Hello and welcome to another episode of the Rich Woman Rising podcast. I'm your host, Eloise Tompkins, and I help women heal their relationship with money so that they can feel so much more comfortable, confident, calm and focused when they go into money conversations, whether that's with clients, whether it's about talking about their business, whatever it is.
And I do this from a body based perspective. And today I want to talk to you about failure. Failing sucks. It sucks to fail. And I recently had an experience where I failed in my business and it ended up being the most magical thing that could have happened to me.
And you might be thinking, my goodness, Ellie, how did you fail in your business? And why was that a good thing? Well, don't worry, because that is exactly what I'm about to talk to you about in this episode today.
But the reason that I want to talk about failure is because so many women are terrified of putting themselves out there in their business. So many women are terrified to post on social media, to talk about their business, to ask for opportunities, to tell people what it is that they want, what it is that they need.
They bumble their way through conversations. Someone might say, what do you need? And they'll say, they don't answer the question directly. Because we have been taught that asking for what we want and saying it directly is a bad thing.
And we worry that we're going to be judged for being direct and communicating clearly. So we dance around the topic, beat around the bush, and don't actually say what it is that we're wanting or needing.
And this is one of the biggest money blockers that I see. And women will ask me, one of the common questions that I also get is, is this a money block? Because women can see it playing out. And this is what one of my members in the Millionaire Mindset Academy recently asked.
She was like, Ellie, I have this situation where I find it really difficult to post on social media. Is that a money block? And we unpacked it. We explored the motivations behind not posting. And the underlying reason that she wasn't posting was because she was scared.
Scared that other people would judge her. And yeah, that is a money block. And usually that money block sits in the worthiness space, not feeling worthy, not feeling good enough, not feeling like they can post, because if they do post, what if someone judges them?
And this exact thing happened to me recently. And if you've been following me on Instagram, then you might have seen me posting about it. So a few months ago, I saw Heidi Anderson, and if you don't know Heidi Anderson, Heidi is an amazing woman who does PR, and she's got a long history working in radio, breakfast radio across Perth and New South Wales, and she did a lot of a big stint in breakfast radio in radio, and then from that, she decided to launch her own PR business. Now, Heidi is incredible at PR. She has done some insane things, like getting a bunch of women to walk through shopping centers in their bras and undies as a way to build body confidence and to talk about anxiety.
And I've been following Heidi for years and loved the work that she was doing. And I saw that she had posted on her social media that she was bringing her shit show to Melbourne, and she was looking for speakers.
I wanted to speak. I wanted to share my story. I wanted to get up on stage and talk. I wanted to speak, but I was also terrified, terrified for a lot of reasons. And some of the reasons that I was terrified were because the things that I wanted to share were personal.
They were about my family. They were about my childhood. They were about my own patents, my own vulnerabilities, my own insecurities. And that's really vulnerable stuff to share. So there was that. And there was also the fear that if I applied, what if I didn't get selected?
And to be honest, that was probably my biggest fear. What if I applied and I didn't get chosen? So when I saw her put the call out out, I was like, okay, cool, I'm gonna park that. I'll apply. And then days went by and I didn't apply until she finally sent an email.
It was a Friday and she was like, today's the last day to apply. You have until midnight to apply. Otherwise your application is void. You don't, you don't get the chance. And it was in that moment I was like, fuck, I need to make a very quick decision here.
And so I applied and as I hit that submit button, I started crying. Because as part of the application, you had to talk about what you wanted to share. And that just brought up a lot of emotion in and of itself and then hitting the submit button to actually apply to speak.
I was like, oh my goodness, what have I done? But it was done. It was submitted and I didn't think anything of it until later in the week. Heidi posted on her socials and said, wow, we've had an incredible lineup of speakers to apply.
Here they are. And there was my name and photo on the list. Now there were I think there were or speakers. So there were quite a lot of people who had applied, which was phenomenal, phenomenal for Heidi, not so phenomenal for me.
But it was phenomenal to see how many people were interested in sharing their story. And what came up for me was, oh, my goodness, that's a lot of amazing people. There is no way I'm going to win. Because not only did Heidi put all of us up on her Instagram page, the way that we would win a spot at her shit show was by getting people on social media to vote for us.
