How to Move Out of Apathy When You Don’t Have The Evidence
This week’s episode was inspired by my clients’ calls this week. I had an amazing week coaching my clients, we had so many great conversations and I honestly didn’t know what I was going to talk about for this week. Last week we touched on the father wound; I was going to share about the mother wound but I want to unpack it a little bit more before I do a full episode - I might even do a workshop series around core wounds as well. There are two things I wanted to bring up: 1. How do you move out of apathy and into action? A lot of times we have all these action plans and to-do lists and we want to get all these things done and we know we want to do it but we feel fear, doubt, and negative emotions that really weigh us down from taking one small action step. It’s not because you don’t have an action plan because you know exactly what you need to do and you have time to do it, but you’re not doing it due to how you’re feeling. The fear is stronger than your desire to succeed - even so, your fear is just stronger. 2. How do we take action when we don’t yet see the evidence? A lot of times what’s happening is that you don’t have the evidence around you that what you’re doing matters or what you’re doing is going to be successful or what you’re doing is needed and wanted in your community and the people in your life but when you don’t have the evidence, it could be really difficult to take the action steps forward.
How to move forward from apathy
Going back to understanding that you have an action plan and know exactly what you need to do along with having the time to do it and yet you still aren’t doing it - The feeling that we use for that belief cycle is apathy. Apathetic is when you don’t have the drive to move forward, it almost feels like you’re stuck in a limbo. This was brought up in a conversation with one of my clients, we recently did a one month post check-in call for the ladies in Intuitive Blueprint and I always do this for every program I run - What I did differently this time compared to my previous programs where I asked my clients what they’ve accomplished. This time around, I really challenged myself to show up differently in my coaching containers, where I lead from a more feminine energy. The way I reframed the call was that I made sure to let my clients know that this call wasn’t about how much you’ve done. If they wanted to celebrate and tell me what they’ve done to acknowledge the wins and achievements, then of course I am happy to do that. However, the intention of the call isn’t to list off all the things that were completed. Instead it was meant to connect and calibrate. I’m so glad I reframed this call this way because one of my clients felt very apathetic where she had the time, action plan but through the coaching conversation I asked her what she would need to do in order for her to want to take the steps forward. This client has people reaching out to her, people who want to work with her, and her fear is holding her back. She has an incredible awareness around this as well, which makes my job a little easier as a coach. So, I asked what needed to be different and her response was that she needed to have fun. Her actual fear was, what if she did it and it wasn’t as good as she wanted it to be. She worried that her clients wouldn’t get the benefit or value from what she is offering. This can be really debilitating for your self confidence especially if you’re heart-centered and you’re really doing your work from a place of service. We tend to put our self worth into our craft, if you’re a coach/instructor/teacher, you really put your self worth there. So when that happens, you may not be taking action because your subconscious mind would want to keep yourself safe. Why would you want to put yourself in a position where someone can validate a false belief you have about yourself that you’re not good enough. When she let me know that she needed to have fun, I suggested that she make the first few classes that she teaches either free or donation based because what she does know and what I pointed out is that she is her own bottleneck (It’s great to have clients who are aware of this!). When you already know this, it’s really hard to move forward. It’s a compound effect of knowing that you’re the problem and you’re getting mad at yourself for being the problem; you compound negative emotions on top of each other and so the apathy turns into shame, anger, and guilt at the same time making it extra heavy. When she said she needed to have more fun, it reminded me of reconnecting with your inner child/wonder child that isn’t afraid to fail, look dumb, or be a beginner again. When we tap into that energy, that’s our feminine energy. There is no failure, only feedback.
Why you don’t need motivation and actually need compassion
After we started getting her gears turning about all these ideas of making this fun for her, I reflected back at her regarding her belief of lack of motivation. She understood it wasn’t actually a lack of motivation but rather more compassion for herself, her thoughts, for the fear that she feels from putting herself out there. I want to extend this invitation to you - if you’ve been in a space where you haven’t been taking action and you haven’t been moving forward and you’ve been telling yourself you need MORE motivation or MORE clarity, I invite you to tap into the divine feminine. Do you need more compassion and what would giving yourself more compassion look like? How would being 5% more passionate with yourself, change the way you go about your to-do list and action plan? How would it change the way you spoke to yourself?
