EP 209 - Breaking Through: How to Do the Uncomfortable Things That Grow Your Business

Have you ever felt resistance to a business decision you knew would be good for growth? You're not alone. In this episode, Maggie delves into why our brains resist the very changes that could transform our businesses—and more importantly, how to overcome that resistance.

Using real examples from her own wellness journey and a client's staffing challenges, Maggie reveals the science behind why change can be so challenging and shares her proven 5-step framework for overcoming discomfort to achieve breakthrough results.

What You'll Learn:

• Why your brain is wired to resist business growth (it's not your fault!)
• The 3 core functions of your brain that create resistance to change
• Real-world examples of resistance in action - from workout routines to staff realignment
• 5 practical tools to overcome resistance and take action on important decisions
• How to plan and implement systems that make difficult changes easier
• Why courage is the antidote to fear in business growth

Key Takeaways:

✅ Resistance is normal - Your brain is designed to conserve energy and avoid the unknown
✅ Have a strong why - Connect your actions to your bigger vision and long-term goals
✅ Know the cost of not changing - What will staying the same cost you?
✅ Accept the discomfort - Fighting the resistance only creates more resistance
✅ Build self-belief - You can learn anything and figure out any problem
✅ Make it easier - Create systems and support to ensure consistency

Featured Examples:

• Personal Story: Maggie's journey building a consistent workout routine despite resistance
• Client Case Study: A production facility owner overcoming resistance to necessary staffing changes for business growth

Quote to Remember:

"Sometimes when we feel that knot in the stomach, that we really don't want to do something, you just need to take a breath and "gag and go". 

"We all have courage inside of us to do the things that feel scary, that feel impossible, that feel difficult."

Ready to Break Through Your Own Resistance?

If you're confronting a major change in your business and find yourself resisting the very things you know you need to do, Maggie can help. Book your complimentary strategy call with Maggie here - https://www.stairwaytoleadership.com/

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt resistance to a decision that you made that you wanted to implement because you knew it would be good for your business, and yet somehow you started procrastinating, finding excuses and so on? This is normal. As entrepreneurs, we always have things in front of us that we need to tackle that we've never done before.

And with that we need to keep learning new skills, coming up with new solutions, doing things that maybe feel uncomfortable in order to progress our business. So our brain resists them. In this episode I wanna explain to you why you experienced resistance and how to overcome it, what to do when it comes up, so you can still do things that you need to do to grow your business that are important and yet very uncomfortable

I wanna give you [00:01:00] a couple of practical examples. One is from my own life and my own business, and one from one of my clients. For me, running a business is fun. I really love business.

Not only coaching my clients, but marketing and selling and creating, business systems and so on is fun just because I love business. So I don't experience a lot of resistance in trying different things. Now, occasionally it happens, but it not, might not be for me as visceral and hard as it is for my clients, however.

Recently I've been expanding on my health and wellness journey and pushing myself to work out more, and this is something I don't like to do. This is something that maybe I have the same reaction to ask my clients when I talk to them about marketing and sales my brain resists a lot and I've been thinking a lot about it

with that [00:02:00] resistance and me working through it and overcoming to build consistency in my workout routines, I realized that I'm experiencing the same feelings like my clients. When I coach them on business, I teach them new skills and I, encourage them to implement new things in their business.

A second example is from one of my clients who has a production facility, and it's a more mature business that's been. In the industry for many, many years. They're one of the leaders in the industry. They are doing well, but my clients has still ambitions to keep growing it, and her current challenge is maybe more advanced to.

Her current challenge was within her team and the staff where she needs to make some changes, not categorical and crazy changes, but [00:03:00] some changes in order to remove an obstacle that's creating issues since blocking and really the root cause of her business not being able to move forward and plateauing and.

She is resisting that change, right? Her brain is coming up with all the excuses. How is this gonna be hard and how is this not gonna work? And so on. So we've been coaching on it on a regular basis to overcome that resistance because so logically she knows and understands that without that staffing realignment and change.

Nothing will change in her business, right? She'll keep experiencing the challenges he's experiencing right now, which makes it impossible for her to grow. So she logically understands if I don't do something about it, I'm just gonna be in the same situation, which I don't like and I don't [00:04:00] wanna stay in and yet, her brain resists. So as you can see, we can experience that resistance in different areas of our life at different stages of our business. So the sooner you'll learn how to overcome it, and the more you practice it, the easier it will be for you to grow the business.