And whoever got the most amount of votes on that social media post would win a spot at her stage. And I was looking at the speakers and I was looking at who was commenting already. By the time I got to the post, there had been already people voting and commenting.
And there was two or three people who were getting a lot of votes. And I was like, oh, my goodness, there is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to get that amount of votes. If they've already got that many votes, I'm not even going to be able to get that amount of votes.
And it wasn't coming from a place of unreasonable doubt. It was just that I knew. I don't have that audience. I didn't have that amount of people. I just didn't have, I wasn't able to achieve that. And there was this little voice inside my head that was saying, say, I told you not to bother applying.
I knew that you wouldn't win. And then the voice then started to say, don't even bother asking. people, don't even bother asking people to vote because you're not going to win anyway. So why bother? And I could feel my heart drop, my stomach sink, my throat clench up.
And I wanted to cry because that voice in my head was just reinforcing that belief that I had. You're not worthy. You don't deserve this. Who the fuck are you to think that you could ever be a speaker on a Heidi Anderson stage as if?
And I'm not going to lie, I hooked into that story. I got hooked into it because you know what, that's a familiar story. That story has been with me for a very long time. And you will have your own familiar stories that have been with you for a very long time.
And when those stories come up for you. I'm curious, are you aware of them? Or do they run on autopilot? Are you aware of the feelings that you have when your stories play out for you? Or do they also just play on autopilot?
Because the difference for me is that I hooked into this story for a record an hour. And then I was like, oh my goodness, hang on a minute. This is that story that I get hooked on. This is my I'm not good enough story.
And you know what? I know how this story plays out. And you know how that story would have played out. It would be, I don't feel worthy. I'm not good enough. I'm shit. I'm not gonna get this opportunity anyway.
So I wouldn't ask for help. I wouldn't bother reaching out to anyone. And then you know what? No one would comment for me. No one would vote for me on that Instagram post. And that would reinforce my story that I'm not good enough because no one voted, even though I didn't ask them to.
And I kind of played that scenario out in my head and I was like, oh, okay. Well, I know how that story is gonna play out because that has been what's happened in the past. I'm very familiar with that.
And then what I did, and this is what I teach in my millionaire mindset academy is I said to myself, I'm like, okay. So that is what will play out if I keep hooking onto this story right now, this old, familiar subconscious story that I'm consciously aware of because I've done the work and I've done the reprogramming.
Even though you still get hooked on it, just because you do the programming, it doesn't mean that you stop getting hooked on the stories. You just have more space to be able to see them. You become aware of them.
And I was like, okay. So the alternative is I step into my inner millionaire self. And I think about her and I think about what she would do. And I think about how she would respond, how she would be thinking, how she would be feeling.
And so I took myself and put myself in her shoes. That in a millionaire, that version of me who has already achieved my seven figure business, who is living in my dream house, living my dream life. I put myself in her shoes.
And I was like, you know what? If I were her now, I would let myself feel disappointed. I would let myself feel the feelings. I would recognize my emotions. I would recognize that feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I would recognize that tug on my heart. I would recognize that my throat felt constricted and that I wanted to cry because it felt overwhelming. And I wouldn't let myself have those emotions. Tell me what I'm going to do.
I'm just going to use those emotions. as information. Information that I'm feeling unsure, I'm feeling scared, and I'm not going to let those emotions dictate my actions because I get to be in control of the behaviour that I choose.
And I want to be that version of myself that changes my subconscious patterns, that changes my narrative. And when I stepped into her and when I was able to see things from her perspective and how she would handle the situation, my goodness, did things change?
What I ended up doing is I thought, you know what? I probably am not going to win this competition. I probably am going to get rejected. Chances are I'm going to fail. And I'm still going to do it anyway.
I'm still going to reach out to people. I'm still going to ask for help. I'm still going to try. I'm going to put myself out there. I'm going to reach out to my network and ask people to vote for me.
And so I did. Was that comfortable? Fuck no. I felt so, so, so uncomfortable. Every single person that I messaged, I'm like, oh my God, this is so out of my comfort zone. I don't like asking for help.
It felt fucking shit. But because I've done that reprogramming, because I'm able to regulate my emotions, because I am able to understand that my emotions are the driving forces behind my behavior. If I'm not aware of what's going on in my body, if I let my emotions and my thoughts operate my life on autopilot, then I would have just gone with that other decision.
