194 | Why You Can’t Grow Your Business From Your Mind and What To Do Instead

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In this episode, I’m breaking down what I call 3D vs. 5D leadership and why growing your business from your mind will feel much harder than it needs to be.

Where you are right now isn’t a problem to solve.  It’s a reflection of what you’ve been thinking and feeling.  And if you keep reacting to what’s in front of you, you will stay in that same loop.

We talk about fear, pressure, and the emotions that come up as you grow and why they don’t mean anything has gone wrong.  They’re part of your expansion.

This is the shift from doing more to leading from a different place.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why focusing on problems keeps you in the same loop
• The difference between 3D and 5D leadership
• Why fear, doubt, and pressure show up at the next level
• How overthinking leads you to second-guess your decisions
• What avoidance actually looks like in your day-to-day
• What it means to lead from trust instead of your mind

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Episode 193 | Why You Feel Constant Pressure and What Your Root Center Is Telling You

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Transcript

Why You Get Stuck in the 3D

Erin Gray 0:00

Today I want to talk about something that I am seeing in some of my clients, people in business. Most founders come from what I call the 3D. We're moving from the mind. We're trying, we see a problem and we try to solve it with our mind. And we think that there's some strategy or something specific action that we will take to fix it. So I want to talk about shifting our energy from the 3D, which I describe it as moving from the mind, moving from your human, right? A very action-oriented place to the 5D. Some people might call it 4D. I think Dr. Jojo Spenza calls it 4D. I call it 5D, but moving from the energy, right? From wherever you want to go, right? You think about your end result, you're moving from that place, which also includes the emotions and the feelings from our higher perspective. Because the more that I do this work, the more I see that's actually what this is about in order to create what we want. Because what we are after is having a calm and safe business and ultimately a life that reflects that. And we don't get there from the mind. Welcome back to your money, your rules. First of all, I want to say that I don't look at things as problems. I think a lot of people, when they come to me, they they look at their business as if they have problems. But what I want them first to, you know, that's one of the things we first talk about is like looking at your business as if they have problems, as it has it has problems, has this thinking about and focusing on the problems. And we, if you, you know, law of attraction or vibration or whatever, all of the teachers that have taught about like where you want to go, when you are thinking about your problems, you're going to create more of the same because you're thinking about it, you're feeling from that place, you're going to create more of that. So when we are thinking about where we are, not where we want to be, right? It has us moving from a very different place. And so many of us are operating so reactively, right? We're putting out fires and we start thinking like, maybe I need different employees, maybe I need to move people around, maybe certain things in management or my strategy needs to change. And while some of this, like actually, this is why I always say I work in the 3D and the 5D, right? Some of these answers or these solutions that you are coming up with might actually be true. We might actually need to look at your employees. We might actually need to look at what is your strategy, but we don't start there and we don't stay focused on looking at, you know, the problems because you have to be asking yourself, what am I thinking and what am I feeling that is creating where I currently am? Where you are right now is a byproduct of what you thought, felt, did yesterday, the day before, weeks, months, right? Depending on your pipeline in your business, like all kinds of things. All of that is a byproduct of what you were thinking and feeling months ago. And so when you're looking at your 3D, when you are looking at your bank account, when you're looking at what's going on in your business, and then you're making or you're summarizing or you're telling a story about it, you are staying right where you are. So the other thing that I think I always ask clients is what are we unwilling to feel? Like this is a game of feeling our feelings. Most people they don't want to hear that because it's not a territory that we're very well versed in. But that is some of the most powerful work that I do with clients because we have to be willing to feel what we have been running from or not wanting to feel in order to have what we want. Building something meaningful comes with feelings most people are trying to avoid. Now, can you get there with you know lots of mind stuff in 3D? Yeah, I have, right? Is there a right way or a wrong way? No. Does it feel better in the body to move from trust, your connection to God, your deep sense of faith and knowing and intuition? Yeah, it feels a lot better in the body and it goes a lot. I don't want to say quicker because what is time, but like it goes a lot quicker. It's a lot more fun and it feels a lot better in the body. I've made the decision, I want to go there. I'm moving from expansion, right? But we don't account for like the grief that might come up. We don't account for, you know, that little part of us, that inner child that feels like, oh, I feel kind of scared about this, but I'm still willing to feel that and move forward anyways. We don't talk about that in-between part that is part of us going to where, you know, getting to where we want to go. I think I talked about this on another podcast. I can't remember which one it was, but I thought and I want to say I probably said four things, but you know, the three things that I think are, I don't remember what the fourth one was that I named, but like I always go back to like the biggest self-development things for us is our business, our marriage, and our children, right? And every level of entrepreneurship shows you something within