get it all out in one round, sometimes it takes two rounds, but usually most of my clients I see, that two-round point, they feel like they've expressed all of the negative, for lack of a better phrase, all of the junk, they've gotten that out. Now it's about how do we talk about what we want.
We go from this is reality, because your feelings are valid, they're legitimate, it’s how you see things. This is how I see it now and then we move to possibility. When you get back to the top of that head, we start talking about what if? What if Susie can handle it? What would that make possible for you? It would reduce my stress. Why would it reduce your stress? Because I wouldn't have to worry about if she was doing her job well.
What else would it make possible? Well, if she really got the job done, maybe I would only have to come to the shop once a week. Okay. If you only came to the shop once a week, what would that make possible? Wow. It would give me the option to be able to start another business.
Oh, wow. What would happen if you started another business? What would that make possible for you? Well, that could add another couple of $100,000 to my retirement account. Nice. If you had a couple of $100,000 more to your retirement account a year, what would that make possible? Do you see what I'm doing? Do you see what I'm doing here?
I'm saying what does these things make possible for me? It’s opening up options for me. It's giving me possibilities for me to be able to think bigger. These are the types of tools that I teach you in Unshakable Leadership, which is my one on one container. I'm taking three people through the month of April, you and me one on one, working to get you fired from your business.
If this is something that you think would be helpful to you because you've tried before and you failed, can we just be honest, I feel like that Mad Men clip, I never watched Mad Men, but I saw that clip once and it stuck with me just as a salesperson and leader at heart, but has anybody ever watched Mad Men? There's a scene where he basically is going to talk to an executive.
The executive is trying to tell him what they do and how he works. He’s basically like, “I'm leaving in about a year.” The guy's like, “Where are you going?” He was like, “Well, you clearly got it all figured out.” But he brings them to the realization that everything you've tried ain't work no way. I gotta find that.
That's why I'm here because it ain't worked. It don't work. Are you going to continue to go down the path that you're on? Are you going to actually let me do what you've hired me to do? That is what it's like working with me. I want to give you tools so that you can get free.
You did not start your business to work in your business 24 hours, 7 days a week. You did not. I haven't met an entrepreneur ever who said the reason they started their business was because they really wanted their business to be their life, that they wanted to own their job.
I'm sure you exist out there so don't come to my door with tiki torches and pitchforks. Good for you, if you want to be a slave to your business, if you want to own your job, good for you but you ain’t my people. My people are dedicated to being able to work two to three days a week, face to face being present in their business, and wanting to take four weeks off a year minimally.
The people I work with want to make sure that they have such a well-oiled system in their business that their business runs like a well-oiled machine because they want to be business owners, they don't want to own their job. If that is you, run, don't walk to the link in my bio. You can set up a compatibility call. It’s free. It's 15 minutes, and we will talk to make sure that this works for you.
Because in my going on six years of coaching now, I've learned who I can help and who I can't. It took your girl a long time but I figured it out. This call isn't just about you seeing if you want to work with me, it's also making sure that Unshakable Leadership can support you, because it cannot support everybody. It cannot. This is just to make sure that it works out for both of us
Alright, my loves. If you have any questions, you know my DMs are always open, but better yet, get on my calendar, go to the bio. Being that, I do need to go to therapy like my shirt says. I will talk to you guys tomorrow. Alright, my loves. Have a good day. Bye. Grace and peace.