I would have gone with that subconscious programming and gone on autopilot and gone, yeah, you know what? I'm not good enough to speak on Heidi Anderson's stage, but I didn't because I'm aware of how my subconscious programming can play out and I've got that space to be able to take a step back.
So I reached out, reached out to so many people and you know what? I had some people who were like super supportive and they commented and they voted for me. I had some people who I reached out to who I didn't think were gonna vote for me.
I thought they'd ignore my message and they sent me messages back going, oh my goodness congratulations I've just voted for you. And I had people who I thought would vote for me who didn't even reply to my message.
They read it and they didn't even reply. And what I learned about failure and what I want you to understand is that people are going to reject you. When you ask for help there are going to be people out there that don't reply, that won't support you, that won't vote for you.
They won't help you. And that's okay because it's not about them. And it's not about you, it just is. Because what I thought is I don't know what's going on in their life right now. I don't know what's going on in their business right now.
I don't know anything about what's going on for them. And maybe it has something to do with me. Maybe they don't like me. That could be one potential outcome. But chances are there could be a hundred other explanations as to why they didn't respond or vote.
It's not my concern. And when I let go of that expectation, when I let go of that judgment and stop making it mean something about me, it was so much easier to reach out and ask for help. And I mean, that's easier said than done, right?
I get it. It's not easy to let go of that judgment. However, it is really important to let go of that judgment if you actually want to reach the goals that you have in your business. So I sent out all those messages.
I got people to vote. I had the people who didn't even acknowledge. And like I knew, I didn't win. I did not win a spot. I already knew that. I put myself in the position of failure knowing that I would fail, knowing that I wouldn't get that spot, knowing that I'd be rejected, knowing that it would feel yuck and knowing that I would be okay, knowing that I have the resilience, the emotional resilience to be okay with that because I can lean into the discomfort of that emotion because I understand how it feels in my body.
I understand that that emotion isn't going to last forever. I understand that in order to reach my goals, then I'm going to have to lean into some of that yuck stuff if I want to experience the success.
It can't be one without the other. So that all being said, I celebrated the people, the speakers who did get their spot and didn't really think too much of it. I was just like, okay, whatever, it is what it is.
What I could have done though, is fall back into that old pattern of, okay, well, I didn't get that. So I'm probably never going to become a speaker and that goal is out the window because I think it can become quite easy to then fall back into that pattern of, well, that didn't work out.
So I'm not going to bother speaking because we like to generalize. We like to kind of, our thoughts like to go, oh, well, that didn't work out. And we fall into these patterns of, well, nothing's going to work out.
And I didn't do that because again I stepped into my inner millionaire and was like well how would she think about this? And so what I did do is I told people that I applied to speak on Heidi's stage.
I was like yeah I applied for that. I was really proud of myself. I put myself out there. I didn't win but these two awesome speakers got a spot. How cool is it for them? Yeah I do want to speak. Yeah I do want to share my story.
Yeah I'm ready to be on stage and I focused on that. I was like I do want to speak because I put it out to the universe and was like you know what I didn't get that opportunity but I'm gonna tell every other person that I come across that I want to speak and that I'm putting myself into the speakers world.
And by putting myself out there people know that that's the goal that I have. I'll be on their mind. Then I get offered a spot to speak at a networking event that I'm a part of. So I didn't get the Heidi spot but I got this other speaking spot.
How fucking cool is that? Because I allowed myself to fail. I leaned into the discomfort. I got this shit show happened. I went to the shit show and one of the other things that Heidi had was a wild card speaker that should pull out on the night.
Now I am a little bit spiritual and I keep leaning more into my spiritual side and there was a part of me that was like oh my goodness I really want this opportunity to speak on Heidi's stage. I really want to share my story.
Erica Kramer the Queen of Confidence was there and I was like oh my goodness how cool would it be to share a stage with Erica Kramer as one of my first speaking gigs? Like how fucking cool would that be?
I'm like there's no chance like oh surely there couldn't be a chance. Low and behold on the night Heidi hands the hat over to Erica to pull a random name out of the container. Erica digs in, rummages around and she pulls my name out of the hat.
