EP35 | The Secret to Building Your Dream Business

The Secret to Building Your Dream Business may be closer than you think. How do we face difficult emotions like self-doubt, anxiety, disappointment? How might you be shutting down because you’re unwilling to face the uncertainty and unpleasant emotions? In this episode, Zach teaches you how to change your relationship with emotions and create emotional resiliency, as well as 3 steps you can action right now to start building your dream business!

 Episode resources:

• Create Purpose Website 

• Join Zach’s Mastermind
• Book: 90 Seconds to a Life You Love by Dr. Joan Rosenberg.

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Connect with me on Instagram and Facebook!

Zach Arend: Here's the bottom line. If you're going to change, if you're going to grow, if you're going to expand your business, scale, your business, if you're going to fulfill on your dream change requires courage. Just does.

If I were you, I would want to know the secret to being a more resilient and confident leader, business owner CEO. That's what we're gonna talk about today, because this is so critical. It's so critical resilience and confidence. They are everything. And the number one secret to both of those to having both of those is what we will call emotional resiliency.

The ability to handle and move through difficult unpleasant emotions. That is the key. So I'm was putting this episode together. And I was just thinking about some stories recently that have come up for some of the, the people I work with. Also some, some examples in my own personal life, you know, how, how do we let difficult emotions keep us from what we desire in our lives, from our dreams?

Because so many people say that they want to change. I have a lot of people come to me, you know, wanting to be work with me one on one. In a coaching relationship and they tell me the change that they want to experience in their life or in their business. And they tell me that that's what they want. And here's what I have found is that we say we want to change, but what we really are saying is we want what we believe the change will bring for us.

We kind of just wanna skip to the good part and be the, be where we are after the change occurs. Very few people are willing to actually do the work and, and experience the experiences of change, the difficult unpleasant emotions that inevitably will come up when we change. And so that's, that's the fundamental distinction is, is.

Doing the work to bring about the change that we wanna wanna see in our lives and in our business. And, and, you know, that's, what I get to do in working with clients is I help them navigate change so that they can get to the, we'll say the other side of that change and experience the, the fruit of that change.

But there is no question that the journey isn't always. Easy if we'll say that. And so I wanted to come on this episode and just kind of talk a little bit about what's occurring and how then can you be more resilient and more confident? Because we first have to become resilient, be able to move through and manage difficult emotions so that we can do the things that we've set out to do to change what we want to change about ourselves and our business.

And the only way we do that is we have to become resilient and be able to move through those unpleasant difficult emotions. And then what happens on the other side of that is confidence. Confidence comes as a result of you being able to handle difficult emotions and move through them. And so that's how we were gonna help you become more resilient and more confident.

And. Bottom line. It's getting really good at managing emotions and creating emotional resiliency, cuz that's gonna translate into you being more resilient and therefore more confident because you're gonna be able to do the things that you desire to do and change what you desire to change. So I wanna share a little bit of some stories that I've seen come up that makes this maybe difficult, you know, one.

One of the things I've observed is the clients I work with. Oftentimes they are established and they're successful already. They aren't trying to figure out how to grow, how to, you know, get more sales. They're kind of at the point of like more sales, more stress, and I'm not sure I can keep doing this or wanna do this in the way that I'm doing it.

Inevitably, they, they start building their leadership team. They start putting strong people in place in their business to start owning different functions within the business. And that's not easy because one of the things that comes up is you're. Now you find yourself in a room with other strong individuals that also have an opinion and.

They find themselves being challenged by, by their team, which is sometimes a shock to the system, right? Because sometimes when we've built a business, we've, we've hired a team around us that they kind of exist to help us. And they're there to serve us. They do what we tell them to do. They go where we tell them to go.

Right. But now all of a sudden we actually have people in the room that are challenging us and that can, that can push all types of different buttons. For, for us all types of uncomfortable emotions are gonna come up. Self doubt, imposter syndrome, all those things start to come up. And so for you to do that effectively, you have gotta learn emotional resiliency and, and so that you can experience what it feels like to be a confident leader on the other side.

And, and I'm just sharing these to see if, what resonates with you to see where you're at. You know, there there's this idea, you know, successful established businesses. Sometimes you have to let go of the good to get to great. You have to take your foot off first to get to second. You gotta cash in your chips so that you can go to the level you ultimately want to go to in your business.

And that's uncomfortable. That's uncomfortable. We've gotta be resilient and confident if we're going to take that foot off first and change, fundamentally change how we operate our business because what's normal is we want to clinging to what works. Even though it's not what we really want. And the only way that you're going to let go of what works so that you can grab onto your dream and what would really light you up and really serve you is you're gonna have to be willing to face those uncomfortable emotions and.