you, right? And this is what I was telling a client the other day. I was like, either you're gonna learn the lesson now at where you are in revenue and your employees and all the things that are going on, or you're gonna learn this lesson at 10x. You get to choose, right? So we can either take the time to feel what we need to feel, to work through, to release, to process, to actually do the work now, or you're gonna take yourself where you're going. And the there's gonna be a lesson. It's it's going to come back up until you have learned the lesson. And not like, you know, shaking my finger at you like you've learned your lesson, but like there are lessons in the growth. There are lessons in where we are, what we are avoiding. There's a lesson there. And are we willing to actually slow down and actually look at it and feel and see, okay, what is the lesson for me here? So, you know, think about when you started your business, maybe in the beginning, it was like this fear of failure that maybe even had the thought. And you might even still have the thought, like, okay, if it what happens if it goes away? But as you have grown, right, as you've grown your business, what you've realized is even if it does, and if you're like Erin, I don't feel that way, okay. Well, that that might be the first thing we need to look at. But you know, if you have grown your business from where you were, right, if it does go away, think about you can build it back again, right? And it's gonna be faster. Think about all the skill sets you have, think about all of the self-development you've done, think about all of the things, the contacts, the people, the you you've done so much. You have so many skill sets and valuable things that you have already done that you could build it back again, right? We already have that skill set. But as your business grows, now what happens is you're dealing with you have like more responsibility and you have employees and you're dealing maybe with more zeros, right? And you feel like maybe people are relying on you. And more often than not, you might feel pressure when it comes to that. And that pressure doesn't necessarily come from anything external. Now, go back actually, listen to episode 193. I just did a podcast on the root center with human design. That center is all about pressure and what we do to get rid of that feeling and how to support yourself. So go back, listen to that one because there is pressure that we feel that we do amplify, you know, energy in general, but a lot of times the pressure starts within us. So, what I find fascinating is that people think if they are feeling fear or they're feeling uncertainty or worry, or maybe their money beliefs are rearing up and you know, because they are expanding. And then now it brings up this next level of money beliefs. There, and it feels like it's coming out of no nowhere, but it's not, right? This is just next level. This is the next spiral. You feel like something's off, right? We don't account for like, okay, I'm gonna make this expansive. I'm I'm going towards here, I'm making this expansive decision and I'm moving from this place, but we also don't account for like, oh, and the human in us is just gonna have a moment, and that's okay. So instead of feeling, what we attempt to do is stop feeling, right? By changing the action, maybe to feel relief, or maybe we question our decision because we're like, uh, I don't like the way that this feels in my body. I know I said I wanted to do this, but like I'm also feeling a little fear, I'm feeling some doubt, I'm not feeling as confident, right? So we try to correct the action from the same line of thinking that got us there, which is gonna get us more of the same. Like I call it this mind F, right? It's just this loop that we go through, right? Versus I know where I'm going, I know what my vision is, I know what my values are, I know where I'm going. I also know as I move, as I transcend, I'm going to feel grief. I'm going to feel a little bit of my confidence, maybe a little bit shaky. Maybe I'm going to doubt myself. That's okay. All of that can be there because that is part of the process. I've always said a level that you, the level of fear that you feel is directly correlated to the power that you have on the other side. I mean, I really had to use this one for me and my money beliefs because I'm like, wow, some of you, if you've been around here for a while, you know, like my relationship with money and it's been a process and how much fear I used to have with money. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like that's how much power I have that has not been unleashed yet on the other side. So a lot of us, we want to bypass this part. We want to bypass, like one of my coaches used to call it the river of misery. I don't really like that saying, doesn't very feel very good in the body, but like this process, right? Like if you think about where you are is on one side of the riverbank, and on the other side of the riverbank is where you want to go. And in order to get there, you got to go through the river, right? And it's just as easy as it is to keep going as it is to turn back. And some of us, we want to relieve that pressure. We want to relieve that feeling that we're feeling in our body. So we think, okay, well, maybe I shouldn't go, you know, I shouldn't expand. Maybe I shouldn't, maybe this wasn't the best time. We start questioning versus staying the course and allowing the feeling. Like that is where the growth happens. The growth isn't, okay, stop feeling this way, go back to where we were, which is what our minds want us to do. Our growth is, I'm going anyways, and I'm going to feel what needs to be felt. And I'm going to be there for myself and I'm going to love myself and I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to give my love to all that little inner child, little Erin in me, you know, whatever, you know, for you, your inner child, like giving yourself all of the love, even when as you're moving towards where you're going. So call it initiation. I don't know, call it whatever it is, right? It's part of the deal. If we want to go where we are going, like that's that's your pay to play. That's your ticket to get on the ride. Like, you don't, nobody gets a free ride in this. And the people that truly have the life and the business. And when I say with, I don't