I was in so much shock. I got up on stage and I spoke. I shared my story and it felt so right. I was meant to be up on that stage. I was meant to be speaking with those speakers that night. There was just this energetic pull.
It was the right place, the right time, the right people and the universe works in these weird ways and I firmly believe that. The thing... that I took away from this and the thing that I want you to walk away from this episode with is that failure is a part of your success.
Failure is a part of your journey. Now it might sound like I didn't fail because I did get the speaking spot and I feel very honored and privileged to have gotten that spot and I'm so grateful that I got that spot.
And I also firmly believe that the reason that it was me that got that spot was because I leaned into that discomfort, I leaned into the failure, I leaned into knowing that I wouldn't win and if I had kind of followed my old subconscious patterns, if I had allowed myself to go down the path of, well, you're shit, you're not worthy, who are you, as if you're going to end up on stage with Heidi Anderson and Erica Cramer, like as if, as if. If I had let myself hook into that story, do you know what would have happened? I would have gone to that shit show because I was still going to go even if I applied or not and I would have watched someone else on stage.
I would have watched someone else be plucked out of the hat and I would have seen their name pulled out. And do you know how much more of a failure I would have felt if that had happened? That would have really hooked into my story of you're not good enough, you're a failure, who are you, and it would have hooked into my you're never going to be able to do what they do.
And the reason I share this is because I want you to start understanding that bringing awareness to those subconscious patterns, that you have those subconscious beliefs and bringing them into your conscious awareness, understanding how those emotions come into play because for me it was that feeling in the pit of my stomach, that tightness in my throat, that my heart, like I could feel my heart was racing.
Those were signals like, okay, something's happening here. I'm hooking into these thoughts. There's something playing out in my body. But the thing is, what was playing out in my body wasn't Heidi Anderson's shit show.
It was all the times in my path where I was told that I wasn't good enough. Don't go after that goal because you're not going to get it. You're not allowed to do that because that's a stupid idea. The amount of times that I wanted to do something as a kid and I was told don't be fucking ridiculous by my dad was a lot.
Every time I wanted to try something it would be met with disapproval. So I learned as a kid to shut down. I learned not to bother trying because I wouldn't get it anyway. And for me, putting myself in that position of knowing that I wasn't going to get a winning spot, but doing it anyway, was showing my inner child that she can trust me to make better decisions for us now.
She can trust me that I'm going to look after her. She can trust that actually we can make choices and do things that we want. And that is really, really powerful. And this is exactly why I've created the Millionaire Mindset Academy, because I want women to be able to shift those emotions, because it's all good and well to recognize the thoughts.
Like, I knew. I was like, okay, well, I'm not good enough. I know that. I knew that. I knew that thought was there. But it was being able to connect what my body was doing, leaning into that discomfort in my body rather than trying to avoid it.
That helped me be able to press submit on that application. It helped me get up on stage when I was randomly called. Like, come up on stage and share your story out of the blue as a wildcard. No preparation.
So being able to lean into those emotions is really, really powerful. And if I can help just one woman be able to lean into that emotional experience, that will just make me so happy, because our emotions are not something that need to be feared.
They're not something that we need to run from. They're something that we need to embrace, because they're just sending us so many amazing, wonderful cues. We just don't like how some of them feel. And because of that, we want to run away from them.
But I promise you, you can learn to embrace those feelings. You can learn to embrace the discomfort. And I also promise you when you do do that there is going to be so much magic and opportunity waiting for you on the other side because on the other side of that discomfort is success.
On that note I think that's where the podcast episode needs to end today and I hope that you are feeling inspired to take action into that discomfort because that is where the juice lies and if you want to learn and dive deeper into this and understand how you can shift your money fears and grow your business to seven figures and beyond then I reckon you would love the secret podcast because that's exactly what it goes into in a lot more depth.
So I'm going to link to that in the show notes if that is something of interest to you and you can really dig your heels in and understand that in a lot more depth and detail. So take care. And if you're interested in checking out the snippets of the speech, then head over to my Instagram because there's some posts there that I've popped up about the shit show and go give Heidi a follow as well.
I'll pop her details in the show notes for you as well because she's phenomenal. But yeah, thanks so much for listening and I will chat with you all again next week. Thank you.