Me personally, I experienced this very intensely when I was, I was in my early, I don't know. I think I was 29, 29 years old. I got promoted vice president of sales. I'm now sitting at the executive boardroom table every week. And I just remember being flooded with emotions, just, I, I was telling myself stories, like, do they have any idea that I don't know what the heck I'm I'm I'm doing here?

Like, I don't think I really deserve this spot at the table. I was just, it was just a matter of time before I got found out for the, the imposter that I, I believed I was. And as I was flooded with all those feelings, it was like, it paralyzed me and I shut down and I didn't, I didn't play full out in those leadership conversations.

I oftentimes deferred not oftentimes most often, probably almost always deferred to. Who I perceived to be the stronger leaders in the room. I deferred to what they thought I should do instead of standing firm in what I believed I should do. And so I was leading very externally, really living, trying to live up to everyone else's expectations and do what I thought I ought to be doing should be doing based on what I thought they believed about me instead of leading from the inside out, leading creatively, really owning.

What I believed was, was the direction and, and trust that. And the reason I didn't do that is because that would've meant I would've had an face uncomfortable emotions, like self doubt, anxiety, disappointment, you know, I would open myself up to maybe being wrong or maybe one of my ideas getting shot down.

And so I didn't. Step out and share myself. And what about you? I mean, how, how might you be shutting down in your own business, maybe with, with your leadership team? How might you be shutting down? Because you're unwilling. To face the uncertainty to face the opportunity of maybe making a mistake or just the disappointment of things, not working out the way you had hoped of being quote unquote wrong.

And because we, we don't like how that feels. We never step out and do the things that we believe are the right things to do the, the things that are kind of on our hearts that we want to express. We, we hold it. And so we have to get really good at this thing called emotional resiliency. So have I convinced you yet?

You know, I just wanna slow down and be like, I don't know. Is this a thing for you do, is there, is there areas in your life, in your business that you're avoiding because of the unpleasant emotions you're afraid you're gonna experience that you're, you're, you're more or less avoiding. Instead of leaning into them.

And so here's the bottom line. If you're going to change, if you're going to grow, if you're going to expand your business, scale, your business, if you're going to fulfill on your dream change requires courage. It just, and courage to experience unpleasant emotions. So my goal for, for the next, I don't know, 10 minutes.

Is, I want you to begin to change your relationship with difficult emotions, unpleasant emotions, because the moment you do and the moment you see them as the, the indicator and the direction you should go, the, the opportunity, your opportunity. That's the moment that you start to, to see magic happen because you start to come alive.

You start to let yourself out of, of your proverbial shell and you fully express who you are to your team and to your clients and your customers. And all of a sudden things get a lot more effortless for you. And success almost is attracted to you. Because you've become an undeniable leader because people follow courage.

And as I just shared earlier, courage requires you to move into unpleasant emotions. And so there's three things I want to give you to get to just start this conversation. And I'm, I'm thinking I might do a part two of this episode just to continue this on. We'll see how far we get here. Number one is I want you to notice how are you avoiding difficult emotions?

My ask here is just become aware of how are you avoiding difficult emotions, unpleasant emotions. For example, sometimes when we get stressed or feel, when we get flooded with emotion, we reach for the Ben and Jerry's ice cream or the, the chocolate, or we grab our phones and get lost in, in social media.

Or we stay up way too late watching the newest series on Netflix. That's one kind of way, you know, do we just, we just go consume to try to cope through some of the stressing anxiety, you know, drinking as well. You know, we'll drink, there's all kinds of things that turn into addictions because we are unwilling to face the unpleasant emotions.

The other thing I wrote down is rationalizations. This is where you have to get more aware of these stories. You're telling yourself, but how often do you bump up against something that's uncomfortable and unpleasant. In other words, something that is not working for you. If you're being honest with yourself, it's not working for you, but then you move and shift into rationalizing why it is the way it is.

And you, you make a, a choice to tolerate. That is another form of avoiding uncomfortable emotions, because the second we start telling that rationalization story, it removes the, the unpleasantness of it. It is a great way to release self doubt and worry, and in all of that, but we don't really remove it at the root.

We kind of just push it aside and we, we find something to distract us with and we never really get our needs. So what happens is this true for you? 1, 2, 3 weeks. Go by and, oh my gosh, here we are again. and I'm suggesting to pay attention to where you're rationalizing away things that aren't working for.

