What to do when you feel like nothing is working

You might be used to dealing with challenges in life, but if you’re a new business owner you’re dealing with a whole new set of challenges and you need new ways of managing them. This week we’re looking at how we can overcome set backs in life and in business.

Prefer to read? Here’s the blog version…

This isn’t going to be your typical episode, but I want to share something really vulnerable and real with all of you this week about running an online business.

When life and business are fighting against you 

So I am back in Batukaras Indonesia after a full 72 hour journey, trekking from New York back to my little slice of heaven. I am so, so happy to be back. But this past week has been anything but smooth sailing. Let me tell you what happened because I feel like this is really going to help a lot of you, and I feel like I’m being called to share this experience so that you guys can learn what to do when you feel like nothing is working and you are feeling all of these emotions because I know this is so common in entrepreneurship. 

So as you guys may know, last year in 2022, one of the main things on my vision board for the year was to learn how to hang 10 on a longboard. So walk to the front of my surfboard. Once I did that, I had a photo of a longboard surfboard on my vision board because I was going to gift myself a custom long board when I was able to do that for the first time so I can continue practicing and it’s a way to celebrate my progress and achievement in the sport. So last year in around October, I first attempted to hang 10 and I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I’m totally going to, you know, improve if I order a custom longboard. And so I found a shaper. I designed my beautiful like pink and orange floral longboard.

I asked so many people, I was so excited. I went back to New York in December, so I even made sure, you know, I wanted it ready before I left. I spent ages on the design, I spent ages waiting for it. I drove to a nearby city to pick it up because I was so excited when I received it back in November and I surfed it for a few times before I had to go back to New York and I left it in storage here. Two days after I arrive back in Batukaras, I take it out surfing and I completely snap my longboard like in half. There was this huge rock in the water that I didn’t see because it was high tide.

I was paddling back towards the wave and there was a wave coming. So I wanted to kind of like pop my board over the wave. And when I did that, my tail and my fin hit the rock and it just snapped. And I was like devastated because I was like, I spent more time designing and waiting for this longboard, then I’ve spent surfing it, you know? So I was just in shock because I’ve owned surfboards before. I’ve never snapped any of them. I feel like I’ve taken such good care of this one, and I didn’t even take it out and all of a sudden it’s ruined. And so there was that. It took me, you know, a few hours to kind of let it all sink in and be like, it’s okay.

You know, shit happens and you just have to live with it. I’m getting it fixed, so it’s all good. And there was that. I had wanted to start recording my YouTube channel for this year because as you guys know, in my 2023 vision board, I want to start my YouTube channel. And as soon as I got back to bk, that was my one goal for the week. But then my snap happened and I had to go find the paint for repair, go send it for repair. I needed to do a bunch of stuff for that. So it got a little pushed back. Then the next day I go into my net worth tracker. I use this app called Mint, and it tracks your assets minus your liabilities.

And all of a sudden, for some reason, I notice that my net worth has gone down by thousands and thousands of dollars. And I look at my Crypto Gemini investing account and it was at zero, and I had had thousands and thousands of dollars in that. I look into it more, and apparently this happened back in November, but it just didn’t update in my app until like this past week. So I had no idea, but I had all of my crypto assets earning in a program called Gemini Earn and users haven’t been able to withdraw their money from the program since last November since the FTX Rug Pull scheme.

And the more I looked into it, the more it seemed that I would just never get my money back. And so the past few days have also been a processing of losing $10,000 in USD that I probably wouldn’t get back ever again after thinking that it was in this really safe program earning interest. And now I can’t withdraw any of my money. There is a huge lawsuit. Like thankfully I don’t have more money in there because on Reddit I’ve read that people have millions of dollars in, they have their life savings. So thankfully, like I don’t have any money that I can’t afford to lose in this program, but still it really sucks to take that hit after thinking it was stored safely in an account that was just earning interest. 

Understanding then accepting your feelings

So then there was that. And when that happened, when things of a financial nature happened to me where it’s really triggering as a loss, I spiral down these thoughts where I go into this like fight or flight mode. And I know this is because of my childhood trauma, of not having enough money, not having enough resources and feeling like I had to save every penny, like all of those limiting beliefs, resurfacing as in you can lose so much money investing you aren’t good with money. All of those limiting beliefs that I’ve worked so hard to overcome, it all resurfaced.

And when this happened, my day-to-day workflow and everything that I wanted to work on such as my YouTube, you can guess it all went down the drain. Like I feel like I traveled so far to get back to Tu Karos, and then it was just like, Nope, let’s snap your board. Nope, lets send you through this depressing downward spiral of bad investing and losing money. And so I just haven’t been in the right state of mind to have been working on my YouTube that was supposed to launch on January 11th, 2023. And when this happened, when I missed my first deadline of something that I had planned months and months in advance for, I had bought a new Sony camera to start vlogging.

I also got an Insta 360 camera that I was going to shoot footage with. I just felt so unmotivated and like such a failure, right? Because I had planned and it was supposed to be this grand launch, and then I simply didn’t execute on any of it. And of course there were thoughts like, you know what? Fuck it. Let me just not do YouTube this year. Let me just push it off until 2024. There were also thoughts, of course, like nothing is working out in business. This is really, really hard. I do not want to do YouTube. I do not want to move forward with this, yada, yada, yada. 

