EP 150: What's really behind your need to overdeliver

Do you feel like you’re constantly over-delivering in your business, even when it leaves you drained and frustrated? You’re not alone. Many soul-led entrepreneurs struggle with the need to over-give, often without realizing that the root cause lies deep in the shadows of their subconscious.

In this eye-opening episode, Jessica Read takes you on a journey into the hidden patterns driving over-delivery and shows you how shadow work can help you break free. By understanding the beliefs that keep you stuck and rewriting your story, you’ll learn how to reclaim your energy, set aligned boundaries, and step into your worth with clarity and confidence.

Key Takeaways:

1. Over-Delivering Isn’t About Your Clients:
   • Discover how subconscious shadows like worthlessness, fear of rejection, and control drive the need to over-deliver.
   • Reflection Question: What am I afraid will happen if I don’t over-deliver?
2. How Shadows Are Formed:
   • Learn how past experiences, like conditional love or external validation, create the belief that your worth must be earned.
   • Reflection Question: When did I first feel like I had to prove my value through effort?
3. The Cost of Over-Delivering:
   • Understand how over-giving leads to resentment, burnout, and undermines your value.
   • Reflection Question: Where do I feel resentment or burnout in my client relationships?
4. Shadow Work as the Path to Freedom:
   • Explore how identifying, thanking, and integrating your shadows can help you create aligned boundaries and honor your energy.
   • Reflection Exercise: Write a letter to your shadow, thanking it for its role and affirming your new truth.

Reflection Questions (from the Episode):

• What story are you telling yourself about why you need to over-deliver?
• What would change if you truly believed your energy and expertise were enough?
• What boundary can you set today that honors your worth?

Connect with Jessica:
Did this episode resonate with you? DM Jessica on Instagram @‌jessica.read.ilc to share your biggest takeaway or leave a review to support the show!

JOIN THE SOUL-LED SUCCESS ACADEMY WAITLIST HERE: https://www.inspiredlifecollective.com.au/academy-waitlist

Transcript

0:01

Are you a soul centered entrepreneur ready to step into your power and create a life and business you love? Welcome to the Alive and Thriving podcast, where host Jessica and industry experts explore how your inner world fuels your outer success. Let's dive in and ignite the embodied leader you were meant to be.