But first, let's talk about why this happens, wouldn't it be nice? If we didn't resist those things, if we just decided to do something and we're super motivated and excited to do it throughout the whole process without needing to deal with our brain saying, no, no, no, don't do it. Or What about this is not gonna work.

And here is why. And this is really comes from how our brain. Is and what its core function is, and the fact that it hasn't really evolved that much, at least part of it. That, [00:05:00] manages our emotions and through the emotions we take action

our brain has three functions, core functions that it really focuses on. The first one is conserved energy for survival. In the past when we were in the caveman ages, we didn't have steady food. There were lions and things attacking us as human beings all over the place. So the brain really was developed to conserve energy.

So then when we needed it, we had it to, let's say, run away from the lion, or we were, managing that energy because the food wasn't, we couldn't. Eat as humans on a regular basis, that energy was managed as long as needed. But in today's day and age, of course, the majority of us don't have that problem, right?

We probably, over rather than under eat. We don't have lions attacking us in one, but [00:06:00] brain still functions. Thats way, and the challenge is that every time we wanna learn something or we need to do something new and we need to think through. Problem solving takes energy. The brain works hard to problem solve.

The brain works hard to learn a new skill to do the repetition and reps and thinking around it and practicing. To help us master any skill. So until the skill becomes something natural, something, we just do? And it's easy for us. That beginning stage of learning curve requires much more energy, which is glucose and oxygen.

So if that skill is not necessary for survival, and if what we wanna do, it's not necessary for survival. For example, learning. Copywriting on marketing. It's not necessary for you. Your body surviving [00:07:00] or making staff changes. Your in your business might be necessary for business survival, but not you as a human being.

Then the brain will resist it, will try to conserve that energy and therefore feed us all the excuses we have. Another, function that the brain has is to protect us from danger. And in the past, anything new and unknown was potentially dangerous, right? So we almost have all human beings that. Falls believe that anything new is dangerous and therefore by default, the brain is scared of it, doesn't wanna do it, thinks that there's bad things will happen, right?

So we are failure resistant and new newness resistant by default as human beings. That's why so many humans [00:08:00] prefer. Consciously or not live with a known problem, then go after solution that is not certain in its results or outcome, right? So even if the solution we're seeking could change our lives through business for.

Drastically to the better because our brain cannot be certain about it. It wants us to stay in the problem that we're on, even if it's uncomfortable. So change is difficult for us as human beings. Brain resists. And then the last thing, the last function that the brain has is seek pleasure, right? We all love a good.

Spike of dopamine, whether it's through sugar entertainment, just feeling good. The brain wants to feel good.

And of course, doing something new or learning new skillset [00:09:00] means we will not be good at it in the beginning. We might fail in the beginning, and that never feels good. So brain wants to avoid it, right? Making changes in your business with your staff might mean that somebody's not gonna be happy, and that doesn't make us feel good, and therefore.

The resistance.

So here are five tools that I use to help me overcome any resistance I ever have to things that I decided I wanted to do because they align with my goals because they will help me achieve not only my current goals, but especially my long-term goals and how I deal with it. And with the five tools that I'm giving you, sometimes you don't need big old five or go through each step in a big way.

If, what you're looking to do doesn't produce a lot of resistance. However, when you have a big new thing ahead of you or you wanna learn [00:10:00] something completely new you've never done before, or you have a big change in your business, those are the things you need to consider in order to move forward, overcome the resistance, and keep going until you create the results you want.

So the first one is you always need to have a strong why. So why are you going after whatever you wanna go and a vision for the future? So how is your future going to change for the better once you've done. Whatever you needed to do once you've learned the skillset.

For example, in my case, when I think about the exercises, once I establish a routine and I get used to exercising in a way that becomes normal, not only it will be easier, but my vision for the future is that I stay flexible and healthy and mobile [00:11:00] why I wanna do that, because I still have big goals because I want to be healthy for my kids and I want to enjoy my own life.

And this is a very strong why for me, right? For my client who's resisting the staffing change her. Why is I still want to grow my business? I have an ambition. I see my business expanding and so on, and I know that this one thing is standing in my way right now to get to achieve that. The second thing you need to be very clear on is knowing the cost of not changing.