Raise your hand if you feel like there have been times where nothing is working and the universe is against you and you get sent into these downward spirals. Raise your hand. I’m raising mine right now. This happens so often. I see it with all of my clients. No one is immune from this. I go through this too, but what I know, and after taking time off, taking time to recharge, reset, get enough sleep, drink my coffee, light my candles, meditate journal. I know that it’s only going to go back up. And I know that I have the power to change my reality. I did not want to make any permanent decisions while I was in that state of mind, right? I did not want to decide the fate of my YouTube channel when I was experiencing other things in my life that was making me feel really anxious and unmotivated.

Sometimes life throws at you, things out of your control, and they’re not things you plan to happen. There are things you feel like you don’t deserve. And the thing is, growth is not easy. Growth in life is not easy. Growth in business is not easy. 

The hardships of entrepreneurship 

Things are not always going to go your way, especially when you’re running a business, especially in entrepreneurship. And what I’ve learned after going through a few of these episodes, right, and seeing my clients work through them and helping my clients work through them, is that even though life and business aren’t always going to go your way, you can always do the hard things.

You can always pick yourself back up even when you are at the lowest of lows, even when you feel like nothing is working, you can still find the inner motivation or seek the external help to get you out of that place because it’s not going to be there forever. What goes down must always go back up. And what goes up always must come back down, right? And it’s just through these ebbs and flows where you learn the most, where you grow the most, but most importantly, you have to keep going. 

What I absolutely love about my job is the insight and the foresight I get while working through the same exact problems with my clients. So for example, back in December, one of my clients had an upcoming launch. She was launching a big program for the first time and was feeling stressed, anxious, all of these limiting beliefs coming up and experienced a little slowdown. The launch wasn’t as gung-ho and bells and whistles as she had planted to be. She missed a few deadlines and she was almost letting herself spiral out of control. She messaged me in Voxer for help, asked me for mantras, for affirmations, what to do when she’s experiencing a bit of a slowdown.

And I had given her a pep talk. I had told her to prioritize self care, gave her affirmations, let her take her time with it. We do not need to rush things because things happen at their own pace. And guess what? One month later, January, less than two weeks in, she has experienced her highest income month in business yet. In just two weeks time, she worked through all of those. Even though she experienced a few days delay in deadlines, she still kept going and she experienced this massive, massive breakthrough.

And having witnessed that multiple times and knowing that breakthroughs like that usually happen after, you know, this phase of discomfort, this phase of pain and suffering and anxiety and discomfort, that is usually where all the growth happens. Because you are stepping outside your comfort zone. You are learning how to deal with stress and additional pressures that weren’t in your life before. 

How to overcome business set backs

And what you have to do when you find yourself in a situation like this is really pinpoint. Try to pinpoint the exact emotions that you’re feeling.

What are you experiencing that’s making you feel like nothing is working? Personally, I felt frustrated this past week, right? I felt like things weren’t going according to plan. I was not hitting my deadlines. And this triggered a pattern of self-sabotage, which stemmed from childhood. These are very ingrained, kind of overachieving tendencies from wanting to do well in school, being raised by immigrant parents. All of that came into play when external factors affected my internal world. When I was able to identify that and when I was able to recognize that this isn’t the reality, right?

It simply isn’t going to be the end of the world if I don’t post a YouTube video on time, this arbitrary date that I had set for myself, right? And how many times do we do that? Do we hold ourselves accountable to I must post six times a week on Instagram, I must release two podcast episodes a week, and I want to start off the new year and I’m going to start doing this on this date. All of these arbitrary numbers mean nothing. If in the grand scheme of things, you are simply consistent and you don’t stop. So if you are able to recognize that and instead shift the energy from really pushing and asking yourself, why isn’t this working to taking care of yourself, get some rest, take time off, reset so that you can go back to your inspired place and act from a place of inspiration that is the best thing that you can do for yourself.

And whether that means finding a coach to help bring you out of that, getting nine hours of sleep, whatever that means for you, having your own tools from your toolkit to get yourself out of that situation. That is how you grow the most and learn the most from these experiences. So if you ever feel like that nothing is working, or if you are starting off 2023 slower than anticipated, it’s okay. This is what makes you stronger as a business owner, more resilient, and this is what helps you grow. So if you ever feel like you are in a funk, what I’ve learned and what I want to communicate with you, if there’s anything you take away from this episode or three things, one, it’s not going to feel this way forever.

It’s simply can’t. You might tell yourself this is the way things are and it’s incapable of change, but that is not the truth. You’re not going to feel this way forever, and your situation isn’t going to be like this forever. Number two, the universe is working in mysterious, magical ways, always outside your frame of reference. That one post that you posted weeks ago might just be reaching someone. Now that one podcast episode you launched months ago might just be reaching a big news source this week.

Those connections you made years ago might just be rediscovering your business now, and they might be one of your future clients. You never know who is watching. You. Never know how these ripples of impact are spreading because you simply have shown up in the past and you never know how this one experience is going to change many, many lives around you. For example, what I thought was, you know, one of the worst weeks of my life, I created content out of it. I used it as fuel for my community for you, right? So you never know how these experiences can shift your reality going forward.

And last but not least, you can always get back up. You can do what is hard and you can change your reality going forward for yourself. I believe in you. I know that you can do it. And as for me, I am going to be hopping back on my train of momentum for 2023, and I’m going to be sharing my first YouTube video with all of you guys very, very soon. I’m so excited to relaunch my channel. If you don’t follow me on YouTube, please subscribe. It would mean so much to me as a growing creator on the platform, and I cannot wait to share more content, more experiences, and more resources with all of you.

I thank you so much for being a part of this journey through the ups and downs, and I will see all of you in the next episode, sending you so much love.

Share on Pinterest