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Do you constantly feel the need to over deliver in your coaching business, in your service based business, even at the expense of your energy and your boundaries? Oh, I feel that deeply. What if I told you that the real answer actually lies. In the shadows of your subconscious, welcome to alive and thriving. This is a space where emotional resilience and intuitive leadership and transformational healing meet to create success that feels expansive and authentic in your business. Now, today we are going to be exploring a pattern that keeps so. Many entrepreneurs stuck in burnout and frustration. And that is this constant question of why do I feel the need to over deliver to my clients? And how can I stop? So here's the thing over delivering. It isn't just about wanting to give your best because I know we're all here wanting to have the best transformation for our clients and make the most impact that over delivering that leads to lack of boundaries or a lack of implementing your boundaries that leads to that energetic drain that leads to that over commitment. That is often rooted in your subconscious beliefs, and that is tied to worthiness, to fear, and to old stories that we have internalized. And these patterns, they run so deep that they feel like second nature, but they don't have to. So by the end of this episode, you will have the tools to uncover the hidden beliefs, driving your over delivery to understand how shadow work can help you heal these patterns and to reclaim your energy and create aligned boundaries that honor your worth. So let's dive into the shadows. And bring them to life. Now, we have not met before. Welcome. My name is Jessica Read. I am an intuitive business mentor and alternative therapist and a shadow work advocate. I help clients get deep, deep into the darkest places within their own minds and bodies to transform their challenges into strength. And over the last 17 not quite consecutive years, But over my course of my life, there has been 17 years where I have been playing with entrepreneurship and I have made so many mistakes. I have learned so many lessons. I have so many phenomenal wins. I have cried. I have wanted to pack it all up and give it all in. I have run away from a business that failed, but I have also helped countless soul led entrepreneurs now, like you, to uncover and heal the hidden beliefs that are holding them back. This is the work that I do best. So today we are diving deep into the unconscious drivers that are behind your over delivering. for listening. And we're also going to dive into how shadow work can help you step into your work with clarity and with confidence. And just before we dive in, I want to let you know that I have a very special wait list open right now. The Soul Lead Success Academy is a 12 week transformational program for purpose driven entrepreneurs just like you who are ready to release the fear, the self doubt, the old patterns through emotional resilience, through shadow work, through energetic alignment. You are going to step into your power, align with your purpose and create success with clarity and ease and authenticity. No more doubting yourself, no more fearing what is to come. What is unknown. You are going to become a confident and aligned leader. And we're going to do that in just 12 weeks. It is time to get out of your own way. And if that resonates with you, I want you to click on the link below in the show notes and pop your name on the wait list so that you can be the very, First to know when this program is coming, you can also be the first to know about any early bird pricing that comes out as well. So let's get into our topic for today. Cause I know that you are busting to stop over delivering. What if your need to over deliver isn't a strength? Okay. So maybe you've often praised it. Oh I'm giving, the best transformation. What I see in so many containers, in so many coaches offers in so many services that are being provided, that over delivery is actually overwhelmed for your clients and that transformation. That they value so dearly can actually happen in a faster time with less deliverables, with less of you. Remember you are not here to fix your client. You are here to guide them. So you do not need to be in it as much. And sometimes I see over delivering come through as a fear of not getting clients results as a fear. And that's often coming from the beliefs that you have about yourself. The internal gaps that you need to feel early in my business. And I still catch myself doing it. Sometimes I thought over delivering. It was a superpower. I'd send all these extra resources and I'd extend my sessions and I'd answer emails late at night. And I told myself that it was because I cared so deeply about my client success. And whilst that is a hundred percent true In reality, I was actually terrified that they wouldn't see my value. If I didn't go above and beyond that, they would see me to be a fraud. I had all of these stories and the work that I did in my shadows is showed me that this pattern wasn't actually about my clients. It was about me. Over delivering is often tied to subconscious shadows, which are parts of ourselves that we've rejected or we've buried. And these shadows can take the form of the shadow of worthlessness, which is where you have the belief that your inherent value is not enough. So you compensate by overgiving the shadow of control, which is a need to micromanage the client's experience stemming from a fear of failure. The shadow of rejection, which is a deep fear that if you don't give enough, people will leave you or stop valuing you. This is how these shadows can show up in your business. Among many other ways, ask yourself. Now, what am I afraid will happen if I stopped over delivering? If I pulled back on if I, enforce my boundaries on when I'm in Voxer, if I did not respond to emails, the second they came through, if I actually turned off my notifications. So that I can check things on my own time. What am I afraid of if I'm not over delivering? Let this question lead you to the story behind your actions. Your shadows were created to protect you, but now they are holding you back. One of my clients, let's just call her, I don't know, Sarah. We'll just call her Sarah. Her name's not Sarah. She, I think you gathered that. She grew up in a home where love was conditional on achievement. Okay. If she brought home an A, then she was praised. If she didn't, she felt invisible and I know some of you are going to relate to that because Sarah is not the only client that I've had that's had this story. That belief that she formed was something along the lines of that love and validation must be earned that followed her into her business. She over delivered as a way to ensure that her client's approval. Even when it drained her completely was there. So working within her shadows helped her to uncover this pattern. And together we rewrote her story. We rewrite it right from the origins where it lived in the cells of her body. Shadows form when we reject parts of ourselves that we fear are unworthy, unlovable, or unacceptable. And this often starts in childhood or through past experiences and things like. A teacher who praised you for only perfect work, or a parent who withheld love unless you met their expectations, or being the sibling who wasn't always getting the A's and watching another sibling constantly be praised and forming your stories and your conclusions from that, or a boss who equated your value with how much you could produce. I'm sure it's quite a few of us who've been in that situation as well. When these moments go unprocessed, they get stored in your subconscious. They show up in your business as over delivering, people pleasing, and that leads to burning out. So I want you to reflect on this pattern for you, where it might have started. You might like to sit with a journal and ask yourself, when did I first feel like I had to prove my worth through my effort? Where did that come from for you? Is it still serving you? I'm willing to bet it's not. There's probably going to be a part of you that desperately wants to hold onto it. And that's the kind of work we