mean just successful. I mean with peace and at ease and flow and love and connection, right? It's learning how to feel what we need to feel. As a society, as a human species, we are wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. And what that looks like more often than not is not or avoiding, I should say, avoiding feeling our feelings like the guilt, like the shame, like the conflict or the fear. So instead, what we do is we try to white knuckle it. We repress, we suppress our emotions. We don't take the time to slow down because, quite honestly, so many of us are running our business in a survival-based state. Slowing down literally feels like death to the body. We aren't practicing feeling what needs to be felt to take care of that inner child, to process, to release emotions. We go to what our default has been is to push harder, to keep going, right? And I'm sure you all have heard the saying of like what got us here won't get us where we want to go, right? Like the hustle that maybe you had that got you to where you are, it's not gonna take you to where you want to go. And quite honestly, do we actually want to? Like it's like having an intuitive, purpose-driven, nervous, system safe business feels so much better than hustle and grind and constantly in this fear-based place. And I want to say avoiding things don't typically look like avoidance. They actually are kind of like cloaked in productiveness. So a completely full calendar with no space, no breaks in your workday. Like that's one of the things that I look at with my clients because when we first get started, a lot of them have a packed calendar. We've been taught this is productive, right? So I want to create space in your calendar for you to think, to contemplate. Like it's one of like your mind and your imagination and visualization and all of that higher mental faculties is like your best asset. So be bored. Allow time in your calendar to just be bored and let downloads come. Also, like taking care of yourself. I know this sounds so silly, but like actually going to the restroom, giving yourself enough water or drinks or whatever you, you know, need to fuel your body with food and hydration. The way I think about it and the way I want you to think about it is you only have one body. This is the body that's holding your dreams. This is the body that's taking you where you want to go. This is the only body you will ever have while you're on planet Earth. Like, take care of yourself and love on yourself. And if you're sitting here saying, Oh, I do all of those things, Erin, okay, then what's next level for you? Is it taking off half a day? Is it what is it for you? Like, we can always take this work even deeper. So, okay, I digress. So if you're not having these conversations, the productiveness, I always give in examples of what like productiveness. So it might be a full calendar. It might be not having conversations that you know you need to have with specific employees. Like, think about we we use the word procrastination so loosely, but like what are we not doing and what is the reason why? A lot of times it's actually our body's way of protecting us, right? So if having a conversation with an employee that isn't doing what they need to do, that's probably gonna take the body back to, hey, I said something to my mom when I was younger and I got in trouble for it. And I learned that speaking out of turn or saying something that really that was true to me either, you know, cost me love or I wasn't able to, I was ignored or something like that. Like that's what the body's actually protecting you from. It's not, it's not having the conversation with your employee. It's what does that bring up within you that hasn't been transcended already? It could even look like overgiving, right? Doing things that your employees need to be doing, not having conversations with your CPA or your insurance agent or waiting until the very last minute to do things. Like I think sometimes, and I've talked about this before on previous podcasts, we tolerate things because we don't want to have. And I don't even like saying having hard conversations, just having the conversations that need to be had that might feel uncomfortable for us in our bodies. That's all that it is, right? The more practice that we get at, the more that we actually slow down and say, hmm, okay, why am I not having this conversation with my bookkeeper? What am I feeling? What am I afraid to feel or I don't like feeling in the body, then we can gain clarity over that. So from the outside, it looks like we're super productive. Our calendar's packed and we've got all of these things, right? But what's really happening is we're avoiding feeling some of those emotions. So if we move from the 5D, what I call it, right? Our moving from our emotions, our highest level self, like our God essence. Like I truly believe God is always working within us, like not as in like powering over someone, but like God moves through us. Like that's what is God's one of greatest joys, is like being able to move through us. He gets to do that through each of us. So, and when I say emotions, I don't mean emotional. I mean moving from a calm, a confident leadership role, self-trust, and like your decisions, like moving from a very confident place. So if you were to zoom out and you were to see yourself as the grandest version of you, how would you be moving? And when we move from this place, we aren't asking what is the strategy that I need to take. We're moving from an identity. A calm and confident leader takes her time to make a decision and is clear. She gives herself time to ride her wave, to sink into a feeling and a decision, right? She doesn't make quick decisions. She isn't rushed by anybody. She takes bigger, and I'm air quoting risks, like what are risks? But like she takes those bolder moves, let's use that, because she knows that she's worthy of it. She's going to make good on what she does because she trusts herself, right? She's betting on herself. She stays the course even when the results haven't shown up yet. This is some of the most unpracticed work that we might have and that we can get even better at, right? She understands that there is a gestation period. Like I did in a podcast on the law of gestation. You can go back and listen to that, but there is a gestation period. I love documentaries