What it means to be able to move forward even without the evidence
Another reason why you may not be taking action is because you are waiting to see the evidence around you that what you’re doing is going to work, that you’re going to succeed. This is why I fall back into jobs so easily because we understand that if we show up, we get paid in two weeks. You’re going to have that consistent paycheck. A lot of us wait for the evidence to produce itself before we take a chance on ourselves, but here’s the thing with entrepreneurship and starting your own business and doing something that’s unconventional; coaching is so much more common these days but in the past it wasn’t. Maybe it still isn’t very common, whatever area you’re in, but this vision that you have for yourself; you’re not taking action yet because you’re waiting for the evidence to produce itself first. But here’s the thing, when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re paving your own path, the evidence is in your vision. In your vision, you see the clients, the home office you’re going to create, the vacations you’re going to take with your family, the long slow mornings on the couch with your coffee and your journal - that’s in your mind. But if you’re waking up everyday having to go to your 9-5, what happens is that then you talk yourself out of doing what you want to do because the evidence of your current life doesn’t match the vision of your mind. That vision of your mind isn’t supposed to be in the physical realm yet. The evidence isn’t supposed to be there yet so stop looking around waiting for it to come. It’s like the analogy of: I can’t love myself until I lose weight. So you keep doing all this stuff and going about all these things, berating yourself and being so mean to yourself because that evidence of losing weight isn’t there yet for you to begin loving yourself. You have to do that mindset shift of not needing the evidence of losing weight in order to start loving yourself. Similar to a coaching business, you don’t need to have clients yet in order to believe that your business is viable. You don’t need to have a client to yet to believe that your work is of value. You don’t need to work your business full time to be able to bet on yourself. That’s the energy I want and need you to start leading with because if you’re constantly waiting for the evidence, you’re going to be waiting for a long time because you’re ahead of your timeline. Where you’re at physically and mentally are two completely different spaces - it’s going to take awhile for your physical realm to catch up with your mental realm. So that physical evidence around you isn’t even supposed to be there, right?
So I want you to take this concept and noodle on it. What evidence are you waiting for and are you ready to release that and do what you need to do for your purpose, because your purpose matters. I think it’s super empowering to understand that the physical evidence doesn’t need to be present in order for you to start, because what are you waiting for? You don’t need to wait for external factors to tell you that what you’re doing matters. I’m launching a coach + NLP certification training and I have big visions for this and I didn’t need someone to pay me first for me to believe that what I want to do is worthy, deserving, and valuable. I didn’t have one person pay me in advance so they can hold their seat in my coaching certification. I decided that I didn’t need that evidence in order for me to go through with it. Let me tell you, this year has been so hard and so much work going through all my training and taking time off; the support and burden on my husband to take care of our home and family while I left. If I needed the evidence before committing to doing this, I wouldn’t have followed through with it.
Two main things to leave you with: do you need more compassion in your life if you haven’t been taking action and are compounding negative emotions on top of yourself - switch the mindset of needing to be motivating to needing to be more compassionate. What needs to be different in order for you to take that action? Where have you been waiting for evidence? What are you holding off from doing because you’ve been waiting for the evidence? Also, it’s normal and totally okay to be this way. It’s how society functions and it doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for your purpose or what you want to do because you’ve been operating this way, I’m just highlighting and bringing to your awareness that you don’t have to wait anymore. To be successful in anything you want to do, you simply can’t wait for the evidence. I don’t think Olympic athletes wait until they’re in the Olympics to start training for it, right? No! So, you can’t wait for the evidence and if you’re waiting, you’re going to be waiting forever and that is an opportunity for you to dive in and do the deep inner work. Get some coaching, energy healing, and subconscious mindset work done around this so you can clear the negative emotions/conflicts/limiting beliefs so you can feel empowered and make congruent decisions that are not for only for your present self but for your future and highest self today.