So if I don't learn the skill, if I don't implement whatever I'm implementing in my business, what is it gonna cost me to stay the same? And again, for me, and I remind that to myself on a regular basis, especially when I experience the resistance, that means decline in my health. That means decline in [00:12:00] my mobility possibility of higher possibility of injuries and things like that, right?

Having more and more of challenges, that is causing a lot of stress for her, A lot of frustration, and just not being satisfied fully with the business that she has.

The third step or tool that you need is acknowledging and coming to terms. With the initial resistance, understanding that this is a normal process. Of doing anything new, of learning anything new or implementing some bigger changes in your business to take it to the next level. Because of course, we always expect, or our brain expects that it should be easy in a sense where there's no resistance, no challenges, everything is smooth and hunky dory, right?

And that doesn't usually happen in life. So [00:13:00] the fact that. It feels hard in the beginning. It doesn't mean it is hard, but it feels hard. And the fact that our brain comes up with the excuses and the fact that we have to fight with our own mind, that it is normal and there's nothing wrong with us, and that we also have capability of overcoming that and still doing what we wanna do.

Only when you accept it, you will be able to move on, right? Because if you don't accept it, you'll have that tagger of resisting. But I don't want to, deal with the resistance. Why is the resistance there? It shouldn't be there. And there's a lot of time and energy that we lose when we even resist the resistance.

Acceptance is the first step to moving forward. The fourth part is very important, and it's having a self-belief [00:14:00] that you can learn anything you need to learn and master it, that you can figure out any problem and come up with solutions even if in the moment. It seems impossible and you feel stuck, and once you have that self-belief, also lean into courage to go and do it.

I sometimes say to my clients, and that's something I took from. Fellow coaches when we're masterminding is sometimes when we feel that not in the stomach, that we really don't want to do something. You just need to debrief, take a breath, breathe and almost like gag and go, right? So even though you feel nauseous, you just need to tell yourself, it's okay.

We all have courage inside of us to do the things that feel scary, that feel impossible, that feel difficult. As [00:15:00] human beings, courage is an antidote to fear the fact that we are feeling fear. It means that we have courage to overcome it.

And the last part is. Meant to make that change, make that learning, make that new thing that you're doing as easy as possible doesn't mean it will be easy to the point where you wanna even re no.

The last part is meant to help you go through the steps that you need to take in order to achieve the results you want, and learn the new scale, implement the change, or whatever you're going after, as easy as possible. Planning and implementing different systems and support systems in order for you to be consistent [00:16:00] and follow through with whatever you wanna do it right?

So to fight the resistance and keep going until it's a norm.

And for me, depending on what it is that I'm implementing, I have of course different systems or different processes that I use. So in. The example of my workout, I knew that adding a strength workout to my routine weekly routine is going to be challenge. First of all, I didn't know myself much about it, but I also knew that if I tried to YouTube it.

Or try to go to the gym. It's not gonna work for me. YouTube it because then my brain would be like, oh, it's taking too long. You still don't know what to do. Trying to go to the gym. Oh, it's too much time. You have other things to do, and so on. So what I did is I asked my husband to help me.

He is really good at training. He knows a lot. We have a mini [00:17:00] gym in the basement. And I was like, you are gonna be my personal trainer because I know that with you. I am setting myself up for success, right? I also decided to do the training at a time and on days that are the easiest for me to implement based on my schedule and other things that I'm doing.

She hired me as a coach to help her not only go through that change, but identify the root causes of her business, plateauing, figure out solutions, and then help her and coach her through the implementation.

And as you start taking actions, planning it. Ahead of time is key because it then removes the excuse for the brain that you don't have time to do it right. If you try to leave it till you have time or decide, oh, I'm just gonna see how the day goes, and then I will take that action. [00:18:00] Other things that are easier to do that you're more accustomed to doing that are more natural.

Flow for you will take always precedence. So you need to decide ahead of time during your weekly planning and allocate time to those actions to remove the friction, to remove the resistance. So I hope you implement these steps on even the smallest change you're trying to implement in your business or in your life even this week.

And if you are confronting a major change in your business, so you want to implement different things that you find yourself resisting to, I can help. And it all starts with a complimentary strategy call with me that you can book through the link in the show notes. Have a fantastic week. Talk to you next week.

Bye.