You, therefore you're tolerating them because that is a powerless position. You're, you're putting yourself in a powerless position. You're you're saying that it is what it is. There's nothing you can do to affect change that is not leading, and that is not being responsible. And I want you to, because I know you can be, and I know that you are responsible.

You know, this idea of no one is coming. And so if this is gonna change, and if this is gonna truly work for me and serve me and be what I dream for it to be, then it's going to be me taking a different approach. And that requires change. That requires courage. Therefore, that requires facing unpleasant emotions.

So notice how these, how you're avoiding or distracting yourself from these emotions. So rationalizations are. Another one is getting angry. You know, anger is an interesting emotion because it masks over top of what we're really feeling. It's a self-defense mechanism rooted in fear. You cannot be angry without having fear at the root of it because there's other instances where anger is more.

Towards some injustice. There's always exceptions to this, but most of the time anger is a strategy to gain back the illusion of control. It's an illusion. We grip the wheel tighter, we get angry and we fall into judgements. We start telling ourselves stories of that's wrong. That's your fault. That's my fault.

And we get angry about it. And again, it's a great way to distract ourselves from what we're really feeling. And what what's probably at the root of anger is oftentimes some sort of insecurity feeling like maybe that imposter syndrome, but we use anger as a, as a, as a strategy to protect ourselves. And it's another way to distract us from what we're really feeling, to really know who we are in that moment.

And, and the last one I wrote down was judgment. And this kind of really, it ties into anger for sure. But we, we walk around and we judge things as good, bad, right wrong. We label them who's to blame who's at fault. That was a mistake. You did that wrong. You need to do that better. And we, we, we say these stories to ourselves and we say these stories to our team.

And they're very limiting because we're not really dealing with what we really need and we're not really communicating clearly when we're in that judgment state. So this is step one is I want you to notice how you're avoiding difficult emotions. What's coming up for you. Where are you distracting yourself and how are you avoiding unpleasant emotions?

What are the behaviors that you're, you're maybe becoming aware of as I'm sharing this with. Number two. And this comes from Dr. Joan Rosenberg. I had the opportunity to get some training from her just the other week, Dr. Joan Rosenberg. She's a, a psychologist out in California. She's worked with very high level individuals.

She's done three Ted talks and she's written a book called 90 seconds to the life you love. I'm actually reading that book right now. It's I highly recommend it. And some, a lot of this podcast today has been inspired by her teaching. And one of the, the second point I'm trying to make here is once you start to become aware of how you're avoiding and distracting yourself from emotions.

Now I'm asking you to go to the opposite direction instead of running away from them. I want you to go in them into those emotions. And this is what Dr. Joan Rosenberg teaches is she talks about writing the wave in her research. She found that an emotion really only hangs around for about 90 seconds.

But we give it power when we resist it, when we avoid it and we, we fight with it and we choose to do battle with it, like trying to make it go away. And she says that if we were just to ride the wave and let ourselves experience it fully that within 90 seconds, just like a wave crashing into the surf it'll dissipate and, and that, and then we will be back into the present moment.

Enable to take our next step. And so this is, this is the second thing I want to give you is lean into your unpleasant emotions. Don't fight them. Don't judge them. Because that's what we do. We label difficult and unpleasant emotions. Sometimes we take it as far as something is wrong with us. And so then we get so fixated on fixing ourselves all the while, not really creating what we really desire to create in our lives.

So she says, just feel your emotions ride the wave of 90 seconds. Just be with it, allow it. I love that word allow, allow it to be. Nonjudgmentally and just notice it and, and get curious. That's the second thing I want you to be doing is once you've become aware, now we're going into these emotions and we're gonna feel them because they're oftentimes information, great information, great input for us.

To inform us in, into what's not working, what we want more of, less of, we need that information if we're gonna move forward. So lean into those emotions. And then the last point number three is you've ridden the wave and now redirect your attention back to creation. I love this idea of creation. You know, simply ask yourself, you know, given what I know and what I'm feeling, what would I like to create next?

What's the opportunity here. What's the result. I most want to see next. What I think of it this way? What do you want to create? And naturally, as you move into that, some more emotions might come up, ride the wave, but stay in it, stay focused on what you wanna create. because anything other than that is you are on your heels reacting to what's happening in the business.

You're not leading, you're not moving forward. You're not going to fulfill on your dreams because of the unwillingness to move through it. There's that old saying by Winston Churchill? I think he said he's like, what does he, when you're going through through hell, keep going. Wow. I don't, I, I had the quote.