can do together over delivering doesn't disdain your energy. It keeps you stuck in a cycle of frustration and burnout. Now, remember to, I just will say when we're talking about over delivering, I'm not talking about not delivering a brilliant experience for your clients. This level of over delivering, this is you stomping on your boundaries, this is you draining your energy, this is you overcompensating, delivering from an energy of scarcity, of fear, of unworthiness. I'll tell you another story about another client of mine who constantly felt undervalued. Even though she was giving her clients so much more than she promised, she was offering all these additional sessions. She was creating all these bonus resources. She pretty much stayed available 24 hours a day, even if she not when she was sleeping, but right up till she go to bed, until when she wake up in the morning, she was available to her clients. Instead of feeling appreciated, though, she started to feel resentful. And the thing is, her clients will sense this resentment. They began questioning her energy, and she started losing clients. And then she started feeling this story that she wasn't good enough. She ended up feeling even more invisible. Over delivering creates an unsustainable dynamic. There is an energetic mismatch. When you give too much, you teach your clients to expect more and more than what they've paid for. Creating this imbalance for you. Again, surprise, delight, like you can absolutely nurture and spoil your clients, but at what cost? And that's what you've got to realize. And again, with what intention behind it, and you might need to put your ego aside for a moment. When you ask that question, you begin to feel unappreciated. It's going to lead to resentment, to burn out. It's going to lead to the joy in your work fading. And then you start as my client did to undermine your value. Over delivering sends the unconscious message that your core offer is not enough. It also can start to send a message that your client can't do this without you, and ultimately you want them to have a really empowered experience. You are there as your guy, as their guide. I want you to look at your client relationships. Where do you feel resentment? Where do you feel burnout? What's one boundary that you can begin reclaiming right now? It's the only way out of over delivering. Is through by facing and integrating the shadows behind it. Okay, when I started doing my own shadow work, I realized that I had a part of me that believed and I say part, please note that there are multiple parts of our personality, multiple parts that reside within us. A part of me believed that if I don't give enough, people will leave. And this belief, it was not rational. It was emotional. It was tied to old wounds around rejection and failure. And instead of rejecting that shadow, I began to work with it. She thanked it for trying to protect me. I rewrote the story. I let go of the belief that I had to prove my worth through overgiving and started showing up with confidence in the value of my energy. And do you know what? This is something that I still do now. The work doesn't stop. I am still so conscious of holding my boundaries. Of not over giving, because do you know what else happens, particularly if you work in a space like I do, where you're working with a lot of energy, you're working with a lot of emotion, you're working in very close proximity to some of people's highest achievements, but also some of their darkest, most traumatic times. If I over deliver. I become a shock absorber for all of that energy. I am not protecting myself in any way, shape or form. And I know that does not feel good. And if you've ever been there, you'll know that too. So when we talk about shadow work, which I've spoken about a few times throughout this episode today, I want to just cover what that actually involves. So here is a process that I go through with my clients, with my private clients, when we are really getting into the depths of shadow work. What it is that they need to face, what parts of them they have pushed down, pushed aside, not wanted to actually be present with. So we begin by identifying the shadow. So this is where we're actually going to name that part of ourself, and we're going to name what the pattern is. That is driving it. For example, I am afraid I'm not enough and then we're going to thank the shadow. Now, there is so much more in depth work that I do as we do this. We use a lot of EFT to desensitize any situations we go back to root cause. We find that within the body. There is a process that I have a framework that I use. It is highly effective to have deep lasting change, but this is just going to give you a bit of an overview of something that you can actually take yourself through at home. So identify your shadow and then thank it, okay, thank the part acknowledging its role in protecting you because it developed for a reason. And even if you don't know exactly what that reason was, or even if your mind thinks it knows, and it's not the right thing, it doesn't matter. We want to just work with it now. Okay, we want to bring some acceptance to it. We want it to be seen and heard. So acknowledge that it's been there to protect you and then start to integrate the shadow. Rewrite the belief with something that feels empowering and feels true. For my energy is valuable and my work speaks for itself. That is a beautiful rewrite for I'm afraid I'm not enough for my clients, for my business, for whatever it is that you're not enough for just in general. And then we are going to set boundaries. That are actually aligned with your values because healthy boundaries are a declaration of your self worth. And I'm going to repeat that healthy boundaries are a declaration of your self worth. So once you've done this, I'm going to encourage you to write a letter to your shadow. Thank it for its role, but release it from its job. And if you are struggling with this. And then affirm your new truth. Sorry. And if you are struggling with this, if this feels hard if your mind won't let you go into those depths because it doesn't feel safe, then this is the kind of work that we can do together privately. We can do parts work, as I said, we do EFT, hypnotherapy. We have so many different ways, body psychotherapy to work with the root cause, to work with that part, to work and integrate those shadows. This is the deep emotional work that we do in our private spaces. So if that is something that feels like what you need right now, then I have an application form you can fill in to work privately together. So write that letter and then come over to Instagram and let me know when you've written it if you want to. If you choose to let me know what part of you've written too, and what is your new truth that you'll be affirming. So as we finish out this episode, as I like to do, I'm going to give you some reflection questions to ponder. What story are you telling yourself about why you need to over deliver? What would change for you if you truly believed that your energy and your expertise were already enough? And what boundary can you set today? That honors your worth, and if you're ready to explore your shadow work and rewrite your patterns beautiful, deep, lasting way, then let's explore private work together or pop yourself on the wait list for the solid success Academy. Because this is the kind of work that we are going to be doing together in that 12 week transformational program where you're in a healing your inner world is going to ignite your business success. As we leave today, I want you to remember that over delivering is not about your clients. It is about the stories that you have carried for far too long. And when you bring those stories into light, you are free to show up with the boundaries, the clarity. And the confidence that already lives within you, you are already enough. The question is, are you ready to believe it?

19:29

That's a wrap on today's episode. Feeling inspired to explore your inner world and reach your full potential? We'd love to hear from you. Subscribe for more, leave a review and share your takeaways on Instagram at jessica. reid. ilc. Until next time, keep thriving!