Written by: Jody Kennett, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
If you have hit a block in growth in your business, career, or leadership, this is what you need for a breakthrough.
Have you ever been in that place building your business or career where you know you are doing everything you should be, your knowledgeable and skilled, your delivering great results, and also receiving recognition, but feeling utterly frustrated because you just cannot breakthrough to the next level of growth? That growth may be an income bracket, or for a new position, or advancement into that next level where things start coming to you because you are known. If you are reading this and feeling a resounding ‘Yes, that’s me!’, I want to assure you that you are close and what’s needed next to tip the tide toward your growth may be a surprise and it might not be where you have been looking.
First of all, let me ask you, where do you believe a breakthrough to the next higher level of achievement, meaning, or fulfillment comes from? Is it working harder, taking massive action, knowing the right people, networking, getting seen, a factor of time, or maybe even manifestation? Yes, it could be a combination of all of those factors. Is success external to us? Is it out there waiting for us and we have to go to it or find and create it?
If you are an entrepreneur, you may believe the next level of exciting growth comes from growing your audience or validation from your fans that you are worthy enough. For career women leaders, you may be working day and night to receive accolades from your superiors because they hold the power to promote you to that next position and you may believe you have to prove yourself and show what you are capable of to them. Worse yet, we may all believe in the zero sum game, that the market is saturated, too competitive for all of us, and that there are few positions at the top.
What if I told you success and growth are not out there somewhere external to us and they are not even in the hands of someone else? Could it be that to get to our next breakthrough level in our business and career is an inside job, an internal shift that we need to realize whether it be a belief, mindset, emotion, or energetic transformation? Success and self-esteem are very similar because neither one is given to us by someone else, they are what we decide, claim, believe and breathe into ourselves.
Stay with me here because I know there are many external actions that need to happen in order to get to higher levels of growth, impact, and success; we all know that we cannot just think or believe something and receive it without taking action and doing what needs to be done. Yet, the action steps we take come from what we believe is possible, what we think about ourselves, and the thoughts we think. As one of my great mentors, Marshall Goldsmith states, ‘What got you here, Won’t get you there.’ This means the success you have had to date is a factor of what you have been doing, thinking and believing thus far. If you want to now take yourself somewhere you have never been, that programming needs an update.
How to Level Up Your Growth from the Inside Out
A breakthrough is going to come from a ‘break’ in thinking, feeling, and believing through to a more expansive, higher, enlightened place. When we are to become someone we have never been before, we have to see ourselves in an entirely new way and then energize this out to others and into the world showing up like we have never done before. You may have heard the expression that our life is a reflection of what is on the inside. I believe this is true and yet I also want to recognize that there is no fault or blame to claim here as we have all had different life experiences and some of us have had a lot more challenges to overcome that were external to us and in some cases done to us. The key is you can overcome them and the impact they may have had on you internally.
3 Internal Steps to Breakthrough to Your Next Level of Growth
As a women’s leadership and confidence coach, I coach women to go from where they are today to where they want to go or better yet, who they want and need to be to achieve their business, career, and leadership goals. Here are three steps you can take to transform yourself internally that will be the catalyst for your next exciting level of business, career or leadership growth:
1. Elevate your thoughts to the next level before you are there. If what got you here will not get you to your next level, what do you need to think and what are the thoughts of someone who would get there? Write down a list of three key thoughts that are beyond what you have currently thought possible or that are higher-level thinking about yourself, your business, and your income.
2. Elevate the emotions you have about yourself and your business, career or leadership. If we are taking massive action and yet are carrying around a lot fear, frustration, guilt, shame, unworthiness, stress or sadness, this is absolutely going to impact our growth. Transforming how we feel, especially about ourselves, is one of the hardest steps here and one I suggest everyone receive support around whether it be from a counselor, coach or some other alternative therapy.
Often, in order to feel better and release negative emotions, we have to do the work to process those emotions. Once they are processed, it is up to each one of us to then be emotionally resilient where we allow and get ourselves to a state where we can feel excited, grateful, and joyful about our work and especially about ourselves. Emotions hold energy; they are energy in motion. By transforming your emotions, you shift the energy going into your business, career, and leadership. The trick is to feel this before you arrive at the milestone while you are building during the process of getting there.
3. Uproot and upgrade your beliefs about yourself and about what is possible for you. That word uproot is on point to describe how deep in our subconscious some beliefs are so much so we may not even be aware of them. They are very much like an iceberg that we only see the tip of in the ocean of our life, but their depth is what causes the damage. Whether you have beliefs that you never saw yourself as a leader, or that it is hard to hit an income bracket, or that your career is limited for one reason or another, each one of these beliefs can be debated and exchanged. In fact, CBT (Cogntive Behavioral Therapy) and CBC, Cognitive Behavioral Coaching do exactly this. It is a counselling and coaching method that help us transform our beliefs and thoughts to impact our behavior and create a different outcome. As a coach, I do CBC with some of my clients and have seen extraordinary results with it.
If you have been looking for your next breakthrough somewhere out there external to yourself, it may be time to look inward and know that you will certainly surpass your next growth step. You will get to this next level because you elevated your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs to be the person who has already arrived before you get there.
As that statement says, our external life is an expression of our internal world; therefore to change what we see externally to a new growth level, we must aspire and ascend to a new growth level internally. When we believe it, feel it, and think it, we will see it.
If you are a female entrepreneur, women leader or career professional who would like to be guided, coached or supported to your next breakthrough growth level and to have a space to process what is needed to get there, reach out and we will elevate you together!
Jody Kennett, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jody Kennett elevates leaders with leadership, communication, and peak energy performance as an ICF-certified coach. She is impacting women in business globally and empowering them to own their power as a leader by combining women's leadership, confidence, and communication coaching. Her specialized training as a certified C-IQ (Conversational Intelligence) coach is transforming conversations, communication, and culture to foster positive relationships and a thriving workplace. As a co-author of The Winning Mindset book, she is inspiring and training people to master their inner-leader and mindset so they can have peak performance. She created Peak Energy 4 Performance to highlight the importance of energy input into not only our bodies, but also our mind, emotions, and environment. Jody is uniquely certified as leadership, life, and health coach bringing 20 years of health and wellbeing expertise to energize leaders and entrepreneurs. She is the coach who will help you 'Lead Your Life', career, and business so you will, 'Lead it, Live it, and Love it!'