and I think it's on Netflix. There's a series about the Dallas Cowboys, and it is so fascinating. And it basically explains this very thing I'm talking about. Jerry Jones, the owner, he came in, he made a bunch of big moves in the 90s because he was moving from the energy of I win Super Bowls. And so he replaced this well-known, I think it's Tom Landry. He replaced this well-known and very liked coach, like 20 years, I think. It might even be 30 years that he was a coach for the Dallas Cowboys. He added a bunch of A players, he got rid of, he traded, like he literally betted all on the team. And I think for two years, if you watch the documentary, you'll see it, but I think for like two years, they won very few games and they lost way more than they won. Like, I want to say like one, two, lost 11, something like that. And of course, you know, the media and everyone was like, what has he done? You know, all the things. And he just held the vision. He didn't listen. He stayed the course. He knew what he was building, he knew where he was going. And I think maybe after two years, or third year, they won the Super Bowl. And I think that that is such a great example of are we gonna stay the course even when the 3D hasn't caught up to us yet? That is what is a skill set that we have to practice, that we have to be stay committed to because it's easy when the external isn't isn't matching up with what your imagination is, with where you are going. But it's like, can we stay the course even when? So the questions that I think, if you're willing to contemplate is am I moving from, right? Am I moving from the energy of the woman who has blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? Or am I moving to, right? Am I thinking and moving from what I desire and what I'm known or like what I am meant for? Or am I trying to get there from my mind, right? Am I moving from, I already know I am the woman, like a perfect, I love this question I asked myself, because you will tap into your intuition and you will see. Am I already XYZ? Just start saying, Am I already the ex-business owner? Am I already all the things? And you will see what your intuition says. And more often than not, right? Depending on, I mean, like if I say, am I already a farmer, I get a no, right? Because that's not what I meant to do. But, you know, really asking yourself and when you know where you are going, when you are moving from that energy, when you are allowing yourself to trust even deeper, to let go, to surrender. You know, I was telling a client the other day, I'm like, the reason why stuff happens at the 11th hour is because we finally decide to let go. Like we just are like, okay, God, show me the way, right? We stop trying to do it with our mind. If we can just get there from the beginning, if we can just trust, if we can co-create with God instead of trying to do it all with our mind, like it feels so much easier and less turbulence and less conflict in the body. So if you're full steam ahead, right? And this doesn't mean like fast, urgent energy, it just means unwavering energy. Like, am I moving from an unwavering knowing, right? Allowing the 3D to catch up, building something meaningful is always going to stretch us. Like that is like we don't learn through everything working out for us. There's no lessons there, there's no expansion there. It's like the growth happens in the expansion. It's meant to be that way. So when you think about, you know, having your business that represents you and your values and your vision and your mission, stay the course. Move from the energy, your God essence, from faith, from your intuition. Allow the downloads to come and take action from them. Like I always say, close the gap between when you receive the download, when you ride your wave, when you feel neutral, and when you go. Trust yourself more than you trust anybody else, more than you trust me, more than anybody. Trust yourself more than you trust anybody else. Like you and your relationship with yourself and God is the most important relationship you will ever have. And develop. Stop trying to figure it out from your mind. That's, I think that's also what we try to do when the fear sets in versus just allowing the fear, not paying attention to it, not thinking it has to go away, but just continuing to focus on where we're going. And I think for me, at least in my body, it feels exhausting when I try to move from the mind. Like I literally, and I will be honest with you, I'm in this work. I'm not sitting over here being like, oh, I've got everything all solved and everything, right? Like it, I'm, I am doing this work alongside you. I'm sharing with you. I think it was last week or the week before. I literally had a headache. I don't get headaches very often. I know when I have a headache, I'm overthinking. I'm trying to solve it with my mind. And I was like, you know what? I'm not. We're letting it go. Like, I'm taking a nap. I'm just gonna let it be. Whatever's supposed to be will be and it will figure it out. It'll be fine. But recognizing like, when are we trying to do things and solve things with our mind? And when are we actually trusting? When are we staying connected? Right. And it doesn't feel very fun. Like that's not a fun way to continue to grow. So if you are looking for a partner to really hold space with you for you, someone who supports your growth while also bringing along the ease and the fun, because that is one of the things, absolutely like teaching clients how to have fun again back into your business, right? While helping you address a lot of the, I mean, we do strategic stuff in your business, right? This isn't all just the 5D. We do look at the strategic part of your business, but we come first and foremost from the 5D. This is what I love to support clients with. I work with a small number of women each year because it is very intentional and it is close support and we go really deep. So to apply, you can click the link in the show notes. Okay, take what I've said today, think about how does this apply to me? Where am I? And I do want to say here, you're already probably moving from the energy in some places. Some places you're moving towards it, right? It's okay. Just recognize where am I already doing this in my life? Where do I want to practice more of that? Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.