I don't think that's the quote. If you know the quote, share it with me. It's just this idea that when, when you're in it, you have one of two choices. You can either stay in it, keep going and get to the other side, cuz you will, you ride the wave 90 seconds be in it or you can stop. You can quit on your dream and you can start to settle and compromise.

I don't want that for you because when we compromise in life and we don't continue to play full out and pursue our dreams. I think that's a, that's a great opportunity to start to experience a lot of regret. And, you know, oftentimes I think of my daughters and I think about what am I role modeling for them?

What could I teach them by the courage that I'm, that I'm showing by creating what I'm creating? And I don't know for me that just snaps me right back into, I have to do this. I want this, I know this desire is there for a reason. It's for me, that doesn't mean it's all gonna be sunshine or rainbows.

There's gonna be some unpleasant emotions. You know that imposter syndrome's gonna come up, but I don't have to let it stop me. I wanna share this with you. I, I found this quote. I read a book. It was several years ago. I love this book. It's called you are not a rock. By Mark Freeman, he's really pulling from some of the teachings of acceptance and commitment training.

It's a psychological modality, if you will, for, for really leaning into living a rich, full and meaningful life. And he says this, he says, let the things you hate scream and shout at you. So all those unpleasant emotions that, that inner jerk that's telling you, who do you think you are? Can you really do this?

Are you enough? Let it scream at you. Let it shout at you because he says they can hang around and watch you build happiness, their presence doesn't negate or contradict happiness, unless you stop the practice of happiness and go off and fight them. Leaving happiness neglected. The idea here is when we try to make unpleasant emotions go away, we try to stop them cuz we don't want them.

We actually put a hold on what we really want. And we go get all entangled in those negative emotions and they get stronger, what we resist persists. So this is why we need to do what Joan Rosenberg says, Dr. Joan Rosenberg. And she says, feel it, move into it. 90 seconds. Ride the wave, be with it, allow it.

And then step three, I kind of went on a tangent there, but I wanted to hit that point home. Number three. Then redirect your attention. Get back to, okay. What's my next step. What do I wanna create next? Given what I know, given what I'm feeling and experiencing, what do I want to create next? The word create implies.

You're moving into it and you're moving forward. That's what I want for you. So if you found this episode helpful, I would love to hear from you I'm on Instagram at @zach.arend DM me. And another thing I wanna invite you every month, I have two to three slots available for a coaching experience for, you know, complimentary it's an opportunity to, to share with you what I do best.

And that is coach you. To your next bold move. Get you back into resonance with the leader. You know, you are so that you can playful out and, and bring your dreams to life. And if you want to experience that, and if you, if you want some help with that, go to my website, www.zacharend.com and just schedule some time with me.

You'll see a link on there. We'll schedule 20, 30 minutes and we'll just chat. And if it makes sense, we can schedule some more time, all complimentary, you know, Yes. At some point, there will be an opportunity to decide if you wanna work together more in a long-term relationship, but that's not my point. I want to serve you.

And because I know that the, the ones that are ready, those that, that really desire to work with me in a long-term commitment, they will, but others, others won't and that's okay. But I wanna serve you. I wanna see you move forward regardless. And so I would encourage you to reach out to me and let's continue this conversation.

So this is the first part. The next episode is going to really talk a lot about how do we change ourselves, you know, the behaviors and how we show up. We all have habits and tendencies. Some of those are serving us. Some of those aren't. And I wanna talk to you about what my clients experience and how they go about personal transformation.

So that they can be the leader. They know they are and shed some of the, the behaviors that are aren't serving them any longer. So stay tuned and we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you really enjoyed this podcast episode and my hope is you found it. Really inspirational.

And also most importantly, I hope you took away some practical things that you can start to do and apply in your own life. So finally, I have one small favor to ask of you before you go, wherever you get your podcast, whether that's apple music or Spotify. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review.

Love to hear your thoughts. Come find us on social media, share it on social media. It just really helps us get the word out, helps us grow our audience. So please do that. Thanks to my team, Ashley Bolden, who handles all the admin and Chris skipper who handles all the music and editing of this podcast for more information on the.

Purpose podcast, you can go to www.createpurpose.net, and you can also follow me on Instagram, @zach.arend. Please drop me a comment. Reach out, drop me a DM. I'd love to hear from you and love to hear what you're taking away from these conversations. What would you like to hear more of? Do you have any guests that you would love to see?

Come on the show. And I'm always looking for great people to talk to and people with great stories that can inspire you. And so if you know of anybody send, 'em my way, love to hear from you. I'm your host, Zach Arend and I'll see you in the next episode of the Create Purpose Podcast. Bye for now.