Are you waiting for an a-ha moment? Well stop.
Today I want to talk about something that I see ALL the time with our students in our Uncage Your Business program.
On the surface it might seem like a good thing – a great thing even! But it’s actually harmful to your business….
That thing? Is having “a-ha” moments.
You know the ones…..
That feeling of enlightenment when you finally “figure it all out”.
The moment where you think you have finally cracked the code on your business/your niche/your offers, and you’re ready to take on the world.
We call that “breakthrough mania” around here…. And it might not mean as much as you think it does.
Having an a-ha moment or a breakthrough can trigger a release of adrenaline and other feel-good hormones, which can be addictive and leave us searching for that same high.
If we have had it even just once, we often come to expect it to be there to help us know if we are on the right track, and anything that doesn’t feel like an a-ha or a HELL YES moment, we throw away as not the right direction for us.
This is a MAJOR problem for new businesses and I see it getting people stuck all the time. People waiting for the idea to feel perfect before they accept it and move forward.
I have literally had students in our program who have been stuck for YEARS because they have been waiting for this perfect feeling.
So let’s talk about the reality of these so-called “aha” moments.
Here is the cold hard truth about a-ha’s and breakthroughs — They mean literally NOTHING.
Yep, I said it. And it’s true.
Whether you have a breakthrough every week or you NEVER have a breakthrough in your business, doesn’t dictate your success. It also doesn’t mean your breakthrough idea was ACTUALLY a good idea.
The thing with a-ha’s is that they don’t always stick. They can often fade as quickly as they came, leaving you feeling disappointed and back at square one.
Secondly, these a-ha moments, where we think our brain has finally figured something out that we have been struggling with forever, can lead to a lack of specificity in your business.
Here is what I mean by that:
Many new coaches try to avoid committing to anything specific (fear of niching!), so they want to use more general language that can encompass all the different aspects of their business.
Sometimes what happens when they are putting SO much energy into trying to do this, determined to figure out THE ONE THING, is they will have what they think is a stroke of genius.
They will come to our sessions super fired up, ready to share their big idea! They FINALLY found the one theme that will encompass everything they want to do! They are going to call their business “insert super generic coachy-word or theme here” and this will let them talk about A and B an C and D topics and it all ties together by this one them and OMG THEY ARE SO HAPPY THEY FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT.
And we have to be the bearer of bad news and tell them that while we love their enthusiasm, their idea isn’t actually that great (we say it much nicer than that and always explain why!)
Often these kinds of a-ha ideas are focused TOO much on our own creative expression. They feel fun and interesting and flowy. They feel like US. So we take that to mean that they are the right idea for our business.
But then we put them out there into the world. And what ends up happening is as you start to put your work out there, you start to see that the big idea that YOU thought was genius, isn’t really landing with people. Your big idea was a nice idea, but it’s not really working for your marketing. And you start to see that the way your people are describing what’s going on for them as you dig in more to market research, isn’t in line with the big idea you had.
You will have LOTS of ways to fulfill your creative expression in your business (and outside of your business), but your business ideas need to be in line with your CLIENTS needs, not just yours.
Often, this a-ha high, and then sudden drop when we realize it wasn’t the magical idea you thought it was, can leave you feeling deflated and like you have to start all over again.
It can be a real roller coaster of emotions!
Instead of searching for that a-ha or waiting for everything to feel like a home-run, we would MUCH rather you ride a more steady wave.
A-ha’s are like tsunamis’ coming in hot and fast and usually not leaving much behind in their wake.
We want your ideas to be more like the tide, like gentle waves coming slowly and steadily in and out, everyday. Slowly molding and shaping the rocks around them.
Hold your “breakthrough mania” moments loosely and don’t make them mean too much, and be open to letting them develop based on the needs of your clients.
Your focus should always be on serving your clients and addressing their needs.
But what if you NEVER feel like you have a breakthrough?
If you’re a new business owner, and especially if you’re taking a business building program (we see this happen all the time with our Uncage Your Business students), you watch other people who are having these big moments of clarity, and you feel this pressure, like “Oh my god, I’m not having mine, I’m not having some big breakthrough. What’s wrong with me?!”
If that’s you, you might be left to feel like your ideas aren’t good enough to move forward with because you didn’t have that a-ha clarity feeling that everyone else had.
But the truth is, a lot of people never have a big breakthrough. It’s more like the temperature gets turned up a little bit at a time. And little by little, it starts to make more sense and feel more clear.
Putting together the puzzle
I often describe the foundational pieces of business building like putting together a puzzle. Except we are only giving you 10 pieces at a time, and saying here, make sense of these…. But it’s a 1000 piece puzzle, and you don’t even have the box to see what the damn picture is supposed to be!
So you do your best, then you go out and gather some more info (i.e. get a few more puzzle pieces), and bring them back to see where they fit.
And little by little, the picture starts to come together.
No ONE puzzle piece was the “breakthrough” piece.
You just slowly did your best and kept going til it started to make sense.
Long-term, sustainable clarity comes with putting your ideas out into the world, and then allowing them to adjust based on the information that you get back.
This is why actually getting out there and working with clients (even if your niche doesn’t feel “perfect” yet), is so so important.
You can’t think your way to clarity.
You can’t journal your way to clarity.
You can’t meditate your way to clarity.
You need to actually be doing the thing in real life, in order to see how it feels and adjust from there.
I am here to take a stand for taking the pressure off yourself to have a big breakthrough or have everything have to feel like a HELL YES moment before you move forward.
Let it feel 50-70% “good enough” and know that that IS truly good enough for you to be on your way to creating a successful business.
